Audiobook Mixtape 2: Gift Ideas from the Ologists’ Brains

an audio catalog of their books? So I did, and it's up at aliward dot com slash ologies slash bookworm. So maybe you need gift ideas. What's better than a book? They're biodegradable, they can be regifted when you're done with them, or when someone else is done with them. Or maybe you yourself will be on some planes or trains or in an automobile this season and you need a good read.

So I did an updated episode for twenty twenty one, gathering as many excerpts from ologists who we've had on since the last audiobook Mixtape episode, put them all together with the help of the Ology staffers Noel Dilworth and Susan Hale, who literally made a whole spreadsheet of ologists and their books and helped me reach out to get the actual author's picks for what part of their books they wanted me to read into your face, So I'm

about to do that. Also, I took a Twitter poll to ask if you wanted me to read all of these excerpts like a normal person making a normal episode. Are kind of like an ASMR bedtime story vibe. Guess what you said? No, thanks, just do it normal, so I will. Okay. First, thank you patrons for supporting the show from before we ever launched. I love you all. You can join Patreon for as little as a buck

a month and submit questions to theologists. And thank you to everyone who supports us by telling friends and family who tweeted at me about being your number one Spotify listen this year. Apparently eighty thousand of you had Ologies as your number one podcast on Spotify, which blows my butt right off. Thank you to everyone who rates on

Apple podcasts and leaves reviews. Read them all and I prove it with a fresh one left this week by New Mexico nature teachers who wrote better than a Narwal migration. They wrote, There's this guy named Chris, who teaches seventh graders to love every creature on this planet. And when Chris turned thirty, he hoped to see the Narwal migration, but it didn't happen. He's about to turn fifty and he's your biggest fanboy. Thanks for a show that continues

to show me the marvels of the world. Chris, Happy birthday. May all Narwaals be with you cosmically, and I hope they migrate before your eyes and before the whole world collapses. Just kidding. We'll get to that later. Okay, onto books, Settle in for a stroll down the stacks, and if any of these ologists and episodes are unfamiliar to you, go back listen to their episodes. Oh so good. Also, I thought this episode would be so easy to do,

just read like a bunch of excerpts. Guess what turns out narrating thirty pages of straight script and making segues isn't as brisk as I thought it would be. And this episode is already two days late. Now, so let's do the music thing, all right, Audio book mixtape number two Okay, still me so, y'all. It's winter in the Northern Hemisphere. We're about to pull on some absurdly thick socks and cozy up with a dozen or so books from your friends. What shall you sip? Perhaps some hot

mold cider? Does that even exist from an existential aspect? So if you listen to the Ciderology episode with Gabe Cook, perhaps you know that Americans call anything with apple juice cider. Pretty much. We're big oafs about it. We get it wrong. But Southern Hemisphere, maybe you're on the beach right now. Maybe you're in a Santa hat kicking back cold ones.

Either way. In Gabe's new book Modern British Cider from Camera Books, he tells us what sider looks like in this modern age, where has it come from, and what is making the trends that are being experienced right now? And he picked this excerpt for me to read to you. He wrote, people who know me well are aware of certain identifiable traits that I possess. My uncanny knack for being a jammy git, my insistence of always choosing red on the roulette table, and my utilization of utilize over

my use of use. Another known foible is my ability to speak with the aim of eliciting an informed and technical response on a topic, and yet instead undertake a torturous, seven minute narcissistic monologue that ends in a yes or no question, or maybe no question at all. It's a particular skill, he writes, Well, true to type. I am approaching this book in a similar fashion. I have been presented with a clear, bold and totemic title, Modern British Cider.

The natural conclusion to writing such a book, you might imagine, would be to establish, identify, and explore exactly so what constitutes a modern British Sider, which is precisely what I am not going to do right now. Cider doesn't really need me, he writes, a condescendingly mustachioed Englishman to apply any form of restrictive definition, just as it is beginning to emerge from its chrysalis and turn into the wonderful, boozy butterfly that it has the potential to become. Modern

British Sider isn't a singular thing, he writes. It's not a style. It's not a particular process or form of packaging. It can't be a tick box exercise because the boxes haven't been agreed upon yet. It's more of a free jazz ensemble, exploring the routes before joining back up together. Ugh, don't you love when someone loves something? So anyway, that was his pick from a modern British sider. But maybe alcohol isn't something that you have a good relationship with.

Maybe your drug is oxytocin and it's love. Dig in to a brand new book by doctor Robin Dunbar of the Philematology episode All about Kissing. So he authored the book The Science of Love, which was published by Wiley in twenty twelve, and in it he covers casual questions like what evolutionary benefit could there be to feeling like you would die for a mate? And is parental love anything like romantic love? If love exists to encourage child bearing,

why do we love until death do us part? And beyond? So Robin Dunbar picked the opening excerpt of the Science of Love for me to read to you, and it goes like this, It's the weirdest thing that will ever happen to you falling in love. I mean, think about it. There you are wending your way innocently through childhood, doing the things that children do, and then the hormones suddenly kick in, and then you fall in love hesitatingly at first, in that first all consuming crush, but then with more

confidence and determination as practice and experience make perfect. And although it doesn't happen every day, from time to time throughout the rest of your life, it will catch you by surprise. It's very weird all at once. You can't think of anything else except this seemingly rare person who has just stepped, probably equally innocently into your life. Your attention is focused almost to exclusion on the object of

your desire. You just cannot get enough of them. You experienced heightened happiness, often associated with glazed eyes, a far away look and a dreamy expression, and roused though not turbulent emotions. The word besotted often comes to mind, he writes, so yes, his book is the Science of Love, and it covers everything science has discovered about romance and passion

and sex and commitment and more. And if you are me and have been mainlining the Beatles documentary and wondering how close friendships mirror intimate partnerships but with less boning, perhaps you'd like to pre order doctor Dunbar's upcoming twenty twenty two book, Friends, Understanding the Power of Our most important relationships because we get by with a little help from each other. So links to those on my website. Friends.

But if you're like, okay, what get back to internet dad, Well, okay, then let's talk dix better. Yet, let's read a whole book about boners and schlongs and ding dongs and pickles. So author PhD biologist and philology guest doctor Emily Willingham wrote the book on him. It's called Fallacy Life Lessons

from the Animal Penis. It was published by Avery in twenty twenty, and doctor Willingham provided an excerpt from chapter two, which gets at most of the book's main themes, and she writes, perhaps you've never looked at a human penis and wondered where did that come from? In which case, congratulations on your escape from the fate of many a girl and woman holding a smartphone. But it's a question that lots of biologists have asked and then asked again.

