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Books podcasts were talking about in November 2024
November 2024 saw a rich assortment of non-fiction and speculative literature discussed across prominent podcasts, touching upon evolutionary biology, human conflict, cultural history, and sleep science. On the Huberman Lab podcast, Andrew Huberman referenced Matthew Walker's well-known book Why We Sleep to discuss vital research regarding sleep, metabolism, and learning. The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast featured Mark Changizi, author of Expressly Human, where the conversation centered on shared interests in evolutionary biology and perception. Social dynamics and conflict resolution were explored on No Stupid Questions, where the hosts discussed Amanda Ripley's High Conflict to explain the concept of conflict entrepreneurs, alongside references to Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature to contextualize societal trends. Historical investigations and unique regional phenomena also drew interest. Stuff You Should Know highlighted Scott Maruna's local history book The Mad Gasser of Mattoon, which relies on direct interviews with community members regarding historical events. Meanwhile, Stuff They Don't Want You To Know explored literary references, discussing Sophia Dembling's book Straight Yankee in Texas in relation to the earliest recorded uses of the phrase kangaroo court, as well as a series of health and wellness guides co-authored by a former coworker. Finally, Pod Save America briefly touched upon upcoming speculative fiction releases by Neal Stephenson. Collectively, these podcast conversations emphasized a thematic connection centered on human behavior, historical documentation, societal conflict, and the scientific mechanics of everyday life.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
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You (Export)
Discussed“But the story is, he and another doctor he worked with, Dr. Rosen, wrote a series of books called the 'You' series, like 'You: The Owner's Manual', 'You on a Diet', 'You Being Beautiful', and they would come in and shoot videos for them.”
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The Yankee Chick's Survival Guide to Texas
Discussed“It was called a 'Straight Yankee in Texas' and they used the phrase 'kangaroo court', but they also used the phrase 'Mustang Court' and they spelled it differently.”
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The Marvel Comics Encyclopedia
Discussed“Wow, yeah, most famously when Marvel Comics published a new edition of their encyclopedia. That's the other thing; those are the two things that happened.”
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Kim
Discussed“There are still, you know, like shout out to Rudyard Kipling's Kim, you know, the Brits are still there in some capacity. And of course, '67, you've got French Indochina, you've got the US definitely not being there.”
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How Did We Get the Bible?
Discussed“That Bible is full of the original feet pics!”
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Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories
Discussed“Uh, it’s like Flannery O’Connor said, 'All that rises must converge,' right? Yeah, but now in a really cool way.”
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Fire and Fury
Discussed“Uh, and he got these recordings a few years back when he was interviewing Epstein about the subject of a book he wrote called Fire and Fury.”
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The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition
Discussed“They okay, got it, in the books, you also see also see it mentioned as, you know, kind of like when people are following a religion and they rationalize they're doing by citing a book.”
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The Demoiselle D'Ys
Discussed“Isn't Robert W. Chambers who wrote 'The Yellow King,' famously sort of memed in its own way in season one of 'True Detective'? And in 'The Yellow King,' the entire universe of that, which is very Lovecraft, and it's wrapped around... that's a nice Carcosa reference! The idea that there is some sort of play, and if you read the”
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The Department of Truth #2
Discussed“It's a comic series that you can get in these little graphic novel compendium things called 'Department of Truth.' Without spoiling it too much, it's based on a secret government society that attempts to ensure conspiracy theories aren't believed by enough people. It manifests in the real world.”
Pod Save America
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Seveneves / Seveneves
Discussed“It just came out, but Neil Stevenson has a new book called Polan, which I'm very excited to read, Polan.”
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The Art of Logic in an Illogical World
Discussed“There’s a really good book called The Art of Logic in an Illogical World that talks about how to take these big culture war issues and break them down into constituent parts. It's about removing the proper nouns; for instance, like, 'Hunter Biden's laptop.'”
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American Values
Discussed“So the first line, I'm going to mess it up, but the first line in RFK's book American Values is something like, I knew very early that the world was made up of gods and monsters, good and evil. And it was like, no, no, it's not.”
