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Featuring : CAT BOHANNON, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human EvolutionYou loved Rachel Gross’s VAGINA OBSCURA? Of course you did. Then you MUST join us for this myth-busting, eye-opening landmark account of how humans evolved—answering questions like what IS the female body? How did it come to be? How does this evolution still shapes all our lives today? Some fast facts to whet your appetite: Women live longer than men; women are more likely to get Alzheimer’s; girls score better at every academic subject than boys until puberty, when suddenly their scores plummet. What’s behind all of this? And why, seriously why, do women have to sweat through our sheets every night when we hit menopause? (asking for me). Bohannon covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex: “We have to put the female body in the picture,” she writes, “If we don't, it's not just feminism that's compromised. Modern medicine, neurobiology, paleoanthropology, even evolutionary biology all take a hit when we ignore the fact that half of us have breasts.” Which means we are gonna talk about breasts. And blood and fat and vaginas and wombs. Let’s face it, the world has focused primarily on the male body for far too long. It’s time to dig deep—so join us for book talk, cocktails, and evolutionary science.
Episode was recorded live February 27, 2025.
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Bluesky: @peculiarbookclub.bsky.social
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbook
“Much like fine wine, battle-hardened assassins grow better with age.”
#1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner
Four women assassins, senior in status—and in age—sharpen their knives for another bloody good adventure in this riotous follow-up to the New York Times bestselling sensation Killers of a Certain Age.
After more than a year of laying low, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action. They have enjoyed their time off, but the lack of excitement is starting to chafe: a professional killer can only take so many watercolor classes and yoga sessions without itching to strangle someone...literally. When they receive a summons from the head of the elite assassin organization known as the Museum, they are ready tackle the greatest challenge of their careers.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Bluesky: @peculiarbookclub.bsky.social
Twitter: @peculiarBC
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book The Possibility of Life, we are stepping away from the movie world and into the TV world with 3 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They are:
season 3 episode 2 "The Ensigns of Command"
season 4 episode 12 "The Wounded"
season 5 episode 2 "Darmok".
Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as they take a deep dive into this classic sci-fi show, and specifically episodes where a new alien race is introduced into the Star Trek mythos. We'll discuss the themes of how leaders communicate, trust being earned, and what food would you order from a replicator.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Bluesky: @peculiarbookclub.bsky.social
Twitter: @peculiarBC
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
The fascinating, untold story of the air we breathe, the hidden life it contains, and invisible dangers that can turn the world upside down
Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air—and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life. This last great biological frontier remains so mysterious that it took over two years for scientists to finally agree that the Covid pandemic was caused by an airborne virus.
In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. We travel to the tops of mountain glaciers, where Louis Pasteur caught germs from the air, and follow Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbreaking experiments. We meet the long-forgotten pioneers of aerobiology including William and Mildred Wells, who tried for decades to warn the world about airborne infections, only to die in obscurity.
Air-Borne chronicles the dark side of aerobiology with gripping accounts of how the United States and the Soviet Union clandestinely built arsenals of airborne biological weapons designed to spread anthrax, smallpox, and an array of other pathogens. Air-Borne also leaves readers looking at the world with new eyes—as a place where the oceans and forests loft trillions of cells into the air, where microbes eat clouds, and where life soars thousands of miles on the wind.
Weaving together gripping history with the latest reporting on Covid and other threats to global health, Air-Borne surprises us on every page as it reveals the hidden world of the air.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Bluesky: @peculiarbookclub.bsky.social
Twitter: @peculiarBC
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
Featuring:JAIME GREEN, The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the CosmosOne of the most powerful questions humans ask about the cosmos is: Are we alone? While the science behind this inquiry is fascinating, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is a reflection of our values, our fears, and most importantly, our enduring sense of hope. In The Possibility of Life, acclaimed science journalist Jaime Green traces the history of our understanding, from the days of Galileo and Copernicus to our contemporary quest for exoplanets. Along the way, she interweaves insights from science fiction writers who construct worlds that in turn inspire scientists. This amazing book somehow managed to incorporate everything from expert interviews, cutting-edge astronomy research, philosophical inquiry, and pop culture touchstones ranging from A Wrinkle in Time to StarTrek to Arrival. But probably what makes this one of my favorites is a sneaky side quest you can’t help but travel throughout: Not “are there aliens,” but “What does it mean to be human?” If you loved chatting with Katie Mack and Marc Hartzman, then you won’t want to miss this night of wonders (and maybe little green cocktails). Only on the Peculiar Book Club!
Episode was recorded live February 13, 2025.
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Bluesky: @peculiarbookclub.bsky.social
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbook
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.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Bluesky: @peculiarbookclub.bsky.social
Twitter: @peculiarBC
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
I loved this book so much that I wrote the Wall Street Journal review for it! It’s an absolutely madcap and unexpected take on history I thought I knew… But I hadn’t yet encountered Candace Pert. This amazing scientist stood at the dawn of three revolutions: the opioid crisis, the AIDS crisis, and the mind-body movement. A troubled genius, beleaguered, beguiling, and not above bedeviling, her visionary work shaped history - for good and, inadvertently, for evil.
Episode was recorded live January 23, 2025.
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon
Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book Invisibility, we are doing the 2020 reboot of The Invisible Man.
Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as they take a deep dive into this inventive horror/thriller. We'll discuss the themes of gaslighting, the technology of invisibility, and strategies for fighting an invisible man.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Twitter: @peculiarBC
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
It’s like that Monty Python Sketch… There are good reasons to know how not to be seen, and Gregory Gbur is ready to tell us all about the SCIENCE. Come now, you say, it isn’t really possible to be made invisible! Or is it? You’ll be surprised! In this book, science writer and optical physicist Gregory J. Gbur traces the science of invisibility from its sci-fi origins in the nineteenth-century writings of authors such as H. G. Wells and Fitz James O’Brien to modern stealth technology, invisibility cloaks, and metamaterials. He explores the history of invisibility and its science and technology connections, including the discovery of the electromagnetic spectrum, the development of the atomic model, and quantum theory. He shows how invisibility has moved from fiction to reality, and he questions the hidden paths that lie ahead for researchers. Join us for an evening of science, bad puns, and a cocktail that I’m sure we can make “disappear”—only on the Peculiar Book Club!
Episode was recorded live January 10, 2025.
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Twitter: @peculiarBC
Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book Bite, we are doing the 1994 horror/romance film Interview with the Vampire
Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as they take a deep dive into this 90's classic. We'll discuss the themes of morality, vampire nihilism, and how great Kirsten Dunst was as a child actor and Tom Cruise was as a villian.
Website: https://brandyschillace.com/peculiar/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ixJJ2Y
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeculiarBookClub/membership
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeculiarBookClub/streams
Twitter: @peculiarBC
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/peculiarbooksclub
Instagram: @thepeculiarbookclub
From the publisher's feed