The answer for humans and most mammals is pretty straightforward and honestly not enthralling. But the rest of the animal kingdom, Dear God, by the time you're done with this book, she writes, you'll be just fine with the penis you have or share or enjoy, I promise. So that is her excerpt. She apologized for that penis paragraph, saying if it's too short, I can try to find another Doctor Willingham. If we've learned anything from your work, it's that the

size or length or breadth is not what's important. And as the blurb of the book says, the fallacy sold to many of us is that the penis signals dominance in power. But this rye and penetrating book reveals that in fact, nature did not shape the penis or the human attached to it to have the upper hand. So it's intention and how you use it. Okay, if you're looking for more of doctor Willingham's work, maybe more upstairs

than downstairs business. She has a brand new book. It's being released December fourteenth, next week by Basic Books, and it's called The Tailored Brain From Ketamine Tiketo to Companionship, a user's guide to feeling better and thinking smarter. Her book has been called a candid and practical guide on the new frontier of brain customization. She says that there's no one size fits all shortcut to the ideal mind and the way to understand, cognitive enhancement is to think

like a tailor. So measure how you need your brain to change and then find a plan that suits it. So that new book is The Tailored Brain. So yes, if you liked her previous work on Dix, you might just love her brain book. Okay. So from Willingham's Willie's to worms, that seems like a good segue, right. Okay, So Doctor one Pagan, beloved guest from the episode Plenariology about very Cool Worms, I promise, has written several books.

There's one, the First Brain, The Neuroscience of Plenarians, through Oxford University Press. So many of you loved him and got pumped about plenarians from his passion. I'm going to read you an excerpt that he sent me from his twenty fourteen book about plenarians. Ready, Okay, Before getting into what a flatworm actually is, we should explore a more general question, what is a worm? A generic worm is an invertebrate, which means an animal that does not have

a vertebrate style spinal cord. Examples of invertebrates include insects, arachnids, and well worms, among other things. Worms in particular are usually not much more than a tube like shaped critter, which generally lacks appendages. But there are variations of the

theme on this, of course. For example, sometimes we refer to caterpillars the very hungry kind, or otherwise as worms, And there is a particularly interesting type of worm, the velvet worm, also known as parapatis, which is not really a worm, but is nonetheless a very interesting little guy who I think deserves a book of its own. But I digress, he writes. In general, worms tend to be slimy little living things. All kids like worms, girls, boys,

doesn't matter. The traditional aversion to slimy, rigly living beings comes later in a kid's life, depending on his or her particular upbringing. Some people outgrow their fascination with critics like these, Thankfully, he says, I never did. Of all worm species, flatworms are some of the most interesting ones

on this earth of ours. Oh, I love him. So if you've already read this worm tone, maybe you'd like his other book, which is Strange Survivors, which is about really bizarre offense and defense strategies animals used to survive in the cutthroat world of natural selection. Or he has a brand new book out twenty twenty one. It's called Drunk Flies and Stoned Dolphins. A Trip through the World

of Animal Intoxication. It's published by BenBella Books. So I'm sorry Drunk and Stoned Animals, Yes, and he writes from parrots to primates, consuming medicinal chemicals is an instinctive behavior that helps countless organisms fight infection and treat disease. But what if the similarities don't end there? Like us, many creatures also consume substances that have no apparent benefit except for intoxication. In fact, animals have been using drugs for

recreational purposes since prehistoric times. We may even have animals to thank for the idea. Legend says that coffee was discovered by observing the behavior of goats that had eaten it. So that is his latest book. It's called Drunk Flies and Stone Dolphins. And if you need more of doctor Pegan in your life, which you do since being on ologies, he launched his own podcast and it's called The Bald Scientist and he talks more about his life and work

and books there and he's a gem. We love him. Okay, from shitammered nats, let's talk about angry wasps are wasps angry? Are they the assholes we've made them out to be? So? If you listen to the Sexology episode with author and entomologist Eric Eaton, you may have learned wasps are just trying to wasp and they just want to feed bits of your turkey sandwich to their carnivore babies. And Eric wrote a breathtaking, the beautiful book called Wasps The Astonishing

Diversity of a Misunderstood Insect. It was published in twenty twenty one by Princeton University Press, and like his episode, it sings the praises of the insect that we all have unfairly decided we hate or maybe have confusing feeling towards. And he picked this excerpt for you. Humanity has a great ambivalence toward wasps. Our patriarchal culture revers the warrior image of social wasps, conveniently ignoring the fact that wasps

we all want to emulate are all female. Meanwhile, we loathe the yellowjackets for exploiting our urban and suburban lifestyles. It may come as a surprise to learn that the overwhelming majority of wasp species leads solitary lives rather than dwelling in paper palaces with queens and workers, or that not all wasps can sting, he writes, So sit back, y'all, relax by the fire, and thumb through some really gorgeous

photos of wasps. Also, when you're stuck on a holiday zoom with your cousin's husband you hate, just change the subject by announcing that wasps are agents of pest control in agriculture and gardens, and there subjects of study in medicine and engineering, and they pollinate flowers, and they engage in symbiotic relationships. They create architectural masterpieces in the form of their nests. So there you go. There's some dinner party convo. And if you're like, I don't know about wasps,

that's fine. If you're like, do you know of any bug books that celebrate small, hard animals who don't have tiny shives on their butts, but maybe they have like lamps instead, well do I ever? So? Self described sparklematologist and firefly expert, doctor Sarah Lewis wrote a book about these luminous little beetles lightning bugs, and it's called Silent Sparks The Wondrous World of Fireflies. It was published in twenty sixteen by Princeton University Press, and doctor Lewis picked

an exerpt for me to read from chapter two. Deep in the Heart of the Smokies, she writes, it wasn't until the forest was completely dark that we saw the first flash. Moments later, a dozen male fireflies took flight around us, broadcasting their typical mating call. Six rapid bursts of light, followed by six seconds of total darkness. Suddenly the forest came alive with flying sparks, and thousands of

male fireflies were flashing together in lockstep synchrony. Together, they flared out their six precisely timed flashes, and then they all ceased at once. Darkness rushed in, like a shade drawn over my eyes. All the scientific descriptions that I'd read left me totally unprepared for the transcendental thrill of this rhythmic pulsating display mesmerized. I sank down and yielded

to this immense biological rhythm. Alone in the silence save for a synchronous symphony played by a thousand fireflies, I felt like I'd fallen out of time. That night, in Elkmont, I witnessed a prodigiou effort that was all about procreation. The tiny pulsating stars responsible for this brilliant display, we're desperately trying to propel their genes into the next firefly generation. As for the rest of us, we were just fortunate to be spectators at their exhibition. So her book, again,

