The Science category has 986 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 9,896 ratings. The most-rated is Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.

986 audiobooks
Cover art for The Reality Bubble

The Reality Bubble

91 ratings

Summary

Shortlisted for the 2020 RBC Taylor Prize

From one of the world's most engaging science journalists, a groundbreaking and wonder-filled look at the hidden things that shape our lives in unexpected and sometimes dangerous ways.

Our naked eyes see only a thin sliver of reality.

We are blind in comparison to the X-rays that peer through skin, the mass spectrometers that detect the dead inside the living, or the high-tech surveillance systems that see with artificial intelligence.

And we are blind compared to the animals that can see in infrared, or ultraviolet, or in 360-degree vision. These animals live in the same world we do, but they see something quite different when they look around.

With all of the curiosity and flair that drives her broadcasting, Ziya Tong illuminates this hidden world and takes us on a journey to examine 10 of humanity's biggest blind spots.

First, we are introduced to the blind spots we are all born with, to see how technology reveals an astonishing world that exists beyond our human senses. It is with these new ways of seeing that today's scientists can image everything from an atom to a black hole.

In section two, our collective blind spots are exposed. It's not that we can't see, Tong reminds us. It's that we don't. In the 21st century, there are cameras everywhere, except where our food comes from, where our energy comes from, and where our waste goes. Being in the dark when it comes to how we survive makes it impossible to navigate our future.

Lastly, the scope widens to our civilizational blind spots. Here, the blurred lens of history reveals how we inherit ways of thinking about the world that seem natural or inevitable but are in fact little more than traditions, ways of seeing the world that have come to harm it.

This vitally important new book shows how science, and the curiosity that drives it, can help civilization flourish by opening our eyes to the landscape laid out before us. Fast-paced, utterly fascinating, and deeply humane, The Reality Bubble gives voice to the sense we've all had - that there is more to the world than meets the eye.

©2019 Ziya Tong (P)2019 Allen Lane

Narrator: Ziya Tong
Author: Ziya Tong
Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Dirt to Soil

Dirt to Soil

90 ratings

Summary

Gabe Brown didn’t set out to change the world when he first started working alongside his father-in-law on the family farm in North Dakota. But as a series of weather-related crop disasters put Brown and his wife, Shelly, in desperate financial straits, they started making bold changes to their farm.  Brown - in an effort to simply survive - began experimenting with new practices he’d learned about from reading and talking with innovative researchers and ranchers. As he and his family struggled to keep the farm viable, they found themselves on an amazing journey into a new type of farming: regenerative agriculture. Brown dropped the use of most of the herbicides, insecticides, and synthetic fertilizers that are a standard part of conventional agriculture. He switched to no-till planting, started planting diverse cover crops mixes, and changed his grazing practices. In doing so, Brown transformed a degraded farm ecosystem into one full of life - starting with the soil and working his way up, one plant and one animal at a time.  In Dirt to Soil, Gabe Brown tells the story of that amazing journey and offers a wealth of innovative solutions to our most pressing and complex contemporary agricultural challenge - restoring the soil. The Brown’s Ranch model, developed over 20 years of experimentation and refinement, focuses on regenerating resources by continuously enhancing the living biology in the soil.  Using regenerative agricultural principles, Brown’s 5,000-acre ranch has grown several inches of new topsoil in only 20 years! The key is how we think, Brown says. In the industrial agricultural model, all thoughts are focused on killing things. But that mind-set was also killing diversity, soil, and profit, Brown realized. Now, he channels his creative thinking toward how he can get more life on the land - more plants, animals, and beneficial insects.  “The greatest roadblock to solving a problem,” Brown says, “is the human mind."

