Book Club with Michael Smerconish

Admiral James Stavridis appears on the Book Club Podcast four times. Listen to To Risk It All (Episode #116), 2054 (Episode #354), The Restless Wave (Episode #415), and The Admiral's Bookshelf (#446). Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Michael interviews New York Times bestselling author Benjamin Wallace about his new book, "The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto." Wallace delves into the enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto, the elusive creator of Bitcoin, whose identity remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of our time. Wallace traces his investigation across the globe, explo...

Michael welcomes New York Times Bestselling author Michael Wolff with his book "All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America." In it, Wolff delivers a breathtaking insider account of the 2024 Trump campaign—undoubtedly the wildest, most unpredictable campaign in U.S. history, including multiple criminal trials, two assassination attempts, and a sudden switch of opponents. 'All or Nothing' takes re...

Laura Delano is a writer, speaker, and consultant, and the founder of Inner Compass Initiative, a nonprofit organization that helps people make more informed choices about psychiatric diagnoses, drugs, and drug withdrawal. She is a leading voice in the international movement of people who’ve left behind the medicalized, professionalized mental health industry to build something different. Laura wo...

Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret.), a leader in international business, national security, and global philanthropy, shares the books that facilitated his success. A guide to living and leading through reading, The Admiral’s Bookshelf links twenty-five essential life lessons and leadership principles to the books that best illustrate them. After speaking with him, Michael is then inspired to revea...

Alex Isenstadt is a Senior Political Reporter at Axios. Previously, he was National Political reporter at Politico, where he covered Donald Trump since 2015. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Michael talks to trial lawyer and communication expert Jefferson Fisher about his fascinating new book, "The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More." Its ties to the themes of Michael's work with The Mingle Project are intriguing. Listen to this conversation about the definitive book that will make your next conversation the one that changes everything. No matter who you’re talking to, "The Next...

"Busted: A Tale of Corruption and Betrayal in the City of Brotherly Love" is the shocking true story of the biggest police corruption scandal in Philadelphia history, a tale of drugs, power, and abuse involving a rogue narcotics squad, a confidential informant, and two veteran journalists whose reporting drove a full-scale FBI probe, rocked the City of Brotherly Love, and earned a Pulitzer Prize....

On October 3, 1993, about a hundred elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take an hour. Instead, they found themselves pinned down through a long and terrible night fighting against thousands of heavily-armed Somalis. The fo...

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, six US presidential administrations of both parties pursued policies for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia that emboldened Russia, playing into its imperialist, centuries-long mythos of regional hegemony. The result: military aggression and full-scale invasion. It was all too foreseeable. In The Folly of Realism, leading national security expert and bestselling a...

Technology: your master, or your friend? Do you feel ruled by your smartphone and enslaved by your email or social-network activities? Digital technology is making us miserable, say bestselling authors and former tech executives Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever. We’ve become a tribe of tech addicts—and it’s not entirely our fault. Michael talks with Vivek Wadhwa, co-author of "Your Happiness Was Hac...

Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown has sat on the Senate floor at a mahogany desk with a proud history. In "Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America", he tells the story of eight of the Senators who were there before him. Listen to his conversation with Michael from 26 November 2019. The book was published on 5 November 2019. Hosted by Simplecast, an...

Yoni Appelbaum is a deputy executive editor of The Atlantic and a social and cultural historian of the United States. Before joining The Atlantic, he was a lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University. He previously taught at Babson College and at Brandeis University, where he received his PhD in American history. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for inform...

The epic story of how America turned the world economy into a weapon, upending decades of globalization to take on a new authoritarian axis—Russia, China, and Iran. It used to be that ravaging another country’s economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities. Now all it takes is a statement posted online by the U.S. government. In Chokepoints, Edward Fishman, a former top Stat...

In Craig Fehrman’s groundbreaking work of history, "Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote" opens a rich new window into presidential biography. Listen to his conversation with Michael here to experience a different side of Presidents past and present. From volumes lost to history—Calvin Coolidge’s Autobiography, which was one of the most widely discussed titl...

Michael welcomes Nicholas Carr, author of "Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart," a bracing exploration of how social media has warped our sense of self and society. From the telegraph and telephone in the 1800s to the internet and social media in our own day, the public has welcomed new communication systems. Whenever people gain more power to share information, the assumption...

He doesn't believe in diets, and says we should exercise less. Meet Dr. Fredrik Nystrom, professor of medicine at Linkoping University in Sweden. He joins Michael with his book "Lighten the load on your shoulders!" Dr. Nystrom is professor and senior consultant in internal medicine in the Department of Health, Medicine and Caring Sciences. Original air date 28 January 2025. The book was published...

Michael talks with Tim Harford, author of "The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics." Today we think statistics are the enemy, numbers used to mislead and confuse us. That’s a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn’t be suspicious of statistics—we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen...

From the New York Times bestselling authors of "The Nazi Conspiracy" and "The Lincoln Conspiracy" comes a true, little-known story about the first assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy, right before his inauguration. What most Americans don’t know is that JFK’s historic presidency almost ended before it began―at the hands of a disgruntled sociopathic loner armed with dynamite, named Richard Pav...

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people's minds--and our own. Listen to him discuss "Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know" with Michael in this podcast. Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlear...

Jesse Ventura has had many lives as a Navy SEAL, a star of pro wrestling, an actor, and as governor of Minnesota. Listen to Michael's 2008 conversation with Ventura about his then-new book "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!" - the story of his controversial gubernatorial years and his life since deciding not to seek a second term as governor in 2002. Written with award-winning author Dick Rus...

Michael talks to William Cohan, author of "The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities." The bestselling author presents his stunning account of the 2006 Duke lacrosse team scandal that reveals the pressures faced by America’s elite colleges and universities and pulls back the curtain, in a riveting narrative, on the larger...

Before he became a full-time talk radio host, Michael worked for a Philadelphia-based trial lawyer, James E. Beasley, who passed away in 2004. Listen to this special conversation where Michael spoke to Ralph Cipriano, who immortalized Beasley in his book "Courtroom Cowboy: The Life of Legal Trailblazer Jim Beasley." Also joining in this conversation is Beasley's son, Jim Beasley Jr. Beasley Sr. wa...

Through Stan's life lessons, you'll discover how perseverance, anticipating change, and creating a shared vision for your team can help you build an enduring and successful business. Learn how Stan overcame early failures, survived the 2008 financial crisis, and led his mortgage firm to become an industry leader when competitors faltered. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.c...

From the archives, Michael's conversation with Louis J. Freeh, author of "My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror." Freeh led the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1993 to 2001, through some of the most tumultuous times in its long history. This is the story of a life in law enforcement, and of one man’s determined struggle to strengthen and r...