Pseudoscience: An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them by Lydia Kang, MD & Nate Pederson

Myths and legends. The unexplained. The macabre. The paranormal. These are all subjects that I like to read about. This book by Lydia Yang, MD and Nate Pederson looks at an assortment of strange and unusual phenomena and attempts to disprove it through scientific fact. Your usual suspects are explored here: UFOs, ghosts, cryptids and the Bermuda Triangle. Then you have your lesser known unsolved mysteries like spontaneous combustion and ley lines. Then you have things that even a lifelong lover of all things this side of Ripley's Believe It Or Not have never encountered such as the all but forgotten 20th century school of thought/cult of Lawsonism.

For the most part the writers are fair and even a touch open minded. Right off the bat, they promise to not disprove any mainstream religions. Things like Atlantis could be real and while the authors destroy the concept of astrology based on the fact that Pluto is no longer a major planet in our solar system, they admit to sometimes reading their horoscopes because 'its fun.'

One subject that I felt did show a bias was the chapter on climate deniers. Personally, I agree that something is wonky with our weather. But I don't blame it solely on the human race. I really think something is off with our planet's axis because I don't remember it still being sunlight at 9:30pm during the summer when I was a kid. Yet, while the authors expressed hopes that maybe there really is a Loch Ness Monster, they both seem to close the door on any other explanation to climate change than it's all because of fossil fuels and deforestation. I agree that has something to do with it. But I feel like there's an unspoken element out there that is also contributing to climate change and that it's being kept hush-hush.

The authors have a pair of similar books that I actually have been wanting to read for some time now. After reading this 2025 book, I am still open to getting those sister volumes. There is a light-hearted element to (most of) this book. Mostly, it's relegated to the captions for the photos and some were really funny. I liked how the majority of the chapters details events and happenings as factual before going back and tearing down the subject matter with a scientific approach. It helps to give this book a very open minded feel to it because who knows, maybe one day we will be visited by aliens flying around in a flying saucer. It's doubtful. But it's not a concept that has been 100% disproven yet.

If only the authors had kept this approach to every chapter. I wouldn't have felt like I was tricked into a promise of scientific exploration of the unknown and wound up attending a very fierce-toned TED talk on climate change.

Alligators in the Sewer and 222 Other Urban Legends: Absolutely True Stories that Happened to a Friend...of a Friend...of a Friend by Thomas J. Craughwell

I've been interested in Urban Legends ever since I read this 3-volume set my mom had back in the 90s. It was written by some noted folklorist and while I read them in high school, I think the books had been published years, if not decades prior.

I'm not 100% certain when or where I got this book either. It was at a used bookstore somewhere in North Carolina. I've got 2 prime suspects. Both on either side of Durham County. Regardless, I don't think I paid more than a dollar for this book.

You don't get to the title alligators in the sewer or many of the most well known urban legends until the last chapter of this book. For someone who was hoping to come across some new myths, that's a very good thing. But if all you wanted were those all-time classics, like the Mexican Chihuahua or the vanishing hitchhiker, you'll either want to stick to just the final chapter or find another book of urban legends to peruse. 

Personally, I was hoping for more inside stuff. I was wanting to know some potential root causes for why these urban legends came about. There are a couple of times that author Thomas J. Craughwell digs a tad under the surface. But out of 223 urban legends, he probably only goes in depth on about 2 dozen of them.

I watch a lot of Travel Channel's Mysteries of the Museum. Oddly enough, several of the urban legends in this book, I've seen presented as fact on the Don Wildman hosted series. So am I to believe that all these museums across the world are presenting urban legends as historical fact or is there a little bit of truth to these urban legends?

I also felt that Craughwell's definition of an urban legend didn't fit with one chapter of this book. The 7th chapter deals with UFOs and aliens. Now, I'm not saying that they are real. However, I've read my fair share of accounts of unexplained phenomenon and books on conspiracy theory to know that many  if not all of the accounts in the UFO chapter are documented facts. With urban legend being about stories that happened to 'a friend of a friend of a friend', if it's been documented by the US Air Force, you can't consider it an urban legend, no matter how outlandish.

There were quite a few personal favs that were not included in this book. For instance, there's a tale of a naked lady who all she could find to wear was a football helmet. When some repair man approaches her he exclaims 'I'm not sure which team you're playing for, but I sure hope they win.' Maybe that is something that started out as a joke and became an urban legend. I just don't know. But that's the kind of information I was hoping this book would have about these types of stories. Maybe the next book on urban legends I get my hands on will provide such knowledge.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.

