Emily Adams
Research-backed card series. Every claim is a real study.
The Social Engineering Series
How people get steered without noticing, starting with the skill that protects you: understanding what you read.
Part 1: Why Literacy MattersWhat it costs when reading goes wrong in seven parts of ordinary life, with every number linked and its limits printed on the card.
Part 2: What Literacy MeansThe official definition, the six skills inside the word, a real example of each, and six questions to ask of anything you read.
Part 3: How Literacy Is MeasuredThe levels behind the headlines about adult literacy: how the test works, what each level means, where U.S. adults scored, and what the shorthand gets wrong.
Part 4: It Was Just a JokeThe first move: say it as a joke, see how it lands, then decide whether you meant it. The research, plus the administration’s own words, checked against official transcripts.
Part 5: It Feels TrueThe second move: repetition. Why a claim you have heard many times starts to feel like something you know, with the lab studies and current claims counted from official transcripts.
Part 6: That Is So MeThe third move: identity. How tying a claim, a product, or a position to who you are makes doubt feel like disloyalty, with the studies and the data behind every card.
Part 7: The DoseThe fourth move: escalation. One small step at a time, so each step makes the next one feel normal, in politics, at the store, and at home.
Part 8: Who Even Knows AnymoreThe fifth move: exhaustion. How a flood of claims, reversals, and fakes wears people down until they stop checking, and what to do about it.
Practice What You Read
Between the LinesA reading game. Read a current news article, answer twelve questions about it, and see your reading level on the same scale the international adult literacy test uses.Play nowMore Series
What Men Reported, AnonymouslyA 2026 anonymous survey of 2,689 young men on sexual coercion and force, with every number checked against the paper and its limits printed on the cards.
The Argument for MatriarchyWhat happened to male violence when female bonobos held power together. Fourteen cards, twenty-plus studies, real photographs.
Raising Good MenHow men behave under pressure, what the research says to do about it, and the Cornell case read through it. By a mother raising boys.