The Strangest Idea in the World

A Quest To Find The Secret Source of All Discoveries

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In this raucous tour of ideas, a stellar experimental psychologist unpacks the five stages behind every breakthrough — and offers inspiration for anyone who dreams of making the world just a little bit better.

Here’s the biggest mystery in human history: Why did it take us 300,000 years to invent the toilet?

Come to think of it, why did discovering everything take so long? Why did we spend 1,500 years believing that you can deactivate a magnet with garlic? Why did centuries pass between the inventions of the button and the buttonhole?

In his debut book, written with his distinct blend of contagious enthusiasm and rigour, creator of the hit Substack Experimental History Adam Mastroianni offers an answer: it’s hard for humans to discover things because discovery is, in the short term, a bad idea. We didn’t evolve to do it, and it’s a miracle that we can at all.

But there’s good news. We can overcome the psychological hurdles to invention and discovery and build a better world. Mastroianni draws on little-known examples, from transfusing the blood of a sheep into a man to physicists who set themselves on fire, to unpack the five strange ways of thinking that lead to a breakthrough, from building a tolerance for weirdness to realizing that nobody actually knows what they’re doing.

Chock full of interactivity to make his case, from visual tricks to hidden pages, and secret endings, it busts myths and, most importantly, offers an antidote to despair about our future. Anyone who masters these moves can discover new knowledge, whether they’re a professor in a lab or a teenager in a basement. Our future depends on both!

One of the most enjoyable books I have ever read. Brimming over with new ideas and thoughts, also funny, also just joyful. The sense of a very brilliant person having a whale of a time introducing you to their very best ideas.
Naomi Alderman, bestselling author of The Power

Through discovery and innovation we achieve miracles. But people show remarkably little curiosity about this aspect of human history: what are discovery and innovation, why do they happen to us and not to rabbits or rocks and why don't they happen more often? Adam Mastroianni's ingenious and delightful book explores how we have to fight our own natures to change the world for the better.
Matt Ridley, author of How Innovation Works

Adam Mastroianni has accomplished the extraordinary: he's reinvented the act of reading with this joyous and genius book. I laughed, cried, ripped out pages, and cringed at my own ignorance. I felt like a kid devouring my first interactive adventure book, except this time I walked away with a deep reverence for humanity's (often stupid) pursuit of truth. This book might just save the world.
Susannah Cahalan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire

His breezy style is clever and wry. His examples of historically durable misconceptions abound. His descriptions of humankind’s ability to repeat mistakes are fascinating. Near the conclusion of his Strangest Idea, Adam Mastroianni reminds us. “The first barrier between us and more knowledge is the mistaken belief that there’s no more knowledge to get.” Is that a puzzling premise? If so, this book is for you.
Bill Nye, Science Educator

About Adam Mastroianni

Adam Mastroianni is an experimental psychologist – with a PhD from Harvard, where he studied with widely-acclaimed author Professor Daniel Gilbert – and a comedy teacher and writer. He now focuses on his Substack, Experimental History. Adam has also written for The New York Times and The Atlantic.

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