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Books podcasts were talking about in October 2025
During October 2025, several podcasts highlighted works addressing institutional disillusionment, political strategy, and historical insights. On The Ezra Klein Show, Jared Abbott recommended Jennifer M. Silva's We're Still Here for its portrayal of working-class life and institutional distrust in Northeast Pennsylvania. Also appearing on the program, John Favreau recommended Martin Luther King Jr.'s Stride Toward Freedom as a firsthand account and strategic study of the Montgomery bus boycott. Further exploring political and social themes, Mariana van Zeller appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience to discuss the documentary and book American Pain by John Temple, which covers the rise and fall of opioid pill mills operated by twin brothers. Meanwhile, Lex Fridman welcomed Julia Shaw on the Lex Fridman Podcast, where he recommended her new book, Green Crime, focusing on the illegal underworld of poachers and corporate fraudsters. These discussions collectively reflected a strong thematic focus on systemic challenges, unlawful enterprises, and the examination of social movements across various American institutions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
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The Thin Red Line
Discussed“The Thin Red Line is another book— ...and movie that shows that. - Yeah, yeah, and I watched the movie years before I read the book, and I didn't understand the movie. And then I read the book, and I read a lot about the editing of the movie, and I understood why I didn't understand the movie”
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Vanity Fair
Discussed“So I think there's something amazing about, you know, Vanity Fair, I used to love the novel, not the magazine. Because same thing, all of life is here.”
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The Idiot
Discussed“I'm sometimes like a Prince Myshkin character from The Idiot by Dostoevsky, where you just see...”
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Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
Discussed“...he ended up finding, and this is one of the big findings in this book that he published called "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male," which was a best-seller for an entire year.”
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Green Crime
Recommended“Her books include Evil, about the psychology of murder and sadism, The Memory Illusion, about false memories, Bi, about bisexuality, and her new book that you should definitely go order now called Green Crime, which is a study of the dark underworld of poachers, illegal gold miners, corporate frauds, hitmen, and all kinds of other environmental criminals.”
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ThePhantomTollbooth a miraculous the toll booths illusion of paradise. Norton Gu Site. the original English edition. Illustrated](Chinese Edition)
Discussed“When I was 11 years old, my biochemistry teacher, he gave me this book he wrote, it was called The Illusion of Paradise.”
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The Trial
Discussed“There's a story literally about the situation that he wrote, perhaps predicted, called "The Trial," where a person is arrested for no reason that anybody can explain and is stuck in the judicial system for a long time.”
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The Castle
Discussed“Of course, "The Trial" is a work of fiction, but I think it is often useful to go to the surreal world of literature, even of the over-the-top dystopian variety like "1984," "Animal Farm," "Brave New World," "The Trial," "The Castle," "Metamorphosis," even "The Plague" by Albert Camus...”
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The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
Discussed“Of course, "The Trial" is a work of fiction, but I think it is often useful to go to the surreal world of literature, even of the over-the-top dystopian variety like "1984," "Animal Farm," "Brave New World," "The Trial," "The Castle," "Metamorphosis," even "The Plague" by Albert Camus...”
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In the Penal Colony
Recommended“I can also highly recommend Kafka's "In the Penal Colony" and "Hunger Artist."”
The Joe Rogan Experience
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Rendezvous with Rama
Discussed“Randdevu with Rama, you know, is a book that was written by Arthur C. Clark and um in it the there is a cylindrical object that arrives into the inner solar system with dimensions of all the tens of kilometers not very far from what we are talking about here.”
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An Inconvenient Truth
Discussed“And when he made that movie, An Inconvenient Truth, what year was that again, Jamie? It was like 1988 or something? Something like 99? What is it? Oh, really? We're that off. Wow. Okay, so 2006.”
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Malleus maleficarum
Discussed“Well, I've read that as well about the printing press. When the printing press was first devised, a lot of people like, oh we're going to get so much knowledge. No, a lot of the early books were like how to detect witches. Right. That's right. Malleus Maleficarum. You know, the the hammer of the evildoers. That was the first”
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American pain
Recommended“So my husband did a documentary about it about the rise and fall of these twin brothers. They started by selling stero steroids and then somebody told him like dude why are you doing what are you doing selling selling steroids or you could make making so much more money selling oxy. It's called American Pain. You should watch it.”
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Sphere
Discussed“did you ever read Michael Michael Michael Kitchen's novel The Sphere or was it just Sphere? No. All right. Do you mind if I spoil Sphere for you?”
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Three felonies a day
Discussed“There's a book by Harvey Silverglate who's a professor of law at Harvard University. The book is called Three Felonies a Day.”
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First Blood
Discussed“But, yeah, I kicked off the book tour with David Morrell who who created Rambo back in 1972 with First Blood.”
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The brotherhood of the rose
Discussed“And uh wrote a series of books in the '80s, Brotherhood of the Rose, Fraternity of the Stone, League of Night and Fog, which were just incredible.”
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The fraternity of the stone
Discussed“And uh wrote a series of books in the '80s, Brotherhood of the Rose, Fraternity of the Stone, League of Night and Fog, which were just incredible.”
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The League of Night and Fog
Discussed“And uh wrote a series of books in the '80s, Brotherhood of the Rose, Fraternity of the Stone, League of Night and Fog, which were just incredible.”
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The tears of autumn
Discussed“No one's really done that since quite American Graham Greene, Tears of Autumn and Graham Greene was 1955 and Tears of Autumn was 1974 and and John le Carré was The Honourable Schoolboy in 1977.”
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The Honourable Schoolboy
Discussed“No one's really done that since quite American Graham Greene, Tears of Autumn and Graham Greene was 1955 and Tears of Autumn was 1974 and and John le Carré was The Honourable Schoolboy in 1977.”
