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Books podcasts were talking about in May 2024
Podcasts in May 2024 traversed literature, science history, and systemic reform. On The Joe Rogan Experience, Sal Vulcano used John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men to draw parallels regarding accidental damage and immense strength, while Craig Jones discussed Eddie Bravo, Erich Krauss, and Glen Cordoza's Mastering the Rubber Guard. Behind the Bastards featured Theodore L. Brown and others' chemistry textbook in a discussion about Kent Hovind's dissertation and referenced Samuel D. Brunson's God and the IRS to examine IRS challenges with the religious right. Stuff You Should Know featured a lighthearted discussion centered on Mark C. Young's The Guinness Book of Records, 1998. On The Megyn Kelly Show, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. mentioned his book written to secure his cousin's release, alongside Lane Smith's It's a Book! Pod Save America welcomed John Legend, who discussed how Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow inspired his advocacy for education and justice reform. Finally, Huberman Lab featured Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy's Rabid during a discussion on the history of rabies research and the gut-brain axis.
The Joe Rogan Experience
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Of Mice and Men
Discussed“Yeah, because we’re f*cked up like Lenny from ‘Of Mice and Men’! You could do that to a puppy! Two puncture wounds to the neck before passing out, recall said, ‘Leave Monty alone; bring him back to his brother and sister; let him be happy.’”
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Mastering the Rubber Guard
Discussed“Man, I had Eddie — here's the funny thing: I had Eddie Bravo's Mastering the Rubber Guard book that came to me at a very influential time where I read the chapter about weed. I was like, [__], maybe I should start smoking weed, you know?”
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Faith of my fathers
Discussed“It's also just so... the thing that's so wild to me is that after, and I know I've talked about this, I'm sure on previous episodes, but just after 20 years of the terror wars and what a disaster those were, and to the point that John McCain wrote in his memoir that the war in Iraq was a mistake;”
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Before the dawn
Discussed“There's a weird, I remember reading this book. I believe it was called 'Before the Dawn,' I believe, by Nicholas Wade.”
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The Danaher Diaries
Discussed“What he eats, and yep, it's, uh, John Danaher talks about Kaizen. Kaizen is this Japanese phrase for doing something over and over and over again.”
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Colour of Money
Discussed“Look, we all love Color of Money; it made money! Color of Money was a separate book!”
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My Life
Discussed“I also think that's how Bill Clinton wrote his autobiography, My Life. Yeah, he wrote, I'm 99% sure he wrote it by hand.”
Behind the Bastards
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Chemistry
Discussed“It has one illustration, which was a diagram of the electromagnetic spectrum, literally cut out of an actual science textbook and taped badly inside the thesis.”
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God and the IRS
Discussed“To describe what happened next, I want to read a quote from a book by Professor Samuel Brunson called God and the IRS, which is about the difficulty the IRS has dealing with the religious right.”
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The autobiography of a race horse
Discussed“What Wally George does in his 1999 autobiography is he coined the phrase 'combat TV' to describe the thing that he invented—now that’s like all news programs!”
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Turner Diaries (Audio)
Discussed“And that is the, yeah, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying to remember my Behind the Bastards extended universe. Uh, that all comes from the Turner Diaries, right?”
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Dr. Spock's baby and child care
Discussed“You might think of him as like Dr. Spock, if you're old enough to remember Dr. Spock, not the one from Star Trek but like the child development doctor who was kind of huge. I think in the 80s and 90s, I think my parents had a Dr. Spock book or two around.”
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To train up a child
Discussed“There's a very popular book among the Christian right called To Train Up a Child, and the basis of it is you should, when children are infants, do stuff like lay them down on a mat, and if they like wiggle to such a point that any part of their body is off of it, you like whip them! Basically,”
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Sapling Cage
Discussed“I wrote a YA novel without any bad things—of course there are bad things; it's a novel and bad things have to happen in a story—called 'The Sapling Cage.' It's great, by the way. Robert actually read it; it is my favorite piece of your writing so far.”
Stuff You Should Know
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The Guinness book of world records, 1998.
Discussed“Yeah, let's, well you know what we get to do now in our typical two-episode procession, the way that is Stuff You Should Know, is we get to wash the stank of Unit 731 off of us by talking about a very fun thing, which is the Guinness Book of World Records, or the Guinness World Records. I feel like”
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A Wrinkle in Time
Discussed“Yeah, but so is like a Time-Life Book.”
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The World Without Us
Discussed“And by the way, I keep saying once we're gone, um remember that amazing 2007 book, The World Without Us by Alan Weisman?”
The Megyn Kelly Show
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It's a Book!
Discussed“In the defense of my cousin Michael Skakel, I did do a book on that and tracked down the people who were actually responsible for the murder, releasing my cousin from prison. I just wanted to mention that again, though questions linger and I want to be fair.”
