Person
Every book Tim Urban recommended on podcasts
Across 4 podcasts. Every show Tim Urban appears on, in one place — not just one.
Timothy Joseph Urban is an American singer who was the seventh place finalist on the ninth season of American Idol. Following his participation in the series, he released two EPs: Heart of Me in 2010 and New York Sessions in 2014. Appearing on programs such as Modern Wisdom, How I Write, and the Lex Fridman Podcast, Urban shared several book recommendations. He enthusiastically recommended Steve Toltz's fiction novel A Fraction of the Whole after discovering it on a reading list. Urban praised David McCullough's John Adams for transforming his perspective on history, and he lauded Bill Bryson's The Body for its exceptional research and writing standards. He also recommended Tobias Rose-Stockwell's The Outrage Machine to discuss the dark valley of hidden harm in media technologies, Ezra Klein's Why We're Polarized to explore the complexities of modern political landscapes, and Iain Banks's Culture Series when discussing futuristic societies enabled by advanced technology.
Books recommended by Tim Urban
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Why We're Polarized
Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein is a deep dive into the structural forces driving American political division.
Recommended“So Ezra Klein has a great book, "Why We're Polarized," where he talks about a lot of this.”
Where to get it
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A Fraction of the Whole
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz is an expansive and humorous Australian fiction novel that follows an eccentric family through a series of wild adventures.
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.”
Where to get it
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Iain M Banks Collection Culture Series 9 Books Bundle
The Culture Series by Iain M.
Recommended“Have you ever read the Culture Series, the Iain Banks books? - Not yet, but I get criticized on a daily basis by some of the mutual folks we know for not having done so.”
Where to get it
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John Adams
John Adams by David McCullough is a celebrated biographical masterpiece that chronicles the life of the second US president and deeply explores the turbulent founding of the United States.
Recommended“David McCullough's book was one of the first experiences I had when I was like, "This is amazing. History is amazing." Even just that specific topic. It's about John Adams, but it's really of course about the founding of the US.”
Where to get it
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Outrage Machine
Outrage Machine by Tobias Rose-Stockwell is a nonfiction book that examines how modern social media platforms manipulate human psychology and attention to foster division and anger.
Recommended“um and um when you know I was just reading uh Tobias Rose stockwell's new book um called the outrage machine”
Where to get it
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The Body
The Body by Bill Bryson is a popular science exploration of human anatomy and physiology.
Recommended“I mean, the amount of research he must do to write a book like The Body. Great book.”
Where to get it
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The Culture
The Culture series by Iain M.
Recommended“Have you ever read the Culture Series, the Iain Banks books? - Not yet, but I get criticized on a daily basis by some of the mutual folks we know for not having done so.”
Where to get it
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Dune
Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction masterpiece Dune is widely celebrated as an epic space opera exploring ecology, religion, and political power on a desert planet.
Discussed“I've heard Dune I've never read Dune but I've heard that Dune goes real. So my problem is I just stuck with the first one. I read the first Dune. It was good.”
Where to get it
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The Anxious Generation
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt is a prominent book examining the profound psychological impacts of smartphones and social media on youth mental health and the rising crisis of loneliness.
Discussed“You mentioned Anxious Generation. Happiness right last name.”
Where to get it
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The Five Ages of the Universe
The Five Ages of the Universe by Fred C.
Discussed“the dark era and that goes on that goes on for even longer. So the five the five stages of the un five ages of the universe sorry book from 1996 goes through this they had to come up with their own numbering convention”
Where to get it
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The Happiness Hypothesis
The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt is a popular psychology book that explores ancient wisdom through the lens of modern scientific research.
Discussed“You mentioned Anxious Generation. Happiness right last name. Yeah. H A I D T and Happiness Hypothesis is one of my favorite books of all time.”
Where to get it
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The Idiot
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a profound 19th-century Russian novel that follows the compassionate, innocent, and deeply misunderstood Prince Myshkin as he navigates the cynical and corrupt high society of St.
Discussed“Well, there is, I mean, with Dostoyevsky's 'The Idiot,' Prince Mishkin, and 'Brothers Karamazov,' there's Alyosha Karamazov, you err on the side of love and almost like a naive trust in other human beings.”
Where to get it
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The Order of Time
The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli is a popular science book that offers a poetic and mind-bending exploration of modern physics, challenging our conventional understanding of time.
Discussed“Something with time by by Carla Relli. The order of things. The order of time.”
Where to get it
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The Three-Body Problem
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu is a sweeping hard science fiction trilogy starter that chronicles humanity's first contact with an alien civilization facing imminent destruction from a triple-star system.
Discussed“And then um and then I um, more recently obviously I read the whole Three Body Problem trilogy which is by the way an example of one of those times when I couldn't do that either.”
Where to get it
Books Tim Urban wrote
Appearances
Other mentions (3: passing, ad reads, own books)
“a little bit like Game of Thron. They didn't name Game of Thrones: A Song of Fire and Ice, which is the actual title. They're like, "Game of thrones, the first book. That's going to be the title of the whole thing”
“Okay, so this was a series called The Story of Us, and then it turned into a book called What's Our Problem? But it was A, it was supposed to be just a blog post”
“And that became this book, What's Our Problem?”