Blueprint
The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
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Narrated by:
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Nicholas A. Christakis
About this listen
Drawing on advances in social science, evolutionary biology, genetics, neuroscience, and network science, Blueprint shows how and why evolution has placed us on a humane path - and how we are united by our common humanity.
For too long, scientists have focused on the dark side of our biological heritage: our capacity for aggression, cruelty, prejudice, and self-interest. But natural selection has given us a suite of beneficial social features, including our capacity for love, friendship, cooperation, and learning. Beneath all our inventions - our tools, farms, machines, cities, nations - we carry with us innate proclivities to make a good society.
In Blueprint, Nicholas A. Christakis introduces the compelling idea that our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors, but also the ways in which we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide. With many vivid examples - including diverse historical and contemporary cultures, communities formed in the wake of shipwrecks, commune dwellers seeking utopia, online groups thrown together by design or involving artificially intelligent bots, and even the tender and complex social arrangements of elephants and dolphins that so resemble our own - Christakis shows that, despite a human history replete with violence, we cannot escape our social blueprint for goodness.
In a world of increasing political and economic polarization, it's tempting to ignore the positive role of our evolutionary past. But by exploring the ancient roots of goodness in civilization, Blueprint shows that our genes have shaped societies for our welfare and that, in a feedback loop stretching back many thousands of years, societies have shaped, and are still shaping, our genes today.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Nicholas A. Christakis (P)2019 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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A Trivial Version of Haidt's "The Righteous Mind"
- By Curt Doolittle on 10-29-13
By: Avi Tuschman
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The Bond
- Connecting Through the Space Between Us
- By: Lynne McTaggart
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling author of The Intention Experiment and The Field comes a groundbreaking new work---a book that uses the interconnectedness of mind and matter to demonstrate that the key to life is in the relationship between things. We are always connected with others, hardwired at our most elemental level---from the quantum level to the cellular, from personal relationships to business and societal structures.
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Horrible narrator
- By Cotran on 09-19-11
By: Lynne McTaggart
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Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters
- By: Alan S. Miller, Satoshi Kanazawa
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Contrary to conventional wisdom, our brains and bodies are hardwired to carry out an evolutionary mission that determines much of what we do, from life plans to everyday decisions. With an accessible tone and a healthy disregard for political correctness, this lively and eminently readable book popularizes the latest research in a cutting-edge field of study: one that turns much of what we thought we knew about human nature upside-down.
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Not bad but didn't live up to the reviews
- By Ana Mohammed on 01-08-12
By: Alan S. Miller, and others
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The Human Swarm
- How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall
- By: Mark W. Moffett
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In this paradigm-shattering book, biologist Mark W. Moffett draws on findings in psychology, sociology, and anthropology to explain the social adaptations that bind societies. He explores how the tension between identity and anonymity defines how societies develop, function, and fail. Surpassing Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, The Human Swarm reveals how mankind created sprawling civilizations of unrivaled complexity - and what it will take to sustain them.
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Worthless
- By Richard on 11-24-19
By: Mark W. Moffett
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The Science of Good and Evil
- Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule
- By: Michael Shermer
- Length: 2 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
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In The Science of Good and Evil, psychologist and science historian Michael Shermer explores how humans evolved from social primates into moral primates, how and why morality motivates the human animal, and how the foundation of moral principles can be built upon empirical evidence. Along the way he explains the implications of scientific findings for fate and free will, the existence of pure good and pure evil, and the development of early moral sentiments among the first humans.
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Read by author
- By Gregory A. Townsend on 04-16-23
By: Michael Shermer
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Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life
- A Psychologist Investigates How Evolution, Cognition, and Complexity Are Revolutionizing Our View of Human Nature
- By: Douglas T. Kenrick
- Narrated by: Fred Stella
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Between what can be learned from evolutionary psychology and cognitive science a picture emerges. In Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life, social psychologist Douglas Kenrick fuses these two fields to create a coherent story of human nature. In his analysis, many ingrained, apparently irrational behaviors—one-night stands, prejudice, conspicuous consumption, even art and religious devotion—are quite explicable and (when desired) avoidable.