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Trump: The Art of the Deal
Discussed“He told the court that he had not read any of Trump's books, but had seen quotes from The Art of the Deal. Now, gentlemen, if this is Trump's last best hope to stop a guilty verdict, I don't like his chances.”
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Get Honest or Die Lying
Discussed“Joining me now is Charlamagne tha God. He is the author of the new book, 'Get Honest or Die Lying'.”
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Black Privilege
Discussed“I tell a story in one of my first books—this is my third book—but I tell a story in my first book, 'Black Privilege,' about how I had a cousin aunt; she was like my mom's cousin, but she was also like an aunt to me as well.”
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The Audacity of Hope
Discussed“And the reason I'd like to see it more like President Obama is because, as he said, these are his words, 'The Audacity of Hope,' like you have to be optimistic.”
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Birth of a Nation
Discussed“Now, as Aaron said in 'Death of a Nation' in my book, he has convinced these poor white voters that he is for them.”
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Thirteen Reasons Why
Discussed“Let's give the audience just a little flavor; let's play the montage of John reading from some of these pornographic books in front of these school boards so people can get a flavor. "13 Reasons Why" by Jay Asher, currently in Storm Grove Middle School and Freshman Learning Center, Page 265: "As if letting him finger me was going to”
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Hoodwinked
Discussed“I talk about this in my book Hoodwinked; go get a copy of it.”
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It's Perfectly Normal
Discussed“This is one we played from May of 2023, and it happened in Asheville, North Carolina, where John went into the school board meeting to take issue with a book that, ironically, is called It's Perfectly Normal.”
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Jack of Hearts (And Other Parts)
Discussed“When you consider even a book like this, I went to Missouri just two days ago. This book is entitled Jack of Hearts and Other Parts.”
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Let's Talk About It
Discussed“Same with this book right here. This book right here is called Let's Talk About It.”
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Queer
Discussed“I can't even open this book, and then you have this book. It's called Queer: The Ultimate LGBTQ Guide for Teens.”
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New Rules
Discussed“Hey everyone I'm Megyn Kelly, welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show And we have a treat for you today Joining me now is someone I've been wanting to interview on this program for years He is one of the sharpest political commentators around Someone who's not afraid to take risks and has been politically incorrect for decades before it was”
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The Undead Among Us - The Figure of the Vampire as the "Unknown Other" and Its Representation in "True Blood"
Discussed“You raised this point in the in the book too, and I thought it was a really good one about how when we do our, you know, look back at history, only the whites get excoriated for their bad behavior 200 years ago. It's like wait a minute, yeah; Genghis Khan was pretty rough. You know, talk about colonizers; I”
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Swimming Against the Current
Discussed“Today, she is here to share her story in a new book that goes into her childhood, the unfair advantage transgender athletes have, and her advice for not just women and girls, but everyone. The book is called 'Swimming Against the Current, Fighting for Common Sense in a World That's Lost Its Mind,' and it's out tomorrow.”
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Say More
Discussed“Meantime, Jen Psaki's book came out last week and her publisher is now having to correct quote inaccuracies. You could also call them lies.”
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Not My First Rodeo
Discussed“Now they've had to pull all that from the audiobook; it'll be on the bookshelves in Barnes & Noble and elsewhere today because they couldn't get it out of the written book, but it's out of the electronic.”
Pod Save America
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The New Jim Crow
Discussed“I read books that pushed me to think about some of these issues, like 'The New Jim Crow' by Michelle Alexander and others that created a sense of urgency around ensuring our kids received better schools and that our justice system was reformed to facilitate decarceration.”
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Promise Me, Dad
Discussed“I mean, I knew, obviously, his book is called 'Promise Me, Dad,' and his need for him to stay in the fight.”
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A Case for the American People
Discussed“Back by popular demand, the man who is braving Judge M's infamously chilly and fart-infested courtroom is a legal analyst for CNN, also author of the excellent book 'Trying Trump,' our old friend Norm Eisen. Norm, welcome back!”
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Lean In
Discussed“Cheryl Sandberg got into it with Lean In; all of these publications have written about it. Dan, only a man with a brain worm would think, 'You know what?”
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My First Book of Sign
Discussed“Politico reported that, do you know she wrote a first book? This was her second book and in the first book her team got her to take the story of killing the puppy out.”
Huberman Lab
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Rabid
Discussed“But what I find amazing about the rabies virus—and there's a great book by the way called 'Rabid,' which is essentially a history of the study of rabies—is that once it travels from the site of the bite up to the brain, what does it do?”