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Abundance
Discussed“In terms of what I would like to see Democratic politicians repudiate, I’m literally talking my book. I have a book coming out in March called 'Abundance.'”
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The Years of Rice and Salt
Discussed“Our friend Terry Slat has a new book out, and I was doing a book event with him. In his book, he talks about how the only time in his life he'd ever been disappointed with Barack Obama was during that speech.”
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
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Expressly Human
Discussed“Today, I had the opportunity to talk to Mark Changizi, who is the author of the book 'Expressly Human' and several other titles. I wanted to talk to Mark for two reasons: first, because we share an interest in evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, particularly with respect to perception, emotion, language, and mass group behavior.”
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The meaning of conservatism
Discussed“And then we end that course with a contemporary version of conservatism, Roger Scruton's 'Meaning of Conservatism,' which came out a few years before he died.”
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We Who Wrestle with God
Discussed“I have this new book coming out called 'We Who Wrestle with God,' and one of the stories that I deal with in that book is the story of Abraham. Yeah, so I want to just delve into that a bit in relationship to identity, and I want you to tell me what you think about this.”
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Lament for a nation
Discussed“You can look at George Grant, who I think is one of Canada's greatest political authors and public commentators, who started off supporting the CCF and the NDP but quickly realized this was not the brand he wanted to get behind and became a big supporter of Dean Baker. He wrote his famous book 'Lament for a Nation' in the”
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Commentary on the British North America Act
Discussed“The start of the system begins with the British North America Act, which effectively is the base of our constitution in Canada now. It was established by an act of the legislature parliament in London, England, in 1867, and it sets out the framework that the political structure of Canada hangs on.”
Stuff You Should Know
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The Mad Gasser of Mattoon
Discussed“But there was a guy named Scott Maruna, who was a high school chemistry professor and grew up in Charleston, about 12 miles away from Mattoon. He decided to go to Mattoon a few years back and talked to some locals and put together a book about the subject: The Mad Gasser of Mattoon.”
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The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
Discussed“He was also the son of the legendary producer of The Wizard of Oz, Mervin Leroy, which explains Warner Leroy's daughter's name.”
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Wicked
Discussed“Red shoes Leroy, or uh what's the what's the Witch and uh Wicked?”
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Old Yeller
Discussed“Yeah, and a book, I think, too!”
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The Anarchist Cookbook
Discussed“Oh wait, I may have mixed that up with the Anarchist Cookbook episode. By the way, everyone, we forgot to mention the Swatch guards!”
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Frugal housewife
Discussed“One of the other things I saw, um, there's a book called The Economical Housewife from the 1850s that it might be the first recipe for dandelion wine, and people still make that today.”
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Dandelion Wine
Discussed“Um, I mean, it's definitely a thing; Ray Bradbury had a novel called Dandelion Wine from 1957, so it's something that's been enjoyed all over the world.”
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Prospecting for uranium
Discussed“Well, the ones that came with uranium, uh, they had, you know, booklets; one was called Prospecting for Uranium! Uh, that, that taught you how to mine a radioactive ore!”
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It
Discussed“I've always wanted to write in, but just hadn't found the right topic until the 'It' stranger things script retooling debate during emojis. Stephen King is by far my favorite author and it is my absolute favorite of his novels! Highly recommend!”
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Disorders of personality
Discussed“So in the late 60s, the DSM-2 introduced a diagnosis called hyperkinetic reaction of childhood, and it's essentially ADHD that they were talking about.”
Huberman Lab
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Why We Sleep
Discussed“This is based on some work that I will provide a reference for, which was published in the journal Science. Matt Walker also discusses studies done by others in his book Why We Sleep.”
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Count Down
Discussed“We can talk about that later, but let's just focus on the chemicals, as that's what led me to much of my research and to writing the book that I authored.”
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The Obesogen Effect
Discussed“And you know, a lot of these chemicals, just to let you know, are obesogens; they increase obesity; there's a book out called Obesogens; you can read about them, and so you know it'll be very—there is some overlap so by reducing some of these chemicals that are in your food storage containers, you're also reducing obesogens, so it's not”
No Stupid Questions
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High Conflict
Discussed“The term was popularized by journalist Amanda Ripley in her 2021 book High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out.”
