AsapSCIENCE

January 5, 2015
Moffit and Brown, the founders of AsapScience, are a pair of Canadian 20-somethings whose highly clickable YouTube videos, which bring science to younger adults and older teens, attract millions of hits. In their illustrated debut, the pair answers the kinds of questions kids often ask and adults occasionally ponder, such as why people hate photos of themselves, why people mostly catch colds during cold weather, whether humans can spontaneously combust, if sneezing can cause one’s eyeball to pop out, and whether cracking one’s joints in puberty leads to arthritis in old age. The book is accurate—for example, the authors do not overstate the importance of the endogenous chemical oxytocin to feelings of love—and entertaining, though it may not be a perfect gift for parents to give to teens, considering chapters entitled “Will Dancing Get you Laid?,” “The Scientific Hangover Cure,” and “The Science of Morning Wood.” Questions of propriety aside, there is plenty of valuable material in the book, particularly for the young and curious.