The Curious Engineer

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Experimental History

experimental-history.com

1) Find what's true and make it useful. 2) Publish every other Tuesday. 3) Photo cred: my dad. Click to read Experimental History, by Adam Mastroianni, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

Essays / personalScience

’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
143 from 1 Jan 2022 to 28 Oct 2026
Posting
weekly (26 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://www.experimental-history.com/feed

2026 23

  1. Fake it ‘til you make it (and then keep faking it)
  2. Claude, don’t touch my lump
  3. The Strangest Idea in the World
  4. There is no epidemic of loneliness, but there is an epidemic of scurvy
  5. Actually good advice
  6. I like 'em thick
  7. Incentives are for losers
  8. Blog Jamboree 2026: The Winners
  9. The Decline of Deviance 2
  10. The most wonderful thing that happened to Tommy McHugh
  11. Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos
  12. Only insane people use the internet
  13. Shame them, shun them, ban them, beat them!
  14. The 3rd Annual Blog Post Competition, Extravaganza, and Jamboree
  15. Nothing ever dies. It merely becomes embarrassing.
  16. Infinite midwit
  17. Help I'm being persecuted
  18. The one science reform we can all agree on, but we're too cowardly to do
  19. I swear the UFO is coming any minute
  20. Underrated ways to change the world, vol. II
  21. I know your secret
  22. Text is king
  23. How to be less awkward

2025 27

  1. The drug that taught me how much I should suffer
  2. Secrets of the ancient memelords
  3. You say potato, I say leprosy
  4. The Decline of Deviance
  5. Bamboozle me, daddy
  6. Thank you for being annoying
  7. Blog Extravaganza 2025: the winners
  8. Use this magic bullet to shoot yourself in the foot
  9. Bag of words, have mercy on us
  10. Do conversations end when people want them to?
  11. Revenge of the Blockheads
  12. Underrated ideas in psychology, vol. III
  13. Face it: you're a crazy person
  14. Three Dumb Studies for your consideration
  15. The Second Annual Blog Post Competition, Extravaganza, and Jamboree
  16. New paradigm for psychology just dropped
  17. 28 slightly rude notes on writing
  18. How I became a British meme
  19. The Bluetooth Test and other keyholes to the soul
  20. Be myself? I'd rather die
  21. Death by klaxon
  22. Hey would you mind killing that patient for me thnx
  23. Funding science is actually a badass thing to do
  24. REPOST: Science is a strong-link problem
  25. Just do your dance already
  26. How to feel bad and be wrong
  27. Two stupid facts that rule the world

2024 31

  1. The end is nigh and here's why
  2. The day the world didn't end
  3. The Anarchist and the Hockey Stick
  4. Underrated ways to change the world
  5. Lead pipes are dangerous? Make 'em mandatory
  6. Both Democrats and Republicans can pass the Ideological Turing Test
  7. If you have Imposter Syndrome, maybe you're on to something
  8. Is psychology going to Cincinnati?
  9. [REPOST] Good conversations have lots of doorknobs
  10. Katalin Karikó and the bottomless scam
  11. Blog Extravaganza: The Winners
  12. There's a place for everyone
  13. Bloodletting, leeches, and other FDA-approved treatments
  14. Good ideas don't need bayonets
  15. Who's got the guts to go to the moon?
  16. The first transmissions from Science House
  17. REPOST: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
  18. Surely you can be serious
  19. The Summer 2024 Blog Post Competition, Extravaganza, and Jamboree
  20. How to get 7th graders to smoke
  21. Underrated ideas in psychology, volume II
  22. The magic soup debacle is finally over
  23. 12 baseless opinions about having good conversations
  24. Startling differences between humans and jukeboxes
  25. Science will only end once we've licked all the objects in the universe
  26. I come from the Isle of Ghouls
  27. You can't be too happy, literally
  28. A slightly tipsy investigation into my wife's superpower
  29. Declining trust in Zeus is a technology
  30. The Slop School of Internet Success and other lies about cyberspace
  31. So you wanna de-bog yourself

2023 33

  1. There are no statistics in the Kingdom of God
  2. Please cheat, I'm begging you
  3. The grim tale of Grimcrack and other grim tales
  4. How to get funnier, and why you shouldn't
  5. How to drive a stake through your own good heart
  6. Let me rattle your itty bitty ear bones
  7. On the importance of staring directly into the sun
  8. I sent Paul Bloom an email
  9. Let’s build a fleet and change the world
  10. I’m so sorry for psychology’s loss, whatever it is
  11. Sorry pal, this woo is irreducible
  12. How many people has Dolly Parton killed?
  13. An invitation to a secret society
  14. Negotiation Part III: the Rat King of New York
  15. The illusion of moral decline
  16. You should not open a door and see someone pooping
  17. Negotiation Pt. II: Welcome to the hovel
  18. I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a cop
  19. A whole negotiation class in three posts (Pt. I)
  20. Help there's a dead CEO in my head
  21. Science is a strong-link problem
  22. The mystery of the Cleveland airport consumerism shrine
  23. Brain training begins in the hips
  24. Sunshine on my buttcheeks
  25. You can't reach the brain through the ears
  26. Mr. Midnight Meatball Sub
  27. It's very weird to have a skull full of poison
  28. You're probably wrong about how things have changed
  29. MYSTERY POST #3: Substack & science: a conversation with Erik Hoel
  30. MYSTERY POST #2: Better for being worse
  31. The radical idea that people aren't stupid
  32. MYSTERY POST #1: my dad
  33. The Experimental History experiment

2022 29

  1. The dance of the naked emperors
  2. The rise and fall of peer review
  3. How to keep cakes moist and cause the greatest tragedies of the 20th century
  4. Things could be better
  5. Socially acceptable anxiety is still anxiety
  6. This movie has a 3% on Rotten Tomatoes and I'm in it
  7. The great myths of political hatred
  8. Psychology might be a big stinkin’ load of hogwash and that’s just fine
  9. Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
  10. Psychology is experimental history
  11. Why aren't smart people happier?
  12. Proposed Edits to the Shared Google Doc of American Culture Upon Returning from a Faraway Land
  13. You'll forget most of what you learn. What should you do about that?
  14. Oligopoly Everywhere
  15. Reading the news is the new smoking
  16. Underrated ideas in psychology
  17. Ideas aren’t getting harder to find and anyone who tells you otherwise is a coward and I will fight them
  18. Pop Culture Has Become an Oligopoly
  19. The Five Tools of Hedonic Design
  20. Against All Applications
  21. Grant funding is broken. Here's how to fix it.
  22. You should not open a door and see someone pooping
  23. Good conversations have lots of doorknobs
  24. Bureaucratic psychosis
  25. Can you kill God with laser beams and atom bombs?
  26. Psychology is experimental history
  27. 450 million guns and other predictions for 2050
  28. The Traffic Apocalypse, the False Messiahs, and the Muncie Plan
  29. The secret shock study