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Rather dated and self-aggrandizing
- By Laurie Frick on 07-21-11
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Cool
- How the Brain's Hidden Quest for Cool Drives Our Economy and Shapes Our World
- By: Steven Quartz, Anette Asp
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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In Cool, the neuroscientist and philosopher Steven Quartz and the political scientist Anette Asp bring together the latest findings in brain science, economics, and evolutionary biology to form a provocative theory of consumerism, revealing how the brain's "social calculator" and an instinct to rebel are the crucial missing links in understanding the motivations behind our spending habits.
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Some Useful Ideas
- By Carson on 07-20-17
By: Steven Quartz, and others
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Primates and Philosophers
- How Morality Evolved
- By: Frans de Waal
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality.In this provocative book, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that modern-day evolutionary biology takes far too dim a view of the natural world, emphasizing our "selfish" genes.
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Having Just Read...
- By Douglas on 12-14-13
By: Frans de Waal
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Big Gods
- How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict
- By: Ara Norenzayan
- Narrated by: Paul Nixon
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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How did human societies scale up from small, tight-knit groups of hunter-gatherers to the large, anonymous, cooperative societies of today - even though anonymity is the enemy of cooperation? How did organized religions with "Big Gods" - the great monotheistic and polytheistic faiths - spread to colonize most minds in the world? In Big Gods, Ara Norenzayan makes the surprising and provocative argument that these fundamental puzzles about the origins of civilization are one and the same, and answer each other.
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Great read
- By paro on 02-27-24
By: Ara Norenzayan
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Genesis
- The Deep Origin of Societies
- By: Edward O. Wilson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Hogan
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Asserting that religious creeds and philosophical questions can be reduced to purely genetic and evolutionary components, and that the human body and mind have a physical base obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry, Genesis demonstrates that the only way for us to fully understand human behavior is to study the evolutionary histories of nonhuman species. Of these, Wilson demonstrates that at least 17 - among them the African naked mole rat and the sponge-dwelling shrimp - have been found to have advanced societies based on altruism and cooperation.
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Simply awful
- By Mike A Klotz on 02-07-20
By: Edward O. Wilson
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Our Inner Ape
- A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are
- By: Frans de Waal
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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We have long attributed man's violent, aggressive, competitive nature to his animal ancestry. But what if we are just as given to cooperation, empathy, and morality by virtue of our genes? What if our behavior actually makes us apes? What kind of apes are we?
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I loved this book
- By Ruth on 06-22-07
By: Frans de Waal
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How Language Began
- The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention
- By: Daniel L. Everett
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Mankind has a distinct advantage over other terrestrial species: we talk to one another. But how did we acquire the most advanced form of communication on Earth? Daniel L. Everett, a "bombshell" linguist and "instant folk hero" (Tom Wolfe, Harper's), provides in this sweeping history a comprehensive examination of the evolutionary story of language, from the earliest speaking attempts by hominids to the more than 7,000 languages that exist today.
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Hard to endure
- By Michael D. Busch on 09-09-18
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This audiobook explains why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, Connected overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm - that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more. It will change the way we think about every aspect of our lives.
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Expected More
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good until Plomin inserted political opinions
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Apollo's Arrow
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Apollo's Arrow offers a riveting account of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic as it swept through American society in 2020, and of how the recovery will unfold in the coming years. Drawing on momentous (yet dimly remembered) historical epidemics, contemporary analyses, and cutting-edge research from a range of scientific disciplines, best-selling author, physician, sociologist, and public health expert Nicholas A. Christakis explores what it means to live in a time of plague.
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Intellectual dishonesty at its best
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Under the Influence
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Society embraces regulations that limit physical harm to others, as when smoking restrictions are defended as protecting bystanders from secondhand smoke. But we have been slower to endorse parallel steps that discourage harmful social environments, as when regulators fail to note that the far greater harm caused when someone becomes a smoker is to make others more likely to smoke. In Under the Influence, Robert Frank attributes this regulatory asymmetry to the laudable belief that individuals should accept responsibility for their own behavior.
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A book for all climate policy advocates
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Good Reasons for Bad Feelings
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A founder of the field of evolutionary medicine uses his decades of experience as a psychiatrist to provide a much-needed new framework for making sense of mental illness.
