
Pseudoscience
An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them
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Narrated by:
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Hillary Huber
About this listen
From the authors of Quackery, a visual and narrative history of popular ideas, phenomena, and widely held beliefs disproven by science.
From the easily disproved to the wildly speculative, to straight-up hucksterism, Pseudoscience is a romp through much more than bad science—it’s a light-hearted look into why we insist on believing in things such as Big Foot, astrology, and the existence of aliens. Did you know, for example, that you can tell a person’s future by touching their butt? Rumpology. It’s a thing, but not really. Or that Stanley Kubrick made a fake moon landing film for the US government? Except he didn’t. Or that spontaneous human combustion is real? It ain’t, but it can be explained scientifically.
Pseudoscience is a wild mix of history, pop culture, and good old fashioned science–that not just entertains, but sheds a little light on why we all love to believe in things we know aren't true.
©2025 Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen (P)2025 Workman Publishing CompanyListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
The 13 killings-by-poison revisited in this book were committed by some of the most infamous murderers in British and American history. Presenting infamous cases from 1857-1972, Adrian Vincent recounts their sinister tales and reveals the lure of money, lust, and deviancy that drove them to pure evil.
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Interesting History, Stunted By Narrator
- By bukabuda on 01-09-25
By: Adrian Vincent
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On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down
- By: James Fell
- Narrated by: Kelli Tager, James Fell
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Nazis are bad. The worst kind of bad. There are no very fine people among them. If you disagree, you won’t like this book. Still here? Cool. You are about to receive an education unlike any you’ve previously experienced. In this uproarious and informative tour from ancient times to the modern day and everything in between, James Fell, the self-proclaimed “sweary historian,” reveals a past replete with deeds both noble and despicable. Throughout the book, he provides insightful analysis of all the sh!t that went down. Behold!
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Rad.
- By Christine C. Keiser on 11-21-23
By: James Fell
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A Beautiful Poison
- By: Lydia Kang
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Just beyond the Gilded Age, in the mist-covered streets of New York, the deadly Spanish influenza ripples through the city. But with so many victims in her close circle, young socialite Allene questions if the flu is really to blame. All appear to have been poisoned - and every death was accompanied by a mysterious note.
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It had potential, but faltered in execution
- By Constance Jenkins on 01-14-18
By: Lydia Kang
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The Impossible Girl
- By: Lydia Kang
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Manhattan, 1850. Born out of wedlock to a wealthy socialite and a nameless immigrant, Cora Lee can mingle with the rich just as easily as she can slip unnoticed into the slums and graveyards of the city. As the only female resurrectionist in New York, she’s carved out a niche procuring bodies afflicted with the strangest of anomalies. Anatomists will pay exorbitant sums for such specimens—dissecting and displaying them for the eager public. Cora’s specialty is not only profitable, it’s a means to keep a finger on the pulse of those searching for her. She’s the girl born with two hearts....
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A well-told story!
- By Carole Wooten on 10-31-18
By: Lydia Kang
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The Quick and the Dead
- By: Cynric Temple-Camp
- Narrated by: Mark Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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From the number one best-selling author of The Cause of Death comes an audiobook about the unlikely, extraordinary, obscure and often tragic ways humans meet their demise. A dead body without a trace of trauma; alien parasites; worms of the brain; crocodile attacks and bizarre eating disorders....In The Quick and the Dead, pathologist and self-confessed death-aficionado Dr. Cynric Temple-Camp takes listeners into a world of disease and death as he seeks answers for those who were unlucky, and those still alive to tell the tale.
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New favorite
- By Kat Garcia on 06-03-25
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A Brief History of the End of the F*cking World
- Brief Histories Series
- By: Tom Phillips
- Narrated by: Tom Phillips
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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This book is about the apocalypse, and how humans have always believed it to be very f--king nigh. Across thousands of years, we'll meet weird cults, failed prophets and mass panics, holy warriors leading revolts in anticipation of the last days, and suburbanites waiting for aliens to rescue them from a doomed Earth. We'll journey back to the 'worst period to be alive', as the world reeled from a simultaneous pandemic and climate crisis. And we'll look to the future to ask the unnerving question: how might it all end?
