Authors

Authors who write books that make you smarter.

A list of the authors who have contributed the most or best encapsulate the emergent metaculture philosophy.

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” -Toni Morrison

Check the Reading List for a list of specific book recommendations.

Synthesizing Their Knowledge

The authors on this list (and many that aren't) are contributing books, articles, podcasts, and other content that expand on these ideas every day. Many are worth a follow on social media, if you still participate in that despite the documented addiction and mental health risks it poses.

This wiki attempts to create a single work that synthesizes the ideas of all of these authors. It would have a much easier time of it if these authors decided to become editors! But if they did you would never know, since it is strictly anonymous.

Neurophilosophy

The best authors tackling the intersection of science and spirituality come from the field of neuroscience. This makes a lot of sense given the fact that the nature of consciousness is a central theme in all religions, and neuroscientists are the ones who are finally making the connection between these subjective experiences and the objective, material causes for them in the brain.

Those that aren't neuroscientists tend to come from the fields of sociology, evolutionary biology and psychology, and some theoretical physicists as well. Others are philosophers, journalists, bloggers, podcasters and other content producers that focus on these subjects.

While a number of historical works have contributed to metaculture, this list will focus on authors who have published works within the last 20 years or so, since these take into account all of the ideas that came beforehand and push the boundaries of thought towards the future.

Neuroscience and Psychology

• Bobby Azarian
• Robert Sapolsky
• Andrew Newberg
• Jonathan Haidt
• Douglas Hofstadter
• Patricia Churchland
• Shankar Vedantam
• David Eagleman
• Michael Pollan
• Oliver Sacks
• Dan Harris
• Sam Harris
• Steven Pinker
• Daniel Dennett
• Gretchen Rubin
• Angela Duckworth
• Max Bennett
• Norman Doidge
• Jamil Zaki
• Tali Sharot
• Adam Grant
• Dan Ariely
• Kurt Gray
• Lisa Feldman Barrett

Complex Systems, Evolution, and Cosmology

• Neil Theise
• Saul Perlmutter
• James Gleick
• Carl Sagan
• Stephen Hawking
• Stephen Wolfram
• Sean Carroll
• E. O. Wilson
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
• Freeman Dyson
• Ray Kurzweil
• Paul Bloom
• Francis Collins
• Alan Lightman

Philosophy, Ethics, Politics, and Social Commentary

• Slavoj Žižek
• Yuval Noah Harari
• Jennifer Michael Hecht
• Naomi Klein
• Maria Popova
• Yujin Nagasawa
• C. Thi Nguyen
• Richard Rohr
• Brendan Graham Dempsey
• Ken Wilber
• Tenzin Gyatso
• Helena Hartmann
• Michael Schur
• Rainn Wilson
• Meghan O'Gieblyn
• Kieran Setiya
• Keith Payne
• Will MacAskill
• Douglas Rushkoff
• Brian Klaas
• Derek Thompson
• Brooke Harrington

No Secular Gurus

With the exception of Sam Harris (whose guruship is hotly contested on r/DecodingTheGurus) this list of authors attempts to avoid any of these secular gurus, even though many of their stated goals and methods seem to align with metaculture. This can be taken as evidence that metaculture represents a cultural attractor. Learn about it, but do so from those who avoid scammy endorsements and culture war bullshit.

More on the secular gurus page.

Videos on Authors

Man to Man with Dean Learner has fascinating interviews with best-selling authors like Garth Marenghi and Glynn Nimron.

Man to Man with Dean Learner

Primus - The Pressman