The Avid Reader Show

An accessible and gratifying introduction to the world of paranormal beliefs and bizarre experiences.

Ghostly encounters, alien abduction, reincarnation, talking to the dead, UFO sightings, inexplicable coincidences, out-of-body and near-death experiences. Are these legitimate phenomena? If not, then how should we go about understanding them? In this fascinating book, Chris French investigates paranormal claims to discover what lurks behind this “weird shit.” French provides authoritative evidence-based explanations for a wide range of superficially mysterious phenomena, and then goes further to draw out lessons with wider applications to many other aspects of modern society where critical thinking is urgently needed.

Using academic, comprehensive, logical, and, at times, mathematical approaches, The Science of Weird Shit convincingly debunks ESP, communicating with the dead, and alien abduction claims, among other phenomena. All the while, however, French maintains that our belief in such phenomena is neither ridiculous nor trivial; if anything, such claims can tell us a great deal about the human mind if we pay them the attention they are due. Filled with light-bulb moments and a healthy dose of levity, The Science of Weird Shit is a clever, memorable, and gratifying read you won’t soon forget.

Chris French is Emeritus Professor and Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit in the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a Patron of Humanists UK. He is the coauthor of Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience.

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The received wisdom in quantum physics is that, at the deepest levels of reality, there are no actual causes for atomic events. This idea led to the outlandish belief that quantum objects—indeed, reality itself—aren’t real unless shaped by human measurement. Einstein mocked this idea, asking whether his bed spread out across his room unless he looked at it. And yet it remains one of the most influential ideas in science and our culture. 
 
In Escape from Shadow Physics, Adam Forrest Kay takes up Einstein’s torch: reality isn’t mysterious or dependent on human measurement, but predictable and independent of us. At the heart of his argument is groundbreaking research with little drops of oil. These droplets behave as particles do in the long-overlooked quantum theory of pilot waves; crucially, they showcase quantum behavior while being described by classical physics. And that classical-quantum interface points to a true understanding of quantum mechanics and a reasonable universe. 

A bold and essential reset of the field, Escape from Shadow Physics describes the kind of true scientific revolution that comes along just once—or less—in a century.

Adam Forrest Kay has two PhDs, one in literature from the University of Cambridge and the other in mathematics from the University of Oxford. He is currently a postdoctoral associate in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Have you ever wondered why your tap water tastes the way it does? The Taste of Water explores the increasing erasure of tastes from drinking water over the twentieth century. It asks how dramatic changes in municipal water treatment have altered consumers’ awareness of the environment their water comes from. Through examining the development of sensory expertise in the United States and France, this unique history uncovers the foundational role of palatability in shaping Western water treatment processes. By focusing on the relationship between taste and the environment, Christy Spackman shows how efforts to erase unwanted tastes and smells have transformed water into a highly industrialized food product divorced from its origins. The Taste of Water invites readers to question their own assumptions about what water does and should naturally taste like while exposing them to the invisible—but substantial—sensory labor involved in creating tap water.

Christy Spackman is Assistant Professor of Art/Science at Arizona State University and Director of the Sensory Labor(atory), an experimental research collective dedicated to creatively disrupting longstanding sensory hierarchies.

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It's 1973 and The Rocky Horror Show is about to be launched onto an unsuspecting world for the first time. Martin Fitzgibbon was the young drummer recruited specifically to play an integral part in the show's success. Here, for the first time, Martin gives his unique insight into how the show and its participants became an overnight success and created a cultural phenomenon which fifty years on still reverberates around the world.

But there was a life before and after "Rocky" too, which although not straightforward, was overwhelmingly one of fun, laughter and surprises.

Behind The Curtain is a tale of contrasting worlds. Of optimism and resilience when dealing with the challenges of life. The authors intention is to take you into that world and leave you with a smile.

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A kinder, funner usage guide to the ever-changing English language and a useful tool for both the grammar stickler and the more colloquial user of English, from linguist and veteran professor Anne Curzan

Our use of language naturally evolves and is a living, breathing thing that reflects who we are. Says Who? offers clear, nuanced guidance that goes beyond “right” and “wrong” to empower us to make informed language choices. Never snooty or scoldy (yes, that’s a “real” word!), this book explains where the grammar rules we learned in school actually come from and reveals the forces that drive dictionary editors to label certain words as slang or unacceptable.

