Books recommended on Modern Wisdom
Chris Williamson and guests brought up 61 books across 18 recent episodes, 16 of them explicit recommendations — each with the episode, the minute, and what was said.
Chris Williamson · UK · YouTube · Jump to episode by episode ↓
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Books mentioned on this show
- 1 The OdysseyΌμηροςAmazon 3 episodes
- 2 The PrecipiceToby OrdAmazon 2 episodes · 1 recommended
- 3 Atomic HabitsJames ClearAmazon 2 episodes
- 4 Nuclear WarAnnie JacobsenAmazon 2 episodes
- 5 SuperintelligenceNick BostromAmazon 2 episodes
- 6 Against the OddsJames DysonAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 7 Art of ResilienceRoss EdgleyAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 8 ConspiracyRyan HolidayAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 9 Die with ZeroBill PerkinsAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 10 Dungeon Crawler CarlMatt DinnimanAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 11 LyingSam HarrisAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 12 MeditationsMarcus Aurelius AureliusAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 13 Michael Jordan: The LifeRoland LazenbyAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 14 Red RisingPierce BrownAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 15 Salt Sugar FatMichael MossAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 16 StonerJohn WilliamsAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 17 The devil's chessboardDavid TalbotAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 18 The historiesHerodotusAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 19 The Moral AnimalRobert WrightAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 20 The Obstacle is the WayRyan HolidayAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 21 A history of great inventionsDyson, James.Amazon 1 episode
- 22 Addicted to AnxietyOwen O'KaneAmazon 1 episode
- 23 Ape That Understood the UniverseSteve Stewart-WilliamsAmazon 1 episode
- 24 Creative ActRick RubinAmazon 1 episode
- 25 East of EdenJohn SteinbeckAmazon 1 episode
- 26 Extreme ownershipJocko WillinkAmazon 1 episode
- 27 Fed UpDaniel LiebermanAmazon 1 episode
- 28 Into Thin AirJon KrakauerAmazon 1 episode
- 29 LifespanDavid SinclairAmazon 1 episode
- 30 Moby DickHerman MelvilleAmazon 1 episode
- 31 NonzeroRobert WrightAmazon 1 episode
- 32 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's NestKen KeseyAmazon 1 episode
- 33 Story of the Human BodyDaniel E. LiebermanAmazon 1 episode
- 34 Team of RivalsDoris Kearns GoodwinAmazon 1 episode
- 35 The Anxious GenerationJonathan HaidtAmazon 1 episode
- 36 The Art of War孙武 (Sun Tzu)Amazon 1 episode
- 37 The Beginning of InfinityDavid DeutschAmazon 1 episode
- 38 The Biohackers HandbookTeemu ArinaAmazon 1 episode
- 39 The Blue Zones solutionDan BuettnerAmazon 1 episode
- 40 The DecameronGiovanni BoccaccioAmazon 1 episode
- 41 The epic of GilgameshBenjamin R. FosterAmazon 1 episode
- 42 The GameNeil StraussAmazon 1 episode
- 43 The God TestRobert WrightAmazon 1 episode
- 44 The Great GatsbyF. Scott FitzgeraldAmazon 1 episode
- 45 The HelpKathryn StockettAmazon 1 episode
- 46 The hero with a thousand facesJoseph CampbellAmazon 1 episode
- 47 The HobbitJ.R.R. TolkienAmazon 1 episode
- 48 The HousemaidFreida McFaddenAmazon 1 episode
- 49 The IliadΌμηροςAmazon 1 episode
- 50 The Lord of the RingsJ.R.R. TolkienAmazon 1 episode
- 51 The MahabharataBibek DebroyAmazon 1 episode
- 52 The Myth of Sisyphus and Other EssaysAlbert CamusAmazon 1 episode
- 53 The Next 100 YearsGeorge FriedmanAmazon 1 episode
- 54 The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research AgencyAnnie JacobsenAmazon 1 episode
- 55 The TeacherFreida McFaddenAmazon 1 episode
- 56 The UpanishadsSwami ParamanandaAmazon 1 episode
- 57 Three Scientists and Their GodsAmazon 1 episode
- 58 TroubledRob HendersonAmazon 1 episode
- 59 Way of the warrior kidJocko WillinkAmazon 1 episode
- 60 What We Owe the FutureWilliam MacAskillAmazon 1 episode
- 61 Your Fellow AmericansPeter SantenelloAmazon 1 episode
Episode by episode
WW3 DEBATE: “We’re On the Brink of Global Collapse” · 2026-08-31
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“Doris Kern Goodwin's Team of Rivals, where Abraham Lincoln goes around the table and asks the entire cabinet.”
