
Fluke
Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters
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Narrated by:
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Brian Klaas
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By:
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Brian Klaas
About this listen
This “captivating illustration of the follies of trying to model and forecast the unpredictable world” (Financial Times) is both “empowering” (The New Statesman, UK) and “compelling” (New Scientist) as it challenges our most fundamental assumptions—by social scientist and Atlantic writer Brian Klaas.
If you could rewind your life to the very beginning and then press play, would everything turn out the same? Or could making an accidental phone call or missing an exit off the highway change not just your life, but history itself?
In Fluke, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas takes a deep-dive into the phenomenon of random chance and the chaos it can sow, taking aim at most people’s neat and tidy version of reality. The book’s argument is that we willfully ignore a bewildering truth: but for a few small changes, our lives—and our societies—could be radically different.
Offering an entirely new lens, Fluke explores how our world really works, driven by strange interactions and apparently random events. How did one couple’s vacation cause 100,000 people to die? Does our decision to hit the snooze button in the morning radically alter the trajectory of our lives? And has the evolution of humans been inevitable, or are we simply the product of a series of freak accidents?
Drawing on social science, chaos theory, history, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Klaas provides a brilliantly fresh look at why things happen—all while providing mind-bending lessons on how we can live smarter, be happier, and lead more fulfilling lives.
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Story
Brimming with energy and lively examples, How Things Are Made maps the awe-inspiring global system of manufacturing that enables virtually every aspect of our existence. By making sense of this surprising and hidden world, we are able to make better choices for ourselves, our communities, and the planet.
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as deep as google search allows it to be
- By Biorelevant on 06-08-25
By: Tim Minshall
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No Democracy Lasts Forever
- How the Constitution Threatens the United States
- By: Erwin Chemerinsky
- Narrated by: Daniel Thomas May
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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No Democracy Lasts Forever argues that the Constitution has become a threat to American democracy and must be dramatically changed or replaced if secession is to be avoided. Deeply troubled by the Constitution's inherent flaws, Erwin Chemerinsky, the renowned dean of Berkeley law school, came to the sobering conclusion that our nearly 250-year-old founding document is responsible for the crisis now facing American democracy.
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Leftist, but he makes sense to me
- By Mike Liveright on 11-29-24
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Bernoulli's Fallacy
- Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science
- By: Aubrey Clayton
- Narrated by: Tim H. Dixon
- Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Aubrey Clayton traces the history of how statistics went astray, beginning with the groundbreaking work of the 17th-century mathematician Jacob Bernoulli and winding through gambling, astronomy, and genetics. Clayton recounts the feuds among rival schools of statistics, exploring the surprisingly human problems that gave rise to the discipline and the all-too-human shortcomings that derailed it.
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Rigorously Bayesian
- By Anonymous User on 01-25-22
By: Aubrey Clayton
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Outraged
- Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground
- By: Kurt Gray
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s easy to assume that liberals and conservatives have radically different moral foundations. In Outraged, Kurt Gray showcases the latest science to demonstrate that we all have the same moral mind—that everyone’s moral judgments stem from feeling threatened or vulnerable to harm, and provides a captivating new explanation for our moral outrage, and unpacks how to best bridge divides. If you want to understand the morals of the “other side,” ask yourself a simple question—what harms do they see?
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Great book. Horrible narrator.
- By Sara Stall-Ryan on 02-22-25
By: Kurt Gray
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The Art of Uncertainty
- How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck
- By: David Spiegelhalter
- Narrated by: David Spiegelhalter
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Renowned statistician David Spiegelhalter shows how we can become better at dealing with what we don't know to make smarter choices in a world so full of puzzling variables. In lucid, lively prose, Spiegelhalter guides us through the principles of probability, illustrating how they can help us think more analytically about everything from medical advice to sports to climate change forecasts.
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Terrific
- By Roger March on 04-01-25
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Shift
- Managing Your Emotions—So They Don't Manage You
- By: Ethan Kross
- Narrated by: Ethan Kross
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Whether it’s anxiety about going to the doctor, boiling rage when we’re stuck in traffic, or devastation after a painful break-up, our lives are filled with situations that send us spiraling. But as difficult as our emotions can be, they are also a superpower. Far from being “good” or “bad,” emotions are information. When they’re activated in the right ways and at the right time, they function like an immune system, alerting us to our surroundings, telling us how to react to a situation, and helping us make the right choices. But how do we make our emotions work for us rather than against us?
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The toolkit I never knew that I needed
- By Tyler L on 02-07-25
By: Ethan Kross
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Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
- Incerto, Book 1
- By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Narrated by: Joe Ochman
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Fooled by Randomness is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. Nassim Nicholas Taleb - veteran trader, renowned risk expert, polymathic scholar, erudite raconteur has penned a modern classic that turns on its head what we believe about luck and skill. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill - the world of trading - Fooled by Randomness provides captivating insight into one of the least understood factors in all our lives.
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Not for MBAs and Economist
- By Ekele Onuh Oscar on 06-19-19
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Thanks for the Feedback
- The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well
- By: Sheila Heen, Douglas Stone
- Narrated by: Sheila Heen, Douglas Stone
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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The coauthors of the New York Times best-selling Difficult Conversations take on the toughest topic of all: How we see ourselves. Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen have spent the past 15 years working with corporations, nonprofits, governments, and families to determine what helps us learn and what gets in our way. In Thanks for the Feedback, they explain why receiving feedback is so crucial yet so challenging. They blend the latest insights from neuroscience and psychology with practical, hard-headed advice.
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Poor narration ruins yet another good read
- By WordNerd on 08-25-14
By: Sheila Heen, and others
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On the Edge
- The Art of Risking Everything
- By: Nate Silver
- Narrated by: Nate Silver
- Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In the bestselling The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver showed how forecasting would define the age of Big Data. Now, in this timely and riveting new book, Silver investigates "The River," or those whose mastery of risk allows them to shape—and dominate—so much of modern life. These professional risk takers—poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true-believers and blue-chip art collectors—can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the 21st century.
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Fascinating report from a distant land
- By David Benjamin on 09-14-24
By: Nate Silver
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Fooled by Randomness
- The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
- By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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This audiobook is about luck, or more precisely, how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. It is already a landmark work, and its title has entered our vocabulary. In its second edition, Fooled by Randomness is now a cornerstone for anyone interested in random outcomes.
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Pass on this one and read The Black Swan
- By Wade T. Brooks on 06-25-12
Another outstanding book from Klaas!
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Glad I read it but not my highest recommendation.
Not bad —but I was hoping for mote
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Very nice and interesting!
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This book should be listed as fiction
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The "What If"and the "What Is" book.
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Only thing he misses is the grace we receive when we acknowledge our lack of control. And surrender to the larger adventure of an infinite game of choosing to be useful. Allowing spirit to make art with our life.
The surprise of combining lack of control with a new level of freedom adventure and joy
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Great read
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Great narration & Continually interesting content
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Chance, Causality and Fluke
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Uñbèlievaɓle facts about things I thought I knew a lot about, which make history infinitely more facinating
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