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Books podcasts were talking about in February 2026
February 2026 featured a wide-ranging collection of book recommendations spanning technology, psychology, memoirs, and life transitions across several prominent shows. On All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg, Jason Calacanis recommended Bill Gurley's Runnin' Down a Dream, praising it as an inspiring new book. The Ezra Klein Show welcomed Jack Clark, who recommended Eric Hoffer's The True Believer to examine the psychology of mass movements and tech cultures, alongside There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm for its exploration of information hazards and artificial intelligence risk. Later on the same podcast, Ashley Parker recommended Frankly, We Did Win This Election by Michael C. Bender to provide insight into the Trump campaign and base. Michael Scherer also shared recommendations on The Ezra Klein Show, highlighting Lucy Ives's essay collection An Image of My Name Enters America, Gore Vidal's memoir Palimpsest, and Douglas Starr's historical nonfiction book Blood. On Modern Wisdom, Dave Evans brought up William Bridges's Transitions to explain the internal experiences of life changes. These recommendations collectively offered listeners deep dives into human psychology, organizational movements, political inner workings, and personal evolution.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
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Runnin' Down a Dream
Recommended“Can I just give a plug to friend of the pod, Bill Gurly? He's got an amazing new book, Running Down a Dream. Please, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before we start, before I start, there it is. Running down a dream, I just want everybody to just stop the pause the podcast.”
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Perversion of Justice
Critiqued“Even though, for example, I caught her fabricating quotes in her book, Coversion of Justice, which was based on the initial Miami Herald series.”
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The Language of Deception
Discussed“In fact, I thought one detail that was really kind of interesting was their first interaction, one of the first was about they bonded over a book called deception, which I haven't I haven't read the book.”
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The Light of Other Days
Recommended“There is this great book, I've mentioned it in the past, by Steven Baxter and Arthur Clark called the light of other days and it's all about how basically all the world's information becomes available to everyone.”
The Joe Rogan Experience
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Occult Feminism: the Secret History of Women's Liberation
Discussed“And it is the occult feminism, the secret history of women's liberation.”
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The Woman's Bible
Discussed“In fact, Elizabeth Katie Stanton and a bunch of her friends wrote something called the Woman's Bible in 1895 where they rewrote the Bible from a feminist perspective and took out the things that they thought uh were oppressive and patriarchal.”
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The Psychology of Totalitarianism
Discussed“Not allowed to teach his own book on the psychological basis of totalitarianism where which is where that book had not come out yet, but it was uh the mass formation hypothesis is what was the kind of core of that book that's now published and and widely regarded.”
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Gattaca
Recommended“Do you remember Did you watch the movie Gattaca? Yeah. Gattaca, absolutely recommended. If you want to understand our brave new world, the one that's really coming at us and the ethical conundrums associated with that, watch Gattaca.”
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Kiss or Kill
Discussed“He wrote a book called Kiss or Kill Confessions of a Serial Climber back in the day.”
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Screenplay
Discussed“I mean there was this book by Sid Field which was a screenwriting book um that you know at one hand it gave a kind of formula on what a movie should be.”
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The Issue With Chronology
Discussed“Well, um there's this guy Anatoli Fenco who's a Russian mathematician and historian and he wrote a book called The New Chronology.”
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Asimov on Numbers
Discussed“Isaac Azimoff wrote a book called Is Azimoff on numbers which is fantastic which talks about this and he talks about Kalahari Bushmen who have no concept of the number zero”
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One Hundred Proofs That the Earth Is Not a Globe
Discussed“Do you know who this guy is? Oh, he's a flat earth guy. Yeah, he's the flat earth guy and he's written a book called Aundred Proofs.”
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Let the Right One In
Recommended“And the book is fabulous as well. It's a an amazing novel.”
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Range
Recommended“Yeah. And if you think about um like one of my favorite books is Range by David Epstein, which which talks about the broad range of skills that people who then really success at really succeed in academia or sports have, right?”
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The Stimulated Mind
Recommended“Be pout on the same day, pMarch 24th. March 24th, Stimulated Mind, Dr. Tommy Wood. Go get it, folks.”
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Defending My Enemy
Discussed“There was a book by a guy called Aya Nia who was the head of the ACLU called Defending Miami.”
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Time to Think
Discussed“So this is the other this is the other reason [clears throat] why I think the movement is essentially anti-gay because you know the Tavveristo pediatric pediatric clinic in London which was an NHS gender clinic which has been closed as a result of the CAST review this report into pediatric gender care they found uh um there's a book”
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Operation Gladio
Recommended“There's a great book on this by Paul Williams. I think it was published in 2017. It's called Operation Gladadio, the CIA, the Vatican, and the mob.”
