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Books podcasts were talking about in July 2025
In July 2025, various podcasts explored literature ranging from evolutionary history and science fiction to hospitality and contemporary novels. On The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, Jordan B. Peterson discussed David E. Jones's An Instinct for Dragons to provide an evolutionary explanation for the concept of dragons. Rory Sutherland appeared on Modern Wisdom to recommend Will Guidara's Unreasonable Hospitality, sharing stories about the restaurant 11 Madison Park. Science fiction and policy were highlighted on The Ezra Klein Show, where Jesse Jenkins recommended Kim Stanley Robinson's complete Mars trilogy, and Jane Faggel recommended Norman Rush's novel Mating alongside Daniel Sarewitz's Frontiers of Illusion. Ryan Holiday recommended Nell Irvin Painter's Old in Art School to James Altucher on The Daily Stoic. Furthermore, The Book Review featured Gilbert Cruz discussing S. A. Cosby's King of Ashes and Jumanna Senan bringing up Jonas Hassen Khemiri's The Sisters to praise its depiction of an eccentric mother and her daughters.
The Joe Rogan Experience
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The bondage of the will
Discussed“There's a philosopher that uh Martin Luther quotes in his book the bondage of the will and he this philosopher says you can make anything out of anything and he's talking about scripture.”
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The Rats
Discussed“Do you ever watch the Netflix series on them? The documentary Rats? The thing the the guy that died did Superersize Me, right?”
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Invictus
Discussed“I would read uh the poem Invictus. Like that poem always just kind of brought me back like you're the master of your own fate. You know what I'm saying? You're the you're the captain of your soul.”
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Black Gangster
Discussed“So he had these all these street books like Dope Fiend and you know uh Black Gangster and it was like all this kind of underbelly uh Iceberg Slim Pimp all these stories were stories I had read early on and these guys they were like me like Donald Go served time in prison.”
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What You Do Is Who You Are
Discussed“And Ben actually wrote this book called What You Do is Who You Are. And in the book, he talked about some of our conversations around culture. And it kind of gave them a framework to really understand how these lessons I learned in prison could really be applied in corporate.”
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Taboo!
Discussed“There's a book called Taboo which is about race difference in the in like all sports.”
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Room 237
Discussed“Have you seen that documentary called Room 237? Yes. I just watched it last night.”
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The Road to Eleusis
Discussed“He just he he uh he he was like came up under this under like some of the top classical scholars of like modern times. One of those dudes is Carl Ruck. He wrote The Road to Eleusis.”
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Starting strength
Discussed“Mark repertoire he's um he wrote this book called Starting Strength and it became like the the main way most most guys at least my age like getting into uh powerlifting. It was about technique.”
Modern Wisdom
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The birth of tragedy
Discussed“one of his first published works is called the birth of tragedy. ”
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Unreasonable Hospitality
Recommended“Unreasonable hospitality. Fantastic book about a guy who ran 11 Madison Park.”
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The Maltese Murders (Dr. David Brooks Mysteries)
Discussed“He's hitting he's hitting the second mountain state as David Brooks would call it and he doesn't know what to do with his life.”
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Solve for happy
Discussed“He's the former CEO of Google X and he has a book out called Solve for Happy, the equation of actual human happiness.”
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The Proverbs
Discussed“Um, I mean, look, you can go in the Bible in the book of Proverbs, the Proverbs 31 woman, she grows crops, she weaves fabric, she sells goods in the marketplace, she does all of the economic production of the house, the man sits in the gate, which is code for politics and war.”
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
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There's no such thing as a dragon
Discussed“I'm going to continue that today with a more recent book, a much more recent book called There's No Such Thing as a Dragon, The Story and Pictures by Jack Kent.”
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An Instinct for Dragons
Recommended“Um there's a book that I found very useful in my analysis of such things called an instinct for dragons by a man named David E. Jones.”
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The intentional stance
Discussed“So, he published a really um I I think really important book called the intentional stance.”
