Jason Silva
Actor, Author, Director, Filmmaker, Philosopher, Producer, Writer
Jason Silva is a Venezuelan-American filmmaker, futurist and speaker who hosted National Geographic's Brain Games in the 2010s and created the online video series Shots of Awe. His books include Sacred Derangement (2025) and The Ecstatic States of America (2026).
Jason Silva's 27 Book Recommendations
- The Rise of Superman
- The Singularity Is Near: “A List of my favorite books!”
- Where Good Ideas Come From: “A List of my favorite books!”
- The Denial of Death: “A List of my favorite books!”
- TechGnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information: “Book Must Read: @erik_davis's new reissue of TECHGNOSIS - it will melt your brain”
- The Promise of a Pencil: “My friend @AdamBraun has released his #PoPbook, and it's a must-read!”
- Stealing Fire: “A $4 trillion revolution in consciousness and high performance—Stealing Fire is the first MUST READ of 2017!”
- The Information: “James Gleak says in his book, The Information, "When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive."”
- Bold: “.@kotlersteven released his book "BOLD" + @billclinton: "a roadmap for people who believe they can change the world"”
- The Future Is Asian: “My friend @paragkhanna has an exciting new book THE FUTURE IS ASIAN”
- How to Change Your Mind: “In celebration of @michaelpollan's new book on psychedelics, HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND, here's a recent short video I did on psychedelic therapy”
- Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noosphere: “Check out Rich Doyle's DARWIN'S PHARMACY, amazing book”
- The Architecture of Happiness: “it was the architecture of happiness that you first started to get into this like we can design spaces that the power of art and architecture to to move us”
- Shamanism: “So there's an amazing philosopher called Eliade, who wrote a book about shamanism, where he spoke of psychedelic drugs as technologies of ecstasy.”
- After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path: “There's a great book called After the Ecstasy, The Laundry”
- The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature: “So the brilliant thinker, Geoffrey Miller, has an amazing book called The Mating Mind.”
- The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America: “the wonderful book the hypomanic edge”
- The Botany of Desire: “in botany of desire I felt you had put out there the most eloquent account of cannabis phenomenology I had come across”
- Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play: “I was excited when I first discovered Csikszentmihalyi's beyond boredom and anxiety”
- The Art of Travel: “I was reading the art of travel in the bathtub in like 1997 I remember and the the words were resonating so profoundly”
- The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell: “I'm a big fan, of course, of Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception.”
- The Better Angels of Our Nature: “You have Steven Pinker, who wrote "The Better Angels of Our Nature" and his TED talk, "The Myth of Violence," that says that, contrary to what you see on the news, the chances of a man dying at the hands of another man are the lowest than they've ever been in history.”
- What the Dormouse Said: “Or the ideas that John Markoff explores. And what the Dormouse says when he says that this 1960s moment, this counterculture, these computers, this dream that was conceived and potentially to be literalized now.”
- The Immortalist: “re-reading The Immortalist by Alan Harrington- most brilliant book no one's ever heard of for sure!”
- Xenolinguistics: Psychedelics, Language, and the Evolution of Consciousness: “Must read; Xenolinguistics.... Language, and the Evolution of Consciousness”
- What Technology Wants: “A List of my favorite books!”
- On Drugs: “he wrote a book called on drugs which is about the phenomenology of drug use which we both agree is like the best book written on drugs ever”