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Gilligan: The Mob Boss Who Changed the Face of Organized Crime
Recommended“There's a great book on this by Paul Williams. I think it was published in 2017. It's called Operation Gladadio, the CIA, the Vatican, and the mob.”
How I Write
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Tuesdays with Morrie
Discussed“Do you know that is? He wrote a book called Tuesdays with Morrie. yeah, yeah.”
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Red Notice
Discussed“Well, talk to me about beginnings. You know, after you wrote Red Notice, you said, "I wanted to write the kind of thing that if you read the first 10 pages, you just wouldn't be able to put the book down."”
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Freezing Order
Discussed“Um in in my second book freezing order there's a whole chapter about a deposition at a law firm in New York which is a really boring thing.”
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Wolf Hall
Discussed“So, one of the things she did with the third part of her trilogy, the Wolf Hall trilogy, was to send me the typescript or the yeah, a virtual equivalent of a typescript, the PDF, and say, Can you look at this and have a look at the the historicity of it?”
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Jack Reacher Boxed Set
Discussed“Lee Child, the man behind the Jack Reacher series, a series that sold more than 200 million books”
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John D. MacDonald, Five Travis McGee Novels
Discussed“John D. McDonald who was uh was a Florida writer did 21 books in the Travis McGee series which is really one of the most magnificent series”
The Ezra Klein Show
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The True Believer
Recommended“Eric Hoffer, "The True Believer," which is a book on the nature of mass movements and the psychology of what causes people to have strong beliefs, which I read because I think that I technologists have strong beliefs and maybe part of a strong culture that includes the word cult. And so you need to understand the science and psychology”
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There Is No Antimemetics Division
Recommended“And finally, a book called "There Is No Antimemetics Division" by a writer with the name qntm, which is about concepts that are in themselves information hazards where even thinking about them can be dangerous. And I always recommend it to people working on A.I. risk as a book adjacent to the things they worry about.”
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Frankly, We Did Win This Election
Recommended“Frankly, We Did Win This Election: the Inside Story of How Trump Lost”
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An Image of My Name Enters America
Recommended“"An Image of My Name Enters America" which is a book of essays, personal essays by Lucy Ives, came out a couple years ago. I read it last year and I had so much fun.”
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Palimpsest
Recommended“"Palimpsest" by Gore Vidal came out a while ago. I just read it recently. I can’t believe I’ve been in DC so long and not read it. It’s hilarious.”
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Blood
Recommended“It’s a book called "Blood" by Douglas Starr. It’s actually a history of blood, which is not something I would ever have thought I wanted to read.”
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Nobody's Girl
Discussed“Virginia Giuffre writes about how he did that to her in her incredible book, "Nobody’s Girl"”
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Random Family
Recommended“"Random Family" by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.”
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Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Recommended“and "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo”
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Vigil
Discussed“But reading his new novel, Vigil, which is about an oil tycoon on his deathbed being visited by angels and people from his past, trying to get him to reassess his own life, began to realize that Saunders is more interested in something else now.”
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The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories
Discussed“One of the books I had in mind while I was writing this was death of Ivan Illich by Toltoy. In that book it's it's a much more modest sinner and his sin is just that he he lived his life by the credo that I just want to do what everybody else is doing.”
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I Will Bear Witness
Recommended“Well, there's one I'm sure you read this, but um, I will bear witness by Victor Clemper. It's an incredible I bought this recently, but I have not read it yet.”
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The Place of Tides
Recommended“And then the third one would be more u maybe more of a an antidote. It's a beautiful book called The Place of Tides by uh James Reebanks and he just goes non-fiction and he goes to uh an island um I think it's off Iceland and he lives with this woman...”
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Essays of J.A. Schumpeter
Discussed“You know, Joseph Schumpeter back in 1911 wrote a book about entrepreneurs basically.”
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Small Is Beautiful
Recommended“And And Tim, why don't we begin with you? Sure, I'd start with uh E.F. Schumacher's uh Small Is Beautiful, Economics As If People Mattered.”
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Manipulation
Recommended“A second book um is more recent. Cass Sunstein wrote a book on manipulation that uh I think has been um it is underrated and is really good for understanding what we have allowed to happen. It's called Manipulation: What It Is, How to Stop It.”
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Rise and Fall of the Great Power
Recommended“The last book, I guess this is where I got some ideas about uh tech platforms and the big picture is from Paul Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.”
