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Books podcasts were talking about in March 2024
March 2024 podcast episodes prominently featured literary awards, historical non-fiction, and discussions on ideology and intuition. On No Stupid Questions, Angela shared her enthusiasm for Josh Waitzkin's The Art of Learning, exploring themes of intuition and chess mastery. Timcast IRL featured a discussion on Liu Cixin's novel The Three-Body Problem, with the host advocating for its introduction in educational settings. On the Lex Fridman Podcast, Mark Cuban discussed reading Christopher Rufo's book on the genealogy of wokeism during a conversation concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion. Pod Save America touched upon the commercial ventures of Donald Trump, noting the inclusion of The Holy Bible by Hendrickson Publishers among items being sold. Finally, Stuff You Should Know dedicated an episode to the Pulitzer Prize, during which Josh discussed reading Andrew Sean Greer's 2018 winner Less, Chuck referenced Charles C. Mann's 1493 as a follow-up to 1491, the hosts examined Alex Haley's Roots: The Saga of an American Family, and they reflected on James Frey's A Million Little Pieces in the context of past literary controversies.
No Stupid Questions
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The Art of Learning
Discussed“But one of my favorite books is called The Art of Learning by one of the greatest chess masters ever: oh, Josh Waitzkin! Yes!”
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Permission to Feel
Discussed“Actually, there's a really interesting author; I've just been reading a book called 'Permission to Feel.' Yes, yes!”
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Fear and Courage
Discussed“And there's a psychologist named Stanley Rachman who was a lifelong scholar of fear and courage! And he wrote a book of the same title: 'Fear and Courage.'”
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Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch
Discussed“I mean there's this Valentine's book that we always read as kids called Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch!”
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The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples
Discussed“I’m going to read to you from The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples! And it’s about how couples can build a healthy, trusting relationship!”
Timcast IRL
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三体
Discussed“I believe the introduction to the 'Three-Body Problem' should be required viewing in schools; kids should definitely watch it.”
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The fourth turning
Discussed“Or the worst part if it, and this is something that even Neil Howell got into in 'The Fourth Turning,' is that the new version of it was that if a war starts and then there's a provocation in the US or Ukraine or somewhere in Europe and somehow it gets blamed on Trump, and it gets blamed on MAGA,”
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Trump
Discussed“I mean, and Trump tried to do that; there's a great clip of Trump after he was out of office; he’s being interviewed for his book, and he's talking about meeting Netanyahu and Abbas, the head of the PLO in the West Bank, and he says very candidly, he says, you know, I got a really good feeling about Abbas;”
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Uncle Tom's Cabin
Discussed“If you want a really bizarre experience, check out Tom Woods' new book. It came out a few months ago, and Tom Woods was debunking this in real time with his newsletters starting in March of 2020.”
Lex Fridman Podcast
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Historia Alexandri Magni
Discussed“At the same time, I read Christopher Rufo's book where he discusses the genealogy of wokeism and ideology.”
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Operation paperclip
Discussed“The following is a conversation with Annie Jacobsen, an investigative journalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and author of several amazing books on war, weapons, government secrecy, and national security, including the books titled 'Area 51', 'Operation Paperclip', 'The Pentagon's Brain Phenomena', 'Surprise, Kill, Vanish', and her new book, 'Nuclear War'.”
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Surprise, Kill, Vanish
Discussed“The following is a conversation with Annie Jacobsen, an investigative journalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and author of several amazing books on war, weapons, government secrecy, and national security, including the books titled 'Area 51', 'Operation Paperclip', 'The Pentagon's Brain Phenomena', 'Surprise, Kill, Vanish', and her new book, 'Nuclear War'.”
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The Cold and the Dark
Discussed“Carl Sagan talked about that in this amazing book he wrote with two scientist colleagues called "The Cold and the Dark."”
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Phenomena
Discussed“You've written, like you said, the book "Phenomena" on the secret history of the US government's investigations into extrasensory perception and psychokinesis.”
