Nestled into a beautiful century-old brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, I spoke with the amazing Dr. Laura Markham —a preacher of love, letting love in, sending love out, and using that as a way to deepen our connection with ourselves and our children. Who is Dr. Laura Markham? She's a Columbia-trained clinical psychologist, founder and editor at PeacefulParentHappyKids.com , author of six parenting books including my favorite, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids, a parenting expert, and a life-changer...
May 16, 2026•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 46
Happy Flower Moon , everyone! Up in Toronto we're experiencing a wonderful blooming, a beautiful bird migration , and lots of slowly-getting-warmer days as we inch towards summer. With this warm spring breeze I'm thrilled to welcome our latest 3 Books guest: a luminous force in publishing, a powerhouse editor-turned-author, and a wonderful storyteller ... the one and only Nita Prose ! Today Nita is best known for her Molly the Maid mystery series which features three main titles and a...
May 01, 2026•1 hr 47 min•Season 1Ep. 160
Happy new moon, everybody! Today we fly down to the hills of Calabasas, California, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, where I sat behind a microphone at a walnut desk across from the one and only Rich Roll. Rich went to Stanford and Cornell and was a national athlete in swimming before his career was cut short by a decade-long struggle with alcohol—eventually landing him in jail and rehab. On the eve of his 40th birthday, as he walked up the stairs he was left totally winded… and decided it was tim...
Apr 17, 2026•1 hr 39 min•Season 1Ep. 45
We welcome global gallivant and raging bibliophile Eve Harlow on 3 Books! Born in Russia, raised in Israel, living in Canada and the U.S., Eve Harlow is a talented actress best known for roles in The 100 , Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Night Agent , and her current star turn as Dr. Ingrid Derian in Watson , the medical-mystery thriller inspired by stories of Sherlock Holmes. Somehow between her busy acting schedule, Eve finds time to read a book a week. She's a library junkie, a reading phenom, an...
Apr 02, 2026•1 hr 28 min•Season 1Ep. 159
Join me on the couch in Molly Bloom's hotel room at the Four Seasons in downtown Toronto. Molly began her career as a world-class skier, but while training as a pre-teen was diagnosed with severe scoliosis. Her doctor told her she could never ski again, but even as a pre-teen Molly had incredible strength of mind and she ended up back on the slopes only a year after her surgery. By age 21, she was ranked #3 in North America. She then took off to LA and began running one of the most exclusive, hi...
Mar 19, 2026•55 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Sonja Lyubomirsky is one of the most influential happiness researchers of our time. Sonja moved to the United States from Moscow at age 9 in the 70s. She went to Harvard and Stanford in the 80s and began studying happiness in 1989 ... longer than almost anyone else alive! Positive psychology wasn't "founded" by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi for another decade. Sonja has published hundreds of papers including her Most Cited 2005 paper which defined the field by flipping a lo...
Mar 03, 2026•1 hr 28 min•Season 1Ep. 158
A few years ago I was in LA and I went with my friend Chad to a "Judd Apatow and friends" comedy show where I was blown away by the lineup he brought out. Ray Romano! Zach Galifianakis! And, of course, the incredible Pete Holmes. Pete was my favorite comic that night. I have loved his comedy for years! And his book ' Comedy Sex God ' was a wonderful read. My parents are Hindu but I grew up in the secular suburbs of Toronto being exposed to many different religions. Pete was very religious, and...
Feb 17, 2026•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Paul Hawken is a brilliant thinker, author, activist, and elder who masterfully distills wisdom about our planetary home. I remember hearing Paul's 2009 commencement speech called " You Are Brilliant and The Earth is Hiring " where he said "You are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on Earth at a time when every living system is declining and the rate of decline is accelerating." Paul is the author of nine bestselling books including ' Drawdown ', ' Regeneration ...
Feb 01, 2026•2 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 157
Thirteen years ago I was surfing online when I stumbled on a blog post called " How To Read More — A Lot More " by someone I'd never heard of named Ryan Holiday. I started reading the post and got sucked in. He had a point! Many great points, actually. And he was young. 26 years old! A 26-year-old young man telling the world to read more books? In an era where most twenty-something men read, uh, none? I found Ryan to be a breath of fresh air. I immediately began to copy everything he did! He l...
Jan 19, 2026•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Africa is the world's second largest continent—by land and population! One and a half billion people spread across fifty-five countries. It's huge! Even a trip there, even many trips there, can only scratch the surface. But we're trying! My mum was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1950, and I recently returned from my first journey to Africa where I met incredible people and heard remarkable stories. In this third African chapter of 3 Books I sat down with Salim Amin where we discuss what it means to ...
