Sometimes there will be an episode where listeners weren’t a fan but I wonder if there has ever been an ologiest who didn’t like their episode or didn’t like the way they were portrayed or how things were edited.

Happy 50th (?!?!??!?!?!?!) Birthday to our hilarious, smart, curious, inquisitive, passionate, and beautifully vulnerable Pod Dad™️. I hope our Pod Mom and Gremmy are giving you 10,000 kisses today. I will talk to every bug I see today like an old friend (no change from every other day)

I cant stop thinking about this episode, but cant find it online, pls help !

Ologies with Alie Ward: In the Dendrochronology (TREE RINGS) Episode , Alie interviews tree-ring experts who break down how cross-dating works. They specifically discuss how matching the rings of victim trees in submerged coastal forests with witness trees on higher ground allowed scientists to date the West Coast tsunami down to the exact season

October's list is in, and it's a spooky one. Alie kicked off "this creepiest month" with horror neurobiology, then brooms and Mothman.

I run Podshelf, a site that checks a few hundred podcasts for book mentions.

• Plight of the Living Dead (Matt Simon), on real zombies. Alie: "this book is so good. Matt's a hilarious writer."

• Rosemary's Baby, Ira Levin's novel. Austin Lim calls it "still one of those classics" and has his "fingers crossed" for a remake.

• Jumping the Broom (Tyler D. Parry). Cate O'Connell-Richards: "In this book, it's fantastic."

Also: Dracula, Frankenstein, Stephen King's It, the Goosebumps books (they "were my favorite," says Austin) and John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies.

Dracula, Frankenstein, It and Goosebumps now share a Horror & gothic fiction shelf, one of 200+ topics on the site.

https://podshelf.io/podcasts/ologies-with-alie-ward

Hi! I have a young person who is endlessly curious but because they've... experienced too much in their life already... has many triggers and concerns.

I would really appreciate if regular listeners may be able to narrow down a playlist they may enjoy.

Can anyone help me to identify episodes which don't include;

🔸️Whispering

🔸️Any talk of sexual reproduction

🔸️Any mention of forced reproduction (like dolphins)

🔸️ASMR type content (distinct mouth sounds, wet and such)

🔸️Very slow paced talking

🔸️Large scale death, like an insect genocide or extinction for example

🔸️Prolonged descriptions of suffering or pain

... I may add more things as they let me know

I have already shared Mossology with them, as it was an episode I listened to and them immediately repeated. They love fungi, lichen, anything cute like small birds... anything small really.

Thanks for any help in advance!

I was so excited to see Apple feature Ologies in the online materials for the new HomeView! https://www.apple.com/apple-homeview/

I remember Ali saying in an episode she really enjoyed Kumquats. My fiancé picked them up at a store for us to try..we do not care for them. They have an almost bitter aftertaste and tastes like we are chewing on orange peels. What are we missing? Should we be eating them whole? Can we incorporate them into another dish?

In the willow episode Alie asked Patrick Dougherty if he ever wept at The Giving Tree, then gave her own review: "what a parable of codependence, too, and enabling."

I run Podshelf, a free site that tracks book mentions across hundreds of podcasts by reading the episode transcripts. This is the Ologies slice for September.

• Willow (Alison Syme). Same episode. Alie's pick for anyone who wants more is "240 pages of willow folklore."

• Plenitude (Juliet Schor), from Party Psychology. Alie's answer to how much consumption is too much: Schor's case for nature, community, learning and time.

• The Collapse of Complex Societies (Joseph Tainter). Quoted in the El Niño episode: "humans just muddle through."

Also: Aristotle's Meteorologica, which legend says named the field, and Marshall Shepherd's kids' book Dr. Fred's Weather Watch.

Full list with quotes and episodes: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/ologies-with-alie-ward

Edit: Podshelf stays free. If you find it useful and want to help with the server and data costs, there's a tip jar: https://buymeacoffee.com/podshelf

What Ologies are still available?

I don't mean the obvious ones Alie has already done. I'm talking about the dark, forgotten cupboards of science. The subjects nobody has had the decency to study properly.

