Person
Every book Michael Easter recommended on podcasts
Across 6 podcasts. Every show Michael Easter appears on, in one place — not just one.
Michael Easter’s most recommended books
- A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
- Dante's Inferno by Dante Alighieri
- Little Chapel on the River by Gwendolyn Bounds
- Monopoly by Philip E. Orbanes
- Pride by Jessica Tracy
- The great shark hunt by Hunter S. Thompson
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
- Wild Problems by Russ Roberts
Michael Easter is a podcast guest and author who has appeared on programs such as The Rich Roll Podcast, Huberman Lab, and EconTalk to discuss human behavior, evolutionary psychology, and modern habits. Throughout these discussions, Easter frequently reflected on his own written works, including The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain, explaining how spending time in environments like the Arctic and writing about topics like the value of silence, rucking, and scarcity shaped his books. In addition to his own publications, Easter referenced other authors and texts to illustrate broader societal concepts. He mentioned Gwendolyn Bounds's Little Chapel on the River to discuss the importance of community gathering places following major crises. Furthermore, Easter brought up Marie Kondo's book on tidying up to describe how people altered their cleaning habits after its release, and he referenced Russ Roberts's Wild Problems during a conversation about the ambiguity and lack of clear answers in life decisions. Through these references, Easter used literature to anchor discussions on modern consumerism, minimalism, and the challenges of navigating complex human environments.
Books recommended by Michael Easter
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The Comfort Crisis
The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter is an exploration of how modern comforts and sedentary lifestyles negatively impact human health and well-being, advocating for the intentional reintegration of physical challenges.
Discussed“I mean, the book really did come out of the fact that I wrote that comfort chapter in the comfort crisis on rocking.”
Where to get it
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A Game of Thrones
A Game of Thrones by George R.
Discussed“even though you're falling asleep and it's been 13 hours of Game of Thrones and you're watching it”
Where to get it
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Dante's Inferno
Dante's Inferno by Dante Alighieri is an epic 14th-century Italian poem depicting a journey through the nine circles of hell that profoundly shaped modern Western conceptions of sin, damnation, and divine retribution.
Discussed“um in Dante's Inferno the book he describes Satan as living in a world of cold and ice”
Where to get it
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Little Chapel on the River
Discussed“She wrote a book called Little Chapel on the River and it's about she was at the Wall Street Journal uh when 911 happened...”
Where to get it
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Monopoly
Monopoly by Philip E.
Discussed“so with an with a normal game like Monopoly like football that is screened off from everyday life”
Where to get it
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Pride
Discussed“And a big point that she talked about I think she has actually a book out called pride and it just the whole book is about Pride”
Where to get it
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Scarcity Brain
Scarcity Brain by Michael Easter explores the evolutionary psychology behind modern human cravings, consumption habits, and dopamine feedback loops in an era of abundance.
Discussed“...when I did scarcity brain like I'm traveling I'm doing all this stuff but I'm usually writing using these notebooks.”
Where to get it
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The great shark hunt
The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S.
Discussed“and then i read you know the great shark hunt and it was like holy [ __ ] / What is this”
Where to get it
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The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell is a classic study of comparative mythology that explores the universal pattern of the hero's adventure.
Discussed“look at joseph campbell i'm going to mess up this quote / But in his uh hero 1000 faces he's got this line”
Where to get it
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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo is a popular self-help guide advocating for minimalist organization and discarding household items that fail to bring personal joy.
Discussed“and this was especially true after the the art of tidying up was that the name of the book”
Where to get it
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Wild Problems
Wild Problems is a guide by Russ Roberts that explores difficult life decisions which cannot be resolved through standard cost-benefit analysis.
Discussed“it's like uh you know it's like in your book Wild problems right this is like there's not a there's not a clear answer to any of this”
Where to get it
Books Michael Easter wrote
Appearances
Other mentions (39: passing, ad reads, own books), the 30 most recent
“After writing the comfort crisis for example I had a lot of parents reach out to me. They said okay, should I take my kid on this you know, two week crazy backpacking trip or should I move I even had one friend who was like should I move into like the worst part of town would that make me”
“This was for my book, The Comfort Crisis.”
“And so, for example, in the Walk with Weight book, I talk about like if you're just thinking purely in terms of health, longevity, performance, like how should you be thinking about training?”
“So I started the Substack a few years ago right after I'd finished Scarcity Brain.”
“The Comfort Crisis I definitely had a drinking problem. Good sign you have a drinking problem is that all of your problems are caused by your drinking.”
“And then that was sort of like the seed that eventually led to the Comfort Crisis book.”
“I definitely move a lot. Yeah, I'm a mover. I trail run. I do a lot of rocking, which I wrote about in the crisis.”
“So what got me thinking about the silencing and the comfort crisis is that and that that section on silence was not in the proposal but I went up to the Arctic and I'm there for like a month and one of the craziest things is just how silent it is.”
“And so a lot of my argument is that you need to do things that reset that bar. And I'll give you an example of from the comfort crisis, it's that, you know, when I when I go up to the Arctic, my plane ride from Vegas to Alaska, how many complaints do I have?”
“so when I was uh reporting my book scarcity brain I came across a stat and there was a range of stats”
“so one of the things that I write about in my newsletter and I had this in the book scar tobring 2 is like how do you how do you frame purchases”
“well you have a problem with comfort the comfort crisis is it really a crisis i argue that it is a crisis one i don't have a problem with comfort uh i do have a problem with always being comfortable always leaning into comfort which is what we're doing now”
“but at the same time i think and i argue in the book the comfort crisis that we need these moments that push back at us and we need to sort of investigate these discomforts that we used to face in our evolutionary past”
“but at the same time i think and i argue in the book the comfort crisis that we need these moments that push back at us”
“so um my book scarcity brain which is coming out soon it has a whole chapter on this”
“so uh he had read the Comfort crisis my last book and just wanted to chat”
“anyway back to this push back against your book um you're writing about something that pretty much most people agree yeah i think but it's like do we really know how to get back into discomfort and like in the book i i argue that there are a handful of fundamental discomforts that we lost over time as the world”
“so in the book too i talk about you hear all this stuff that's like break up with your phone less time on your phone here are a thousand different ways to use your phone less”
“so i mean i the the way that the book is written as i tell this story of this hunt that i did in the arctic and that's the overarching narrative and as i'm facing these specific discomforts we used to face as we evolved then i sort of peel off and then i investigate each one in different sections”
“there's this concept in the comfort crisis I write about called prevalence induced concept change”
“but you know in the book I also argue been embedded in our food system it's it's in so many different places today”
“I mentioned uh his work in that class in particular in the comfort crisis I think it's in the chapter about some of the benefits of boredom”
“that I mean something I write about in the comfort crisis 2 is uh rucking”
“and in scarcity brain I argue we've been using substances for millions of years as survival tools”
“so when I was reporting the Comfort crisis for example I traveled to Bhutan and and I go meet with this guy who's a Kempo in the Buddhist face”
“I I would argue I argue in the comfort crisis that the things that most impact your day-to-day life today how you live”
“so as part of this new book scarcity brain when you uh when you look at the diseases that kill humans modern humans it's heart disease”
“yeah was part of the Comfort crisis The overarching Narrative of that book is I spent uh 33 days in the Arctic”
“I mean I write about it in scarcity brain about um addiction and how we think about it”
“so in this book um scarcity brain there's this underlying question I have that is you know everyone knows that everything's fine in moderation and yet we all suck at moderation in some way or another in our life”