©2018 Gabe Brown (P)2018 Chelsea Green Publishing

Narrator: Gabe Brown
Author: Gabe Brown
Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Big Picture

The Big Picture

82 ratings

Summary

Does human purpose and meaning fit into a scientific worldview? Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void? In short chapters filled with intriguing historical anecdotes, personal asides, and rigorous exposition, listeners learn the difference between how the world works at the quantum level, the cosmic level, and the human level - and then how each connects to the other. Carroll's presentation of the principles that have guided the scientific revolution - from Darwin and Einstein to the origins of life, consciousness, and the universe - is dazzlingly unique. Carroll shows how an avalanche of discoveries in the past few hundred years has changed our world and what really matters to us. Our lives are dwarfed like never before by the immensity of space and time, but they are redeemed by our capacity to comprehend it and give it meaning. The Big Picture is an unprecedented scientific worldview, a tour de force that will be listened to alongside the works of Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett, and E. O. Wilson for years to come. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2016 Sean Carroll (P)2016 Penguin Audio

Narrator: Sean Carroll
Author: Sean Carroll
Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality

The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality

74 ratings

Summary

At the end of his career, Albert Einstein was pursuing a dream far more ambitious than the theory of relativity. He was trying to find an equation that explained all physical reality - a theory of everything. He failed, but others have taken up the challenge in a remarkable quest that is shedding light on unsuspected secrets of the cosmos. Experimental physicist and award-winning educator Dr. Don Lincoln of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory takes you on this exciting journey in The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality. Suitable for the intellectually curious at all levels and assuming no background beyond basic high-school math, these 24 half-hour lectures cover recent developments at the forefront of particle physics and cosmology, while delving into the history of the centuries-long search for this holy grail of science. You trace the dream of a theory of everything through Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, Feynman, Gell-Mann, Weinberg, and other great physicists, charting their progress toward an all-embracing, unifying theory. Their resulting equations are the masterpieces of physics, which Dr. Lincoln explains in fascinating and accessible detail. Studying them is like touring a museum of great works of art - works that are progressing toward an ultimate, as-yet-unfinished masterpiece. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2017 The Great Courses (P)2017 The Teaching Company, LLC

Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Internet of Money

The Internet of Money

70 ratings

Summary

While many books explain the how of bitcoin, The Internet of Money delves into the why of bitcoin. Acclaimed information-security expert and author of Mastering Bitcoin, Andreas M. Antonopoulos examines and contextualizes the significance of bitcoin through a series of essays spanning the exhilarating maturation of this technology. Bitcoin, a technological breakthrough quietly introduced to the world in 2008, is transforming much more than finance. Bitcoin is disrupting antiquated industries to bring financial independence to billions worldwide. In this book, Andreas explains why bitcoin is a financial and technological evolution with potential far exceeding the label "digital currency." Andreas goes beyond exploring the technical functioning of the bitcoin network by illuminating bitcoin's philosophical, social, and historical implications. As the Internet has essentially transformed how people around the world interact and has permanently impacted our lives in ways we never could have imagined, bitcoin - the Internet of money - is fundamentally changing our approach to solving social, political, and economic problems through decentralized technology.

©2016 Merkle Bloom LLC (P)2017 Merkle Bloom LLC

Length: 4 hrs and 9 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Our Mathematical Universe

Our Mathematical Universe

70 ratings

Summary

Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy, and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and groundbreaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories, but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist. Fascinating from first to last - this is a book that has already prompted the attention and admiration of some of the most prominent scientists and mathematicians. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2014 Max Tegmark (P)2013 Random House Audio

Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Until the End of Time

Until the End of Time

69 ratings

Summary

Instant New York Times Best Seller "A splendid and invigorating read." (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings) From the world-renowned physicist and best-selling author of The Elegant Universe comes a captivating exploration of deep time and humanity's search for purpose.  Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in the face of this vast expanse. Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal.  From particles to planets, consciousness to creativity, matter to meaning - Brian Greene allows us all to grasp and appreciate our fleeting but utterly exquisite moment in the cosmos.

