Nate Pedersen on his book
Pseudoscience:
An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them
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 nonfiction writer and anthologist living in southern Minnesota. He is the co-author of Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything, Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World's Worst Diseases, and his most recent book Pseudoscience: An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them, all from Workman / Hachette. His website is http://natepedersen.com.
Saturday, December 6, 1:30 p.m.
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Coming January 10, 2026:
"Everything you wanted to know about coronaviruses but were afraid to ask."
Laura H. Kahn MD, MPH, MPP, author of One Health and the Politics of COVID-19
