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Lex Fridman Podcast

Lex Fridman · Science · Technology

Books mentioned on Lex Fridman Podcast

21 books from the 8 episodes we have processed, ranked by how many episodes they came up in. Sponsor reads are left out. How we check

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Most heard · 1 episode
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
by American Psychiatric Association

“with the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Profession. DSM-3. DSM-3, and then there's been DSM-3R, DSM-4, DSM-4TR, and now DSM-5. Finally, not with a Roman numeral, but with an Arabic numeral. So they thought with DSM-5, when they needed to modify it, it would be like a piece of software.”

#502 – Psychiatry, Insane Asylums, Mental Illness, ECT, Lobotomies, Freud & Jung · 17/09/2026 · at 13:34

  1. 2
    Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry's Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness
    by Andrew Scull · 1 episode

    “Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine, and Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry's Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness. Andrew Skull has spent decades studying how societies have understood madness, how psychiatry rose to authority, and how often that authority was used with false confidence and catastrophic consequences.”

    #502 – Psychiatry, Insane Asylums, Mental Illness, ECT, Lobotomies, Freud & Jung · 17/09/2026 · at 0:14

  2. 3
    Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    by Mark Twain · 1 episode

    “And one of the texts I was going to have that I assigned in the class was Huckleberry Finn. And a lot of the students said they wouldn't read Huckleberry Finn because they knew it had language in it and they didn't want to see those words.”

    #499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil War, Slavery, Lincoln, Grant & Lee · 28/07/2026 · at 3:40:49

  3. 4
    Asylum
    by Patrick McGrath · 1 episode

    “I thought was quite well done. And my friend Patrick McGrath, who's a novelist, wrote a book called Asylum. Patrick grew up in the grounds of Broadmoor. Broadmoor is England's premier hospital for the criminally insane.”

    #502 – Psychiatry, Insane Asylums, Mental Illness, ECT, Lobotomies, Freud & Jung · 17/09/2026 · at 1:54:51

  4. 5
    Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
    by David Graeber · 1 episode

    “And this, by the way, is not a new thesis. David Graeber wrote this wonderful piece, Bullshit Jobs, back in, I think it was maybe early 2010s, based on a poll he did in the UK asking people at that time, I think the question was something like, would it make a difference if you didn't go to work for humanity, for mankind?”

    #501 – DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux · 26/08/2026 · at 3:09:45

  5. 6
    Einstein's Unfinished Dream: Practical Progress Towards a Theory of Everything
    by Don Lincoln · 1 episode

    “So let me, I love this. All right. So let's back up. I'm going to pitch. I wrote this book for Oxford, Einstein's Unfinished Dream. And Einstein's Unfinished Dream was to come up with a theory of everything. It was unfinished because, well, it's unfinished. And so the second part, the tagline of that book is practical progress towards a theory of everything with the emphasis on practical.”

    #497 – Biggest Mysteries in Physics: Antimatter, Dark Energy & ToE – Don Lincoln · 29/05/2026 · at 1:29:50

  6. 7
    Fat and Blood: And How to Make Them
    by Silas Weir Mitchell · 1 episode

    “So wear and tear, that was the problem. And the solution was fat and blood. That was the title of the other book. So you got scrawny and all nervous and twitchy. And what you really needed was to build back up your strength, including your nervous strength.”

    #502 – Psychiatry, Insane Asylums, Mental Illness, ECT, Lobotomies, Freud & Jung · 17/09/2026 · at 2:14:38

  7. 8
    Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine
    by Andrew Scull · 1 episode

    “The following is a conversation with Andrew Skull, a historian of psychiatry and mental health. He has authored many books that I highly recommend, including Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine, and Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry's Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness.”

    #502 – Psychiatry, Insane Asylums, Mental Illness, ECT, Lobotomies, Freud & Jung · 17/09/2026 · at 0:00

  8. 9
    Mein Kampf
    by Adolf Hitler · 1 episode

    “I think if we ignore history, we're going to be doomed to repeat it. I think that's, we should never censor books. We should read books. We should read Mein Kampf. We should read books that capture a certain moment in history, even if it's a hateful moment in history, even if it's a destructive moment in history.”

    #499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil War, Slavery, Lincoln, Grant & Lee · 28/07/2026 · at 3:39:54

  9. 10
    Moby-Dick, or The Whale
    by Herman Melville · 1 episode

    “Or do you want to escape? I listen to a mixture. I listen to some history books, but I also listen to some mysteries and some. So fiction is also. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And some books that I think I should listen to and haven't ever gotten around to reading. I did Moby Dick that way.”

    #499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil War, Slavery, Lincoln, Grant & Lee · 28/07/2026 · at 2:29:21

11 more, by type

History & Politics

4

Fiction & Literature

3

Mind & Behaviour

2

Health, Fitness & Nutrition

1

Philosophy, Spirituality & Belief

1