Why do people and groups ignore, deny and resist knowledge about society's many problems? In a world of 'alternative facts', 'fake news' that some believe could be remedied by 'factfulness', the question has never been more pressing. After years of ideologically polarised debates on the topic, this book seeks to further advance our understanding of the phenomenon of knowledge resistance by integrating insights from the social, economic and evolutionary sciences. It identifies simplistic views in public and scholarly debates about what facts, knowledge and human motivations are and what 'rational' use of information actually means. The examples used include controversies about nature-nurture, climate change, gender roles, vaccination, genetically modified food and artificial intelligence. Drawing on cutting-edge scholarship and personal experiences of culture clashes, the book is aimed at the general, educated public as well as students and scholars interested in the interface of human motivation and the urgent social problems of today. -- .

By the age of nine, I will have lived in more than a dozen countries, on five continents, under six assumed identities. I'll know how a document is forged, how to withstand an interrogation, and most important, how to disappear . . . To the young Cheryl Diamond, life felt like one big adventure, whether she was hurtling down the Himalayas in a rickety car or mingling with underworld fixers. Her family appeared to be an unbreakable gang of five. One day they were in Australia, the next in South Africa, the pattern repeating as they crossed continents, changed identities, and erased their pasts. What Diamond didn't yet know was that she was born into a family of outlaws fleeing from the highest international law enforcement agencies, a family with secrets that would eventually catch up to all of them. By the time she was in her teens, Diamond had lived dozens of lives and lies, but as she grew older, love and trust turned to fear and violence, and her family--the only people she had in the world--began to unravel. She started to realize that her life itself might be a big con, and the people she loved, the most dangerous of all. With no way out and her identity burned so often that she had no proof she even existed, all that was left was a girl from nowhere. Surviving would require her to escape, and to do so Diamond would have to unlearn all the rules she grew up with. Wild, heartbreaking, and often unexpectedly funny, Nowhere Girl is an impossible-to-believe true story of self-discovery and triumph.

In a society of strangers, there develops what can be called crimes of mobility -- forms of criminality rare in traditional societies: bigamy, the confidence game, and blackmail, for example. What they have in common is a kind of fraudulent role-playing, which the new society makes possible. This book explores the social and legal consequences of social and geographical mobility in the United States and Great Britain from the beginning of the 19th century on. Personal identity became more fluid. Lines between classes blurred. Impostors abound.

"Before the Internet became widely known as a global tool for terrorists, one perceptive U.S. citizen recognized its ominous potential. Armed with clear evidence of computer espionage, he began a highly personal quest to expose a hidden network of spies that threatened national security. But would the authorities back him up? Cliff Stoll's dramatic firsthand account is "a computer-age detective story, instantly fascinating [and] astonishingly gripping"" (Smithsonian).

Cliff Stoll was an astronomer turned systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley Lab when a 75-cent accounting error alerted him to the presence of an unauthorized user on his system. The hacker's code name was "Hunter" -- a mysterious invader who managed to break into U.S. computer systems and steal sensitive military and security information. Stoll began a one-man hunt of his own: spying on the spy. It was a dangerous game of deception, broken codes, satellites, and missile bases -- a one-man sting operation that finally gained the attention of the CIA...and ultimately trapped an international spy ring fueled by cash, cocaine, and the KGB.

Mystery. Manipulation. Murder. Cults are associated with all of these. But what really goes on inside them? More specifically, what goes on inside the minds of cult leaders and the people who join them? Based on the hit podcast Cults, this is essential reading for any true crime fan. Cults prey on the very attributes that make us human: our desire to belong, to find a deeper meaning in life, to live everyday with divine purpose. Their existence creates a sense that any one of us, at any time, could step off the cliff's edge and fall into that daunting abyss of manipulation and unhinged dedication to a misplaced cause. Perhaps it's this mindset that keeps us so utterly obsessed and desperate to learn more, or it's that the stories are so bizarre and unsettling that we are simply in awe of the mechanics that make these infamous groups tick. The premier storytelling podcast studio Parcast has been focusing on unearthing these mechanics--the cult leaders and followers, and the world and culture that gave birth to both. Parcast's work in analyzing dozens of case studies has revealed patterns: distinct ways that cult leaders from different generations resemble one another. What links the ten notorious figures profiled in Cults are as disturbing as they are stunning--from Manson to Applewhite, Koresh to Rael, the stories woven here are both spellbinding and disturbing. Cults is more than just a compilation of grisly biographies, however. In these pages, Parcast's founder Max Cutler and national bestselling author Kevin Conley look closely at the lives of some of the most disreputable cult figures and tell the stories of their rise to power and fall from grace, sanity, and decency. Beyond that, it is a study of humanity, an unflinching look at what happens when the most vulnerable recesses of the mind are manipulated and how the things we hold most sacred can be twisted into the lowest form of malevolence.