©2020 Brian Greene (P)2020 Random House Audio

Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Stuff Matters

Stuff Matters

67 ratings

Summary

Why is glass see-through? What makes elastic stretchy? Why does a paper clip bend? These are the sorts of questions that Mark Miodownik is constantly asking himself. A globally renowned materials scientist, Miodownik has spent his life exploring objects as ordinary as an envelope and as unexpected as concrete cloth, uncovering the fascinating secrets that hold together our physical world. From the teacup to the jet engine, the silicon chip to the paper clip, the plastic in our appliances to the elastic in our underpants, our lives are overflowing with materials. Full of enthralling tales of the miracles of engineering that permeate our lives, Stuff Matters will make you see stuff in a whole new way.

©2014 Mark Miodownik (P)2014 Tantor

Narrator: Michael Page
Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Reality Is Not What It Seems

Reality Is Not What It Seems

62 ratings

Summary

From the New York Times best-selling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, a closer look at the mind-bending nature of the universe. What are time and space made of? Where does matter come from? And what exactly is reality? Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has spent his whole life exploring these questions and pushing the boundaries of what we know. Here he explains how our image of the world has changed over the last few dozen centuries. In elegant and accessible prose, Rovelli takes us on a wondrous journey from Aristotle to Albert Einstein, from Michael Faraday to the Higgs boson, and from classical physics to his own work in quantum gravity. As he shows us how the idea of reality has evolved over time, Rovelli offers listeners a deeper understanding of the theories he introduced so concisely in Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. His evocative explanations invite us to imagine, beyond our ever-changing idea of reality, a whole new world that has yet to be discovered.

©2017 Carlo Rovelli (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Available on Audible
Cover art for How To

How To

62 ratings

Summary

The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide, from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the number one New York Times best sellers What If? and Thing Explainer For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.  Best-selling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a '90s kid by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and powering your house by destroying the fabric of space-time. And if you want to get rid of a book once you're done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapor, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the earth's mantle, or launching it into the Sun. By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn't just make things difficult for himself and his listeners. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, Munroe invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.

©2019 Randall Munroe (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Narrator: Wil Wheaton
Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Life on Earth

Life on Earth

60 ratings

Summary

A new edition of David Attenborough’s groundbreaking Life on Earth. Winner of Best Non-Fiction Audiobook at the New York Radio Awards 2019.    Shortlisted for Best Audiobook at the Specsavers National Book Awards 2018.    Shortlisted for Futurebook of the Year at the Futurebook Awards 2018.   The nation’s greatest voice, David Attenborough, reads a brand-new edition of Life on Earth, now available as an audiobook for the first time. David Attenborough’s unforgettable meeting with gorillas became an iconic moment for millions of television viewers. Life on Earth, the series and accompanying book, fundamentally changed the way we view and interact with the natural world, setting a new benchmark of quality, influencing a generation of nature lovers. Told through an examination of animal and plant life, this is an astonishing celebration of the evolution of life on earth, with a cast of characters drawn from the whole range of organisms that have ever lived on this planet. Attenborough’s perceptive, dynamic approach to the evolution of millions of species of living organisms takes the reader on an unforgettable journey of discovery from the very first spark of life to the blue and green wonder we know today. Now, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the book’s first publication, David Attenborough has revisited Life on Earth, completely updating and adding to the original text, taking account of modern scientific discoveries from around the globe. This special anniversary edition provides a fitting tribute to an enduring wildlife classic, destined to enthral the generation who saw it when first published and bring it alive for a whole new generation. This audiobook includes wildlife sounds from BAFTA Award winning sound recordist, Chris Watson, who has worked extensively with David Attenborough on his BBC projects. A soundscape appears at the beginning of each chapter to provide a fully immersive experience of the habitat and some of the species described. A full list of the tracks, as they appear in the audiobook, is available below. Prologue - Acacia scrubland dawn chorus in the Masai Mara, Kenya, featuring White-browed Robin-chat.  Chapter One, The Infinite Variety - Tropical rain forest in Panama with the calls of Montezuma oropendola. Chapter Two, Building Bodies - Fish and crustaceans recorded underwater on a coral reef off Seligan island, Borneo. Chapter Three, The First Forests - Geysir and geothermal activity at Haukadalur hot springs in Iceland. This track also features the Strokkur geysir erupting.  Chapter Four, The Swarming Hordes - Evening insect chorus in the Conkouati forest reserve, Republic of Congo. Chapter Five, The Conquest of The Waters - Ocean currents through sea kelp recorded at a depth of 8m, Moray Firth, Scotland. Chapter Six, Invasion of The Land - Reed frog chorus at sunset, Amboseli National Park, Kenya. Chapter Seven, A Watertight Skin - Seawash around basking marine iguanas, Isla San Cristóbal, Galapagos. Chapter Eight, Lords of The Air - Springtime dawn chorus with nightingale, Hambleton wood, Rutland Water nature reserve, UK. Chapter Nine, Eggs, Pouches and Placentas - forest chorus along riverside platypus territory, Queensland, Australia. Chapter Ten, Theme and Variation - Common Pipistrelle bats echolocating after sunset, Holystone woodland, Northumberland. Chapter Eleven, The Hunters and The Hunted - Spotted hyena contact calls at midnight in the Masai Mara, Kenya. Chapter Twelve, A Life in The Trees - Black howler monkeys calling across the tree canopy at sunrise in Belize. Chapter Thirteen, The Compulsive Communicators - Street market, Ramnagar, Uttarakhand, Northern India. Epilogue - Beach habitat in mangroves with Great frigatebirds and red footed boobies, Isla Genovesa, Galapagos.

