This ‘bookshelf’ features a selection of recommendations for reading, listening, and researching.
I begin with podcasts, categorised as general or interview. Next, you will find a selection of my favourite blogs, categorised as general or finance. Finally, I offer a selection of books, categorised as classical, fiction, or non-fiction.
Previously published on a separate webpage, I will now host the list here on the Substack and anticipate sharing updates periodically.
Please do let me know if you enjoy anything that you find here. Likewise, if you have any recommendations for me in return, I will be delighted and grateful to receive them.
Podcast Recommendations
Manifold - Steve Hsu’s conversations tackle a broad range of research areas. Hsu is unafraid of examining controversial theses and became collateral damage in the quasi-cultural revolution of 2020, losing his faculty position at Michigan State University. Compelling conversations include those with Aella, Dominic Cummings, and this discussion on artificial intelligence with three developers.
Anglofuturism - Tom Ough and Calum Drysdale, friends of mine, present a podcast that explores ideas for 21st-century Britain, seeking ways to boost British technological creativity, productivity, and national wealth. The line of questioning is often tongue-in-cheek but thought-provoking.
The Abundance Agenda - James O’Malley and Martin Robbins share their abundance radicalisation stories – what got them interested in growth, progress and abundance.
The Stubborn Light of Things - Melissa Harrison takes listeners for a walk through the Suffolk countryside around her cottage. Originally aired during 2020, when a pandemic locked many of us indoors, the series offered an escape into nature, guiding listeners from spring through to summer and into autumn accompanied by sounds of birdsong, running streams, and extracts from the diary of an 18th-century clergyman. For the full immersive experience, I would recommend that you listen to episodes once a week from early March.
Tides of History - Patrick Wyman guides the listener through tracts of human pre-history that are rarely examined in popular culture. Wyman’s analysis is informed by years of academic study but each episode begins with a dramatic narration that sets the scene and breathes life into the subject. Wyman’s interpretation of the nature of human migration across time and place is particularly enlivening. A good entry-point is his exploration of the Yamnaya Culture. Patrick often publishes accompanying pieces on his Substack, such as here on Indo-Europeans and Yamnaya Culture.
Duck: Rabbit - In this series of conversations, advertising executive Rory Sutherland and behavioural scientist Paul Dolan discuss divisive societal issues. The episode on living longer or better is a particular highlight and resonated strongly with me.
These Times - UnHerd political editor Tom McTague and Cambridge political economy professor Helen Thompson investigate the historical context of current affairs. Invariably timely, the stand-out episodes for me include those on Europe’s Reckoning with Ukraine and The Israel-Hamas War. Besides these, recent highlights include the special reports for the 2024 UK General Election exploring the voter bases of Reform in Clacton, the Labour left in Chingford, and the SNP in the Outer Hebridies.
The Secret History of the Future - In 2019, two journalists, Tom Standage of The Economist and Seth Stevenson of Slate Technology, identified historical examples of technological innovation and compared them with current technological innovations. From food, to transportation, to artificial intelligence, this series is impressively expansive. So far, the analysis has withstood the test of time.
Darknet Diaries - Jack Rhysider’s series is an accessible entry-point into the world of hacking, information security, and cyber-warfare. The enthralling and prescient analysis of the NotPetya attack by the Russian state on Ukraine aired in late 2019 is a good place to start.
The Coming Storm - Gabriel Gatehouse's seven-episode series journeys deep into the depths of QAnon, politics, and conspiracy theory. First aired in 2022, I would go as far as to say that the series left me metaphysically adrift, reflecting on the nature of reality itself.
The Prince: Searching for Xi Jinping - Sue-Lin Wong's 2023 eight-episode series exemplifies world-leading journalism. Despite commanding the largest nation in the world, Xi Jinping's personal history is relatively obscure. For the first time in popular media, Sue-Lin Wong and The Economist's China bureau produced a deep-dive analysis of Xi Jinping's life and times. It is extraorindary and chilling in equal measure.
The Rest is History - Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland are light-hearted but well-informed as they delve into an astonishingly vast range of historical subjects. An all-time highlight for me is their conversation with Jonathan Freedland on Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler. Elsewhere, The Rise of the Nazis, Outbreak of the First World War, and The Rise of Putin series are also excellent. To hear the hosts talking at length on their specialist topics, try Britain in 1974 (see also on the 1970s, the These Times interview with Dominic Sandbrook) or try Baghdad (see also on Christianity and Islam, the Conversation with Tyler interview and Leading interview with Tom Holland).
