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100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know
Synopsis Here's the big, not-so-secret secret. People in power--government and religious leaders, heads of big corporations, the rich and well connected--all have one major goal: to stay in power. And they'll do whatever it takes to make sure that happens. Sometimes this means suppressing the truth and covering up facts that might make the rest of us angry enough to challenge the powerful--or at least to have a good laugh at their expense.
261 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
115 people are currently reading
1005 people want to read
About the author
Russ Kick
40 books98 followersEditor of the website The Memory Hole which publishes and archives hidden US government documents, including scientific studies and reports, civil rights-related reports, intelligence and covert action reports.
He was also editor-at-large for The Disinformation Company, where he had published several books including The Book of Lists and 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know.
He was also editor-at-large for The Disinformation Company, where he had published several books including The Book of Lists and 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 66 reviews
February 2, 2009
This book is a wet dream for people who enjoy a good conspiracy theory. 100 interesting facts are given that will make those who already distrust the government shake their heads and say, "I knew it. I knew they were up to something." Those who lack that level of distrust in the government will find their eyes opened to the level of corruption in the government and in numerous other areas. Of course, some people will shake their heads in disgust at the author for making up such filthy lies and publishing it.
September 8, 2018
Fun :)
Q:
It's no big secret that the Central Intelligence Agency breaks the law. But just how often its does so is a shocker. A Congressional report reveals that the CIA's spooks “engage in highly illegal activities” at least 100,000 times each year (which breaks down to hundreds of crimes every day). Mind you, we aren't talking about run-of-the-mill illegal activities — these are “highly illegal activities” that “break extremely serious laws.”
In 1996, the House of Representatives' Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a huge report entitled “IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century.” Buried amid hundreds of pages is a single, devastating paragraph:The CS [clandestine service] is the only part of the IC [intelligence community], indeed of the government, where hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in countries around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated efforts by foreign governments to catch them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day (easily 100,000 times a year) DO [Directorate of Operations] officers engage in highly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk political embarrassment to the US but also endanger the freedom if not lives of the participating foreign nationals and, more than occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself.
Amazingly, there is no explanation, no follow-up. The report simply drops this bombshell and moves on as blithely as if it had just printed a grocery list.
One of the world's foremost experts on the CIA — John Kelly, who uncovered this revelation — notes that this is “the first official admission and definition of CIA covert operations as crimes.” He goes on to say:The report suggested that the CIA's crimes include murder and that “the targets of the CS [Clandestine Service] are increasingly international and transnational and a global presence is increasingly crucial to attack those targets.” In other words, we are not talking about simply stealing secrets. We are talking about the CIA committing crimes against humanity with de facto impunity and congressional sanctioning. (c)
Q:
One of the strangest things the media do is to bury huge revelations deep in the bowels of a larger story. (c)
Q:
In the year after 9/11 — from September 30, 2001, to that date the following year — the Justice Department maintained that 288 terrorists had been convicted in the US of their heinous crimes. But the GAO found that at least 132 of these cases (approximately 42 percent) had nothing to do with terrorism. Because of the GAO's methodology, it didn't verify every one of the remaining 156 convictions, so it refers to their accuracy as “questionable.” (c)
Q:
Carl Sagan was among the scientists lending his intellectual muscle to this hare-brained scheme. (c)
Q:
One highway patrolmen fired warning shots into the air, and all hell broke loose as the assembled police opened fire on the unarmed crowd. … South Carolina's Governor praised the police for their handling on the situation, giving all of them promotions. (c)
Q:
IBM equipment was on-site at the Auschwitz concentration camp. (c)
Q:
