Person
Every book Brian Cox recommended on podcasts
Across 3 podcasts. Every show Brian Cox appears on, in one place — not just one.
Brian Cox’s most recommended books
- The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
- A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
- Black Holes & Time Warps by Kip Thorne
- Something Deeply Hidden by Sean Carroll
- The Cosmic Landscape by Leonard Susskind
- The fabric of the cosmos by Brian Greene, Javier García Sanz
- The Theoretical Minimum by Leonard Susskind
- Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
- Out of the Mist by Gloria Dare
- The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow
Brian Cox is an English physicist, professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester, and well-known science broadcaster who presents numerous BBC science programs exploring cosmology and quantum mechanics. During several podcast appearances, he recommended and discussed multiple influential science books. On StarTalk Radio, he recommended Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World while discussing science communication and public curiosity, and mentioned Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos when describing space-time as the fabric of the universe. In another episode, he recommended Leonard Susskind's The Theoretical Minimum for listeners interested in learning quantum mechanics and brought up Sean Carroll's Something Deeply Hidden while discussing emergent space-time. Cox also recommended Leonard Susskind's The Cosmic Landscape while explaining the string landscape and the number of possible laws of physics in the multiverse. On The Joe Rogan Experience, he mentioned Kip Thorne's Black Holes & Time Warps during a conversation about whether wormholes could be stable enough for travel. Furthermore, Cox discussed Richard Phillips Feynman's The Feynman Lectures on Physics to explain the mechanics of ocean tides and referenced James Joyce's Finnegans Wake when discussing how Murray Gell-Mann named quarks after a phrase found in the text.
Books recommended by Brian Cox
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The Demon-Haunted World
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan is a classic work of science communication that explores the importance of critical thinking, the scientific method, and skepticism in combating pseudoscience.
Recommended“you one of my favorite books is the demon haunted world and I love the first I think it's the first chapter where he tells the story of being in a taxi here in New York actually in a cab with a cab driver”
Where to get it
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A Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking's landmark popular science book has served as an iconic introduction to cosmology and black holes for millions of readers worldwide.
Discussed“in the last edition of a brief history of time that stephen added to there's a great story at the end where he said it”
Where to get it
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Black Holes & Time Warps
Black Holes & Time Warps by Kip Thorne is a popular science book exploring the bizarre physics of gravitational collapse, time dilation, and the theoretical mechanics of black holes and wormholes.
Recommended“and that there's a great this great book by Kip Thorne actually we just mentioned him he got the Nobel Prize last year for the gravitational waves and he wrote a brilliant blog links in the 80s called black holes and time warps way talks about the the answer is we don't fully know”
Where to get it
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Something Deeply Hidden
Something Deeply Hidden by Sean Carroll is an accessible yet rigorous exploration of quantum mechanics, focusing heavily on the many-worlds interpretation and the nature of emergent spacetime.
Recommended“what we're looking at is something called emergent spacetime which is very cutting-edge sean carroll actually you will know wrote a good book on this thing's called something deeply hidden sean called a physicist at cal tech i think he's uh he's moved recently”
Where to get it
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The Cosmic Landscape
The Cosmic Landscape by Leonard Susskind is a popular science book exploring string theory, the multiverse, and the vast array of possible physical laws.
Recommended“this goes back to it links to something called the string landscape which leonard suskind actually wrote a great book called the cosmic landscape a while ago detailing this theory”
Where to get it
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The fabric of the cosmos
The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene and Javier García Sanz is a popular-level exploration of space, time, and the fundamental nature of reality.
Recommended“in so so often we describe space-time the this as the fabric of the universe the style of brian green's great book right the fabric of the universe”
Where to get it
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The Theoretical Minimum
The Theoretical Minimum by Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky is an accessible yet rigorous introductory physics book designed for readers who want to genuinely understand the mathematical foundations of mechanics and quantum physics.
Recommended“there's a leonard suskind he's one of the great um black hole theorists a great theoretical physicist people wrote by the way a brilliant book called the theoretical minimum if you're really interested in quantum mechanics and you really want to get down into it his book theoretical minimum i've got mechanics superb”
Where to get it
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Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce is a famously experimental and notoriously dense modernist novel that challenges traditional narrative structures with its idiosyncratic language and dreamlike logic.
Discussed“And the very famous quote from Finnegan's Wake called three quarks for muster mark or something like that. It was because he thought there were three of them at the time and that explained the pattern we saw in the particles we were producing at particle accelerators.”
Where to get it
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Out of the Mist
Discussed“So we made the album, an album called Out of the Silence, which I still like by the way. I think it's a really good late 80s kind of soft rock album.”
Where to get it
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The Anthropic Cosmological Principle
Discussed“there another great book by John Barrow and Frank tippler called the anthropic cosmological principle from the 1980s it one of my favorite books actually and I remembered it”
Where to get it
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The elegant universe
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene is a bestselling exploration of string theory, quantum mechanics, and the quest for the ultimate physical theory of reality.
Discussed“he would have um it's great but the elegant universe is a beautiful description of string theory and and so I think the idea initially with the Hope was that you'd have a theory and you could write it down”
Where to get it
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The Feynman Lectures on Physics
The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard Phillips Feynman is a renowned three-volume physics textbook compiled from undergraduate lectures delivered by the celebrated theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology.
Discussed“So imagine the earth and if you try to explain the tides in the ocean by just having a static picture of the earth and the moon just standing as is drawn in textbooks as is drawn in textbooks then it's hard to figure out what's happening because as Richard Feman said in the Fman lectures if everything's just standing”
Where to get it
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The Particle at the End of the Universe
The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean Carroll is a popular science book that details the monumental scientific quest to discover the Higgs boson and understand the fundamental laws of nature at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
Discussed“actually I think I'm Sean Carroll II I don't have you've had Sean Shareable dumps he he's said something the same I think in the book they wrote the big picture I think he has a similar argument”
Where to get it
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The Time Machine
The Time Machine by H.
Discussed“I mean his time machine is no right to do that really worked out yet”
Where to get it
Books Brian Cox wrote
Appearances
Other mentions (2: passing, ad reads, own books)
“I started off as a joke this actually I wrote it in an infinite monkey cage book this radio show that I do but he ended up when I'd written it down I thought actually that it makes sense”
“perfect and then just [ __ ] all over the place well I bet every keystroke along the way and there's a monkey [ __ ] on their typewriter”