Podcasts are like books in that if there's a topic you're interested in, there's probably a podcast about it! These radio programs that you can listen to on your time cover many different topics from current events to science to true crime to celebrity gossip. We've put together a list of books that might appeal to fans of specific podcasts. The podcast of interest is in bold. Or if you've already read one of these titles, you might just find yourself a new podcast to binge!
Interested in learning more about how to start listening to podcasts? This article gives a nice overview of all the technology you need to get started and even a few recommendations.
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The best American nonrequired reading 2019
by Edan Lepucki For fans of This American Life: With the help of a New York Times bestselling author, fifteen Bay Area high school students select the best fiction, essays, poetry and graphic work—all of which show why writing brings people tighter no matter what else is happening in the world. Original. |
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What if? : serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions
by Randall Munroe For fans of Stuff You Should Know: The creator of the incredibly popular webcomic xkcd presents his heavily researched answers to his fans' oddest questions, including “What if I took a swim in a spent-nuclear-fuel pool?” and “Could you build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns?” |
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Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
by Tres Dean For fans of How Did This Get Made? Sporting a proverbial perfect Rotten Tomatoes score of 100%, Certified Fresh, The Rock embodies everything we want from our Hollywood superstars... and everything we admire in those who so boldly pursue the American Dream. But how did it all happen? How did a loathed professional wrestler become the most famous person in the world? Was it just good timing? Years of trial and error? Countless hours in the gym? A winning smile? Or his total mastery of Instagram Stories? For Your Consideration: Dwayne "TheRock" Johnson looks at the distinct phases of the legend's career, examining the ways in which he has become both an onscreen heartthrob and an off-screen hero. Composed of five critical essays and fun extras, including an all-Rock version of the Oscars, a quiz identifying the best Rock character to take to the prom, and a definitive ranking of The Rock's catchphrases, this book is sure to satisfy pop culture enthusiasts and The Rock's hardcore fans alike. |
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Lady killers : deadly women throughout history
by Tori Telfer For fans of My Favorite Murder: Based on her popular online series that appeared on Jezebel and The Hairpin, the author, in this first book to examine female serial killers through a feminist lens, delves into the cruel and cunning minds of 14 women who, largely forgotten by history, had a penchant for murder and mayhem. |
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Here for it : or, how to save your soul in America ; essays
by R. Eric Thomas For fans of Keep It: R. Eric Thomas didn't know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went--whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city--he found himself on the outside looking in. In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Eric redefines what it means to be an "other" through the lens of his own life experience. He explores the two worlds of his childhood: the barren urban landscape where his parents' house was an anomalous bright spot, and the verdant school they sent him to in white suburbia. He writes about struggling to reconcile his Christian identity with his sexuality, about the exhaustion of code-switching in college, accidentally getting famous on the internet (for the wrong reason), and the surreal experience of covering the 2016 election as well as the seismic change that came thereafter. Ultimately, Eric seeks the answer to the ever more relevant question: Is the future worth it? Why do we bother when everything seems to be getting worse? As the world continues to shift in unpredictable ways, Eric finds the answers to these questions by re-envisioning what "normal" means, and in the powerful alchemy that occurs when you at last place yourself at the center of your own story. |
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Ghostland : an American history in haunted places
by Colin Dickey For fans of Lore: Explores some of the United States' most infamously haunted places, including old mansions and hotels, abandoned prisons, empty hospitals, and other locations, and reveals the repressed history they represent. |
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Talking to GOATs : the moments you remember and the stories you never heart
by Jim Gray For fans of the Bill Simmons Podcast: The 12-time Emmy Award-winning sportscaster and Hall of Fame inductee draws on four decades of reporting to share inside stories, memorable anecdotes and rare interview moments with such figures as Muhammad Ali, Kobe Bryant and Barack Obama. |
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Quackery : a brief history of the worst ways to cure everything
