(Part 2) Top products from r/JoeRogan

Ok, two different categories of recs that arent exactly what you asked for but you might want to put on the radar:

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1. Superbly enjoyable stories of bad-assery: I love Alistair MacLean's (historical fiction) books. These two are my favorite. They are the alpha male equivalent of romance beach novels. They are excellent:
   South by Java Head: https://www.amazon.com/South-Java-Head-Alistair-MacLean/dp/0006172482
   The Guns of Navarone: https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Navarone-Alistair-MacLean/dp/0006172474
   
   
2. Marcus Aurelius's Meditations is the single book I would take with me to an island. It reads like a conversation with a friend. Not archaic, not heavy or overwrought, and yet gets to the essence of what it means to be a good man and live a good life. General Mattis used to carry this in combat. I suggest reading it bits at a time, in 20-30 minute sessions. https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Thrift-Editions-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/048629823X
   
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   Some quotes from #2 to give you a sense. Crazy this was just a roman emperor's diary 2000 years ago:
   
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   “When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...”
   
   “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
   
   “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
   
   “Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”
   
   “The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
   “Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.”

I'm in the middle of Homo Deus currently. Its great so far, Yuval is a great writer and his books are a lot more accessible than traditional history books. I'm sure there are a lot of liberties taken with some of the history but I think Sapiens is a must-read. Homo Deus is more assumption based on current reality but its very interesting so far.

Gulag Archipelago is one I read based on the recommendation of Jordan Peterson. Awesome book if you are into WW1-WW2 era eastern europe. being an eastern european myself, i devour everything related to it so this book tickled my fancy quite a bit. good look into the pitfalls of what peterson warns against.

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning is another history book discussing that time period and how it all transpired and the lesser known reasons why WW2 went down the way it did. some surprising stuff in that book related to hitler modeling europe around how the united states was designed at the time.

apologies for inundating with the same topic for all my books so far but Ordinary Men is an amazing book chronicling the people that carried out most of the killings during WW2 in Poland, Germany and surrounding areas. The crux of the argument which I have read in many other books is that Auschwitz is a neat little box everyone can picture in their head and assign blame to when in reality most people killed during that time were taken to the outskirts of their town and shot in plain sight by fellow townspeople, mostly retired police officers and soldiers no longer able for active duty.

for some lighter reading i really enjoy jon ronson's books and i've read all of them. standouts are So You've Been Publicly Shamed and The Psychopath Test. Highly recommend Them as well which has an early Alex Jones cameo in it.

All right. Just went through my library and the following stood out to me:


Desert Solitaire (1968) by Edward Abbey: One of the best American voices for conservation spent some seasons as a park ranger in the desert southwest. Here are some brilliant, funny, and soundly critical musings inspired by his time there.


A Continuous Harmony (1972) & The Unsettling of America (1977) by Wendell Berry: In my opinion, Wendell Berry is the best cultural critic we've ever had. He's 86 now and still a powerful voice of reason in a chaotic society. Dismissed mistakenly by fools as someone who just wants to go back to the old days, he offers much-needed critiques on our decomposing relationship to the land and what it's been doing to our culture.


Night Comes to the Cumberlands (1962) by Harry M. Caudill: This Kentucky native saw what the predatory and morally bankrupt coal industry had done to the people and land (and the relationship between the two) in Appalachia and outlined how it all happened in powerful inarguable detail. This book serves as a stern warning about what chaos and destruction industries can bring forth when profit is their only concern. Anyone wondering why Appalachia is full of depressed drug addicts can find the roots of those issues in this book, which inspired The War on Poverty.

The Big Sky (1947) by A.B. Guthrie Jr. : A classic novel about a young kid who runs away to join the fur trade in the frontier days. It tells a very believable story, rather than chasing the overblown myths of the West like most novels dealing with that subject.

