Books first mentioned on podcasts in week 2023-W44

“One of the books that I read as a youngster was Viktor Frankl's famous book, 'From Death Camp to Existentialism.' Now, I didn't know too much about existentialism, and I still don't, but I do know that he survived that by focusing on the love he had for his wife and the love he had for his family.”

“If you look at the conditions of life, especially when things are not going well for you, you could easily proclaim, like the antinatalists do, that life is so bloody miserable in its essence that it would be better if it didn't exist at all. That's Mephistopheles, by the way, in Goethe's Faust.”

“Victor Davis Hanson wrote a compelling book titled The Case for Trump, which is the best thing I've read about that election cycle.”

“He wrote in his book, which was one of the major sources for Last King of Scotland, quote: 'Amin's bizarre behavior derives partly from his tribal background; like many other warrior societies, the Caka—Amin's tribe—are known to have practiced blood rituals on slain enemies.'”

“He drew little pictures in his little book of all the different animals he saw in the Galapagos. And ever since, I have this image in my mind.”

“Um, if you read Phil Knight's book, he talks about if you went jogging in like the 40s, 50s, or 60s, people were like throwing bottles at you from their car because they're just like mad.”

“Is there a hobby that you just can't live without or a little pastime, even if it's just watching TV or maybe even reading? Will likes to read about World War II—a lot of people don't know that.”

“I didn't think I'd get the gig as a narrator of a show, 'Never Have I Ever,' where I'm like the psychologist for a high school Indian-American girl trying to figure out her way in school, right? I didn't see that one coming.”

“This book was written by my colleagues at Stanford, Sandra Khan and Paul Ehrlich, and it has an introduction by Jared Diamond, who won a Pulitzer for 'Guns, Germs, and Steel,' and a foreword by the great Robert Sapolsky, also a colleague of mine at Stanford.”