Introduction | xiii |
Creature Features | 1 |
Camel Spiders: The Rumors of My Size Have Been Greatly Exaggerated | 3 |
Military Marine Mammals: Dolphins So Smart They Should Give Their Own Nerd Nite Presentation | 7 |
Sex Catapults! | 9 |
Cephalopods: The Impossibly Awesome Invertebrates | 13 |
Stomatopods: Why Is My Thumb Bleeding and My Mind Blown? | 17 |
Finding Nemo('s Sex): Sex Change and Gender Roles in Anemonefishes | 21 |
Mmm … Brains | 25 |
It's Not You, It's Misophonia | 27 |
Sex, Drugs, and Happiness | 31 |
Don't Trust Your Brain: Why Foreign Accents Are All in Your Head | 36 |
Lessons from The Oregon Trail | 40 |
Synesthesia: Hearing Colors and Tasting Sounds | 44 |
Brain on a Chip: The Ethics of Brain Experimentation | 49 |
How We Become Disgusting (Some More Than Others) | 52 |
Bodily Fluids | 57 |
To Boldly Go: Dealing with Poop and Pee in Space | 59 |
Milk! You'll See It Everywhere Once You Know What to Look For | 62 |
Triclosan: It's Not the Bacteria but the Soap That's Going to Kill You! | 65 |
Lost: Bladder Control. Reward for Safe Return. | 69 |
Microbes Can Save You, Kill You, or Just Give You the Poops | 72 |
Runoff: What Is It and Why Even Notice It? | 75 |
Doing It | 81 |
Hot or Not? How to Be a Perfect 10; or, How to Manipulate Perceptions of Physical Attractiveness | 83 |
Dating Tips from the Animal Kingdom: What to Wear and How to Flaunt It | 86 |
Dating as a Data Nerd | 90 |
10 Things You Didn't Know About Sex … Education | 95 |
Going Ape for Pansexual Primates | 99 |
Smells and the Microbiome: Are Microbes Controlling Your Sex Life? | 103 |
Health and (Un)Wellness | 107 |
Maggot Therapy; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bugs | 109 |
Happy 13th Birthday, Nerd Nite! Now Get Yourself to an Adolescent Medicine Doctor | 113 |
What Your DNA Says About You | 117 |
The Science of the Hangover | 121 |
You and Your Microbiome: Say Hello to Your Little Friends | 127 |
Penis or Vagina? 'Tain't That Simple! | 133 |
The Modern Study of Genetics Is Full of Twists and Turns | 136 |
Pathogens and Parasites | 141 |
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Birds | 143 |
Pigeons, Cannibals, and Vaginas: The Story of My Favorite Parasite | 146 |
What Birds Can Teach Us About the Impending Zombie Apocalypse | 151 |
Zombies Are Real and You Might Be One | 155 |
Hacking the Antiviral Immune Response | 159 |
Human Parasites (No, Not Your Mooching Roommate) | 161 |
Death and Taxes (But Really, Just Death) | 163 |
Monarch the Bear: A Tale of Tycoons, Taxidermy, and the California Flag | 165 |
How to Not Destroy Ourselves: Lessons from Sci-Fi | 168 |
Mass Extinction | 172 |
How and Why Cancer Happens; or, If You Live Long Enough You're Going to Die | 176 |
Algae Apocalypse: The Most Important Slime | 179 |
Space, the Big and the Beautiful | 183 |
Bullshit in Space: An Astronomical Adventure Through Cosmic Misinformation | 185 |
Preparation A: Our Relief Against Severe ASSteroids | 189 |
Life Under the Ice of Europa | 191 |
Artificial Gravity in Science Fiction | 194 |
Sky Rockets in Flight, Asteroids Delight: Asteroid Mining for Science, Profit, and Fun! | 199 |
Better than NASA: Canada's Sample of an Asteroid; or, the Untold Story of the Tagish Lake Meteorite | 201 |
The Telescope That Blew Everyone's Mind … Part Two! | 205 |
Tech (High and Low) | 209 |
"They're Putting Acid in Our Food!": The Everyman's Guide to Thwarting Fear and Understanding GMOs | 211 |
What I Learned About Dating Apps (Generally) After I Spent Five F**king Years Studying Them for a PhD | 214 |
Adventures in Human-Powered Flight | 217 |
What Does Google See? | 221 |
Becoming a Cyborg Through Disability: Building Prosthetic Limbs | 226 |
Machine Learning for a Free and Open Internet | 230 |
How to Win Friends and Influence Bacteria | 234 |
Why Nuclear Fusion Would Be Awesome-If We Get It to Work | 239 |
Math Is Fun | 243 |
A Tea Test Tempest | 245 |
The Mathematics of Gossip | 248 |
From Bach to Tool: The Secret Math Behind Music Theory | 251 |
Getting to Know Infinity | 257 |
Math for a Better City | 261 |
A Little "Bit" of Cryptography | 265 |
Careers | 269 |
Veterinary Confidential | 271 |
Chindogu: The Japanese Art of Unuseless Inventions | 274 |
Caskets, Corpses, and Biers, Oh My!: A Brief Look at Death Care and the History and Science of Embalming in the US | 277 |
Wildlife Detectives: The Science and Stories of "Animal CSI" in investigating and Solving Wildfife Crime | 282 |
Cut It Off!: A Civil War Amputation | 285 |
Fermentation: A Cultural Story | 289 |
Fire: Of Flames and Friendship | 294 |
Our Beloved Nerd Nite Bosses | 297 |
Acknowledgments | 303 |