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The Better Angels of Our Nature
Discussed“I'm familiar with the work; Better Angels of Our Nature, which I think preceded Enlightenment Now, right?”
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Life Is So Good
Discussed“Prer was following in the footsteps of many other Americans who learned to read late in life, including the famous George Dawson, the grandson of a formerly enslaved person who learned to read at 98 and co-authored a book at 101.”
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Stolen Focus
Discussed“I do feel kind of robbed, and one of the books that I started reading but I haven't gotten too far into it is called Stolen Focus. Have you heard about this book? It's by, I think, he's a journalist named Johann Hari?”
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Uncovering Your Path
Discussed“I think he has lots of other fancy titles, but I really, really appreciate the person, and he sent me his latest book to endorse, and this book is called Uncovering Your Path. I started reading it the way I honestly read most books that I'm asked to endorse, which is like trying to read it at the equivalent of”
The Megyn Kelly Show
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Limited Boxed Set: The Real Anthony Fauci
Discussed“We discussed everything from his position on vaccines and censorship to the claims he makes in his latest book, 'The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.'”
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The Wuhan Cover-Up
Discussed“Alright, back to the conversation, and I have another book about to come out called "Wuhan Coverup," which shows how Dr. Fouchy, along with others from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the CIA through USAID, was pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into developing pandemic superbugs that could cause pandemics, keeping them in areas where they knew they were”
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Elon Musk
Discussed“And if you read, you know, I read Elon Musk’s autobiography from last year, this is what he does I mean he—the reason why we know who Elon Musk is is because he's taken this approach to every company he's ever worked at to great success”
Breaking Points
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Black Beauty
Discussed“Ryan writes about this in his book as a very organic, genuinely bottom-up way.”
The Daily Stoic
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The Death of Socrates
Discussed“So I was reading Emily Wilson's book, The Case Against Socrates, which I thought was interesting because she famously has this biography of Seneca, and they're both pretty negative.”
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The Trial of Socrates
Discussed“It was interesting to read a kind of Steelman case against Socrates, which is what I felt she was doing there in Stone's book, The Trial of Socrates, or something like that.”
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How to Build Stonehenge
Discussed“There was a great book called 'How to Build Stonehenge' that came out two years ago, which really got close to explaining it.”
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The Year 1000
Discussed“Then you'll see, there are a lot of global historians now who would say, 'Well, Valerie Hansen wrote a very popular book recently that argues, well, no, actually, a product around the time of the Vikings could theoretically travel from the Americas all the way around the entire world.'”
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Forgive Me Not
Discussed“It's like, like that one thing I loved about your book was how you gave examples of what I would call stoic fables, like literal descriptions of what it would be good to do.”
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A New Stoicism
Discussed“I mean I love Larry Becker's work and new stoicism, you know, that was new and convincing to people who never would, you know, some people just don't have a taste for ancient philosophy and that was convincing to a lot of philosophers who have never picked up something translated.”
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
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The culture code
Discussed“Yes, yeah, I read something similar to what you're saying in terms of how to give proper feedback, and it was in a book called The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, and he talks about a three-step method.”
The Ezra Klein Show
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The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement
Discussed“and in the process and I talk about this in my book The Rise of the conservative legal movement what happened is that the professions became liberalized but liberalism also became professionalized...”
