Nate Pedersen presents Pseudoscience

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.

Nate Pedersen is an award-winning writer and historian based in Minnesota. He is the author of the nonfiction books Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything (an NPR Best Science Book), Patient Zero: A Curious History of Epidemic Disease, and Pseudoscience: An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them.

He is also a librarian by training and has edited multiple Lovecraftian and weird-fiction anthologies, including a volume nominated for the World Fantasy Award. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Believer, The San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous other publications. He frequently lectures on history, folklore, and science for public audiences.

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