Monthly round-up · All months
Books podcasts were talking about in May 2026
During May 2026, podcasters across several shows shared recommendations spanning politics, history, fiction, and health. On All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg, Jason Calacanis recommended James Fore and Frank Fore's book Running down a Dream. The Ezra Klein Show featured multiple guests discussing various titles. Liam Donovan recommended Patrick McGee's Apple in China for its foreign and industrial policy insights, as well as Gregory Zuckerman's The Frackers to explain American energy dominance. Lee Drutman appeared on the same show to recommend Lani Guinier's Tyranny of the Majority, Samuel P. Huntington's American Politics, and William Gaddis's novel The Recognitions. Also on The Ezra Klein Show, Chris Williamson was not the speaker, but on Modern Wisdom he mentioned Tony Robbins' audiobook Awaken the Giant Within. Finally, Dr. David Unwin appeared on The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett to discuss Dr. John Briffa's Escape the Diet Trap after his wife discovered it in a supermarket.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
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Running down a Dream
Recommended“He's been running down a dream. If you haven't bought the book, get the book. It's incredible.”
The Ezra Klein Show
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Apple in China
Recommended“Patrick McGee's, uh, Apple and China, uh, I found just very interesting from an industrial policy standpoint, from a foreign policy standpoint, from a national security standpoint.”
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The Frackers
Recommended“I think the frackers is really interesting for understanding our energy dominance uh you know evolution and revolution. Um, I think the the watching us go from a scarcity mindset in the 2000s when I started my career to being the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.”
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Tyranny of the Majority
Recommended“All right. So, one book that I think people should read is Lonnie Guineir's Tyranny of the Majority.”
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American Politics
Recommended“Uh, another book I'd recommend is Sam Huntington's American politics promise of disharmony, which is a a historical look at these eras of reform in American politics.”
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The Recognitions
Recommended“Um, and a final book, I'll recommend a book of of fiction, The Recognitions by William Gatis, which is a book about forgery and authenticity and originality.”
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Comfortable with Uncertainty
Discussed“There's this book I love and I go back to and back to called Comfortable with Uncertainty.”
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Another Kind of Freedom
Discussed“Chödrön has a new book out, Another Kind of Freedom, which is on these themes and and many others.”
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The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation
Discussed“One of the things Trungpa Rinpoche says in Myth of Freedom is he has a whole chapter called Boredom.”
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The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Shambhala : the sacred path of the warrior ; Great eastern sun : the wisdom of shambhala ; Selected writings
Recommended“I recommend uh Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, which is an excellent book to be reading right now in terms of what's happening in the world.”
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Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
Recommended“And I recommend uh Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, which is uh one of the very first books I ever read in Buddhism.”
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Enlightened Vagabond
Recommended“And I recommend this book, um called Enlightened Vagabond by Matthieu Ricard.”
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The Hour of the Predator
Recommended“The book that I'm recommending is called The Hour of the Predator. And it's a statement it's a non-fiction book about how the power in our society and around the world is changing, and it is an absolute plea for us to preserve our democracy.”
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Rain of Gold
Recommended“There's a a book called Rain of Gold by Victor Villaseñor, which is all about how if you just put your mind to it, you can lift up your family and have success. It's the American dream in this book, and it's a Rain of Gold.”
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Yesteryear
Recommended“So, I would tell you that I think the banger book of the year that really encapsu- encapsulates in a fascinating, mind-bending way all of the frustration and rage that women and gender stereotypes put in onto us and that we have to navigate is Yesteryear, which is a fiction book. It just came out. It's a 36-hour stay up”
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Why Nothing Works
Recommended“So, in this audience is this totally unoriginal, but the truth is I just read Why Nothing Works. I think you just interviewed Mark Duckworth. I know. I told I literally just read it. It's on my nightstand. Um and it was great. It was it was really it got me thinking about this mix of top-down, more centralized, get”
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The Poison Squad
Recommended“Another one is Deb Blum's Poison Squad.”
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The Lost History of Liberalism
Discussed“One of the books I came across in the search is called The Lost History of Liberalism. It's by the story of Helena Rosenblatt.”