Shantyboat (1977) & Payne Hollow by Harlan Hubbard: He and his wife Anna built a truly rewarding and pleasant life together almost entirely independent of modern industrial society in the 1940s and 50s, first floating down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers on a shantyboat they built, living from temporary gardens and trading with people they met along the river, and then settling into Payne Hollow where they lived a realer-than-Thoreau existence together for decades. True love, and true meaningful living.

Of Wolves and Men (1978) by Barry Lopez: Rogan seems to think he's some kind of authority on wolves and I cringe every time I hear him start talking about them. It doesn't begin and end with "These are savage fucking predators that need to be controlled!" He seriously needs to read this book, which is a beautifully-written and exhaustive look at the history of the relationship between human and wolves. Like most interesting things, it is a complex issue.

My Life With The Eskimo (1909?) by Vilhjalmur Stefansson: The accounts of an ethnologist traveling through the arctic before much contact had been made between Europeans and Natives. Incredible stories of survival and the inevitable interesting situations that occur when two vastly different cultures meet.

The Marsh Arabs (1964) & Arabian Sands (1959) by Wilfred Thesiger: This dude went deep. Deep into the marshes of Southern Iraq and deep into the Empty Quarter of Arabia. Both books are amazing accounts of voyages through incredible parts of the world whose geography and people have since been changed forever.

The Mountain People (1972) by Colin M. Turnbull: This anthropologist lived with the Ik in Uganda as they went through a complete cultural disintegration brought on by starvation during a drought. Reading this, one sees how quickly complete tragic anarchy takes hold when basic resources are in desperate need. Humanity went out the window.

Let me know if you ever read any of these, and how you like them. I would bet they provide anyone with good food for thought and discussion.

Steve Volk was an awesome guest who was promoting his book 'Fringe-ology'. If you're into taking a more objective look at the unexplainable- like paranormal, psychic phenomena, and extrasensory perception then this book is hard to beat. Really fun read too.

In his book How to Build a Time Machine by Paul Davies tackles the issue directly: Is time travel possible? The answer, insists Davies, is definitely yes, the caveat though are ironing out the kinks in the space-time continuum. Ignore the tongue in cheek title though, it's misleading and does not literally describe in detail on how to build an actual time machine, just the theoretical plausibility.

I'm also glad you brought up the impossibility according to our science because while you are absolutely right in classical physics it's not possible, once you get down to the quantum realm, all classical physics completely breaks down and that goes to the very heart of the subject itself. And we're only just now tapping into this new realm of science and with companies like D-Wave and Google exploring the possibilities of quantum computers, we might have a definite answer in the near future.

Tom Shroder Wrote about a book about healing power of LSD.
http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Test-Ecstasy-Power-Heal/dp/0147516374/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452616841&sr=1-1&keywords=acid+test

edit: that sounded fruity here:
Acid Test: LSD, Ecstasy, and the Power to Heal
Despite their illegality, many Americans are already familiar with the effects of psychedelic drugs. Yet while LSD and MDMA (better known as Ecstasy) have proven extraordinarily effective in treating anxiety disorders such as PTSD, they remain off-limits to the millions who might benefit from them. Through the stories of three very different men, awardwinning journalist Tom Shroder covers the drugs’ roller-coaster history from their initial reception in the 1950s to the negative stereotypes that persist today. At a moment when popular opinion is rethinking the potential benefits of some illegal drugs, Acid Test is a fascinating and informative must-read.

There's a really good book about this dude and his feud with another renowned chemist, Walther Nernst, as well as some other history concerning people like Gilbert Lewis and Linus Pauling and Svante Arrhenius. It's my favorite science history book other than maybe Quantum Ten. It's called Cathedrals of Science by Patrick Coffey.

As much as Joe talks about conspiracy theories, it would be cool to have Jesse Walker on, the author of The United State of Paranoia. I loved this book and I think Joe would have an interesting conversation with this dude.

This is an excellent book if you're interested in learning more about the Bin Ladens.