Fake News in Digital Cultures presents a new approach to understanding disinformation and misinformation in contemporary digital communication, arguing that fake news is not an alien phenomenon undertaken by bad actors, but a logical outcome of contemporary digital and popular culture, conceptual changes meaning and truth, and shifts in the social practice of trust, attitude and creativity. Looking not to the problems of the present era but towards the continuing development of a future digital media ecology, the authors explore the emergence of practices of deliberate disinformation. This includes the circulation of misleading content or misinformation, the development of new technological applications such as the deepfake, and how they intersect with conspiracy theories, populism, global crises, popular disenfranchisement, and new practices of regulating misleading content and promoting new media and digital literacies.

During the summer of 1924, everyone was obsessed with Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, the two wealthy, brilliant, lovers who had brutally murdered a boy with a chisel just for the "thrill." Between the charm and accessibility of the dashing teenage defendants, their "deviant" sexual appetites, and the 1920s' culture wars over the generational shift in acceptable morality, it is no wonder it was labeled the trial of the century. 100 years after the murder, this groundbreaking new biography reveals the motivations behind Bobby's death and the secret life of one of his killers. Pulling on previously unseen archival collections from across the country, Arrested Adolescence looks at the full life of Nathan Leopold to discover the secrets hidden from history.

Much has been written about the group of 14th-century warrior monks known as the Knights Templar. Some authors, such as Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, portray them as folk heroes wrongly accused. Others disagree, saying the Templar story is ultimately one of greed, deception, and idolatry. Just who were the Knights Templar? And what is their legacy? In The Templar Papers, historian Oddvar Olsen has assembled a veritable Who's Who of experts to unravel the mystery. Instead of rehashing previous scholarship, this book delves into new aspects of Templar lore, such as the origins of the order an its supposed survival after 1314. The Templar Papers offers the inquisitive reader several lifetimes of research and insight. This is a distinctive and truly unique compilation that will stimulate your mind and settle the controversy.

Behaving in the workplace with courtesy and respect is an essential element in the corporate world. To ensure proper etiquette, office manners must be observed at all times. Most of these conducts were introduced to us while we were still young. Still some of the things always need a reminder. Written by the well known author, psychotherapist and counsellor, Seema Gupta, this book is a complete guide on the correct manners and etiquette that a person should practice at all times, especially at workplace to develop an appealing personality. What should be the dress code and posture, his language, his way of greeting people, his conduct while working with his colleagues in office or at home, telephone manners, written communication, etc., all these and many more have been discussed by the author. By reading this book, you can learn the elements of polished mannerisms and etiquette that can impress people instantly and help you become a winner in whichever field you are in.! This book is a must for all those who aim to make it big in their lives and win everyone's heart.

