
Life as No One Knows It
The Physics of Life's Emergence
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Narrated by:
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Sara Imari Walker
About this listen
An intriguing new scientific theory that explains what life is and how it emerges.
What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life originates or the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might look like.
In Life as No One Knows It, physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is. This is an urgent issue for efforts to make life from scratch in laboratories here on Earth and missions searching for life on other planets.
Walker proposes a new paradigm for understanding what physics encompasses and what we recognize as life. She invites us into a world of maverick scientists working without a map, seeking not just answers but better ways to formulate the biggest questions we have about the universe. The book culminates with the bold proposal of a new theory for identifying and classifying life, one that applies not just to biological life on Earth but to any instance of life in the universe. Rigorous, accessible, and vital, Life as No One Knows It celebrates the mystery of life and the explanatory power of physics.
©2024 Sara Imari Walker (P)2024 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Bracingly original. . . . This has the potential to be a game changer."—Publishers Weekly (★starred review★)
"An honorable addition to a small genre that began with Noble Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger’s What Is Life? . . . Ingenious."—Kirkus Reviews
“With wit and clarity, Walker outlines a radical new approach to bridge the conceptual gap between non-life and life.”—Paul Davies, author of What’s Eating the Universe and The Demon in the Machine
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An exuberant and insightful work of popular history of how streets got their names, houses their numbers, and what it reveals about class, race, power, and identity. When most people think about street addresses, if they think of them at all, it is in their capacity to ensure that the postman can deliver mail or a traveler won’t get lost. But street addresses were not invented to help you find your way; they were created to find you. In many parts of the world, your address can reveal your race and class.
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Simply OK
- By CJFLA on 07-18-20
By: Deirdre Mask
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Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them
- A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity
- By: Antonio Padilla
- Narrated by: Antonio Padilla
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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For particularly brilliant theoretical physicists like James Clerk Maxwell, Paul Dirac, or Albert Einstein, the search for mathematical truths led to strange new understandings of the ultimate nature of reality. But what are these truths? What are the mysterious numbers that explain the universe? In Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, the leading theoretical physicist and YouTube star Antonio Padilla takes us on an irreverent cosmic tour of nine of the most extraordinary numbers in physics, offering a startling picture of how the universe works.
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Exciting, Strange, Difficult = Meh
- By Michael on 05-23-23
By: Antonio Padilla
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We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
- Stories from Rwanda
- By: Philip Gourevitch
- Narrated by: Philip Gourevitch
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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An unforgettable firsthand account of a people's response to genocide and what it tells us about humanity. This remarkable audiobook chronicles what has happened in Rwanda and neighboring states since 1994, when the Rwandan government called on everyone in the Hutu majority to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority.
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Things you'd never imagine
- By LEE on 12-27-19
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T
- The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us
- By: Carole Hooven
- Narrated by: Rachel Perry
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Through riveting personal stories and the latest research, Harvard evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven shows how testosterone drives the behavior of the sexes apart and how understanding the science behind this hormone is empowering for all.
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I wanted more science
- By L on 09-04-21
By: Carole Hooven
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The Devil Finds Work
- An Essay
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 3 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Baldwin's personal reflections on movies gathered here in a book-length essay are also a probing appraisal of American racial politics. Offering an incisive look at racism in American movies and a vision of America's self-delusions and deceptions, Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist.
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A Critical Masterpiece.
- By Ramon McGee on 05-10-18
By: James Baldwin
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Purpose
- What Evolution and Human Nature Imply About the Meaning of Our Existence
- By: Samuel T. Wilkinson
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Generations have been taught that evolution implies there is no overarching purpose to our existence. Some scientists take this logic one step further, suggesting that evolution is intrinsically atheistic and goes against the concept of God. But is this true? By integrating emerging principles from a variety of scientific disciplines—ranging from evolutionary biology to psychology—Yale Professor Samuel Wilkinson provides a framework of evolution that implies not only that there is an overarching purpose to our existence, but what this purpose is.
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Remarkably Well Written
- By Kindle Customer on 03-17-25
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The Last Days of the Dinosaurs
- An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World
- By: Riley Black
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Picture yourself in the Cretaceous period. It’s a sunny afternoon in the Hell Creek of ancient Montana 66 million years ago. A Triceratops horridus ambles along the edge of the forest. In a matter of hours, everything here will be wiped away. Lush verdure will be replaced with fire. Tyrannosaurus rex will be toppled from their throne, along with every other species of non-avian dinosaur no matter their size, diet, or disposition. They just don’t know it yet.
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One of the best
- By Amazon Customer on 05-02-22
By: Riley Black
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Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation
- Why Physicists Are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe
- By: George Musser
- Narrated by: Alan Peterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Neuroscientists have painstakingly built up an understanding of the structure of the brain. Could this help physicists understand the levels of self-organization they observe in other systems? These same physicists, meanwhile, are trying to explain how particles organize themselves into the objects around us. Could their discoveries help explain how neurons produce our conscious experience? Exploring these questions and more, George Musser tackles the extraordinary interconnections between quantum mechanics, cosmology, human consciousness, and artificial intelligence.