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Incredibly Thorough and Captivating
- By BNC3 on 06-06-25
By: Tom Phillips
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Gory Details
- By: Erika Engelhaupt
- Narrated by: Mari Weiss
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Filled to the brim with far-out facts, this wickedly informative narrative from the author of National Geographic's popular Gory Details blog takes us on a fascinating journey through an astonishing new reality. Blending humor and journalism in the tradition of Mary Roach, acclaimed science reporter Erika Engelhaupt investigates the gross, strange, and morbid absurdities of our bodies and our universe.
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Feels like old school Discovery channel
- By Anonymous User on 02-15-23
By: Erika Engelhaupt
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Strange Medicine
- A Shocking History of Real Medical Practices Through the Ages
- By: Nathan Belofsky
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Now published in five languages, Strange Medicine casts a gimlet eye on the practice of medicine through the ages that highlights the most dubious ideas, bizarre treatments, and biggest blunders. From bad science and oafish behavior to stomach-turning procedures that hurt more than helped, Strange Medicine presents strange but true facts and an honor roll of doctors, scientists, and dreamers who inadvertently turned the clock of medicine backward.
By: Nathan Belofsky
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Cursed Objects
- Strange but True Stories of the World's Most Infamous Items
- By: J.W. Ocker
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Beware...this book is cursed! These strange but true stories of the world's most infamous items will appeal to true believers as well as history buffs, horror fans, and anyone who loves a good spine-tingling tale.
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Good information!
- By Amelia on 07-29-21
By: J.W. Ocker
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Dark Folklore
- By: Mark Norman, Tracey Norman
- Narrated by: Mark Norman, Tracey Norman
- Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The fields of folklore have never been more popular—a recent resurgence of interest in traditional beliefs and customs, coupled with morbid curiosities in folk horror, historic witchcraft cases and our superstitious past, have led to an intersection of ideas that is driving people to seek out more information. Tracey Norman (author of the acclaimed play WITCH) and Mark Norman (creator of The Folklore Podcast) lead you on an exploration of those more salubrious facets of our past.
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Amazingly Well Researched
- By Nils J. Rasmussen on 02-20-25
By: Mark Norman, and others
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How to Survive History
- How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History's Deadliest Catastrophes
- By: Cody Cassidy
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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History is the most dangerous place on earth. From dinosaurs the size of locomotives to meteors big enough to sterilize the planet, from famines to pandemics, from tornadoes to the Chicxulub asteroid, the odds of human survival are slim but not zero—at least, not if you know where to go and what to do. In each chapter of How to Survive History, Cody Cassidy explores how to survive one of history’s greatest threats: getting eaten by dinosaurs, being destroyed by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, succumbing to the lava flows of Pompeii, being devoured by the Donner Party, and more.
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A fun, light romp
- By Ron on 03-11-24
By: Cody Cassidy
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The Theory of Everything Else
- A Voyage into the World of the Weird
- By: Dan Schreiber
- Narrated by: Dan Schreiber, Jamie Morton, Ella Al-Shamahi, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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From the Silicon Valley tech billionaires currently trying to work out whether or not the universe is one giant video game simulation to the self-proclaimed community of Italian time-travelers who are trying to save the world from destruction; The Theory of Everything Else will act as a handbook for those who want to think differently.
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Yawn
- By Tony Love on 08-18-23
By: Dan Schreiber
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The Book of Unexplained Mysteries
- On the Trail of the Secret and the Strange
- By: Will Pearson
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Sometimes, the questions can be more interesting than the answers. The Search in Extraterrestrial Intelligence [SETI] has recently hotted up, with a whole new wave of research going to show that we will always be fascinated by what we don't understand. Was 'The Wow Signal' a radio transmission from deep space? Or was it the resonating frequency of a passing comet? Often, it can feel as if professional explainers of all stripes want to put an end to anything mysterious in life.
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Don't waste your time...
- By Isabel Murnane on 10-27-20
By: Will Pearson
There was not one innovative “debunking” that I didn’t already hear about at least ten years ago in this book. Save your money and just listen to some YouTube podcasts with more modern stories.
The one redeeming chapter on “rumpilogy” lives in my head rent free, however.
Same old stories…waste of time to read.
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