If Books Could Kill

In 2013, education reformers tried to help poor students the using the best tool at their disposal: The 16th most popular Ted Talk.

Special thanks to Marcus Credé! 

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Sources:

• Much Ado About Grit
• What Shall We Do About Grit?
• Grit under attack
• Teaching “Grit”
• The Problem With Grit
• The Limits of “Grit”
• Grit: The power of passion and perseverance
• Is 'Grit' Doomed To Be The New Self-Esteem?
• Measurement Matters
• Using Psychological Science to Help Children Thrive
• Self-Control and Academic Achievement
• Cognitive and noncognitive predictors of success
• Should non-cognitive skills be included in school accountability systems?
• Measuring Students’ Non-Cognitive Skills and the Impact of Schooling
• Grit: A Short History of a Useful Concept
• Teaching Kids 'Grit' is All the Rage.
• "Grit" Revisited
• Character Education: A Cautionary Note
• What if the Secret to Success Is Failure?
• The Effects of the EITC on Child Achievement
• Academic Performance And Food Stamps

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Peter went on Mike's other show, Maintenance Phase, to revisit a biohacking diet book for the boys.

Where to find us: 

• Our Patreon
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• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• The 4-Hour Body
• Does Glycemic Index Matter for Weight Loss? An Examination of the Evidence 
• New! Improved! Shape Up Your Life! 
• The 4-Hour Body: The Real App You Are Working On Is An App Called Yourself

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Peter and Michael discuss "Bullshit Jobs" by anarchist anthropologist David Graeber. The result: two professional podcasters debating which jobs are real and which jobs are fake.

Where to find us: 

• Our Patreon
• Our merch!
• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant
• 37% of British workers think their jobs are meaningless
• Average Annual Hours Worked by Persons Engaged for United States
• The times they are not changin’: Days and hours of work in Old and New Worlds, 1870–2000
• ‘Bullshit’ After All? Why People Consider Their Jobs Socially Useless
• Alienation Is Not ‘Bullshit’: An Empirical Critique of Graeber’s Theory of BS Jobs
• Many people feel they work in pointless ‘bullshit’ jobs, research confirms
• The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure 
• Study: Leisure Time Declines
• USA Consumption as percent of GDP
• The Significance of Task Significance: Job Performance Effects, Relational Mechanisms, and Boundary Conditions
• Task significance and meaningful work: A longitudinal study
• Americans’ job satisfaction in 2024

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

It turns out that the key to wealth is buying the right kind of watch, marrying the right kind of wife and being the right kind of white.

Where to find us: 

• Our Patreon
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• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Uneasy Street
• A Century of Wealth In America
• Family, Education, and Sources of Wealth among the Richest Americans, 1982–2012
• Wealth Elite Moralities
• The insane growth of America’s millionaire class
• The Extraordinary Rise In The Wealth Of Older American Households
• Planning & Progress Study 2025
• Striking Out on Their Own: The Self-Employed in Bankruptcy
• How Many Households Meet The Net Worth Guidelines Of The Millionaire Next Door?
• Paying Tribute to Thomas Stanley and His ‘Millionaire Next Door’
• Pity the Billionaires
• What Rich Women Want
• The deserving or undeserving rich?
• The Evolution of Top Incomes

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

The boys catalog the definitive worst takes of the year, from the pundits who misunderstood our political moment to a guy who wants to have sex with a computer.

To hear the rest of the episode, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

The boys continue their discussion of Walter Isaacson's "Elon Musk." This is the part where Elon loses his mind. 

Where to find us: 

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• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• From self-proclaimed ‘socialist’ to Team Trump and DeSantis: Elon Musk’s curious politics revealed  
• The Quiet Political Rise of David Sacks, Silicon Valley’s Prophet of Urban Doom
• Elon Musk biographer admits suggestion SpaceX head blocked Ukraine drone attack was wrong 
• Elon Musk's Daughter on Dad's Biography: 'Sad Excuse for a Puff Piece'
• Character Limit
• Twitter fulfilling more government censorship requests under Musk 
• Elon Musk booed for nearly 5 minutes straight at Dave Chappelle show in San Francisco 
• New CNN Chief Trying to Please GOP Elite 
• Research finds more than 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 if USAID defunding continues, including more than 4 million children under five
• What the data says about Social Security 
• Trump Administration, DOGE Activities Risk SSA Operations and Security of Personal Data

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

A biography that dares to ask: Is a lifetime of worker abuse and narcissism worth it to experience robot butlers?

