-
The Story Behind
- The Extraordinary History Behind Ordinary Objects
- Narrated by: Emily Prokop
- Length: 4 hrs and 18 mins
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The Story Behind
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Publisher's summary
Learn the fascinating history and trivia behind the everyday items we take for granted — from the host of the popular podcast The Story Behind, Emily Prokop!
Many of us learn about the major inventions that shape our world. But we too often overlook the objects we use every day. In The Story Behind, Emily Prokop, creator of the Webby Award nominated podcast, explores the who, how, and huh? of everything from Band-Aids to bubble gum; hypnosis to Hula Hoops; and lullabies to lead pipes. Along the way, she demonstrates how the major events of history - from wars, plagues and revolutions to historic achievements and discoveries - have influenced some of the world’s most pervasive inventions. From food, fashion and games to transit and modern technology, The Story Behind offers a closer look at the things closest to us.
Critic reviews
"There's something so fascinating about looking into the history and stories behind the everyday, mundane, and ordinary. Emily's book will perfectly scratch the itch of curiosity you have for thing you see everyday!" (Patrick Foote)
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 37
How often does a single tiny mistake cause an entire civilization to collapse? More often than you think! Listeners of Jared Knott’s book Tiny Blunders/Big Disasters will be amazed at the little things that changed history in a big way.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very, very interesting facts
- By dexter on 11-02-21
By: Jared Knott
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The World's Best Short Stories
- 127 Funny Short Stories About Unbelievable Stuff that Actually Happened
- By: Bill O'Neill
- Narrated by: Robin LaRose
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
The World's Best Short Stories is a compendium of crazy and oddly funny stories from different periods across human history. You’ll learn about pompous politicians, admirable animals, and some very strange oddballs! The book provides the listener with an easily accessible entrance into some of the most important aspects of human history. The stories are packed with humor and jokes to offer up even the grumpiest of listeners a wry smile.
By: Bill O'Neill
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What Einstein Didn't Know
- Scientific Answers to Everyday Questions
- By: Robert L. Wolke
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 205
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 182
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Story4 out of 5 stars 181
How does soap know what's dirt? How do magnets work? Why do ice cubes crackle in your glass? And how can you keep them quiet? These are questions that torment us all. Now Robert L. Wolke, professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, provides definitive - and amazingly simple - explanations for the mysteries of everyday life.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A funny thing happened on the way to a great book
- By Joseph on 10-01-12
By: Robert L. Wolke
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Why Do We Say That?
- 101 Idioms, Phrases, Sayings & Facts! A Brief History on Where They Come From!
- By: Scott Matthews
- Narrated by: Mandy Grant-Grierson
- Length: 1 hr and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 15
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 11
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Story4 out of 5 stars 10
In Why Do We Say That, we have curated 101 of the most regularly used idioms, proverbs, turns of phrases, and colloquial terms that have the most fascinating backstories. For each phrase, we have explained how it was coined, how its use evolved through the ages, and how it gained its contemporary use.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Waste of Money
- By Bill on 02-18-23
By: Scott Matthews
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You Have More Influence Than You Think
- How We Underestimate Our Power of Persuasion, and Why It Matters
- By: Vanessa Bohns
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 53
If you’ve ever felt ineffective, invisible, or inarticulate, chances are you weren’t actually any of those things. Those feelings may instead have been the result of a lack of awareness we all seem to have for how our words, actions, and even our mere presence affect other people. In You Have More Influence Than You Think, social psychologist Vanessa Bohns draws from her original research to illustrate why we fail to recognize the influence we have, and how that lack of awareness can lead us to miss opportunities or accidentally misuse our power.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I got what was needed
- By Purdy on 10-24-21
By: Vanessa Bohns
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Fact or Fiction 2
- 50 (More) Popular Myths Explained
- By: Scientific American
- Narrated by: Suzie Althens
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
The editors of Scientific American’s best-selling Fact or Fiction: Science Tackles 58 Popular Myths return with Fact or Fiction 2: 50 (More) Popular Myths Explained. We cast an analytical eye on another collection of urban lore and cultural myths that persist so long in our collective consciousness they acquire a ring of truth. Who hasn’t heard the “five-second rule”, which insists that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat if it’s picked up within five seconds? How many of us have been told to “feed a cold, starve a fever"?
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5 out of 5 stars
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great info
- By jim on 03-26-24
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Interesting Stories for Curious People
- A Collection of Fascinating Stories About History, Science, Pop Culture and Just About Anything Else You Can Think Of
- By: Bill O'Neill
- Narrated by: Robin LaRose
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 47
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 47
Want to impress your buddies at the bar? Need to think of something interesting to do at the next family gathering? Want to learn a bunch of random facts about history, science, true crime, and the paranormal? Listen to Interesting Stories for Curious People, the ultimate guidebook for a plethora of interesting facts about a whole bunch of several different topics. A quick listen packed with information.
