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 80 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!”
- 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”
- Expanded Cinema: “In the book Expanded Cinema, Gene Youngblood described”
- The Romance of Reality: “a new book blowing my mind.”
- Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That's Lost Its Mind: “My friend Jamie Wheal's new book, Recapture The Rapture, teaches us how to reclaim”
- Contact: “in his novel "Contact"... It spoke to me profoundly.”
- Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon: “"When we dream of space, we dream of transcendence. We dream of what we might become" - from the book Rocket Men.”
- Bewildered Travel: The Sacred Quest for Confusion: “A religious studies professor wrote a book called BEWILDERED TRAVEL in which he makes the case that travel is really about the desire for bewilderment”
- Call Me by Your Name: “This is absolutely magnificent. It’s from the book that inspired the later film "Call Me By Your Name"”
- The Selfish Gene: “That was Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, I believe. In the 70s he wrote this book where he introduced the term meme.”
- The 4-hour Workweek: “I read 4-Hour Workweek years ago in Point Dume in Malibu and I remember reading it and feeling like you have hacked it, you have figured it out... that template stayed with me, dude. I remember I was very affected by your book. I was like this guy has it figured out.”
- Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age: “Steven Johnson wrote a whole other book about that called Future Perfect where he talks about, look, it's not utopia but it's leaning that way.”
- Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World: “I don't know if you've heard of the book Reality is Broken, but it's all about the power of game and mechanics to help save the world.”
- Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace: “I've been obsessed for awhile with liminal trance states. I read a book by Janet Murray called Hamlet on the Holodeck, and it's about narrative and immersion.”
- How to Make a Spaceship: “#HowToMakeASpaceship is an outstanding & Compelling book. Get it. Read it. Be inspired.”
- Good Morning, I Love You: “In her new book, GOOD MORNING, I LOVE YOU, Dr. Shauna Shapiro shares decades of scientific study…”
- Magic Medicine: A Trip Through the Intoxicating History of Drugs: “Cody Johnson has written a fascinating book out this summer: Magic Medicine: A Trip Through the Intoxicating History…”
- Mating in Captivity: “Can we desire what we already have? Currently reading "mating in captivity"”
- Out of Control: “Reading Kevin Kelly's "Out Of Control"... Absolutely fascinated by his explanation of 'emergence', how higher order complexity emerges. Wow.”
- The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity: “Excited about @EstherPerel's new book #TheStateofAffairsBook, a new look at trust & betrayal.”
- The Immortality Key: “books like The Immortality Key do a pretty good job at providing compelling, persuasive evidence for the Eleusinian mysteries”
- The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption: “there's a book about this, it's called The Information Diet, and it says that it's really up to us to take responsibility over our information diet, to set up curators, to set up certain filters”
- The Art of Immersion: “there's a great book called The Art of Immersion by Frank Rose, who used to be at Wired, who says that the future of immersive storytelling... we all long to go back to Pandora even though we've never really been there”
- The Rational Optimist: “there's a book by Ridley called The Rational Optimist and he coined the word idea sex and he says that ideas coming together in open liquid networks... are akin to genetic recombination in nature”
- Abundance: “Peter Diamandis... has his book called Abundance and he'll explain that... because our brains evolved in a time where we had to have fight or flight mode, the amygdala is always looking for danger”
- Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human: “the book How Cooking Made Us Human says… and I argue this in many of my talks that we're in a co-evolution with our tools”
- Scale: “Two important books”
- Sapiens: “Two important books”
- The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History: “Important books in my library”
- Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth: “Books that matter”
- A Neurophenomenology of Awe and Wonder: Towards a Non-Reductionist Cognitive Science: “Must read”
- Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence: “Important books in my library”
- On Love: “he also wrote an amazing book on love called On Love that's spectacular”
- Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion: “he wrote a book called Religion for Atheists where he says that museums have a responsibility to create spaces for contemplation… which is a thing I totally agree with”
- Eat, Pray, Love: “that movie Eat Pray Love, which is based on that great book that resonated with so many people”
- The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact: “There's a great book about cinema by a guy called Colin McGinn. It's called The Power of Movies.”
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: “that's kind of how consciousness works. Gödel, Escher, Bach in his famous book said that essentially the brain is like a hard drive that stores models that mirror the world”
- Brave New World: “the famous book Brave New World is a dystopia… I actually think a lot of what that book talks about doesn't have to be dystopic”
- The Body Keeps the Score: “like that book The Body Keeps The Score”
- The Mind of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism: “From the book: THE MIND OF THE TRAVELER”
- Embodiment and the Inner Life: Cognition and Consciousness in the Space of Possible Minds: “Currently reading”
- The Politics of Experience: “Currently reading”
- Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design: “Currently reading”
- Cartographic Cinema: “Two books of the moment”
- How to Stay Sane: “Two books of the moment”
- How to Land a Plane: “Gotta read this ;)”
- The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression: “Insane book”
- How Poems Think: “On poetry and altered states... from the book "how poems think"”
- Last Tango in Cyberspace: “Steven Kotler's new novel, The Last Tango in Cyberspace is a psychedelic Sci fi rollercoaster.”
- Others in Mind: Social Origins of Self-Consciousness: “How To Hack Happiness? Hint: incorporate the ideas of the following books: 1) PsychoGeography of Everyday Life 2) Others In Mind 3) David Lenson's ideas of consciousness in his book On Drugs.”
- Equus: “If you've never seen or read the play, I recommend it.”
- The Denial of Death: “When I first read Ernest Becker's book, The Denial Of Death, my jaw dropped. Here, finally, was a distillation of the human experience that rang true.”
- 3 Essays on Virtual Reality: Overlords, Civilization, and Escape: “This book shows how deep the rabbit hole goes…”
- Vanishing Asia: Three Volume Set: West, Central, and East: “VANISHING ASIA: a new, masterful coffee-table book… by my friend Kevin Kelly”
- Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life: “How To Hack Happiness? Hint: incorporate the ideas of the following books: 1) PsychoGeography of Everyday Life 2) Others In Mind 3) David Lenson's ideas of consciousness in his book On Drugs.”
- Somewhere in Time: “I also remember reading Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson which blew my mind.”