Silent Sparks. It's been called a passionate exploration of one of the world's most charismatic and admired insects. So it might just inspire you to go sit in a forest and reconnect with the natural world. And also, aren't we all kind of passionate about passion? I feel like we are. Cicadas are just ask entomologist doctor Jen Kritsky. He is the author of the twenty twenty one Ohio Biological Survey

book Periodical Cicadas, the Brood ten Edition. And if you're like, why do these bugs live under ground for seventeen years? I need more info before brood ten emerges again in

sixteen and a half years. Well, he told me. The page seventy two of his book describes the purpose of seventeen year cicadas, and he writes, love gives them wings and they flaunt themselves in the sun for a brief space, like some gay lifario, and like him, they dissipate every energy, and then fall to the earth like an empty pouch,

as Balsak says, and die. When examined after their death, they're found to be a mere shell, scarcely more substantial than that they cast off when they began their amatory career. It's true that the female, before her death, goes to some trouble to drill holes in the bark of the trees for the purpose of laying her eggs, after which she too falls and dies, leaving as empty a carcass

as that of her mate. For seventeen years have these hopeful creatures been waiting in the dark recesses of the earth for the time when fate will throw them together. And for seventeen years they have been laying in a good supply of food, so that when their honeymoon shall arrive, they may waste no time in idle, vulgar feeding, but may devote themselves entirely to the cultivation of each other's acquaintance, And so through affection they starve to death. Ah, how Emo,

how beautiful horniness It drives us? It drives us to peril. What a beautiful tragedy. So that was doctor Jen Kritzky's book, Periodical Cicada's. So that was doctor Jean Kritzky's book, Periodical Cirkada's. What a beautiful tragedy. They need to love, to connect, to leave a genetic legacy, to copulate with the absolute loudest screaming partners, you can find. It's not just humans or bugs though. Bears are also so vulnerable to the magic of affection. You can take it from personology guest

and bear expert Chris Morgan. So he wrote a book called Bears of the Last Frontier, The Adventure of a Lifetime among Alaska's Black, Grizzly and Polar Bears. It was published in twenty eleven by Stuart Taborian Chang, and it details his time traversing Alaska to document and study the mating behavior of giant coastal brown bears, and he writes in the chapter the Love Zone, a pattern emerges on the meadow that has had me transfixed. The bears enter the scene over a giant log pile, pausing as if

walking into a saloon and assessing the competition. Some bears scatter while others quit munching momentarily to size up the newcomer. The biggest males confidently resume grazing, while the intermediary bears leave the scene quietly, gingerly looking over their shoulders in the hope that the females weren't watching them, retreat pushing through the saloon doors. A giant male entered the scene today,

and every female looked up. They all seem to be trying to catch his attention, coyly turning in circles before sitting on their rumps and wandering back and forth toward and then away from him in the hope that he might follow. The big fellow had an air of supreme confidence about him, and he immediately pulled out some of his best moves to impress his competitors, starting with a bear's typical cowboy swagger. Elvis, eat your heart out, he writes.

The hip gyrations on this guy caught everyone's attention, including another large male who was already copulating with a female. What thank you, Chris Morgan. We have just learned that nature is one big muddy orgy. It's a little heteronormative, but whatever floats these beautiful beloved beast boats, you know. And so now that we've covered some birds and the bees of bears and bugs, let's talk bird butts. You loved.

Doctor John Bates Awology episode, and he is the editor of the University of Chicago Press's Book of Eggs, a life sized guide to the eggs of six hundred of the world's bird species. This is the ultimate, thick, illustrated love letter to six hundred of the most intriguing eggs. Doctor Bates picked this excerpt for me to read to you. The diversity of birds that successfully reproduce via the egg is astonishing. Birds live on every continent and successfully breed

in every terrestrial habitat. In the frigid Anarctic, where winter temperatures are below seventy degrees fahrenheit and winds may reach two hundred miles per hour or three hundred and twenty kilometers, the emperor penguin stands in place, carrying its single egg on top of its feet for two months to warm it before the chicks hatch. In Chile, gray gulls breed in the world's driest deserts, where few predators can venture.

The eggs and chicks are safe, but the parents must commute daily to the ocean to obtain food and water for themselves in their offspring. We still have much to learn about the biology of birds eggs, but there is no doubt that reproduction through eggs has been a very successful system for birds for millions of years. This book is a journey through the strategies that different bird species and the tactics that different individuals have evolved and adopted

to successfully reproduce via the fragile egg. So in the witch came first the chicken in the egg debate. The order is the egg, then the chicken, then the scientist, and then the book. And then you buy the book, I don't know, read it for yourself, give it to a friend. There you go. And if you're wondering, is there a book about history and geologic time, maybe also

molten Earth? Well there is, and it's called Misadventure. It's by the wonderful Just Phoenix, who's your favorite volcanologist and also the guest of the very first episode of Ologies Ever and her book was published this year in twenty twenty one by Workman Publishing, and it's part memoir with a buwload of adventure and exploration from jungles, to glaciers, to TV studios, and of course, the world's largest volcano. Okay, so this is a story about one time she was

doing science on a volcano. Page one hundred and four. I approached the flow guardedly, was to get close enough to stick the pointed pick end of the hammer into one of the flow's toes. As I drew closer, the heat grew more intense than anything I'd ever felt. The flow I was targeting was an excess of eighteen hundred degrees fahrenheit, which is nearly four times hotter than the highest setting on an oven. It seemed as if nature had hushed itself unbidden, except for my heartbeat, which was

jackhammering in my ears. I paused, eyeballing potential targets and not wanting to get closer to that outrageous heat until I knew for certain where I would strike. I set the coffee can down behind me and decided on a nice, fat lobe of lava about six feet away that was slowly blobbing toward my right foot. Faintly, I heard a tinkle that sounded like tiny pieces of glass being crunched

ever so gently. The lava was making an almost musical sound as the new flow rolled over the older ground beneath. Between that and the radiating w waves of heat that were hitting me full force, it felt like a dream. I couldn't take the heat much longer, so I clenched my teeth and stepped toward the floe, right arm extended with the hammer pick pointing down. Suddenly, my eyes felt like they were being sand blasted at Matt's direction. I

had kept my sunglasses on, so I tried blinking. The awful feeling remained, and I recognized my eyes were dehydrating. I needed to hurry, or my vision might end up more compromise than it already was, and one errant movement

could result in serious burns. I took one last step, shielded my eyes with my gloved left hand enough to deflect some of the searing air, planted my right foot ten inches from the floe, and stuck the pick into the living, silvery glob Feeling no resistance, I pulled up slowly, straining against the heat to see what was happening on the end of the hammer. The lava followed the hammer's path, some of its sticky bulk attached to the pick with

the rest fighting to stay part of the flow. The taffy from Hell stretched, vivid and red, the insubstantial silver crust broken by the hammer, the flow's dazzling scarlet insides exposed to the world. I kept pulling and free to glob the molted rock tendrils oozing back to the bulk of the floe. I pivoted, shaking the hammer to make the glob release its hold. It fell to the waiting coffee can, and the water inside crackled to life, boiling