It isn’t exactly the same, but “Gang Leader for a Day” is fantastic: https://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X

I'll plug Bill's book since he's too polite to: The Social Leap

https://www.amazon.com/King-Warrior-Magician-Lover-Rediscovering/dp/0062506064

Go read a book: https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires-Reinvent/dp/006236250X

https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Built-Hell-Extraordinary-Communities/dp/0143118072/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519698332&sr=8-1&keywords=a+paradise+built+in+hell

I bought Volume I, this edition.

Eugene S. Robinson, host of the Knuckle Up podcast, the BEST MMA podcast out there...author of "FIGHT: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Ass Kicking, but were afraid you would get your ass kicked, for asking"

Eugene is also the lead singer of the band [Oxbow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxbow_(band) and Deputy Editor at OZY.com.

Eugene is a very interesting guy who could easily yammer on for 3 hours or more about MMA, politics, music, whatever.

Time may be running short...get Eugene on the podcast, SOON!

It completely is true.

His Patreon is held aloft by his YouTube, not his Twitter.

While Peterson may get recognition in the mainstream for his interactions with the SJWs, he rarely actually makes content about that. His Patreon specifically funds his lectures.

This is from his Patreon:

>I will produce two original lectures a week: one dealing with the psychological significance of Biblical stories; the other providing a more in-depth analysis of thinkers such as Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn and Jung, with detours into the thinking of the other great philosophers and historians of the Western tradition. I will also implement a biweekly Q and A series, and set up interviews with the best scientist-lecturers and other thinkers of the current age. Finally, I want to start an online letter archive so that people can have access to the most interesting and meaningful of the thousands of letters I have received over the last months.

No mention of SJWs, at all.

But, how exactly is he dishonest when he does discuss SJWs?
Are you pretending that people aren't being physically assaulted on university campuses for holding opinions that lay outside the mainstream?
Did the Berkeley riots not happen?
Are Antifa not starting riots at every free-speech or right-wing event?

Please don't tell me you're doing the ''both sides are just as bad'' thing. If you are, I would like for you to give me some examples of right-wing Randian university professors braining people they disagree with with bike locks.

Don't get me wrong, assholes exist on both sides, but one side is clearly more vicious and authoritarian than the other.

Fact of the matter is, the right and the centre aren't starting riots at leftist speaking events, whereas the left is attempting to shut down everyone they disagree with.
And it isn't fringe elements, either.

When a mainstream news outlet like Vice runs an article where they ask an ethicist if it's ok to punch someone in the face if you disagree with them, it's clear we have a problem.
When MTV is advocating hipster racism, you can no longer claim that it's a fringe minority.
When the blank slate theory is so heavily propogated in mainstream academia that Steven Pinker needs to author an entire book deconstructing the theory and the openly socialist presidential candidate refuses to disavow his support for Fidel Castro, it is clear that marxism has poisoned public discourse.
And when people are coming out of university claiming that black people can't be racist and that birth defects prove human biological sex isn't binary, it's clear that postmodernism has corrupted university education.

It is not a fringe, it is not a minority. At this point, left wing politics as an edifice have become a diseased behemoth.

And it isn't just science, politics, and philosophy that have been infected. Modern comic-books have become this. Think that's a cherrypicked example? It isn't. Unfortunately, this is what comic-books are now. how about this space-dictator that's just a Donald Trump photoshop? Or a writer using a supervillain to conflate people who want border control with actual, literal Nazis? Even Iron Man has been killed off and replaced with a 15 year old black girl.

Comic-books are the canary in the coalmine. The worm is turning in all media.

Politics is downstream from culture. That's what makes the discussion of social justice so important.

You can claim that there are more pressing issues for the citizenry than discussing social justice, but there aren't. Art and culture are representative of a society's mental health, and leftist social policing and cultural indoctrination are a societal obsessive-compulsive disorder that cannot be left untreated.