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1 out of 5 stars
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no...not again...not for me
- By Still here...still on 09-23-20
By: Bill O'Neill
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The Book of Common Fallacies
- Falsehoods, Misconceptions, Flawed Facts, and Half-Truths That Are Ruining Your Life
- By: Phillip Ward, Julia Edwards
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 21 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 144
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 114
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 116
Everything you thought you knew was wrong! Long before Snopes.com and Wikipedia, The Book of Common Fallacies set out to debunk popular beliefs and set the record straight. By tracking down the facts and citing experts in a multitude of fields, Philip Ward points out the senseless ideas that we have come to accept as fact. Newly updated with today’s common misconceptions, The Book of Common Fallacies exposes the truth behind hundreds of commonly held false beliefs.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A few good entries, but most are obscure
- By Dana on 06-10-16
By: Phillip Ward, and others
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Fact or Fiction
- Science Tackles 58 Popular Myths
- By: Scientific American
- Narrated by: Janet Metzger
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 130
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Story4 out of 5 stars 130
Did NASA really spend millions creating a pen that would write in space? Is chocolate poisonous to dogs? Does stress cause gray hair? These questions are a sample of the urban lore investigated in this audiobook, Fact or Fiction: Science Tackles 58 Popular Myths. Drawing from Scientific American’s “Fact or Fiction” and “Strange But True” columns, we’ve selected 58 of the most surprising, fascinating, useful, and just plain wacky topics confronted by our writers over the years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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funny
- By jim on 03-19-24
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Napoleon's Hemorrhoids…And Other Small Events That Changed History
- By: Phil Mason
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,094
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 970
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Story4 out of 5 stars 966
Hilarious, fascinating, and a roller coaster of dizzying, historical what-ifs, Napoleon's Hemorrhoids is a potpourri for serious historians and casual history buffs. In one of Phil Mason's many revelations, you'll learn that Communist jets were two minutes away from opening fire on American planes during the Cuban missile crisis, when they had to turn back as they were running out of fuel. You'll discover that before the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon's painful hemorrhoids prevented him from mounting his horse to survey the battlefield.
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3 out of 5 stars
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They just throw the facts too fast
- By Concerned_llama on 12-11-20
By: Phil Mason
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How to Speak Science
- Gravity, Relativity, and Other Ideas That Were Crazy Until Proven Brilliant
- By: Bruce Benamran, Stephanie Delozier Strobel
- Narrated by: Braden Wright
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 219
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 196
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 192
As smartphones, supercomputers, supercolliders, and AI propel us into an ever more unfamiliar future, How to Speak Science takes us on a rollicking historical tour of the greatest discoveries and ideas that make today's cutting-edge technologies possible. Wanting everyone to be able to "speak" science, YouTube science guru Bruce Benamran explains - as accessibly and wittily as in his acclaimed videos - the fundamental ideas of the physical world: matter, life, the solar system, light, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, special and general relativity, and much more.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wowzers!
- By Ralph Temblador on 02-15-21
By: Bruce Benamran, and others
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The Stupid Crook Book
- By: Leland Gregory
- Narrated by: Nick Landrum
- Length: 3 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 8
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 7
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 7
Straight from police blotters across the country, The Stupid Crook Book chronicles idiotic criminals and their foiled attempts to turn a quick buck or cause general mischief. In this hilarious volume, witness stories about dopey crooks such as: A former convict robs a bar to get cash to feed his drug habit. Unfortunately, he lives above the bar in question, and the victim of his crime - his landlord! A man is stopped for speeding in Oklahoma and pleads with the officer not to give him a ticket, IF he finds drugs in the car.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Simply hilarious!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-29-19
By: Leland Gregory
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1,000 Random Facts Everyone Should Know
- A Collection of Random Facts Useful for the Bar Trivia Night, Get-Together or as Conversation Starter
- By: Tyler Backhause
- Narrated by: Philip Andrew Hodges
- Length: 3 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4 out of 5 stars 41
Have you ever had that moment when you are in the middle of a conversation and suddenly the room becomes quiet and nobody knows how to move the discussion forward? Of course you do. Haven’t we all? It’s for this reason that I decided to write this book.What better way to break that silence than to throw out some of these facts: Wolves have a serious appetite! They can eat up to twenty pounds of meat in one sitting! The first high heeled shoes were worn by Egyptian butchers to help them walk above the bloodied bodies of animal carcasses.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fun! But had some flaws.
- By Frances R. on 08-26-18
By: Tyler Backhause
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The Lost Continent
- Travels In Small Town America
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: William Roberts
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 917
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 764
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Story4 out of 5 stars 760
Hardly anyone ever leaves Des Moines, Iowa. But Bill Bryson did, and after 10 years in England he decided to go home, to a foreign country. In an ageing Chevrolet Chevette, he drove nearly 14,000 miles through 38 states to compile this hilarious and perceptive state-of-the-nation report on small-town America.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Written by Bryson's evil twin
- By M. S. Cohen on 08-11-14
By: Bill Bryson
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The Ultimate Bathroom Reader
- Interesting Stories, Fun Facts and Just Crazy Weird Stuff to Keep You Entertained on the Crapper! (Perfect Gag Gift)
- By: Bill O'Neill
- Narrated by: Robin LaRose
- Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 7
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Story5 out of 5 stars 7
Who doesn’t love a bit of random trivia now and then? Or, for that matter, who doesn’t enjoy plucking some obscure tidbit of information from the back of their mind and dropping it into conversation? Get The Ultimate Bathroom Reader, your ultimate source of interesting facts about a wide range of diverse topics. This audiobook is truly a quick-listen packed with information from cover to cover. All of these facts, plus hundreds more, are listed here, in simple, bite-size chunks - with a few pop quizzes thrown in just to keep your brain ticking over.
By: Bill O'Neill
What listeners say about The Story Behind
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- celeste rickers
- 02-14-23
So fun!
I enjoyed the book very much! I only wish it was longer :-) thanks for the facts and trivia!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Zach Brunson
- 07-12-21
Fun, Short, and Quirky Factoids
This is a collection of fun, short, and often quirky stories about the background and history of random aspects of everyday life: factoids for the inquisitive mind.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- John Cashman
- 11-07-20
Very good book
if you are interested in the origins and evolution of everyday things, you will love thisbook.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Dogs Land
- 03-25-24
One third of the book is repeated after initial description of subject under “TLDR” ..?
I had to look that up, so I must not be the target audience.
In first part of book she states that all she knew about inventions was that “white men invented them”. Perhaps a little history lesson about the massive contributions Asian, Arabic and African cultures made in the early history when white people were scratching out a life in Europe…
Glad it was free
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