instantly thanks to the scorching lava bloob. I had dropped. Steam rose from the can as the sample was hyper quenched, solidifying it and preserving the information contained inside its primordial makeup. As soon as the boiling stopped, I picked up the can and rejoined Matt at a safe distance from the floe front. Relieved to be in cooler air and a

static about all things lava, I couldn't stop grinning. We packed up the sample and treked off to map the lava flow that was currently burning an isolated island of green amid the sea of black. So there you go. How Planets Are Made In Jess Phoenix's book, misadventures. But if we're all here right on this big craggy lump of rock, who else is out there? I mean, don't

ask me, I don't know. Ask astrobiology guest doctor Kevin Hann, who is a NASA JPL scientist and author of the twenty twenty book Alien Oceans, The Search for Life in the Depths of Space, published by Princeton University Press, who at this point in the episode owes me a fruit basket. Actually, one second before we hear what a professional alien hunter has to say, let's just throw some money at one

of my favorite causes. We're going to pick eight two six LA, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students age six to eighteen with their creative and expository writing skills and helping teachers inspire their students to write. And eight two six LA is base here in LA. They provide after school tutoring, they have evening in weekend workshops, I have in school tutoring help for English language learners,

and they assist with student publications. So that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show, whoms I like very much. Okay, Terrestrial o'clock here we go, So doctor Hand chose this excerpt for me to read to you. Here we go. The discovery of life beyond Earth, or conversely, the discovery that it does not exist anywhere else, is as profound a shift in our framework of the cosmos as is moving the Earth from the center of the universe to being just one of many planets orbiting an

average star in a universe full of stars. So perhaps we are the only ones. Perhaps the origin of life is hard and life is rare. Or perhaps we live in a universe teeming with life, a biological universe of incredible diversity across planets, moons, stars, galaxies. Perhaps our tree of life, the singular center of biology as we know it, is revealed to be but a tiny twig on a tiny branch, joined to a vast and grand tree of life, connecting the beauty of all life in the known universe.

Looking up the night sky, he writes, seeing Jupiter as a bright point of light above the horizon, I can't help but wonder whether our return to that beautiful planet and its magnificent moons will once again catalyze as scientific revolution and our understanding of our place in the universe. Europa and the many alien oceans of our solar system. Oh wait ooh goosebumps. So that was doctor Kevin Hand's Alien Oceans. And if you're like read more stuff like that,

please Internet Dad, than fine I will. If you heard the ufology or ufhology episode about flying saucers and all kinds of sky mysteries, you'll remember that one guest, Sarah Scoles, is an author and wrote they are already here UFO culture and Why we See Saucers, and that is via Pegas's books that came out in twenty twenty. So here is the excerpt that Sarah wanted me to beam into your consciousness. Here we go. Perhaps knowing is not the

point of UFOs. For serious researchers in this field, trying to know seems to hold the most appeal of all unanswered questions. After I'll keep you up at night, they animate you, compel you to crack open that laptop just one more time, letting it light your face blue. At one am. They press you to come up with theories and then test them on your friends. Hear me out. Your sentences begin to begin when or if you find whatever you're seeking. The film of your life slows to

fewer frames per second. People I've interviewed, she writes, have called UFOs various versions of the ultimate problem to solve. Many of them don't believe UFOs, a term that denotatively just means something in the sky that the seer can understand. They don't believe that they were forged in alien furnaces far far away, although some do. But they do believe

these sites are something. Maybe there's something in our heads, maybe their secret military craft, misinterpreted planets, blimps, wavering stars, atmospheric phenomena, swamp gas are collective ignorance of all of the above, organized into skylights. But whatever they are or are not, people undoubtedly see things they can't explain, talk

about them, write about them, wonder about them. Ooh yes, So bring on the invasion of in Sarah's words, the big wigs, the scrappy upstarts, the field investigators, the rational people, and the unhinged coops of this sprawling UFO community. So the truth is out there in a book. You know what else is out there? Space garbage, so much of it, so over our heads, and in the future it might even encircle our planet like a hula hoop made out

of robots. So. Doctor Alice Gorman is a space archaeologist and last year she published a book via MIT Press called You Ready Hold on Your Butts. It's the best title, Doctor Space Junk versus the Universe. I mean, with that title, how am I supposed to pick an excerpt? I'm not because we asked doctor Gorman to do it. This is the cosmic sample she wants this to read. Here we go. We don't think of the space environment in the same way as Earth's. One reason is the common perception of

space as a black, empty vacuum. Unlike Earth, space is infinite beyond our Sun. There are billions of others just like it, even in our unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy, as Douglas Adam called it in The Hitchhiker's Guide the Galaxy. She writes, perhaps most importantly, as far as we know, there's nothing living in interplanetary

space that humans haven't put there. We have managed to expand the human biosphere just a little into low Earth orbit, where the International Space Station circles with its tiny crew. And I hate to tell you this, she writes, but some fool sent Matta Gascar hissing cockroaches into space on an experimental space station that's still in orbit. There's no way that's going to end well. So that is Doctor Space Junk versus the Universe by Alice Gorman. So if

you ever need a new nightmare fuel, you're welcome. There you go, and we talk about that in her Space Archaeology episode as well. You're wondering is there a disasterrologist in the house, because this sounds terrible, and to be honest, there is. Her name is doctor Smith Montano, and she came on the show in twenty eighteen to talk about emergency management and guess what. She put out a book

this year. It's published by Park Row and it's called Disasterrology Dispatches from the front Lines of the Climate Crisis, and it's called part memoir, part expert analysis, and a passionate account of a country and crisis one unprepared to deal with the disasters of today and those looming in our future. Her work is so weird and great and cool. Okay,

So she picked this bit from Disastrology. Frustrated years ago when I first began to understand the urgency of the climate crisis, I struggled to figure out how I could help prevent future climate driven disasters when I was already standing in the middle of one. How could I justify taking the time to worry over Miami's future when that future had already arrived in New Orleans. What I did not understand at the time was that we could and had to do both if we do not radically change

our emergency management policy and approach to managing disasters. The apocalyptic Hollywood disaster scenes that come to mind when we think about climate change could become real life. My hope is my sharing with you the long and often indirect journey I have taken to understand the true extent of the trouble we're in. You will see the problems clearly too, and find the courage to take action. Because she writes, we have a lot to do, okay, folks, Yes, we

have a lot to do. I feel like we're on board. We know that, But what is to be done? Okay? So in her episode of Indigenous Fire Ecology, doctor Amy Christensen talked about land stewardship first start, and by start, I mean a revisiting, as these methods have been used for tens of thousands of years, and she wrote a guide book called First Nations Wildfire Evacuations, a Guide for

