
Ends of the Earth
Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and Our Future
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Narrated by:
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Fred Berman
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By:
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Neil Shubin
About this listen
The bestselling author of Your Inner Fish takes listeners on an epic adventure to the North and South Poles to reveal the secrets locked in the ice about life, the cosmos, and our planet’s future.
“Urgent [and] prescient…The book captures Shubin’s reverence for both the beauty and the mysteries hidden in the cold, barren tundra.”—The New Yorker
Renowned scientist Neil Shubin has made extraordinary discoveries by leading scientific expeditions to the sweeping ice landscapes of the Arctic and Antarctic. He’s survived polar storms, traveled in temperatures that can freeze flesh in seconds, and worked hundreds of miles from the nearest humans, all to deepen our understanding of our world.
Written with infectious enthusiasm and irresistible curiosity, Ends of the Earth blends travel writing, science, and history in a book brimming with surprising and wonderful discoveries. Shubin retraces his steps on a “dinosaur dance floor,” showing us where these beasts had populated the once tropical lands at the poles. He takes listeners meteor hunting, as meteorites preserved in the ice can be older than our planet and can tell us about our galaxy’s formation. Listeners also encounter insects and fish that develop their own anti-freeze, and aquatic life in ancient lakes hidden miles under the ice that haven’t seen the surface in centuries. It turns out that explorers and scientists have found these extreme environments as prime ground for making scientific breakthroughs across a vast range of knowledge.
Shubin shares unforgettable moments from centuries of expeditions to reveal just how far scientists will go to understand polar regions. In the end, what happens at the poles does not stay in the poles—the ends of the earth offer profound stories that will forever change our view of life and the entire planet.
©2025 Neil Shubin (P)2025 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"In this comprehensive yet concise history of modern polar exploration, Shubin, a professor of evolutionary biology, mixes urgent scientific findings about glaciers and sea-level rise with prescient geopolitical histories of Arctic territorial disputes. Throughout, Shubin relates stories from his own field expeditions: a pilot lands a propeller plane in an icy valley; a crew member stumbles on kaleidoscopic hues of blue while spelunking in Antarctic crevasses; Shubin’s team discovers a field of dinosaur footprints that had been miraculously preserved under layers of ice. Such descriptions enliven the book, and capture Shubin’s reverence for both the beauty and the mysteries hidden in the cold, barren tundra."—The New Yorker
"Paleontologist Neil Shubin's Ends of the Earth offers readers a comprehensive overview of the geology, oceanography, glaciology, geopolitics, and climatology of the planet's polar regions: Antarctica and the Arctic. Shubin writes clearly and understandably about various complex topics, incorporating stories about his own fieldwork experiences in these places and arguing that polar science offers a "lens to see the natural world and the extraordinary ways we have come to know it.""—Science
"Shubin brings the polar world to life through a combination of travel and immersive science writing.... As Shubin demonstrates in Ends of the Earth, the stark polar regions present extreme challenges not only to humans, but to all living things. Yet, through adaptation, life finds a way."
—Undark Magazine
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Story
Led by physicist James Trefil and astrophysicist Shobita Satyapal, this book traverses the incredible history of black holes and introduces contemporary developments and theories on still unanswered questions about the enigmatic objects. From the early work of Albert Einstein and Karl Schwarzschild to an insider look at black hole-galaxy connection research led by co-author Satyapa, the comprehensive book surveys an exciting and evolving branch of space science.
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Technical, dry with some interesting bits
- By Chris Brooks on 03-12-25
By: James Trefil, and others
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Hope Dies Last
- Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future
- By: Alan Weisman
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Alan Weisman
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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A remedy to climate anxiety by one of the most important voices on humanity’s relationship with the Earth, Hope Dies Last fills a crucial gap in the global conversation: Having reached a point of no return in our climate confrontation, how do we feel, behave, act, plan, and dream as we approach a future decidedly different from what we had expected?
By: Alan Weisman
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Doctors by Nature
- How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves
- By: Jaap de Roode
- Narrated by: Anand Jagatia
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Ages before the dawn of modern medicine, wild animals were harnessing the power of nature's pharmacy to heal themselves. Doctors by Nature reveals what researchers are now learning about the medical wonders of the animal world. In this visionary book, Jaap de Roode argues that we have underestimated the healing potential of nature for too long and shows how the study of self-medicating animals could impact the practice of human medicine.
