Playing Books

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. Thank you for tuning in to the episode on emotions. What if the greatest threat to your goals, your relationships, and your peace of mind is not the world around you but the unchecked storm raging inside you? Here is a question worth sitting with: if artificial intelligence is programmed to process and respond to information without emotional interference, why...

Welcome to the Playing Books Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this episode on human high capabilities and advantage. Artificial Intelligence may have left you feeling miserable and doubtful about your abilities and their relevance in the future. This episode should show why that shouldn’t be the case. Civilization, past advances, and development go to show, in many respects, that humans are ind...

Welcome to the Playing Books Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to the architecture episode. Picture this. Eleven million cubic yards of concrete poured into a single block on the Columbia River. Accolades were freely and frequently lavished on Grand Coulee Dam and the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project, including "The Biggest Thing on Earth!" "The Eighth Wonder of the World!" and...

Welcome to the Playing Books Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to the podcast's memoir episode. In this episode, our conversation is on Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s My Story , an inspiring, revealing, and marvelous memoir that chronicles one of the most extraordinary leadership journeys of the modern era. Published to mark Sheikh Mohammed's fifty years in public service, a journey that...

Welcome to the colonialism episode of the Playing Books Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this expository episode. In this episode, we discuss Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, a revealing, inspiring, and remarkable book that has influenced generations of readers, scholars, and activists. Rodney examines how centuries of colonialism, slavery, imperialism, and economic exploitatio...

Welcome back to Playing Books, the show where extraordinary stories reshape how you think, live, and participate in the world. Thank you for tuning in to the cyber episode of the podcast. In this episode, we discuss Fred Kaplan’s Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War , an explosive account of cyber warfare from its classified origins to its terrifying present day. Listening to this episo...

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. Thank you for tuning in to the intelligence episode of the podcast. The episode asks a question as old as humanity and as urgent as the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI): What is intelligence, really? Today, we’re sitting with Blaise Agüera y Arcas’s What Is Intelligence?: Lessons from AI About Evolution, Computing, and Minds, an inspiring and revealing book...

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. We thank you for tuning in to the sex episode of the podcast. We're exploring one of the most misunderstood aspects of human experience: sex. This episode focuses on Meg-John Barker’s The Psychology of Sex (The Psychology of Everything). What can psychology teach us about sex? How do different bodies and brains respond sexually? How can we prevent people f...

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. We thank you for tuning into the mental health episode of the podcast. Today’s conversation centers on a book that feels urgent, humane, and quietly revolutionary. The Unfragile Mind: A Physician’s Call for Restoring Hope and Humanity to Mental Health Care by Gavin Francis is not just another title in the mental‑health space. It’s a reminder, delivered with cl...

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. We thank you for tuning into the memoir episode of the podcast. You made a great choice. This episode is largely about desiring a quality life, dreaming it, and going to work with everything you’ve got to make it a reality. We discuss Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life, one of the most unexpectedly raw, refreshingly honest, and genuinely l...

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. We thank you for tuning into the history episode of the podcast. What if the "New World" wasn't new to everyone? Our conversation is about Ivan Van Sertima’s They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (Journal of African Civilizations). We step outside the lines of traditional history to explore a masterpiece that didn’t j...

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. We thank you for tuning into the cognitive episode of the podcast. We discuss Barbara Oakley, PhD’s A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra). Being a human being itself makes everyone highly intelligent and cognitive, far more than imagined. Many students, parents, teachers, bosses, and supposed geniuses have assumed t...

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. We thank you for tuning into the health episode of the podcast. What if your grocery list could become your first line of defense against disease? In this week’s episode, we dive into the groundbreaking book Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself by William W. Li, MD, a powerful, eye-opening exploration of how food can do far mor...

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. We thank you for tuning into the mystery episode of the podcast. Do you ever feel like invisible hands manage the world’s stage? Do you suspect that history isn’t a series of accidents, but a carefully scripted play? Humans must never be independent! We must become docile. In this episode of Playing Books, we discuss Jüri Lina’s "Architects of Deception.&...

Thank you for tuning in to the Playing Books podcast. Welcome to the character episode of the podcast. What if the fastest way to real success, truly loving, mutual relationships, and lasting influence isn’t grinding harder or posting louder, but getting smaller on purpose?   In this fresh, no-fluff episode of Playing Books , we crack open Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney, a foundational,...

Thank you for tuning into the Playing Books Podcast. Welcome to the writing episode of the podcast.  Have you felt it, that sinking moment when you reread something you wrote and thought: this isn't it? The idea was there. The feeling was real. But somehow, between the brain and the page, something leaked out, leaving behind a sentence that works but doesn't sing. "Most writers know w...

Thank you for tuning in to the Playing Books Podcast. We welcome you to the biography episode of our podcast. In this episode of the Playing Books Podcast, we discuss Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, a book that strips away the myth, the marketing fog, and the glossy hero stories to reveal the real human behind Apple’s iconic glow. This isn’t just a biography; it’s a brutally honest autopsy of geniu...

Thank you for tuning in to the Playing Books Podcast. We welcome you to our episode about animals. "Ever wondered what truly awakens when the sun dips below the horizon? Most of us live our lives bathed in daylight, oblivious to the vibrant, mysterious world that thrives under the cloak of night. In this captivating new episode of the Playing Books podcast, we plunge into the shadows with Dan...

Thank you for your time and for tuning in to our expository episode of the Playing Books podcast. In this new episode of the Playing Books Podcast, we sit down with Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin’s Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism (An Examination of Antisemitism) , a book that doesn’t tiptoe around the hard questions. Instead, it walks straight into them with clarity, realism, and a k...

Thank you so much for tuning in to the Playing Books podcast. Welcome to yet another episode to honor women in this International Women's Month.  This episode explores the conversation we’ve all been avoiding until now. We discuss Laura Bates' Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All (Essential Book for Women's Histor...

Thank you for your time and for tuning in to the Playing Books podcast. Welcome to the spycraft episode of the Playing Books podcast.  In this episode of Playing Books, we discuss Operation Ajax: The Story of the CIA Coup that Remade the Middle East by Mike de Seve, illustrated by Daniel Burwen, with a foreword by Stephen Kinzer, and ask a simple question: what really happened in Iran in 1953, and...

Thank you for tuning in to the Playing Books Podcast. We're recording this episode in a month when the world marks International Workers’ Day, making it the perfect time to ask: whose voices are actually being heard in the workplace, in politics, and in public? In this episode, we’re discussing Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard. A book that The Guardian calls one of the 100 Best Boo...

Welcome to a new practical episode of the Playing Books podcast. We discuss the mechanics of human agreement in this episode.  Every day, we negotiate at work, at home, in relationships, even with ourselves. The question is: Are we negotiating well? In this episode of the Playing Books Podcast, we talk about the timeless negotiation classic Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In b...

Thank you for tuning in to the Playing Books Podcast. Welcome to the entrepreneurial episode of the podcast.  We discuss Daniel S. Peña’s Your First 100 Million and ask a simple, uncomfortable question: what if the gap between your current life and your first serious wealth is not talent, luck, or followers, but the price you’re truly willing to pay for it? Did you know happiness comes from massiv...

Thank you for your time and for tuning in to the love episode of the Playing Books podcast. What is the actual cost of following your heart? Is it your reputation? Your peace of mind? Your bank account? In today’s episode of the Playing Books podcast, we are dusting off a masterpiece of realism that has been unfairly forgotten. We’re diving into Arnold Bennett’s 1914 classic, The Price of Love. Wh...