by Lydia Kang For fans of Sawbones: What won't we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine--yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison--was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices. Ranging from the merely weird to the outright dangerous, here are dozens of outlandish, morbidly hilarious "treatments"--conceived by doctors and scientists, by spiritualists and snake oil salesmen (yes, they literally tried to sell snake oil)--that were predicated on a range of cluelessness, trial and error, and straight-up scams. With vintage illustrations, photographs, and advertisements throughout, Quackery seamlessly combines macabre humor with science and storytelling to reveal an important and disturbing side of the ever-evolving field of medicine. |
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Astrophysics for people in a hurry
by Neil deGrasse Tyson For fans of Radiolab: The notable host of StarTalk reveals just what people need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe. |
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Blood in the water : the Attica prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy
by Heather Ann Thompson For fans of Ear Hustle: Historian Heather Ann Thompson offers the first definitive telling of the Attica prison uprising, the state's violent response, and the victims' decades-long quest for justice. Drawing from more than a decade of extensive research, Thompson sheds new light on every aspect of the uprising and its legacy, giving voice to all those who took part in this forty-five-year fight for justice: prisoners, former hostages, families of the victims, lawyers and judges, and state officials and members of law enforcement. |
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The confidence game : why we fall for it... every time
by Maria Konnikova For fans of The Dream: Explores the psyches, motives, and methods of con artists to reveal why they are consistently successful, identifying common hallmarks of cons to share additional insights into the relationship between artists and victims. |
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She come by it natural : Dolly Parton and the women who lived her songs
by Sarah Smarsh For fans of Dolly Patron's America: The National Book Award-finalist author of Heartland explores how the music of Dolly Parton and other prominent women country artists has both reflected and validated the harsh realities of rural working-class American women. |
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How to be fine : what we learned from living by the rules of 50 self-help books
by Jolenta Greenberg For fans of Dear Prudence: The hosts of the popular By the Book podcast draw on their active experiments with self-help books to reveal the unexpected ways that some of the advice they followed positively improved their lives. |
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Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man
by Emmanuel Acho For fans of Code Switch: In Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and small, insensitive and taboo, many white Americans are afraid to ask - yet which all Americans need the answers to, now more than ever. With the same open-hearted generosity that has made his video series a phenomenon, Acho explains the vital core of such fraught concepts as white privilege, cultural appropriation, and "reverse racism." In his own words, he provides a space of compassion and understanding in a discussion that can lack both. He asks only for the reader's curiosity - but along the way, he will galvanize all of us to join the antiracist fight. |
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Doughnut economics : seven ways to think like a 21st century economist
by Kate Raworth For fans of Planet Money: Argues that the economic system is dangerously out of date and proposes seven key ways to bring it into the twenty-first century by breaking the addiction to growth, making money and commerce serve people, and creating regenerative economies. |
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Name drop : the really good celebrity stories I usually only tell at happy hour
by Ross Mathews For fans of Who Weekly: Paired with cocktail suggestions and other “Rossipes,” an irreverent essay collection by the best-selling author of Man Up! includes pieces about his encounters with such personalities as Barbara Walters, Omarosa and the Kardashians. |
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The office : the untold story of the greatest sitcom of the 2000s : an oral history
by Andy Greene For fans of Office Ladies: A senior writer for Rolling Stone draws on firsthand interviews with series creators, writers and actors to demonstrate The Office’s evolution from a quiet British import to a production that indelibly shaped American culture. |
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Planet funny : how comedy took over our culture
by Ken Jennings For fans of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me: From the witty and exuberant New York Times best-selling author comes a history of humor—from fart jokes on clay Sumerian tablets all the way up to the latest Twitter memes—that tells the story of how comedy came to rule the modern world. |
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The perfectionists : how precision engineers created the modern world
by Simon Winchester For fans of 99% Invisible: The best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the crucial role of precision in advancement. |
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Scandals of classic Hollywood : sex, deviance, and drama from the golden age of American cinema
by Anne Helen Petersen For fans of You Must Remember This: A collection of shocking clashes and controversies from Hollywood's Golden Age, featuring notorious personalities including Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Jean Harlow, and more. |