Popular Science

Few events have had a more profound impact on the social and cultural upheavals of the Sixties than the psychedelic revolution spawned by the spread of LSD. This audiobook for the first time tells the full and astounding story - part of it hidden till now in secret Government files - of the role the mind-altering drug played in our recent turbulent history and the continuing influence it has on our time. And what a story it is, beginning with LSD’s discovery in 1943 as the most potent drug known to science.

Is the Dude a bowling-loving stoner or a philosophical genius living the good life? Naturally, it's the latter, and The Big Lebowski and Philosophy explains why. Enlisting the help of great thinkers like Plato and Nietzsche, the book explores the movie's hidden philosophical layers, cultural reflection, and political commentary.

Sady Doyle, hailed as "smart, funny, and fearless" by the Boston Globe, takes listeners on a tour of the female dark side, from the biblical Lilith to Dracula's Lucy Westenra, from the T-Rex in Jurassic Park to the teen witches of The Craft. She illuminates the women who have shaped our nightmares: Serial killer Ed Gein's "domineering" mother Augusta; exorcism casualty Anneliese Michel, starving herself to death to quell her demons; author Mary Shelley, dreaming her dead child back to life.

Most of us know Harold Ramis as the filmmaker and actor who brought warmth and humor to the big screen in classics like Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, National Lampoon's Vacation, Groundhog Day, and National Lampoon's Animal House. To Violet Ramis, he was best known as an amazing father, confidant, and friend. In Ghostbuster's Daughter, Violet reflects on the life and legacy of her father, providing listeners with an extraordinarily candid and insightful look into the man who helped shape modern American comedy.

Since her introduction in 1959, Barbie’s impact has been revolutionary. Far from being a toy designed by men to oppress women, she was a toy invented by women to teach women what was expected of them, for better or for worse. Whether tarred-and-glittered as antifeminist puffery or celebrated as a feminist icon, Barbie has undeniably influenced generations of girls. In Forever Barbie, cultural critic, investigative journalist, and first-generation Barbie owner M. G. Lord uncovers the surprising story behind Barbie’s smash success.

Hit the lights and jump in the fire, you're about to enter the School of Rock! Today's lecture will be a crash course in brain surgery. This hard and fast lesson is taught by instructors who graduated from the old school - they actually paid $5.98 for The $5.98 EP. But back before these philosophy professors cut their hair, they were lieutenants in the Metal Militia.

Utilizing a series of essays examining the broad philosophical concepts embedded in Rod Serling's series, The Twilight Zone, Philosophy in The Twilight Zone provides a platform for further philosophical discussion.

On location in Blairstown: The Making of Friday the 13th covers the creation, planning, and filming of the iconic 1980 film, Friday the 13th in a way that no other film has been documented before.

Since Stan Lee and Marvel introduced Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy 15 in 1962, everyone's favorite webslinger has had a long career in comics, graphic novels, cartoons, movies, and even on Broadway. In this book some of history's most powerful philosophers help us explore the enduring questions and issues surrounding this beloved superhero: Is Peter Parker to blame for the death of his uncle? Does great power really bring great responsibility? Can Spidey champion justice and be with Mary Jane at the same time?

Final Fantasy is one of the most iconic and beloved video game series in the world. Since its inception, its titles have adopted names, themes, and stories from across global mythology, including the beliefs of the Vikings. This book embarks on a detailed exploration of how Norse lore in particular influenced the writing and design of Final Fantasy VII - arguably the most critically acclaimed of the franchise - and its wider Compilation. This work is presented as a tribute to the metaseries Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.

Millions of people go to enormous lengths to achieve fame. Fame is woven into our lives in ways that may have been unimaginable in years past. Mining decades of experience, writer, director, producer, and actress Justine Bateman writes a visceral, intimate look at the experience of Fame. Combining the internal reality-shift of the famous, theories on the public’s behavior at each stage of a famous person’s career, and the experiences of other famous performers, Bateman takes the listener inside and outside the emotions of Fame.

In Lurking, Joanne McNeil digs deep and identifies the primary (if sometimes contradictory) concerns of people online: searching, safety, privacy, identity, community, anonymity, and visibility. She charts what it is that brought people online and what keeps us here even as the social equations of digital life - what we’re made to trade, knowingly or otherwise, for the benefits of the internet - have shifted radically beneath us. It is a story we are accustomed to hearing as tales of entrepreneurs and visionaries and dynamic and powerful corporations.

What would the world look like if everybody had everything they wanted or needed? Trekonomics, the premier book in financial journalist Felix Salmon's imprint PiperText, approaches scarcity economics by coming at it backward - through thinking about a universe where scarcity does not exist. Delving deep into the details and intricacies of 24th-century society, Trekonomics explores post-scarcity and whether we, as humans, are equipped for it.

New York Times best-selling author and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman presents a unique Audio Companion for Chuck Klosterman X, in which he contextualizes and reads from the collection of his best articles and essays, providing both a fascinating tour of the past decade and an ideal introduction to the mind of one of the sharpest and most prolific observers of our unusual times.

For ten years, Calvin and Hobbes was one the world's most beloved comic strips. And then, on the last day of 1995, the strip ended. Its mercurial and reclusive creator, Bill Watterson, not only finished the strip but withdrew entirely from public life. In Looking for Calvin and Hobbes, Nevin Martell sets out on a very personal odyssey to understand the life and career of the intensely private man behind Calvin and Hobbes.

Since his creation, Batman has been many things: a two-fisted detective; a planet-hopping gadabout; a campy pop-art sensation; a pointy-eared master spy; and a grim and gritty ninja of the urban night. For more than three-quarters of a century, he has cycled from a figure of darkness to one of lightness and back again; he's a bat-shaped Rorschach inkblot who takes on the various meanings our changing culture projects onto him.

It was a magical time enhanced by radio as well as the great live performances. Radio and music of the Big Band Era were made for each other, and the so-called Swing Years were a golden age of rhythm. It was not just music that made you want to dance. It was music that made you glow, music that made you want to sing, music that made you come alive, music for falling in love. And, despite the passage of time, it still is.

For too long, women have been told that we are terrible at being friends, that we can't help being cruel or competitive, or that we inevitably abandon each other for romantic partners. But we are rejecting those stereotypes and reclaiming the power of female friendship. In Text Me When You Get Home, journalist Kayleen Schaefer interviews more than 100 women about their BFFs, soul mates, girl gangs, and queens while tracing this cultural shift through the lens of pop culture.

Electronic monitoring. Locked-down drug treatment centers. House arrest. Mandated psychiatric treatment. Data-driven surveillance. Extended probation. These are some of the key alternatives held up as cost-effective substitutes for jails and prisons. But many of these so-called reforms actually widen the net, weaving in new strands of punishment and control, and bringing new populations, who would not otherwise have been subject to imprisonment, under physical control by the state.

Darwin had his theory of evolution, and David Bianculli has his. Bianculli's theory has to do with the concept of quality television: what it is and, crucially, how it got that way. In tracing the evolutionary history of our progress toward a Platinum Age of Television - our age, the era of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad and Mad Men and The Wire and Homeland and Girls - he focuses on the development of the classic TV genres.