If Books Could Kill
The 4-Hour Workweek
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.
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TwitterPeter's other podcast, 5-4Mike's other podcast, Maintenance PhaseSources:
The Fraud and the Four-Hour WorkweekRevisiting "The 4-Hour Workweek"New! Improved! Shape Up Your L...The Clinton E-Mail Scandal [TEASER]
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.
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God And Man At Yale
Oops all grievance.
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No Ivory Tower : Mccarthyism And The UniversitiesThe Fire Is Upon UsThe Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945The Passion of William F. Buckley: Academic Freedom, Conspiratorial Conservatism, and the Rise of the Postwar RightWhy Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities with the Intelligence Community, 1945-1955Debunking a L...'On Bullsh*t' and the Pundit Industrial Complex [TEASER]
For this month's bonus episode we dissected Harry Frankfurt's gloriously brief bestseller and applied the concept to our favorite op-ed page.Â
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Liberal Fascism
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.
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History News Network: A Symposium on Jonah Goldbergâs L...Are The Straights OK [TEASER]
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.Â
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BONUS: Conservatives vs. Pride Month
Lots of subscribers asked us to release last month's bonus episode in full so here it is! Share it with the conservatives, the boomers and the Satanists in your life.
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TwitterPeter's other podcast, 5-4Mike's other podcast, Maintenance PhaseThanks to Mindseye for our theme song!
The Rules
In 1995 a bestselling book proposed a simple dating strategy for women: Get thin, wear bright colors and become a completely different person for the rest of your life.
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From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America Taffy Brodesser-Aknerâs essay, âStuff Your âRulesââ The More Things Change: The Rules And Late EighteenthâCentury Conduct Books For Women Shrinking...Atomic Habits
This week we're discussing "Atomic Habits," a book about how to use science (and also some stuff thatâs definitely not science) to train yourself to be a more functional person.
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How 1% Performance Improvements Led to Olympic GoldFrom paupers to kings: The lottery-funded revolution Habit FormationImplementation Intentions to Reduce Smoking: A Systematic Review of the...Conservatives vs. Pride Month [TEASER]
To celebrate Pride Month we recorded the most depressing bonus episode we've ever done.
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The World is Flat
Much has been said about globalization, but perhaps no one has said it worse than Thomas Friedman.
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Why The World Isn't FlatThe World Is Still Not FlatDHL Global Connectedness Index 2022"Nudge" Part 2: Mr. Nudge Goes to Washington
The Nudgening.
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David Gal's "Behavioral Winter"The i-frame and the s-frame: How focusing on individual-level solutions has led behavioral public policy astrayWhy Is Behavioral Economics So Popular?Applying Behavioral Insights To Intimate Partner ViolenceWhat Counts as a Nudge?The Power of Nudges, for Good and BadAllowing Patients to Waive the Right to Sue for Medical Malpractice: A Response t...The Meme Stock Cult [TEASER]
In 2021, scrappy young investors from across the world joined forces to buy GameStop stock, aiming to take down greedy hedge funds. What came next was tragedy, injustice, and a conspiratorial internet cult so stupid we had to do an episode about it.
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"Nudge" Part 1: A Simple Solution For Littering, Organ Donations and Climate Change
In 2008, an economist and a law professor proposed a radical new approach to politics: Telling people not to do bad stuff.
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Mike's Maintenance Phase episode on the godfather of the "cafeteria nudge"Nudge: Concept, Effectiveness, and EthicsFrom mechanism to virtue: Evaluating Nudge theoryThe effectiveness of nudging: A meta-analysis of choice architecture interventions across behavioral domainsWhy the Most Important I...The 5 Love Languages
Whatâs your love language? Is it gifts? Words of affirmation? Or is it podcasts about books with extremely weird, reactionary gender dynamics?
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Can Gary Chapman Save Your Marriage?The Sixth Love Language Does Not ExistHow âThe Five Love Languagesâ Gets Misinterpreted The 5 Love Languages Donât Matter as Much as You ThinkThe Creator Of The 5 Love Languages Is A Homo...Ben Shapiro's Plan To End Poverty [TEASER]
Is it bootstraps? It's bootstraps.
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Rich Dad Poor Dad
In 1997, Robert Kiyosaki revealed the secret to lifelong success: Deliver grifty seminars and hire child slaves.
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Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance IndustryâRich Dad Poor Dad' Robert Kiyosaki ExposedStupid Investment of the WeekRobert Kiyosakiâs Rich Dad Education on Real Estate Investing ReviewThe Ticket to Easy Street? The Financial Consequences of Winning the Lotte...The Dumbest Campus Controversies Of The Last Decade [TEASER]
Get in loser, we're going to Oberlin.
