Monthly round-up · All months
Books podcasts were talking about in March 2026
March 2026 saw various podcast episodes highlighting significant books on science, philosophy, politics, and sports. On The Joe Rogan Experience, Shanna H. Swan recommended the book To Die For by Joyce Slobogian, discussing its exploration of PFAS in flight attendant uniforms. The Ezra Klein Show featured multiple guests sharing influential recommendations. Michael Pollan recommended The Blind Spot by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson as a critique of Western science, the stream-of-consciousness novel Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann, and Being You by Anil Seth as a study of the self as perception. Christopher Caldwell also appeared on The Ezra Klein Show to recommend Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground as a political book about busing in Boston, and Jim Bouton's Ball Four as a sports book that changed his perspective on writing. On The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday suggested reading Albert Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus. Together, these selections brought attention to deep inquiries into consciousness, historical hardships, political structures, and personal reflections across different broadcast platforms.
The Joe Rogan Experience
-
To Die For
Recommended“There's a whole book. I I I don't should probably shouldn't recommend another book, but I think it's a good book. I'll just say. It's called to die for. D and it's about the flight attendants uniforms and the harms that they do because they're coated they have a lot of PFAS cuz they you know, have to keep clean”
-
White Rage
Critiqued“Books like White Rage. Like understanding why you're a problem, uh you as a white man are a problem in the modern-day military”
-
Capitalism and Freedom
Discussed“and uh but I read a lot of books like you know Milton Freriedman capitalism and freedom”
-
A World Appears
Discussed“So, um this new book, what inspired it? What what got you to I mean, you you've kind of explored consciousness a little bit with your psychedelic book, yeah. How to change your mind.”
-
Killing the Image
Discussed“Narrated by Andre Ward. Perfect. Killing the image, a champions journey, fighting and forgiveness. He's the perfect guy to do that, too, cuz like I said, he's the guy that did it right, you know, went out on top.”
-
The spirits’ book
Discussed“I uh did this whole audiobook, a modern English version of a book that was published in 1857 by a French dude named Allan Kardec who uh the it's called The Spirits' Book and you know, you've like got all these mediums that he's communicating with and putting together all this like, you know, definitive book on spiritism.”
The Ezra Klein Show
-
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
Discussed“There’s the famous definition of Thomas Nagel, who wrote this great essay called "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" And his test for consciousness is if it is like anything to be a creature, that creature then is conscious.”
-
The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness
Discussed“And he’s written a really interesting book called "The Hidden Spring" And his theory is that consciousness arises when you can’t automate things.”
-
The Blind Spot
Recommended“Well, a book that was really influential in the writing of this book is a book called "The Blind Spot" It’s by a philosopher, Evan Thompson, and two physicists, Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser. It’s a critique of Western science, and it makes a very powerful case that the blind spot of the physical sciences is inability to deal with”
-
Ducks, Newburyport
Recommended“Another book that was really influential as I was working on the stream of consciousness is a stream-of-consciousness novel by Lucy Ellmann called "Ducks, Newburyport" It’s 1,000 pages, one sentence. And that sounds I know that sounds really daunting and I’m not going to pick that up. You can open it anywhere you want, read 10 pages...”
-
Being You
Recommended“Lastly, there was a book about conscience. There were several books on consciousness I liked, but the one I want to recommend is "Being You" by Anil Seth. He’s an English neuroscientist, and it’s a book about the self, and he treats the self as a perception.”
-
The Gulag Archipelago
Recommended“Oh, I think everyone should read the gulag archipelago. I think that is such a wonderful book. This is Alexander Andrew Solzhenitsyn. It’s a story of his time.”
-
Common Ground
Recommended“Since we’re talking about politics, I think if you ask me to name the best political book, it would probably be j. Anthony lukas’s common ground, which is a book about busing in Boston and which is the first political event that I have any memory of from being a child.”
-
Ball Four
Recommended“And, and then I guess if I could recommend a baseball book, a book that really changed the way I don’t look at both sports and writing is ball four by Jim bouton?”
-
The Beauty Myth
Discussed“Her heyday was was um the 1990s with a breakthrough book called The Beauty Myth. It came out when I was uh an undergrad.”
-
Outrages
Discussed“Yeah, so the year year before the pandemic in 2019 she published a book called Outrages ; and she very famously made um a a a basic like a a foundational factual error in that book where she misinterpreted a phrase in the historical record.”
-
Here Where We Live Is Our Country
Recommended“Um I guess we've been talking around this, but um my my friend Molly Crabapple has an absolutely brilliant book coming out ; called Here Where We Live Is Our Country, the story of the Jewish ; un- Bund, and it's available for pre-order, comes out in April, and I think it gets at what an alternative story of hearness”
-
Fire Alarm
Recommended“And the third book is a book called Fire Alarm, Reading Walter Benjamin's On the Concept of History by Michael Löwy. ; Um and Walter Benjamin is the is this is the text that he wrote ; ; right before he took his own life fleeing the Gestapo in 1940. ; Um and it gets at this idea of the”
-
Persians
Recommended“So the first book I want to recommend is called The Persians The Age of the Great Kings by Lloyd Llewellyn Llewellyn Jones. And this is a really interesting book because most of the stories that have been written or histories that have been written about ancient Persia have been based on Greek sources.”