Communities and External Agencies. It was put out by Purity Publishing and doctor Amy Christensen describes increasingly frequent wildfire blazes and she's been on the front lines of these. She writes, it begins with the smoke. Someone from the nation will see a smoke plume, either nearby or far away, and almost immediately an image will appear on social media. Did you see the smoke? A quiet unease then ripples through

the community. Wildfires in the summer are nothing new for First Nations in the boreal forest, and everyone under stands that the risk is real. It often happens on a hot day when warm winds gust the smoke plume expands and ash spreads through the upper atmosphere, turning the sun a disconcerting orange. In need of reinsurance, people call the band office for their families. Band staff search for information and try to determine the position of the fire and

whether it's a threat. When the ash starts to fall, everyone knows that things are getting serious. When the ash starts to fall, everyone knows that things are getting serious. What was once beautiful black ash floating like tiny feathers in an orange sky now collects like ground, gray chalk on car hoods and a platform for curious children to write their names. The day begins to darken as the

smoke blocks out the sun. Day quickly turns to night, and visibility becomes limited to a few meters at best. Those who have respiratory conditions such as asthma begin to experience difficulties breathing, and then ash and embers at ground level make it physically difficult for even healthy people to breathe. The band reaches out to multiple agencies local, provincial, and

federal for advice on whether to evacuate. Although the smoke seems to be near and poses a threat to community members, they have no idea how close the fire is to the community. The actual flame front could be many kilometers away, but rumors continue to circulate. If the first nation is accessible by road, some people might simply get in their vehicles and leave before an evacuation is called. For those who live in fly in communities, it's not that easy.

In both cases, residents must depend on leaders and outside agencies to ensure their safety. There are often no set protocols or guidelines in place, even though First Nations are some of the most at risk communities in Canada and it's been predicted that they're at risk status will only

increase with climate change. If you live in a First Nation and are responsible for or concerned about wildfire evacuations, or if you work for an outside agency and need or want to know about the special concerns and needs of First Nations, this book is for you, though it will also be a valuable resource for other Indigenous and

non Indigenous communities in Canada and beyond. Indigenous peoples around the world have lived with fire for tens of thousands of years and have specialized fire knowledge which has been passed down through generations. Unfortunately, as a result of colonization, many Indigenous communities have been unable to practice their fire management techniques to protect their communities from fire. So that is from doctor Amy Christensen's book, which will be linked

in the show notes too. And if you want some more background on the whys and the what's and also the hows when it comes to climate, Doctor Iana Elizabeth Johnson of the Oceanology episode released a twenty twenty Penguin Random House book called All We Can Save, Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, and it was co edited by Kathleen Wilkinson and doctor Johnson picked the very beginning for me to read. So if you like scientists, do you had a feeling? Okay, here we go. Unice

Newtonfoot rarely gets the credit she's due. In eighteen fifty six, Foot theorized that changes in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could affect the Earth's temperature. She was the first woman in climate science, but history overlooked her until just a few years ago. Unice Newton Foot arrived at her breakthrough idea through experimentation with an air pump, two glass cylinders,

and four thermometers. She tested the impact of carbonic acid gas, which was the term for carbon dioxide in her day, against common air, and when placed in the sun, she found the cylinder with carbon dioxide trapped more heat and

stayed hot longer. From a simple experiment, she drew a profound conclusion quote an atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature, and if, as some suppose, at one period of its history, the air had mixed with it, a larger proportion than at present, an increased temperature must have necessarily resulted, said Eunice Newton Fort. So in other words, they right. She connected the dots between carbon dioxide and planetary warming, and she did it more

than one hundred and sixty years ago. Foot's paper Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun's rays was presented in August eighteen fifty six at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and then it was published. For unknown reasons, it was read aloud by Joseph Henry, secretary of the Smithsonian, rather than by Foot herself. That was three years before Irish physicist John Tyndall published his own more detailed work on heat trapping gases, work typically

credited as the foundation of climate science. Did Tyndall know about Foot's research, It's unclear, though he did have a paper on color blindness in the same eighteen fifty six issue of the American Journal of Science and Arts as hers. In any case, we have to wonder if Eunice Newton Foot I ever found herself remarking, as so many women have. I literally just said that, dude, this book they write is about a spectrum of work that needs doing and

a collective effort to make our best contributions. It's not about heroes. So whether you're a veteran of the climate movement, a keen onlooker from the sidelines, or someone joining this conversation for the first time, we hope you will find yourself in these pages. We have peeled away jargon, including foundational information, and created simplicity without forfeiting complexity, because this

book is for everyone concerned about our shared future. So that is from All we Can Save, which was edited by doctor Diana Elizabeth Johnson and Kathleen Wilkinson, so that was from their intrough So if you're looking for a book about the whole damn Earth and what to do again, All We Can Save writings by dozens of diverse women leading on climate science in the United States. They're scientists, journals, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, wonks, innovators,

and designers. All have essays in there. So awesome book All We Can Save. Speaking of ladies doing things, let's get a glance at historical power structures, shall we? We shall so? Doctor Karacuny of the Egyptology episode put out a new book just last month November twenty twenty one. For one second, I forgot what year and month we were in. It's it's been a time people. But doctor Kracuni's book was put out by nat Geo and it's called The Good King's Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and

the Modern World. Okay, you're ready for this. She sent this excerpt to read to you, and I'm hoping not to stumble through it too much. Here we go. Whether Kufu's monarchical divination sendwaswritz absolutism, Akintans fanaticism, Ramsey's populism, or Tarka's pious orthodoxy, Egyptian Pharonic history was largely a patriarchal

rinse and repeat with approximately the same result. She writes, The modern world has been tossed around in the same cycle, albeit with more stark philosophical differences communism or capitalism, socialism or democracy, fascism or theocracy, totalitarianism or oligarchy, with all the bloodshed in between, and yet it's all still essentially the same patriarchal system. And with every new cycle, each leader uses the pain of the last fall to cement

his nascent rule. Rinse and repeat the patriarchy is the water in which we all swim unknowable to most normalized. For all humans have been thinking these unequal, controlling, spreadsheeting, market driven, power obsessed, smash and grab, consumptive, accumulating, domesticating competitive ways for so long that we feel we don't

know any other way. We find ourselves looking up from our hard labors, only to see that the landscape has been clearcut while we weren't looking, that the toxic smog of industry suddenly hides the blue sky, and that a few billionaires have carved out pleasure gardens with beautiful furnishings, air purreifiers, and high walls. In response, we have cleaved

into two factions. One group that wants to walk forward to find a different way, and another group that just wants a king like the one Israel asked for in the Book of Samuel. One aid, So if you have ever looked at power structures and thought, why are we like this? Egyptologist doctor Karacute shed some light utter past with her new book and again that was called The Good King's Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World, and the book on Race that everyone will be reading