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Hillbilly Elegy
In 2016, J.D. Vance informally launched his political career with "Hillbilly Elegy," a memoir that blames the relative poverty of Appalachian and Rust Belt populations on their own culture. Despite its reactionary premise, mainstream and liberal press outlets were so enamored by the book that they accidentally made Vance a senator.
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Appalachian Reckoning Americaâs Divided Recovery What Did H...The Coddling Of The American Mind
TRIGGER WARNING: if you're a SNOWFLAKE college professor afraid of how your students are expressing themselves, you might need a SAFE SPACE, because Michael and Peter are discussing "The Coddling of The American Mind," a book about campus culture that's light on facts and heavy on cherry-picked anecdotes.
CORRECTION: The Socrates quote mentioned at the end of this episode is apocryphal. We thank the listeners who pointed this out for refusing to coddle our American minds.
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The New York Times's War On Trans Kids [TEASER]
The nation's most prestigious newspaper insists on asking a very stupid question. So for this month's bonus episode, we decided to answer it.
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As we mentioned at the top of the episode, we're donating this month's support to three of our trans journo-friends! They've been unbelievably patient with Mike as he's navigated the science and politics of this issue over the last year. Here's where to find and support their work:
...The Clash of Civilizations
"If your thesis doesn't hold up to obvious criticisms, there's a chance that your thesis sucks."
Thanks to Paul Musgrave and Alex Cruikshanks for helping us fact-check this episode!
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Links!
Huntingtonâs 1993 articleStatistics on deaths in state-based conflicts The Clash of Civilizations: An Islamicistâs CritiquePaul Musgraveâs Roundtable on Clash of Civilizations  âThe Hispanic Challengeâ The âArab Streetâ? Pub...The End of History
Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man" changed political discourse forever. Peter and Michael peel back his muddled history and fluffy rhetoric, revealing several more layers of muddled history and fluffy rhetoric.
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Reflections on the End of History, Five Years Later (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2505433)More Proof That This Really Is the End of History (h...The Lab Leak [TEASER]
In December 2019, the coronavirus pandemic began in Wuhan, China. In May 2021, America experienced one of the most cursed weeks of punditry we've ever seen.
This is a condensed version of the full episode. To hear the rest go to patreon.com/IfBooksPod. See you next week!Â
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus
In 1992 a yoga instructor with a distance-learning PhD had the courage to ask: "Are women not getting help around the house because they're using the wrong modal verb?"
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The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages?The Secret
Rhonda Byrne's "The Secret" sold millions of copies based on a simple premise: All of science is fake and the only reason anything ever happens is because people manifest it by communicating with the universe.
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Power Lines Oprah's Ugly Secret The Staggering Bullshit of The SecretDeath by âalternativeâ medicine: Whoâs to blame? For Some Seeking Rebirth, Sweat Lodge Was End A Little Secret About The SecretÂThanks...
The Population Bomb
How a Stanford lepidopterist convinced the world to fear the breeding habits of the poor. Again.
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Sonia Shahâs âThe Next Great Migrationâ Barbarian Hordes: The overpopulation scapegoat in international development discourseOptimism and OverpopulationThe Population Bomb RevisitedThe Strange History of Birth ControlBirth Control for OthersHow the World Survived the Population Bomb: Lessons From 50 Years of Extraordinary Demographic HistoryWhy the Population Bomb is a Rockefeller BabyA Bari Special Bonus Episode [TEASER]
Our first premium episode is a deep dive into the blog of the infamously (and dubiously) "canceled" Bari Weiss.
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More free episodes are on their way!Â
The Game
Neil Strauss's "The Game" aimed to teach any man how to hook up with beautiful women. All he needed was a little bit of sociopathy, a lot of misogyny and a fanny pack full of props.
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He's Simply Resistable  Pickup Artists Are Still A Thing. And They Want You To Know Theyâve Evolved.Misogynist Incels and Male Supremacism Would the Pickup Artist Stand a Chance in the...David Brooks's "Bobos in Paradise"
David Brooks became liberals' famous conservative by telling them what they wanted to hear. But ... why did they want to hear something that was lazy and wrong?
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Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers"
In "Outliers," Malcolm Gladwell posited that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in something. Mike and Peter prove him wrong by mastering his dumb book over the span of about 50 minutes.
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Freakonomics
In 2005, two men named Steven and Stephen published the quintessential airport book. In 2022, two men named Mike and Peter started a whole podcast just to make fun of it.
Thanks to Ted Joyce and Ames Grawert for helping with the research for this episode!
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