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Books podcasts were talking about in April 2024
April 2024 discussions across multiple shows centered on ancient history, personal identity, and philosophical ideas regarding tolerance and belief. On The Joe Rogan Experience, guest Christopher Dunn discussed his books Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt and Giza: The Tesla Connection, exploring themes of ancient engineering, acoustical science, and clean energy. Timcast IRL explored ideas of free speech and societal control, with the host referencing Herbert Marcuse's paper Repressive Tolerance and Robert E. Picirilli's commentary on the Book of Galatians. Literary works and personal narratives were highlighted on Pod Save America, where the hosts referenced Dorothy Chan's Babe, Charlotte's Web, and Hillary Clinton's Hard Choices while discussing political controversies and farm life. On The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, Russell Brand recommended Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane to Jordan Peterson, praising Eliade's influence on Joseph Campbell. Additionally, Freakonomics Radio featured a discussion by the host on Dani Shapiro's memoir Inheritance, focusing on the author's Orthodox Jewish upbringing and identity.
The Joe Rogan Experience
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Lost technologies of ancient Egypt
Discussed“And so in my second book, Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt, I appeal, I put out a challenge to, uh, modern Egyptian engineers to go and check the artifacts for themselves. And that's what they did.”
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Giza : the Tesla Connection
Discussed“Giza: The Tesla Connection. Acoustical Science and the Harvesting of Clean Energy.”
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The President is Missing
Discussed“Two of them on page 156 of his book; you know this. He says that he doubts the authenticity of the moon landings as president.”
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Aliens from Planet X
Discussed“According to the top two UFO researchers, I have a book coming out hopefully in time for this podcast, 'Aliens from Planet X,' that talks about their origin and future appearance.”
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Dracula
Discussed“I had to look up my own library; Bill Case said the whole moon landing falsification was supervised by the United States Air Force. Well, my dad was in the Air Force; I never heard of Canon Air Force Base; it’s tiny—fewer eyewitnesses—and every department of the military has their special ops intelligence division headquarters.”
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Fear and Loathing
Discussed“Did you ever read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing; that guy gave sort of the be—that's, I think, probably the best window into an outsider in the political process, at least in terms of the campaign trail.”
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The Shallows
Discussed“Yeah, there's a saying that I've read—a book called The Shallows about what social media does to us—but it was: you are what you do repeatedly, you are what you think repeatedly, and we all—at least I do—and did for a long time—wake up and just start the record and the monologue that's happening in your head.”
Timcast IRL
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A Critique of Pure Tolerance
Discussed“This is a great example of something I've talked about multiple times; Herbert Marcuse wrote a paper called 'Repressive Tolerance,' and what's going on here is emblematic of the ideas in that paper. The idea that you have to shut down other people's speech.”
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The Book of Galatians
Discussed“He noted the Book of Galatians that remarks on enlightenment and cited other philosophies about enlightenment and the afterlife. He also acknowledged that some may respond cynically to his interest in Christianity but explained it as meaning deteriorates in the modern world.”
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No Going Back
Discussed“If you want more real, honest, and politically incorrect stories that'll have the media gasping, pre-order No Going Back.”
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Les damnés de la terre
Discussed“This is like Frantz Fanon in 'The Wretched of the Earth' or whatever he wrote—decolonization is always violent; it's fundamentally violent.”
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The sorrows of empire
Discussed“This is from a book called 'The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic' by Chalmers Johnson, who was also the author of 'Blowback'. Listen to this; this is something I look at often, and I wanted to share it with you, Tim.”
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Blowback
Discussed“This is from a book called 'The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic' by Chalmers Johnson, who was also the author of 'Blowback'. Listen to this; this is something I look at often, and I wanted to share it with you, Tim.”
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Commentaries on the laws of England
Discussed“It's kind of crazy because like we get left behind these great quotes from the founding fathers and like Blackstone's formulation, and then Benjamin Franklin says, 'No, it should be that when 100 guilty persons escape, it is better that 100 guilty persons escape than one innocent person suffer.' And we're like, wow, thought-provoking, brilliant.”
Pod Save America
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BABE
Discussed“You guys just don't know what it's like to live on a farm; sometimes you gotta kill puppies—they're always killing puppies. You ever read Babe or Charlotte's Web? Most of that book is about killing pigs.”
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Hard Choices
Discussed“Hillary Clinton wrote a book called Hard Choices that was about negotiating with North Korea, and this woman thinks that her medal is proven by murdering a 14-year-old puppy.”
