If Books Could Kill

This week we're tackling Steven Pinker's 900 page dissection of the reasons why violence, torture and war have declined over the last 10,000 years. Was it an indeterminate mixture of politics, economics, technology and serendipity?  Or did some European guys write some books that said murder was bad?

Special thanks to Philip Dwyer, Eleanor Janega, David M. Perry and Doug Thompson for help researching and fact-checking this episode!

Where to find us: 

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

Sources:

• The Darker Angels of Our Nature
• Getting Medieval On Steven Pinker
• The Decline of Violence in the West: From Cultural to Post-Cultural History
• Pinker’s (Mis)Representation of the Enlightenment and Violence
• Herding and Homicide: An Examination of the Nisbett-Reaves Hypothesis
• Peace in Our Time
• John Gray: Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war
• The business class doesn't understand the Enlightenment
• Delusions Of Peace
• Pinker And Progress
• Norbert Elias and the History of Violence
• Modernization, Self-Control And Lethal Violence
• Explaining Long Term Trends in Violent Crime
• The Enlightenment’s Dark Side

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

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

Before Donald Trump became America's most prominent politician and birth certificate inspector, he spent his days making everyone in New York City slightly uncomfortable. Michael and Peter discuss "The Art of the Deal," Trump’s 1987 bestseller chronicling his exploits as a celebrity slumlord.

Where to find us: 

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

Sources:

• When Donald Trump Took Down Holiday Inns 
• The Lost City of Trump 
• Who Runs New York Now? 
• How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions 
• Doer and Slumlord Both 
• Donald Trump Gets What He Wants
• Donald Trump was a nightmare landlord in the 1980s 
• Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

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

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

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

"There are two kinds of political scientists: The types who deal with noisy data and post on Twitter with a bunch of caveats. And then there are the types who write books about identity politics."
 
Where to find us: 

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

Sources:

• Sam  Huneke's "Yascha Mounk’s Woke Straw Man"
• Jacob T. Levy's "The Defense of Liberty Can’t Do Without Identity Politics"
• Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò's "Elite Capture"
• Aaron Huertas's "We Need to Talk About Reactionary Centrists"
• Mary Lin Elementary under federal investigation
• Parents refute claims of segregation at Mary Lin Elementary School
• School Segregation in Metropolitan Regions, 1970–2000
• 60 Years After Brown
• School choice and racial segregation in US schools
• Student Population Has Significantly Diversified, But Many Schools Remain Divided Along Racial, Ethnic, and Economic Lines
• U.S. public school students often go to schools where at least half of their peers are the same race or ethnicity
• The Return of Old-Fashioned Racism to White Americans’ Partisan Preferences
• Why The Democrats Have Shifted Left Over The Last 30 Years
• Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change
• Trump, the 2016 Election, and Expressions of Sexism
• Changing Norms Following the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: The Trump Effect on Prejudice
• Changes in Americans’ prejudices during the presidency of Donald Trump
• The CDC slide presentation
• Model-informed COVID-19 vaccine prioritization strategies

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

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

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

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

You stare, mouth agape, at the bookstore display. It’s a self-help book, but with curse words in the title?! This must be a revolutionary new framework, not simply the same dull, reactionary ideas repackaged as hip and new.

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 Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck (Blog Post)
• Where A is Ordinary: The Evolution of American College and University Grading, 1940-2009
• We’ve Been Handing Out Participation Trophies for 100 Years
  Positive Disintegration‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a #@%!’ Review: A Blunt Philosophy

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

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

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:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

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!

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

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:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

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

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!

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

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!

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