Jan 03, 2026•1 hr 47 min•Season 1Ep. 156
Happy Solstice, everyone! In the northern hemisphere today we have the least amount of daylight of any day of the year. Below the equator it has the most! And as we do every December solstice it's time for our annual "Best Of" episode of 3 Books . 3 Books is our award-winning 22-year-long conversation to uncover and discuss the 1000 most formative books in the world ... 3 books at a time. This year we recorded shows in Nairobi, Ottawa, Del Mar, and even a few on the street ... journeying to coll...
Dec 21, 2025•1 hr 18 min
Who we are is a function of where we are. Do you agree with that? Who you are depends on where you are. We're different people in different places, right? You're different in the board room than you are on vacation. You're different with your parents than you are with your kids. I'm different hanging out with Malcolm Gladwell in his West Village apartment than I am sitting in my basement as I type up a little note about it. That theme is one that we get to open up in this chapter of 3 Books with...
Dec 20, 2025•41 min•Season 1Ep. 37
This podcast is me reading a little book I put out earlier this year: CANADA IS AWESOME It's an audio book about all the weird, wonderful, beautiful things that make Canada ... Canada. Did you ever notice Canadians speak in the collective? "What do you think of the weather we're having?" "Shall we grab a Timmy's before the meeting?" "Think we have a shot at the playoffs?" We, we, we. We use the word we so much. Why do we feel like such a collective? I don't think it's complicated. I think it's b...
Dec 12, 2025•59 min
We're back to Africa! Last month we kicked off a little Kenyan series on 3 Books and today I'm thrilled to share another chapter recorded in the heart of pulsing downtown Nairobi in the country's top bookstore. I landed after an overnight flight and immediately filled my belly with fresh samosas, pakoras, curried goat tripe, and fresh tamarind juice ... for breakfast! ... and then, after seeing the city I hopped into a car with Perlexy, who works with our guest in Chapter 104 and current Ken...
Dec 04, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Season 1Ep. 155
So one day I'm out taking one of my magical life-changing long walks when suddenly two guys are like "Hi! How are you?!" And I look up kind of stunned because I'm walking around downtown Toronto where no one really pops out of the woodwork to shout a "Hi! How are you?!" at you … What do I see? Two young men smiling back at me. Like, big smiles! Gigantic smiles. Dressed up, too. It takes me a minute to piece it together but turns out they're Mormon Missionaries living away from home for two yea...
Nov 20, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 36
We're heading to Africa! Over the years we have taken the 3 Books podcast on the road many times ... from recording in Judy Blume's bookstore in Key West to to the back of Jackie's Uber in St. Louis to Jonathan Haidt's kitchen in New York we've gone where the stories take us. And for the first time we are going to the 55-country and 1.5 billion person continent of Africa. I am so excited to share the first of three chapters of 3 Books recorded in Nairobi, Kenya. I landed there and went whi...
Nov 05, 2025•2 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 154
"Whatever Jen Agg says is worth listening to," said Anthony Bourdain. I fully agree! If you live in Toronto you probably know Jen Agg. If you don't, let me tell you she runs the best restaurants in town! Come visit and try them! Her most recent stunner is a two-story converted auto-body shop turned Toronto Life #1 ranked restaurant called " General Public " and it is a feast for the senses. Jen describes the place as "part Narnia, part fancy British pub, and part '80s cocaine dream" which give...
Oct 21, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 35
The pace of living is accelerating. I often feel like things are happening too quickly to process ... the reels are going too fast, the scrolls have too many colors, the information feed feels like a flood. I just can't process it all! Do you feel the same way? If so you need this conversation as much as I did. Carl Honoré is the godfather of the "slow movement" — a Canadian born, UK-based author, journalist, and popular TED speaker whose first book, the 2004 long-running bestseller ' In Prai...
Oct 07, 2025•1 hr 53 min•Season 1Ep. 153
Sep 21, 2025•1 hr 37 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Last year I picked up a book called ' Moonbound ' by Robin Sloan and it blew me away. Reading it was like riding some rainbow-speckled rocket ship where I experienced the bizarre combination of having no idea what was going on while not being able to wait for what happened next. The book was full of talking beavers. Talking swords! Strange video games. And ever-expanding worlds with wizards, who maybe aren't really wizards, and oh—it's narrated by a microscopic AI-type chronicler, who's been i...
Sep 07, 2025•1 hr 53 min•Season 1Ep. 152
My friend Drew Dudley once told me that, other than his parents, he hadn't heard anyone speak to him more in his life than Jerry Howarth… The voice of the Toronto Blue Jays. I can relate. Growing up I would listen to Jerry Howarth call the Blue Jays games on the radio on long summer drives, with my friends at the park, or just on my clock radio with the "Sleep" timer on as I fell asleep. Why do I love Jerry? Because for thirty-six years he was a local leader and community-builder who created tru...