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Three Way Fight
Discussed“The public opinion aspect intrigues me; there's an organization called the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers that examined popular hashtags. They found that for topics like Taylor Swift or Trump, TikTok posts were outnumbered two to one compared to Instagram, but for banned topics it changed drastically, showing an 8 to 1 ratio for the Uyghurs and 174 to”
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The Situation Room
Discussed“Later, George Stephanopoulos talks to Dan about covering 2024 in his new book, which is full of untold stories about the White House Situation Room.”
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All Too Human
Discussed“I haven't written a book since my memoir, All Too Human, which came out in 1999.”
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Postcards From the Edge
Discussed“I came up with the title before finalizing that chapter, and it’s called 'Postcards From The Edge.'”
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Democracy Or Else
Discussed“Okay, we are here at the LA Times Festival of Books, my friends and co-hosts here along with Jon Lovett, who has a live show today, so you couldn't be here. They wrote a book, Democracy RSE, how to save America in 10 easy steps.”
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The Perfect Storm
Discussed“There’s that phrase that arrived when that book Perfect Storm came out, which was a very good phrase because it's so useful in so many sort of events.”
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The Run of His Life
Discussed“Um, the one thing I do remember about that moment was that was really the moment where Jeffrey Toobin kind of ascended into the cultural consciousness, like he was the one reporting on that case from Los Angeles. He later wrote what I think is one of the best legal books ever, um, irrespective of what you might think about”
Speaker Donald Trump Reportedly Snoozes Through Day 1 of Criminal Trial 2024-04-16 Listen at 1:10:32 -
The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents with Commentary
Discussed“But The Run of His Life is one of the best legal books I have ever read, with the exception of The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents and Commentary by Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissman. That's exactly right.”
Speaker Donald Trump Reportedly Snoozes Through Day 1 of Criminal Trial 2024-04-16 Listen at 1:10:42 -
Drawdown
Discussed“The Her Foundation had this report, the 2025 Project, and in it, they talk about how the next conservative administration has to obviously sign a national abortion ban if they can get it through Congress. But even if they can't, yes, they want to go after mifepristone.”
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2020
Discussed“I got two theses on these: one is the Eric Klinenberg who just got a great book out now about the pandemic called 2020.”
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
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The Sacred and the Profane
Discussed“Hey, I got a book for you—read The Sacred and the Profane by Eliade. Yes, sir, he was a big influence on Campbell too, and Eliade is a real genius; he's a real genius.”
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The user illusion
Discussed“The book I know best is probably his most famous work called 'The User Illusion.'”
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Dennett's philosophy
Discussed“I read Daniel Dennett's book and also Jeffrey Gray's book; Gray is a real genius.”
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
Discussed“I read Daniel Dennett's book and also Jeffrey Gray's book; Gray is a real genius.”
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The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception
Discussed“Gibson wrote a great book called 'The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception,' and I believe there are brilliant concepts within it.”
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Breaking the spell
Discussed“I was reviewing your book today, "Breaking the Spell," and that’s really the domain that I wanted to discuss, although I'm perfectly happy to branch out from that in anywhere that our conversation takes us.”
Freakonomics Radio
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Inheritance
Discussed“It’s so curious to me because I've read the book 'Inheritance' by Dani Shapiro. I haven't read it, but I know she came from an Orthodox Jewish family and was always the blonde outlier.”
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THE PETER PRINCIPLE WHY THINGS ALWAYS GO WRONG
Discussed“The book he wrote with Raymond Hull was called 'The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong.' It wound up selling millions of copies. The book was meant to say corporate strategy.”
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Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present
Discussed“So my sense of reading you, overall particularly reading your new book, 'Age of Revolutions,' is a sense of sadness and surprise that the world finds itself today in a state of peril.”
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The Future of Freedom
Discussed“Fareed Zakaria is host of the weekly CNN program GPS, that stands for Global Public Square, and he has written several books including 'The Post-American World' and 'The Future of Freedom.'”
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The Truth About Immigration
Discussed“He came to our attention because of a book he has coming out soon called The Truth About Immigration.”
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The Millionaire Next Door
Discussed“That makes me think of The Millionaire Next Door, that book.”
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
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Love Life
Discussed“The right person is the person it happens with, Matthew. AI's book is called Love Life. That hit right there.”
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Worthy
Discussed“Jamie is also an active philanthropist who has funded leadership training in more than 100 prisons and shelters across the United States and has donated over $40 million in product and funds to help women face the effects of cancer with confidence. Jamie is donating 100% of her author proceeds from her new book, Worthy, to charity as well.”
