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Books podcasts were talking about in July 2026
During July 2026, several prominent podcasters and their guests highlighted various non-fiction titles, biographies, and specialized guides across multiple podcast episodes. On The Joe Rogan Experience, Joe Rogan recommended Annie Jacobsen's book Biological War, telling listeners to go get terrified, and also praised Diana Walsh Pasulka's book American Cosmic during a podcast wrap-up. Meanwhile, Maggie Haberman appeared on The Ezra Klein Show and shared several reading recommendations when asked by the host. She discussed reading Charlie Savage's Takeover, The Return of the Imperial Presidency, noting it provided a very good look at how Dick Cheney expanded executive power under George W. Bush following the events of September 11. Haberman additionally mentioned Bill Burden's book Strangers, stating she felt compelled to have some sense of it because it was everywhere, and she praised Keith McNally's book I Regret Almost Everything as fun and fantastic. In health and wellness discussions, Andrew Huberman appeared on Huberman Lab to answer top health questions, during which he recommended Natalie Crawford's book The Fertility Formula as an excellent resource for learning more about fertility. Finally, on The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday recommended William Lee Miller's political biography President Lincoln as a companion book, and also brought up Karen Armstrong's biography of Buddha as a recommendation for Ezra Klein.
The Joe Rogan Experience
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Practical Silo Construction; A Treatise Illustrating and Explaining the Most Simple and Easiest Practical Methods of Constructing Concrete Silos of Al
Discussed“We had Tim Robbins on and we were talking about Silo. Have you seen that show Silo? Not yet. Not yet. Really good show. It's on Apple. And it's essentially about an underground civilization that survived some sort of cataclysm.”
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Biological War
Recommended“Um Biological War, Annie Jacobsen. Go get it, folks. Go get terrified.”
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Wonders in the Sky
Discussed“And he wrote Wonders in the Sky all about that. Stopped at like I think it was like 1860 or something like that.”
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Behold a Pale Farce
Discussed“Bill Cooper's book um Behold a Pale Horse. ... Okay, so in Behold a Pale Horse, he talks about the quiet weapons.”
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American Cosmic
Recommended“And I really loved your other book, too, American Cosmic.”
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The Nature of Things
Discussed“there's a book called the the nature of things by a guy named Lucriccius written in 350 BC and it's Epicurianism”
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The Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru
Discussed“There was a a Jesuit priest named Pablo Jose Arriaga who was going around Peru and he wrote a book called the Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru. I think it was 1602.”
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Veneration: Unveiling the Ancient Realms of Demonic Kings and Satan's BattlePlan for Armageddon
Recommended“And there's a fantastic book written by my my friends Derek and Sharon Gilbert called Veneration, where they detail the right of Kispum. And this idea of making contact with the spirits of dead giants and the veneration of giants.”
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The Rigveda
Discussed“And um then you you wonder like, oh wait, the Rigveda is so old. It's as old as it's is the oldest sacred text out there.”
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The Yugas
Discussed“I'm reading a book about it right now. Yeah. Yeah. So uh there's like different yugas and yugas are like thousands of years and the concept is that the yugas keep cycling around and so like uh we are in the kal yuga right now and before that was a dwara yuga that's when most of mahabharat happened and before”
The Ezra Klein Show
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Takeover
Recommended“Okay, so I'm reading Charlie Savage's Takeover, The Return of the Imperial Presidency, which was a very very good look at how particularly Dick Cheney expanded executive power under W. Bush post 9/11.”
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Strangers
Recommended“I am reading Bill Burdens Strangers because a book that is that everywhere I sort of feel compelled to have some sense of. I haven't read it yet.”
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I Regret Almost Everything
Recommended“And then Keith McNally's I Regret Everything. Oh, that book has been fun. It's actually fantastic.”
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The Fourth Branch
Recommended“I have not finished it yet but I'm currently reading uh the fourth branch by Daniel Squadron and very much enjoying that”
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The Party's Interests Come First
Recommended“So there's a great book by Joseph Tigian the party's interests come first the life of Xi Jong Shin father of Xiinping. It's a great book and a great read.”
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The Souls of China
Recommended“The second is um Ian Johnson uh the souls of China, the return of religion after Mao. Um and it's about uh what is occurred on the grounds in the grassroots with the rise of various forms of Dowoism, Buddhism, Protestant Christianity”
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States of Denial
Recommended“The second is um state of denials. Um, it's not about Israel Palestine, but I claim all the time that um the Israelis um are suffering from severe denial, collective denial and blindness.”
