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.

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

• Robert Sapolsky
• Andrew Newberg
• Jonathan Haidt
• Sam Harris
• Steven Pinker
• Daniel Dennett
• Douglas Hofstadter
• Patricia Churchland
• Shankar Vedantam
• David Eagleman
• Michael Pollan
• Oliver Sacks
• Dan Harris
• 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

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

Philosophy, Ethics, Politics, and Social Commentary

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

Secular Gurus

There are a number of authors and podcasters that collectively fall under the category of "secular gurus." This term was coined by the excellent podcast Decoding the Gurus and refers to a phenomenon that has largely evolved from the world of podcast and YouTube content creators, so most of the conversation on this topic takes place in those spaces. The Decoding the Gurus subreddit is full of discussions about these creators and their philosophies that are incredibly influential in the modern culture, especially in the manosphere. Jordan Peterson is the quintessential example, but Elon Musk, Russell Brand, and many others are available to choose from.

Secular Gurus are usually former new atheists who have shifted to a focus on explorations of meaning. This may sound familiar to readers of this wiki. The important distinction is that "secular gurus" have a strong tendency towards intolerant, alt-right ideology, conspiracy theories, and grift.

While this wiki strongly advocates the search for meaning in a secular context, it does so without embracing authoritarian ideology, contrarianism, religious regression to orthodoxy, or paid "universities" with crappy, misinformed content you can get better versions of for free.

The point being, 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 without ulterior motives.

The rise of secular gurus in an age of conspiracy theories

Ranking the Gurus: A Definitive Tier List of Modern Gurus

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