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First Platoon
Discussed“But the real problem, what has happened, and I write about this in my book, 'First Platoon', which is about a group of young soldiers who goes to Afghanistan and unwittingly becomes part of the Defense Department’s biome efforts to capture biometrics on 85% of the population of Afghanistan.”
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Kitchen Confidential
Discussed“- Yeah, he wrote a book called "Kitchen Confidential," in the 90s. I was in cooking school at the time. It was so... he romanticized cooking in the restaurant so well.”
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Russo-Ukrainian War
Discussed“He has written many insightful books on Ukraine and Russia, the Soviet Union, and Slavic peoples in general, spanning centuries on topics like Chernobyl and nuclear disasters, as well as the current war in Ukraine, in a book titled The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History.”
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Lost Kingdom
Discussed“Admittedly, in that book, I concluded in the 18th century before the rise of nationalism, but subsequent works, like Lost Kingdom, trace the story further into modern times.”
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The Man With the Golden Gun
Discussed“He did this with a new weapon, a spray pistol that later made it into Ian Fleming's Bond novel, The Man With The Golden Gun.”
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Atoms and Ashes - a Global History of Nuclear Disasters
Discussed“Let me switch gears and ask about nuclear safety, as you brought an intriguing point in your book, 'Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disaster.'”
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Nuclear Folly
Discussed“Yes, you've authored a great book on the Cuban Missile Crisis, where we came alarmingly close to not just another world war but to a nuclear conflict that could obliterate human civilization as we know it.”
Pod Save America
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The Holy Bible
Discussed“He's selling Bibles, he's selling sneakers, he's selling NFTs, he's doing all these things; it's all part of the narrative you just laid out, which is he's in it for himself, not for any of you guys.”
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The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain
Discussed“Um, like, if you want the Book of Mormon, they’ll just come to your house and give you one.”
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Commander in Cheat
Discussed“And the question you face is, do you call the man a cheater, or do you keep his ball in your pocket? Rick Reilly from Sports Illustrated, it's a classic, wrote a whole book about Trump cheating at golf!”
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Warren Buffett's Ground Rules
Discussed“And remember in that speech, there was a lot about economic inequality; that was the Buffett Rule, which was based on the idea that Warren Buffett used to say that his secretary paid a higher tax rate than he did.”
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Discussed“Look, I've said this quite a few times now: I think from the scene in 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,' where Gene Wilder—that's a big-ass joke; he trips, looks like he’s going to trip, and then does a somersault and he's up on his feet.”
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Prototype
Discussed“But I did read the Washington Post story about what McConnell said to Jonathan Martin for his book, and one thing I had forgotten about was that he apparently said to Martin, 'I feel exhilarated by the fact that this fellow—meaning Donald Trump—finally totally discredited himself.”
Stuff You Should Know
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Less
Discussed“Um, I picked this book because that's sometimes when I'm after a novel and it's been a while, I will go to the Pulitzer list and that's exactly what I did. And I'm reading Less by Andrew Sean Greer, which won in 2018, and it is so funny and great!”
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1493
Discussed“He won, which was yours, 1491! And then the follow-up was 1493! He won a big award for that, but not the Pulitzer!”
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Roots
Discussed“Alex Haley was another recipient in 1977 for his book Roots, which, surprisingly, had a colon in its full title: Roots: The Saga of an American Family. I think I may have seen it before on the cover, but they never really emphasized the colon, making it seem implied.”
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A million little pieces
Discussed“I think the sad thing is that apparently it's sort of like a million little pieces book that that guy wrote. I read that book, and it was great with a capital G! In my mind, I always thought, 'Dude, why didn’t you just call it a novel?'”
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Dangerous to man
Discussed“But because there was a respected naturalist, Bruce Wright, writing about this, it was picked up by another scientist, a conservationist named Roger Caras, who wrote a book a couple of years later called Dangerous to Man.”
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Bloom County
Discussed“Well, now that I think about it, the first one that really— not the first one that made me laugh, but the one that hit me on a second level was Bloom County.”
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The Complete Maus
Discussed“Essentially, Art Spiegelman, the guy who created Mouse, said that Peanuts was Schultz breaking himself up into child-sized pieces and letting them go at each other for half a century.”