Mind control. Satanic rituals. Unspeakable sexual perversions. Supervillains eating children's brains. A divine mandate to keep Donald Trump in the White House, no matter what. This surreal combination of horror-movie shocks and fascist marching orders is the signature of QAnon, which emerged from the dark corners of the internet in 2017 and soon became the galvanizing force behind Trump supporters, both during Trump's presidency and in the volatile, ongoing aftermath of the 2020 election. But despite the strange pervasiveness of QAnon, its origins remain obscure. Who is behind QAnon's messaging, and what do they want? And why do they pair their extreme political agenda with such obviously made-up, phantasmagorical beliefs? In Operation Mindfuck, Robert Guffey argues that this is not as mysterious as QAnon's anonymous "drops" of cryptic directives seem to be. Drawing on an encyclopedic knowledge of conspiracy theories and mixing deep-dive research, political analysis, and firsthand notes from QAnon's underbelly, Guffey insists that we've seen it all before. Unraveling QAnon's patchwork quilt of recycled material, from pulp-fiction spook stories to Hunter S. Thompson-style pranksterism to Nixon-esque dirty tricks, Guffey diagnoses QAnon as a highly engineered ploy, calibrated to capture the attention and lock-step loyalty of its audience. Will its followers ever realize that they've been had? Can this new American religion be dispelled as a cult like any other? The answers, Operation Mindfuck reveals, are hidden in plain sight.

As humans, we embrace our individuality, yet we chase the comfort and sense of purpose that comes from being part of a group. Especially timely given our polarized world, Chasing We-ness examines how social media, AI, new leadership styles, and other modern developments affect our state of we-ness. It illuminates how our contemporary identities find expression in both progressive and conservative social movements that foster a sense of we-ness. Embracing the reality that "we're all in this together," the book interrogates our efforts to achieve a state of we-ness that rejects hate, social injustice, and autocratic agendas in the twenty-first century. This book explores why, how, and with what effect we build we-ness into our lives in both healthy and destructive ways. William Marsiglio draws on his expertise as a leading sociologist to explore the motivational forces that inspire a sense of group belonging in intimate groups, civic organizations, thought communities, sports and leisure activities, and work. Promoting initiatives that cultivate mindfulness, empathy, altruism, and leadership, Chasing We-ness proposes essential life skills to empower us, reduce social divisions, strengthen the social fabric, and uplift our spirits as global citizens.

Throughout history, individuals have planned events that have harmed others and some of these actions have become conspiracy theories and mysteries. Through spirit board communications with the other side, explore the details of 26 of the world's most famous cases. Learn what President John Kennedy has to say about his own assassination and murder. Consider the words of General George Custer as he tells what happened at the Battle of the Little Big Horn-and who killed him. Find out about the murder of Abraham Lincoln and trace the strange events surrounding John Wilkes Booth. Discover secrets of Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy, General George Patton, manipulation of the weather, the alien conspiracy, and much more. As you will soon see, the spirits on the other side know all and are willing to talk about it.

In this compelling whodunnit, Elaine Dewar reads the science, follows the money, and connects the geopolitical interests to the spin. When the first TV newscast described a SARS-like flu affecting a distant Chinese metropolis, investigative journalist Elaine Dewar started asking questions: Was SARS-CoV-2 something that came from nature, as leading scientists insisted, or did it come from a lab, and what role might controversial experiments have played in its development? Why was Wuhan the pandemic's ground zero-and why, on the other side of the Atlantic, had two researchers been marched out of a lab in Winnipeg by the RCMP? Why were governments so slow to respond to the emerging pandemic, and why, now, is the government of China refusing to cooperate with the World Health Organization? And who, or what, is DRASTIC? Locked down in Toronto with the world at a standstill, Dewar pored over newspapers and magazines, preprints and peer-reviewed journals, email chains and blacked-out responses to access to information requests; she conducted Zoom interviews and called telephone numbers until someone answered as she hunted down the truth of the virus's origin. In this compelling whodunnit, she reads the science, follows the money, connects the geopolitical interests to the spin-and shows how leading science journals got it wrong, leaving it to interested citizens and junior scientists to pull out the truth.

