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Blue
- In Search of Nature's Rarest Color
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
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Publisher's summary
A globe-trotting quest to find blue in the natural world - and to understand our collective obsession with this bewitching color
Blue is a rare color - natural blue, that is. From morpho butterflies in the rain forest to the blue jay flitting past your window, vanishingly few living things are blue - and most that appear so are doing sleight of hand with physics or complex chemistry. Flowers modify the red pigment anthocyanin to achieve their blue hue. Even the blue sky above us is a trick of the light.
Yet this hard-to-spot accent color in our surroundings looms large in our affections. Science journalist Kai Kupferschmidt has been fascinated by blue since childhood. His quest to find and understand his favorite color and its hallowed place in our culture takes him to a gene-splicing laboratory in Japan, a volcanic lake in Oregon, and to Brandenburg, Germany - home of the last Spix's macaws. From deep underground where blue minerals grow into crystals to miles away in space where satellites gaze down at our "blue marble" planet, wherever we do find blue, it always has a story to tell.
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In Arrival of the Fittest, renowned evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner draws on over 15 years of research to present the missing piece in Darwin's theory. Using experimental and computational technologies that were heretofore unimagined, he has found that adaptations are not just driven by chance, but by a set of laws that allow nature to discover new molecules and mechanisms in a fraction of the time that random variation would take.
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Robustness makes for an interesting life and book
- By Gary on 11-29-14
By: Andreas Wagner
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The Second Book of General Ignorance
- Everything You Think You Know Is (Still) Wrong
- By: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Just when you thought that it was safe to start showing off again, John Lloyd and John Mitchinson are back with another busload of mistakes and misunderstandings. Here is a new collection of simple, perfectly obvious questions you'll be quite certain you know the answers to. Whether it's history, science, sports, geography, literature, language, medicine, the classics, or common wisdom, you'll be astonished to discover that everything you thought you knew is still hopelessly wrong.
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It's all stuff from QI
- By Bonnie Kennedy on 04-07-21
By: John Lloyd, and others
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The Cosmic Serpent
- DNA and the Origins of Knowledge
- By: Jeremy Narby
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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This adventure in science and imagination, which the Medical Tribune said might herald "a Copernican revolution for the life sciences", leads the listener through unexplored jungles and uncharted aspects of mind to the heart of knowledge. In a first-person narrative of scientific discovery that opens new perspectives on biology, anthropology, and the limits of rationalism, The Cosmic Serpent reveals how startlingly different the world around us appears when we open our minds to it.
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Very Good Religious Text
- By Blair K. Hartman on 08-09-17
By: Jeremy Narby
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At the Edge of Uncertainty
- 11 Discoveries Taking Science by Surprise
- By: Michael Brooks
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The atom, the big bang, DNA, natural selection - all are ideas that have revolutionized science; and all were dismissed out of hand when they first appeared. The surprises haven't stopped in recent years, and in At the Edge of Uncertainty, best-selling author Michael Brooks investigates the new wave of radical insights that are shaping the future of scientific discovery.
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All smoke, no fire
- By Kenton on 07-25-15
By: Michael Brooks
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Creation
- How Science Is Reinventing Life Itself
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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What is life? Humans have been asking this question for thousands of years. But as technology has advanced and our understanding of biology has deepened, the answer has evolved. For decades, scientists have been exploring the limits of nature by modifying and manipulating DNA, cells, and whole organisms to create new ones that could never have previously existed on their own.
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The Goldilocks book on what is life
- By Gary on 07-11-13
By: Adam Rutherford
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The Human Cosmos
- Civilization and the Stars
- By: Jo Marchant
- Narrated by: Jo Marchant
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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For at least 20,000 years, we have led not just an earthly existence, but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are - our art, religious beliefs, social status, scientific advances, and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. It's a disconnect with a dire cost.
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This book has changed the way I think about my own mortality!
- By Jerry on 02-04-21
By: Jo Marchant
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The Science of Discworld
- A Novel
- By: Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen
- Narrated by: Michael Fenton Stevens, Stephen Briggs
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Not just another science audiobook and not just another Discworld novella, The Science of Discworld is a creative, mind-bending mash-up of fiction and fact, that offers a wizard’s-eye view of our world that will forever change how you look at the universe.
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Not the best Pratchett, but gets there in the end
- By Rachel on 07-30-14
By: Terry Pratchett, and others
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The Book of General Ignorance
- By: John Mitchinson, John Lloyd
- Narrated by: uncredited
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Abridged
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Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the heave-ho in this humorous, downright humiliating book of reeducation based on the phenomenal British best seller. Challenging what most of us assume to be verifiable truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature, and more, The Book of General Ignorance is a witty “gotcha” compendium of how little we actually know about anything. It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school.
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Interesting.
- By A. Hawkbird on 12-07-08
By: John Mitchinson, and others
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The Cabaret of Plants
- Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination
- By: Richard Mabey
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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A rich, sweeping, and compelling work of botanical history, The Cabaret of Plants explores dozens of plant species that for millennia have challenged our imaginations, awoken our wonder, and upturned our ideas about history, science, beauty, and belief. Going back to the beginnings of human history, Richard Mabey shows how flowers, trees, and plants have been central to human experience not just as sources of food and medicine but as objects of worship, actors in creation myths, and symbols of war and peace, life and death.
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Can't wait to listen to again!
- By hyacinthgirl on 12-27-16
By: Richard Mabey
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A Series of Fortunate Events
- Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You
- By: Sean B. Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean B. Carroll
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason, or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world.
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We are for a short time.
- By Anonymous User on 10-14-20
By: Sean B. Carroll
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The Disappearing Spoon
- And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
- By: Sam Kean
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Reporter Sam Kean reveals the periodic table as it’s never been seen before. Not only is it one of man's crowning scientific achievements, it's also a treasure trove of stories of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The infectious tales and astounding details in The Disappearing Spoon follow carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, the arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.
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Great Book, Great Narration, But...
- By Henny Button on 09-18-10
By: Sam Kean
What listeners say about Blue
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- EON
- 06-02-24
BLUE scintillating & saturating a fascinating deep dive way beyond a simple color.
The overarching story/history of blue, in particular, throughout the history of earth, let alone our common modern’ scientific & aesthetic humans other animals and plant perspective, was infatuating and enchanting! A new s.t.e.A.m., aesthetic/scientific way of looking back at our short time here.
Update - Noted & big respect and thanks for the healthy perspective from the previous reviewer Lissa, well said.
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- Doyle
- 09-03-22
excellent
the book made me look at the color blue in a whole different way. I will never look at the blue the same way ever again.
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- Lissa
- 07-05-23
Interesting info, BUT
Much interesting info about blue pigment, but the author’s cultural and gender arrogance detracted from the narrative and much enlightening information was overlooked, if it wasn’t Euro-centered
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1 person found this helpful