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Communion
Discussed“But he was a horror and science fiction writer and in '87 published the book 'Communion' which had, if you look up the cover of 'Communion', the illustration that was done by Ted Jacobs along with, you know, Strieber, because he was like this is what I saw, you got to draw this right, that is as stereotypical alien head”
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Abduction
Discussed“Then, yeah, he had a book in '94 about 13 different abduction cases called 'Abduction: Human Encounters with Alien.' Uh, parentheses, BTW, I teach at Harvard. Did I mention?”
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The interrupted journey
Discussed“UPI picks it up, uh, and then a guy named John G. Fuller made it into a book in 1966 called The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours Aboard a Flying Saucer. Uh, which eventually became a TV movie in 1975 called The UFO Incident, which you can watch on YouTube if you want to see a relatively young and, uh,”
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How to fix a broken heart
Discussed“That's tip number one from psychologist Guy Winch, the author of "How to Fix a Broken Heart": Stay the heck off social media.”
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Llama, Llama Red Pajama
Discussed“Uh, all right, well, quickly before we talk about llama fleece, I kind of forgot until I started researching this that there was a book series for kids called Llama Llama.”
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
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Apocalypse Never
Discussed“Hello everybody, I'm talking today with journalist and author Michael Shellenberger, who wrote "Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All" and has a new book coming out next year called "Pathocracy."”
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The Man Who Would Be Queen
Discussed“And by the way, the other psychologist is Michael Bailey, and he wrote a book on it. I can't—it’s something—I think it was something like The Man Who Would Be Queen.”
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Bill
Discussed“It's an old phenomenon; there's a wonderful book called "The Fourth Leading Cause of Death"u2014the fourth leading cause of deathu2014and that was before the vaccine compulsion.”
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Political Ponerology
Discussed“You know, it's if you believe—if you read Political Ponerology, this really interesting book on the psychology of totalitarianism, he argues that totalitarianism is defined by the narcissists and the psychopaths taking over every major institution in society and emerging from the bottom up.”
StarTalk Radio
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Harlan Ellison's The city on the edge of forever (teleplay)
Discussed“So if memory serves, that was The City on the Edge of Forever, which was a famous story by Harlan Ellison, a famous science fiction writer.”
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The large scale structure of space-time
Discussed“So back on my shelf I got a book by Stephen Hawking, 'The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time.' Okay, it’s got some title like that.”
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A primate's memoir
Discussed“Oh, it's sort of one of my not-even-marginally scientific books that I cranked out; it's called 'A Primate's Memoir.' Basically, just stories of the 30 odd years hanging out with baboons in various places in East Africa.”
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Treasure Island
Discussed“I am in Action Comics 14! So, uh, Superman visits the Hayden Planetarium!”
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Accessory to War
Discussed“By the way, I retell that story in my book, 'Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance between Astrophysics and the Military' and more broadly, it's between Astrophysics and security. Hey, I'm Adrian Soulard and I reinvented the suitcase.”
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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Faerie queene
Discussed“In the book, you describe validating the criminal or validating the target's model of the world. What does that mean exactly?”
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Carmilla
Discussed“I think it was one of the most highlighted lines in 'Attached.'”
SmartLess
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Snacking Cakes
Discussed“Do you guys know Yosi or her cookbooks? She has this book called Snacking Cakes.”
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Twelfth Night
Discussed“I did this play, I did Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in high school! I didn't understand a word I was saying! And I... and until there was an audience!”
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East of Eden
Discussed“And at the same time I did see Streetcar and I saw East of Eden and those two movies had a major impact! Anyway, somebody, Hillary Shore took me on as... even though she knew the whole resume was [___], and she took me on!”
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Dune
Discussed“Johnny Betts from Private Eye, Taylor Rolator from 21 Jump Street, you might know him as Glenn from Finish Line, um, you might know him as Jack Passion from WKA Road, probably not, but you might know him more as Gurney HCK from Dune or Thanos from Avengers: Endgame or or Dan White for which he was nominated for an”
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
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Rezerva by Printul Harry, Spare-Prince Harry, ROMANIAN language book, 2023
Discussed“You know Prince Harry's book, 'Spare'? Well, in a Lebanese family, the oldest son is golden, and the second son is irrelevant.”