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Earth under fire
Discussed“Wrote a book called Earth Under Fire that was ridiculed a lot in the 80s.”
Modern Wisdom
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Existentialism Is a Humanism
Discussed“Whereas if you just randomly pick one of the great philosophers, like if you just pick up Sartra, as I did the other day, I told you this, and read existential is existentialism is a humanism, and think this is complete nonsense.”
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Better Never to Have Been
Discussed“David Benitar is the sort of superstar of antiism. Um he wrote a book called Better Never to Have Been, which sounds like one of these sort of you know, I'm about to write about how terrible how terrible life is.”
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The Rebel
Discussed“and then anonym writes the rebel which is one of his one of his later um works which is again discussing you know what can an absurdist coherently value without simply falling back onto a kind of leap of faith or something”
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An Inquiry concerning human understanding;
Discussed“And he later sort of revises his thoughts into the much shorter inquiry concerning human understanding.”
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Laws
Discussed“Even even someone like Plato who we quite often think of as having a a very strong stable consistent set of made out of marble well as he if you if you you know is one of his earlier works which is both a kind of political treatise but also a theory of the human mind is called the republic”
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Of Boys and Men
Discussed“Do you know Richard Reeves? He does the American Institute for Boys and Men policy. I have heard of it. I don't Yeah, he wrote of boys and men.”
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Mate
Discussed“I read this in, uh, Tucker Max and Jeffrey Miller's book, Mate, which is about 10 years old, but is probably the best evolutionary psychology informed dating book that exists. They said, why does [ __ ] shaming exist”
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The Spirit Level
Discussed“This is something that's talked about a lot in the spirit level. Uh and if you plot the the kind of the markers of social disease”
The Ezra Klein Show
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We're Still Here
Recommended“Another one is this beautiful book that's a few years old now um called We're Still Here by Jennifer Silva, which looks at working-class life in Northeast Pennsylvania and just shows the utter disillusionment that working-class people have with all institutions and the the depth of the problem that we have in trying to rebuild trust in institutions.”
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Devotions
Recommended“So, um, I have been reading, uh, Mary Oliver's book, Devotions, which is, um, a collection of”
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The Man Without Qualities
Recommended“The other book that I will recommend is The Man Without Qualities by Robert Mucil.”
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Hollywood Babylon
Recommended“The third book for comic relief is um it's a book that I enjoy reading every now and then even though it's debunked and everybody says it's it's nonsense is Kenneth Angler's Hollywood Babylon.”
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Stride toward freedom
Recommended“Martin Luther King's stride toward freedom which is his book and firsthand account of the Montgomery boy bus boycott.”
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What Art Does
Discussed“So, your new book is called What Art Does. And I guess tell me, what does art do?”
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Silence
Discussed“So Cage Cage with his book Silence was very important for me. That came along at just the right time for me.”
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The print
Recommended“So one of the books it's called printing and the mind of man. It was the catalog really of an exhibition that was at the British Museum in 1963...”
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The mind of man
Recommended“So one of the books it's called printing and the mind of man. It was the catalog really of an exhibition that was at the British Museum in 1963...”
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Naples '44
Recommended“My third one is um Naples 44 by Norman Lewis. Norman Lewis was a British intelligence officer...”
How I Write
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Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street
Discussed“This was just Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts. And I asked Jagger what his favorite Stones covers would be. Mhm. He said Exile on Main Street, Some Girls and Sticky Fingers.”
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Rolling Stones - Some Girls
Discussed“This was just Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts. And I asked Jagger what his favorite Stones covers would be. Mhm. He said Exile on Main Street, Some Girls and Sticky Fingers.”
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No Ordinary Time
Discussed“The best example of this I come across is Doris Kearns Goodwin's book No Ordinary Time. It's a biography of FDR during World War II.”
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The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Discussed“He is famous for writing The Five People You Meet in Heaven.”
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Adventures in the screen trade
Discussed“Bill Goldman's book about adventures in the screen trade, he explains that the more action happens in the last seven minutes of a movie than than often happens in the first hour and a half of it.”
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Gilead
Recommended“One of my favorite books is Gilead by Marilyn Robinson.”
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
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The Clash of Civilizations?
Discussed“The author who actually predicted this and well there's Mir Shimemer who predicted in the early 2000s also Samuel Huntington wrote a book called the Clash of Civilizations in the mid '90s that was sort of the opposite of end of you know end of history was celebrated. Clash of Civilizations was sort of reviled.”
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The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
Discussed“The author who actually predicted this and well there's Mir Shimemer who predicted in the early 2000s also Samuel Huntington wrote a book called the Clash of Civilizations in the mid '90s that was sort of the opposite of end of you know end of history was celebrated. Clash of Civilizations was sort of reviled.”
Interesting Times
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Listening to the Law
Discussed“Her new book, "Listening to the Law," offers insights into her approach to the Constitution: from the Dobbs decision on abortion to her view of the Supreme Court’s role in the age of Donald Trump.”
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Battle for the American Mind
Discussed“They wound up writing the battle for the American mind together. And so Hegseth knew about me from all the stuff I’d done on education.”
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God Owes Us Nothing
Discussed“Have you ever read God owes us nothing by Leszek kolakowski? No it’s a book. He’s a Polish philosopher, but it’s a book about essentially the Calvinist form of Catholicism.”
Huberman Lab
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U. S. Navy SEAL Guide to Fitness
Recommended“Mow the lawn and go skateboarding, and then as we transitioned, we got closer, it was turn it on, download the Stew Smith "Guide to Navy SEAL" prep, and did that like everybody else did.”
Acquired
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Who Knew
Recommended“you recently wrote your memoir, Who Knew, which is excellent. The first chapter of your career was in Hollywood.”
