Book · recommended on 4 episodes
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov
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Mikhail Bulgakov
Find it on AmazonAffiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
This book by Mikhail Bulgakov has come up 4 times across 2 different shows: Lex Fridman, Tim Ferriss. 4 of those mentions were genuine on-air recommendations, not just passing references. The people who brought it up: Dmitri Dolgov, Jordan Peterson, Max Levchin, guest. The earliest mention we indexed is from 2020-12-20 and the most recent from 2026-06-10. Every occurrence below links to the episode page and to the exact second it was said on YouTube.
“I usually buy M&M in batches of five but you give it as gifts to new friends. It's a great book. You're missing out.”— Max Levchin
The guest here is Max Levchin: Cofounder of PayPal and founder/CEO of Affirm; Soviet-Ukraine-born engineer-turned-CEO, cryptography enthusiast, obsessive cyclist, and prolific tech investor (sci-fi.vc). Affirm and PayPal cofounder Max Levchin on marriage, cycling, fighting socialism, building buy-now-pay-later, and his obsessive coffee philosophy.
“the master in margarita that's a deadly book i've read that i think four times and i still there's still it's unbelievably deep”— Jordan Peterson
The guest here is Jordan Peterson: Influential clinical psychologist, lecturer, and podcast host; author of Maps of Meaning, 12 Rules for Life, and Beyond Order, known for his lectures on psychology, religion, and meaning. Jordan Peterson and Lex Fridman roam across God, beauty, death, fame, power, marriage, diet, and the meaning of life.
“the first book is ... it's bulgakov's master and margarita ... it's a really powerful book for uh even in english”— guest
The guest here is Dmitry Korkin: Professor of bioinformatics and computational biology at WPI specializing in complex disease, computational genomics, and systems biology. His lab studies the structural and evolutionary biology of SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses. A computational biologist breaks down how proteins fold, how viruses evolve, and why AlphaFold is a landmark for AI in science.
“the master and margarita it's one of actually my favorite books it is you know by a russian it's a novel by russian author mikhail bulgakov”— Dmitri Dolgov
The guest here is Dmitri Dolgov: CTO of Waymo, the autonomous driving company that began as Google's self-driving car project in 2009. He has worked on the project since the DARPA Urban Challenge era and helped lead it to the first at-scale public driverless ride-hailing deployment. Waymo CTO Dmitri Dolgov on building a truly driverless car, scaling beyond Phoenix, and why aggression isn't the same as good driving.
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