The Ezra Klein Show
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Complete Mars Trilogy
Recommended“And I guess maybe in that note, I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy to sort of take a break from all this heavy stuff. Um, and so one that I'll call out is Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, but I think it's a great example of a story of sort of how humanity might muddle through the”
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Mating
Recommended“Well, I'm way less nerdy than Jesse. So, my first recommendation, my um my first recommendation is um uh Norman Rush's Mating, which is just I just read that. Did you love it? I I love the first twothirds of it. Okay. In my view, that novel is sublime and beautiful and funny and an exploration of love and anthropology”
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Frontiers of Illusion
Recommended“The second one is Frontiers of Illusion by Daniel Sowitz who is just a brilliant thinker around science and technology policy and science and tech science and society and it just does a really great job sort of laying out both the myth the myths that we believe about science and how it operates and how we need to be”
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American Tabloid
Recommended“Um, my second book uh would be James Elroyy's American Tabloid, a novel about uh the Kennedy assassination. If you've enjoyed, you know, thinking putting yourself in kind of conspiratorial mindset, uh, and obviously JFK is in the news with the release of these files, I mean, this book really cannot be beat.”
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Low Life
Recommended“And then finally, I would say Lucy Sante's uh book, Low Life, about the history of organized crime and kind of skezy characters in New York over the centuries is always a good one to visit and, you know, again, kind of takes you back.”
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A Grief Observed
Recommended“and then I'd also recommend a grief observed which is by him also um it's like a really nice read on grief cuz grief can feel very lonely when you're going through it”
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The social transformation of American medicine
Recommended“But I also revisited Paul Star's classic social transformation of American medicine because I've been trying to get my attention back on the healthcare issue.”
Interesting Times
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Passport to Magonia
Discussed“So one of the first books I read when I made the turn to study U.F.O. beliefs and practices was Jack’s "Passport to Magonia," which is a great book, one of the many great titles of books in the U.F.O. literature.”
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Why the Allies Won
Discussed“I was very persuaded by a book that appeared close to 30 years ago, Richard Overy, "Why the Allies Won" about the merits and demerits of what’s called the strategic bombing of Germany.”
Conversations with Tyler
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Eagle and the Hart
Discussed“She is the author of numerous books and most recently one of the best books of last year she published the eagle and the heart, the tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV.”
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The Classical Style
Recommended“So I'm a real hardass at Giuliard. And I make my students I assume that they've all read Charles Rosen's The Classical Style.”
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After Babel
Recommended“I assume that they have a favorite orchestration book, but for the class I make them read um all of I'm afraid um George Steiner's After Babel, which is about translation and the whole the whole process of taking something from one situation, in this case one language, into another language, what you can carry across and what gets uh”
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Metaphors We Live By
Recommended“And then they make them read um uh the words we use of Jackson and Malof um because you know the metaphors we live by because that's one where we tend to speak and we haven't ever necessarily looked at the language we're using and what it what it communicates.”
How I Write
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Mrs. Dalloway
Discussed“Mrs. Delaware for instance when you were earlier you were saying as you were reading I think it was sweet darkness”
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The prelude
Discussed“So he has this beautiful line at the beginning of this passage and the prelude is 300 pages of Blackber.”
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Songs of Innocence
Discussed“So, William Blake, who you quoted, he had he had songs of of innocence and songs of experience, but he didn't see innocence as a commodity that was replaced by experience.”
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Songs of innocence and of experience
Discussed“So, William Blake, who you quoted, he had he had songs of of innocence and songs of experience, but he didn't see innocence as a commodity that was replaced by experience.”
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On love
Discussed“So I wrote my first book which in the United States was called on love and in the uh many other parts of the world was called essays in love and that was an attempt to understand sensations around love”
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Essays in Love
Discussed“So I wrote my first book which in the United States was called on love and in the uh many other parts of the world was called essays in love and that was an attempt to understand sensations around love”
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Maxims
Discussed“I remember this 17th century character, French character, Laros Fuku. Do you know him? No. Luko who wrote this book called the maxims in the 17th century and this a beautiful book it must be it's about 200 fragments.”