next year. Is edited by Anna gifty Opoku Ajaman, who was our fiscal guide through the economic sociology episode, and she's edited a book. It's called The Black Agenda, Bold Solutions for a Broken System, and it will be released via Saint Martin's Press in February of twenty twenty two, but it's available for pre order and here's a preview of its contents. Here's the book blurb for it, just

to kind of get you excited. So, the summer twenty twenty marked an important shift in discussing racial equities place in America. The Black Agenda honors that shift and discourse by being the first book of its kind, a bold and urgent move towards social justice through a profound collection of essays featuring Black scholars and experts across economics, education, health, climate,

criminal justice, and technology. And it speaks to the question what's next for America on the subjects of policymaking, mental health, artificial intelligence, climate movement, the future of work, the LGBTQ community, the criminal legal system, and much more. Essays include groundbreaking ideas ranging from black maternal and infant health to reparations to AI bias, to inclusive economic policy. With the potential to uplift and heal not only Black America, but the

entire country. So that is the book blurb for The Black Agenda, and one reviewer wrote, this book will challenge what you think is possible by igniting law overdue conversations around how to enact lasting and meaningful change rooted in racial justice. So which reviewer said that you want to know? Oh, just Abram X Kendy, the number one New York Times bestselling author of How to Be An Anti Racist. So that is already getting a lot of buzz and excitement

around it. That's called The Black Agenda, edited by Anna gifty Yo Poco Pajumen, and that'll be out February twenty twenty. But there's a link for pre order on my website and for more on social and cultural work. You can dig into some history with Stephen Hanks, who you may remember from the pre Pandemic So Long Ago February twenty

twenty Genealogy episode. And Stephen wrote the books sixteen nineteen twenty Africans and Aki Tree, as well as the twenty twenty one book Three Brothers sixteen twenty six The Ancestry of the World up to sixteen, twenty six and beyond to our day, and that's all through ink water Press and Stephen picked an excerpt from Three Brothers for me to read you right in line with the holidays. It's this beautiful passage about history and tracking your past and food and the way he writes is very kind of

poetic and beautiful. And he says in twenty sixteen, a retired man living in the Pacific northwestern part of the United States took his DNA test. How did the DNA of the Yakut tribe of Siberia match an African American in the United States. Siberia today part of Russia, but prior to them, the region was home to the Huns, the Mongol Empire, and to various nomad indigenous One traditional culinary dish is Siberian pelmeni, made of various meats such as beef, pork, rabbit, or bear, cooked in a pot

with bone, broth and liver. It can also be served as dumplings mixed with milk, onion, and garlic. One's appetite may also turn to omal fish, which can be boiled, fried, or salted and smoked. An appetizer with vodka venison is also served in soups dried or fried in cowberry sauce.

How could a migration of indigenous Asian peoples of Siberia cross into Alaska, divided by the frigid waters, the Athabaskan, the Arawakan, the carib the ancestors to the Mexica, the Chickahamany, the Tuscarora peoples passed through the trail across the Bering Strait to South America, the Caribbean, and North America. So that is an excerpt from Stephen Hank's book Three Brothers

sixteen twenty six. So if your appetite has been wet, you can order Three Brothers sixteen twenty six, which covers the origin of slavery in New York and Virginia, the ancestry of the Indigenous and Haiti and the Americas, and the rise and fall of international world powers. So he covers a lot in it, and so yes, since we did our last Books episode in twenty nineteen, there's been so much, obviously wonderful work has been published on history

and equity and how injustice and ignorance sadly blooms. And last summer I got to interview the founder of agnetology, which is the study of ignorance. And his name is doctor Robert Procter. He's a Stanford professor who for decades has been studying why we refuse to face the truth. He wrote the book on ignorance. Will co edited it with doctor Landa. Scheibinger, and it's called Agnetology, The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, and it was published by Stanford

University Press in twenty oh eight. So doctor Procter sent me a snippet to read to you. Here we go. Doubt is our product. The Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company internal Memo, nineteen sixty nine. Philosophers love to talk about knowledge. A whole field is devoted to reflection on the topic, with product tie ins to professorships and weighty conferences. Epistemology

is serious business taught in academies the world over. There is moral and social epistemology, epistemology of the sacred, the closet, and the family. There is a computational epistemology laboratory at the University of Waterloo and a Center for Epistemology at

the Free University in Amsterdam. A Google search turns up separate websites for constructivist, feminist, and evolutionary epistemology, of course, but also libidinal an android Quaker Internet, and my favorite, he writes, Erato Metaphysical Epistemology Harvard offers a course in the field without the Erato metaphysical part, which, if we are to believe its website, explores the epistemic status of weighty claims like the standard meter is one meter long, and I'm not a brain in a vat. We seem

to know a lot about knowledge. What is remarkable, though, he writes, is how little we know about ignorance. So because we know so little, he literally coined agnetology. It is the study of ignorance and pretty much the opposite of epistemology. And also, there are so many types of epistemology. Just think of how many episodes I have in the future, you guys, Erato Metaphysical epistemology. M m, yes, perhaps anyway, that is doctor Robert Procter's book. But is ignorance bliss?

I have thought about it, and I think never. I think it's never a good thing. But if there was a red pill or a blue pill, would you take it? Well? Your favorite futurologist Rose Eveleth, who you know and love from her podcast flash Forward and also the Futurology episode. She wrote a book that's part essays and part incredible graphic novel and it's called flash Forward, An Illustrated Guide to Possible and Not So Possible Tomorrow's And it was published by Abrams in April of this year. And I

texted her. She said she was impartial about the excerpt, and I was like, there's so many good ones, so okay, I said, can I pick this part? She said, pick whatever part you want, So here we go. Patrick Cowenberg embodied the mythological American dream. Born into a wealthy family in the Dutch East Indies, Kallenberg's family lost everything in nineteen forty five when the island nation rested its independence

from colonial rule to become Indonesia. The Klan moved to the Netherlands completely broke, and Kallenberg didn't let that deter him. He managed to learn five languages and eventually moved to Los Angeles, where he scrubbed toilets while getting a degree

in physics at the California Institute of Technology. After graduation, Callenberg spent two years in the military, ultimately earning a purple Heart for his service, and due to injuries sustained in Vietnam, including shrapnel that stayed forever lodged near his groin, he returned to civilian life and he helped the US more passively, assisting the CIA in operations in Southeast Asia and Africa, and eventually getting a master's degree in psychology,

before ultimately ully going to law school and working his way up to a role as a judge in the Los Angeles Superior Court. Cowen berg story was, as that court's former director of public information wrote, a publicist dream come true. The problem was that it was all indeed a dream. As people started digging into his resume, they found that nearly every piece of his biography was fabricated. He had never attended Caltech, there was no shrapnel near his groin, he never worked for the CIA, and he

certainly did not have a purple heart. In August of two thousand and one, after four years as a Superior justice in Los Angeles, cowen Berg was removed from his post in perhaps the ultimate act of cowardice. Rose writes cowen Berg had the gall to blame his wife for his lives, saying that she had typed his CV and repeated the tall tales he told her about his background. I mean, can you imagine that part of the book. I was like, what so much f only to go

down in history as an absolute dill weed? And that is from the chapter don't lie to me? Do you really want to know what everybody's lying? And when I got to that part of the book, I was like, ooh, I feel like I gasped everything on my desk toward my face. So that is again Rose Eveli's book. And she's about to celebrate the conclusion of her podcast flash Forward as we know it, she says, So she might be possibly reintroducing or retiring it. We're going to see.

