Welcome to a special BONUS episode, where I chat with an author about their nonfiction book that is morbidly curious book club adjacent, but it hasn't been a pick. Thus, a bonus episode!

I had the immense pleasure of hosting Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris at my Barnes & Noble in Mooresville, NC to promote her new book SLEUTH-HOUND: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes!

I recorded the event, so the audio quality isn't amazing...but I wanted to share our awesome conversation. Enjoy!

The untold story of the Edinburgh doctor who became Arthur Conan Doyle's model for Sherlock Holmes, and his adventures in the criminal underworld of Victorian Britain.

Throughout nineteenth-century Edinburgh, the surgeon Joseph Bell was known for his extraordinary talent for detection and diagnosis. To the amazement of onlookers at the Royal Infirmary, he could read a patient’s ailments, occupation, and personal habits from a single glance. Though such deductive powers were all quite “elementary” to Bell, they had a profound influence on the medical student and budding writer Arthur Conan Doyle. Soon enough, Bell’s methods helped spark the creation of fiction’s most iconic detective.

Since Sherlock Holmes first appeared in 1887, he has become a global phenomenon. Yet the man Conan Doyle credited as Sherlock's prototype has slipped into the shadows. In Sleuth-Hound, the New York Times bestselling author Lindsey Fitzharris brings Bell center stage, recounting how his work took him from ward to witness box as a medical detective probing murder and misdeeds. He worked closely and covertly with the police surgeon Henry Duncan Littlejohn and a pioneering ballistics expert named Dr. Watson, and even collaborated with Conan Doyle to overturn a homicide conviction. Bell’s forensic investigations took him from gaslit alleyways to Gilded Age drawing rooms, put him on the trail of poisoners and child killers, and even drew him into the hunt for Jack the Ripper.

By scrutinizing a scratch on a desk, a trace of cigar ash, or the slightest peculiarity of a man’s gait, Bell could turn the smallest clues into revelations. His sharp mind forever changed the way we read bodies, detect crimes, and serve justice.

Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris is a New York Times bestselling author, television host, and medical historian with a PhD from the University of Oxford. A regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, The Guardian, The Lancet, and New Scientist, she is known for bringing the grisly, surprising, and deeply human history of medicine to life.

Her debut book, The Butchering Art (2017), a celebrated account of Victorian surgery, won multiple literary awards, earned international acclaim, and has been translated into 20 languages. In 2021, she hosted the Smithsonian Channel series The Curious Life and Death of…, exploring some of history’s most mysterious deaths.

Her follow-up book, The Facemaker (2022), about pioneering First World War surgeon Harold Gillies, was an instant New York Times bestseller and debuted at #4 on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list.

Welcome to a special BONUS episode, where I chat with an author about their nonfiction book that is morbidly curious book club adjacent, but it hasn't been a pick. Thus, a bonus episode!

Buy a copy of the book here!

The official memoir from paranormal investigator and Ghost Hunters TV star Steve Gonsalves!

Widely known as a lead investigator on the smash-hit TV series Ghost Hunters as well as Ghost Hunters Academy and the ratings king, Ghost Nation, Steve Gonsalves—already considered to be one of the top paranormal investigators in the world and a pioneer in the industry—showcases a collection of his most meaningful paranormal encounters from some of his favorite haunted locations.

Along with the compelling history of each site, Steve recounts his terrifying experiences with disembodied voices, haunting EVPs, mysterious dark masses, and other unexplained phenomena—in addition to what he learned about living through a life with ghosts. His beliefs and theories on the craft of paranormal investigation are told through heartwarming, hilarious, and profound stories, reflecting the fun-loving personality that has garnered him millions of fans. Filled with facts and anecdotes to add an extra level of insight—all intricately woven together to create the perfect balance of unique information and spooky fun—this is the ultimate book for paranormal enthusiasts, history buffs, and horror fans.