©2018 David Attenborough (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Gathering Moss

Gathering Moss

60 ratings

Summary

Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites listeners to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses.   Robin Wall Kimmerer's audiobook is not an identification guide, nor is it a scientific treatise. Rather, it is a series of linked personal essays that will lead general listeners and scientists alike to an understanding of how mosses live and how their lives are intertwined with the lives of countless other beings, from salmon and hummingbirds to redwoods and rednecks. Kimmerer clearly and artfully explains the biology of mosses, while at the same time reflecting on what these fascinating organisms have to teach us.   Drawing on her diverse experiences as a scientist, mother, teacher, and writer of Native American heritage, Kimmerer explains the stories of mosses in scientific terms as well as in the framework of indigenous ways of knowing. In her audiobook, the natural history and cultural relationships of mosses become a powerful metaphor for ways of living in the world.

©2003 Robin Wall Kimmerer (P)2018 Tantor

Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Greatest Story Ever Told - So Far

The Greatest Story Ever Told - So Far

59 ratings

Summary

From award-winning physicist, public intellectual, and the bestselling author of A Universe from Nothing Lawrence Krauss, comes “a masterful blend of history, modern physics, and cosmic perspective that empowers the reader to not only embrace our understanding of the universe, but also revel in what remains to be discovered” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, American Museum of Natural History). In this grand poetic vision of the universe, Lawrence Krauss tells the dramatic story of the discovery of the hidden world that underlies reality - and our place within it. Reality is not what you think or sense - it’s weird, wild, and counterintuitive, and its inner workings seem at least as implausible as the idea that something can come from nothing. With his trademark wit and accessible style, Krauss leads us to realms so small that they are invisible to microscopes, to the birth and rebirth of light, and into the natural forces that govern our existence. His unique blend of rigorous research and engaging storytelling invites us into the lives and minds of remarkable scientists who have helped unravel the unexpected fabric of reality with reasoning rather than superstition and dogma, and to explain how everything we see - and can’t see - came about. A passionate advocate for reason, Krauss gives the rationale for the seemingly irrational - and the mysteries and apparent contradictions of quantum physics, and explores what that means for our lives here on Earth - and beyond. At its core, The Greatest Story Ever Told - So Far is about the best of what it means to be human - an epic history of our ultimately purposeless universe that addresses the question, “Why are we here?”

