In 1996, a frustrated screenwriter got a fellowship in Italy. Twenty years later, Beyoncé released "Lemonade." 

Content warning: This episode includes a mention of suicide.

Support us on Patreon:
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Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Rebecca Solnit’s “A Paradise Built in Hell”
• Kelly Link's "White Cat, Black Dog"
• The Half-Century in Bullshit: On Peter Bogdanovich’s “Paper Moon” and Robert Greene’s “The 48 Laws of Power”
• A Book of Anecdotes, 1957
  The Little Brown Book Of Anecdotes
• Fear Nothing: Self-Fashioning and Social Mobility in 50 Cent’s The 50th Law
• The fear of conflict leads people to systematically avoid potentially valuable zero-sum situations
• The Immigration Dilemma
• You Can Win But I Can't Lose
• If you rise, I fall: Equality is prevented by the misperception that it harms advantaged groups
• Zero-Sum Thinking and the Roots of U.S. Political Divides
• A Genesis of Conflict: The Zero-Sum Mindset
• Forbes Winslow’s Physic and Physicians
• The role of masculinity in men's help-seeking for depression: A systematic review
•  The Strange, Sad Story of Joe Orton, His Lover, and 72 Stolen Library Books 
• A Failure Of Initiative
• New Orleans reaches settlements for police shootings after Hurricane Katrina
• Post-Katrina, White Vigilantes Shot African-Americans With Impunity

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Retailers have been sounding the alarm about a shoplifting epidemic driven by organized criminal syndicates. In a shocking twist, it turns out that their story is mostly made up. Join us as Peter tries to figure out where this panic originated and as Mike finally comes clean about his criminal past.

To hear the rest of the show, support us on Patreon:
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This week we're tackling "San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities," a book that dares to ask: What if everything that experts think about homelessness is wrong, and everything that one crank on Twitter thinks about homelessness is right?

Thanks to Ned Resnikoff for helping us with the research for this episode!

Support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Inflection Points in Community-level Homeless Rates
• How Housing Costs Drive Levels of Homelessness
• The 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report To Congress
• The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness
• San Francisco Homelessness Benchmarking Report
• Homelessness is a Housing Problem
• A randomized trial of permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless persons with high use of publicly funded services
• San Francisco Department of Public Health Update Report on Mental Health Reform
• Civil Commitment in the United States

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Have you ever wanted to escape the grind and follow your dreams? This week we're discussing "The 4-Hour Workweek," which reveals that all you need is a plan, a willingness to take risks and a modestly sized fraud operation built on Third World labor.

Support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• The Fraud and the Four-Hour Workweek
• Revisiting "The 4-Hour Workweek"
• New! Improved! Shape Up Your Life!
• From Productivity to Psychedelics: Tim Ferriss Has Changed His Mind About Success

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

But her e-mails! Michael explains the non-scandal that captivated the mainstream media in 2016 while Peter attempts to sow the podcast with anti-Hillary sentiment.

To hear the rest of the show, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Oops all grievance.

Support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• No Ivory Tower : Mccarthyism And The Universities
• The Fire Is Upon Us
• The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945
• The Passion of William F. Buckley: Academic Freedom, Conspiratorial Conservatism, and the Rise of the Postwar Right
• Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?
• Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities with the Intelligence Community, 1945-1955
• Debunking a Longstanding Myth About William F. Buckley
• How William F. Buckley Jr.’s Right-Wing College Crusade Paved the Way for Ron DeSantis
• The Right v. Higher Education: Change and Continuity
• The Buckleys: A Family Examined
• The Academic Elite Goes to Washington, and to War
• What About “God and Man”?
• The Attack on Yale
• The academy on the firing line: William F. Buckley, Jr.'s God and Man at Yale and the modern conservative critique of higher education
• Conservatives charge that universities are hotbeds of liberalism. They’re wrong. 

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

For this month's bonus episode we dissected Harry Frankfurt's gloriously brief bestseller and applied the concept to our favorite op-ed page. 

To hear the rest of the show, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Who poses the greatest threat to democracy? Is it the movement that openly identifies with the symbols, goals and policies of fascist governments? Or is it the median bureaucrat at the Department of Health and Human Services?

In 2008, a National Review nepo-baby attempted to answer this vexing question.

Support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• History News Network: A Symposium on Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism
• The Nature of Fascism
• How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them
• The Anatomy of Fascism
• Mussolini and Fascism: The View From America
• The Return of Old-Fashioned Racism to White Americans’ Partisan Preferences in the Early Obama Era
• Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America
• What Hillary Rodham Clinton Really Said About Children’s Rights and Child Policy
• The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930
• A campus takeover that symbolized an era of change

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

In our "Rules" and "Game" episodes we didn't get a chance to dissect the phenomenon of online dating (i.e. describe our worst dates and read cringe profiles out loud to each other), so that is what we are doing on today's bonus episode. 

To hear the rest of the show, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Lots of subscribers asked us to release last month's bonus episode in full so here it is! Share it with the conservatives, the boomers and the Satanists in your life.

Support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod
 

Where to find us: 

• Twitter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!