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Books podcasts were talking about in April 2023
April 2023 podcast discussions frequently explored personal transformation, historical ideologies, and foundational scientific and spiritual texts. On Behind the Bastards, hosts examining the history of yoga traced influences back to Paramahansa Yogananda's influential 1946 work 'Autobiography of a Yogi' and Maxick's bodybuilder guide 'Muscle Control'. The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast hosted guests who referenced several major works across disciplines; Joe Hage discussed Thomas S. Kuhn's 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' regarding paradigm shifts, and later episodes featuring Naomi Wolf turned to her book 'The Beauty Myth'. That same episode incorporated historical examinations of totalitarianism and public health through Robert Proctor's 'Racial Hygiene' and Robert Jay Lifton's classic 'The Nazi Doctors', alongside Charles Mackay's 'Memoirs of extraordinary popular delusions' to examine collective political behavior. Additionally, an episode of My First Million highlighted Ryan Holiday's curation of biography recommendations, noting the connection between the reading habits of successful figures and the structure of biographical literature.
Behind the Bastards
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Autobiography of a Yogi
Discussed“And, uh, Vishnu Ghosh is the younger brother of a famous guru and author named, uh, Paramahansa Yogananda, who wrote a book called Autobiography of a Yogi that was published in 1946.”
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Muscle Control
Discussed“Um, and in fact, as much of an influence as his brother's book was, Ghosh was also influenced by the book Muscle Control by a German bodybuilder named Maxick.”
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A Quiet Flame
Discussed“There's a series of detective books that I read from time to time, the Bernie Gunther books, which are about a detective who is not a Nazi but is first in the Weimar State and then in the Nazi State.”
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Mengele
Discussed“Yeah, I'm gonna quote now from Mengele: Unmasking the Angel of Death.”
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Discussed“You’ll be aware of the famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which explains how you change your paradigms regarding what you know.”
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The beauty myth : how images of beauty are used against women
Discussed“Her first book, 'The Beauty Myth,' challenged notions of attraction, arguing that they are societally fabricated.”
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Racial hygiene
Discussed“There's a fantastic book called 'Racial Hygiene,' and of course, the classic 'The Nazi Doctors' makes this point.”
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The Nazi Doctors
Discussed“There's a fantastic book called 'Racial Hygiene,' and of course, the classic 'The Nazi Doctors' makes this point.”
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Memoirs of extraordinary popular delusions
Discussed“I keep going back to 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions' and 'The Madness of Crowds.'”
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The end of America
Discussed“But I do think if you're looking for unconscious motivations, my work dating from The End of America, in which I was focused on torture and surveillance, and my more recent work in which I recognized how violent and a coercive society can become definitely arose from my experience of being raped as a child and then molested as a”
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The Body Keeps the Score
Discussed“One really wonderful book is The Body Keeps Score about trauma, right?”
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The bell curve
Discussed“One of the things that the authors of The Bell Curve pointed out—Richard Hernstein, one of the authors—was that in the typical Ivy League environment, the typical Ivy League inhabitant never meets anybody in the lower half of the cognitive ability distribution.”
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A Brief History of Time
Discussed“So, I think when I read Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time, which is going to be 20 years ago, or approximately. Oh, it's almost 40 years old!”
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Lost in TransNation
Discussed“It's called 'Lost in Transnation: A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness.' So 'out of the madness'?”
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The Firm
Discussed“So what happened with the twins is that after decades, in fact, John Money wrote a book in 1997 in which he claimed that his twin study confirmed and supported the results of his experiment.”
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The mind has mountains
Discussed“He wrote about this in a great book, Dr. Paul McHugh's book called 'The Mind Has Mountains.'”
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As Nature Made Him
Discussed“Unfortunately, when it did become public knowledge–and a book was written by John Colapinto called 'As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl'–it told the entire story from A to Z.”
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Unprotected
Discussed“Years ago when I worked at UCLA, my first book, ‘Unprotected,’ came out in 2008, where I challenged the political correctness in the student health clinic.”
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The book of Exodus
Discussed“I've recently completed a seminar on the biblical Book of Exodus with a group of scholars in Miami, and that's available on The Daily Wire Plus platform.”
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Discours de la méthode
Discussed“It’s called 'Best Things First', coming out in mid-April.”
My First Million
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The Obstacle Is the Way
Discussed“Your friend Ryan Holiday has an intriguing post where he shared his top 25 biography recommendations; the introduction emphasizes how successful individuals all have biographies on their shelves.”
StarTalk Radio
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Into the Anthropocosmos
Discussed“You're the founder and director of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative and author of 'Into the Anthropocosmos.' One word there, whoa!”
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The jazz of physics
Discussed“Among your books, the one I remember most is from now six or seven years ago: The Jazz of Physics. Let me get the right subtitle here: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe.”
