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Oh, and to actually comment on the substance of your message--yeah, there's a lot of self-help crap out there. But I think Laurie is trying hard to find the good science that can actually be applied. To use an example from the episode--the work on happiness showing that using money for others makes you happier than using it on yourself is pretty good (I recommend taking a look at "Happy Money" by Elizabeth Dunn and Mike Norton, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008J4L17K/. Or you can find free journal articles on the work--not plugging a purchase here). I think the worry we sometimes have is that if the research on this topic is good, then it -should- work when we try to apply it, so why aren't we trying to do a better job than the bullshit self-help industry is? I dunno--I've never been one to care that much about applying my own work to 'real life' but I can see the pull of trying to apply this work...

Unless you like dense but vague prose with no obvious application, I can't recommend this one, at least from the beginning in the free kindle sample: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian-Conception/dp/0199919755/ref=la_B000AQ6R56_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520986930&sr=1-1

But the first taste is free and YMMV. There are lots of blurbs from prestigious publications so go figure.

I just started reading How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. It looks like it's going to be an artsy political manifesto for dealing with some of the issues raised in this podcast: getting your capacity for outrage hijacked by companies competing for your attention, and doing stupid busywork because that seems more "productive" than going on a cruise and looking at animals on an island.

She starts with this Giorgio de Chirico quote from about a hundred years ago, in which he predicts that in the future we won't value dilettantes like Darwin anymore:

>In the face of the increasingly materialistic and pragmatic orientation of our age ... it would not be eccentric in the future to contemplate a society in which those who live for the pleasures of the mind will no longer have the right to demand their place in the sun. The writer, the thinker, the dreamer, the poet, the metaphysician, the observer ... he who tries to solve a riddle or pass a judgement will become an anachronistic figure, destined to disappear from the face of the earth like the ichthyosaur and the mammoth.

As someone who has always aspired to live a useless life but has never had the funds to pull it off, I'm curious to see what advice she has for ordinary people like me.

Guest request: Alex Rosenberg

For the following reasons:

1. I’m pretty sure Tamler mentioned that Rosenberg was his PhD supervisor. They wrote a paper together, anyway:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A%3A1026311011245
   Would be interesting to hear why Tamler now rejects the conclusion in that paper (if he does).
   
   
2. Rosenberg pushes the kind of hardcore reductionist/eliminativist agenda that Dave and Tamler seem to loathe: https://www.amazon.com/Atheists-Guide-Reality-Enjoying-Illusions/dp/0393344118
   
   
3. Rosenberg can be pretty terrifying in a debate:
   https://youtu.be/bhfkhq-CM84
   I think he’d bring out the best/silliest in Dave and Tamler.

Nevermind.
Willard Van Orman Quine, The Web of Belief.

https://www.amazon.com/What-Does-All-Mean-Introduction/dp/0195052161

Hmm I used a NYT review to get the translated name to post here, but it was published under the name "A Writer's Reality", which might have caused you trouble getting it. Bellow I posted a few links

https://www.amazon.com/Writers-Reality-Mario-Vargas-Llosa/dp/0815602537


https://www.amazon.com/Writers-Reality-Mario-Vargas-Llosa/dp/0395622344/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1537896303&sr=1-2&keywords=A+Writer%27s+Reality


https://www.amazon.com/Writers-Reality-Mario-Vargas-Llosa-ebook/dp/B00CKDAMY4

VeryBadWizards comes from the title of Tamlers book called "A Very Bad Wizards: Morality Behind The Curtain"
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Very-Bad-Wizard-Morality-Curtain/dp/193478138X
PS: David wrote the foreword to it too (I believe)