Truth cover art

Truth

A Brief History of Total Bulls--t

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Truth

By: Tom Phillips
Narrated by: Tom Phillips
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About this listen

This is a book about truth - and all the ingenious ways, throughout history, that we've managed to avoid it.

We live in a 'post-truth' age, we're told. The US has a president who openly lies on a daily basis (or who doesn't even know what's true, and doesn't care). The internet has turned our everyday lives into a misinformation battleground. People don't trust experts any more.

But was there ever really a golden age of truth-telling?

As the editor of the UK's leading independent fact-checker, Tom Phillips deals with complete bollocks every day. Here, he tells the story of how we humans have spent history lying to each other - and ourselves - and asks an important question: how can humanity move towards a truthier future?

©2019 Tom Phillips (P)2019 Headline Publishing Group Ltd Anthropology World Funny

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Critic reviews

"Tom Phillips is a very clever, very funny man." (Greg Jenner)

All stars
Most relevant  
very well performed and informative book.
Tails from the past the show not much has changed in society but informs you how to start to spot bullshit.

Proof nothing changes.

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Really interesting, accessible and good content. Unfortunately - and I recognise this is very much a me problem - if like me you have misophonia I would not recommend. A lot of sticky mouth noises and swallowing noises.. I had to keep turning it off and taking it in bits because the sound of swallowing salvia makes my skin crawl. Would benefit from some audio editing. But the book itself is very interesting. A shame. But only a shame for sensitive listeners like me.

Not for those with misophonia

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A superb book! My first from Tom Phillips and I can't wait to listen to his others. It's thought provoking and hilarious!

Brilliant and hilarious!

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By far the best book about the sexual preferences of racist bat people that live on the moon that I have ever read

By far the best…

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another splendid book by Tom, however the narration by Nish would have been more enjoyable

another great book

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Excellent reading by the author himself. It always brings more life to it as that is the person that knows the puns and where to stress and where to pause. It delivers the message and communicates the original thought in the best of ways. ... Still, I cannot believe how much bull$h¥t we indeed do believe! - over time and time and time again!

Interesting, witty, funny!

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very dull and you seem to be waiting a long time for any interesting content

not very gripping

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I found this book entertaining enough and there were some great stories detailed throughout but it became quite repetitive after a while as did the author's constant attempts to add a witty remark or crack a joke at pretty much every opportunity availed to him which gave a constant air of smugness...

Having said all of that however, I think this book made it's point and does remind any listener (or reader) that humans are full of conceit and that it is our own personal responsibility to avoid the trap of believing everything that we read and hear and that everyone has a responsibility to try not to spread nonsense... As obvious as that is for us to live in a relatively sane world...

Entertaining... But a little dissapointing

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While the book is well written in terms of narration and flow, there's really nothing interesting here. There's certainly interesting trivia regarding famous figures of the past, but the examples of 'bulls--t' are truly unsurprising. This was not a read that's likely to uproot anyone's worldview unless they are truly ignorant to the general behavior of people, media, and the depiction of world events.

Uninteresting

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