Modern Wisdom
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Crush It!
Discussed“So the reason I like authenticity is why I’m on book seven, why I’m still here, why in the 2007-08-09 social media world of just Twitter and a little bit of Facebook, there were a lot of personalities.”
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Never Satisfied
Discussed“One is called 'Never Satisfied,' and the other one is called 'How to Rewire Your Brain.'”
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Bird by Bird
Discussed“It's similar to how I think of 'Bird by Bird,' a book about writing that's really about life.”
The Rubin Report
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The End of History and the Last Man
Discussed“I don't think that history has an end point; I don't think we're at the end of history, as Fukuyama suggested.”
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Enlightenment Now
Discussed“I think human beings don't change, and the story of humanity is not humanity becoming ever better, sort of in the Steven Pinker notion.”
No Stupid Questions
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The Power of Habit: by Charles Duhigg | Summary & Analysis
Discussed“That was in his book, The Power of Habit!”
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A Brief History of Intelligence
Discussed“And he said, A Brief History of Intelligence by Max Bennett! And I said to Danny, I was like, never heard of Max Bennett! I spent 20-plus years studying intelligence and what it is and what it's not!”
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Weird
Discussed“Her name is Olga Hazan and she is the author of Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider and Insider World. But she wrote several articles about trying to change her own personality.”
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Peter and Wendy
Discussed“Finally, Mike gets a few details wrong about the story of Peter Pan, at least as it's told in the original 1911 novel 'Peter and Wendy' by Scottish author and playwright J.M. Barrie.”
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Little House on the Prairie
Discussed“I felt like I was, I don't know, it was like very Little House on the Prairie feeling, like you know, you're Laura with Mary.”
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Zoom
Discussed“I will say one of the best pieces of advice I heard recently was from someone who was telling me about a children's book, I don't know what book it is, but the entire book just repeats over and over the two words, 'Zoom out, zoom out, zoom out, and maybe that's the power of nostalgia.'”
People I (Mostly) Admire
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Road to Freedom
Discussed“That's precisely the set of ideas that I address in my new book, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society.”
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Globalization and its discontents
Discussed“One of the things I found most interesting when I read Globalization and Its Discontents, which was your first book for a popular audience, is that I've known a lot of economists and almost every one of them sits in their office reflecting on the world in their head.”
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The Emperor's New Mind
Discussed“His book—I don't know if it's the same book we both read, *The Emperor's New Mind*? Yes, exactly, that's the book that blew my mind as a teenager. By that point, I already liked math, but he talked about these things called Turing machines, which are theoretical computers.”
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
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Moo's Law
Discussed“No, but he did publish a book in 2005 called 'Wake Up, Survive and Prosper in the Coming Economic Turmoil.' This guy loves New Zealand.”
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Love and Hate in Jamestown
Discussed“And then I didn't know this, but there's this author, David A. Price, who has a book called Love and Hate in Jamestown, and in this book, which I haven't finished, he makes a pretty fascinating case.”
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Chaos
Discussed“I just got done reading the 2019 book by author Tom O'Neal, titled 'Chaos: The CIA and Charles Manson.' It dives into the Manson Family and all this other stuff and draws a bunch of conclusions that I think you guys would find interesting.”
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Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders
Discussed“We agree with you, Full Body Taste; it does raise a lot of fascinating questions. There are some holes in 'Helter Skelter.' Tom O'Neal is writing in good faith; he spent decades researching these links, and he had a lot of falling out situations with various publishers.”
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Operation Chaos
Discussed“Sorry, Christian Bible, we're going with 'Operation Chaos'; that's the one book we're going to read. So while we are getting a copy of that, we want to hear from you folks.”
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Living Off The Grid
Discussed“And there's this notable book called 'Going Off the Grid' or possibly 'Playing Dead,' which discusses the challenges of successfully committing pseudocide.”
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Playing Dead
Discussed“And there's this notable book called 'Going Off the Grid' or possibly 'Playing Dead,' which discusses the challenges of successfully committing pseudocide.”
Behind the Bastards
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Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System
Discussed“In the book *Junk Science*, Innocence Project lawyer Chris Fabricant writes that Mayfield looked like a good suspect.”
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Blink
Discussed“He needs on-the-job training, you need 10,000 hours of torturing to get really good at it, that's what that Malcolm Gladwell book is about, if I'm remembering it properly.”
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The undying legion
Discussed“I'm also an author; I’m currently in the middle of writing a military science fiction trilogy, and you can find it anywhere you find your books. It's called The Undying Legion!”