The Secrets of Life series is written for everyone who, frankly, needs a spot of cheering up, and will provide conversation starters for years after reading! O'Connor's easy- going, conversational style brings an outsider's questioning eye to the great forces behind life. The first book in the four-part series contends that if we set received wisdom to one side and really dig into the facts, there are actually very few 'secrets' in life. Instead, suggesting it's possible to see that from the split second of Big Bang, right up to our present attempts to make the world a better place, everything that's alive has been trying to find strategies to survive the iron Laws of Thermodynamics, to work together to make more from less, and to overcome the constant threat of destructive, entropic forces. How Did Life End Up With Us? delves into explanations as to the reasons behind why cooperation is the strongest force in life, and why altruism is the proof for the 'gene-based theory of evolution'. O'Connor reveals that from the point that life first sparked off some 3.8 billion years ago, every living thing has descended from the original cell by taking blind mutational and genetic 'decisions'. Through The Secrets of Life series, aimed at general readers like himself, O'Connor recognises that life may appear as an endless and violent conflict, yet under the obvious requirement to take one another's energy, there's always been a deeper current that's driving living things to higher and higher levels of cooperation. In other words, the future isn't quite as bleak as you may believe! Example questions posed (and answered) in Book One - How Did Life End Up With Us? Why are mutations like a gambling scam? And why, if DNA is just a bunch of chemical elements, does it behave like a sophisticated hedge fund manager? If DNA is so brilliant at replicating things, then why does the reproduction process make so many mistakes? Why does everything have to die? How were the Beatles witnesses to one of the great scientific breakthroughs? Is natural selection enough to explain evolution?

Are the marketing men of the world deluding us? Can we believe all that we hear and see? Or are we deluding ourselves? How many of us are truly happy? This book is the result of an awakening. It is the same awakening to the self and to the wonder of the cosmos that has driven thinking men and women for generations. It is the same awakening that has been the generative cause of the affect of religion and belief. It is the same awakening that has then caused man to revolt against the same. Delusion is a human phenomenon and it is the cause of almost every problem mankind has created. This book is an attempt to explain the processes of delusion and in so-doing we find answers to some of the biggest mysteries: Alien abduction and UFO's ghosts and the paranormal, marketing, propaganda and religious, and mind control of the masses. Is mankind ready for truth? Not only is it out there, it's been waiting for us.

Professor Carroll Quigley presents crucial "keys" without which 20th century political, economic, and military events can never be fully understood. The reader will see that this applies to events past-present-and future. "The Rhodes Scholarships, established by the terms of Cecil Rhode's seventh will, are known to everyone. What is not so widely known is that Rhodes in five previous wills left his fortune to form a secret society, which was to devote itself to the preservation and expansion of the British Empire. And what does not seem to be known to anyone is that this secret society ... continues to exist to this day. ... This group is, as I shall show, one of the most important historical facts of the twentieth century." -Quigley

Humans are unique in their ability to create systematic accounts of the world - theories based on guiding cosmological principles. This book is about the role of cognition in creating cosmologies, and explores this through the ethnography and history of Yijing divination in China. Diviners explain the cosmos in terms of a single substance, qi, unfolding across scales of increasing complexity to create natural phenomena and human experience. Combined with an understanding of human cognition, it shows how this conception of scale offers a new way for anthropologists and other social scientists to think about cosmology, comparison and cultural difference.

Conspiracy theories seem to be proliferating today. Long relegated to a niche existence, conspiracy theories are now pervasive, and older conspiracy theories have been joined by a constant stream of new ones - that the USA carried out the 9/11 attacks itself, that the Ukrainian crisis was orchestrated by NATO, that we are being secretly controlled by a New World Order that keep us docile via chemtrails and vaccinations. Not to mention the moon landing that never happened. But what are conspiracy theories and why do people believe them? Have they always existed or are they something new, a feature of our modern world? In this book Michael Butter provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to the nature and development of conspiracy theories. Contrary to popular belief, he shows that conspiracy theories are less popular and influential today than they were in the past. Up to the 1950s, the Western world regarded conspiracy theories as a legitimate form of knowledge and it was therefore normal to believe in them. It was only after the Second World War that this knowledge was delegitimized, causing conspiracy theories to be banished from public discourse and relegated to subcultures. The recent renaissance of conspiracy theories is linked to internet which gives them wider exposure and contributes to the fragmentation of the public sphere. Conspiracy theories are still stigmatized today in many sections of mainstream culture but are being accepted once again as legitimate knowledge in others. It is the clash between these domains and their different conceptions of truth that is fuelling the current debate over conspiracy theories.