Stuff You Should Know: An Incomplete Compendium of Mostly Interesting Things

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Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up

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Truth: A Brief History of Total Bullsh*t

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A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes

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The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (Unabridged Edition)

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Future Stories: What's Next?

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Fucking Good Manners

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The Second Book of General Ignorance: Everything You Think You Know Is (Still) Wrong

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The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp Through Civilization's Best Bits

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The Smartest Book in the World: A Lexicon of Literacy, a Rancorous Reportage, a Concise Curriculum of Cool

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The Midwest Survival Guide: How We Talk, Love, Work, Drink, and Eat . . . Everything with Ranch

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Can Holding in a Fart Kill You?: Over 150 Curious Questions and Intriguing Answers

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Why Do Men Have Nipples?

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Everything You Pretend to Know and Are Afraid Someone Will Ask

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523 Hard to Believe Facts: Better Explained, Counterintuitive and Fun Trivia from the Creator of RaiseYourBrain.com

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A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life From the Stone Age to the Phone Age

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101 Amazing Facts about Everything: Prepare to have your mind BLOWN!

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The Story Behind: The Extraordinary History Behind Ordinary Objects

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What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves

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A Walk Around the Block: Stoplight Secrets, Mischievous Squirrels, Manhole Mysteries & Other Stuff You See Every Day (And Know Nothing About)

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Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks

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AsapSCIENCE: Answers to the World's Weirdest Questions, Most Persistent Rumors, and Unexplained Phenomena

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Your Brain on Facts: Things You Didn't Know, Things You Thought You Knew, and Things You Never Knew You Never Knew

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What Einstein Told His Barber: More Scientific Answers to Everyday Questions

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You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself

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Stuff They Don't Want You to Know

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Is That a Fact?: Frauds, Quacks, and the Real Science of Everyday Life

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unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation

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Swearing Is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language

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The Day It Finally Happens: Alien Contact, Dinosaur Parks, Immortal Humans—and Other Possible Phenomena

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The End is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses

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Stuff They Don't Want You to Know

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Cracking the Cube: Going Slow to Go Fast and Other Unexpected Turns in the World of Competitive Rubik's Cube Solving

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Badass Women Give the Best Advice: Everything You Need to Know About Love and Life

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At Sixes and Sevens: How to Understand Numbers and Make Maths Easy

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The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design

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Atlas of Improbable Places: A Journey to the World's Most Unusual Corners

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Encyclopedia of Norse and Germanic Folklore, Mythology, and Magic

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Finding Faeries: Discovering Sprites, Pixies, Redcaps, and Other Fantastical Creatures in an Urban Environment

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Space Is Cool as F*ck

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How the Nobel Peace Prize Works

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The Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping

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The Origins of Some Everyday Superstitions: Why exactly do we avoid walking under a ladder? Why is stepping on a crack in the sidewalk such a big deal? What kind of monster carries a rabbit’s foot in their pocket? The answers to these questions and more lie in wait ahead in this episode. Look out!

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The Creepy Legacy of the Hotel Cecil: The Hotel Cecil in downtown Los Angeles has had no less than 16 unnatural deaths, from suicides to murders and everything in between. Listen in to the history of this decidedly creepy hotel. 

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Short Stuff: Cassowary: Australia is home to a kind of bird that is the second largest in the world and can kill a human being, making it the closest living version of a velociraptor? Of course it is!

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Selects: How Royalty Works: In some nations royals are so ingrained in the national fabric they are considered part of the country. In this classic episode, Josh and Chuck take a look backward in time at the ancient tradition of despotism and unbridled privilege.

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How Sarcasm Works

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How Mail Order Marriages Work: Everybody knows mail order marriages are at best a last resort for jerks looking to boss a foreign spouse around or, at worst, a front for human trafficking. Or are they? Yes and no. Mail order marriage comes with nuance and a surprisingly long history.

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Harry Houdini: More than Magic: Harry Houdini was a master magician. He was also a movie star. And an inventor. And an aviator. Listen and learn all about the late great illusionist.

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The Flannan Isles Mystery: In December 1900 three lighthouse keepers vanished without a trace from a deserted island in Scotland. To this day no one knows exactly what happened to them.