Linguist and veteran English professor Anne Curzan equips readers with the tools they need to adeptly manage (a split infinitive?! You betcha!) formal and informal writing and speaking. After all, we don’t want to be caught wearing our linguistic pajamas to a job interview any more than we want to show up for a backyard barbecue in a verbal tux, asking, “To whom shall I pass the ketchup?” Curzan helps us use our new knowledge about the developing nature of language and grammar rules to become caretakers of language rather than gatekeepers of it. Applying entertaining examples from literature, newspapers, television, and more, Curzan welcomes usage novices and encourages the language police to lower their pens, showing us how we can care about language precision, clarity, and inclusion all at the same time.

With lively humor and humanity, Says Who? is a pragmatic and accessible key that reveals how our choices about language usage can be a powerful force for equity and personal expression. For proud grammar sticklers and self-conscious writers alike, Curzan makes nerding out about language fun.

Anne Curzan is the Geneva Smitherman Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature, Linguistics, and Education and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan, where she also currently serves as the dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

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An award-winning science writer discovers she’s faceblind and investigates the neuroscience of sight, memory, and imagination—while solving some long-running mysteries about her own life.

Science writer Sadie Dingfelder has always known that she’s a little quirky. But while she’s made some strange mistakes over the years, it’s not until she accosts a stranger in a grocery store (whom she thinks is her husband) that she realizes something is amiss.

With a mixture of curiosity and dread, Dingfelder starts contacting neuroscientists and lands herself in scores of studies. In the course of her nerdy midlife crisis, she discovers that she is emphatically not neurotypical. She has prosopagnosia (faceblindness), stereoblindness, aphantasia (an inability to create mental imagery), and a condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory.

As Dingfelder begins to see herself more clearly, she discovers a vast well of hidden neurodiversity in the world at large. There are so many different flavors of human consciousness, and most of us just assume that ours is the norm. Can you visualize? Do you have an inner monologue? Are you always 100 percent sure whether you know someone or not? If you can perform any of these mental feats, you may be surprised to learn that many people—including Dingfelder—can’t.

A lively blend of personal narrative and popular science, Do I Know You? is the story of one unusual mind’s attempt to understand itself—and a fascinating exploration of the remarkable breadth of human experience.

Sadie Dingfelder is a freelance science journalist. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic, the Washington Post, and Washingtonian magazine. A former staff reporter at the Washington Post Express, Dingfelder also previously served as senior science writer at the Monitor on Psychology magazine, covering new findings in neuroscience, cognitive science, and ethology for members of the American Psychological Association.

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Imagine you've made it. You and your friends have hit the big time in music and you're going to be a star. But then, quite suddenly, it's over. Your best friends don't want you anymore, and you're on the outside. Perhaps they're tired of your bad habits, they think you're not good enough, or they sense you just don't want it as much as they do. Whatever the cause, you're a reject. So, what do you do next?

Featuring a player rejected by both Nirvana and Soundgarden who became a decorated special forces soldier, Britpoppers who spiralled into addiction before becoming novelists and missionaries, the terrifying story of Guns N' Roses' first drummer, super-rejecting band leaders, self-destroying rappers, troubled hard rock bassists and girl-band burnouts, The Rejects takes an intimate, thoughtful look at people who've been kicked out of bands, what they experienced and what came afterwards.
Coming from a writer with twenty years' music industry experience, The Rejects is a sympathetic study of some of music's most fascinating characters, and what happens when the dream comes crashing to an end. The result is a compelling alternative history of popular music.

Jamie Collinson has worked in the music business for over twenty years, primarily for two iconic independent record labels; Ninja Tune and Domino. Having worked with Arctic Monkeys, My Bloody Valentine, Franz Ferdinand, Wiley, Wet Leg and Roots Manuva, he's lived in London and Los Angeles, where he founded Ninja Tune's US HQ. He's been backstage at some of the world's most famous venues and festivals in the company of the artists he's worked with, navigated colourful characters, A & R'd albums and directed marketing campaigns to sell them. Along the way, he's seen success and failure, heartbreak, joy, addiction, violence, terrifying egoism and stunning generosity. Throughout it all he's done a lot of writing, including journalism for the Guardian, Spectator, Evening Standard and many music magazines. He published a novel, The Edge, with Oneworld Publications in 2020.