Now let's turn our attention to the last member of our trifecta of defective tests — the polygraph, more commonly referred to as the lie detector. Invented by the same person who created Wonder Woman and her golden lasso that makes you tell the truth (I'm not kidding), the polygraph is said to detect deception based on subtle bodily signals, such as pulse rate and sweatiness. Its proponents like to claim that it has a success rate of 90 percent or more. This is pure hogwash. (c)
Q:
Davidson says of Sagan:
He believed the drug enhanced his creativity and insights. His closest friend of three decades, Harvard psychiatry professor Dr. Lester Grinspoon, a leading advocate of the decriminalization of marijuana, recalls an incident in the 1980s when one of his California admirers mailed him, unsolicited, some unusually high-quality pot. Grinspoon shared the joints with Sagan and his wife, Anne Druyan. Afterward, Sagan said, “Lester, I know you've only got one left, but could I have it? I've got serious work to do tomorrow and I could really use it.” (c)
Q:
In an essay that earned her death threats, Abenaki storyteller and historical consultant Marge Bruchac wrote:Any word can hurt when used as a weapon. Banning the word will not erase the past, and will only give the oppressors power to define our language. What words will be next? Pappoose? Sachem? Pow Wow? If we accept the slander, and internalize the insult, we discredit our female ancestors who felt no shame at hearing the word spoken. To ban indigenous words discriminates against Native people and their languages. Are we to be condemned to speaking only the “King's English?” What about all the words from other Native American languages?....When I hear it [“squaw”] spoken by Native peoples, in its proper context, I hear the voices of the ancestors. I am reminded of powerful grandmothers who nurtured our people and fed the strangers, of proud women chiefs who stood up against them, and of mothers and daughters and sisters who still stand here today. (c)
Q:
“Dora” was a depressed and “hysterical” seventeen-year-old (not eighteen, as Freud claimed) who reluctantly came to Sigmund because of problems involving friends of the family, Mr. and Mrs. K. Dora was upset because 1) Mr. K. obviously wanted a piece of her and had even made passes at her when she was thirteen and sixteen, and 2) she rightly believed that her father and Mrs. K. were getting it on. The good doctor immediately sussed what was really happening: Not only was Dora in love with Mr. K., she also wanted to give her father a blowjob and hop into the sack with Mrs. K. Not surprisingly, Dora thought this was a load of crap and abruptly quit seeing Freud after eleven weeks. (с)
Q:
The federal government has created a database that will eventually contain every child pornography image ever created, from those in old Danish magazines to digital photos put online to private pictures seized from busted pervs. … But putting all of this radioactively illegal, far-flung, extremely hard-to-obtain material into one place protected by just a password raises a whole raft of tough questions. Precisely who at each of these agencies will have access to this cornucopia of kiddie porn? How closely will access be monitored? How tight is the system's security? How often will passwords be changed? What happens if hackers compromise it? What are the implications of allowing a private organization to have access? What kind of oversight will there be? Public oversight has been nil, and by the time Congress was informed by the GAO, the database had already been a fait accompli for nine months. (c)
Q:
Who would've thought, as a 2003 study found, that fish in Texas would have Prozac in their brains and livers? (c)
Q:
It's no big secret that the Central Intelligence Agency breaks the law. But just how often its does so is a shocker. A Congressional report reveals that the CIA's spooks “engage in highly illegal activities” at least 100,000 times each year (which breaks down to hundreds of crimes every day). Mind you, we aren't talking about run-of-the-mill illegal activities — these are “highly illegal activities” that “break extremely serious laws.”
In 1996, the House of Representatives' Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a huge report entitled “IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century.” Buried amid hundreds of pages is a single, devastating paragraph:The CS [clandestine service] is the only part of the IC [intelligence community], indeed of the government, where hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in countries around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated efforts by foreign governments to catch them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day (easily 100,000 times a year) DO [Directorate of Operations] officers engage in highly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk political embarrassment to the US but also endanger the freedom if not lives of the participating foreign nationals and, more than occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself.
Amazingly, there is no explanation, no follow-up. The report simply drops this bombshell and moves on as blithely as if it had just printed a grocery list.