By: Jaap de Roode
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The Rise and Reign of the Mammals
- A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us
- By: Steve Brusatte
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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We humans are the inheritors of a dynasty that has reigned over the planet for nearly 66 million years, through fiery cataclysm and ice ages: the mammals. Our lineage includes saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, armadillos the size of a car, cave bears three times the weight of a grizzly, clever scurriers that outlasted Tyrannosaurus rex, and even other types of humans, like Neanderthals.
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Fantastic Book
- By Peter Jensen on 09-08-22
By: Steve Brusatte
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Land Power
- Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies
- By: Michael Albertus
- Narrated by: Braden Wright
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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For millennia, land has been a symbol of wealth and privilege. But the true power of land ownership is even greater than we might think. In Land Power, political scientist Michael Albertus shows that who owns the land determines whether a society will be equal or unequal, whether it will develop or decline, and whether it will safeguard or sacrifice its environment.
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Great stories of what countries are doing that we never hear about. This is led by working with the people. Excellent…..
- By Hal on 02-24-25
By: Michael Albertus
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The Last Dynasty
- Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra
- By: Toby Wilkinson
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Alexander the Great and Cleopatra may be two of the most famous figures from the ancient world, but the Egyptian era bookended by their lives—the Ptolemaic period (305-30 BC)—is little known. In The Last Dynasty, Toby Wilkinson unravels the incredible story of this turbulent era.
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Interesting history of an oft overlooked period
- By Tom on 05-07-25
By: Toby Wilkinson
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How to Read a Tree
- Clues and Patterns from Bark to Leaves
- By: Tristan Gooley
- Narrated by: Tristan Gooley
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Tristan Gooley helps listeners reconnect with nature by finding direction and searching for hidden clues in stars, clouds, water and more. Now, he turns his attention to perhaps nature’s most beloved feature – the stately, majestic tree. Every single tree tells us an epic story – if we know how to read it! Here you’ll discover hundreds of astonishing secrets hiding in plain sight among the living network of branches, trunks, roots, bark, leaves, buds, flowers, stumps and more.
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For nature lovers
- By Rochester, MN on 03-05-24
By: Tristan Gooley
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The Many Lives of Anne Frank
- By: Ruth Franklin
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In this innovative biography, Ruth Franklin explores the transformation of Anne Frank (1929–1945) from ordinary teenager to icon, shedding new light on the young woman whose diary of her years in hiding, now translated into more than seventy languages, is the most widely read work of literature to arise from the Holocaust. Comprehensively researched but experimental in spirit, this book chronicles and interprets Anne’s life as a Jew in Amsterdam during World War II while also telling the story of the diary—its multiple drafts, its discovery, its reception, and its message for today’s world.
By: Ruth Franklin
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Becoming Earth
- How Our Planet Came to Life
- By: Ferris Jabr
- Narrated by: Joe Ochman
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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One of humanity’s oldest beliefs is that our world is alive. Though once ridiculed by some scientists, the idea of Earth as a vast interconnected living system has gained acceptance in recent decades. We, and all living things, are more than inhabitants of Earth—we are Earth, an outgrowth of its structure and an engine of its evolution. Life and its environment have coevolved for billions of years, transforming a lump of orbiting rock into a cosmic oasis—a planet that breathes, metabolizes, and regulates its climate.
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Fascinating and well researched
- By Amazon Customer on 07-10-24
By: Ferris Jabr
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Paris Undercover
- A Wartime Story of Courage, Friendship, and Betrayal
- By: Matthew Goodman
- Narrated by: Kristi Burns
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Etta Shiber and Kate Bonnefous are the unlikeliest of heroines: two seemingly ordinary women, an American widow and an English divorcée, living quietly together in Paris. Yet during the Nazi occupation, these two friends find themselves unexpectedly plunged into the whirlwind of history. With the help of a French country priest and others, they set out to rescue British and French soldiers trapped behind enemy lines—some of whom they daringly smuggle through Nazi checkpoints hidden inside the trunk of their car.
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Great history marred by terrible reader
- By gail on 03-01-25
By: Matthew Goodman
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When the Earth Was Green
- Plants, Animals, and Evolution's Greatest Romance
- By: Riley Black
- Narrated by: Wren Mack
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Riley Black brings us back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded. Each chapter stars plants and animals alike, underscoring how the interactions between species have helped shape the world we call home. As the chapters move upwards in time, Black guides listeners along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present.
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No argument
- By Anonymous User on 05-20-25
By: Riley Black
Excellent scientific view of the poles
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