Person
Gary Marcus's book recommendations
Key facts
- Gary Marcus has recommended or discussed 5 books on podcasts, as of May 7, 2025.
- Gary Marcus has talked about books on 2 podcasts, as of May 7, 2025.
- Those books came up in 3 episodes, as of May 7, 2025.
- The 3 books Gary Marcus has mentioned in the most episodes, as of May 7, 2025: How the World Really Works, The Language Instinct and The Martian.
- The latest episode with a book mention from Gary Marcus aired on May 7, 2025.
Updated
Across 2 podcasts. Every show Gary Marcus appears on, in one place, not just one.
Gary Fred Marcus is an American psychologist, cognitive scientist, and author, known for his research on the intersection of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Appearing on various podcasts, Marcus has recommended several influential books to listeners. On The Ezra Klein Show, he recommended Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct for two primary reasons as his first selection. As his second recommendation, he mentioned Vaclav Smil's How the World Really Works, noting he had not yet fully finished it. For his third recommendation, Marcus offered Andy Weir's The Martian, describing the work as a wonderful and engaging page-turner of a fiction book. Beyond direct recommendations, Marcus has frequently discussed other prominent titles in his interviews. On the Big Technology Podcast, he referenced Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow to introduce the concepts of fast, automatic, reflexive system one cognition versus system two cognition while outlining his own proposed approaches to artificial intelligence. In another episode of the Big Technology Podcast, Marcus mentioned Rebooting AI, a book he co-wrote with Ernest Davis, while discussing how recent chatbot systems have successfully brought the concept of semantic search to life.
Books Gary Marcus recommended or discussed
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How the World Really Works
Recommended“the second book I'll recommend is vaclov's Mills how things really work which I haven't quite finished”
Where to get it
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The Language Instinct
Recommended“I will start with Steve pinker's the language Instinct for two reasons”
Where to get it
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The Martian
Recommended“and then I'll recommend a fiction book which is the Martian which is a wonderful page Turner”
Where to get it
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Rebooting AI
Discussed“but it it's astounding that it works well enough that everybody can now for example vividly see what semantic search would be like like in 2019 in rebooting AI Ernie Davis and I wrote about semantic search”
Where to get it
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Thinking, Fast and Slow
Discussed“So a lot of people will have read Danny Conorman's book thinking fast and slow and there he talked about system one and system two cognition. So system one was fast and automatic reflexive.”
Where to get it
Books by Gary Marcus
Appearances
| Episode | Podcast | Date | Books |
|---|---|---|---|
| Is AI Scaling Dead? — With Gary Marcus | Big Technology Podcast | 2025-05-07 | 1 |
| An AI Chatbot Debate — With Blake Lemoine and Gary Marcus | Big Technology Podcast | 2023-02-22 | 1 |
| A Skeptical Take on the A.I. Revolution | The Ezra Klein Show | 2023-02-17 | 3 |
Other mentions (5: passing, ad reads, own books)
“So people might want to read uh my last two books by the way. Taming Silicon Valley which is really about how to regulate AI and rebooting AI which was 2019 is a little bit old”
“So people might want to read uh my last two books by the way. Taming Silicon Valley which is really about how to regulate AI and rebooting AI which was 2019 is a little bit old but still I think anticipates a lot of the problems around common sense and world models”
“so I actually wrote about this 20 some years ago my book the algebraic mind and I gave an example there which is I said suppose it was a different system”
“I wrote a whole book called Cluj that was all about human cognitive flaws it's not that I'm unaware of them or not nor that I'm unconcerned about them but I still would have trouble calling the kind of large language model based systems smart”
“so in rebooting AI we have the example of you ask a robot to tidy up your room”