
Custodians of Wonder
Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive
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Narrated by:
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Danny Hughes
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By:
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Eliot Stein
About this listen
Eliot Stein has traveled the globe in search of remarkable people who are preserving some of our most extraordinary cultural rites. In Custodians of Wonder, Stein introduces listeners to a man saving the secret ingredient in Japan's 700-year-old original soy sauce recipe. In Italy, he learns how to make the world's rarest pasta from one of the only women alive who knows how to make it. And in India, he discovers a family rumored to make a mysterious metal mirror believed to reveal your truest self. From shadowing Scandinavia's last night watchman to meeting a 27th-generation West African griot to tracking down Cuba's last official cigar factory "readers" more than a century after they spearheaded the fight for Cuban independence, Stein uncovers an almost lost world.
Climbing through Peru's southern highlands, he encounters the last Inca bridge master who rebuilds a grass-woven bridge every year. He befriends a British beekeeper who maintains a touching custom of "telling the bees" important news. And he crunches through a German forest to find the official mailman of the only tree in the world with its own address—to which people from across the world have written in hopes of finding love. These are just some of the last custodians preserving age-old rites on the brink of disappearance against all odds. Let Eliot Stein introduce you to all of them.
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Hagitude best attitude
- By LisaBrashear on 11-13-22
By: Sharon Blackie
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When We Were Real
- By: Daryl Gregory
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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JP and Dulin have been the best of friends for decades. When JP finds out his cancer has aggressively returned, Dulin decides it’s the perfect time for one last adventure: a week-long bus tour of North America’s Impossibles, the physics-defying glitches and geographic miracles that started cropping up seven years earlier—right after the Announcement that revealed our world to be merely a digital simulacrum. The outing, courtesy of Canterbury Trails Tours, promises the trip of a (not completely real) lifetime in a (not completely deluxe) coach.
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Wish the characters were more likable
- By Ulrika on 06-16-25
By: Daryl Gregory
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Cabin
- Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman
- By: Patrick Hutchison
- Narrated by: Patrick Hutchison
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Wit’s End isn’t just a state of mind. It’s the name of a gravel road, the address of a rundown, off-the-grid cabin, 120 shabby square feet of fixer-upper Patrick Hutchison purchased on a whim in the mossy woods of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. To say Hutchison didn’t know what he was getting into is no more an exaggeration than to say he’s a man with nearly zero carpentry skills. Well, used to be. You can learn a lot over six years of renovations. CABIN is the story of those renovations, but it's also a love story; of a place, of possibilities, and of the process of construction.
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Enjoyable read. no see, some F-bombs Great experience
- By Richelle's Music on 04-23-25
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One Good Thing
- A Novel
- By: Georgia Hunter
- Narrated by: Eva Feiler, Georgia Hunter
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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1940, Italy. Lili and Esti have been best friends since they first met at university. When Esti’s son Theo is born, they become as close as sisters. While a war seethes across borders, life somehow goes on—until Germany invades Italy, and the friends suddenly find themselves in occupied territory. Esti, older and fiercely self-assured, convinces Lili to join the resistance efforts. But when disaster strikes, a critically wounded Esti asks Lili to take a much bigger step: To go on the run with Theo. Protect him while Esti can’t.
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I loved it
- By helene vanderhoff on 04-28-25
By: Georgia Hunter
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The Pilgrimage
- By: Paulo Coelho
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Step inside this captivating account of Paulo Coehlo's pilgrimage along the road to Santiago. This fascinating parable explores the need to find one's own path. In the end, we discover that the extraordinary is always found in the ordinary and simple ways of everyday people. Part adventure story, part guide to self-discovery, this compelling tale delivers the perfect combination of enchantment and insight.
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Excellent, Favorite Coelho Book So Far!
- By PNW Prime on 01-14-15
By: Paulo Coelho
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Jane Austen's Bookshelf
- A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend
- By: Rebecca Romney
- Narrated by: Rebecca Romney
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that Austen’s books took the lives of women seriously, explored relationships with wit and confidence, and always, allowed for the possibility of a happy ending. She read and reread them, often wishing Austen wrote just one more. But Austen wasn’t a lone genius. She wrote at a time of great experimentation for women writers—and clues about those women, and the exceptional books they wrote, are sprinkled like breadcrumbs throughout Austen’s work.
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Fascinating!
- By pjb on 05-31-25
By: Rebecca Romney
What stood out the most to me were things I didn't realize and take for granted.
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Awonderful uplifting book!
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The book itself is excellent, but I couldn't make it through the first chapter of the narrator. The narrator reads as though he is reading a particular distasteful essay. The pronunciation and flow is unnatural and stilted. The way you might read a legal document you didn't fully understand, or participate in a diction exercise.
I've honestly never dropped an audiobook before JUST because of the narrator. This is the first.
It's a shame. Stein's engaging stories deserve better. I'll pickup the ebook and finish it that way.
Fascinating Book. Awful Narration.
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