-
The Mantle of the Prophet
Recommended“The second book is The Mantle of the Prophet Religion and Politics in Iran by Roy Mottahedeh. Which also does something rare. It it it adds texture to the Iranian society and helps you understand the post-revolutionary Iran with all of its contradictions and societal trends”
-
America in the World
Recommended“O.K, well, they’re not in any order of not in terms of publication, although I am reading right now a book, I think, published two years ago by Robert Zoellick called "America in the World" A great book about America’s diplomatic history.”
-
The Mystery of Capital
Recommended“A second book I just took back from my bookshelf because of Peru, but "The Mystery of Capital" by Hernando de Soto, and I think it’s also interesting to remind us of some perpetual problems in the Western hemisphere, the tension between socialism and capitalism, and Hernando de Soto specifically speaks about the importance of titles to land.”
-
Leadership Lessons: Ronald Reagan
Recommended“And then third, the Reagan biography by Will Inboden, because also just to understand, Trump invokes Reagan a lot. Peace through strength, although actually peace through strength was, I learned first a Nixon phrase which then Reagan used and now Trump is using.”
-
Rationalism in Politics
Recommended“Rationalism in Politics by Michael Oakeshott, and in particular the essays Rationalism and Politics and On Being Conservative.”
-
Empire of Liberty
Recommended“Empire of Liberty by Gordon Wood.”
-
Roll, Jordan, Roll
Recommended“A book about the first 30 or so years of our Republic and Roll, Jordan, Roll by Eugene Genovese.”
-
From the Ruins of Empire
Recommended“So a few things. I mean, on this last question, From the Ruins of Empire by Pankaj Mishra is a really excellent kind of intellectual history of for lack of a better way of putting it, you know, people global south or people in decolonized spaces um in the 20th century uh coming up with alternatives to Western hegemony.”
-
The World of Yesterday
Recommended“Then I personally, as someone who's been trying to make sense of what it's like to live in a collapsing liberal order, um The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig I found myself reading twice since Trump's election. But it's it's just haunting and beautiful um contemporaneous uh you know, Stefan Zweig was a great Austrian writer writing this writing”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
-
Deskbound
Discussed“Kelly Starret wrote a book Deskbound some years ago and you know he really played a role in popularizing this this idea”
-
Now We Are Six
Discussed“And there's this particular book here called Now We Are Six. It is Anyone who's read my book uh Lifespan knows that this book is very important to me.”
-
Obedience to Authority
Discussed“And even Dr. Milgram's book was called obedience to authority. They thought it was all about the authority, the lab coat, the guy's tall.”
-
Dying to Win
Discussed“I mean, you have written books about suicide terrorism. That's right. I've got one of them in front of me here called Dying to Win.”
-
River Out of Eden
Discussed“Like like uh Darwin himself when he's articulating the survival of the fittest, there is an aspect of you shouldn't take care of those people because they're actually bringing the genetic gene pool down.”
-
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Discussed“Um in fact, when he wrote The Last Battle, you know, the last series in his Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe books, uh there are animals in heaven.”
-
The Last Battle
Discussed“Um in fact, when he wrote The Last Battle, you know, the last series in his Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe books, uh there are animals in heaven.”
-
The Book of Mormon
Discussed“I was looking into things like the Book of Mormon and the Bhagavad Gita.”
-
I Am that
Recommended“It is um it comes from a teacher of mine in India, my best teacher in life, Nisargadatta, wrote a book called I Am That, recommended to everybody.”
-
Forbidden Facts
Recommended“You've written so many of these great books. All of them I'm going to link below. The newest one here is called Forbidden Facts, Government Deceit and Suppression about Brain Damage from Childhood Vaccines. There's another book about children here, Protecting the the Gift, Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe and Parents Sane. The Gift of Fear, Survival Signals That Protect”
-
Protecting the Gift
Recommended“You've written so many of these great books. All of them I'm going to link below. The newest one here is called Forbidden Facts, Government Deceit and Suppression about Brain Damage from Childhood Vaccines. There's another book about children here, Protecting the the Gift, Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe and Parents Sane. The Gift of Fear, Survival Signals That Protect”
The Daily Stoic
-
Plato and the Tyrant
Discussed“although the irony is I had James Romm here and he he wrote this book Plato and the Tyrant.”
-
The Fall
Discussed“Well I think both The Fall and The Plague are two striking books for this moment.”
-
THE PLAGUE
Discussed“Well I think both The Fall and The Plague are two striking books for this moment.”
-
The Myth of Sisyphus
Recommended“If we read one Camus, we'll read The Myth of Sisyphus, right? Cuz that's the one thing to read.”
How I Write
-
Red Cavalry
Discussed“So, let's take a line from Isaac Babel, one of my favorite short story writers. Babel writing in the early 1920s, um during the Soviet-Polish War in Red Cavalry.”
