In 2013, education reformers tried to help poor students the using the best tool at their disposal: The 16th most popular Ted Talk.

Special thanks to Marcus Credé! 

Where to find us: 

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• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Much Ado About Grit
• What Shall We Do About Grit?
• Grit under attack
• Teaching “Grit”
• The Problem With Grit
• The Limits of “Grit”
• Grit: The power of passion and perseverance
• Is 'Grit' Doomed To Be The New Self-Esteem?
• Measurement Matters
• Using Psychological Science to Help Children Thrive
• Self-Control and Academic Achievement
• Cognitive and noncognitive predictors of success
• Should non-cognitive skills be included in school accountability systems?
• Measuring Students’ Non-Cognitive Skills and the Impact of Schooling
• Grit: A Short History of a Useful Concept
• Teaching Kids 'Grit' is All the Rage.
• "Grit" Revisited
• Character Education: A Cautionary Note
• What if the Secret to Success Is Failure?
• The Effects of the EITC on Child Achievement
• Academic Performance And Food Stamps

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Peter went on Mike's other show, Maintenance Phase, to revisit a biohacking diet book for the boys.

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

Sources:

• The 4-Hour Body
• Does Glycemic Index Matter for Weight Loss? An Examination of the Evidence 
• New! Improved! Shape Up Your Life! 
• The 4-Hour Body: The Real App You Are Working On Is An App Called Yourself

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Peter and Michael discuss "Bullshit Jobs" by anarchist anthropologist David Graeber. The result: two professional podcasters debating which jobs are real and which jobs are fake.

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• Peter's newsletter
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• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant
• 37% of British workers think their jobs are meaningless
• Average Annual Hours Worked by Persons Engaged for United States
• The times they are not changin’: Days and hours of work in Old and New Worlds, 1870–2000
• ‘Bullshit’ After All? Why People Consider Their Jobs Socially Useless
• Alienation Is Not ‘Bullshit’: An Empirical Critique of Graeber’s Theory of BS Jobs
• Many people feel they work in pointless ‘bullshit’ jobs, research confirms
• The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure 
• Study: Leisure Time Declines
• USA Consumption as percent of GDP
• The Significance of Task Significance: Job Performance Effects, Relational Mechanisms, and Boundary Conditions
• Task significance and meaningful work: A longitudinal study
• Americans’ job satisfaction in 2024

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

It turns out that the key to wealth is buying the right kind of watch, marrying the right kind of wife and being the right kind of white.

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• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Uneasy Street
• A Century of Wealth In America
• Family, Education, and Sources of Wealth among the Richest Americans, 1982–2012
• Wealth Elite Moralities
• The insane growth of America’s millionaire class
• The Extraordinary Rise In The Wealth Of Older American Households
• Planning & Progress Study 2025
• Striking Out on Their Own: The Self-Employed in Bankruptcy
• How Many Households Meet The Net Worth Guidelines Of The Millionaire Next Door?
• Paying Tribute to Thomas Stanley and His ‘Millionaire Next Door’
• Pity the Billionaires
• What Rich Women Want
• The deserving or undeserving rich?
• The Evolution of Top Incomes

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

The boys catalog the definitive worst takes of the year, from the pundits who misunderstood our political moment to a guy who wants to have sex with a computer.

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

The boys continue their discussion of Walter Isaacson's "Elon Musk." This is the part where Elon loses his mind. 

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Sources:

• From self-proclaimed ‘socialist’ to Team Trump and DeSantis: Elon Musk’s curious politics revealed  
• The Quiet Political Rise of David Sacks, Silicon Valley’s Prophet of Urban Doom
• Elon Musk biographer admits suggestion SpaceX head blocked Ukraine drone attack was wrong 
• Elon Musk's Daughter on Dad's Biography: 'Sad Excuse for a Puff Piece'
• Character Limit
• Twitter fulfilling more government censorship requests under Musk 
• Elon Musk booed for nearly 5 minutes straight at Dave Chappelle show in San Francisco 
• New CNN Chief Trying to Please GOP Elite 
• Research finds more than 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 if USAID defunding continues, including more than 4 million children under five
• What the data says about Social Security 
• Trump Administration, DOGE Activities Risk SSA Operations and Security of Personal Data

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

A biography that dares to ask: Is a lifetime of worker abuse and narcissism worth it to experience robot butlers?