Steve Gonsalves has been a public speaker and educator about paranormal phenomena for more than two decades. As a main cast member of the hit television series Ghost Hunters, as well as Ghost Hunters Live, Ghost Hunters Academy, and Ghost Nation, Steve helped pave the way for a worldwide paranormal explosion. Gonsalves started his work in paranormal studies at a very young age and has investigated over 1,500 reportedly haunted locations. He had the privilege of working closely with Ed and Lorraine Warren, paranormal pioneers and the inspiration for The Conjuring movie series, as well as Dr. William G. Roll (Poltergeist). Along with his multiple appearances on a variety of television, radio, and paranormal series, Gonsalves executive produced and codirected the hit documentary films, The House in Between 1 and 2. He lives with his cat, Fleur, in Massachusetts.

Knock knock... Happy almost-Halloween babes, it's season 3 episode 10!

In October, the Morbidly Curious Book Club read Spiritualism's Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Séances in Lily Dale by Averill Earls, Sarah Handley-Cousins, Marissa C. Rhodes, and Elizabeth Garner Masarik!

Buy a copy of the book here! https://morbidlycuriousbookclub.myshopify.com/products/spiritualisms-place-reformers-seekers-and-seances-in-lily-dale

Browse our online bookstore here: https://morbidlycuriousbookclub.myshopify.com/

And thanks for being here to celebrate MCBC's 5 years! Enjoy this coupon to use in the MCBC Online Bookstore:

SPIRIT5 for $5 off!

In Spiritualism's Place, four friends and scholars who produce the acclaimed Dig: A History Podcast, share their curiosity and enthusiasm for uncovering stories from the past as they explore the history of Lily Dale. Located in western New York State, the world's largest center for Spiritualism was founded in 1879. Lily Dale has been a home for Spiritualists attempting to make contact with the dead, as well as a gathering place for reformers, a refuge for seekers looking for alternatives to established paths of knowledge, and a target for skeptics.

This intimate history of Lily Dale reveals the role that this fascinating place has played within the history of Spiritualism, as well as within the development of the women's suffrage and temperance movements, and the world of New Age religion. As an intentional community devoted to Spiritualist beliefs and practices, Lily Dale brings together multiple strands in the social and religious history of New York and the United States over the past 150 years: feminism, social reform, utopianism, new religious movements, and cultural appropriation.

Podcasters and historians alike, Averill Earls, Sarah Handley-Cousins, Elizabeth Garner Masarik, and Marissa C. Rhodes each identify one site in Lily Dale and one theme that its history illuminates. They use those sites and themes to approach Lily Dale not as debunkers but as inquisitive researchers and storytellers. At the same time, they also reflect on their own relationships contending that it's never quite possible to separate grief, hope, faith, and friendship from understandings of the past. Spiritualism's Place breaks myths, unveils unexpected stories, and finds new ways to contemplate Spiritualism's role in American history.

Averill Earls is Assistant Professor of History at St. Olaf College. She is the author of the forthcoming book, Love in the Lav, and Executive Producer of Dig: A History Podcast.

Sarah Handley-Cousins is Assistant Teaching Professor of History at the University at Buffalo. She is the author of Bodies in Blue, Executive Editor of Nursing Clio, and Producer of Dig: A History Podcast.

Elizabeth Garner Masarik is Assistant Professor of History at SUNY Brockport. She is the author of The Sentimental State and Producer of Dig: A History Podcast.

Marissa C. Rhodes is Assistant Professor of History at Saint Leo University. She is the former Managing Director of A Journal of the Plague Year and Producer of Dig: A History Podcast.

Knock knock...

Welcome to a special BONUS episode, where I chat with an author about their nonfiction book that is morbidly curious book club adjacent, but it hasn't been a pick. Thus, a bonus episode!

Did you know the book club is now an online indie bookstore?! Your one-stop shop for nonfiction. Grab a book club pick, subscribe to our book box, books featured on the podcast (like this one that you're listening to), YA/kids section, morbid cookbooks, and more! Check it out here: https://morbidlycuriousbookclub.myshopify.com/

I sat down (again) with the amazing Corinna Barrett Lain to discuss her book, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection.

