Book · recommended on 7 episodes
The Denial of Death
Ernest Becker ISBN 9780285640078
Find it on AmazonAffiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Ernest Becker ISBN 9780285640078
Find it on AmazonAffiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
This book by Ernest Becker has come up 7 times across 2 different shows: Andrew Huberman, Lex Fridman. 7 of those mentions were genuine on-air recommendations, not just passing references. The people who brought it up: Andrew Huberman, Brian Greene, David Wolpe, Lex Fridman, Steve Keen, host. The earliest mention we indexed is from 2020-08-20 and the most recent from 2025-04-07. Every occurrence below links to the episode page and to the exact second it was said on YouTube.
“I'm reading Erns Becker's the denial of death highly recommend it to everyone a Pulitzer after all”— Andrew Huberman
The guest here is Lori Gottlieb: Psychotherapist and best-selling author of "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone," widely regarded as one of the world's leading experts on relationships. She also writes the "Ask the Therapist" advice column (formerly at The Atlantic, now The New York Times). Psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb explains how to find and be a great romantic partner by reading your feelings, choosing calm over chaos, and rewriting the stories you tell yourself.
“I find the idea is of Ernest Becker with denial of death really powerful which is that humans will not only have emotions”— Steve Keen
The guest here is Steve Keen: An Australian heterodox economist and longtime critic of mainstream neoclassical economics, known for predicting the 2008 crisis. He is a scholar of Karl Marx, author of 'Debunking Economics' and 'The New Economics: A Manifesto,' and creator of the open-source system-dynamics modeling software Minsky. Heterodox economist Steve Keen dissects Marx, capitalism, money creation, and why mainstream economics gets climate change catastrophically wrong.
“i read ernest becker's denial of death which i found and still find to be one of the most profound works i've ever come across”— David Wolpe
The guest here is David Wolpe: A prominent American rabbi (longtime leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles), author, and public intellectual known for debating atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Rabbi David Wolpe and Lex Fridman explore God, faith, free will, the Holocaust, mortality, and whether machines could one day have souls.
“there's this wonderful book that had a great influence in me called the denial of death by ernest becker”— Brian Greene
The guest here is Brian Greene: Theoretical physicist at Columbia University and a leading string theory researcher. Bestselling author of physics books including The Elegant Universe and Until the End of Time. Physicist Brian Greene unpacks quantum gravity, the Big Bang, consciousness, free will, aliens, and how mortality gives a meaningless universe its meaning.
“somebody i've enjoyed reading ernest becker wrote the denial of death there's also martin heidegger”— Lex Fridman
The guest here is David Sinclair: Professor of genetics at Harvard and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School. Author of 'Lifespan' and co-founder of several longevity biotech companies. Harvard geneticist David Sinclair explains how aging is a loss of biological information that can be slowed, measured, and even reversed.
“when i read ernest becker that i highly recommend people read is the first time i this scene it felt like this is the right thing at the core”— Lex Fridman
The guest here is Eugenia Kuyda: Co-founder and CEO of Replika, an app that lets users build a chatbot AI friend that connects emotionally. A former Russian investigative journalist who created the first version of the tech to memorialize a close friend who died. Replika founder Eugenia Kuyda on loneliness, losing her best friend, and building an AI companion born from grief.
“ernest becker's book denial of death had a big impact on my thinking about human cognition consciousness and the deep ocean currents of our mind”— host
The guest here is Sheldon Solomon: Social psychologist at Skidmore College and co-developer of Terror Management Theory. He co-authored 'The Worm at the Core' and built decades of experiments on how mortality awareness shapes human behavior, extending the ideas of Ernest Becker. Social psychologist Sheldon Solomon argues the fear of death secretly drives nearly everything humans build, believe, and destroy.
26× recommendedTom O'Neill
17× recommendedSteven Pressfield
17× recommendedS.C. Gwynne
16× recommendedMarcus Aurelius
16× recommendedViktor Frankl
15× recommendedBrian Muraresku