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The Wisdom of the Body
Discussed“I once read a very elegant paper by Walter Cannon, a foundational figure in physiology. Cannon was the chair of physiology at Harvard in the 1920s and 1930s and authored 'The Wisdom of the Body.'”
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Memoirs of a Stomach
Discussed“In our research, we referenced some beautiful passages from the book 'Memoirs of My Stomach,' written by a French author in 1853, highlighting the gut-brain dialogue.”
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Creating a Life
Discussed“Some of the notable titles and topics of those books include 'Creating a Life,' 'Finding Your Individual Path,' as well as 'The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other,' which, as the name suggests, is about relationships.”
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The Eden Project
Discussed“Some of the notable titles and topics of those books include 'Creating a Life,' 'Finding Your Individual Path,' as well as 'The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other,' which, as the name suggests, is about relationships.”
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Living Between Worlds
Discussed“He has also written about how to access our most resilient self in the book entitled 'Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times.'”
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Under Saturn's Shadow
Discussed“And so that's what led to the writing of the book 'Under Saturn's Shadow.' And I suggested a number of those secrets.”
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Swamplands of the Soul
Discussed“I also wrote a book called 'Swamplands of the Soul' that deals with anxiety, depression, loss, betrayal, etc.”
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The End of Craving
Discussed“There’s a wonderful book called "The End of Cravings" by Mark Schatzker, who also wrote "The Dorito Effect."”
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The Dorito Effect
Discussed“There’s a wonderful book called "The End of Cravings" by Mark Schatzker, who also wrote "The Dorito Effect."”
ChooseFI
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The Daily Stoic Journal
Discussed“I got that quote from a book that I've been reading called The Daily Stoic, and that book has been very helpful for me.”
No Stupid Questions
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How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes
Discussed“She's also the author of a book called How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes—a good goal for anyone! Yeah, that's a good goal.”
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The Hiding Place
Discussed“Mike got some details wrong in a story from Corrie ten Boom's 1971 autobiographical novel, The Hiding Place. When directly asked by the Gestapo whether a young woman hiding in their home is Jewish, ten Boom's sister, who is named Nollie, not Nelly, admits that she is.”
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The Highly Sensitive Person
Discussed“I wanted to recommend the book, The Highly Sensitive Person by Dr. Elaine Aron to Amanda and anyone else who feels similarly. It gives very good explanations for the how and the why of her form of narcissism, and above all, it underscores the many advantages of being highly sensitive.”
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Give and Take
Discussed“And in the book Give and Take, Adam has this typology: there are three kinds of people.”
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The Giving Tree
Discussed“And I think maybe that very famous book, The Giving Tree, if you'll remember the book, is about this tree.”
Timcast IRL
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The devil's chessboard
Discussed“Yeah, and then there's another CIA historian who wrote a best-selling biography of Allen Dulles, called The Devil's Chessboard. He wrote a book about the involvement of the CIA in the assassinations, called Brothers.”
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Romeo and Juliet
Discussed“Yeah, and then there's another CIA historian who wrote a best-selling biography of Allen Dulles, called The Devil's Chessboard. He wrote a book about the involvement of the CIA in the assassinations, called Brothers. He's an historian named David Talbot; he was the founder of Salon.”
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Πολιτικά (Politiká)
Discussed“This was the Sparta problem Aristotle talks about in 'Politics,' where Sparta knew how to wage war.”
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An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
Discussed“Listen, if you're worried about global warming or climate change, just go watch An Inconvenient Truth; it came out in 2006, everything in it has been proven wrong.”
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Beyond Order
Discussed“Like it is about framing the way you view the world and giving people this lens from which to approach the challenges they face. What is it? Jordan Peterson's book called '12 Rules for Life'?”
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
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Natural History
Discussed“And it's weird; when you look at what he writes in Natural History, he is kind of the first cryptozoologist; like, the scholarly burden of proof is not really a thing, so this guy is just sort of like when Freud was making up psychoanalysis.”
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Ctesias: On India
Discussed“The earliest mention of it comes from another ancient historian, a Greek named Ctesias, who wrote a book called Indica in the fifth century BCE. The book, which translates to 'the couch,' is unfortunately lost to history.”
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A Storm of Witchcraft
Discussed“Again, I hark back to what Dr. Baker wrote in his book, The Storm of Witchcraft; he provides a great introduction that describes it as the 'perfect storm' of all these elements that come together.”
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The Woman Who Walked into the Sea
Discussed“This also reminds me of a work by Carol Carlson, 'The Devil in the Shape of a Woman,' that I wanted to ask you about.”
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
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The forbidden body
Discussed“It's a brilliant book called 'The Forbidden Body', where she argues against this stigma. When I tracked Shelley down, she stressed to me she's really proud of everything she said about stigma and is 100% right.”