Political Currency: Inside the Room - In their mini-series The Brexit Plots, Ed Balls and George Osborne interview Michael Gove, the Leave campaign-in-chief. The 3-hour interview is delightfully in-depth and candid.
Folk on Foot - Matthew Bannister, the former BBC broadcaster, tours the British Isles interviewing traditional folk musicians in the places that they live and love. Having myself had the pleasure of interviewing Kris Drever in the past, I immensely enjoyed Kris Drever on Orkney. Having also spent time singing and walking along rivers with Sam Lee, I greatly enjoyed hearing Sam again on Sam Lee in Sussex. Other highlights for me are Seth Lakeman on Dartmoor talking about fiddles and Johnny Flynn on the Hackney Marshes talking about the London trad-rock scene in the 2010s.
Interview Format
Invest Like the Best - Patrick O'Shaughnessy's podcast stands head and shoulders above its peers. Patrick previously managed the quantitative strategies at OSAM and now runs a VC investor. The podcast, which began as an experiment in 2016, now features an all-star roster of financial market heavyweights. Guests are invariably subject-matter experts and very often highly eloquent. Patrick, meanwhile, is a self-effacing host with a voracious appetite for knowledge. I have listened to several hundred hours of this podcast such that favourites are too many to count. Try, for example: Christian Rudder on dating app data; every episode with Michael Mauboussin, Cliff Asness, or Rory Sutherland; Scott Goodwin on credit investing; Boyd Varty on tracking animals in the South African Bush; or, the first instalment with Carl Kawaja. Full access to the searchable transcript library is available on the website.
Secrets of Statecraft - Andrew Roberts (now ennobled) interviews political and military public figures. Roberts has a particular interest in how the study of history has influenced the careers and decision-making of these individuals. Episodes that stand out include those with David Cameron, Michael Gove, and Richard Dearlove, as well as Mike Gallagher on China and Tom Gross on Israel.
Odd Lots - Each week, Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway interview ‘the perfect guest’ on a specialist subject. Typically, that subject is a technical and recondite feature of financial markets. The double-heading interview style is effective and often elicits stimulating conversations. After each interview has concluded, Joe and Tracy reflect on the discussion, another worthwhile stylistic feature. The episode in conversation with Jim Chanos is a good entry-point. More current affairs, but their interview with CIA official Robert Papp on the Russia-Ukraine War is insightful.
Modern Wisdom - It is easy to criticise Chris Williamson, the unconventional host of this podcast, whose trajectory from nightclub promoter in the North East of England via reality television series Love Island to ‘manosphere’ lifestyle guru par excellence is remarkable. And yet, Williamson produces insightful conversations with astonishing regularity. While his interviewing style lacks finesse, it appears to be on a positive trajectory as he fails and learns in public. Top conversations include those with Hannah Ritchie (Our World in Data), Louise Perry (Mother, Maiden, Matriarch), Scott Galloway (Prof G), Peter Attia (Outlive), Morgan Housel (Psychology of Money).
Leading - Stewart and Campbell are able to draw in truly impressive guests for long-form interviews, usually political characters from the hallowed halls of the centrist political class. The interview style can be over-bearing and is, too often, tactless (see, the appallingly misjudged exchange with an indefatigable David Baddiel). Typically, however, the guests’ acumen and valuable experience shines through. Favourite conversations include A Tale of Two Spies, Gus O’Donnell, and John Major.
Other notable long-form interviewers include Sean Carrolls’ Mindscape, Dwarkesh Patel (for instance, with Edward Glaeser and Dominic Cummings), and Conversations with Tyler Cowen. Admirably, Dwarkesh and Tyler both offer freely-accessible transcript libraries on their websites.
General Blog Recommendations
Astral Codex Ten (ACX) - A widely-read blog by rationalist writer Scott Alexander. The author, formerly anonymous but now doxxed, was a San Francisco Bay Area psychiatrist. ACX covers a broad range of topics including the most controversial areas of science, philosophy, and culture. An all-time favourite piece of writing is the parable style piece The Prophet And Caesar's Wife. On philosophy and culture, I would recommend Beware Isolated Demands for Rigour and Fake Tradition Is Traditional. On scientific themes, try How Are The Gay Younger Brothers Doing? and Welcome Polygenically Screened Babies.