Where to find us: 

• Our Patreon
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• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• What Elon Musk Gets Wrong about South Africa
• Elon Musk’s Anti-Semitic, Apartheid-Loving Grandfather 
• Elon Musk claims he was once one of the best Quake players around
• Watch Elon Musk Talk About Being an ‘Illegal Immigrant’ in Video From 2013 
• Elon Musk’s dad Errol says he can ‘prove’ existence of emerald mine in new bombshell claim revealing its location 
• How Elon Musk Went from Superhero to Supervillain 
• The Believer
• Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow 
• How Elon Musk Plans on Reinventing the World (and Mars)
• Tesla factory workers reveal pain, injury and stress: 'Everything feels like the future but us' | Tesla
• Hundreds of Tesla workers tested positive for the virus after Elon Musk reopened a plant, data shows
• Inside Tesla as Elon Musk Pushed an Unflinching Vision for Self-Driving Cars 
• Tesla video promoting self-driving was staged, engineer testifies
• Elon Musk Says His 'Running Robot' Will 'Actually Eliminate Poverty' As He Shares Video Of Tesla Optimus Jogging 
• Elon Musk Wants ‘Strong Influence’ Over the ‘Robot Army’ He’s Building 
• There’s a Very Simple Pattern to Elon Musk’s Broken Promises

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

How do you tell the entire history of humanity in a single book? Whatever you do, do not open a browser window. 

Thanks to Dorsa Amir, Duncan Stibbard Hawkes and David Perry for help researching and fact-checking this episode!

Where to find us: 

• Our Patreon
• Our merch!
• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• A Response to Yuval Harari
• Yuval Noah Harari’s History of Everyone, Ever
• How Humankind Conquered the World
• The revolution that wasn't
• Advances In The Study Of The Origin Of Humanness
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a banal and risible self-help book
• Are Human Rights Western? 
• Bonaparte in Egypt
• Ship of Fools
• The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari
• A Reductionist History of Humankind
• Harari, Sapiens and historical accuracy
• The Broad Spectrum Revolution at 40
• The Neolithic Revolution in the Middle East
• Was the Agricultural Revolution a Terrible Mistake?
• The Darker Side of the "Original Affluent Society"
• Harari's world history
• Compassion with Justice: Harari’s Assault on Human Rights
• Reconsidering the link between past material culture and cognition 

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Live like Dale Carnegie, neg like Calvin Coolidge.

Where to find us: 

• Our Patreon
• Our merch!
• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Self-help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America
• The Positive Thinkers
• Age of industrial violence 1910-1915 : the activities and findings of the United States commission on industrial relations
• Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914–1942 
• Dale Carnegie and the Problem of Sincerity
  New York Times review from 1937

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Peter and Michael discuss a book that's light on facts and long on sentences.

Where to find us: 

• Our Patreon
• Our merch!
• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Book Review: ‘Summer of Our Discontent,’ by Thomas Chatterton Williams
• Police shootings database 2015-2024
• From the archive, 22 March 1991: President Bush sickened by Rodney King case
• Barack Obama Public Approval
• Letter To Christopher L. Eisgruber, President Princeton University
• Police give additional details in beating of machete-wielding man amid Dallas protest
• In City After City, Police Mishandled Black Lives Matter Protests
• RIOTS IN LOS ANGELES: Challenger; Nation Needs Healing, Clinton Says
• Median household income by race and ethnicity U.S. 1967-2023
• Majority of college students support Israel/Gaza campus protests, 1 in 10 actually participate in them
• Thomas Chatterton Williams on Race, Identity, and “Cancel Culture”

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

How one comedian's offhand advice launched a decent TV episode, a mediocre book and a terrible movie.