But if you'd like to celebrate her and the podcast, you can join Rose and Julia for an online party on December seventeenth at five pm. There's going to be some surprise special guests, she says, for an evening of fun surprises, meet your fellow listeners a flash forward, say hello and goodbye for a while. So I put the link to that on my website right below the link

to buy Rose's book flash Forward. So that's all about ellieword dot com, slash ologies, slash bookworm too okay, looking toward the future, little segue, how do we do things though? How does anyone do anything? Ever? We're thinking about the study of knowledge, the study of ignorance. How much things have to change? How do we make sure to do those things instead of just having those intentions, you know, from like matching socks to writing term papers, to taking

on massive issues to a nightly skincare routine. How does shit happen well? In tiny little steps? And in February twenty twenty, with the Volitional Psychology episode, I got a chance to meet with one of the world's authorities on procrastination, a research psychologist named doctor Joseph Ferrari, who wrote Still Procrastinating, The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done. It was published by Wiley Press. And I said, Doc, pick me a piece to read for anyone who does not yet

have this book. And he said, sure, thing, you proc And if you listen to that episode you know why he camm that. So he selected if you've ever driven a car, bit a passenger, or had someone come to pick you up, you've probably encounter a sidewalk sign with the words no standing, no parking, no waiting. It's frustrating to see these signs when you try to pick someone up, He writes, where do you go? How do you accomplish your task? The person you're picking up is waiting for you.

The parking regulations are obstacles impeding your goal of picking up a friend or a relative. It's almost as if these signs are talking to the procrastinators of the world. What certain procrastinators may not realize is that someone is waiting for them, and that person can't park, stand, or wait. There are things that have to be done, and they need to be done now. Procrastination is like stopping a train that left the station. When we procrastinate, we hold

others up. We're telling the conductor stop here, stop where I want you to stop, or even I will get on the train what I want to get on that train. This book is more than a typical self help approach for dealing with chronic procrastination. In fact, you should consider it to be of mutual help to you and all of the people you interact with. When you learn how to prevent the waiting, standing, or parking in your life. This will also benefit countless others whose schedules are delayed

by your procrastination. I will show you how to stop waiting for that perfect opportunity or time to act because it doesn't exist, how to stop standing still and make the positive changes that will help you meet your needs and achieve your goals, and how to stop parking and missing all that life has to offer, he writes. So that is doctor Joseph Ferra's book, Still Procrastinating. It's a great book for those of us who think future us

will be better at doing something than present us. And by people, I just mean me, because I'm just a constant referee in the battle between past me, who cowered at a task and future me, who's just pissed that we did that. And here's present me making you this episode and putting it out two days late. But hey, what are you gonna do? I'm only humans. Sorry, there's just a lot to read, all right, Okay, moving on now?

What if this year just takes a big ass turn sideways, and despite all of our boosters and two years of holing up from covid omicron, just crashes your holiday party. Well, for a quarantine refresher, perhaps you'd like a copy of

Quarantinology episode guests Jeff Mayino and Nikola Twilly. They put out a twenty twenty one book called Until Proven Safe, The History and Future of Quarantine, and it was published by mcd and I was like, you, wonderful play historians, Why don't you hit me up with an excerpt, give me some adventure and not unlike an underpaid frontline worker putting a sack of groceries on your doorstep that you'll

have to wipe off with bleach. They delivered so. On page thirty five, they write, over the past six centuries, quarantine has shaped the public health response to infectious disease around the world. But it has also shaped our streets,

buildings and cities, our borders, laws, and imaginations. Quarantine has inspired the construction of great fortress like facilities built on the edges of civilization, as well as high tech medical institutions in the very heart of the modern metropolis of Reporting this book, we crawled into crumbling hospitals overlooking the sea, towards ruins overgrown with weeds, and donned hard hats to step inside a brand new federal quarantine facility then under

construction in the geographic center of the United States, quarantine has also transcended its medical origins to become a vital tool in protecting our global food supply and even our planet. Our travels took us to a greenhouse in suburban London charged with safeguarding the world's chocolate supply, to an animal disease research center in Manhattan, Kansas, built to survive the strongest tornadoes, and to a pristine spacecraft assembly room in Pasadena, California.

Quarantine is not just the purview of the World Health Organization or the centers for disease Control, as we discovered, officials at the US Department of Agriculture and NASA also depend on it to stave off famine and to safely explore the cosmos. And they add quarantine is our most powerful response to uncertainty. It means waiting to see if something hidden inside us will be revealed. It is also one of our most dangerous, operating through an assumption of guilt.

In quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe. So again, their book is called Until Proven Safe. It was by Jeff Maino and Nicola Twilly, and it was released just this last year, but they've been working on it for years. So good timing, pretty good timing, and you're like, Dad board, are you trying to bum my ass out? And no,

not at all. I'm just saying, the more words we put in our brains by people who are passionate enough to pitch and write a whole book about it, I mean, the better prepared we are to live life and enjoy the future perhaps make it better for everyone. So I leave you with an excerpt from an expert on awesome things and how very simple gratitude can get you to appreciate what's in front of you, even in the shittiest

of times. So Osomology guest and author and speaker Neil Pezricia has become a dear pal after meeting him to record, and he essentially said dealer's choice when it came to an excerpt from his twenty sixteen epic book, The Happiness Equation, which was published by Penguin, and his book is packed with interviews and research on happiness. But I picked this little bit for you about things that you can do to boost yourself out of a bumber town. And one

of the things he lists is you can write. And Neil writes writing for twenty minutes about a positive experience dramatically improves happiness. Why because you actually relive the experience as you're writing it, and then you relive it every time you read it. Your brain sends you back. In a University of Texas study called how Do I Love thee Let me Count the Words, researchers Richard Slatcher and James Pennebaker had one member of a couple write about