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Liberalism
Discussed“One of the other books on the Wilson I've quite liked is Edmund Fawcett's Liberalism the Life of an Idea I think is the subtitle. And he makes more than you do of the idea that central to liberalism is the idea that in a conflict-ridden disputatious society that you can turn difference into something constructive”
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Liberalism against Itself
Recommended“I don't know if you know his work. I think he's coming out with a new book that I'm looking forward to, but I would like to recommend liberalism against itself, which really picks up on some of the themes also for my last chapter and it's about Cold War liberalism and sort of why we went wrong in the”
The Joe Rogan Experience
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Dark Side of the Moon
Discussed“You You take that white light. You've seen pictures of like prism, you know, Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd, you know, white light goes in, rainbow comes out.”
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A Treatise on Crimes and Misdemeanors
Discussed“You notice that nobody talks about Crimes and Misdemeanors? Where Woody Allen is directly in his orbit?”
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Divine Misdemeanors
Discussed“You notice that nobody talks about Crimes and Misdemeanors? Where Woody Allen is directly in his orbit?”
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They Knew They Were Right
Discussed“There's a there's a book about the neoconservatives by Jacob Hill Brun called They Knew They Were Right, which is of course, right?”
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Tyranny's Ally
Discussed“And then they wrote a book where Worms wrote the book and Richard Pearl wrote the forward. It's called Tyranny's Ally. America's failure to remove Saddam Hussein.”
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Have a Nice Disclosure!
Recommended“And the book is called Have a Nice Disclosure, Julia Mossbridge, PhD.”
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Elvis
Discussed“He wrote a book on Elvis, Bigfoot, and flying saucers, I think it was the book.”
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Flying Saucers
Discussed“He wrote a book on Elvis, Bigfoot, and flying saucers, I think it was the book.”
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Dead Wrong
Discussed“Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups.”
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Hit List
Discussed“Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination.”
Huberman Lab
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On Life After Death
Discussed“Some of the myths and misunderstanding arrive from the beautiful work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychologist who wrote the famous book on death and dying. The different stages of grief very quickly are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.”
Modern Wisdom
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The Naked Ape
Discussed“He was in his 90s, but he's like the first researcher who wrote a book about really observing humans as if they were animals. Like what How do their How do their body move? And uh, so the book was called Naked Ape.”
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Awaken The Giant Within
Recommended“there's this great audiobook from Tony Robbins. It's 30 years old. George Mac sent it to me. I don't even know how to find it. It's I'll try and find it and put it in the links, but it's basically an hour and a half worksheet, Awaken the Giant Within.”
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The Southpaw
Discussed“like it reminded me of the movie South Paul you know when uh he gets confronted and then she ends up getting shot like bro you need to chill u but yeah I I would love to make that happen but it's not done yet.”
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The Mismeasure of Man
Discussed“Now that title is strategic because there was a famous book called the mismeasure of men by uh Steven Jay Gould who was very critical of evolutionary psychology and evolutionary approaches to human behavior and we think it's the precise opposite that's happening in scale development in psychology now that a a lack of insight into evolutionary psychology and just”
Interesting Times
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The Republic
Discussed“Would you say that there is a inherent value in being able to read and engage with Plato’s Republic, or being able to listen to and experience Handel or Bach or anyone else who’s considered a great composer?”
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A Time to Kill
Discussed“That lets us tell that we should be reading Hamlet before or distinct from reading the firm or a time to kill because Hamlet.”
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The Symposium
Discussed“And so you have this shared basis of learning, but it’s amazing to see the fruits that arise from that, because they just go back to the dorm and they’re all kind of wondering what was going on in Plato’s Symposium, because it’s a really strange text in so many ways.”
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
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Escape the Diet Trap
Recommended“So it just so happened that she was in a supermarket and she saw some a discounted diet book. That one. That's the book. Escape the diet trap by Dr. John Briffa.”
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Fork in the Road
Recommended“So this this is Jen's book. And the most important thing is Jen doesn't make a penny out of this book. So, it's Fork in the Road with the idea that in your journey, which one are you going to pick? Do you see? So, it's Fork in the Road. She doesn't make any money from this. Every penny goes”
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Foundations of Geopolitics: the Geopolitical Future of Russia
Discussed“The main philosopher for the Third Rome strategy is Alexander Dugin, who in 1997 wrote a wrote a book called Foundation of Geopolitics.”
How I Write
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Existentialists and Mystics
Recommended“She used the word unselfing in a kind of almost as an aside in she has a book called Existentialists and Mystics that you would, I think, appreciate given what you just said about the the light. Uh and she talks about how art and nature, our encounters with art and with the natural world, are occasions for unselfing.”
