Peter and Michael discuss Michael Lewis’s bestselling book about the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, a young prodigy whose only flaw was that he dreamed too big.

Where to find us: 

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

Sources:

• Michael Lewis Is Buying What Sam Bankman-Fried Is Selling 
• Michael Lewis Likens Critics of His New Book on Sam Bankman-Fried to a 'Mob'
• The SBF trial is a reminder that crypto is a rotten business
• Review: Michael Lewis's Going Infinite
• The Curious Case of FTX’s ‘Company Therapist’ (vice.com)
• FTX’s Collapse Was a Crime, Not an Accident
• Going Infinite by Michael Lewis review – falling for the antihero
• The Second FTX Asset Recovery Report Is Packed With Bombshells
• Takeaways From a New Book on Sam Bankman-Fried
• Caroline Ellison Testifies Against Sam Bankman-Fried, Blaming Him for Crimes 

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

2 Better 2 Angels

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

Where to find us: 

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

Sources:

• Jeffrey Epstein’s Science of Sleaze
• Pinker’s response to Epstein allegations
• How Jeffrey Epstein Captivated Harvard
• Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA
• It’s Official — Steven Pinker Is Full of Shit
• Pinker, Epstein, Soldier, Spy
• A century of sexual abuse victimisation: A birth cohort analysis
• The prevalence of child sexual abuse with online sexual abuse added
• Have Sexual Abuse and Physical Abuse Declined Since the 1990s?
• Explanations for the Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases
• The Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases
• Why Have Child Maltreatment and Child Victimization Declined?
• Spanking and Other Corporal Punishment of Children by Parents: Undervaluing Children, Overvaluing Pain
• Were There Really More Hate Crimes Last Year?
• Hate Crime Reported by Victims and Police
• The Sexual Victimization of College Women
• The "Discovery" of Child Abuse
• A Short History of Child Protection in America

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

We're finally discussing a good book! Naomi Klein's "Doppelgänger" chronicles the long, steady descent of another Naomi — Wolf (buddy oof) — from feminist icon to crank conspiracist. 

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

In 2013, Sheryl Sandberg became an icon for women who wanted to move from middle management at a tech company into upper management at a tech company. Today, Peter and Michael examine the contents of her bestselling book, survey the wreckage of corporate feminism and ask whether women will finally find liberation in the Metaverse.

Where to find us: 

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

Sources:

• Facebook Feminism, Like It or Not
• Feminism's Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning in?
• One Cheer for Lean In
• Is there an implicit quota on women in top management? A large‐sample statistical analysis
• Female tokens in high-prestige work groups: Catalysts or inhibitors of group diversification?
• Want Equal Pay? Get a Union.
• The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations
• What Was the Girlboss?
• New Research: Women Who Don’t Negotiate Might Have a Good Reason
• Now, Women Do Ask: A Call to Update Beliefs about the Gender Pay Gap
• What’s It Like Inside the Hive? Managerial Discretion Drives TMT Gender Diversity of Women-Led Firms
• I asked Facebook if I could work part-time from home after I had my baby. They said no—so I quit
• Women in the Workplace 2023
• Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome
• Dig Deep: Beyond Lean In

 Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

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!

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!

To hear the rest of the episode, 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!

To hear the rest of the episode, 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!

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!