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A Psalm for the Wild-Built
Recommended“the second is the psalm for the wild built. It's um a genre that I do you know this book? ... this book by Becky Chambers has really allowed me to kind of sit with alternative futures and help me imagine beyond what I think is possible.”
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Moomin Book Two
Recommended“the third is uh for me kind of book for the present which is a children's book. ... It's a book um by Tove Yansen. It's the Mumin series. ... allows me to first of all read a book to both my four and 8-year-old ... but also is like a profound ... sensitive book”
Huberman Lab
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The Fertility Formula
Recommended“some fertility experts will also recommend other things. And for that, I'll just cue you to Natalie Crawford's excellent book on the titled the fertility formula as well as her podcast episode that she did with us”
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Attention Span
Recommended“She wrote an an excellent book called Attention Span if anybody's like really interested in this.”
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Lithium Salts in the Treatment of Psychotic Excitement
Discussed“And as all good physician scientists do, he wrote up his results. And he wrote it up in a paper entitled lithium salts in the treatment of psychotic excitement. Okay, back then they didn't call it mania, they called it psychotic excitement. This is a paper that was published September 3rd, 1949 in the Medical Journal of Australia, a classic”
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Better with Age
Recommended“Better with age. I'll I'm going to read it. The psychology of successful aging.”
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Be the Pack Leader
Recommended“I read his book Be the Pack Leader and the principles within that book were critical for developing an incredible relationship with Costello who lived 11 years.”
The Daily Stoic
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The Bully Pulpit
Discussed“I think Doris Kearns Goodwin's The Bully Pulpit is another good example of this, the contrast between Taft and Roosevelt, their understanding of the media.”
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President Lincoln
Recommended“And a companion book I would give you is President Lincoln by William Lee Miller, which is a political biography of Lincoln as a politician.”
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Buddha
Recommended“Have you read Karen Armstrong's biography of Buddha?”
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Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1882–1940)
Recommended“Have you read this? This is a very old one. No, I've not read this. This is The Lion and the Fox, the first political biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
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A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America
Discussed“In 1787, John Quincy Adams, there he goes, published a work called a defense of the constitutions of governments of the United States of America.”
Interesting Times
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The Strategy of Denial
Discussed“Just for backdrop wrote a book called strategy of denial, which was a book arguing specifically that US foreign policy should be oriented around deterrence against potential Chinese aggression in the Pacific.”
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Crunchy Cons
Discussed“Your book, “Crunchy Cons” anticipated the MAHA movement.”
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The Benedict Option
Discussed“You wrote a book called “The Benedict Option” in the mid-2010s that crystallized a sense of Christian disillusionment with politics and disengagement with politics.”
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Living in Wonder
Discussed“And then your latest book, “Living in Wonder,” was about the return of the supernatural, and also about anxieties about an A.I. future.”
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Submission
Discussed“Now, this is the message that Michel houellebecq famously articulated in his book submission.”
Modern Wisdom
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The Decameron
Discussed“There's a famous book called The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio and an Italian notary and he writes about what it was like at that time and and copies”
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Metropolis
Discussed“Nobody's ever going to top, you know, Metropolis or uh No Ferratu or, you know, and there's probably still people today that think that”
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Nosferatu
Discussed“Nobody's ever going to top, you know, Metropolis or uh No Ferratu or, you know, and there's probably still people today that think that”
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The Mahabharata
Discussed“recognizing patterns in the Vadic epic tradition of the Mahabar parata and there's there's a kind of common ancestor”
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Nonzero
Discussed“You know, I've been arguing, I mean, I I had a book called Nonzero that was about this that that you know, 26 years ago or something. That was about the growing nonzero-sum dynamic among nations.”
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Three scientists and their gods
Discussed“So, my first book, and it's funny because I now have I mean, three of the six books I've written have the word God or gods in the title... That book was called Three Scientists and Their Gods, my first book.”
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Green Eggs and Ham
Discussed“So it is named after the Dr. Seuss book Green Eggs and Ham which he wrote on a bet that he couldn't write a children's book using only 50 words.”
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Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham with 12 Silly Sounds!
Discussed“So it is named after the Dr. Seuss book Green Eggs and Ham which he wrote on a bet that he couldn't write a children's book using only 50 words.”
