Booklist

Jimmy’s Recommended Reading!

Jimmy is a voracious reader but as he travels a lot (and has said that he is a slow reader, due to his dyslexia) he consumes audio books (usually on at least double speed, he’s said that every book he listens to sounds like it’s narrated by chipmunks).

He recommends books a lot in podcasts (or even during shows) and below are the ones mentioned.

Where possible the book Author / Title is followed by at least one link to whichever podcast / live gig he mentioned it in.

Sometimes there maybe just an Author’s name – that’s when he didn’t mention a specific book, but just recommended the author. When he does – I’ll be back to update.

On Jokes

But first – I may as well plug Jimmy’s new book (I’m sure it is what he would want). To be published October 2026:

On Jokes (or, why everything you know about comedy is wrong): The Secret Science of Making People Laugh

Read all about it here.

A. A. Gill – Pour Me: A Life (YMIW 2022)
Aldous Huxley – Brave new World (Rogan) (Malice)
Alain de Botton – The School of Life (see website)
Alex Hormozi – Gym Launch Secrets (San Fran heckle compilation)
Alex Hormozi – $100m Leads (San Fran heckle compilation)
Andrew Doyle – The End of Woke (review)
Annie Grace – This Naked Mind – Control Alcohol (YMIW)
Bill Perkins – Die With Zero: Getting All You Can From Your Money and Your Life
Charlie Munger – not a book but his theory on Inversion Thinking (Heckle video)
Christopher Hitchens – God Is Not Good (Audible)
Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow (Szeps2026)
David Deutsch – The Beginning of Infinity – Explanations that Transform the World (YMIW) & (Rogan)
David Deutsch – The Fabric of Reality: Towards a Theory of Everything (Szeps2025)
Derek Parfit – Reasons and Persons (YMIW)
Dominic Holland – Open Links (T-on-L)
Eckhart Tolle
Esther Perel – Mating in Captivity – Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (Heckle Video)
Esther Perel – The State of Affairs – Rethinking Infidelity (Heckle Video)
Francis Foster – (Un)educated: My Life as a Teacher, and Why You Should Never Become One (promo for book)
Friedrich Nietzsche (Szeps2026)
George Mack – Essays on High Agency People (Szeps2025)
G.W.F. Hegel (Szeps2026)
Iain McGilchrist – The Master and His Emissary – The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (YMIW) & (MW2025)
James Joyce – Finnegan’s Wake (Chrissy Chaos)
Jean Baudrillard – The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (Szeps2026)
Jo Brand (can’t work out which book he means) (Heckle video)
Johan Huizinga – Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Theroux)
John Sarno – Healing Back Pain (YMIW)
John Sarno – Mind/Body Prescription (Heckle video)
John Williams – Stoner (Rabbit Hole pod)
Jon Ronson – So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (Malice)
Jonathan Haidt – The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2 Bears)
Lionel Shriver – Mania (Big Pitch10)
Louise Perry – The Case Against The Sexual Revolution (Heckle video1) & (Heckle video2)
Malcolm Gladwell – Outliers (B&L book)
Mary Harrington
Matthew McConaughey – Greenlights (Heckle video)
Milan Kundera – Slowness (MW2025)
Morgan Housel – Same As Ever (MW2025)
Morgan Housel – The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed and Happiness, 2020 (Malice)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb – The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Audio book updated 2019) (heckle video)
Neil Howe – The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us About How and When This Crisis Will End (2 Bears)
Neil Postman – Amusing Ourselves to Death, 1987 (Malice) (2 Bears)
Neil Strauss – The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (Melbourne)
Neil Strauss – The Truth: An Eye-opening Odyssey Through Love Addiction, Sex Addiction and Extraordinary Relationship (Melbourne)
Oliver Burkeman – Four Thousand Weeks: Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count (HappyPlace)
Pete Holmes – Comedy Sex God (YMIW)
Peter Turchin – Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration (heckle video)
Quentin Tarantino – Cinema Speculation (Rogan) (2 Bears)
Raymond Carver – What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
René Girard – Mimetic Desires (MW2023)
Richard Dawkins – The Selfish Gene (Audible)
Richard N. Bowles – What Colour is Your Parachute: Your Guide to a Lifetime of Meaningful Work and Career Success (Rosebud 2025)
Robert Emmons – Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier (Substack)
Scott Galloway – Notes on Being a Man (LBC 2025)
Sebastian Junger – Tribe (YMIW 2022)
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz – Everybody Lies: What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are (Heckle video)
Stephen Fry – Making History (Szeps2025) (Heckle video)
Stephen Jenkinson – Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (Heckle video)
Stephen Pinkner – Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress (Breaking Bread) (Whiskey Ginger)
Stephen Pinkner – The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity (Whiskey Ginger)
Steve Stewart-Williams – The Ape That Understood the Universe – How the Mind and Culture Evolve (Rogan)
Steven Pressfield – The War of Art (Heckle video)
Tim Urban – What’s Our Problem? (Breaking Bread)
Toby Ord – The Precipice – Existential Risk and The Future of Humanity (Heckle video)
Tom O’Neil & Dan Piepenbring – Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties (Rogan)
Warren Farrell, Dr – The Myth of Male Power (Heckle video) *note – a 21st anniversary edition is now available
Will Storr – The Status Game (MW2025)
Will Storr – Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It’s Doing to Us (YMIW 2022)
William Strauss – The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny (Szeps2025) – see Neil Howe (above) for updated version.

Plus – in Rosebud – Jimmy mentioned “Zen and the Modern Art of Living“. There are several books of a similar name so I’m not sure which one he was referencing (he read it 25+ years ago).