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The course of love
Discussed“So, my books tend to be quite odd. I mean, I wrote a book called The Course of Love.”
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Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Discussed“So um the Czech writer Milan Kundara was extremely important for me um the book of laughter and forgetting uh and the unbearable lightness of being and also his book the art of the novel immensely significant texts that seemed to have an incredible freedom.”
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Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí = The Unbearable Lightness of Being = Sonzai no taerarenai karusa [Japanese Edition]
Discussed“So um the Czech writer Milan Kundara was extremely important for me um the book of laughter and forgetting uh and the unbearable lightness of being and also his book the art of the novel immensely significant texts that seemed to have an incredible freedom.”
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Art of the Novel
Discussed“So um the Czech writer Milan Kundara was extremely important for me um the book of laughter and forgetting uh and the unbearable lightness of being and also his book the art of the novel immensely significant texts that seemed to have an incredible freedom.”
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Blood on the tracks
Discussed“Think of you know I don't know uh Bob Dylan Blood on the tracks that's a breakup album.”
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The Architecture of Happiness
Discussed“And um it enraged me and I wrote a book called the architecture of happiness which was an attempt to think about buildings.”
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Zero hour
Discussed“So, Airplane was a uh spoof on Zero Hour, which was a very serious 1957 movie with the same plot, exact same plot.”
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Crash Landing
Discussed“That line wasn't even from Zero Hour. It was from another airliner in trouble movie from the 50s called Crash Landing.”
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Harold
Discussed“And there was a one of the one of the early movies uh which uh Jerry and Jim and I became aware of was Harold and Maude.”
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Story of Maude Reed
Discussed“And there was a one of the one of the early movies uh which uh Jerry and Jim and I became aware of was Harold and Maude.”
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Spies Like Us
Discussed“And, you know, there was a movie called uh, Spies Like Us. really funny movie, but they had all this all these car crashes”
The Daily Stoic
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Old in art school
Recommended“She wrote this book called Old in Art School about her a she's like the peak of her profession. She's done everything you could.”
People I (Mostly) Admire
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Human Nature
Discussed“She's got a new book. It's called Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet.”
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Speak, Memorably
Recommended“When I heard he had a new book out called Speak Memorably: The Art of Captivating an Audience, I knew I had to get him on this show to share his insights with you, the listeners.”
The Book Review
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Daughters of the Bamboo Grove
Discussed“And this one is called Daughters of the Bamboo Grove from China to America, a true story of abduction, adoption, and separated twins by Barbara Demick.”
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King of Ashes
Recommended“This book is King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby.”
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The Sisters
Recommended“So, this is The Sisters by Yonas Hassan Hamiri.”
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Wild Thing
Recommended“Okay, so this is a biography that I really liked called Wild Thing by Sue Purau.”
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Fate of the Day
Recommended“This is called The Fate of the Day, The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777 to 1780 by Rick Atkinson.”
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These Summer Storms
Recommended“So, this is called These Summer Storms by Sarah McClean.”
Huberman Lab
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Daily Rituals
Discussed“I've been listening to this book uh that unfortunately is only available as an audio book called Daily Rituals, which it's got two-minute chapters, and it describes the daily rituals of writers and artists and creatives.”
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Body for Life
Discussed“And even into the 2000s when Bill Phillips came out with 'Body For Life' and stuff, he was big on the fasted cardio and stuff.”
Lex Fridman Podcast
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Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
Recommended“One of the greatest books for anyone working on business systems. And if you had not read it, you must pick it up immediately. "Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture," I think it was published in 2001.”
Behind the Bastards
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Eichmann
Discussed“And I'm going to quote from Cesarini's book, Ikeman, his life and crimes. Here Ikeman initially welcomed the chance to unburden himself to someone who was both knowledgeable and supposedly sympathetic.”
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Eichmann Before Jerusalem
Discussed“In her book Ikeman Before Jerusalem, Betatina Stangth describes Adolf Ikeman in this period as almost mad with a mix of desperation and megalomania.”
