Middlemarch

This book by George Eliot has come up 2 times on Lex Fridman. 2 of those mentions were genuine on-air recommendations, not just passing references. The people who brought it up: Dan Houser, David Wolpe. The earliest mention we indexed is from 2022-03-16 and the most recent from 2025-10-31. Every occurrence below links to the episode page and to the exact second it was said on YouTube.

Eliot’s epic of 19th century provincial social life, set in a fictitious Midlands town in the years 1830-32, has several interlocking storylines blended effortlessly together to form a fully coherent narrative. Its main themes are the status of women, social expectations and hypocrisy, religion, political reform and education. It has often been called the greatest novel in the English language.