Where to find us: 

• Our Patreon
• Our merch!
• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Susan Faludi's "Backlash"
• For Women Who Count on Men to Be Jerks
• Bridget Jones’s Legacy
• Single Women in Popular Culture
• A Decade of Advice for Women and Men in the Best-Selling Self-Help Literature
• The gendered nature of self-help
• Single Women in Popular Culture 

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Did you know that in the split-second it took you to read the title of this episode, your subconscious already figured out that it was going to be extremely good?

Peter and Michael talk about Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink," a book that is mostly cute scientific anecdotes but also indirectly resulted in millions of taxpayer dollars being wasted on fraudulent science.

Where to find us: 

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• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Unconscious influences on decision making: A critical review
• Half a Minute: Predicting Teacher Evaluations From Thin Slices of Nonverbal Behavior and Physical Attractiveness
• 'Thin slices' of life
• Conditions for Intuitive Expertise: A Failure to Disagree
• Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes
• Magic at the marketplace: Choice blindness for the taste of jam and the smell of tea
• False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant
• Reading Lies: Nonverbal Communication and Deception 
• Behavioral Science and Security
• TSA Should Limit Future Funding for Behavior Detection Activities
• TSA Does Not Have Valid Evidence Supporting Most of the Revised Behavioral Indicators Used in Its Behavior Detection Activities 
• Telling Lies: Fact, Fiction, and Nonsense
• TSA’s Secret Behavior Checklist to Spot Terrorists
• A Review of 'Blink' by Malcolm Gladwell

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

This is most of the episode but if you want to hear the last 20 minutes, support us on Patreon!

https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Last episode we met two Princeton political scientists who are bad at virology. Today we learn that they are also bad at political science.

Where to find us: 

• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Lawrence Wright’s “The Plague Year”
• Jonathan Howard’s “We Want Them Infected”
• How the Pandemic Defeated America
• COVID-19: examining the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions
• US State Restrictions and Excess COVID-19 Pandemic Deaths
• Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions
• Policy Interventions, Social Distancing, and SARS-CoV-2 Transmission
• The Impact of Vaccines and Behavior on US Cumulative Deaths
• Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates
• Report for the Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry
• The Effectiveness Of Government Masking Mandates 
• School closures during COVID-19
• COVID-19–Related School Closures
• The Effects of School Closures on COVID‑19
• Higher COVID-19 Deaths with Later School Closure in the United States
• Reopening America’s Schools
• Reading literacy decline in Europe
• DeSantis vs. Newsom
• Red States Have Seen Less Learning Loss
• Political partisanship and mobility restriction 
• Republicans Aren’t New To The Anti-Vaxx Movement
• KFF poll on anti-vaxx beliefs

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Two political scientists look back at a deadly pandemic and ask, "could we have done even less?"

Where to find us: 

• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Lawrence Wright’s “The Plague Year”
• The 2019 WHO report                
• 30‐day mortality following COVID‐19
• COVID-19: examining the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions
• Policy Interventions, Social Distancing, and SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in the United States
• What we can learn from Sweden
• A review of the Swedish policy response to COVID-19
• How Sweden approached the COVID‐19 pandemic
• The first eight months of Sweden’s COVID‐19 strategy
• The Swedish COVID-19 Response Is a Disaster
• Excess mortality in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic 
• Comparing drivers of pandemic economic decline 2020
• How Sweden approached the COVID-19 pandemic
• Comparisons of all-cause mortality between European countries and regions
• Jonathan Howard’s “We Want Them Infected.”
• Deaths: Leading Causes for 2021
• Stay-at-home orders associate with subsequent decreases in COVID-19 cases and fatalities in the United States 
• Did the Timing of State Mandated Lockdown Affect the Spread of COVID-19? 
• US State Restrictions and Excess COVID-19 Pandemic Deaths

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

By popular demand we are releasing last month's Patreon bonus episode on the main feed! We chart the transformation of the lab leak from an unfounded theory promoted by right-wing cranks to an unfounded theory promoted by liberal journalists.