Noahpinion - Noah Smith is a self-proclaimed techno-optimist and consistently posts thought-provoking pieces on economics, innovation, and geopolitics. Try his recent pieces on poverty and progress and on global geopolitical risk.
Weekly Diary (formerly here) - Paul Norris, an old friend, is someone whose writing I have enjoyed for many years. I never cease to admire his style for its idiosyncratic sensitivity and self-awareness.
Felix Stocker - Felix Stocker, another friend, writes a blog with an interdisciplinary approach that is worth reading. Omnivorously curious, Felix has a propensity to generate a novel perspective and valuable insights on any given theme. See, for instance, his primer on ad economics in mobile games, his piece on talent featuring personal anecdotes, and his piece that re-examines the structure of the New Orleans slave trade market through the lens of network topology.
Thoughts in Between - Matt Clifford wrote a blog, currently discontinued, that remains a superb compendium of thought-provoking material. Matt is a fascinating character who came to prominence after founding Entrepreneur First with Alice Bentinck, the talent investing business . As a result of his involvement in funding early-stage artificial intelligence businesses, Matt became a UK government champion for AI as Chair of Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) as well as his involvement in organising the first AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in 2023. To hear Matt in conversation, try the interview with Patrick O’Shaughnessy in 2020 or this interview with Harry Stebbings in 2024. Matt’s reading lists (2010s, 2020) are one of the inspirations for this post.
Other notables include Hannah Ritchie on sustainability data, Byrne Hobart on technological innovation, Emma Garland on desire, Benedict Evans on artificial intelligence, Jay Foreman on maps and Greater London infrastructure, Sam Bowman on housing, Sam Dumitriu on planning reform, Joe Hill on the Greater London policymaking, Ben Southwood at Works in Progress, Razib Khan on human genetics, Peter Leonard on Central Asia, Dan Neidle on tax policy (interviewed here).
Finance Recommendations
Money Stuff - Matt Levine is a classicist-turned-lawyer-turned-investment banker-turned-Bloomberg columnist. Levine has an unrivalled ability to deliver high-quality original content at the intersection of financial markets, law, and regulation on a daily basis (writing a stunning ~700k words per year). Beyond the newsletter, it is worth highlighting Matt's totemic account of the cryptocurrency ecosystem titled The Crypto Story, the Money Stuff Podcast, as well as this interview with Matt Levine on Making Media.
Klement On Investing - Joachim Klement digests academic papers and summarises them as blog-posts with Teutonic regularity and efficiency. Some of his finest writing involves dismantling conventional investment wisdom that does not hold up to empirical analysis. See, for instance, the following essays in which Klement challenges investment heuristics such as ‘printing money creates inflation’, ‘US Treasuries are risk-free’, ‘stocks are a hedge against inflation’, ‘in the long run stocks are less risky than in the short run’, ‘stocks outperform bonds in the long run’, or ‘higher taxes are bad for the stock market’. Another piece that has stuck with me was his write-up of enclothed cognition.
Consilient Observer - Michael Mauboussin and the MSIM team produce deep-dive studies on foundational financial markets questions. Michael's reflections on thirty years in markets are another fascinating read.
Other notables include the team at FTAV who deliver eclectic financial journalism with an impressive time-to-pixel as well as legendary pub quizzes, Memos by Howard Marks for perspectives on investment strategy and market philosophy, and 10K Diver for digestible Twitter threads on single financial topics.
Books
On Bedside Table
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
George Eliot & Money - Dermot Coleman
War & Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Folk Song in England - Steve Roud
A Short History of Byzantium - John Julius Norwich
Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations
Recently Read
The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot
Middlemarch - George Eliot
A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail Lermontov
Against the Tide - Roger Scruton
How to be a Conservative - Roger Scruton
The Beginning of Infinity - David Deutsch
The English & their History - Robert Tombs
Il Gattopardo - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived - Adam Rutherford
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush - Eric Newby
For the Record - David Cameron
Outlive - Peter Attia
Material World - Ed Conway
The Time of the Gypsies - Michael Stewart
The Price of Time - Edward Chancellor
Trillions - Robin Wigglesworth
Between the Woods & the Water - Patrick Leigh Fermor
Classical Writing
Histories (Ἱστορίαι) - Aged thirteen, I spent long nights in my room marvelling at Herodotus’ descriptions of the ancient world in English translation. Later, through school and university, I spent long nights in the library battling through Herodotus’ original in the Ionian Ancient Greek dialect. Herodotus' text sits somewhere between fiction and non-fiction, effectively inventing the genre of history. Although well-known for its account of the Greco-Persian Wars, Herodotus deserves to be read for the varied stream of vignettes that portray the cultures and customs of the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East.