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On Stalin's team
Discussed“Uh, Sheila Fitzpatrick, author of 'On Stalin's Team,' which is a book about said team, prefers this word; she uses the term team, but notes, 'quote, alternatives are available.'”
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Bloodlands
Discussed“Writing about this in the book 'Bloodlands,' historian Timothy Snyder claims the only national minority that was highly overrepresented at the end of the NKVD during the Great Terror were the Georgians—Stalin's own.”
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Beria
Discussed“So here's how Knight describes Lavrentiy as an adolescent in the book Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant, ‘Beria was a mediocre student, not excelling in any subject but considered cunning and devious.’”
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Wealth & poverty
Discussed“Beyond the Powell memorandum, a major intellectual touchstone of this movement was 'Wealth and Poverty,' a book by George Gilder.”
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The Fountainhead
Discussed“The company of the commercial faithful gathered on the banks of Cali's Russian River could look for succor to Goldwater's autobiography, The Conscience of a Conservative, to William F. Buckley's editorials in National Review, to the novels of Ayn Rand!”
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Unsafe at any speed
Discussed“In 1965, Nader published a book called "Unsafe at Any Speed," which compelled the automotive industry to include seat belts and improve safety features.”
The Daily Stoic
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Originals
Discussed“They might say you should just read The Originals or that we haven't read the originals.”
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The Justice of Mercy
Discussed“I talked about this in the intro of the justice book that is coming out in June where, as a philosopher, you're looking at big questions like the trolley problem.”
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Everything Is F*cked
Discussed“It's funny because I was doing my book tour for Everything is F*cked, where I did most of this research and wrote about most of this stuff. A guy came up to me after one of the shows and asked if I had ever heard of optimistic nihilism, and I said I hadn’t.”
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The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient
Discussed“The 'stronger' piece is about emotional strength, often leaning on Stoicism—especially the wonderful book, The Stoic Challenge, by William Irvine, which everyone loves.”
Speaker How Stoicism Can Beat Your Social Media Addiction | Jonathan Haidt 2024-04-22 Listen at 9:20 -
Ametora
Discussed“I was so inspired that I went and bought this book called 'How Japan Saved American Fashion.' I read it, and I learned all about the culture of Japan.”
Lex Fridman Podcast
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Biggest Ideas in the Universe
Discussed“He is a theoretical physicist at Johns Hopkins, host of the Mindscape Podcast that I personally love and highly recommend, and author of many books, including the most recent book series called 'The Biggest Ideas in the Universe,' the first book of which is titled 'Space, Time, and Motion,' and it's on the topic of general relativity.”
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Quanta and Fields
Discussed“The second book, coming out on May 14th, which you should definitely pre-order, is titled 'Quanta and Fields.' That one is on the topic of quantum mechanics.”
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Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie
Discussed“So that's why I keep needing to distinguish between black holes according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, which is book one of 'Spacetime and Geometry,' which is perfectly classical.”
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The great shark hunt
Discussed“I really like a particular Hunter S. Thompson book called 'The Great Shark Hunt', where he covers the Ruben Salazar murder by LAPD or LA Sheriff's Department in Boyle Heights in the '70s. His relationship with his lawyer, Oscar Acosta, and that whole saga is great. 'Fear and Loathing' I like, but not as much as his straightforward reporting.”
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Vagabonding in America
Discussed“There was this book— Yeah. called 'Vagabonding in America' by an old hobo Ed Buryn. I read this and it just basically, some of it was outdated. They had stuff in there like the hobo code, like, oh, this moniker on the side of a fence means this person has free soup or something like that.”
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Who Is Barack Obama?
Discussed“Is there any hope here, solutions, short-term, long-term? Obama kind of summarized this beautifully in his book.”
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Forcing the Hand of God
Discussed“There's an incredible book called 'Forcing the Hands of God.' Oh, beautiful book.”
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For Love of Country
Discussed“She served in the U.S. military for many years, achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and now she's the author of a new book called 'For Love of Country.'”
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The Bhagavad gita
Discussed“You have spoken about the value of religious faith in your life, particularly your Hindu faith, viewing the Bhagavad Gita as a spiritual guide. What role does faith in God play in your life?”
Stuff You Should Know
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Carsick
Discussed“For me, John Waters is a pretty fun one because he hitchhiked and enjoyed it as a kid and then eventually wrote a book. He hitchhiked as a 68-year-old grown man in 2013 from his home in Baltimore to his other home in San Francisco and wrote a book about it called 'John Waters Hitchhikes Across America.'”