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The Unaccountability Machine
Discussed“the second one is the unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies which is just a fantastic exploration of why when things go very wrong in our society at the end of the day after all of the investigations there's sort of no one to blame and it's the structures of our institution that we've created to do that”
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Price and Rent Effects of Energy Efficiency in Residential Properties
Discussed“I've been thinking about something Hana rent wrote in the origins of totalitarianism another one of these books that when you begin quoting it you know things are not going great”
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Offshore
Discussed“Another kind of parallel book to read it's a very short book it's called offshore and it's by uh Brooke Harrington who is a sociologist who in order to write the book trained as a financial adviser and so entered that world and learned how it worked from the inside”
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American Kleptocracy
Discussed“and then as a third book uh to the trilogy I would say read American kleptocracy which is a book by Casey Michelle which talks about much more specifically American focused how Grand corruption is already visible and already at play in the United States”
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The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order
Discussed“What does that tell us in his book the rise and fall of the neoliberal order the historian Gary gell introduced me to this concept of political orders these structures of political consensus that stretch over decades”
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The Affluent Society
Discussed“visually you have John Kenneth gallb one of the Great economists of the new dual era writing the affluent society which is all about the problems of the society where now there is much more plenty but what makes life worth living has been been eroded”
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Underground Asia
Discussed“I found kind of an unconventional place to study this and read about it Tim Harper underground asia Global revolutionaries and the assault on Empire and this is a book about underground radicals in east and south Asia and Southeast Asia 1900 to 1925 looking to upend Empire looking to upend capitalism looking to free their countries from Colonial shackles”
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The Known Citizen
Discussed“and finally uh Sarah iigo the known citizen very different kind of book a history of privacy in modern America We're talking about morality We're talking about community and of course social media has put the question of privacy and what constitutes privacy and what's private and what's public such an urgent question in understanding America”
Behind the Bastards
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Goldsmith's The vicar of Wakefield
Discussed“And that same year, he went further, having read Forster's ghost story, Dr. Watt, in which a man dies after a gay sexual encounter.”
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Twilight
Discussed“Now, I need to explain to you something called a book series called the Twilight series!”
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Guerrilla leader
Discussed“Uh, James Schneider writes in his book Gorilla Leader, he discovered then the reality in modern war that the civilian population will always suffer when a European power pursues its national interests without regard to the culture and political aspirations of the native populace.”
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Setting the Desert on Fire
Discussed“I want to quote now from a book called Setting the Desert on Fire by James Barr. At the Times Valette, Cho believed that the Sultan's power as Khalif gave him a disturbing and disruptive political influence worldwide.”
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The young T.E. Lawrence
Discussed“Um, in the wonderful book The Young T.E. Lawrence, biographer Anthony Satin writes that Lawrence and his four brothers never, quote, 'had an unhappy or even an unsettled life.'”
Freakonomics Radio
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The Wimpy Kid
Discussed“I'm an owner of an unlikely story bookstore in Plainville, Massachusetts, and I'm the author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.”
Lex Fridman Podcast
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Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles
Discussed“I had a vague idea about the Austrian School; the only thing I had read about the Austrian School until then had been 'Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles,' a very good book by Jesús Huerta de Soto.”
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The Road to Serfdom
Discussed“He also pointed out, and this is proven in Hayek's book 'The Road to Serfdom,' that any middle ground solution is unstable in terms of capitalism, meaning it tends towards socialism.”
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A Sand County Almanac
Discussed“It also increases this concept from Leopold's essay called 'unhobbling', where models are hobbled and then trained to be unhobble.”
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
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Keeping Faith
Discussed“But somebody told me that a book editor—a book-on-tape editor had also worked on his memoirs! And I don't know how it came up, but he mentioned, he was like, 'Oh, the comedian Anna Gasteyer, she was a friend of—' which was such a weird feeling that he knew who I was!”
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A Little Life
Discussed“That could be good; I still have to finish A Little Life. That’s a hard one!”
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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Discussed“And now this is the film which is such a beautiful blessing and responsibility to have as people who also love it and have lived for this for 20 years and have done the research like read the L. Frank Baum books and have done their homework and have lived it and loved it!”
The Tucker Carlson Show
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Congressional government
Discussed“It's always about where they have tried to innovate from really the progressive era, like they wanted congressional government; that was the title of Woodrow Wilson's book.”
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Insomnia
Discussed“And Pat actually talks about this in his book, where he says this was a specific strategy hatched out of the Department of Defense by some of the neocons at the time to continue justifying the largest defense spending that we continue to be tied down with.”