NPR article mentioned: https://www.npr.org/2026/10/06/nx-s1-5991669/failed-execution-christa-pike-tennessee-reporter-witness

Lethal injection is nothing like what people think. This is its untold story. In the popular imagination, lethal injection is a slight pinch and a swift nodding off to forever-sleep. It is performed by well-qualified medical professionals. It is regulated and carefully conducted. And it usually provides a “humane” death. In reality, however, not one of those things is true. Secrets of the Killing State pulls back the curtain on this clandestine punishment practice, presenting a view of lethal injection that states have worked hard to hide. Botched executions are a part of this story, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. For all the suffering that we see, there is also suffering that we don’t see. Indeed, the story told here is even bigger than the executions themselves, for behind the scenes is where it unfolds. Fake science, torturous drugs, inept executioners, prison problems, and decades of state secrecy have created an execution method hard-wired to go wrong in countless ways. The story of lethal injection is a story of gross incompetence, law breaking, torturous deaths, and a stunning indifference to the way in which human beings die at the hands of the state. These are the secrets of the killing state—all that we know from litigation files, scientific studies, investigative journalism, autopsy reports, interviews, and scholarship across a number of fields. Death penalty expert Corinna Barrett Lain uses this groundbreaking journey into the dark reality of lethal injection to shine a light on the American death penalty more broadly and show that the state at its most powerful moment is also the state at its worst. We are now over 45 years into the lethal injection era, and most Americans still have no idea what states are doing in their name. It’s time they found out.

Corinna Barrett Lain is S. D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law at University of Richmond School of Law.

Welcome to a special BONUS episode, where I chat with an author about their nonfiction book that is morbidly curious book club adjacent, but it hasn't been a pick. Thus, a bonus episode!

Did you know the book club is now an online indie bookstore?! Your one-stop shop for nonfiction. Grab a book club pick, subscribe to our book box, books featured on the podcast (like this one that you're listening to), YA/kids section, morbid cookbooks, and more! Check it out here: https://morbidlycuriousbookclub.myshopify.com/

I sat down with the remarkable Dr. Marcia Chatelain to discuss her latest book, How Bright the Path Grows: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the March on Washington

There is no shortage of footage immortalizing the men who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when 250,000 Americans gathered beneath the Lincoln Memorial to call for an end to segregation. There were reverends and rabbis, activists and Rat-Pack icons—and of course the day’s headliner, whose prophetic dream of a post-Jim Crow world has forever defined the Civil Rights Movement. But there is no “class photo” of the Black women who helped organize the march, performed on its main stage, or were honored during its “Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom.

In How Bright the Path Grows, Marcia Chatelain weaves a gleaming group portrait of these singular women. Among this cohort were several household names: vaudeville icon Josephine Baker; civil rights activist Rosa Parks gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, and Daisy Bates, champion of the Little Rock Nine. But many were relative unknowns, including Eva Jessye, the choir director who designed the day’s musical program, and Anna Hedgeman, the coordinator who pushed in the eleventh hour for a tribute to Black women’s work.

How Bright the Path Grows is a scintillating group biography, rendering the lives of thirteen Black women visionaries—some famous, others soon to be—in novelistic detail and like never seen before.

MARCIA CHATELAIN is a Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of South Side Girls and Franchise, which won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History, the James Beard Foundation Book Award for Writing, the Hagley Prize for Business History, and the Lawrence W. Levine Award from the Organization of American Historians. An active public speaker and educational consultant, Chatelain has received awards and honors from the Ford Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Welcome to a special BONUS episode, where I chat with an author about their nonfiction book that is morbidly curious book club adjacent, but it hasn't been a pick. Thus, a bonus episode!