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The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
Recommended“The last book, I guess this is where I got some ideas about uh tech platforms and the big picture is from Paul Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.”
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Little Bosses Everywhere
Recommended“My second choice is a book by Bridget Read. It's a book called Little Bosses Everywhere.”
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Jules, Penny & the Rooster
Recommended“And then the final book is a kids book by my favorite kids book author ever, this guy called Daniel Pinkwater. And last year he had a book out from Tachyon Press called let me find the title here, Jewels, Penny, and the Rooster.”
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In Defense of Politics
Discussed“I've become obsessed with this quote over the the past year from Bernard Crick. It's in this book called In Defense of Politics, and he says that politics involves genuine relationships with people who are genuinely other people, not objects for our philanthropy or tasks for our redemption.”
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The Other Significant Others
Discussed“I remember Raina Cohen who you've had on the show I know her her beautiful book um the other significant others one of the things I loved about that book was she went back you know in lots of different societies and I remember many religious traditions where attainlessness of God was actually through the other person.”
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The Inheritance of Loss
Discussed“One of my favorite books by far this year was the loneliness of sunny and Sonia. It's so beautiful. It's so I mean it sits in my heart like I think about it a couple times a week. Me too. But it's all about It is this dance.”
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On Repentance and Repair
Recommended“And one of the books that I think is a powerful book in this new bookshelf that we're going to call group help is Da Rutenberg's on repair and repentance. It's a beautiful book.”
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The Politics of Ritual
Recommended“So the politics of ritual by Molly Farnath. It is a book that came out a few years ago and she from I think Princeton University Press and she looks at we think about ritual as a way to basically keep solidifying older values”
Modern Wisdom
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Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard
Discussed“Saurin Kerkard wrote fear and trembling which is exactly what you're expected to feel when you when you have that divine call tell you leave your job, exit this relationship, get marry her.”
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No More Mr Nice Guy
Discussed“and in part um uh uh uh No Mr. nice guy, Robert Glover, like he's sort of like a a looking at a part of this and a wing of this.”
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Letting go
Discussed“It makes me think about David Hawings letting go type.”
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Transcend
Discussed“Scott Barry Scott Barry Kauman did a good a good job on that. His book transcend was was real nice and he's he's big into into masalist stuff.”
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Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Discussed“So we all know the flow state from Mihi Czech semih high the the positive psychologist who invented the term flow the psychology of optimal experience published back in 90 something.”
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Transitions
Recommended“So William Bridges wrote the book transitions making life making sense of life's big changes.”
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Anxiously Attached
Discussed“I mean this was a great insight I learned from Jessica Balm's first book, Anxious Anxiously Attached. She's got a new one out called Safe.”
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Safe
Discussed“She's got a new one out called Safe. You should bring her on the show. She'd be great for you.”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
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When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...
Discussed“Steven Pinker has a book out last year called When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows. It's about the immediate change in a social system when private knowledge”
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Junglekeeper
Recommended“Jungle Keeper, what it takes to change the world. This book is about the profound power of saying yes. Yes to one's calling. Yes to sticking with your dream when it comes at a high cost.”
The Daily Stoic
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The Antidote
Discussed“I remember with with the antidote which I have here. Amazing. Uh which I have you signed but when did that was old school edition.”
Interesting Times
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All watched over by machines of loving grace
Discussed“and you supplied the poem 'Machines of Loving Grace' the name of a poem by Richard Brautigan. Yes here’s how the poem ends. I like to think it has to be of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines”
Lex Fridman Podcast
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the sun and her flowers
Discussed“Like, I don't know, we talked about the movie Her, and at one point it promised me that it wouldn't, it wouldn't ascend without me.”
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Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch)
Recommended“Sebastian is the author of two books I highly recommend for beginners and experts alike. First is Build a Large Language Model from Scratch and Build a Reasoning Model from Scratch.”
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Build a Reasoning Model (From Scratch)
Recommended“Sebastian is the author of two books I highly recommend for beginners and experts alike. First is Build a Large Language Model from Scratch and Build a Reasoning Model from Scratch.”
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Season of the Witch
Recommended“I need to get him a copy of Season of the Witch, which is a history of SF from 1960 to 1985, which goes through the hippie revolution... And it's just like, that is so recent, and so much turmoil and hurt, but also love in SF. And it's like, no one knows about this. It's a great book, Season”
Huberman Lab
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Far From the Tree
Discussed“He wrote Far from the Tree, which is about children who are very different from their parents in some way.”