Aug 23, 2025•58 min•Season 1Ep. 30
What do Xmas Jammies, ADHD, and The Amazing Race have in common? The Holderness Family! Penn and Kim Holderness have created viral videos with ... billions of views. They entered Season 33 of The Amazing Race ... and won. They wrote one of my favourite books ... 'ADHD is Awesome'. Penn and Kim started their careers in broadcasting but have old ditched that to find a massive 8 million person following as creators of hilarious yet educational videos on topics as wide-ranging as wearing masks durin...
Aug 09, 2025•1 hr 49 min•Season 1Ep. 151
A few years ago, I settled into the children's section of Book City in the heart of Toronto's beautiful Bloor West Village for the first chapter of 3 Books recorded live in an open bookstore with my favorite bookseller in the world—the one and only Sarah Ramsey. I love Sarah because she takes the art of bookselling seriously and seemingly reads people's minds to find the exact book they need to help them grow. As we always say: Humans are the best algorithm. Listen in to hear us talk about how b...
Jul 24, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Born in 1934, the 18th of 19 children in the small blue-collar town of Shawinigan Falls, Quebec, Jean Chrétien has risen to become the "grandfather of Canada" and a definitive force in global politics for over 50 years. Chrétien was one of the longest-serving Prime Ministers in Canadian history and led three successive majority terms as leader of the Liberal Party from 1993 to 2003. He famously said no to joining the US in the Iraq War (solidifying Canada's independence on foreign policy), signe...
Jul 10, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 150
Long before I oriented my life around reading, I would get the majority of my (4-5!) books per year read during the summer. But summer reads get a bad rap for being too silly, too saucy, too simple. So this summer join me in bridging the gap to find great beachy reads. We want books that have a speedy pace *and* expand our minds! We want books that help us escape our everyday lives *and* teach us something new. A mesmerizing coming-of-age novel! A slim tear-jerky memoir! A crucial self-help book...
Jun 25, 2025•46 min
BIG NEWS! I just finished writing CANADA IS AWESOME: A Little Book About A Big Country. This podcast is me reading the whole book! The book is about all the weird, wonderful, beautiful things that make Canada ... Canada. Did you ever notice Canadians speak in the collective? "What do you think of the weather we're having?" "Shall we grab a Tims before the meeting?" "Think we have a shot at the playoffs?" We, we, we. We use the word we so much. Why do we feel like such a collective? I don't think...
Jun 21, 2025•59 min
It started with a modern plea for help: "Can I charge my dead phone in your bookstore?" I was in Del Mar, California, walking up the coast of the Pacific Ocean after birding all morning in Torrey Pines. I was tracking my birds on eBird—the Peregrine Falcons, Anna's Hummingbirds, and California Scrub-Jays—and, of course, completely drained my phone's battery. When I get to Del Mar I spy this hobbit-hole looking bookstore called Camino Books: For The Road Ahead and when I walk in I am ...
Jun 11, 2025•45 min•Season 1Ep. 149
Loneliness rates have doubled since the 1980s and Vivek Murthy, former US Surgeon General, says loneliness will be the next major epidemic. So if loneliness is being alone and sad … then what's being alone and happy? Solitude. A few years ago, I picked up an incredible book called ' Solitude ' by Michael Harris, bestselling author and winner of the Governor General's Award for his writing. It completely blew me away. Why? Because in our era of endless machine-gun blasts at our brains, I feel s...
May 27, 2025•1 hr 36 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Ginny Yurich ( @1000hoursoutside ) drove 5 hours up the road from Michigan to Toronto to hang out with Leslie and me. We went for a walk outside (of course!) and recorded this podcast—our second outdoors podcast in a row after Nickisha The Dog Walker ! Why outside? I'm glad you asked! Ginny Yurich is the homeschooling mother of 5 (!) who has spirited a movement called 1000 Hours Outside . I like 1000 as you know! 1000 Awesome Things was my first blog, 1000 formative books is ... this e...
May 12, 2025•1 hr 57 min•Season 1Ep. 148
Have you heard of a book called ' The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck '? I'm guessing you have since it's sold, uh, 16 million copies since it came out in 2016. There hadn't been a non-fiction book that big and disruptive in a long, long time… Mark's meteoric success is the product of a giant mind which has mastered the art of taking the biggest, densest books on the planet and then simmering them down into simple, profanity-laced models and stories that hit you like a ton of bricks. The world...
Apr 27, 2025•1 hr 51 min•Season 1Ep. 28
