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Books podcasts were talking about in December 2025
In December 2025, podcast discussions frequently explored storytelling techniques, midlife psychological transitions, and political economies. On How I Write, Adrian Tchaikovsky recommended Joe Abercrombie's The Heroes for its immersive battle scenes, while also praising Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood and Susanna Clarke's Piranesi for inspiring a powerful sense of the numinous. Psychological turning points were addressed on Modern Wisdom, where Connor Beaton brought up James Hollis's The Middle Passage to explain the maturation process and internal turning points that occur during midlife. Later on the same show, George discussed Derek Sivers's Useful Not True in the context of false memories and changing worldviews, while also recommending Mark Forsyth's The Etymologicon to explore the fascinating origins of words and language. Meanwhile, economic and geopolitical comparisons took center stage on The Ezra Klein Show, where Tracy Aloway recommended Dan Wang's Breakneck for comparing the political economies of the United States and China. Aloway also highlighted Amy Pease's Northwoods as one of her favorite pieces of recent fiction. Across these different shows, hosts and guests used books to examine personal transformation, imaginative writing craft, and global economic structures.
The Joe Rogan Experience
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The Iliad
Discussed“read the Iliad or something this is kind of how people are fighting.”
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Revenge of the Tipping Point
Discussed“You know, I started to read this um Malcolm Gladwell just published a new book called Revenge of the Tipping Point, and I'm only like 15 pages in.”
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Conversations with God, Book 1
Discussed“Um, and they were a series of books called Conversations with God by Neil Donald Walsh. Have you ever heard of them?”
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The UFO Experience, A Scientific Inquiry
Discussed“I do draw from Heinik's in his book the UFO experience. He lists out how we all should approach this based on the reliability scale and the stranges scale.”
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Passport to the Cosmos
Recommended“whether it's Whitley Strieber from Communion or the John Mack books, the guy from Harvard that wrote what was it? Abduction, Passport to the Cosmos and Abduction. Yeah, two great books.”
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The Great Taking
Recommended“Have you ever read uh The Great Taking? No. Great Taking is a very good, very scary short book. David Webb is the author.”
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The Tao of Willie
Discussed“I don't know if you've read the Dow of Willie. I love all these kind of to the left versions of sometimes I find it hard to read the I want to read what Willie thinks about the dampata more than I want to read the dumpata myself.”
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The Dude and the Zen master
Recommended“Yeah, the dude in the Zen master. It's a great book by the way.”
How I Write
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The dancers at the end of time
Discussed“There is a story that I mean, Michael Moorcock wrote a series called The Dancers at the End of Time, which is set in such a far future, there are basically about seven people left...”
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Children of Ruin
Discussed“So for example in Children of Ruin, which is the second of my kind of big sci-fi books in that series, I wanted to write about uplifted octopuses because they are very fascinating creatures, but that felt like half a book.”
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Dogs of War
Discussed“So, there's in Dogs of War the main character is Rex. He is an bioengineered dog who is being used as a military asset.”
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The Heroes
Recommended“He wrote a book called The Heroes. There is a very large battle in The Heroes which you are basically seeing through the slot in someone's visor...”
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Mythago Wood
Recommended“There are a couple of books I have read which have inspired me this incredible sense of the numinous. The numinous. Yes, of this kind of just the all of there being just a world that is just out of sight but is very very real and you can you get that I mean so Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood is”
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Piranesi
Recommended“...and Susanna Clarke's Piranesi is another both of which are books I absolutely love and at some point I want to write a book that inspires a similar kind of sense...”
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Mornings in Mexico
Discussed“I remember when I was when I was 18, I read his book Mornings in Mexico, which is a series basically of essays about New Mexico.”
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War and Peace
Discussed“Well, I mean Pierre Bazookov in War and Peace, you know, opens with him in that drinking party where they're all doing crazy drinking games and he doesn't want to be doing it.”
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Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric
Recommended“You know, we only focused on three techniques and these books, rhetoric and style, classical English style, classical English rhetoric. They're part of a series. These are the two that I love. And especially this one about style.”
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Farnsworth's Classical English Style
Recommended“You know, we only focused on three techniques and these books, rhetoric and style, classical English style, classical English rhetoric. They're part of a series. These are the two that I love. And especially this one about style.”
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Is a River Alive?
Discussed“I was going through the book and I remember just being blown away by how vivid his descriptions of rivers were. He had just published a book called Is a River Alive?”
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Machine dreams
Discussed“That's the first line of Machine Dreams. Yeah. My first novel.”
Lex Fridman Podcast
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Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (On the Shoulders of Giants)
Discussed“Galileo is an extremely prominent exception to this, though he argued against this sort of potentialist orthodoxy in The Dialogue of Two New Sciences.”
Modern Wisdom
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The Middle Passage
Recommended“And you know, in there's a a great Union psychologist named Dr. James Hollis and he wrote this book called The Middle Passage. And it's all about how we go through this kind of turning in midlife.”
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Useful Not True
Recommended“So there's um yeah, Civers has this useful but not true um and he starts off with this story of obviously for people who don't know he ends up being a quite a successful entrepreneur, internet programmer, etc., etc.”
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The Etymologicon
Recommended“So there's a book called the Ethmologicon which is where I got a lot of this stuff from.”
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The science of happily ever after
Discussed“In fact, the book he wrote is called The Science of Happily Ever After, and he talks about three wishes.”
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If the universe is teeming with aliens-- where is everybody?
Discussed“There's a a book I tried to bring this guy on Steven Webb uh if the universe is teaming with aliens where are they all? Um, and he's got 50 solutions to the Firmeny paradoxes.”
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The end of history
Discussed“He in 1992 published this book called The End of History and the Last Man.”
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Don't Look up
Discussed“Do you ever see the movie Don't Look Up, Leonardo DiCaprio. Yeah, there's a meteor. Well remembered.”
The Ezra Klein Show
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Breakneck
Recommended“Dan Wong's new book breakneck break neck is excellent for comparing the political economy of the US and China and a lot of the things we just discussed”
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Northwoods
Recommended“best fiction I read this year new fiction is Northwoods which is the sort of surreal story about an old house in New England”
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Marriage at Sea
Recommended“Marriage at Sea, which is a true story of a couple in the 1970s that get shipwrecked by a something whaling related. Whale. Oh, that's great. And survive at sea.”
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Orality and Literacy
Recommended“Walter's orality and literacy which I've been talking about a lot which is basically the way like our communication environment is such that we're like an oral society increasingly”
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No sense of place
Recommended“So yeah, no sense of place by Josh Myroitz is my last one.”
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Citizenville
Discussed“You have a great metaphor in your book Citizenville where you say that people treat government like a vending machine.”
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Built to Last
Recommended“I said look my favorite book one of the most influential books interesting in my life is called built to last.”
The Daily Stoic
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So You've Been Publicly Shamed
Discussed“is it John Ronson that such a good book? Um but that's a totally different thing, right? Like that I I think I I consider that more public humiliation.”
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De profundis
Discussed“There's a beautiful scene in Oscar Wild's book Dave Profundis where he talks about this moment he's being transferred from one prison to another.”
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By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept
Recommended“This is actually my copy, but I wondered if Have you read by Grand Central Station? I sat down and wept.”
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The years of Lyndon Johnson (Volumes 1-3)
Discussed“In the Robert Carroll books on Lyndon Johnson, he talks about he's like, I got it, but I have it on a leash.”