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Strong Start, Discursive Ending
- By Oliver on 01-17-24
By: George Musser
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The Craft
- How the Freemasons Made the Modern World
- By: John Dickie
- Narrated by: Simon Slater
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Founded in London in 1717 as a way of binding men in fellowship, Freemasonry proved so addictive that within two decades it had spread across the globe. Masonic influence became pervasive. Under George Washington, the Craft became a creed for the new American nation. Masonic networks held the British empire together. Under Napoleon, the Craft became a tool of authoritarianism and then a cover for revolutionary conspiracy. Both the Mormon Church and the Sicilian mafia owe their origins to Freemasonry.
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The best book about Freemasonry out there.
- By Isaac Pea on 02-19-21
By: John Dickie
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I Am a Strange Loop
- By: Douglas R. Hofstadter
- Narrated by: Greg Baglia
- Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop" - a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called "I". The "I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.
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The Self That Wasn't There
- By SelfishWizard on 01-09-19
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A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth
- 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters
- By: Henry Gee
- Narrated by: Henry Gee
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place—in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in rocks, where boiling hot jets of mineral-rich water gushed out from cracks in the ocean floor. In A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, Henry Gee zips through the last 4.6 billion years with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual rigor.
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incredibly annoying
- By A reader on 12-22-21
By: Henry Gee
What listeners say about Life as No One Knows It
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-27-24
Very interesting
Great primer on assembly theory. The theory treats life as the proverbial ship of Theseus, constantly reconstituting itself but having identity as a lineage of information for making more things like it. It defines life in terms of assembly number, or how many steps of recursively constructed objects is required to make an object, where a higher assembly number can only come from life.
Candidly, I had a lot of questions. A standard thought experiment in physics is the "Boltzman brain" that imagines a fully formed brain complete with current memory popping into existence. The author says it is not possible, but in an infinite universe, it is not clear why that is the case. Unfortunately, this book had more filler than answers to these questions. It tantalized with the key questions -- what is information? what is causation? -- without necessarily answering them. Still, it gave a lot to think about and research. Recommended.
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- Donna
- 12-06-24
Too dense for me
Incredibly intelligent woman with a great voice. As much as I tried for weeks forcing myself to listen, i just had to stop. I thought after listening to her on StarTalk I’d be captivated by her argument. Alas it is just to in the weeds for me to enjoy.
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- Amanda N
- 09-11-24
Amazing
This is such an interesting concept that not only challenges the growth of our current understanding but provides a very interesting philosophy of how to perceive life. I will certainly listen to this again over time.
Personally, understanding how important the passing of time and the building of information are gives me great comfort. Now knowing how even the mundane things in life are actually so critically important and everlasting is a game changer. I have always felt that on a spiritual level but now can directly connect that to reality.
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- Ty Sowry
- 11-14-24
Fantastic introduction to Assembly Theory
Great book introducing an emerging idea of life and the physics that governs it. Assembly Theory is innovative, fresh, and deeply intriguing. The writing is engaging and the narration quite pleasant. 10/10, will read again, highly recommend.
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- Gustavo Medina Tanco
- 11-09-24
Superficial
The objective of the book is not very clear. Furthermore, it lacks depth. It sounds like a forced collection of trivial scientific facts coming from a broad area of physics, not clearly related to the subject suggested by the title, and not well justified speculations, all presented superficially. The voice, cadence and lack of luster of the reader makes the experience even worse.
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- Sequoia Spencer
- 08-09-24
very interesting
Interesting and entertaining, could have been longer. I love it when the author narrates.
I would recommend.
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2 people found this helpful
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- John linden
- 09-10-24
Fascinating thought patterns
Engaging and thought provoking views on the universe. A great way of explaining we don't know what we don't know.
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- Anonymous User
- 08-19-24
I hope there's more to come.
I've enjoyed following Sara Walker's work since her Big Biology interview several years ago. I love her way of thinking and find her theories thought provoking. I think the book was less illuminating and more confusing than her various podcast appearances. I was hoping for a deep dive into how assembly theory worked. This book felt like an introduction, and the audio reading was fairly monotoned and staccato. In the end, I hope she writes another and keeps at it.
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- J. Doggett
- 10-02-24
A new approach to Origin of Life research
I found this to be an excellent introduction to a novel approach to origin of life research. It was credible, well thought out, and supported with solid reasoning. My only detraction would be that it was narrated by the author, and not very well. She should have enlisted a professional narrator,
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- Petter
- 09-09-24
A great listen
Life as No One Knows It by Sara Imari Walker offers a fresh look at how physics might explain the origin of life. It's a fascinating read that makes complex ideas easy to grasp.
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