Harper Simon on "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" || Books That Changed My Life
Release Date: 05/28/2026
"Red Queen" Author Victoria Aveyard on "The Lord of the Rings" || Books That Changed My Life
Books That Changed My Life
To win your FREE, SIGNED copy of Tempest, click here: https://booksthatchangedmylife.org/pages/win-a-book-3 (Copies will ship as soon as they are available). On this episode of Books That Changed My Life, all-star fantasy author Victoria Aveyard joins Chris Collins to talk about The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien — the book that turned a bookish kid from western Massachusetts into a bestselling storyteller. Victoria remembers walking out of Fellowship of the Ring at 11 years old, marching straight to Target, buying the paperback, and carrying it through seventh grade until the spine was...
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Margaret Cho (and dog) on "I'm With The Band: Confessions of a Groupie" | Books That Changed My Life
Books That Changed My Life
On this episode of Books That Changed My Life, host Chris "Bulldog" Collins is joined by Margaret Cho to discuss I'm With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie by Pamela Des Barres — the 1987 memoir Margaret first read as a teenager growing up in her family's San Francisco bookstore. Pamela is a longtime friend and mentor who edited Margaret's writing, and Margaret returns to the book with the perspective of someone shaped by it: not for its catalog of famous lovers, but for its portrait of a young woman bubbling over with vitality, wit, and creative energy. The conversation moves through...
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Caitlin Peluffo on "Screw Everyone" || Books That Changed My Life
Books That Changed My Life
This week, Chris "Bulldog" Collins sits down with stand-up comedian Caitlin Peluffo to discuss the Book That Changed Her Life, Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy by Ophira Eisenberg. Peluffo grew up in San Bruno, California, moved east for a master's at Pratt Institute in photography and video performance art, and has been in Brooklyn for close to two decades. She first came across the book in a humor writing class where the infamous "Garfield chapter" was on the syllabus. Reading it sent her down an Eisenberg rabbit hole, and, she says, is what convinced her she could do stand-up...
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Harry Hamlin on "A Course in Miracles" || Books That Changed My Life
Books That Changed My Life
In this episode of Books That Changed My Life, host Chris "Bulldog" Collins is joined by actor Harry Hamlin to discuss A Course in Miracles. Best known for L.A. Law, Clash of the Titans, and currently AMC's Mayfair Witches, Hamlin is also a Yale-educated Jungian, a Shakespearean actor, and the founder of Tri-Alpha Energy — the first private fusion company in the world. He keeps 350 books on his phone and has spent six decades trying to figure out, in his words, "how to live." The conversation moves from a dysfunctional Pasadena childhood and a teenage Jesus-freak phase through a head-on...
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Patton Oswalt on "This Paradise" || Books That Changed My Life
Books That Changed My Life
In this episode of Books That Changed My Life, host Chris "Bulldog" Collins sits down with actor and comedian Patton Oswalt to discuss This Paradise, a short story collection by Ruby Cowling. Check out Patton's new special, "Tea & Scotch" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRFgLNxygC4 Oswalt, an evangel for the book, has bought and given away dozens of copies since discovering Cowling's short fiction through a Canadian publisher's Christmas advent calendar of stories. Oswalt traces his relationship with books back to reading Stephen King's The Stand at age 10, and talks about raising...
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JORDY on "I Let You Go" || Books That Changed My Life
Books That Changed My Life
In this episode of Books That Changed My Life, host Chris "Bulldog" Collins sits down with singer-songwriter Jordy to dive into I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh. Jordy opens up about rediscovering reading during a hard stretch in late 2023, and how this psychological thriller became the book that turned him into a two-books-a-week reader for good. He walks through the novel's now-legendary Part One twist — and the strange full-circle moment when Mackintosh herself saw his reaction video online, reached out, and sent him an early copy of her latest book with a handwritten note. The...
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Justin Halpern on "Lord of the Flies" || Books That Changed My Life
Books That Changed My Life
This week on Books That Changed My Life, host Chris "Bulldog" Collins sits down with writer and executive producer Justin Halpern (Abbott Elementary, Harley Quinn, S**t My Dad Says) to talk about Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Justin opens up about growing up as an only child in San Diego, spending countless after-school hours in a VA cancer ward where his father worked, developing a love of sitcoms as a latchkey kid, and finally discovering reading through the shortest book on his father's shelf. He and Chris dig into Golding's examination of power, tribalism, and masculinity, tracing...
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Joan Lunden on "Stand Like Mountain, Flow Like Water" || Books That Changed My Life
Books That Changed My Life
On this episode of Books That Changed My Life, Chris "Bulldog" Collins sits down with broadcast journalism icon Joan Lunden to talk about the book that changed her life: Stand Like Mountain, Flow Like Water by Brian Luke Seaward. Lunden traces the book back to a pivotal moment at 40, when she found herself facing the end of her marriage and, for the first time in decades, looking inward instead of outward. After years spent racing through a career that had her up at 3:30 a.m. and living at "180 miles an hour," she made a conscious decision to get physically strong — and discovered, almost by...
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Emily Silva on "The Wild Edge of Sorrow" || Books That Changed My Life
Books That Changed My Life
In this episode of Books That Changed My Life, host Chris Collins is joined by author and mindfulness coach Emily Silva. Emily opens up about growing up in a strict fundamentalist Baptist household in the San Francisco Bay Area, the anxiety and panic attacks that pushed her out of a banking career and into therapy, coaching, and eventually writing, and the Book That Changed Her Life: The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller. She and Chris go deep on why grief and gratitude are inseparable rather than opposites, the case for becoming "an advocate for grief" instead of tidying it away, the...
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Hayley Kiyoko on "The Four Agreements" || Books That Changed My Life
Books That Changed My Life
In this episode of Books That Changed My Life, host Chris Collins is joined by singer-songwriter and filmmaker Hayley Kiyoko. Hayley opens up about the decade-long journey of turning Girls Like Girls from a song into a music video, a novel, and now her directorial debut film, growing up in a chaotic artistic household with a World Hall of Fame ice-skating choreographer for a mother and a stand-up comedian for a father, and the Book That Changed Her Life: The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. She and Chris go deep on the book's four principles — being impeccable with your word, not taking...
info_outlineIn this episode of Books That Changed My Life, host Chris Collins is joined by author, artist, and musician Harper Simon!
Harper and Chris talk teenage years in New York City, sneaking into hardcore matinees, the pull of psychedelics and counterculture, and an early literary education from Allen Ginsberg himself, before diving into the Book That Changed Harper's life: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe.
Harper recalls how the wild chronicle of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters found him as a 15-year-old just beginning to explore hippie culture and the roots of American rebellion, cracking open a door to a whole way of seeing the world.
The two explore the origins of New Journalism, the cross-country bus trip that birthed a movement, the Grateful Dead's acid test beginnings, and what Kesey's outlaw spirit can still teach us 60 years later about art, freedom, and the cost of becoming a lightning rod.
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