
How to Feed the World
The History and Future of Food
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Narrated by:
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Joe Jameson
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By:
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Vaclav Smil
About this listen
An indispensable analysis of how the world really produces and consumes its food—and a scientist's exploration of how we can successfully feed a growing population without killing the planet
We have never had to feed as many people as we do today. And yet, we misunderstand the essentials of where our food really comes from, how our dietary requirements shape us, and why this impacts our planet in drastic ways. As a result, in our economic, political, and everyday choices, we take for granted and fail to prioritize the thing that makes all our lives possible: food.
In this ambitious, myth-busting book, Smil investigates many of the burning questions facing the world today: why are some of the world’s biggest food producers also the countries with the most undernourished populations? Why do we waste so much food and how can we solve that? Could the whole planet go vegan and be healthy? Should it? He explores the global history of food production to understand why we farm some animals and not others, why most of the world’s calories come from just a few foodstuffs, and how this might change in the future.
How to Feed the World is the data-based, rigorously researched guide that offers solutions to our broken global food system.
©2025 Vaclav Smil (P)2025 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing. Disputes about what to do with the millions of tons of garbage generated every day have given rise to waste wars waged almost everywhere you look. Some are border skirmishes. Others hustle trash across thousands of miles and multiple oceans. But no matter the scale, one thing is true about almost all of them: few people have any idea they're happening.
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Great writer of awful reality
- By Tracie B. on 04-15-25
By: Alexander Clapp
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Size
- How It Explains the World
- By: Vaclav Smil
- Narrated by: Stephen Perring
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Size explains the regularities—and peculiarities—of the key processes shaping life (from microbes to whales), the Earth (from asteroids to volcanic eruptions), technical advances (from architecture to transportation), and societies and economies (from cities to wages).
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Worth a read
- By Rurik McKaiser on 05-21-23
By: Vaclav Smil
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Power Density
- A Key to Understanding Energy Sources and Uses
- By: Vaclav Smil
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In this book, Vaclav Smil argues that power density is a key determinant of the nature and dynamics of energy systems. Any understanding of complex energy systems must rely on quantitative measures of many fundamental variables. Power density—the rate of energy flux per unit of area—is an important but largely overlooked measure. Smil provides the first systematic, quantitative appraisal of power density, offering detailed reviews of the power densities of renewable energy flows, fossil fuels, thermal electricity generation, and all common energy uses.
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A Different Look at the Pros and Cons of Renewable Energy and Fossil Fuels
- By Anonymous User on 07-10-24
By: Vaclav Smil
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Cómo funciona el mundo [How the World Really Works]
- Una guía científica de nuestro pasado, presente y futuro [A Scientific Guide to Our Past, Present and Future]
- By: Vaclav Smil, Francesc Pedrosa Martín - translator
- Narrated by: Carlos Canales
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Un sincero y revelador análisis de las posibilidades energéticas de nuestro futuro. Así pues, este libro aborda temas tan importantes como la improbable y difícil tarea de descarbonizar el planeta, en parte por la estrecha relación entre la producción de alimentos y los combustibles fósiles, pero también destapa realidades incómodas, como la dependencia de las economías modernas respecto de la alta producción de amoníaco, metal, cemento y plástico.
By: Vaclav Smil, and others
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Air-Borne
- The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Joe Ochman
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air—and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life. This last great biological frontier remains so mysterious that it took over two years for scientists to finally agree that the COVID pandemic was caused by an airborne virus. In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery.
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Very clarifying look at how messy science can be
- By webtraverser on 03-04-25
By: Carl Zimmer
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Space to Grow
- Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier
- By: Brendan Rosseau, Matthew Weinzierl
- Narrated by: William Sarris
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Space is a place of unparalleled possibility for humanity, and it's undergoing a revolution. A wave of companies led by gutsy entrepreneurs are unlocking opportunities that fire the imagination. No, it's not hotels on Mars or day trips to orbit (yet), but it's an awe-inspiring transformation driven by innovative technologies, creative approaches, hard work, and—for the first time—market forces.
By: Brendan Rosseau, and others
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How the World Eats
- A Global Food Philosophy
- By: Julian Baggini
- Narrated by: Julian Baggini
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The need for a better understanding of how we feed ourselves has never been more urgent. In this wide-ranging and definitive book, philosopher Julian Baggini expertly delves into the best and worst food practices in a huge array of different societies. His exploration takes him from cutting-edge technologies, such as new farming methods, cultured meat, GM and astronaut food, to the ethics and health of ultra processed food and aquaculture, as he takes a forensic look at the effectiveness of our food governance, the difficulties of food wastage, and the effects of commodification.
By: Julian Baggini
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We Are Eating the Earth
- The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate
- By: Michael Grunwald
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 14 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Michael Grunwald, bestselling author of The Swamp and The New New Deal, builds his narrative around a brilliant, relentless, unforgettable food and land expert named Tim Searchinger. He chronicles Searchinger’s uphill battles against bad science and bad politics, both driven by the overwhelming influence of agricultural interests. And he illuminates a path that could save our planetary home for ourselves and future generations—through better policy, technology, and behavior, as well as a new land ethic recognizing that every acre matters.
By: Michael Grunwald
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Energy
- An Audio Guide
- By: Vaclav Smil
- Narrated by: Dave Ferguson
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In this user-friendly and informative audiobook, prolific author and academic Vaclav Smil provides an introduction to this far-reaching term and gives the reader a greater understanding of energy's place in both past and present society. Starting with an explanation of the concept, he goes on to cover such exciting topics as the inner workings of the human body, and the race for more efficient and environmentally friendly fuels.
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Listening to the Encyclopedia of Energy
- By See Reverse on 03-02-18
By: Vaclav Smil
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No Less Strange or Wonderful
- Essays in Curiosity
- By: A. Kendra Greene
- Narrated by: A. Kendra Greene
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Celebrated author and artist A. Kendra Greene’s No Less Strange or Wonderful is a brilliant and generous meditation—on the complex wonder of being alive, on how to pay attention to even the tiniest (sometimes strangest) details that glitter with insight, whimsy, and deep humanity, if only we’d really look. In twenty-six sparkling essays, Greene is trying to make sense—of anything, really—but especially the things that matter most in life: love, connection, death, grief, the universe, meaning, nothingness, and everythingness.
By: A. Kendra Greene
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The Moral Circle
- Who Matters, What Matters, and Why
- By: Jeff Sebo
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we prioritize humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. As a result, we use hundreds of billions of vertebrates and trillions of invertebrates every year for a variety of purposes. We also plan to use animals, AI systems, and other nonhumans at even higher levels in the future. Yet as the dominant species, humanity has a responsibility to ask: Which nonhumans matter, how much do they matter, and what do we owe them in a world reshaped by human activity and technology?
By: Jeff Sebo
lots of dense information, hard to absorb.
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Full of good info, but not for audiobook format
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