One of the world's foremost experts on the CIA — John Kelly, who uncovered this revelation — notes that this is “the first official admission and definition of CIA covert operations as crimes.” He goes on to say:The report suggested that the CIA's crimes include murder and that “the targets of the CS [Clandestine Service] are increasingly international and transnational and a global presence is increasingly crucial to attack those targets.” In other words, we are not talking about simply stealing secrets. We are talking about the CIA committing crimes against humanity with de facto impunity and congressional sanctioning. (c)
Q:
One of the strangest things the media do is to bury huge revelations deep in the bowels of a larger story. (c)
Q:
In the year after 9/11 — from September 30, 2001, to that date the following year — the Justice Department maintained that 288 terrorists had been convicted in the US of their heinous crimes. But the GAO found that at least 132 of these cases (approximately 42 percent) had nothing to do with terrorism. Because of the GAO's methodology, it didn't verify every one of the remaining 156 convictions, so it refers to their accuracy as “questionable.” (c)
Q:
Carl Sagan was among the scientists lending his intellectual muscle to this hare-brained scheme. (c)
Q:
One highway patrolmen fired warning shots into the air, and all hell broke loose as the assembled police opened fire on the unarmed crowd. … South Carolina's Governor praised the police for their handling on the situation, giving all of them promotions. (c)
Q:
IBM equipment was on-site at the Auschwitz concentration camp. (c)
Q:
Now let's turn our attention to the last member of our trifecta of defective tests — the polygraph, more commonly referred to as the lie detector. Invented by the same person who created Wonder Woman and her golden lasso that makes you tell the truth (I'm not kidding), the polygraph is said to detect deception based on subtle bodily signals, such as pulse rate and sweatiness. Its proponents like to claim that it has a success rate of 90 percent or more. This is pure hogwash. (c)
Q:
Davidson says of Sagan:
He believed the drug enhanced his creativity and insights. His closest friend of three decades, Harvard psychiatry professor Dr. Lester Grinspoon, a leading advocate of the decriminalization of marijuana, recalls an incident in the 1980s when one of his California admirers mailed him, unsolicited, some unusually high-quality pot. Grinspoon shared the joints with Sagan and his wife, Anne Druyan. Afterward, Sagan said, “Lester, I know you've only got one left, but could I have it? I've got serious work to do tomorrow and I could really use it.” (c)
Q:
In an essay that earned her death threats, Abenaki storyteller and historical consultant Marge Bruchac wrote:Any word can hurt when used as a weapon. Banning the word will not erase the past, and will only give the oppressors power to define our language. What words will be next? Pappoose? Sachem? Pow Wow? If we accept the slander, and internalize the insult, we discredit our female ancestors who felt no shame at hearing the word spoken. To ban indigenous words discriminates against Native people and their languages. Are we to be condemned to speaking only the “King's English?” What about all the words from other Native American languages?....When I hear it [“squaw”] spoken by Native peoples, in its proper context, I hear the voices of the ancestors. I am reminded of powerful grandmothers who nurtured our people and fed the strangers, of proud women chiefs who stood up against them, and of mothers and daughters and sisters who still stand here today. (c)
Q:
“Dora” was a depressed and “hysterical” seventeen-year-old (not eighteen, as Freud claimed) who reluctantly came to Sigmund because of problems involving friends of the family, Mr. and Mrs. K. Dora was upset because 1) Mr. K. obviously wanted a piece of her and had even made passes at her when she was thirteen and sixteen, and 2) she rightly believed that her father and Mrs. K. were getting it on. The good doctor immediately sussed what was really happening: Not only was Dora in love with Mr. K., she also wanted to give her father a blowjob and hop into the sack with Mrs. K. Not surprisingly, Dora thought this was a load of crap and abruptly quit seeing Freud after eleven weeks. (с)
Q:
The federal government has created a database that will eventually contain every child pornography image ever created, from those in old Danish magazines to digital photos put online to private pictures seized from busted pervs. … But putting all of this radioactively illegal, far-flung, extremely hard-to-obtain material into one place protected by just a password raises a whole raft of tough questions. Precisely who at each of these agencies will have access to this cornucopia of kiddie porn? How closely will access be monitored? How tight is the system's security? How often will passwords be changed? What happens if hackers compromise it? What are the implications of allowing a private organization to have access? What kind of oversight will there be? Public oversight has been nil, and by the time Congress was informed by the GAO, the database had already been a fait accompli for nine months. (c)
Q:
Who would've thought, as a 2003 study found, that fish in Texas would have Prozac in their brains and livers? (c)
September 17, 2008
About 20 were no brainers, or mostly suspected. The other 80 were genuinely interesting factoids, mostly of the creepy/"what's the world come to" sort. Certainly worth picking up and reading, it's a quick way to learn stuff you didn't know and really should. Disappointing the the bibliography in it is so limited, so it's not much of a launching pad for more research.
