The Ascent of Money

This book by Niall Ferguson has been genuinely recommended 7 times on Lex Fridman. The people who vouched for it on air: Lex Fridman. It comes up in conversations about brain health, consciousness, nutrition & diet, productivity & performance, trauma & ptsd. The earliest recommendation we indexed is from Mar 2020 and the most recent from Aug 2020. Every quote below is verbatim, attributed, and linked to the exact second it was said. Sourced expert opinion, not medical advice.

Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress.

• “i recommend ascent of money as a great book on this history debits and credits on ledgers started around 30 000 years ago”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “i recommend ascent of money as a great book”
  Lex Fridman · Lex Fridman Podcast · Aug 202000:04:06

  Said during "David Eagleman: Neuroplasticity and the Livewired Brain | Lex Fridman Podcast #119". The episode features David Eagleman: Neuroscientist, Stanford professor, and bestselling science communicator known for popularizing brain research. He runs Neosensory, a company building sensory-substitution wearables, and authored Livewired and Incognito. Neuroscientist David Eagleman explains why the brain is not hardware plus software but a constantly self-rewiring 'livewired' system.

• “i recommend the scent of money as a great book on this history debits and credits on ledgers started around 30 000 years ago”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “i recommend the scent of money as a great book”
  Lex Fridman · Lex Fridman Podcast · Aug 202000:04:40

  Said during "Sara Seager: Search for Planets and Life Outside Our Solar System | Lex Fridman Podcast #116". The episode features Sara Seager: Planetary scientist and astrophysicist at MIT, a pioneer in the search for exoplanets and their atmospheres. She created the Seager equation and authored the memoir 'The Smallest Lights in the Universe.'. MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager on hunting exoplanets, reading alien atmospheres for life, and finding hope after losing her husband.

• “I recommend a cent of money as a great book in this history debits and credits on Ledger's started around 30,000 years ago”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “I recommend a cent of money as a great book”
  Lex Fridman · Lex Fridman Podcast · Jul 202000:03:35

  Said during "Peter Singer: Suffering in Humans, Animals, and AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #107". The episode features Peter Singer: Influential bioethics professor best known for the 1975 book Animal Liberation and a key popularizer of the effective altruism movement, widely regarded as one of the most influential living philosophers. Peter Singer and Lex Fridman explore the nature of suffering across humans, animals, and AI, plus ethics, utilitarianism, and effective altruism.

• “I recommend the scent of money as a great book on this history also the audio book is amazing”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “I recommend the scent of money as a great book”
  Lex Fridman · Lex Fridman Podcast · Jun 202000:02:37

  Said during "David Patterson: Computer Architecture and Data Storage | Lex Fridman Podcast #104". The episode features David Patterson: Turing Award-winning computer scientist and UC Berkeley professor, known for pioneering RISC processor architecture and co-creating RAID storage. Co-author with John Hennessy of the seminal textbook Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach. Turing Award winner David Patterson explains how RISC and RAID reshaped computing, and why Moore's law is ending.

• “since cash app allows you to buy bitcoin let me mention that cryptocurrency in the context of the history of money is fascinating i recommend ascent of money as a great book on this history”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “i recommend ascent of money as a great book”
  Lex Fridman · Lex Fridman Podcast · May 202000:01:34

  Said during "Ilya Sutskever: Deep Learning | Lex Fridman Podcast #94". The episode features Ilya Sutskever: Co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI and one of the most cited computer scientists in history. He co-authored the landmark AlexNet paper that helped launch the modern deep learning revolution. OpenAI's Ilya Sutskever explains why deep learning works, what's missing for reasoning and AGI, and how AI power should be governed.

• “I recommend a cent of money as a great book on this history debits and credits on Ledger's started around 30,000 years ago”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “I recommend a cent of money as a great book”
  Lex Fridman · Lex Fridman Podcast · Apr 202000:01:34

  Said during "Dmitry Korkin: Computational Biology of Coronavirus | Lex Fridman Podcast #90". The episode features Dmitry Korkin: Professor of bioinformatics and computational biology at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). His group reconstructed the 3D structure of SARS-CoV-2's major viral proteins early in 2020 and made the structural genomics data openly available to researchers. Computational biologist Dmitry Korkin explains how bioinformatics maps the coronavirus's proteins to speed up drugs and vaccines.

• “cryptocurrency in the context of the history of money is fascinating I recommend a cent of money as a great book on this history”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “I recommend a cent of money as a great book on this history”
  Lex Fridman · Lex Fridman Podcast · Mar 202000:02:35

  Said during "Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science | Lex Fridman Podcast #77". The episode features Alex Garland: British writer and director of philosophical science-fiction films including Ex Machina, Annihilation, and the series Devs. Known for weaving rigorous science and philosophy into mainstream cinema. Filmmaker Alex Garland and Lex Fridman explore AI, consciousness, free will, and the poetry of science behind Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Devs.