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More ideas about parenting with less stress
Discussed“Well, that's totally in the book on how to do that. You do not solve all of your children's problems—that's the heart of love and logic.”
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Thrilled To Death
Discussed“There's a book I love called 'Thrilled to Death.' It continually presses on your nucleus accumbens, which produces dopamine, continuously pressing on the pleasure centers in your brain.”
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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Discussed“If everyone wants to see me try to cook this recipe from Rad’s book, tune in to YouTube! Mhm! If you love this episode, you’ll really enjoy my episode with Selena Gomez on befriending your inner critic and how to speak to yourself with more compassion.”
The Rubin Report
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The End of the Alphabet
Discussed“We have different TV shows and fashion senses and everything, and I break all of that down in the book.”
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
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The Notebook
Discussed“For sure, yeah, but I had read, of course, this Nicholas Sparks book! It was like targeted for someone like me, my age! And I was like, I have to do this!”
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A walk to remember
Discussed“And then how does it... like the choice 'cause Walk to Remember was the first movie, right? Princess Di? Oh my God!”
Behind the Bastards
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Gone Girl
Discussed“I wonder if the author of Gone Girl got inspired by this story when she wrote a book, you know? Do you know?”
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The One Device
Discussed“That's where Brian Merchant's 2016 history of the iPhone, 'The One Device,' comes in. Um, yeah, and it's a really interesting book, a really good book.”
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Infinite Loop
Discussed“By that point, I had read 'Infinite Loop,' which was the first truly critical examination of Jobs.”
Freakonomics Radio
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Ours Was the Shining Future
Discussed“David Leonhardt has other talents: I'm a senior writer at The New York Times and I'm the author of 'Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.' Leonhardt has been writing about immigration for years.”
The Daily Stoic
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Two Books Are Better Than One!
Discussed“So early in grad school, I'm at MIT. I had published these two books about how to be a good student, right? And I had a blog.”
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Getting Things Done
Discussed“Yeah, you go back and read David Allen, what you get, what's his goal? Occasional moments of Zen-like peace, among the mind, like there's nothing to turn you into a processing machine and a survival process you, right?”
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The Four Cardinal Virtues
Discussed“And then it's okay, we're going to do the four cardinal virtues books, we're going to, you know, really push the studio quality pod, you know, the plays. It was like you push chips in, right?”
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Drive
Discussed“Then I would read, like, I don’t know, one of your newsletter or one of your books or like 'Drive' by Dan Pink, and I'm like, oh, it's so good! This stuff is so good!”
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What If?
Discussed“Yeah, there's a whole series of books out called 'What If,' and they're fascinating; I don't know if you've ever read them.”
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The Dialogues of Plato
Discussed“But he ends up in this, he ends up in this bookstore, and the bookseller is reading one of, uh, Plato's dialogues or, I know, I guess it would have been one of Zenon's books.”
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The First Three Minutes
Discussed“And you know, I read a book called The First Three Minutes, which is about the first three minutes of the universe.”
The Joe Rogan Experience
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The Technological Society
Discussed“Kaczynski's brother David later stated that Ellul's book, The Technological Society, became Ted's bible.”
Huberman Lab
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Deep Work
Discussed“One of his more notable books is entitled "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World," which has had a tremendous positive influence on my work life and indeed my life in general.”
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Slow Productivity
Discussed“Cal also has a new book out now which I'm currently reading entitled "Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout."”
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Unashamedly Superhuman
Discussed“One of my favorite studies in this context is a paper from Ali's lab entitled "Mind Over Milkshakes: Mindsets, Not Just Nutrients, Determine the Ghrelin Response."”
People I (Mostly) Admire
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How to Win Friends and Influence People
Discussed“Dale Carnegie was really good at winning friends and influencing people, and Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus write books about how to golf.”
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Smarter Faster Better
Discussed“Charles Duhigg has one more big book we haven’t yet discussed, titled 'Smarter Faster Better'; it tackles productivity and uses great storytelling to convey its points.”