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A Very Good, if Imperfect, Book
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In Search of Memory
- The Emergence of a New Science of Mind
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- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
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A deft mixture of memoir and history, modern biology and behavior, In Search of Memory brings listeners from Kandel's childhood in Nazi-occupied Vienna to the forefront of one of the great scientific endeavors of the 20th century: the search for the biological basis of memory. Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel intertwines the intellectual history of the powerful new science of the mind - a combination of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and molecular biology - with his own personal quest to understand memory.
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Is a neural circuit like a red or green signal?
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This audiobook explains why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, Connected overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm - that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more. It will change the way we think about every aspect of our lives.
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Expected More
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By: Nicholas A. Christakis, and others
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Blueprint
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In Blueprint, behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin describes how the DNA revolution has made DNA personal by giving us the power to predict our psychological strengths and weaknesses from birth. A century of genetic research shows that DNA differences inherited from our parents are the consistent life-long sources of our psychological individuality - the blueprint that makes us who we are. This, says Plomin, is a game-changer. It calls for a radical rethinking of what makes us who were are.
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good until Plomin inserted political opinions
- By Daniel Lathen on 02-27-19
By: Robert Plomin
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Apollo's Arrow
- The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live
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Apollo's Arrow offers a riveting account of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic as it swept through American society in 2020, and of how the recovery will unfold in the coming years. Drawing on momentous (yet dimly remembered) historical epidemics, contemporary analyses, and cutting-edge research from a range of scientific disciplines, best-selling author, physician, sociologist, and public health expert Nicholas A. Christakis explores what it means to live in a time of plague.
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Intellectual dishonesty at its best
- By lisa barrett on 12-15-20
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Society embraces regulations that limit physical harm to others, as when smoking restrictions are defended as protecting bystanders from secondhand smoke. But we have been slower to endorse parallel steps that discourage harmful social environments, as when regulators fail to note that the far greater harm caused when someone becomes a smoker is to make others more likely to smoke. In Under the Influence, Robert Frank attributes this regulatory asymmetry to the laudable belief that individuals should accept responsibility for their own behavior.
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A book for all climate policy advocates
- By John E. McGarry on 07-12-20
By: Robert H. Frank
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Good Reasons for Bad Feelings
- Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
- By: Randolph M. Nesse MD
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
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A founder of the field of evolutionary medicine uses his decades of experience as a psychiatrist to provide a much-needed new framework for making sense of mental illness.
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A Very Good, if Imperfect, Book
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In Search of Memory
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Is a neural circuit like a red or green signal?
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A fascinating investigation of the origin of humans based on incredible new discoveries and advanced scientific technology.
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Wonderfully Accessible
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By the late 1970s, the fishermen of the Texas Gulf Coast were struggling. The bays that had sustained generations of shrimpers and crabbers before them were being poisoned by nearby petrochemical plants, oil spills, pesticides, and concrete. But as their nets came up light, the white shrimpers could only see one culprit: the small but growing number of newly resettled Vietnamese refugees who had recently started fishing. Turf was claimed. Guns were flashed. Threats were made.
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Very interesting
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The Canceling of the American Mind
- Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All—but There Is a Solution
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Cancel culture is a new phenomenon, and The Canceling of the American Mind is the first book to codify it and survey its effects, including hard data and research on what cancel culture is and how it works, along with hundreds of new examples showing the left and right both working to silence their enemies.
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Good book, Important information, poorly read
- By pj on 12-08-23
By: Greg Lukianoff, and others
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Against the Grain
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Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.
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World without Women
- By Paul Richards on 04-28-18
By: James C. Scott
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The Tyranny of Merit
- What's Become of the Common Good?
- By: Michael J. Sandel
- Narrated by: Michael J. Sandel
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The world-renowned philosopher and author of the best-selling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good? World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgment it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life.
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Enlightening
- By Robert McIntosh on 09-18-20
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The Ape That Understood the Universe
- How the Mind and Culture Evolve
- By: Steve Stewart-Williams
- Narrated by: Tom Lawrence
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The Ape That Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our child-rearing patterns, our moral codes, our religions, our languages, and science? The book tackles these issues by drawing on ideas from two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory.
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The Evolution of Desire
- By: David M. Buss
- Narrated by: Greg Tremblay
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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If we all want love, why is there so much conflict in our most cherished relationships? To answer this question we must look into our evolutionary past, argues prominent psychologist David M. Buss. Based one of the largest studies of human mating ever undertaken, encompassing more than 10,000 people of all ages from 37 cultures worldwide, The Evolution of Desire is the first work to present a unified theory of human mating behavior.