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A Billion Years of Sex Differences
Recommended“Everyone should go and buy it, Billion Years of Sex Differences.”
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Strong Female Character
Recommended“There's a great book there's two great books by comedians about adult autism diagnosis. There's Fern Brady strong female character”
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Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things?
Recommended“and there's Pierre Nlli Why can't I just enjoy things?”
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Say Nothing
Recommended“I was reading London Falling, Patrick Granf's new book. Um, you know Patrick Granke, he wrote Say Nothing. Um, you should read Say Say Say Nothing. I think you'd really like it.”
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Mate
Recommended“So mine my my kind of go-to for this is a little bit niche, but it's Mate by Tucker Max and Jeffrey Miller. to become the man women want the evolutionary psychology inspired dating book for men.”
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Awareness
Recommended“awareness, Anthony Dlo. Anthony Dlo. Yeah. And it's got, you know, the subtitle is the perils and opportunities of reality. That's the better subtitle.”
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Genghis Khan
Recommended“there is a book I won't recommended to be by one of the I mean a name everybody would know there's a book called Genghaskhan in the making of the modern world it is remar from like modern postal systems to infrastructure to rel religious freedom”
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The Making of the Modern World
Recommended“there is a book I won't recommended to be by one of the I mean a name everybody would know there's a book called Genghaskhan in the making of the modern world it is remar from like modern postal systems to infrastructure to rel religious freedom”
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A Fraction of the Whole
Recommended“So, I read it and it was so good. It was called A Fraction of the Hole by Steve Toltz. He's this Australian author. takes place in Australia and it is so funny and it's such an adventure and it's this just fantastic fiction book.”
How I Write
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Gulliver's Travels
Discussed“However, in Gulliver's Travels, he got really serious and preachy and the whole last part of the book is just him preaching at you about how the world should be different.”
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Silas Marner
Discussed“So, you want 100% of your audience to get the headline and laugh, but once you're down at paragraph eight, you can do an obscure Silas Marner reference that two people are going to get.”
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Discussed“Like Eeyore, like um, the robot in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Now, that's a funny irony robots, you know, they have no emotions.”
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Richard II
Discussed“So I reread Shakespeare's Richard II which is a [clears throat] wonderful play.”
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Bernice Bobs Her Hair
Discussed“Bernice bobs her hair. You know, it doesn't sound like much, but trust me, it's a lot in that nom in that short story.”
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A Series of Unfortunate Events: Lemony Snicket
Discussed“Well, yeah, I remember when I was a kid there was a series You definitely know it. The Series of Unfortunate Events. of course. Lemony Snicket. You guys published that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I published him.”
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The Talented Mr. Ripley
Discussed“Like So, I I think there's something immensely appealing for readers it of like that that that is what happens. Justice is served. That story is phenomenal. The Talented Mr. Ripley. Holy cow. I haven't read the book, but I've watched the movie and it is so good.”
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Flight
Discussed“So, this is my favorite children's book from growing up. It's called Flight. And it tells the story of Charles Lindbergh and his Spirit of St. Louis.”
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Heartstopper
Discussed“We did these wonderful books in the UK Heartstopper by Alice Oseman. It tied into a Netflix series. It was incredible to me to actually to see the percentage of physical to digital.”
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Where the Crawdads Sing
Discussed“take a book like Where the Crawdads Sing. Yeah, you know, we so we published that in the UK, Penguin Random House published it here. Wasn't a huge was not a huge deal at all, but what you know, one of the best-selling books of the last 20 years.”
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
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The Lion King
Discussed“You remember in the Lion King, most of you have seen that when Scar emerges to rule, the landscape parches and all the provision disappears.”
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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Recommended“I've recommended to people frequently that if they're interested in fiction, they might consider reading Dossi. And I would say read Crime and Punishment because it's like the world's greatest thriller. It's an amazing book.”
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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Illustrated)
Recommended“I've recommended to people frequently that if they're interested in fiction, they might consider reading Dossi. And I would say read Crime and Punishment because it's like the world's greatest thriller. It's an amazing book.”
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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Discussed“I read first book by Alexander Soljenitz and I read when I was about 13. It was one day in the life of Ivan Denisvich and it was the first book that had come out of the Soviet Union really during a a period of thaw in the early 1960s that revealed what had happened under Stella and then I”