Where to find us: 

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

Sources:

• What Elon Musk Gets Wrong about South Africa
• Elon Musk’s Anti-Semitic, Apartheid-Loving Grandfather 
• Elon Musk claims he was once one of the best Quake players around
• Watch Elon Musk Talk About Being an ‘Illegal Immigrant’ in Video From 2013 
• Elon Musk’s dad Errol says he can ‘prove’ existence of emerald mine in new bombshell claim revealing its location 
• How Elon Musk Went from Superhero to Supervillain 
• The Believer
• Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow 
• How Elon Musk Plans on Reinventing the World (and Mars)
• Tesla factory workers reveal pain, injury and stress: 'Everything feels like the future but us' | Tesla
• Hundreds of Tesla workers tested positive for the virus after Elon Musk reopened a plant, data shows
• Inside Tesla as Elon Musk Pushed an Unflinching Vision for Self-Driving Cars 
• Tesla video promoting self-driving was staged, engineer testifies
• Elon Musk Says His 'Running Robot' Will 'Actually Eliminate Poverty' As He Shares Video Of Tesla Optimus Jogging 
• Elon Musk Wants ‘Strong Influence’ Over the ‘Robot Army’ He’s Building 
• There’s a Very Simple Pattern to Elon Musk’s Broken Promises

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

How do you tell the entire history of humanity in a single book? Whatever you do, do not open a browser window. 

Thanks to Dorsa Amir, Duncan Stibbard Hawkes and David Perry for help researching and fact-checking this episode!

Where to find us: 

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• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• A Response to Yuval Harari
• Yuval Noah Harari’s History of Everyone, Ever
• How Humankind Conquered the World
• The revolution that wasn't
• Advances In The Study Of The Origin Of Humanness
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a banal and risible self-help book
• Are Human Rights Western? 
• Bonaparte in Egypt
• Ship of Fools
• The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari
• A Reductionist History of Humankind
• Harari, Sapiens and historical accuracy
• The Broad Spectrum Revolution at 40
• The Neolithic Revolution in the Middle East
• Was the Agricultural Revolution a Terrible Mistake?
• The Darker Side of the "Original Affluent Society"
• Harari's world history
• Compassion with Justice: Harari’s Assault on Human Rights
• Reconsidering the link between past material culture and cognition 

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Live like Dale Carnegie, neg like Calvin Coolidge.

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

Sources:

• Self-help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America
• The Positive Thinkers
• Age of industrial violence 1910-1915 : the activities and findings of the United States commission on industrial relations
• Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914–1942 
• Dale Carnegie and the Problem of Sincerity
  New York Times review from 1937

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Peter and Michael discuss a book that's light on facts and long on sentences.

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

Sources:

• Book Review: ‘Summer of Our Discontent,’ by Thomas Chatterton Williams
• Police shootings database 2015-2024
• From the archive, 22 March 1991: President Bush sickened by Rodney King case
• Barack Obama Public Approval
• Letter To Christopher L. Eisgruber, President Princeton University
• Police give additional details in beating of machete-wielding man amid Dallas protest
• In City After City, Police Mishandled Black Lives Matter Protests
• RIOTS IN LOS ANGELES: Challenger; Nation Needs Healing, Clinton Says
• Median household income by race and ethnicity U.S. 1967-2023
• Majority of college students support Israel/Gaza campus protests, 1 in 10 actually participate in them
• Thomas Chatterton Williams on Race, Identity, and “Cancel Culture”

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

How one comedian's offhand advice launched a decent TV episode, a mediocre book and a terrible movie.

Where to find us: 

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

Sources:

• Susan Faludi's "Backlash"
• For Women Who Count on Men to Be Jerks
• Bridget Jones’s Legacy
• Single Women in Popular Culture
• A Decade of Advice for Women and Men in the Best-Selling Self-Help Literature
• The gendered nature of self-help
• Single Women in Popular Culture 

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!