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Everyday Extraordinary: A Scientist Ponders a Lifetime of Magical, Bizarre, and Paranormal Experiences
Experiences with strange phenomena such as ghosts, UFOs, psychics, and miracle cures make for titillating stories. Many of us leave these stories as just that—stories—but for some people the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and otherworldly happenings leads down a dark path. Paranoia and the belief in the paranormal have real-life consequences. What is the science behind these scenarios?
Everyday Extraordinary provides an antidote for the conspiracy theories, medical quackery, and science denial prevailing in today’s pop culture.
People will always believe in the unbelievable. In this skeptical and scientific investigation, Barry Markovsky pushes back against harmful flights of fancy with down-to-earth and evidence-based explanations wrapped in compelling stories. Each of the chronologically ordered chapters has a Frontstage and Backstage section. The Frontstage recounts a personal experience: awakening from a night terror as a young child; having my fortune told by a psychic; the claims of an alternative medicine practitioner. The Backstage section explains in simple terms what’s actually going on— mechanisms and functions behind our dreams, how psychics use standard “cold reading” techniques, how quack doctors distort evidence. Each explanation is scientifically grounded, but with minimal jargon and softened with anecdotes, illustrations, and humor.
Everyday Extraordinary makes sense of things that at first seem inexplicable. Many of these experiences feel special and unique despite being remarkably common. And even when not experienced directly, most are all too familiar to readers through reality TV shows, tabloids, and social media.
The stories gently encourage readers to ask questions rather than jump to conclusions; to consider alternative explanations for what happened; to distinguish good evidence from bad; to suspend judgment when the evidence isn’t there; to have a mind both open and skeptical; to consider that what we wish to be true may not always be so. Without being preachy, the scientific explanations prove extraordinary in their own right. Along the way, readers accumulate tools for thinking critically about all sorts of claims, extraordinary and otherwise.
Everyday Extraordinary provides an antidote for the conspiracy theories, medical quackery, and science denial prevailing in today’s pop culture.
People will always believe in the unbelievable. In this skeptical and scientific investigation, Barry Markovsky pushes back against harmful flights of fancy with down-to-earth and evidence-based explanations wrapped in compelling stories. Each of the chronologically ordered chapters has a Frontstage and Backstage section. The Frontstage recounts a personal experience: awakening from a night terror as a young child; having my fortune told by a psychic; the claims of an alternative medicine practitioner. The Backstage section explains in simple terms what’s actually going on— mechanisms and functions behind our dreams, how psychics use standard “cold reading” techniques, how quack doctors distort evidence. Each explanation is scientifically grounded, but with minimal jargon and softened with anecdotes, illustrations, and humor.
Everyday Extraordinary makes sense of things that at first seem inexplicable. Many of these experiences feel special and unique despite being remarkably common. And even when not experienced directly, most are all too familiar to readers through reality TV shows, tabloids, and social media.
The stories gently encourage readers to ask questions rather than jump to conclusions; to consider alternative explanations for what happened; to distinguish good evidence from bad; to suspend judgment when the evidence isn’t there; to have a mind both open and skeptical; to consider that what we wish to be true may not always be so. Without being preachy, the scientific explanations prove extraordinary in their own right. Along the way, readers accumulate tools for thinking critically about all sorts of claims, extraordinary and otherwise.
296 pages, Hardcover
Published March 17, 2026
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18 people want to read
About the author
Barry Markovsky
18 booksI'm a social psychologist. I've been lucky to have enjoyed a long career full of exciting research projects on such topics as networks, power, status, justice, and how people influence one another's perceptions and beliefs.
For the last few years I’ve backed off academic publishing and focused instead on writing for everyday people. The result has been, among other things, a series of much-read articles at TheConversation.com, and this new book, Everyday Extraordinary. It turns out that most of what I've learned about other sociological and psychological topics helps to explain why popular beliefs in astrology, ESP, ghosts, UFOs, and many other fringe claims are held so dearly by so many.
In 2020 I retired from my job as a sociology professor and moved to Western North Carolina where I write (and hike and play music and cook and socialize and live) to my heart’s content.
For the last few years I’ve backed off academic publishing and focused instead on writing for everyday people. The result has been, among other things, a series of much-read articles at TheConversation.com, and this new book, Everyday Extraordinary. It turns out that most of what I've learned about other sociological and psychological topics helps to explain why popular beliefs in astrology, ESP, ghosts, UFOs, and many other fringe claims are held so dearly by so many.
In 2020 I retired from my job as a sociology professor and moved to Western North Carolina where I write (and hike and play music and cook and socialize and live) to my heart’s content.
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February 6, 2026Everyday Extraordinary by Barry Markovsky is a skeptical, science-based look at paranormal and bizarre experiences like ghosts, UFOs, psychics, and miracle cures. Through personal stories paired with clear “behind-the-scenes” explanations, Markovsky shows how psychology, dreams, cold reading, and misinformation can make ordinary events feel supernatural. The book encourages critical thinking, curiosity, and evidence over conspiracy theories and science denial.
Displaying 1 of 1 review