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Fear of a Black Universe
Discussed“Then you followed that up with Fear of a Black Universe: An Outsider's Guide to the Future of Physics. So you're still at it, but you're also a jazz saxophonist, so you're out of control here, it seems.”
Lex Fridman Podcast
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A short history of nearly everything
Discussed“And now let me leave you some words from Bill Bryson in his book, "A Short History of Nearly Everything."”
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Anatomy
Discussed“About the topics as well, we recently had a schoolteacher present on teaching immigrants with a book called 'Making Americans.' We had a presidential advisor to four presidents discuss changing US politics.”
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The society of mind
Discussed“In Marvin Minsky's 'The Society of Mind,' he truly thinks of the human brain as a society of different kinds of capabilities.”
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Ego Is the Enemy
Discussed“One of the books that I reprogrammed my brain with at night was called 'Ego Is the Enemy.' 'Ego Is the Enemy.'”
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My Ántonia
Discussed“Okay, I just want to snapshot that quote and put it on my LinkedIn and the back of my book. When is your autobiography coming out?”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
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The case against sugar
Discussed“He had just written a book at that time called 'The Case Against Sugar.'”
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Good calories, bad calories
Discussed“Prior to that, he had written 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' and 'Why We Get Fat.'”
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Why we get fat
Discussed“Prior to that, he had written 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' and 'Why We Get Fat.'”
Freakonomics Radio
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Why We Curse
Discussed“If I ask you to give the answer to the title of this one book of yours, "Why We Curse," why do we? How answerable is that question?”
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Holy Sh*t
Discussed“Moore is the author of a book called Holy [ __ ]. A Brief History of Swearing.”
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The Stuff of Thought
Discussed“Question: you've got this kind of euphemism treadmill that Stephen Pinker talks about where it starts off as a bad word, but then people use it more and more, and then you get used to it, and then it falls away, and then you need to come up with another bad word.”
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
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The Basketball diaries
Discussed“I think Michael Landon stays up with the kid who's on opium and sweats it out. It's like Basketball Diaries level. It really is, in the middle of whatever the hell else used to happen on that show, cook and stew or whatever in Walnut Grove.”
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
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Paris
Discussed“Her new book is out now; it's called Paris: The Memoir.”
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How to Change Your Mind
Discussed“I read Michael Pollan's book, 'How to Change Your Mind.' I went through it like a bag of peanuts, and I told my wife, Renee—who is the love of my life—that I had never done psychedelics before in my life.”
SmartLess
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The Outsiders
Discussed“You started in and I mentioned sort of the brat pack, but you started in, was The Outsiders your first big film? It was my first movie, period!”
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The Hotel New Hampshire
Discussed“Wow, wasn't that a John Irving book? I remember when that came out.”
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Maestro
Discussed“So, it really got movies; I heard, I read the script, and I remember saying to him, 'Like this, you know this is the book talking about maestros, dude.'”
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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Born Free
Discussed“God, I won't, I want that one, the Born Free of anteaters, yes; that'd be great! Have you seen that viral video from like the 80s where the guy goes and talks to the lion?”
People I (Mostly) Admire
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The Fault in Our Stars
Discussed“He's the author of The Fault in Our Stars, which began as a novel for young adults and ended up a cultural phenomenon.”
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The Anthropocene Reviewed
Discussed“I've secretly been a fan of John Green for a while, but when I stumbled onto his latest book, The Anthropocene Reviewed, I was shocked to discover that it was non-fiction, actually meant for adults.”
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Looking for Alaska
Discussed“Can you take me back to your first book? It's called Looking for Alaska.”
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Turtles All the Way Down
Discussed“You've been cranking out books every year, every other year, and then after The Fault in Our Stars, there was a five-year gap before your next book, Turtles All the Way Down.”
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Outlive
Discussed“It has taken him seven years to collect and organize his insights into his first book. It's called 'Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity.'”
Huberman Lab
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The Telomere Effect
Discussed“To learn more about the work from Dr. Epel's laboratory, as well as her books entitled 'The Telomere Effect' and, now more recently, 'The Stress Prescription,' you can find links to those in the show note captions.”
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The Stress Prescription
Discussed“To learn more about the work from Dr. Epel's laboratory, as well as her books entitled 'The Telomere Effect' and, now more recently, 'The Stress Prescription,' you can find links to those in the show note captions.”
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Altered Traits
Discussed“I find this intriguing, as it parallels meditation; while a single meditation session may lead to brain adjustments, as detailed in the book *Altered Traits,* engaging in repeated daily short meditations or longer TM retreats can indeed induce significant brain plasticity.”
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Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic
Discussed“This concept was discussed by a guest on this podcast, a psychiatrist named Dr. Paul Kti, who authored a remarkable book on trauma.”