The Book of Unusual Knowledge

I bought this book over the summer during the 301 Endless Yard Sale taking place in Smithfield/Selma, North Carolina. A kid of about 15 was selling it. The mysterious title of The Book of Unusual Knowledge intrigued me. The picture of Stonehenge is was enticed me to pick it up. The factoid about how many endless hours it took to erect the stone monoliths sold me on the book. One portrait of Abe Lincoln and the book was mine. 

This book is massive. Just under 600 pages in length if you remove the index. A hardback, it's 'deceptively lightweight' as my bride described it one night when I asked her to hand it to me. 

Inside are articles on the real names of celebrities, Popes who were murdered in the Vatican, famous UFO sightings and much more. Some of the material isn't what I would consider 'unusual knowledge'. Information on the various sightings of the Virgin Mary is unusual. The history of that raining summer in Geneva which inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein is not. With topics like movies, animals, pop culture and holidays, what is considered unusual knowledge is really up to the reader to decide.

This felt like one of those Uncle John's Bathroom Readers. Only there aren't any stupid puns about having to poop. There are a few quiz type activities like linking the musician name with their real identities. No article is longer than 3 pages. Okay; there might have been one or two that were 4 pages in length. Most were only a page long. So there's a ton of relatively short reads. However, it took me a long time to read because of how huge this book was.

BuzzFeed listed this 2012 fact book as one of the best gift ideas for the 2024 holiday season. The retail price on Amazon is decent and publisher Publications International Ltd. offers over a dozen more similarly bound books including one volume about cats and another about crime. I'm very tempted to buy another book to increase my unusual knowledge over as I did enjoy this book even though some of it seemed like pretty usual stuff 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Quantum Leap #13 (2023 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

"Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished. 

He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better.

His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home."

This was the introduction to the classic 90s sci-fi series Quantum Leap starring Scott Bakula as Beckett and Dean Stockwell as Al. Created by Donald P. Bellisario, Quantum Leap ran for 97 episodes (including a 2-hour pilot movie) on NBC for 5 seasons from 1989-1993. 

In this time travel based series, Sam Beckett traded lives of an assortment of people. During his adventures through time, Sam would become a woman, an elderly black man, a Navy Seal, a minor league baseball player, a young man with Down Syndrome and the notorious Kennedy assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.  Every life that Sam took control over, he would have to correct some sort of mistake in the time line in order to get closer to going back home to his time period of year 1999.

From 1991-93, Innovation Publishing produced 13 comics based on Quantum Leap. The premise of unique circumstances behind Sam's leaps continued with the time traveller switching places with a death row inmate, part of a pair of identical twins and a department store Santa in the series' lone holiday comic. Issue #13 was to be released as a one-shot special titled 'Time and Space'. However, due to production delays, this project became what would be the series' final issue documenting Sam Beckett's 1963 experience of leaping into an extraterrestrial aboard an honest-to-god UFO.

Issue #13 ended with a soft cliffhanger. After saving a human couple who were abducted by the aliens, Sam leapt into the body of a toddler. Issue #14, which was titled 'Two Dweebs and a Little Monster', was to be the first of a 3-part trilogy in which Sam leapt into the bodies of youngsters. The first chapter would have Sam's host being kidnapped by a pair of bumbling brothers seeking to sell the child to baby brokers. But with NBC cancelling Quantum Leap and Innovation founder David Campiti's departure leaving the company in disarray, the comic adaptation was sacked. A promised annual with Sam leaping into the body of a heart surgeon in the middle of an operation with his patient flat-lining on the table, was also cancelled. 

The biggest problem of Quantum Leap wasn't the fan base. They were loyal and vocal. Even through season 4, some episodes drew audiences of up to 18 million viewers. NBC just didn't have faith in the show. The home of the peacock changed Quantum Leap's schedule 8 times in the show's 5 year run! Thus a major complaint from the fans were that they never could find the show!

The plug was finally pulled by NBC execs on May 5, 1993. In the episode titled 'Mirror Image', Sam leapt into his body. Only, he didn't return to his time period. Instead, Sam found himself in a bar in Western Pennsylvania on the exact day and time he was born. Facing a bartender who claims to be in control of Sam's leaps, Dr. Beckett is given a choice of going home or correcting the biggest mistake of his time travel career. Ultimately, Sam leaps to the 1960s, informing Al's then wife Beth, that Al is alive and imprisoned in a Vietnamese POW camp.

As a result of Sam's sacrifice, history is changed. Al and Beth remain married upon Al's freedom. The couple wind up having 4 daughters, one of which would be involved with Project Quantum Leap. Dr. Sam Becket (sic) never returned home. 

Speak about fan outrage! NBC received countless phone calls requesting at a chance to bring Sam home. A letter campaign was launched. For decades, Scott Bakula teased fans with hints of a feature-length movie to bring Sam Beckett home. Finally in 2022, the Quantum Leap project was revived, ironically on NBC. Only, Bakula was a no-show and sadly Dean Stockwell had passed away the year prior.

The spirit of Al Calavicci is alive and well in the new series as the backstory of the reboot tells of how Al never stopped searching for his friend. As mentioned earlier, daughter Janis, would have a troubled relationship with project coordinator Magic Williams; the now older Navy Seal that Sam had leapt into. Though new leaper Dr. Ben Song went back through the Project Quantum Leap accelerator to save his fiancee from an evil leaper, season 2 provides hope that Ben might run into Sam Beckett before returning to 2022 California. Right now, Scott Bakula denies being involved with the reboot. But Leap fans can dream. 

And yes, while I realize NOW that I read this book previously, I actually don't remember it! So, is it really a re-read???

Script by Christine Elaine Hantzopulos. Art by Luke Ross. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #23 (A Time Travel Story) of the 2023 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

The Big Book of the Unexplained

Of the several editions of Big Books that I am reading during social distancing, The Big Book of the Unexplained was the one I was looking forward to the most. And it was the most disappointing. 

Written by the creator of Deathlok, Doug Moench, I was really excited to read this collection of accounts of the strange and unknown. I love UFOs, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and all that paranormal stuff that has us stymied. I'm the type of person that feels that there's got to big a hint of truth to these accounts. They may not be what we think they are or happened how we might recall the events occurred. But I am sure a lot of it was real events.

The host of this book is Charles Fort, a research of the paranormal and macabre around the turn of the 20th century. Had I not read within the past year or so a book about the Fortean Times, I probably wouldn't have any idea who he was. But I did and I appreciated his appearances throughout the book. Well, at first.

However, Moench keeps having Charles Fort talking about this cosmic trickster. And he keeps getting all whimsical and philosophical about this being. Maybe he's talking about God or gods. But that's beside the point. Moench devotes a lot of his time to this powerful being instead of focusing on what I was hoping for- lots and lots of accounts of the unexplained. 

While I appreciate the use of a narrator or host, they haven't seemed to really work in the Big Books. The 70s book had a host and it was the weakest part of that entire volume. I feel the same about Fort here. But unlike in the 70s book where the host was only at the beginning of each chapter, Charles Fort is at the beginning and ending of each section. Rod Sterling or even Jack Palance, he is not!

When it focuses on the unusual, it's good. But it goes off on tangents a lot!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.

Strange Days: The Year in Weirdness (#1)

If you think 2020 is weird, well, you're probably right. It's extremely weird what with a pandemic and quarantines and massive loss of live, employment and livelihood. But 1995 was a pretty weird year. 

Published by the editors and writers of the Fortean Times, Strange Days: The Year of Weirdness chronicles the strange and unusual. From UFO sightings to ghosts, doppelgangers to astrological occurrences, animal attacks and strange creatures galore. If something didn't make sense with the normal way of life, it was covered by the Fortean. 

So what is the Fortean Times? Until a year ago, I didn't know anything really about it. And except for a very brief mention of it in a recent episode of Doctor Who, it's probably not a publication known by many. Since 1973, the Fortean Times has covered anomalous phenomenon through the use of the scientific method. Thus, the Fortean is the Fox News of all things bizarre- that is if Fox News was truly fair and balanced. 

I had bought this book at a yard sale early last year. I read some of it and then kinda filed it away. Why did I finish it now all of a sudden? It was all thanks to the pandemic. I finished the book for a couple of reasons. First, I hoped to possibly uncover a clue as to the origins of COVID. Then I wanted to read about read things that were really bizarre. That was to help make today's strange days a little less odd. It actually worked. 

It was refreshing to read a book about the odd, weird, and macabre without taking a side. Often these type of books veer off into either direction of Skepticsville or Conspiracy Theorist's Junction. This book really does just tow the straight and narrow by giving facts from reports and any sort of comment from the scientific community that may have investigated these incidents. 

Now if only the reports of this current crisis was reported the same way.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.