Where to find us: 

• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Peter and Michael discuss The Let Them Theory, a self-help guide to seeking bliss through unmitigated complacency.

Where to find us: 

• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• How to stop screwing yourself over
• Mel Robbins and Plagiarism
• Let her? Army wife claims Mel Robbins stole her idea for blockbuster self-help book 
• Mel Robbins’s “Let Them” theory: really that simple?
• Breathing Practices for Stress and Anxiety Reduction: Conceptual Framework of Implementation Guidelines Based on a Systematic Review of the Published Literature 
• Polarization in America
• The 5 Resets 
• Impact of health warning labels on selection and consumption of food and alcohol products: systematic review with meta-analysis

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

To hear the rest of the episode, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Are you a single lady struggling to find love with a man? Don't fret! A twice-divorced game show host who thinks conversation is for women is here to help.

Where to find us: 

• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Who's to blame for the crisis of American masculinity? On the right, politicians tell men that they being oppressed by feminists and must reassert their manhood by supporting an authoritarian regime. And on the left, users of social media are often very irritating to people who write airport books.  

Where to find us: 

• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Conscientiousness as a Predictor of the Gender Gap in Academic Achievement
• Gender Differences in Scholastic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis
• Early Childhood Behavior Problems and the Gender Gap in Educational Attainment in the United States
• Where The Boys Aren’t
• The gender achievement gap in grades and standardised tests
• The State of Gender Equality for U.S. Adolescents
• Highlights of women’s earnings in 2023
• The gender gap in educational outcomes in Norway
• Social Influences And The Gender Gap In Disruptive Behavior
• Family Disadvantage and the Gender Gap
• What might interrupt men's suicide?
• As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops
• The Cost of Caring
• Is Your Child Ready for Kindergarten?
• Age of Entry to Kindergarten and Children’s Academic Achievement
• The Effect of Age at School Entry on Reading Achievement Scores 
• Beyond the Pros and Cons of Redshirting
• Self- Control and the Developing Brain
• Importance of Sex Differences in Impulse Control and Addictions
• It is a myth that boys lag behind in brain development

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Peter and Michael dissect Jen Sincero's "You are a Badass," a book that answers the question: What if "The Secret" was written in the painful, try-hard style of "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck"? Featuring a surprise digression about Sincero's other, even worse books.

Where to find us: 

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Savy Writes Books
  
  

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

In 2004, historian Thomas Frank proposed a theory about the rightward drift of the white working class. Was he a prescient king whose work presaged the rise of Trump — or a bumbling fool with a broken thesis?  Unfortunately it turns out he is a secret third thing that takes one hour and six minutes to explain.

Special thanks to Julia Valdés for her help with this episode!

Where to find us: 

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• The Thesis That Drove American Politics Crazy: The Emerging Democratic Majority
• What’s the Matter with What’s the Matter with Kansas?
• Class is Dismissed
• The White Working Class and the Democratic Party
• It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class.
• How the diploma divide came to dominate American politics
• The 'Diploma Divide': Does It Exist for Racial and Ethnic Minorities?
• Blind Retrospection: Why Shark Attacks Are Bad For Democracy
• Nationally poor, locally rich: Income and local context in the 2016 presidential election
• Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government
• Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America
• Political Landscapes of Donald Trump
• The White Working Class and the 2016 Election
• Partisanship by family income, home ownership, union membership and veteran status
• The Elites Had It Coming
• What Explains Educational Realignment Among White Americans?

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Peter and Michael discuss the book that launched the phenomenon of New Atheism and asked the question: What if we hated Muslims, but in a secular way?

Where to find us: 

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Views of Violence
• Carnival Booth: An Algorithm for Defeating the Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening System
• The same motive for anti-US 'terrorism' is cited over and over
• Does intuitive mindset influence belief in God? 
• Terrorism science: 5 insights into jihad in Europe
• Analytic cognitive style predicts religious and paranormal belief
• What Is "Islamophobia"?
• Essays In Defense of Profiling
• To Profile or Not to Profile
• Chapter 2 The Making of Jihadist Social Actors in Europe in
• Who are the new jihadis?
• Disbelief - Prometheus Books 
• God and the Ivory Tower
• Religion’s evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion
• The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-Products, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition Generate
• Talking to the Enemy

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

What should workers do when they get laid off? In 1998 a bleak, asinine bestseller told them to find another whey. 