Mexican Batman, Britain’s Downfall, Mr Bean’s Comeback & Jimmy Carr - Rabbit Hole #5 · 2026-08-29
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“Tolkien would give CS Lewis his draft of the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. They would both read it out loud and then roast one another over a pint.”
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“It's where J.R. Tolkien and CS Lewis used to meet up. Tolkien would give CS Lewis his draft of the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings.”
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“Joseph Campbell, The Hero Thousand Faces, The Hero's Journey, all of those kind of great books that informed Star Wars.”
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“I had Alex Pekkas on the show and he did a breakdown of the Odyssey, because he can read the original Greek, able to get much more a rich explanation.”
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“Even the first book ever written, the first thing ever written down before that it was all verbal story writing. Gilgamesh wasn't it? Is the Gilgamesh is a bit older.”
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“Hunter S. Thompson like he rewrote The Great Gatsby just to know what it felt like to write a good book.”
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“If you read East of Eden by Steinbeck, it's the last sort of big book I read. You drop his sentences into Google, no one said sentences like that.”
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“Had Annie Jacobson on the show who wrote Nuclear War, a countdown scenario. And that's a fun episode.”
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“That whole anxious generation Jonathan Height thing of like it's not good for kids and there's this kind of you know they think it's social media is as harmful as cigarettes.”
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“You put me on to Stoner. That was a wonderful book. It's about a guy called William Stoner who lives on a farm with his parents.”
Female Psychopath Explains How She Manipulates Men - Kanika Batra · 2026-08-27
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“if you watched the help, but Minnie makes a very specific pie for her old boss. And let's say there's fecal matter in there”
“Age Reversal Is Coming.” Inside The First Human Trials - Dr David Sinclair · 2026-08-24
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“In in my book, Lifespan, it's a little dated now, but you might remember I chose a CD as the analogy.”
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“there's so many even uh uh Teemo Teimu Arena was it that wrote the Biohackers Handbook. It's his coffee table book.”
Ex-Gang Member: What Makes A Violent Man Change? - Johnny Chang · 2026-08-22
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“I remember it was like the art of war um with um General Sunzu and he's like these are your people bro you should read this”
Jocko Willink, Matt McCusker & Jeff Dye - Mostly Wise #3 · 2026-08-20
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“You know, that that guy John Crackour who had the whole in a thin air thing, he wrote that book being like nobody should do this. It's so dangerous.”
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“I wrote a book called Extreme Ownership, which is about like taking ownership of what's going on. It seemed like another move could have just been like own it.”
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“Dude, I I read a book called uh The Next Hundred Years. I don't know if I talked about this before by George Freriedman and he he wrote it I think like I would say the early 2000s maybe like”
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“So, I wrote a bunch of kids books and they're a series of kids books and they turned basically the first two books kind of combined together to make the first movie. Way of the Warrior Kid.”
Harvard Professor: “I Tried Every Diet. This Is By Far The Worst.” - Daniel Lieberman · 2026-08-15
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“If you read the Blue Zones book, it tells you what to eat. Tells you at least a half a cup of beans a day.”
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“There's a book by a guy named Michael Moss called Salt, Sugar, Fat, which is really worth reading.”
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“About 13 years ago I wrote a book called the story of the human body.”
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“Fed Up comes out August 11th and I tried to make it fun and readable.”
Hunter Biden, Matt McCusker & Duncan Trussell - Mostly Wise #2 · 2026-08-13
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“Have you ever read the devil's chessboard? Well, have you listened to the devil's chessboard now? Now you have audio. Listen to it because I actually did it while I paint.”
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“If you go read the Upanishads from 3,500 years ago and the Vedic wisdom, you'll literally find they're saying exactly this.”
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“Have you read that book? It's so good. The way we process time is based on how fast the brain processes information.”
“We’re At The Beginning Of A Revolution” - Jimmy Carr · 2026-08-10
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“that book Die with zero is so brilliant it's it's kind of about so much more than that as well that kind of what you should be doing at what stage of life”
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“we shut down all the asylums in the 80s because we saw one floor of the cuckoo's nest and we decided asylums were terrible places”
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“I had William McCascal on the show. He's the long-termism guy, what we owe the future.”
Q&A: Becoming A Dad, Favourite Peptides & Red Rising · 2026-08-08
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“You can sit back and enjoy an amazing retelling of the Odyssey by a guy with a beautiful voice for two and a half hours.”
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“I read The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday and The Art of Resilience by Ross Edgely. These were suggested by friends who'd been through horrendous injuries.”
