u/sispehar

Pulled the book mentions from the last four episodes since I find these threads useful and the recs from this show actually stick. A few real standouts and a chunk of repeat canon, so flagging what felt new.

The one that genuinely stood out: Cathy Lanier (former DC police chief, now NFL Chief Security Officer) on ep #862 said The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is her favorite book of all time and she made it mandatory reading for her command staff. She's read it three times. Not the typical context that book shows up in. She also pitched Blink specifically as a decision-making book for people in high-paced professions, which lands differently coming from someone running security for the NFL than from a startup founder.

The other standout is the Anne Lamott episode (#864) where Tim calls Bird by Bird "one of my absolute favorite books." Long-time listeners know it gets name-dropped, but it was nice to hear him state it that flatly. Anne also has a new one out called Good Writing co-written with her husband Neil Allen.

The rest:

• From Strength to Strength (Arthur Brooks), ep #864. Tim said he borrowed a framework from it. Worth noting if you missed it the first time he mentioned it.
• Scaling People (Claire Hughes Johnson) and The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership (Chapman/Dethmer/Klemp), also ep #864. Recurring Tim references but worth flagging for anyone new.
• High Growth Handbook (Elad Gil), ep #863. Tim called it outstanding and pushed people to check it out. Seven years old now but still gets the nod.
• Brian Dean's episode #861 was a 4HWW success story, so naturally heavy on entrepreneurship reads. He recommends Ready, Fire, Aim (Michael Masterson) over almost anything else for getting people into action mode. Also flagged The Million Dollar One-Person Business and Tiny Business, Big Money (both Elaine Pofeldt) and Built to Sell (John Warrillow) as a foundational primer.
• Extreme Ownership (Jocko/Babin) came up again on the Lanier ep. Not new but a different framing through her lens of leadership and accountability.

What's actually new vs the usual Tim canon: Pofeldt's two solo-business books and Claire Hughes Johnson's Scaling People are the freshest. Most of the rest is reinforcement of the standard 5BF rotation. If you only pick up one from this batch and you haven't read it, High Growth Handbook is the one I'd grab. Tim doesn't push books that hard very often.

Full running list of every book mentioned on the Tim Ferriss Show here if anyone wants the archive: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/the-tim-ferriss-show/books

Anything from these four episodes you've actually picked up and read?

The Bernard Donoughue Downing Street Diary arc is genuinely out of control. Dominic cited it across THREE separate 70s Britain episodes (663, 664, 665) and at one point just calls it "fantastic diaries" with the energy of a man who has reread the same passage about Harold Wilson going to bed at 9pm fourteen times this year. If you only pick up one thing from the last month of episodes it's probably that.

The other standout was Tom on episode 667 dragging out Walter Pater's 1869 The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry to read the "head upon which all the ends of the world are come" passage about the Mona Lisa, in full Victorian-prose voice. He then immediately followed it with Mario Praz's The Romantic Agony (1933) on 19th century erotic obsession with the painting, which is exactly the kind of obscure pull this sub exists for.

A few more from the run:

• Ep 666 (Wine and the Birth of Civilisation): Tom plugging Kathleen Burk's forthcoming Wine: A Global History (preorder energy was strong), plus the obligatory Pliny Natural History, the Polyphemus bit from the Odyssey, and Sadakat Kadri's Heaven on Earth on Sharia law for the Islamic wine angle. Also Omar Khayyam quoted directly, because of course.
• Ep 664 (70s Scandal): Dominic absolutely roasting Denis Healey's My Secret Planet as "basically a book about how clever he was". Edmund Dell's A Hard Pounding got the "brilliant book" treatment for the 74-76 crisis. Christopher Andrew's Defence of the Realm for the MI5 angle.
• Ep 663 (The Brexit That Never Was): Tony Benn's Against the Tide: Diaries 1973-76 described as "that rare thing of a diary written by a really unreliable narrator", which is one of the better one-liners of the month.
• Ep 662 (Rise of Thatcher): Apparently Thatcher read The Day of the Jackal twice, the second time to figure out the plot. She also did Dostoevsky's Demons and Koestler's Darkness at Noon, which is a more sympathetic reading list than I would have guessed.
• Ep 661 (Dawn of the Samurai): Tom going hard on the Royall Tyler translation of The Tale of the Heike for the Tomoe Gozen passage, then comparing the whole thing to the Iliad. Rosina Buckland's British Museum catalogue The Samurai got namechecked too.

Honourable mention to Vasari's Lives of the Artists (ep 667), Crosland's The Future of Socialism (ep 665), and obviously Dominic plugging Seasons in the Sun every time the 70s come up, which, fair enough, he wrote the actual book on it.

Full running list of every book mentioned on The Rest Is History here if anyone wants the archive: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/the-rest-is-history/books

What's the Donoughue threshold before Dominic just admits he's writing the next book about him?

Pulled together every book Marcus, Henry, or Ed name-dropped on the show over the last 30 days (Apr 10 - May 8). A couple stood out.

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien got the strongest endorsement of the month, on the Jimmy Savile Part III ep (#660). Just a quick aside in the middle of an extremely dark series - "Read an amazing Irish book right now called The Third Policeman. I would recommend it to fucking anybody. I'm having a great time with it." That kind of unprompted plug from these guys is rare, especially mid-Savile arc.

Devolution by Max Brooks came up on the Cryptids 101 ep (#661). Same author as World War Z, but this one's diary entries of a woman trapped on a mountain outside Portland during a volcanic eruption. Henry's words: "it's fucking incredible." The whole Cryptids ep was basically a Bigfoot media rec dump.

Other ones worth noting:

• Department of Truth (James Tynion IV / Martin Simmonds) - flagged as a top pick on the same Cryptids ep. There's a Bigfoot hunter storyline they called one of the best comic runs in years.
• The Hand is My Sword by Robert Trias - on Count Dante Part I (#662). First American karate book, 1946, written by the guy who opened the first US karate school. Pure Marcus research bait.
• In Plain Sight by Dan Davies - the Jimmy Savile Part II source text (#659). The "nobody would have believed her" angle on the accusers came straight out of this.
• Mindhunter by John Douglas - Side Stories Gilgo Guilty mention. Came up because the killer reportedly read it and got obsessed with Ed Kemper.

Casual mentions in there too: World War Z, Fellowship of the Ring (Green Dragon hobbit tangent on the Count Dante finale).

Full running list of every book mentioned on Last Podcast On The Left here if anyone wants the archive: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/last-podcast-on-the-left/books

Anyone actually read The Third Policeman? Curious what made it land that hard for them.

Hey, how do you usually find guests, especially book authors? And how do you communicate and arrange the entire thing? Do you use any platform that helps you with the discovery, contact and potentially fees?

Do you think you would need an easier way to find authors/guests for your podcast?

A question for the podcasters here, do any of you keep an organized list of books you've mentioned on your show?

I keep noticing podcasts where books come up constantly but there's no list anywhere (except for a few major ones, like Joe Rogan).

Been working on a tool that scans podcasts daily and pulls book mentions into a reading list per show, with a sentiment tag (so 'this book changed my life' isn't grouped with offhand mentions). Running on 154 podcasts so far: https://podshelf.io/reading-lists

If you'd like your show added, comment the name, I'll backfill old episodes and plug it into the daily scan.