©2017 Lawrence Krauss (P)2017 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved

Narrator: Lawrence Krauss
Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Coyote America

Coyote America

56 ratings

Summary

With its uncanny night howls, unrivaled ingenuity, and amazing resilience, the coyote is the stuff of legends. In Indian folktales it often appears as a deceptive trickster or a sly genius. But legends don't come close to capturing the incredible survival story of the coyote. As soon as Americans - especially white Americans - began ranching and herding in the West, they began working to destroy the coyote. Despite campaigns of annihilation employing poisons, gases, helicopters, and engineered epidemics, coyotes didn't just survive, they thrived, expanding across the continent from Anchorage, Alaska, to New York's Central Park. In the war between humans and coyotes, coyotes have won hands down. Coyote America is both an environmental and a deep natural history of the coyote. It traces both the five-million-year-long biological story of an animal that has become the "wolf" in our backyards and its cultural evolution from a preeminent spot in Native American religions to the hapless foil of the Road Runner. A deeply American tale, the story of the coyote in the American West and beyond is a sort of Manifest Destiny in reverse, with a pioneering hero whose career holds up an uncanny mirror to the successes and failures of American expansionism. An illuminating biography of this extraordinary animal, Coyote America isn't just the story of an animal's survival - it is one of the great epics of our time.

©2016 Dan Flores (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Author: Dan Flores
Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Tiger

The Tiger

53 ratings

Summary

It’s December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia’s Far East. The tiger isn’t just killing people, it’s annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren’t random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again. As he re-creates these extraordinary events, John Vaillant gives us an unforgettable portrait of this spectacularly beautiful and mysterious region. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers, even sharing their kills with them. We witness the arrival of Russian settlers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, soldiers and hunters who greatly diminished the tiger populations. And we come to know their descendants, who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching and further upset the natural balance of the region. This ancient, tenuous relationship between man and predator is at the very heart of this remarkable book. Throughout, we encounter surprising theories of how humans and tigers may have evolved to coexist, how we may have developed as scavengers rather than hunters, and how early Homo sapiens may have fit seamlessly into the tiger’s ecosystem. Above all, we come to understand the endangered Siberian tiger, a highly intelligent super-predator that can grow to 10 feet long, weigh more than 600 pounds, and range daily over vast territories of forest and mountain. Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger circles around three main characters: Vladimir Markov, a poacher killed by the tiger; Yuri Trush, the lead tracker; and the tiger himself. It is an absolutely gripping tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga.

©2010 John Vaillant (P)2010 Random House

Narrator: John Vaillant
Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries

The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries

49 ratings

Summary

Everything we now know about the universe - from the behavior of quarks to the birth of galaxies - has come from people who've been willing to ponder the unanswerable. And with the advent of modern science, great minds have turned to testing and experimentation rather than mere thought as a way of grappling with some of the universe's most vexing dilemmas. So what is our latest picture of some of the most inexplicable features of the universe? What still remains to be uncovered and explored by today's scientists? "We know a lot about the universe. But there's even more that we don't know," says astrophysicist and professor Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, an award-winning lecturer, and one of the world's foremost experts on the secrets of the universe. This course, which has been honored with a 2013 Telly Award for Outstanding Educational Program, features six self-contained lectures that transport you on a marvelous journey to the frontiers of the known (and unknown) universe and introduce you to tantalizing questions being addressed by the world's top scientists. Engaging and fascinating, this lecture series is a wonderful entrée to scientific pursuits that lie at the very heart of the history and nature of our universe. Disclaimer: Please note that this recording may include references to supplemental texts or print references that are not essential to the program and not supplied with your purchase.