June 28, 2016
A must read for everyone. I am now properly angry, disgusted, sad, horrified, sickened, irate, etc, etc.
One thing I would have liked is if Kick would have cited his sources for each "number" there is are references in the back, but it would have been easier to follow up and check facts with citations.
One thing I would have liked is if Kick would have cited his sources for each "number" there is are references in the back, but it would have been easier to follow up and check facts with citations.
November 20, 2011
Russ Kick has an axe to grind and is evident throughout this VERY EASY read. Some of the 100 anecdotes offered here have been common knowledge for some time and are not "revolutionary" in their revelation. There are a few nuggets that gave me a wee bit of a pause but as an educator, a scientist and an eternal skeptic I found the lack of evidence or single case studies to be less than overwhelming. Run read, great for party trivia and takes maybe an hour, tops to finish. Don't pay full price, borrow from a friend or go to your recycled books store. The latter is where my copy will end up.
February 7, 2017
I guess the writing style was a little too fake hip for my style, but there was some good and interesting information in this little book. Should disturb many.
October 12, 2010
This....was a downer. A small coffee table book about how everything SUCKS! Government is corrupt, corporations are greedy, and organized religion is....organized religion.
I recommend each "chapter" be read at random times, and not continuously like most people read novels. THIS WILL BUM YOU OUT!
I recommend each "chapter" be read at random times, and not continuously like most people read novels. THIS WILL BUM YOU OUT!
July 30, 2011
Conspiracy theorists unite! This text is for you. With such earth shattering revelations as, "The government lies to its citizens" to "Shakespeare's works are loaded with sexual jokes and terms" this is the non-thinker's Bible. Despite that, it was amusing to discover that the settlers of the US of freakin' A practiced cannibalism to stay alive their first New England winter (and present New Englandahs should follah suit to get rid of the plethora[r] of ignorant dwellahs who still creep and cling in da same region), and that "Electric cars have been around since the 1880s." This is a collection of nuggets of facts--surprisingly with an index in the back of the book for more research by curious individuals (hurrah for validating these bon mots) for the reading impaired. Don't fret, when the author gets close to interesting research he remembers his specific intended audience and inserts friendly conversational gems like "Barbie's similarity to her slutty forerunner didn't go unnoticed" and "Preventing cig litter isn't high up on the tobacco industry's list of priorities, though."
July 20, 2021
I bought this when it was first released by DISINFORMATION right after September 11. It was a big coffee table book of short essays that are a captivating indictment of all of the worst aspects of our civilization that is best that we are not aware of. I had read it back then, although I am unaware of where the book ended up. I bought this recently when it was on sale for Amazon Kindle, and didn’t realize it was rebranded until I was four or five essays in and realizing I had read it before. Different cover, the Disinformation stuff is all but eliminated (save the small logo-icon at the end of essays), but it is no less interesting to read over. It is a book of small essays that can be read quickly in one sitting, and overall perfect for a coffee table or bathroom read that takes a second but will grab your attention hard and fast. Fun, wild stuff, I only wish after learning that it was the book I had bought all those years ago that it was updated at some point with some supplemental info that has come about in the last twenty years.
November 26, 2016
I spotted this book while waiting in line at my local B & N. It seemed interesting and was on sale for next to nothing. This was one of those cases where an impulse book buy actually worked out for me. As I read it, I couldn't help but think of these guys:
It just seemed like information straight from their newspaper. Some of the facts are disgusting. Almost all are infuriating. The author's biases are occasionally apparent through his use of sarcasm, but that didn't take away from the book too much. I was looking for a replacement for that horrid FSM book I bought as a gift, and I think I've found it.
It just seemed like information straight from their newspaper. Some of the facts are disgusting. Almost all are infuriating. The author's biases are occasionally apparent through his use of sarcasm, but that didn't take away from the book too much. I was looking for a replacement for that horrid FSM book I bought as a gift, and I think I've found it.
December 5, 2018
It's not so much what "we're not supposed to know", but just a few fun facts. Some widely known, some dubious, some random, some small time, some gossip-like, and only a few that seemed worthwhile. I'm not sure, how exactly the author picked them or what kind of logic was used, but these are definitely not life-changing knowledge. Also, I would not recommend the book to a non-US reader.