Where to find us: 

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America
• Downsizing in America
• Temp:  How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary
• The Disposable American
• Spencer Johnson, ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’ Author, Dies at 78
• What was the New Economy?
• Boss, Employees Share Large Cheese Platter
• Tarpon's big cheese has aides reading
• Why doesn’t downsizing deliver?
• On the Battlefields of Business, Millions of Casualties
• Shareholder Value and Workforce Downsizing, 1981-2006
• Long-Term Earnings Losses Due to Job Separation During the 1982 Recession
• Does Employee Downsizing Really Work?
• Layoffs, Top Executive Pay, and Firm Performance
• Emerging Conceptions of Work, Management and the Labor Market
• A Conceptual Framework for Analyzing Why Organizations Downsize
• Organizational Downsizing: Constraining, Cloning, Learning
• The Decline and Fall of the Conglomerate Firm in the 1980s

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

New York’s favorite criminal is in the news, so here is our episode about his ridiculous life.

To hear all of our bonus episodes, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Is fact-checking a legitimate enterprise? Is America's most famous fact-checker nothing more than a dweeb? Michael and Peter discuss.

To hear the rest of the episode, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

A memoir about parenting very badly and then getting weirdly defensive when anyone asks you about it.

Where to find us: 

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Effects of Authoritative Parental Control on Child Behavior, Child Development
• Types of Parenting Styles and Effects On Children
• Does “Tiger Parenting” Exist? Parenting Profiles of Chinese Americans and Adolescent Developmental Outcomes
• Associations of parenting dimensions and styles with externalizing problems of children and adolescents: An updated meta-analysis
• Do the associations of parenting styles with behavior problems and academic achievement vary by culture? Results from a meta-analysis
• Parenting Styles: A Closer Look at a Well-Known Concept
• Impact of Behavioral Inhibition and Parenting Style on Internalizing and Externalizing Problems from Early Childhood through Adolescence
• The One Weird Trait That Predicts Whether You’re a Trump Supporter
• Investigating Correlates of Self-Regulation in Early Childhood with a Representative Sample of English-Speaking American Families
• Amy Chua thinks identity politics on both sides are to blame.
• How the 'Tiger Mom' Convinced the Author of Hillbilly Elegy to Write His Story

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Is social media to blame for the teen mental health crisis? It's complicated!

Thanks to Emily Weinstein, Amy Orben, Andrew Przybylski, Dean Burnett, Michael Mullarkey and Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz for help researching and fact-checking this episode!

Where to find us: 

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Emily Weinstein's book, "Behind Their Screens"
• Positive and negative uses of social media among adolescents hospitalized for suicidal behavior
• The Sisyphean Cycle of Technology Panics
• The Relationship Between Online Social Networking and Depression: A Systematic Review of Quantitative Studies
• Online "predators" and their victims
• The Coddling of the American Parent
• No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression
• How technology is transforming the ways in which children play
• Banning mobile phones in schools in Spain
• No One Knows Exactly What Social Media Is Doing To Teens
• Windows of developmental sensitivity to social media
• Smartphones are bad for some teens, not all
• How Smartphones Affect the Social-Emotional Development of Adolescents
• Social media use and its impact
• Time Spent on Social Network Sites and Psychological Well-Being
• A School-Level Analysis of Adolescent Extracurricular Activity

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

To celebrate ("celebrate") Donald Trump choosing JD Vance as his running mate we are re-releasing our "Hillbilly Elegy" episode. Enjoy!

Peter and Michael discuss "The Origins of Woke," a glimpse into the dark aspirations of the Republican Party and the mind of a very unusual man.

