Playing Books

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this retrospective episode of the podcast. Winston Churchill led Britain through World War II as Prime Minister of Britain, and history calls him a hero. But did you know he also engineered a famine that killed three million Indians? The Bengal Famine of 1943. In this episode, we open Madhusree Mukerjee's explosive book, Churchil...

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this personal development, self-improvement, and goal-setting episode of the podcast. You set the goal. You buy the journal. You swear this time will feel different. Then something invisible pulls you back to square one, and you blame your willpower, your schedule, your past. Brianna Wiest calls that force something else. She calls i...

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. Thank you for tuning in to our politics episode of the podcast. What does effective leadership look like in a century defined by economic competition, technological change, and global uncertainty? In this episode, we discuss the book by China’s President, Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, which presents China's approach to leadership, governance, econom...

Thank you for tuning in to the Playing Books podcast. Welcome to our first episode on President Donald J. Trump. What does it take to understand a man who has been called everything from a master dealmaker to a media manipulator, a Manhattan playboy to the Leader of the Free World? In this episode of Playing Books, we open the pages of Trump Revealed, the definitive biography by Pulitzer Prize win...

Thank you for tuning in to the Playing Books podcast. Welcome to the finance episode. Why does financial advice often sound like a foreign language? What do terms like inflation, equity, bonds, leverage, and derivatives actually mean? And why do so many intelligent people feel excluded from conversations about money, investing, and wealth building? In this episode of the Playing Books podcast, we...

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. Thank you for tuning in to the hands-on skills episode of the podcast. Why does a brilliant product sit there unsold? Why does a clever ad feel loud and still get ignored? And what if the problem was never your offer, but the sentence that tried to introduce it? We discuss Eugene M. Schwartz’s Breakthrough Advertising , with a foreword by Martin Edelston, in t...

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. Thank you for tuning in to the expository episode of the podcast. What do we actually know about Muhammad, and how do we know it? Most of us meet him through a finished life story. A merchant. A shepherd. A messenger. A conqueror. A man whose words remade the map of the world. But that polished portrait did not arrive on the day he died. It was assembled later...

Welcome to the Playing Books Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to our Mathematics episode of the podcast. Why did math feel impossible in school? Why do so many bright adults still quietly admit they cannot do it? And what if the very thing you were taught to fear is the key to thinking more clearly about nearly everything? Today on Playing Books, we open the cover on Morris Kline's classic,  M...

Welcome to the Playing Books Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another detective episode. If you have ever wondered how CIA officers read a room in seconds, get a stranger to reveal everything, or disappear in plain sight, this episode is for you. Inside Ultimate Guide to CIA Skills, Tactics, and Techniques, former CIA officer John Kiriakou pulls back the curtain on real-world tradecraft. Not Ho...

Thank you for tuning in to the Playing Books Podcast. In this episode, we discuss Ben Macintyre's A Spy Among Friends, the gripping New York Times bestseller that reveals one of the most astonishing acts of betrayal in modern history. Imagine discovering that your closest friend, trusted colleague, and longtime confidant has secretly worked for the enemy for decades. For British intelligence o...

Welcome back to the Playing Books Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to our English and grammar episode. Do you ever feel your English is almost there but not quite strong enough to own the room, ace the interview, or win the conversation? You know exactly what you want to say, but the right words, correct grammar, and confident tone slip away. This new episode is your reset. Today we discuss 30 Day...

Welcome to the Playing Books podcast. Thank you for tuning in to the British Premiership episode. Today we open the pages of works that reshape how we see power, ambition, and the people who hold both in Britain’s premiership history. Our discussion focuses on Robert Eccleshall and Graham Walker’s Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers. The book refuses to treat history’s most influent...

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...