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Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Discussed“Whether it's obviously Jack Kerouac's On the Road is a big one, or Tom Robbins even Cowgirls Get the Blues. The Gus Van Sant movie, the main character was born with an abnormally large thumb, so she obviously had a talent as a hitchhiker, and that's kind of one of the subplots of the book and film, right?”
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Fire investigation
Discussed“So that book was sort of the standard until 1969, about 25 years later or so, when Paul Kirk, a biochemist and forensic scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, published a different book called 'Fire Investigation.'”
Speaker The Dubious Science of Arson Investigation | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW 2024-04-16 Listen at 0:07 -
Development as Freedom
Discussed“There’s a great, great book referenced in this same article, written by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, called 'Development as Freedom,' which essentially backs up what we’re discussing.”
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Human sexual response
Discussed“None other than William Masters of Masters and Johnson’s fame said that women should use the drug to avoid falling into the third sex or the neutral gender, which is very off-base to say the least.”
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The Feminine Mystique
Discussed“Yeah, there was a lot of infighting in feminism at the time—there was the Old Guard, kind of personified by Betty Friedan, who wrote The Feminine Mystique, who was kind of opposed to the gay contingent, which she called the Lavender Menace, which she believed prevented mainstream society from accepting feminism and seeing it as credible.”
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The Everglades: river of grass
Discussed“And she was a really good writer and she wrote a book called 'The Everglades: River of Grass,' which is a great title or whatever, but it was apparently a very popular book that changed people's attitudes toward the Everglades.”
Huberman Lab
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10 to 25
Discussed“Yeager is also the author of an important and extremely useful new book entitled '10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People.' The book is scheduled for release this summer, that is, the summer of 2024, and we provided a link to the book in the show notes.”
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Man's Search for Meaning
Discussed“It could be for art, for intellectual history; it’s a classic Viktor Frankl argument from 'Man’s Search for Meaning.' What helped him survive as he was leaving the concentration camps was the debt he owed to the future work he wanted to write to share with the world.”
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Cultures of Growth
Discussed“But um, what I find compelling is a beautiful new book by Mary Murphy called 'Cultures of Growth' who was trained at Stanford under Claude Steele. Uh, was also trained by Carol Dweck, just came out a week ago, and it's getting tons of great press.”
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The End of Poverty
Discussed“And we all went back to college and were there for a service, and I remember being in the airport and I picked up Jeffrey Sachs' 'End of Poverty,' which was a popular book at the time, and just thinking, 'Here's a guy who, like, I don’t know, was doing something pretty mundane, macroeconomics, but he was spending all his”
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Fearless
Discussed“This is perhaps a an opportunity to um put a call out there's a a wonderful book I think an important book that isn't so well known in the in the array of quote unquote military and seal books, um which is the book about Adam Brown.”
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The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Discussed“One of the most important books in my life in the last 12 years has been Joseph Campbell's 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' for the back end of the hero's journey, and I haven't read it.”
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The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
Discussed“But also, I mean, I read Sam Harris's first book, 'The End of Faith' in 2006, and so I've followed him for 15 years, religiously read all of his books.”
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Why Buddhism is True
Discussed“I don't know him personally, so public stuff notwithstanding, that's not important to me, but 'Waking Up' and I took an online course with Robert Wright, who wrote 'Why Buddhism is True.'”
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Range
Discussed“Like to use David Epstein's book title, right? It's range.”
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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Betrayal
Discussed“If you read "Betrayal," the second book, in Houston, the money was actually – we went there for the purposes of picking it up; the DEA agent who was there was supposed to have gotten in touch with the clearing house, where law enforcement tells each other on the day of or a day before what they’re going to be”
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Containment Is Not Possible
Discussed“And in the book, you say something along the lines of humans are reacting like waves are everywhere in human life; this is just the latest wave.”
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Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους
Discussed“I always get these guys confused with this particular statement; they said books are going to be bad because nobody's going to memorize information anymore, and that was the basis for being a learned person back then.”
StarTalk Radio
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The Colour of Magic
Discussed“Hi, this is from Michigan and I would like to know if you, Charles, have read the Discworld books! Ah, yes!”
SmartLess
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Charlotte's Web
Discussed“I think I was in fifth or sixth grade; uh, I was Templeton the rat in a production of Charlotte's Web!”
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The Chronology of Water
Discussed“This is, uh, this is the chronology of water. Yeah, a long time. Um, and would that be the first film that you direct?”