Where to find us: 

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• What Speech Does "Hostile Work Environment" Harassment Law Restrict? 
• Tunis v. Corning Glass Works, 698 F. Supp. 452 (S.D.N.Y. 1988)
• Pakizegi v. First Nat. Bank of Boston, 831 F. Supp. 901 
• Tesla Settles Discrimination Suit With Former Factory Worker - The New York Times
• Menial Tasks, Slurs and Swastikas: Many Black Workers at Tesla Say They Faced Racism - The New York Times 
• Diaz v. Tesla, Inc.
• Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American
• Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination 
• Meta-analysis of field experiments shows no change in racial discrimination in hiring over time | PNAS
• Systemic Discrimination Among Large U.S. Employers 

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Peter and Michael discuss the media coverage of the protests at Columbia — from the crazed, bloodthirsty ravings of right-wing media to the more muted, respectful bloodthirst of centrist media.

To hear the rest of the episode, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Peter and Michael discuss Michael Lewis’s bestselling book about the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, a young prodigy whose only flaw was that he dreamed too big.

Where to find us: 

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Michael Lewis Is Buying What Sam Bankman-Fried Is Selling 
• Michael Lewis Likens Critics of His New Book on Sam Bankman-Fried to a 'Mob'
• The SBF trial is a reminder that crypto is a rotten business
• Review: Michael Lewis's Going Infinite
• The Curious Case of FTX’s ‘Company Therapist’ (vice.com)
• FTX’s Collapse Was a Crime, Not an Accident
• Going Infinite by Michael Lewis review – falling for the antihero
• The Second FTX Asset Recovery Report Is Packed With Bombshells
• Takeaways From a New Book on Sam Bankman-Fried
• Caroline Ellison Testifies Against Sam Bankman-Fried, Blaming Him for Crimes 

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

2 Better 2 Angels

Support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Where to find us: 

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Jeffrey Epstein’s Science of Sleaze
• Pinker’s response to Epstein allegations
• How Jeffrey Epstein Captivated Harvard
• Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA
• It’s Official — Steven Pinker Is Full of Shit
• Pinker, Epstein, Soldier, Spy
• A century of sexual abuse victimisation: A birth cohort analysis
• The prevalence of child sexual abuse with online sexual abuse added
• Have Sexual Abuse and Physical Abuse Declined Since the 1990s?
• Explanations for the Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases
• The Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases
• Why Have Child Maltreatment and Child Victimization Declined?
• Spanking and Other Corporal Punishment of Children by Parents: Undervaluing Children, Overvaluing Pain
• Were There Really More Hate Crimes Last Year?
• Hate Crime Reported by Victims and Police
• The Sexual Victimization of College Women
• The "Discovery" of Child Abuse
• A Short History of Child Protection in America

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

We're finally discussing a good book! Naomi Klein's "Doppelgänger" chronicles the long, steady descent of another Naomi — Wolf (buddy oof) — from feminist icon to crank conspiracist. 

To hear the rest of the episode, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

In 2013, Sheryl Sandberg became an icon for women who wanted to move from middle management at a tech company into upper management at a tech company. Today, Peter and Michael examine the contents of her bestselling book, survey the wreckage of corporate feminism and ask whether women will finally find liberation in the Metaverse.

Where to find us: 

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Facebook Feminism, Like It or Not
• Feminism's Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning in?
• One Cheer for Lean In
• Is there an implicit quota on women in top management? A large‐sample statistical analysis
• Female tokens in high-prestige work groups: Catalysts or inhibitors of group diversification?
• Want Equal Pay? Get a Union.
• The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations
• What Was the Girlboss?
• New Research: Women Who Don’t Negotiate Might Have a Good Reason
• Now, Women Do Ask: A Call to Update Beliefs about the Gender Pay Gap
• What’s It Like Inside the Hive? Managerial Discretion Drives TMT Gender Diversity of Women-Led Firms
• I asked Facebook if I could work part-time from home after I had my baby. They said no—so I quit
• Women in the Workplace 2023
• Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome
• Dig Deep: Beyond Lean In

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

This week we're tackling Steven Pinker's 900 page dissection of the reasons why violence, torture and war have declined over the last 10,000 years. Was it an indeterminate mixture of politics, economics, technology and serendipity?  Or did some European guys write some books that said murder was bad?