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“I read The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday and The Art of Resilience by Ross Edgely. These were suggested by friends who'd been through horrendous injuries.”
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“It's like my one of my favorite fiction books, if not my favorite fiction series of all time. It absolutely rules.”
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“Dungeon Crawler Carl is very different to Red Rising but as compelling. I'm addicted to this series. It should come with a warning label.”
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“Maybe David Deutsch, guy that wrote the beginning of Infinity.”
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“If you read James Clear's Atomic Habits and take his habit process to improve your life, the thoughts developed from it are still useful.”
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“Another one that everyone should read is the Precipice by Toby Ord.”
The New Science Of Female Attraction - Psychology Roundtable · 2026-08-06
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“reading the game by Neil Strauss and doing pickup artistry”
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“I've read the teacher. this one takes it to another level and turns out he's wooing a 16-year-old”
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“the person that did the housemaid, right? Of which Sydney Sweeney just starred in”
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“the paperback of my first book, Trouble, the Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class”
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“my previous book, The Eight That Understood the Universe”
Who You Meet Down America’s Forgotten Backroads - Peter Santenello · 2026-08-03
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“Your fellow Americans and I'm going to put you in that basket, Chris.”
“One Year Ago I Was In My Parents’ Basement” - Jett Franzen · 2026-07-30
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“he says the struggle towards heights uh is enough to fill any man's heart. And he's basically say like it it's literally the journey. It is Seephus relentlessly pushing that boulder up.”
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“I ended up reading meditations by Marcus Reelis and I was like wow like this is this is incredible.”
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“It's pretty good. People should people should revisit it. I think you can get it for free online and there's an audible version, too.”
Something Scary Is Happening In Biolabs - Annie Jacobsen · 2026-07-23
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“with nuclear war the response to that was so many people calling me up and saying like okay, I read your book. I just want to die instantly.”
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“I'm pretty sure that the precipice came out in 2019. Uh so, before COVID and it. Catastrophic risk via asteroid, a comet, supervolcano, stellar explosion.”
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“There's a famous book called The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio and an Italian notary and he writes about what it was like at that time”
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The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency — Annie JacobsenAuthor's ownOn tour
“I wrote a book on DARPA called The Pentagon's Brain. It published 10 years ago, 11 years ago. And I write in the book, The Defense Department leads technology everywhere”
14 Patterns Behind the World’s Greatest Minds - David Senra · 2026-07-20
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“I read his book Creative Act. You read Creative Act?”
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“there's this great book called Michael Jordan: The Life. It's like 700 pages long. Uh it's by this guy named Roland Lazenby.”
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“his first autobiography, which is called Against the Odds, an autobiography by James Dyson.”
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“It's called A History of Great Inventions. It literally like somebody printed out a Wikipedia page of like 200 um inventions with hand-scrawled notes.”
The True Story Of The Odyssey (and why it matters) - Alex Petkas · 2026-07-18
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“Why is the Odyssey such an important story? Well, it's a story that has affected a lot of people.”
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“Homer is the author according to the Greeks of the Iliad and the Odyssey. These two poems that”
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“you can find very striking recognizable patterns in the Vadic epic tradition of the Mahabar parata”
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“Read Heroditus. There's many details, you know. Were they northern? Were they southern? Who knows?”
The Hidden Danger of Accepting Social Norms - George Mack · 2026-07-16
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“I don't think that there's that much of a waiting in terms of the LLM that James Clear's Atomic Habits on Moby Dick is worth 10 million times that of an anime and manga blog.”
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“I don't think that there's that much of a waiting in terms of the LLM that James Clear's Atomic Habits on Moby Dick is worth 10 million times that of an anime and manga blog.”
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“If you need a new listen on Audible, of a very old relatively old book, Ryan Holiday's book Conspiracy. This one's his best one by distance.”
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“There was another guy who helped Lewis Capaldi with anxiety. I think he wrote a book called Addicted to Anxiety.”
Why The AI Doomers Might Be Right - Robert Wright · 2026-07-11
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“you wrote probably the most influential book in my life, which was The Moral Animal, and it was the thing that got me started on the trajectory of thinking about evolutionary psychology”
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“one reason I called the book the God Test is it it's kind of like a test a God would set up, right?”
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“I had a book called Nonzero that was about the growing nonzero-sum dynamic among nations”
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“when I read Superintelligence I'm real worried there's going to be a fast takeoff scenario or computer brain interfaces”
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“Ed Fredkin, that book was called Three Scientists and Their Gods, my first book”