On the Shortness of Life (de brevitate vitae) - Reading Seneca felt akin to unearthing a lost manuscript containing deep philosophical truths about the human condition. Except, Seneca has never been lost and his aphorisms are as prevalent and relevant today as they were two thousand years ago. de brevitate vitae is a highlight and I explore that text in this post. We are also fortunate to have many Senecan texts preserved in the manuscript tradition. Another excellent passage is the 2nd Choral Ode of Thyestes.
The New Testament (novum testamentum) - A foundational text for the Christian tradition and Western culture, it remains ubiquitous in our world, thought, and moral philosophy. You may well find that you already know the text intimately as a result of having periodically attended church services.
Aeneid (Aeneis) - Virgil's Roman epic. The greatest English translation remains Dryden’s heroic couplets. In prose, Robert Fagles’ translation remains the compelling version that I have enjoyed to date.
The Periplus of Hanno (Άννωνος Περίπλους) - An account from Ancient Carthage that is both unique in its a survival and utterly fascinating. I explore the text at length in this post.
Fiction
The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece chronicles Maggie Tulliver’s passionate struggle against the constraints of provincial Victorian life. Set in rural Lincolnshire against the backdrop of the British Industrial Revolution, with the Tulliver family mill as its focal point, Eliot deploys her signature psychological realism to explore the family dynamics, economic hardship, and rigid moral codes of a mid-Victorian England.
Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann's masterful depiction of the rise and fall of a wealthy German merchant family. The narrative is set in the Hanseatic states over the course of four generations.
The Earthsea Quartet - Ursula Le Guin's accessible and beautiful short novels tell the story of coming of age through four different characters. She weaves fantasy and nature together into a gripping narrative and delivers a compelling message of balance and harmony.
The Adventures of Tintin (Les Aventures de Tintin) - Hergé's epic graphic novels are world-famous and have never ceased to entertain me. The illustrations are as magnificent as the story-telling. The ways in which the enthralling narratives reveal the prejudices of the author's own life and times are equally fascinating.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Over a century since its first publication, Arthur Conan Doyle's original series remains intensely readable. The complete works can now be enjoyed for free online and are available here.
The Name of the Rose (Il Nome della Rosa) - Umberto Eco's brilliant detective mystery set in a French monastery. Rich in allusion and history.
Non-Fiction
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World - A magisterial account of world history from the perspective of Central Asia and the Eurasian plateau. I had the pleasure of interviewing Peter Frankopan about this book. The interview is published here.
Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History - John Julius Norwich is probably most famous for his Christmas Crackers (the annual collections of findings, vignettes, and monographs). This history of Sicily is an epic survey of a part of the world that has been otherwise under-explored in popular historical writing.
Flashboys - Michael Lewis is a magnificent story-teller with the ability to pour life into the dullest corners of the financial markets. Through his eyes, structured credit and accountants are transformed into heroes and villains. Best known for Liar's Poker and The Big Short, I prefer to recommend Flashboys, Lewis’ account of the early days of high-frequency trading.
Finally, the following pair of First World War diaries together offer a glimpse of the brutality of the Western Front. I found that the two diaries enhance one another when read in parallel: Storm of Steel (In Stahlgewittern), Ernst Junger's account, told from the perspective of a Germany infantry officer; Memoirs of an Infantry Officer Siegfried Sassoon's diaries, offers a British infantry officer's perspective. In film, the equivalents are Sam Mendes’ 1917, and Edward Berger’s version of All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen Nichts Neues), the visceral re-imagining of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 work of the same name.
For more non-fiction, try The Electric Typewriter for a curated annual collection of high quality articles by theme, Read Something Wonderful for a curated collection of writing with a random selection function, English Wikipedia Top 100 for today’s 100 most-visited English Wikipedia articles, Exploding Topics for trends, Visual Capitalist and Flowing Data for data visualisations.