Special thanks to Philip Dwyer, Eleanor Janega, David M. Perry and Doug Thompson for help researching and fact-checking this episode!

Where to find us: 

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• The Darker Angels of Our Nature
• Getting Medieval On Steven Pinker
• The Decline of Violence in the West: From Cultural to Post-Cultural History
• Pinker’s (Mis)Representation of the Enlightenment and Violence
• Herding and Homicide: An Examination of the Nisbett-Reaves Hypothesis
• Peace in Our Time
• John Gray: Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war
• The business class doesn't understand the Enlightenment
• Delusions Of Peace
• Pinker And Progress
• Norbert Elias and the History of Violence
• Modernization, Self-Control And Lethal Violence
• Explaining Long Term Trends in Violent Crime
• The Enlightenment’s Dark Side

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Before Donald Trump became America's most prominent politician and birth certificate inspector, he spent his days making everyone in New York City slightly uncomfortable. Michael and Peter discuss "The Art of the Deal," Trump’s 1987 bestseller chronicling his exploits as a celebrity slumlord.

Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• When Donald Trump Took Down Holiday Inns 
• The Lost City of Trump 
• Who Runs New York Now? 
• How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions 
• Doer and Slumlord Both 
• Donald Trump Gets What He Wants
• Donald Trump was a nightmare landlord in the 1980s 
• Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

To hear the rest of the episode, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

"There are two kinds of political scientists: The types who deal with noisy data and post on Twitter with a bunch of caveats. And then there are the types who write books about identity politics."
 
Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Sam  Huneke's "Yascha Mounk’s Woke Straw Man"
• Jacob T. Levy's "The Defense of Liberty Can’t Do Without Identity Politics"
• Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò's "Elite Capture"
• Aaron Huertas's "We Need to Talk About Reactionary Centrists"
• Mary Lin Elementary under federal investigation
• Parents refute claims of segregation at Mary Lin Elementary School
• School Segregation in Metropolitan Regions, 1970–2000
• 60 Years After Brown
• School choice and racial segregation in US schools
• Student Population Has Significantly Diversified, But Many Schools Remain Divided Along Racial, Ethnic, and Economic Lines
• U.S. public school students often go to schools where at least half of their peers are the same race or ethnicity
• The Return of Old-Fashioned Racism to White Americans’ Partisan Preferences
• Why The Democrats Have Shifted Left Over The Last 30 Years
• Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change
• Trump, the 2016 Election, and Expressions of Sexism
• Changing Norms Following the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: The Trump Effect on Prejudice
• Changes in Americans’ prejudices during the presidency of Donald Trump
• The CDC slide presentation
• Model-informed COVID-19 vaccine prioritization strategies

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

To hear the rest of the episode, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

You stare, mouth agape, at the bookstore display. It’s a self-help book, but with curse words in the title?! This must be a revolutionary new framework, not simply the same dull, reactionary ideas repackaged as hip and new.

Support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck (Blog Post)
• Where A is Ordinary: The Evolution of American College and University Grading, 1940-2009
• We’ve Been Handing Out Participation Trophies for 100 Years
  Positive Disintegration‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a #@%!’ Review: A Blunt Philosophy

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

In 1996, a frustrated screenwriter got a fellowship in Italy. Twenty years later, Beyoncé released "Lemonade." 

Content warning: This episode includes a mention of suicide.

Support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Rebecca Solnit’s “A Paradise Built in Hell”
• Kelly Link's "White Cat, Black Dog"
• The Half-Century in Bullshit: On Peter Bogdanovich’s “Paper Moon” and Robert Greene’s “The 48 Laws of Power”
• A Book of Anecdotes, 1957
  The Little Brown Book Of Anecdotes
• Fear Nothing: Self-Fashioning and Social Mobility in 50 Cent’s The 50th Law
• The fear of conflict leads people to systematically avoid potentially valuable zero-sum situations
• The Immigration Dilemma
• You Can Win But I Can't Lose
• If you rise, I fall: Equality is prevented by the misperception that it harms advantaged groups
• Zero-Sum Thinking and the Roots of U.S. Political Divides
• A Genesis of Conflict: The Zero-Sum Mindset
• Forbes Winslow’s Physic and Physicians
• The role of masculinity in men's help-seeking for depression: A systematic review
•  The Strange, Sad Story of Joe Orton, His Lover, and 72 Stolen Library Books 
• A Failure Of Initiative
• New Orleans reaches settlements for police shootings after Hurricane Katrina
• Post-Katrina, White Vigilantes Shot African-Americans With Impunity