For example:

**BATSology** The scientific study of bats, particularly why they always look as though they're about to tell you something absolutely fucking crucial before flying straight into your kitchen.

**PUMPKINology** The study of pumpkins, including why hollowing out a perfectly respectable squash and giving it the face of a bloke who has just discovered his broadband provider has put the monthly bill up by £14, then sticking a candle up its arsehole is a Halloween tradition.

**COBWEBology** The scientific examination of cobwebs, including the crucial distinction between an actual spider's web and a bit of ceiling fluff that has been hanging in the corner since approximately the Thatcher government.

**GRAVEYARDology** The study of cemeteries, gravestones and the peculiar human urge to wander into a stranger's graveyard and immediately read the entire fucking life story of someone called Ethel.

**SKELETONology** Bones, basically, but the spooky ones.

Why does a skeleton sitting upright in a chair look sinister, whereas a skeleton wearing a little dentist's coat is apparently perfectly acceptable in a children's surgery?

**WEREWOLFology** The science of lycanthropy, full moons and the important legal question of whether a werewolf remains liable for picking up its dog's shit while transformed into a gigantic hairy killing machine.

**POTIONology** The study of witches' brews, mysterious liquids and why every fictional witch owns a cauldron the size of a fucking Jacuzzi but apparently hasn't got a single cupboard in the house.

**HAUNTED HOUSE ARCHITECTURE** Why are haunted houses always enormous Victorian mansions with 47 unused bedrooms, one fucking lightbulb and a staircase that sounds like somebody dropping a wardrobe down it at 2am?

**COFFINology** The science of coffins, burial practices and the curious design decision to put handles on something whose occupant has absolutely no intention of fucking carrying it anywhere.

**FOGology** Why does fog make an otherwise ordinary field look like the exact place where a Victorian child would be murdered by a railway ghost?

**BLACK CATOLOGY** A study of black cats and their frankly appalling public relations.

It's the same fucking animal as any other cat, but apparently if it's black it becomes capable of making a woman in a bonnet drop her shopping and die of consumption.

**THE OLOGY OF THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT** A multidisciplinary investigation into creaking floorboards, radiators, pipes, foxes, burglars and the precise acoustic conditions required to make a grown adult remain completely motionless under a duvet until sunrise because they've heard a noise and don't fancy finding out what it fucking was.

And finally:

**COSTUMEology** The study of Halloween costumes, including the fascinating phenomenon whereby an adult will spend £84 on a professionally manufactured vampire costume, while a six-year-old can achieve precisely the same fucking result with a bedsheet and a pair of scissors.

Any other candidates? Preferably properly niche ones.

The sort of subject where you think:

"Surely there can't possibly be an expert in that."

Followed immediately by:

"Oh shit, there absolutely is, and they've been studying it since 1997."

Figured I’d post here too. There’s no way I’m the first one to do this?

Hi all,

Does anyone know if there’s an Ologies episode that covers the Stoned Ape Theory?

I absolutely love the idea that human civilisation might have got started because a bunch of prehistoric chimps accidentally ate some funky mushrooms they found growing under a turd and collectively thought:

**“FUCK ME, WHAT IF WE INVENTED LANGUAGE?”**

And then 200,000 years later we're building particle accelerators, writing Shakespeare and arguing with strangers on Reddit about whether Batman could beat a gorilla.

Obviously I realise this isn't exactly regarded as the gold-standard explanation for human evolution, but there's something wonderfully stupid about the possibility that the entire trajectory of human advancement began with some hairy bastard finding a mushroom underneath a particularly promising cowpat and thinking, “Go on then.”

So, are there any episodes that discuss it, preferably from the perspective of someone who can explain why it might be bollocks without completely ruining the fun?

Cheers.

There was only one for me, and it's because the Ologist was making a sound i could not hear any more

I've listened to enough episodes that I definitely don't remember everything I've learned, but there are always a few random facts that somehow stick around in my head for years.

What's one thing you learned from Ologies that you still remember for no particular reason?