their relationship for twenty minutes three times a day. Compared to the test group, the couple was more likely to engage in intimate dialogue afterward, and the relationship was more likely to last. So what does the twenty minute replay do? It helps us remember things we like about people and experiences in our lives. If you can be happy with simple things, then it will be simple to be happy. Find a book or a journal or start a website and write down three to five things you're grateful for

from the past week. He says, I wrote five a week on one thousand Awesome Things dot com. Some people write in a notebook by their bedside. Back In twenty three, researchers Robert Emmons and Michael Kulla ask groups of students to write down five five gratitudes, five hassles or five events that happened over the past week, for ten straight weeks, and guess what happened. The students who wrote five gratitudes

were happier and physically healthier. Charles Dickens put this, well, reflect on your present blessings, of which everyone has many, not your past misfortunes, of which all have some. Remember, he says, just like driving a car, throwing a football, or doing a headstand, you can learn to be happier. So that is from the happiness equation from Neil Pezricia. And so there you are with a giant list of great books waiting for you or someone for whom you

need a gift. And I list them all at alliwar dot com slash ologies slash Bookworm two and our previous episode from twenty nineteen is at aliwar dot com slash ologies slash Bookworm. You can check your local bookstore to see if they have any of these books. They probably have all of them, or if not, order them online. And I included on my website links to each of them via bookshop dot org, which is an excellent alternative to Amazon if you want to support local bookstores. But

you can get them however works best for you. I'm not going to judge just providing resources, so gift them, read them. I hope they open up your world a little more. And thank you to every guest who has ever been on to share your knowledge and just make us all better people. And remember there has never been a better time to think. Hey, I'm going to ask some brilliant people some real basic bee questions because we're all going to die one day. You might as well

cut some banks. And while you're at it, text or crush or you can write a book. What if you wrote a book? You know what? Like last time, I'm going to let this episode be some sort of cosmic sign that you should start it. Maybe it's a collection of poems or short stories, or a memoir, or some kind of drippy romance maybe or a creepy mystery. Just write. I think about doctor Adam Becker of the Quantum Ontology episode so often, so I'm going to read his advice again.

In his episode, we talked about how he had ADHD. He's an astrophysicist who's written lauded books such as What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics, which came out in twenty eighteen and is a total mind bender and amazing. And he said what he does is he decided, Okay, the only way that I'm going to get through this is if I plan it and then just only pay attention to whatever's in front of me.

Because I can't write ninety thousand words, but I can write six hundred words a day, and if I do that for a while, eventually I'll have ninety thousand words. And he did, and his book is amazing. So if you have a story to tell, I hope you tell it and maybe one day you can have it bound in leather made of your own flesh. Wait where the fuck did that come from? Okay, I forgot one more book.

Anthropodermic biocotocologist. Megan Rosenblum is a librarian. She's an author who's one of the world experts in books bound in human skin, including some authors who had their books bound in their own skin after they died, and in her twenty twenty book Dark Archives, a librarian's investigation into this science and history of books bound in human skin, which was published by McMillan, she covers this as snugly as

I guess bookbinding. There are a lot of very, very creepy stories about this, but she picked an excerpt from Dark Archives, and it's a reminder that experts gotta start somewhere, and science and writing isn't always smooth as silk or as leather. And she wrote, Taber led me to an area of the Munger building I had never seen, where his colleagues from the Conservation department stood stone faced around

some dark leather objects on a table. I could tell they were just as uncomfortable with this situation as I was. Most librarians would feel squeamish about removing pieces of antique books, regardless of the purpose. I wish I had worn something more clinical than my cheery yellow cardigan, something like a white lab coat might have been more reassuring. Little did they know that this was my first time wielding the knife.

So her book goes on to talk about how they figure out which ones are human skin, and who would want their own work bound in that or I guess in other people's skin. Anyway, what's my point? My point is write a book, maybe do not have it bound in your own skin, but just there's a lot of books out there, and you should write one also, so buy all these books at the link of the show notes, alleyword dot com, slash Ologies Bookworm two. You can get on all up in the first one again at alleyward

dot com, slash Ologies, slash Bookworm. And I want to thank sisters Sponny Dutch and tannefl says the podcast you are that for handling merch at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you to Emily White of the Wordery Professional Transporptionists who makes these episodes transcribed. They're available for free on our website. You can check out alleyword dot com slash Ologies, dash Extras for those. There's also bleeped episodes up there. Thank

you Caleb Patten for those. Smologies episodes come out every few weeks and they are truncated episodes that are classroom safe. Thank you to Zek Rodriguez Thomas and Stephen Ray Morris for working on those huge Thanks to Berthday Girl, Noel Dilworth and Susan Hale for helping me for literally months to compile all of these clips. This episode would not

exist without you. Thank you to Aaron Talbert for adminting the Ologies podcast Facebook group full of lovely curious folks there's also, by the way, an offshoot, the Ologites book Club, and they're on Facebook and Instagram. Thank you to lead editor and sole husband Jarrett Sleeper of mind gam Media for putting this all together for me. Jarrett, You're wonderful. I have gratitude for you. I love you. On Christmas, I love you. That's really cute. I'm Ali Ward at

Twitter and Instagram. We're at Ologies on both and the theme music was written and performed by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands. If you stick around till the end of the episode, you know, I tell you a secret. This week's secret is this really took so much longer than I thought. I was like, oh, this week's gonna be so easy to just have a bunch of excerpts to read, and it turns out editing a lot of excerpts and then also segus and just I don't know anyway,

this coming out on a Thursday. I'm really sorry. Oh yeah, here's my little here's my tip and my secret. Okay, it's the holidays. There are Hana commarties, there's Christmas parties, Festivist parties, New Year's parties, and maybe you're like, I don't want to drink much or at all, and may

I suggest sparkling water and bitters. It's not a good fit for anyone totally avoiding alcohol because bitters does have alcohol in it, kind of like a vanilla extract wood, but you only add two to three drops in a glass. There's so many flavors of bitters. There's like woodsy angostura bitters. There's past shows kind of like licorice and floral. There's all these artisanal bitters and cherry and orange. You can

make your own. If you add a few shakes of angostura bitters and a shake of cherry to sparkling water, you pretty much have something that tastes like a doctor pepper, both no calories and no weird stuff in it and like a trace of alcohol. Just say so, maybe treat yourself to bitters and a soda stream And if you use a bed Bathroong coupon in the store, they never expire. Just saying so you can get twenty percent off of

soda stream. This is not an ad for them. I just love a soda stream and bitters and a discount. Sometimes with my bed bathroo On coupons, I give them to other people in the checkout line, I'm like, look at all these coupons. I gotta save a little on that. Anyway, I've talked too much. Curl up with whatever beverage you want, under whatever blanky you have. Crack into a book or right one twenty twenty two goals. Who knows we might

be in pajamas again all year. Tack Kjack, get your booster. Okay, bye bye, but you don't have to take my word for it.