Assholes: A Theory 

Loved your reviews --. Defining the problem helps cool the visceral reaction! Regarding a departmental asshole, one scientist reminded the group that every organism needs one-🙈😂.

I would recommend How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell as a very readable recent philosophy text 😊

One of my favorite philosophy-lite books is The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli. It's quite lyrical, and Benedict Cumberbatch reads the audiobook. Rovelli is a theoretical physicist, and he writes about how scientists try to understand the meaning and measurement of time. It's a scientific book, but Rovelli explores time quite similarly to ancient Greek philosophers like Zeno, Parmenides, and Aristotle

Philosophy is extremely difficult, that's why I love it. Grappling with philosophical issues is a worthwhile challenge for us disaffected Gen Xers. 😆

If you want to explore philosophies of utopia and dystopia, I would also recommend Ethics for a Broken World by Tim Mulgan or Gore Capitalism by Sayak Valencia

i don't have any recommendations but i hope you find some as i thoroughly enjoyed your take on the 'a's

I also loved Children of Time! It was fascinating to me. Haven’t yet picked up the second book but plan to shortly. Look forward to hearing your thoughts!

I don’t like philosophy, but an asshole book sounds like fun.

What a fun Review! At first I thought ThePoptimist was about to throw some shade at rude people but no, just a Review about a book I haven't heard about! And thank you for talking about the difficulty of Reading philosophy, it feels like everybody is so much smarter than me and I just learned how to read😪 will not give up though! 💪 And I'm very excited for a children of time Review from you ❤

Great move to pick up Adorno, that is something I just know I will never get LOL. Scent of Time sounds interesting though, haven't heard of it. I'm not sure I have the energy to really dive into the Asshole books, as personally I feel they have increased and they always win because they don't care and just suck all your energy out of you. Adressing them in their assholeness only makes you a target of ridicule and being called names like "Spießer" and such rdiculous notions when you just want to go through your day undisturbed by them ruining everything. It's like getting smokers to understand they are invading your space instead of the other way around.

For sci-fi, I don't know how "hard science" you need it to be, but I love Becky Chambers, Ann Leckie, Lois McMaster Bujold, Martha Wells (Murderbot is iconic at this point), Nnedi Okorafor, and John Scalzi. Aliette de Bodard's novellas have the most sumptuous worldbuilding. Her stories don't always work for me (sometimes I feel like an element is missing, but I'm always glad I read it) but you might enjoy her Xuya Universe books -- Vietnamese-influenced space opera that I would love to see adapted for film!

Thanks really, I love your insight.

This isn't relevant to the topic but in some episodes you talk about books you read that make you want to grab people by the shoulders and yell them, "Read the damn book." Well, I wanted to share two books that fall into this category for me: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Relevant to your topic: I just read the Children of Time books and they blew me away. Another sci-fi book you might check out is All Systems Red by Martha Wells. And it's a small investment because it is relatively short. But if you enjoy it, there are more books in the series.

08:10 This brings back memories. I remember a line by Adorno that went something like "the apparent and hypocritical reification of the reification" (translated from spanish by me just now, so it may have errors) and after reading that I felt this urge to find his tomb, dig him up and shoot his skeleton on the knee. So yeah, for me it was kinda hard to grasp, but also I believe we have to accept their use of language, where everything has to be very precise and there's no "I'm going to say this in my own words". Anyways, I haven't read much philosophy recently (I got the scent of time for my bday back in March, still pending, it throws me off that this dude writes like a book per month), but I do remember enjoying Jostein Gaarder's The world of Sophie and Plato not prozac by Lou Marinoff. Both are divulgation (is that what you call them?) books so they're more accessible. I'm loving hearing your thoughts on books and stuff! I think you have a very unique flavor compared to other booktubers.

This was hilarious. After hearing it so casually so many times in this review, I think the key word lost all its meaning to me.

I read Byung Chul-Han in German (Müdigkeitsgesellschaft) and man, is he wordy. It reads a bit like 19th century German - long setences, a lot of commas, five sub-clauses in one sentence. Not that his ideas aren't worth wading through all that!

Why are we not hearing from James as the threat of Trump raises its head again?

If GenX makes philosophy our version of Boomer war books, that would make me very happy. I think most of my reading in this vein has been feminist theory and I'd love to branch out. Surely someone's written a theory of bitches 😅