August 1, 2009
This was a great read! I recommend putting this one on your coffee table. The only downside is that it's 2009 and this book hasn't been edited since 2004, so some of the scientific facts and government policies have been updated more recently. Nevertheless, I definitely recommend it.
January 15, 2015
Man and I thought I was paranoid before lol! This is great for anyone who likes trivia and thinks there is a lot more going on than the government and media want you to know. There are a handful of facts that are a little pointless and something I considered well known but overall a fun quick read
July 2, 2008
A very enlightening read. Some things the book lists are absolutely shocking. It gives very short accounts of facts that will certainly interest you further and cause you to look into deeper.
August 1, 2018
This was a better book than I thought it would be. Much of the information I had heard before, but the author digs into some nice detail. He lists his references in the back of the book. The book is not a stroll through a stack of conspiracy theories, it is a retelling of some rather shocking things that have been happening around us for years. Strangely the author starts and finished on two stories concerning the Bible, and he is oddly incorrect in his accounts in both stories. That took a bit off the shine of his work a bit for me.
December 7, 2019
So there's an uneven quality to the book - sometimes the author is trying so hard to be irreverent that the "truths" he tells has a stretchy "I'm going to have to fact check him" feel to them. Other times he's just telling us things that 20 years after the book was published are simply mainstream truths, like the CIA is a criminal organization, we were lied to in order to get to war in Iraq, the air quality in Manhattan 9/11 was catastrophically bad, etc. It's a fun little read that can casually be gone through in a couple long afternoons.
November 26, 2018
Written in 2004, this felt outdated.
I also think what the author chose to cover was largely uninteresting, but there were some subjects that engaged me.
I guess I can’t really say anything particularly stood out about this informational book, except the parts about animal cruelty (in which I do agree with his views and I’m glad he sheds light on it.)
I also think what the author chose to cover was largely uninteresting, but there were some subjects that engaged me.
I guess I can’t really say anything particularly stood out about this informational book, except the parts about animal cruelty (in which I do agree with his views and I’m glad he sheds light on it.)
March 2, 2022
This book made me grateful I don't live in the United states. A more accurate title would be "100 things you're not supposed to know about the US". Only a handful of topics were broadly global and therefore interesting to me. I didn't enjoy the author's writing style - his use of slang and profanity was off-putting.
June 4, 2022
While dealing with family health emergencies like Thomas in the hospital and just starting dialysis, this book was in my LFL and it was a welcome yet unusual distraction. Filled with many facts and conspiracies that are quite shocking! A great read to help get your mind off the hard things and life and would be great to read when you have small moments of free time. I recommend this book.
January 11, 2021
A very mixed bag of factoids. Some quite interesting and amusing, some disturbing, some just so-so. I'm glad I read through it - though it's a very superficial look at these "things" with little appreciation of reasons why such information is not widely talked about in most cases.
February 22, 2021
This is one of those books where reading the title of each "chapter" fills you in more than reading the entries. Some were fascinating other entries where more like common sense/knowledge. Glad I borrowed the book rather than paid for it.
June 30, 2022
Some interesting things in there but some misinformation there too. Like a reference to "...the radioactive stuff you drink so that xray / ct pictures can be taken. Not radioactive but radio-opaque. As Twain said to not believe everything you hear and only have what you read.
July 24, 2025
It taught me tons of factoids that are fun to throw at unsuspecting people. The information is presented in an easy-to-read, darkly humorous fashion. Definitely the kind of book that you pass around to others in order to share the wealth.
May 29, 2017
Some interesting facts
December 3, 2017
Tended to get whiny and preachy about those 100 things.
March 28, 2018
Interesting read. Great introduction into conspiracy theories and makes for fun and friendly discussion topics.
January 16, 2019
Lots of fun learning random "forbidden" information.
October 17, 2019
Good stuff here! Some Real Doosies. Quick and to the point, enough info given that you can talk about the topics, and the juicy ones you can research more later.
July 22, 2022
Got this on a flash ebook sale, the tin foil hat stuff outweighs the remainder of the book. Ended up leafing through this one.
April 30, 2023
Lots of random, sometimes surprising, facts all packed into this small book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 66 reviews