-
The Method of Hope
Discussed“It is in a book called The Method of Hope. And he says, "Well, I don't go into the rainforest looking for what looks like medicine."”
-
Crush
Discussed“And you don't need to know that this is in the book Crush, which is about queer loss and and desire in the '90s in the wake of the AIDS epidemic.”
-
Antifragile
Discussed“Yeah, I'm thinking like if you have a book like Antifragile by Nassim Taleb or The Black Swan.”
-
The Black Swan
Discussed“Yeah, I'm thinking like if you have a book like Antifragile by Nassim Taleb or The Black Swan.”
-
The Story of Babar
Discussed“They sure as hell could read Babar and this flight this book about Charles Lindbergh and maybe the reason that the back catalog is so good is because parents really want to share those experiences with kids.”
-
The Emperor's New Clothes
Discussed“So, it's again when I'm kind of writing a story, if I've if I have a child or an animal in there that just comes sort of naturally, like I feel like I need some kind of an animal in here. When I'm when I switch over to my left brain and ask myself, what's going on here? A lot”
-
Shane
Discussed“Oh, great Western starring Alan Lad as a gunslinger that comes into this threatened environment of um sodbusters in a in a kind of range war against cattlemen. And Brandon Dewilda, who at that time was like 6 years old, he was the innocent. He was the child in that thing.”
-
The French Connection
Discussed“In Silence of the Lambs, um Clarice Stalling gets stripped of her badge and her gun to pursue this case. In the French connection, Gene Hackman and Roy Shider have to turn in their badge and their gun.”
-
Blade runner 2049
Discussed“Even in LadeRunner 2049, I know I'm citing movies or whatever, the Ryan Gosling character K is told, "Turn in your badge and your gun, you're off the case."”
-
Braveheart
Discussed“Ah, that's a that's a principle uh that my friend Randy Wallace who wrote Braveheart taught me and um it was that the first act kind of introduces the hero but in the second act the villain has to come forward.”
-
Casablanca
Discussed“like one of the classic cases of uh a hero giving up something is in Casablanca where the Bogart character at the end of the movie gives up the love of his life, Ingred Bergman, right? He puts her on the plane to Lisbon with her husband...”
-
The Big Lebowski
Discussed“The big Labowski. Yeah, you're familiar with that one, right? The dude Jeff Bridges. If you think about the Big Labowski, the genre of the Big Labowski is a detective story. Okay. Right. The dude is kind of given an assignment at the start by a rich guy.”
-
Interior Chinatown
Discussed“I say for instance in Chinatown when um Jack Nicholson the detective first meets Fay Dunaway she's the one who knows all the answers right what he's trying to find you know he's trying to get dig up what's behind the murders of this and that and the other...”
-
Bullies and Mean Girls in Popular Culture
Discussed“And so, in that the core idea that I was thinking about was identity, and it seems like a something that you see in a lot of stories is there's a moment where we see the true identity strangely enough I was to give Mean Girls ridiculous example I admit but I was thinking of these stories like Mean Girls”
-
The Hobbit
Discussed“Listen to this from Tol. Okay. It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterwards were nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in weight.”
-
Schindler's List
Discussed“If you think about um Schindler's List. Yeah. You know what could be more horrific than that? But it's a beautiful movie. Yeah. And you know that Spielberg and the cameraman and the lighting, they went to incredible pains to make up every frame, you know, work.”
Modern Wisdom
-
EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX
Discussed“I think it was in the everything you always wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask book which is one of the first best sellers of the public about sex.”
-
The Time Machine. H. G. Wells (englische Ausgabe)
Discussed“I think in we had a conversation in 2021 in which I I spoke about this but basically the analog I use is a novel called the time machine which was written I think at the start of the 20th century and uh it was basically um this story of in the far future humanity has sort of evolved into”
-
Ricochet
Discussed“The first shoot that I did got picked up by uh a really good uh author and put on the cover of a book called Ricochet.”
-
The Silent Patient
Discussed“I read uh The Silent Patient by uh Alex Michaelides or Andrew Michaelides.”
Interesting Times
-
What's the Matter with Kansas?
Discussed“I mean, again, the book I’m working on right now has got the working title, what’s the matter with Minnesota. And I chose that a year ago. By the way, listeners, just like you will recognize that as an allusion to Thomas Frank’s book. What’s the matter with Kansas.”
Huberman Lab
-
Born to Flourish
Discussed“and so, I think that that is is real, but I also think that the qualities, like for example, kindness, I believe, and this is the subject of this new book that I wrote with my colleague Courtland Dahl, Born to Flourish, qualities like kindness are innate.”
-
The Case Against Perfection
Recommended“There's another book that I I would I would recommend here that I read years ago and I actually I'm probably overdue to go back and and reread this. This predates CRISPR technology, but there's a Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel who years ago wrote a short book called The Case Against Perfection.”
-
The Last Lecture
Recommended“In fact, in one of my favorite books, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, he talks about um he was a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon, he eventually died, and he gave this last lecture, which is an incredible lecture”