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A cosmic perspective on carbon--its importance in the universe and our lives

When we think of carbon, we might first think of a simple element near the top of the periodic table: symbol C, atomic number 6. Alternatively, we might think of something more tangible--a sooty piece of coal or a sparkling diamond, both made of carbon. Or, as Earth's temperature continues to rise alarmingly, we might think of the role carbon plays in climate change. Yet carbon's story begins long ago, far from earthly concerns. In The Sixth Element, astronomers Theodore Snow and Don Brownlee tell the story of carbon from a cosmic perspective--how it was born in the fiery furnaces of stars, what special chemical and physical properties it has, and how it forms the chemical backbone of the planets and all life as we know it. Foundational to every part of our lives, from our bodies to the food, tools, and atmosphere that sustain our existence, carbon is arguably humankind's most important element.
Snow and Brownlee offer readers the ideal introduction to the starry element that made our world possible and shapes our lives. They first discuss carbon's origin, discovery, and unique ability to bond with other elements and form countless molecules. Next, they reveal carbon's essential role in the chemical evolution of the universe and the formation and evolution of galaxies, stars, planets, and life, and then, more generally, its technological uses and its influence on Earth's climate. Bringing readers on a historical, scientific, and cross-disciplinary journey, The Sixth Element illuminates the cosmic wonder that is carbon.

Theodore P. Snow is professor emeritus at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy at the University of Colorado Boulder. Over the course of his career, he has worked on two orbital telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, built experiments for rocket and satellite observations, and studied chemical reactions important in interstellar space. He is the author of the award-winning textbook The Dynamic Universe. Don Brownlee is professor emeritus of astronomy at the University of Washington. He has been involved in spacecraft, rocket, high-altitude balloon, and U-2 airplane experiments since he was a graduate student, and he was the principal investigator in charge of the NASA Stardust mission that collected samples from a comet and returned them to Earth. He is the coauthor of Rare Earth and Life and Death of Planet Earth.

From award-winning journalist Kenneth Miller comes the definitive story of the scientists who set out to answer two questions: “Why do we sleep?” and "How can we sleep better?”

A century ago, sleep was considered a state of nothingness—even a primitive habit that we could learn to overcome. Then, an immigrant scientist and his assistant spent a month in the depths of a Kentucky cave, making nationwide headlines and thrusting sleep science to the forefront of our consciousness.

In the 1920s, Nathaniel Kleitman founded the world’s first dedicated sleep lab at the University of Chicago, where he subjected research participants (including himself) to a dizzying array of tests and tortures. But the tipping point came in 1938, when his cave experiment awakened the general public to the unknown—and vital—world of sleep. Kleitman went on to mentor the talented but troubled Eugene Aserinsky, whose discovery of REM sleep revealed the astonishing activity of the dreaming brain, and William Dement, a jazz-bass playing revolutionary who became known as the father of sleep medicine. Dement, in turn, mentored the brilliant maverick Mary Carskadon, who uncovered an epidemic of sleep deprivation among teenagers, and launched a global movement to fight it.

Award-winning journalist Kenneth Miller weaves together science and history to tell the story of four outsider scientists who took sleep science from fringe discipline to mainstream obsession through spectacular experiments, technological innovation, and single-minded commitment. Readers will walk away with a comprehensive understanding of sleep and why it affects so much of our lives.

Kenneth Miller is a contributing editor for Discover, and his work has appeared in Time, Life, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Aeon, and many other publications. His honors include the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism, the ASJA Award for Best Science Writing, and the June Roth Memorial Award for Medical Writing. He lives in Los Angeles.

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Some ideas seem to possess a disproportionate ability to lead to new insights, new discoveries, new ideas, and even entirely new ways of thinking. Such ideas are said to be fruitful. Looking across the history of science and mathematics, we see creative minds preoccupied with the search for ideas of this kind. More precious than truth, but far less plentiful, fruitful ideas provide those in pursuit of knowledge with a seemingly bottomless well of innovation from which to draw as they attempt to solve new problems and to refine solutions to old ones. Seasoned researchers have a nose for these ideas. They often know in an instant that some way of approaching a problem will eventually result in a solution to it and to a whole host of other problems, all of which suddenly seem related.

In Fruitfulness, Chris Haufe explains how these ideas are detected and developed into large-scale frameworks for research. He argues for a philosophical perspective on scientific knowledge that places the search for fruitfulness at the heart of the scientific enterprise. This perspective demands a fundamental shift in our thinking about scientific theories, conceiving of them as metaphors to facilitate research instead of increasingly correct descriptions of nature.

Chris Haufe is the Elizabeth M. and William C. Treuhaft Professor of the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. He works on problems in the history and philosophy of knowledge.

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