Did you know the book club is now an online indie bookstore?! Your one-stop shop for nonfiction. Grab a book club pick, subscribe to our book box, books featured on the podcast (like this one that you're listening to), YA/kids section, morbid cookbooks, and more! Check it out here: https://morbidlycuriousbookclub.myshopify.com/

Join the book club here: https://www.morbidlycuriousbookclub.com/

I sat down with the one and only Dr. Karen Tang to discuss her book, It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (But Were Never Told)

An inclusive and essential new resource for reproductive health--including period problems, pelvic pain, menopause, fertility, sexual health, vaginal and urinary conditions, and overall wellbeing--from leading expert and fierce advocate Dr. Karen Tang

"Dr. Karen Tang is a literal godsend to women in a time still filled with great ignorance in medical research and financing of women's health initiatives. Please read her book, follow her on Instagram as I have, and feel blessed as I do to have an advocate for our body, our health, and our human rights." ―Sharon Stone

Did you know that up to 90% of women experience menstrual abnormalities or pelvic issues in their lifetime? Yet these conditions are overwhelmingly misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or dismissed. The root causes for these issues, such as PCOS, endometriosis, fibroids, ovarian cysts, PMDD, or pelvic floor dysfunction, don't receive the stream of funding for research and new treatments that other conditions do, despite affecting up to half the population. Dr. Karen Tang is on a mission to transform how we engage with our bodies and our healthcare. It's Not Hysteria is a comprehensive guide to common conditions and potential treatment options, with practical tools such as symptom prompts and sample questions for your provider, to equip readers to take control of their gynecologic health. Reproductive healthcare, from abortion to gender-affirming care, is under siege. The onus continues to fall on patients to find and advocate for the care they need. In the face of uncertainty and misinformation, It's Not Hysteria is destined to become a new classic that educates and empowers women and those assigned female at birth.

KAREN TANG, MD, MPH, is a board-certified gynecologist and minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon who is an internationally recognized leader in reproductive health. She received her medical degree and masters in public health at Columbia University, and trained in obstetrics and gynecology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center / Harvard Medical School. As @KarenTangMD, she reaches millions of viewers with her educational videos about period health, pelvic pain, and reproductive rights. Dr. Tang has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, Forbes, NBC News, and Oprah Daily, among other media outlets. She lives in the Philadelphia area with her husband and three children.

Welcome to a special BONUS episode, where I chat with an author about their nonfiction book that is morbidly curious book club adjacent, but it hasn't been a pick. Thus, a bonus episode!

Did you know the book club is now an online indie bookstore?! Your one-stop shop for nonfiction. Grab a book club pick, subscribe to our book box, books featured on the podcast (like this one that you're listening to), YA/kids section, morbid cookbooks, and more! Check it out here: https://morbidlycuriousbookclub.myshopify.com/

Join the book club here: https://www.morbidlycuriousbookclub.com/

I sat down with Andrew Guthrie Ferguson to discuss his latest book, and release it on Constitution Day: Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance.

For consumers living in a digitally connected world, smart technologies have built an inescapable trap of digital self-surveillance. Smart cars, smart homes, smart watches, and smart medical devices track our most private activities and intimate patterns. While these devices allow users to receive personal insights by monitoring their every move, that data can be accessed by police and prosecutors looking to find incriminating clues. Digital technology exposes everyone, everywhere, all at once, and we have few laws to regulate it.

In Your Data Will Be Used Against You, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson warns us of how the rise of sensor-driven technology, social media monitoring, and artificial intelligence can be weaponized against democratic values and personal freedoms. At the same time, that data will solve crimes, radically transforming how criminal cases are prosecuted. Ferguson explores how this proliferation of private data in combination with public surveillance networks promises new ways to solve previously unsolvable crimes, but also leaves us vulnerable to governmental overreach and abuse. He argues for legal interventions that address the threat of digital self-surveillance and provides concrete suggestions about how legislators, judges, and communities should respond.

As consumers, citizens, and potential subjects of surveillance, the questions in this book must be confronted now, before the trap of surveillance captures us completely. Providing a stark warning of the dangers of digital self-surveillance, Your Data Will be Used Against You is a defense of civil liberties against the growing threat of data-driven policing.

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School. He is a national expert on new surveillance technologies, policing, and criminal justice. He is the author of the 2018 PROSE Award winning book, The Rise of Big Data Policing. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute.