Unexplainable

Support for the show comes from the Audible original The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. Earth's final days are near and the clock is ticking for members of the Phoenix Colony. All they need to do is upload their minds back into the quantum computer. Simple enough. But their plan is disrupted by digital duplicates of their own minds that could destroy their stored consciousness forever.

Find out in the thought-provoking sequel The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. Available now only from Audible.

Earth's final days are near and the clock is ticking for members of the Phoenix Colony. All they need to do is upload their minds back into the quantum computer. Simple enough. But their plan is disrupted by digital duplicates of their own minds that could destroy their stored consciousness forever.

Find out in the thought-provoking sequel The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine.

And if anyone's interested in reading more about that, there's a great essay by John McPhee called Atchafalaya.

I have a fondness for scary books. I really like that experience of being really messed up by letters on a page. And I remember being really interested in scary stuff as a teenager, but also being puzzled at why. Because I would read a Stephen King novel or watch a slasher movie and then feel compelled to sleep with the lights on for several nights.

I like Stephen King novels.

Should the Numbers Count by John Torek is among the few modern philosophy papers that might fairly be described as infamous.

The conclusion that it's better to save five than one, he argues, is based on a belief that you can somehow sum up suffering and happiness between different people, so that the suffering of five people adds up to more than the suffering of one.

Thus, Torek argues that the drug's owner should not just reflexively save the five instead of David. She should instead flip a coin.

And it turns out, there are a lot of examples of zombies and zombifiers out in nature. There are so many, in fact, that Mindy wound up writing a whole book about them, called Rise of the Zombie Bugs.

There are so many more weird, wonderful zombie stories in Mindy Weisberger's book. That is Rise of the Zombie Bugs.

Today's guest is Olga Hassan. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the book, Me But Better, The Science and Promise of Personality Change.

The book is a joy to read, full of ideas, but also personal in the sense that Olga documents her year-long effort to change things she doesn't like about her own personality.

She wrote a whole book about it called Tuning the World.

Fanny says it was the first time that the conversation about pitch standards really took off.

Fanny did extensive research on Deegan for her book.

So she decided to write a book. It's called Food Intelligence. It comes out later this month. And in the book, she takes the mystery of metabolism head on.

One of the scientists that I spoke to in reporting this book, he says, metabolism converts everything we eat into everything we are and everything we do.

We have this line in the book, it's not about metabolism, stupid.

If you want to read more about metabolism and all kinds of food science, Julia's book, which she co-wrote with Kevin Hall, Food Intelligence, the Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us, is out next week.

Rachel wrote a whole book about vaginas. It's called Vagina Obscura, an anatomical voyage.

But as I started to do the actual reporting and research, I realized that it was also a book about these like gaps in our knowledge and why there was so much that we didn't know about half the bodies on earth.

So your book, Vagina Obscura, walks us through female reproductive anatomy from the outside in.

Rachel's book about the vagina and friends is called Vagina Obscura.

If you want to read more about Paul Bierman's work or the history of ice coring or the weird wonders of Camp Century, check out his book, When the Ice Is Gone.

And the most important magazines were owned by Cond Nast, the glitzy publishing empire that's the focus of a new book by New York Times reporter Michael Grinbaum.

The way Cond Nast elevated its editors, the way they paid for their mortgages so they could live in beautiful homes, there was a logic to it, which was that Cond Nast itself became seen as this kind of enchanted land.

One of which is what's called a media guide. For the kids who don't appreciate the institution of the media guide, back in our day, they used to print directories and send them out to media members.

A physical book.

I needed to find, Pablo, the 1996-97 Vancouver Grizzlies media guide.

I'm Preet Bharara and this week Diller joins me on my podcast Stay Tuned with Preet to discuss his sexuality, the end of Hollywood, and how the media industry broke.

Mark wrote a whole book on this. It's called Basic Instinct, of course. Because he thinks relying on the idea of instinct gets away from everything he loves about science.

If you want to read more about animal behavior from Mark, he's got a couple of great books you can check out. One's called Basic Instinct.

If you want to read more about animal behavior from Mark, he's got a couple of great books you can check out. One's called Basic Instinct. The other is called Freaks Of Nature.

Support for the show comes from the Audible original The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. Earth's final days are near and the clock is ticking for members of the Phoenix Colony. All they need to do is upload their minds back into the quantum computer. Simple enough. But their plan is disrupted by digital duplicates of their own minds that could destroy their stored consciousness forever.

Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprise his role as Roscoe Cadulian in this follow-up to the Audible hit sci-fi thriller The Downloaded by Canada's most decorated sci-fi author Robert J. Sawyer.