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The light between us
Discussed“Finally, I get to sit down with her—I’m talking about Laura Lynn Jackson, the author of these two incredible books: "The Light Between Us" and "Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe."”
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You can heal your life
Discussed“Louise Hay, I love me some Louise Hay! That lady, oh, if she was still alive!”
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
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Shattered assumptions
Discussed“She's a social psychologist and the author of two books; one from about 30 years ago called 'Shattered Assumptions' and the other called 'The Two Moralitities: The Origin and Fall of Right and Left Politics.' Why did I want to talk to Dr. Janoff-Bulman?”
Speaker Trauma and the Demolition of Faith | Ronnie Janoff-Bulman | EP 449 2024-05-16 Listen at 1:12 -
Im Westen nichts Neues
Discussed“Well, it's interesting, because the Book of Job is one of the books that really sets the stage in the biblical corpus for the story of the crucifixion, right? Because the crucifixion story is the story of Job expanded even more thoroughly, right?”
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The Open Society and Its Enemies (1+2)
Discussed“You know, the notion that we're not going to make a change every second based on one disconfirming thing—I mean, I actually love Karl Popper. You know, the notion is we should be cognitively conservative when it comes to our schemas, or our theories.”
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Two Moralities
Discussed“And I do agree, you know, it's interesting, we talk about motivation because when I was doing the 'Two Moralities' book, of course all of that is funneled right through motivation.”
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To Kill a Mockingbird
Discussed“It's like that Atticus Finch quote where you get to put on someone else's shoes and walk a while.”
Freakonomics Radio
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America in Black and White
Discussed“What I'm thinking is, take my friendship with the late Abigail Thernstrom and Steven Thernstrom, which goes back to my early days at Harvard, and which ended when I critically reviewed their book, America in Black and White, in a long review in the Atlantic, and they broke off with me.”
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Wealth Supremacy
Discussed“Kelly is also the author of a book called Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today's Crisis.”
Lex Fridman Podcast
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Mother of God
Discussed“In 'Mother of God', I write about the first one that me and JJ caught together, which was probably a little bigger than this table.”
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Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
Discussed“You go back to that Frans de Waal book, 'Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?', there's so many incredible examples of controlled studies where the researchers didn't understand how to shed this insurmountably human perspective and recognize that there's other types of intelligence, whether that's in elephants or cats.”
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One River
Discussed“Richard Evan Schultes is someone I learned about from Wade Davis’ book ‘One River,’ which is this hefty tome about the Amazon.”
StarTalk Radio
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A madman dreams of Turing machines
Discussed“So what's the novel? A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines. Maybe the title's too long.”
The Rubin Report
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Nation of Victims
Discussed“I read his books, and so I didn’t would not have guessed personally, you know, that Vivek would have—and again, no shade on him; he's a super successful guy.”
People I (Mostly) Admire
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Fighting fire
Discussed“So you wrote a memoir about your years as a firefighter called Fighting Fire, and you tell one incredibly powerful story after another about your experiences. Do you have your own personal favorite story from that book?”
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The gutsy girl
Discussed“Now, that can get toxic for sure, but later I wrote a book about instilling bravery in girls because it was becoming really clear to me when I looked around that women defaulted to fear and that women were really missing out on something important. So the book you're talking about now is The Gutsy Girl.”
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Lost cat
Discussed“You wrote a book about, of all things, your cat running away; it's called Lost Cat, and I have to say, being just totally honest, in a million years I never would have read that book if I didn't know I was going to talk to you today.”
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Tough Broad
Discussed“Your most recent book is called Tough Broad, and one thing I like about your books is they're also different from one another, but this one starts with an observation which I think is 100% true but almost never talked about, which is that our society is incredibly dismissive of older women.”
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Extended Mind
Discussed“I did read Annie Murphy Paul’s book, The Extended Mind, and she talks about awe in there. It turns out awe is really good for us and is really easily triggered by going outside.”
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Between Two Kingdoms
Discussed“We're back with a brand new episode featuring Suad Jwad. Her incredible book, Between Two Kingdoms, documents her battle with cancer, and she's also the subject of the recent documentary film American Symphony.”
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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Voices in the ocean
Discussed“Uh and it appears, uh I looked into this because I was you know my book before the underworld was called voices in the ocean, it's about dolphins, uh and orcas are of course the biggest and wiliest dolphins!”
SmartLess
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Born Standing Up
Discussed“Um, and number one is walking, uh, Steve's new book is for Tracy. Uh, that's—that's what they call two years old!”
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I Must Say
Discussed“Yeah, I went, um, speaking about receipts, I went to the, when Marty's biography came out, um, he didn't send me one, so I went to the bookstore, bought it, and while I was at the cash register, put the book and the receipt, took a photo of it, emailed him and said that's okay, I got it. [Laughter] Very”