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Retailers have been sounding the alarm about a shoplifting epidemic driven by organized criminal syndicates. In a shocking twist, it turns out that their story is mostly made up. Join us as Peter tries to figure out where this panic originated and as Mike finally comes clean about his criminal past.

To hear the rest of the show, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

This week we're tackling "San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities," a book that dares to ask: What if everything that experts think about homelessness is wrong, and everything that one crank on Twitter thinks about homelessness is right?

Thanks to Ned Resnikoff for helping us with the research for this episode!

Support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Inflection Points in Community-level Homeless Rates
• How Housing Costs Drive Levels of Homelessness
• The 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report To Congress
• The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness
• San Francisco Homelessness Benchmarking Report
• Homelessness is a Housing Problem
• A randomized trial of permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless persons with high use of publicly funded services
• San Francisco Department of Public Health Update Report on Mental Health Reform
• Civil Commitment in the United States

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Have you ever wanted to escape the grind and follow your dreams? This week we're discussing "The 4-Hour Workweek," which reveals that all you need is a plan, a willingness to take risks and a modestly sized fraud operation built on Third World labor.

Support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• The Fraud and the Four-Hour Workweek
• Revisiting "The 4-Hour Workweek"
• New! Improved! Shape Up Your Life!
• From Productivity to Psychedelics: Tim Ferriss Has Changed His Mind About Success

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

But her e-mails! Michael explains the non-scandal that captivated the mainstream media in 2016 while Peter attempts to sow the podcast with anti-Hillary sentiment.

To hear the rest of the show, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Oops all grievance.

Support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• No Ivory Tower : Mccarthyism And The Universities
• The Fire Is Upon Us
• The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945
• The Passion of William F. Buckley: Academic Freedom, Conspiratorial Conservatism, and the Rise of the Postwar Right
• Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?
• Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities with the Intelligence Community, 1945-1955
• Debunking a Longstanding Myth About William F. Buckley
• How William F. Buckley Jr.’s Right-Wing College Crusade Paved the Way for Ron DeSantis
• The Right v. Higher Education: Change and Continuity
• The Buckleys: A Family Examined
• The Academic Elite Goes to Washington, and to War
• What About “God and Man”?
• The Attack on Yale
• The academy on the firing line: William F. Buckley, Jr.'s God and Man at Yale and the modern conservative critique of higher education
• Conservatives charge that universities are hotbeds of liberalism. They’re wrong. 

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

For this month's bonus episode we dissected Harry Frankfurt's gloriously brief bestseller and applied the concept to our favorite op-ed page. 

To hear the rest of the show, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Who poses the greatest threat to democracy? Is it the movement that openly identifies with the symbols, goals and policies of fascist governments? Or is it the median bureaucrat at the Department of Health and Human Services?

In 2008, a National Review nepo-baby attempted to answer this vexing question.

Support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• History News Network: A Symposium on Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism
• The Nature of Fascism
• How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them
• The Anatomy of Fascism
• Mussolini and Fascism: The View From America
• The Return of Old-Fashioned Racism to White Americans’ Partisan Preferences in the Early Obama Era
• Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America
• What Hillary Rodham Clinton Really Said About Children’s Rights and Child Policy
• The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930
• A campus takeover that symbolized an era of change

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

In our "Rules" and "Game" episodes we didn't get a chance to dissect the phenomenon of online dating (i.e. describe our worst dates and read cringe profiles out loud to each other), so that is what we are doing on today's bonus episode. 

To hear the rest of the show, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod