Ulysses

This book by James Joyce was genuinely recommended once in the episodes we index, on Lex Fridman. The people who vouched for it on air: Norman Ohler. It comes up in conversations about consciousness, psychedelics. Every quote below is verbatim, attributed, and linked to the exact second it was said. Sourced expert opinion, not medical advice.

Written over a seven-year period, from 1914 to 1921, this book has survived bowdlerization, legal action and controversy. The novel deals with the events of one day in Dublin, 16th June 1904, now known as "Bloomsday". The principal characters are Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly. Ulysses has been labelled dirty, blasphemous and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book-although he found it not quite obscene enough to disallow its importation into the United States-and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession".

• “it's Ulysses by James Joyce. Ulysses is good, but only when you're in your early 20s, living in New York”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “Ulysses is good”
  Norman Ohler · Lex Fridman Podcast · Sep 202504:13:44

  Said during "Norman Ohler: Hitler, Nazis, Drugs, WW2, Blitzkrieg, LSD, MKUltra & CIA | Lex Fridman Podcast #481". The episode features Norman Ohler: German novelist and non-fiction author of Blitzed, Tripped, and The Bohemians. He researches the role of drugs in history using primary archival sources and is working on a new book, Stoned Sapiens, about human civilization through the lens of drugs. Norman Ohler reveals how methamphetamine fueled Nazi Blitzkrieg and how Hitler's opioid addiction warped his wartime decisions.