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Ὀδύσσεια
Discussed“Well, I do believe that we need to be less doctrinaire on the right and to actually think, you know, and read those books you were mentioning earlier, and to be thinking through and ask the questions and try to learn more, and realize like, you know, a history book may have been written at a time to just with”
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Abnormal psychology
Discussed“I remember being in high school reading an abnormal psychology textbook that I bought at the school bookstore that had an entry on autism that was like two paragraphs long, this esoteric disorder whose origins we were uncertain of, whose parameters were unclear.”
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The crusader
Discussed“I want you reading this stuff; we're giving out Pat Buchanan's books.”
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Novels (Black House / Talisman)
Discussed“Fast forward perhaps a year—on the day that my dad died, I get a notification: 'Cassie Hutchinson's coming out with a book,' and the teaser of the book explicitly says she's going to talk about her interplay with the Trump lawyer who told her to lie. So all of a sudden I realize, and of course it's on the day”
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Good Energy
Discussed“We wrote a book called 'Good Energy' with the simple thesis that conditions plaguing us are connected! We need to stop treating conditions with ineffective drugs and siloed approaches, and appreciate the interconnectedness of our beautiful human body!”
Timcast IRL
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Suicide
Discussed“I think this is what Emil Durkheim wrote about in his book Suicide, where he talks about the concept of anomie, where people that experience the death of their worldview either learn to accept it or they don't accept it, and this is the result when you don't accept it.”
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The men who stare at goats
Discussed“So apparently, have you seen that movie, The Men Who Stare at Goats? I read the book a long time ago.”
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Area 51
Discussed“I always like to say this, too, when talking about aliens: Annie Jacobson wrote this crazy book where she interviewed a guy from Area 51, some high-up guy. He said back in the 50s or 60s, I think it was the 60s, our government was taking severely autistic children and mutating them to look like extraterrestrials to scare the Soviets.”
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Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci
Discussed“Well, you know, there's a famous communist theorist, Antonio Gramsci; he's an Italian theorist, and in the Prison Notebooks, which is his great work that was translated actually by Joseph Buttigieg, so they're all—and Kamala is the daughter of a Marxist! So you're seeing them seep into the government!”
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Speechless
Discussed“First of all, let's not forget Timcast is what made my book, which accurately did—unlike David Pakman, it did make my book Speechless! It really helped it get to number one nationally!”
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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Discussed“You know, my buddy Spencer just wrote this great...I'll plug a book that's not my own! He just came out with this great book, 'Light of the Mind, Light of the World', which makes all of these points, and it does so beautifully!”
The Jordan Harbinger Show
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Het Achterhuis
Discussed“You start the book, you start Nexus with something you call, I think, I'm paraphrasing here, the naive view or naive theory of information.”
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The Dead Zone
Discussed“Yeah, maybe I’ve got to read Chase Jarvis’s book. There’s a book I’ve got to read; I can’t go to this thing.”
People I (Mostly) Admire
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Livewired
Discussed“If you want to learn more about David Eagleman's ideas, I really enjoyed a couple of his mini books, like Livewired, which talks about his brain research, and Some 40 Tales from the Afterlives, his book of speculative fiction. So this is the point in the show where we take a listener question, and I welcome my producer, Morgan.”
StarTalk Radio
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Alien Oceans
Discussed“It is, and my God, just at the dawn of co, you had a book by that title. That's right, Alien Oceans.”
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The Conscious Mind
Discussed“He is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist, also an author. Reality Plus and The Conscious Mind are two of his many books.”
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Reality+
Discussed“First of all, this has been yet another edition of StarTalk, a special edition this time with Professor David Chalmers regarding your latest book. Tell me about Reality+, all those questions about reality and consciousness.”
SmartLess
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Fall of Giants
Discussed“There's also a book that goes along with it. The 'Giants' book is spectacular.”
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Sage Warrior
Discussed“So I even think about like what do I want to do, and there's this beautiful book called 'The Sage Warrior' by a woman named Valarie Kaur, who’s this incredible, she's a lawyer, she's an activist, she's a woman who just—she's a writer, she does all this incredible stuff, and she paired this book with this album of music that”
