Popular Science

“As I sat in the front row that day, I was 80% faking it with a 100% real Gucci bag.” Samhita Mukhopadhyay had finally made it: she had her dream job, dream clothes—dream life. But time and time again, she found herself sacrificing time with family and friends, paying too much for lattes, and limping home after working for twelve hours a day. Success didn't come without costs, right? Or so she kept telling herself. The Myth of Making It is a field guide and manifesto for all of us who are tired, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of hustle culture.

The editors of Scientific American’s best-selling Fact or Fiction: Science Tackles 58 Popular Myths return with Fact or Fiction 2: 50 (More) Popular Myths Explained. We cast an analytical eye on another collection of urban lore and cultural myths that persist so long in our collective consciousness they acquire a ring of truth. Who hasn’t heard the “five-second rule”, which insists that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat if it’s picked up within five seconds? How many of us have been told to “feed a cold, starve a fever"?

It used to be pretty easy to distinguish between the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture. The bourgeois worked for corporations, wore gray, and went to church. The bohemians were artists and intellectuals. Bohemians championed the values of the liberated 1960s; the bourgeois were the enterprising yuppies of the 1980s.

For 6,557 miles, Chuck Klosterman thought about dying. He drove a rental car from New York to Rhode Island to Georgia to Mississippi to Iowa to Minneapolis to Fargo to Seattle, and he chased death and rock 'n' roll all the way. Within the span of 21 days, Chuck had three relationships end, one by choice, one by chance, and one by exhaustion. He snorted cocaine in a graveyard. He walked a half-mile through a bean field.

Remember that time you screwed up simple math or forgot the name of your favorite song? What if someone told you that such embarrassing "brain farts" are actually secret weapons, proof of your superiority to computers and AI? In Scatterbrain, we learn that boredom awakens the muse, distractions spark creativity, and misjudging time creates valuable memories, among other benefits of our faulty minds. Throughout, award-winning neuroscientist Henning Beck's hilarious asides and brain-boosting advice make for a delightful account of the most cutting-edge neuroscience.

From its first publication in 1992, Men, Women, and Chain Saws has offered a groundbreaking perspective on the creativity and influence of horror cinema since the mid-1970s. Investigating the popularity of the low-budget tradition, Carol Clover looks in particular at slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films. Although such movies have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasures to their mostly male audiences, Clover demonstrates that they align spectators not with the male tormentor, but with the females tormented.

In I Wear the Black Hat, Klosterman questions the very nature of how modern people understand the concept of villainy. What was so Machiavellian about Machiavelli? Why don't we see Batman the same way we see Bernhard Goetz? Who's more worthy of our vitriol - Bill Clinton or Don Henley? What was O.J. Simpson's second-worst decision? Masterfully blending cultural analysis with self-interrogation and limitless imagination, I Wear the Black Hat delivers perceptive observations on the complexity of the anti-hero.

As with many self-destructive kids, Noah Levine's search for meaning led him first to punk rock, drugs, drinking, and dissatisfaction. But the search didn't end there. Having clearly seen the uselessness of drugs and violence, Noah looked for positive ways to channel his rebellion against what he saw as the lies of society. Fueled by his anger at so much injustice and suffering, Levine now uses that energy and the practice of Buddhism to awaken his natural wisdom and compassion.

In the fall of 1969 eight prominent anti-Vietnam War activists were put on trial for conspiring to riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. One of the eight, Black Panther cofounder Bobby Seale, was literally bound and gagged in court by order of the judge, Julius Hoffman, and his case was separated from that of the others.

Women of all ages are using cannabis to feel and look better. For rookies and experienced marijuana users alike, this lively, information-filled audiobook is just the supportive guide you need to find the right dose to relieve anxiety, depression, and inflammation, and mitigate the onset of dementia and other signs of aging. Plus boost moods, ease aches, even lose weight, and get restful sleep. And a dose just for fun? Well, that works, too!

In an increasingly polarized society, and in the midst of seemingly endless culture wars, our civil discourse appears to be in shambles. What are we to do? If a lack of conversation is the primary culprit of the current state, then perhaps intentionally engaging in debate and discussion will lead us in the right direction. From race and police brutality, to concepts of beauty and the body, to sex and dating, Let's Agree to Disagree is an endeavor to revive cultural dialogues from hostility to civility.

A Harvard Business School student pays over $200 for a $20 bill. Washington, D.C., commuters ignore a free subway concert by a violin prodigy. A veteran airline pilot attempts to take off without control-tower clearance and collides with another plane on the runway. Why do we do the wildly irrational things we sometimes do?

The primal image of the black-caped vampire Dracula has become an indelible fixture of the modern imagination. It's recognition factor rivals, in its own perverse way, the familiarity of Santa Claus. In this critically acclaimed excursion through the life of a cultural icon, David Skal maps out the archetypal vampire's relentless trajectory from Victorian literary oddity to movie idol to cultural commodity, digging through the populist veneer to reveal what the prince of darkness says about us all.

Hearts on Fire is about the creative explosion in Canadian music of the early 2000s, which captured the world's attention in entirely new ways. The Canadian wave didn't just sweep over one genre or one city, it stretched from coast to coast, affecting large bands and solo performers, rock bands and DJs, and it connected to international scenes by capitalizing on new technology and old-school DIY methods.

When Dungeons & Dragons was first released to a small hobby community, it hardly seemed destined for mainstream success—and yet this arcane tabletop role-playing game became an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. In Game Wizards, Jon Peterson chronicles the rise of Dungeons & Dragons from hobbyist pastime to mass market sensation, from the initial collaboration to the later feud of its creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.

Joel Bakan's book is a brilliantly argued account of the corporation's pathological pursuit of profit and power. An eminent law professor and legal theorist, Bakan contends that the corporation is created by law to function much like a psychopathic personality whose destructive behavior, if left unchecked, leads to scandal and ruin. Despite the structural failings found in the corporation, Bakan believes change is possible and outlines a far-reaching program of concrete, pragmatic, and realistic reforms through legal regulation and democratic control.

We all remember Oscar Wilde, but who speaks for Bosie? What about those 'bad gays' whose un-exemplary lives reveal more than we might expect? Too many popular histories seek to establish heroes, pioneers and martyrs but, as Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller argue, the past is filled with queer people whose sexualities and dastardly deeds have been overlooked. Based on the hugely popular podcast series, Bad Gays subverts the notion of gay icons and queer heroes and asks what we can learn about LGBTQ+ history, sexuality and identity through its villains and baddies.

The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense - economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind.

Francesca Gino has been studying rebels in life and in the workplace for more than 15 years. She has discovered that rebels - those who practice "positive deviance" at work - are harder to manage, but they are good for the bottom line: their passion, drive, curiosity, and creativity raise the entire organization to a new level. And she has found that at home, rebels are more engaged partners, parents, and friends. Packed with strategies for embracing rebellion at work and in life, Rebel Talent encourages all of us to rebel against what’s comfortable, so that we can thrive.

The landscape that the Brat Pack memorialized is rich with cultural themes and significance, and has influenced an entire generation who still believe that life always turns out like an '80s movie. You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried takes us back to that era, through Susannah Gora's interviews with key players such as Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy, and John Cusack, and mines all the material from the movies to the music to the way the films were made to show how they helped shape our visions for romance, friendship, society, and success.