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Short Stuff: Jackalope: Jackalopes aren’t real, right? Wouldn’t you like to know, city slicker.

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The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment: In the early 1960s, one of the most unethical experiments in psychology’s history was quietly conducted in a state hospital in Michigan. It sought to upend the delusions of the three patients involved, but ultimately disabused the experimenter of his own.

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Short Stuff: Handwashing vs Dishwashers: Josh and Chuck finally put to rest the age old debate over which is better – and learn a little about themselves along the way.

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Selects: How Police Interrogation Works: Every year, police across the U.S. get thousands of criminals to confess to their crimes. The trouble is, the procedure that almost all departments use is grounded in bad science and can produce false confessions. Learn about ways of making you talk in this classic episode.

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Les Paul & Leo Fender Part I: The story of Les Paul and Leo Fender defines rock and roll music. Listen in to part one of the tale of these two musical rivals.

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Selects: Will We Find Evidence of Aliens by Their Engineering Projects?: In 1960 physicist Freeman Dyson suggested that in the hunt for alien life, we should search for evidence of massive engineering projects that encapsulate stars with solar arrays to harness their energy. Could we humans ever make one ourselves? Find out in this classic episode.

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What's the deal with blue people?: The famous blue people of Kentucky are no longer blue. But why were they like that in the first place?

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88 – New Coke Didn’t Fail. It Was Murdered.: In 1985, Coca-Cola debuted New Coke. It was the company’s effort to remake itself, in the face of competition from other soda companies and lagging sales. But things didn’t really go as planned. Mother Jones senior reporter Tim Murphy pulls back the

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Best of - General Colin Powell: My American Journey: Colin Powell, who died on October 18, 2021, wore many hats during his distinguished career in public service, among them: Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and National Security Advisor. And he was the first African-American to hold each of those positions. When he joined the Army in the 1950's, though, his only ambition was to be a good soldier. It was beyond the realm of possibility for the son of working class Jamaican immigrants to aspire much higher. In this episode, which originally posted in September of 2017, you'll hear Powell's stories about his journey from the South Bronx, to the jungles of Vietnam, to the Jim Crow South, to the highest reaches of government, and about the decades of American history he helped shape.

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Selects: How X-Rays Work: Like many huge discoveries, X-rays were accidentally stumbled upon. That serendipity led to a medical breakthrough still in use today. Learn about how X-rays are created and why they make such delightful images of our bones, in this classic episode.

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Selects: Southerners Aren't Lazy and Dumb, They Just Had Hookworm: There was a time when the lower classes of the American South were considered lazy and dimwitted, a stereotype that still somewhat survives today. But this stereotype was rooted in fact. Hookworms, it turns out, were sapping Southerners’ life force. Find out all about it in this classic episode.

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Salem Witchcraft Trials: More Bonkers Than You Know: Looking back 300 years on, it’s easy to overgeneralize why the Salem Villagers decided to persecute (and execute) their neighbors. But as much as this story has become an American history chestnut, we still don’t understand why Salem lost its mind.

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The Delightful History of Pubs

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Selects: What's the Deal With Staring?: Gazing too long upon another person is almost universally viewed as anywhere from impolite to hostile, which is odd considering science isn't fully certain why we stare - and why we're so good at knowing when we're being stared at. Learn all about it in this classic episode.

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Josh and Chuck's List of Horror Movies that Changed the Genre: Once in a while a movie comes along that's so forward-thinking it changes the way that horror is done. A new subgenre is spawned, new tropes are established, and audiences are more terrified than ever.

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Selects: Why Do Lefties Exist?: For at least the last 200,000 years, between 10-15% of the human population are left-handed and this fact has utterly left science baffled. In searching to explain handedness, all sorts of contradictory evidence has emerged, creating a fascinating mystery. Learn all about it in this classic episode.

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How MRI Works

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How Ghost Prisons Work: In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the controversial "ghost prisons," covert prisons created by the CIA after September 11th, 2001 to secretly detain and interrogate terrorist suspects in various locations around the world, including the U.S.

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Your Gut Is Also A Brain

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Les Paul & Leo Fender Part II