©2012 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2012 The Great Courses

Length: 3 hrs and 1 min
Available on Audible
Cover art for A Universe from Nothing

A Universe from Nothing

49 ratings

Summary

Where did the universe come from? What was there before it? What will the future bring? And finally, why is there something rather than nothing? Krauss’ answers to these and other timeless questions, in a wildly popular lecture on YouTube, has attracted almost a million viewers. The last of these questions in particular has been at the center of religious and philosophical debates about the existence of God, and it’s the supposed counterargument to anyone who questions the need for God. Scientists have, however, historically focused on more pressing issues—such as figuring out how the universe actually functions, which could help us to improve our quality of life. In this cosmological story that rivets as it enlightens, pioneering theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss explains groundbreaking scientific advances that turn the most basic philosophical questions on their head. One of the few prominent scientists to have actively crossed the chasm between science and popular culture, Krauss reveals that modern science is indeed addressing the question of why there is something rather than nothing—with surprising and fascinating results. The beautiful experimental observations and mind-bending theories are all described accessibly, and they suggest that not only can something arise from nothing, something will always arise from nothing. With his characteristic wry humor and clear explanations, Krauss takes us back to the beginning of the beginning, presenting recent evidence for how our universe evolved—and the implications for how it will end. It will provoke, challenge, and delight listeners as it looks at the most basic underpinnings of existence in a whole new way. And this knowledge that our universe will be quite different in the future has profound consequences and directly affects how we live in the present. As Richard Dawkins described it, this could potentially be the most important scientific book with implications for supernaturalism since Darwin.

©2012 Lawrence M. Krauss (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for My Favorite Universe

My Favorite Universe

45 ratings

Summary

What forces molded the universe? Are those forces still at work, removing, changing, or adding heavenly bodies even as we gaze upward? Will humanity, and Earth itself, one day be gone? Are we alone? In an era when science journalism is perhaps more thorough and ambitious than ever before, fascinating explorations of questions like these seem available to us almost every day - provided we have a working understanding of the scientific theories on which they're based. Discover the answers to these and other startling questions about the cosmos with My Favorite Universe, a spirited and intellectually engaging journey through the cosmos and its history, from before the big bang to the likely ways in which Earth, and perhaps the entire universe, might end. In this lecture series, Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist who directs the nation's most famous planetarium, makes that understanding available to anyone. Explore how black holes are formed, how asteroids move through space, why the odds seem overwhelmingly in favor of extraterrestrial life, and much more. With the foundation provided by this magnificent course, the realities of the universe will be revealed in stark - and often violent - beauty. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2003 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2003 The Great Courses

Available on Audible
Cover art for Chaos

Chaos

45 ratings

Summary

James Gleick explains the theories behind the fascinating new science called chaos. Alongside relativity and quantum mechanics, it is being hailed as the 20th century's third revolution.

©1998 James Gleick (P)2011 Random House

Narrator: Rob Shapiro
Author: James Gleick
Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for I Contain Multitudes

I Contain Multitudes

44 ratings

Summary

Joining the ranks of popular science classics like The Botany of Desire and The Selfish Gene, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin - a "microbe's-eye view" of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on Earth. Every animal, whether human, squid, or wasp, is home to millions of bacteria and other microbes. Ed Yong, whose humor is as evident as his erudition, prompts us to look at ourselves and our animal companions in a new light - less as individuals and more as the interconnected, interdependent multitudes we assuredly are. The microbes in our bodies are part of our immune systems and protect us from disease. In the deep oceans, mysterious creatures without mouths or guts depend on microbes for all their energy. Bacteria provide squid with invisibility cloaks, help beetles to bring down forests, and allow worms to cause diseases that afflict millions of people. Many people think of microbes as germs to be eradicated, but those that live with us - the microbiome - build our bodies, protect our health, shape our identities, and grant us incredible abilities. In this astonishing book, Ed Yong takes us on a grand tour through our microbial partners and introduces us to the scientists on the front lines of discovery. It will change both our view of nature and our sense of where we belong in it.

©2016 Ed Yong (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

Narrator: Charlie Anson
Author: Ed Yong
Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
Available on Audible