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Highly naive look on the nature of women
- By Xavier on 12-10-18
By: David M. Buss
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The WEIRDest People in the World
- How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
- By: Joseph Henrich
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- Unabridged
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In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church.
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Lots of mispronounced words
- By Phillip Falk on 10-24-20
By: Joseph Henrich
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The Big Picture
- On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
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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?
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ABSOLUTE MUST READ!
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The Better Angels of Our Nature
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Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.
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I'd kill for another book this good
- By Eric on 11-11-11
By: Steven Pinker
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The Rational Optimist
- How Prosperity Evolves
- By: Matt Ridley
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- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
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Personal
- By Robert F. Jones on 09-15-17
By: Matt Ridley
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The Age of Grievance
- By: Frank Bruni
- Narrated by: Frank Bruni
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The twists and turns of American politics are unpredictable, but the tone is a troubling given. It’s one of grievance. More and more Americans are convinced that they’re losing because somebody else is winning. More and more tally their slights, measure their misfortune, and assign particular people responsibility for it. The blame game has become the country’s most popular sport and victimhood its most fashionable garb.
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This book lacks intellectual depth in its narrative.
- By Tremayne on 05-23-24
By: Frank Bruni
What listeners say about Blueprint
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-06-19
Phenomenal and Enjoyable Book!
Blueprint is phenomenal, enjoyable, and a must-read for anyone interested in human nature. It's fun to read and accessible to anyone, whether layman or academic. With outstanding breadth and scope, Christakis combines works from evolutionary biology, anthropology, history, medicine, and more (including original research) to create a unified theory that bridges genetics and culture, while sending a strong positive message about our future as a society. The audio book, read by the author, is also excellent.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Domenick Zero
- 06-16-19
An optimist view of the human condition grounded in science
Christakis pulls together up to date knowledge of natural and social sciences without disparaging either into a very optimistic view of our future. This is something that I needed in face of what is going on around the world today. I do hope the social blueprint that he describes will right us before we destroy ourselves and our beautiful planet with us.
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15 people found this helpful
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- Margaret
- 10-02-19
This book contains very important information
The specifics of one's DNA profiles is the "What's your sign?" of this decade. The evolution of our shared cultural evolution is the really important topic. If you don't know why cultural evolution is so much more interesting than your personal SNPs, I recommend this book as a place to start.
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- Lahgda
- 12-23-19
Great read on human evolution and interactions
This audio book has great examples of evolution in general. The animal, human and technology samples brings this book to life. And after hearing this book it made me aware of our immediate evolution happening around us today with artificial intelligence and virtual realities and how they relate to human evolution and reality and what might our next evolution be (humans in a world with artificial intelligence). I recommend this book to anybody interested in evolution and how biological and environmental factors affect evolution in general.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-04-19
incitful listen
makes you reevaluate why you make the decisions you do. I highly suggest reading this book.
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- TW
- 09-14-19
well worth the time
Great presentation of behavioral
science concepts, thought provoking and really helps understand complex concepts. well worth the time
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- D. Lockwood
- 09-20-19
A welcome alternative view.
A nice contradiction to Desmond Morris's"The Naked Ape"
much more positive in both it's premises and conclusions. A worthwhile read.
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- Arturo Amador Cruz
- 10-23-20
A fascinating listen end-to-end
Super interesting and fascinating with a great narrator. The book never gets boring, you will struggle putting it down
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- gil benmoshe
- 06-27-20
fantastic, but does not deserve its title
This is a great book, but it is not a utopian manifesto by any means. I was disappointed to hear so little about how to design a better society, but very much enjoyed what it did have to say.
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- Alex
- 02-26-20
No other book has blown my mind as this one did
The best book I have listened in a while. Professor Christakis is a brilliant mind, he asks himself questions that many wouldn't. Blueprint, The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, is THE BOOK to read. Professor Christakis offers mind-blowing evidence about our evolutionary heritage and how it affects the way we build our societies. Moreover, it is a remainder for us to look one another with love, as all of us have embedded in our DNA "The Social Sweet".
Thanks for writing this and narrating it, Professor. You are a remarkable person.
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