Drawing much of his material from the annals of both the Nobel Prize and its real (much funnier) offspring, the Ig Nobel Prizes, Kallen dishes up a lively, if sometimes also revolting, smorgasbord of scientific highs and lows. Some of the latter are downright disturbing—such as 1950s CIA experiments that involved administering LSD to unwitting volunteers and a 2014 Harvard research project in which students chose to give themselves electric shocks rather than sit alone without sources of entertainment for 15 minutes. Still, the general drift tends toward amusing and occasionally world-changing discoveries, like 19th-century physician Ignaz Semmelweis’ then-bizarre notion that doctors should wash their hands between patients and a 2010 trial that showed the remarkable efficacy of the placebo effect in subjects who knew they were taking sugar pills. Readers will be entertained by a study (helpful to prospective cannibals) of a human body’s caloric content, as well as one confirming the pizza preferences of Togo’s rainbow lizards. Researchers studying slime molds, fatbergs, and whale snot explain the surprisingly broad goals and implications of their work. The stock photos are more decorative than illuminating, but the work is entertaining enough to persuade skeptical readers to engage with the sciences.