Living on Earth
Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World
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Narrated by:
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Mitch Riley
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Peter Godfrey-Smith
About this listen
"Listening to Godfrey-Smith's exploration of animal consciousness will rattle every nook and cranny of your brain with an onslaught of interesting questions...the author leaves listeners with a radical new perspective."—AudioFile on Metazoa
This program is read by the author.
The bestselling author of Other Minds shows how we and our ancestors have reinvented our planet.
If the history of the Earth were compressed down to a year, our species would arise in the last thirty minutes or so of the final hour. But life itself is not such a late arrival: It has existed on Earth for something like 3.7 billion years—most of our planet’s history and over a quarter of the age of the universe (as far as we can tell).
What have these organisms—bacteria, animals, plants, and the rest—done in all this time? In Living on Earth, the philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith proposes a new way of understanding how the actions of living beings have shaped our planet. Where his acclaimed books Other Minds and Metazoa explored the riddle of how conscious minds came to exist on Earth, Living on Earth turns to what happens when we look at the mind from another side—when we come to see organisms as active causes, not merely as results of the evolutionary process. The planet we inhabit is significantly the work of other living beings, who shaped the environments that we ourselves later transformed.
To that end, Godfrey-Smith takes us on a grand tour of the history of life on earth. He visits Rwandan gorillas and Australian bowerbirds, returns to coral reefs and octopus dens, considers the impact of language and writing, and weighs the responsibilities our unique powers bring with them, as they relate to factory farming, habitat preservation, climate change, and the use of animals in experiments. Ranging from the seas to the forests, and from animate matter’s first appearance to its future extinction, Godfrey-Smith offers a novel picture of the course of life on Earth and how we might meet the challenges of our time, the Anthropocene.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
©2024 Peter Godfrey-Smith (P)2024 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"A thoughtful meditation on how the actions of organisms, even the most primitive (ticks, snails), have generated the world humans have inherited . . . [Full of] enlightening insights into the natural world and our often perilous relationship to it."—Kirkus Reviews
"Living on Earth is a hugely important book. The final installment in Peter Godfrey-Smith's essential trilogy, it give us a sweeping, careful, and courageous exploration of a natural world suffused with life, with minds, and perhaps with consciousness too. Godfrey-Smith writes with grace, humility, and wisdom about a dizzying array of topics, from the distant past to the far future, from the deep ocean to the frontiers of technology. The picture he paints reaffirms our continuity with the natural world, and impresses on us the urgency of the choices we now face.”—Anil Seth, director of the Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex and author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness
"Only Peter Godfrey-Smith could write this book. It offers a vast, kaleidoscopic, and immensely thought-provoking overview of the development of life on Earth, with special attention to humanity's place in the bigger picture. We are often told that human beings are part of the natural world, but rarely is the mutual influence between people and the rest of our shared ecosystem spelled out with such care."—Sean Carroll, professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of Quanta and Fields
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We are in the midst of a global mental health crisis, and mental illnesses are on the rise. But what causes mental illness? And why are mental health problems so hard to treat? Drawing on decades of research, Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Chris Palmer outlines a revolutionary new understanding that for the first time unites our existing knowledge about mental illness within a single framework: mental disorders are metabolic disorders of the brain. Brain Energy will transform the field of mental health, and the lives of countless people around the world.
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Arguing brain health theory to medical profession
- By Maya H Saric on 03-10-23
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Welcome to the Universe
- An Astrophysical Tour
- By: Michael A. Strauss, J. Richard Gott, Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the Universe is a personal guided tour of the cosmos by three of today's leading astrophysicists. Inspired by the enormously popular introductory astronomy course that Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott taught together at Princeton, this book covers it all - from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes, wormholes, and time travel.
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All About What We Know About the Universe - ALL
- By J.B. on 02-17-17
By: Michael A. Strauss, and others
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Reentry
- SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets That Launched a Second Space Age
- By: Eric Berger
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
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From launchpad explosions to a pernicious cricket infestation to the demanding management style of Musk himself, the rise of SpaceX was beset with challenges and far from inevitable. Find out how the startup beat the odds and flew high enough to outpace their rivals... and where they're going next.
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Appreciated the engineering details
- By Will on 10-19-24
By: Eric Berger
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Inspired
- How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, Second Edition
- By: Marty Cagan
- Narrated by: Marty Cagan
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
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How do today's most successful tech companies - Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla - design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently from the vast majority of tech companies. In Inspired, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides listeners with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love.
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Great book, terrible audio wanted to ask a refund
- By Srikanth Ramanujam on 11-15-18
By: Marty Cagan
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The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
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Not one boring moment!
- By WRWF on 12-22-17
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Cosmic Queries
- StarTalk’s Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going
- By: James Trefil, Lindsey N. Walker - editor, Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Narrated by: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
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In this illuminating audiobook, Tyson and coauthor James Trefil, a renowned physicist and science popularizer, take on the big questions that humanity has been posing for millennia - How did life begin? What is our place in the universe? Are we alone? - and provide answers based on the most current data, observations, and theories.
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Not worth it
- By Daniel Earl on 03-15-21
By: James Trefil, and others
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Ranger Confidential
- Living, Working, and Dying in the National Parks
- By: Andrea Lankford
- Narrated by: Julia Motyka
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
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The real stories behind the scenery of America’s national parks. For 12 years, Andrea Lankford lived in the biggest, most impressive national parks in the world, working a job she loved. She chaperoned baby sea turtles on their journey to sea. She pursued bad guys on her galloping patrol horse. She jumped into rescue helicopters bound for the heart of the Grand Canyon. She won arguments with bears. She slept with a few too many rattlesnakes. Hell yeah, it was the best job in the world! Fortunately, Andrea survived it.
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Depressing from Cover to Cover
- By Drew (@drewsant) on 04-13-15
By: Andrea Lankford
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Through turbulent times, stories keep us afloat. Books, particularly, console and guide us, feed our souls and open our eyes to worlds, possibilities and experiences we have never considered before. Many of us have been self-medicating with books for years without identifying the practice as ‘bibliotherapy’. Celebrate the positive impact books can have on our lives with this collection of carefully curated suggestions for each life stage.
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The Secret Life of the Universe
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What would happen if we were to awaken one day and suddenly realize that the world we live in appeared eerily alien, as if we'd been teleported to some other distant world? That frightening prospect is now. Our planetary hydrosphere, which animates all of life on Earth, is rebelling in the wake of a global warming climate, spurring biblical spring floods, devastating summer droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires and powerful autumn hurricanes and typhoons, wreaking havoc on ecosystems and society.
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Planet Aqua
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Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience.
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Is it a struggle to relax, even while on vacation? Do you feel irritable constantly, like the slightest inconvenience might set you off? Do you have shallow breaths, trouble sleeping, and aches that won't go away? If the answer to any or all of these questions is yes, your nervous system might be dysregulated. Soothe shows how to bring it back into balance—and experience a calmer, more resilient way to be.
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The Memory Palace
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The Memory Palace is a collection of tiny, crystalline historical tales that come across like luminous short fiction, and, like Nate DiMeo’s acclaimed podcast of the same name, conjure lost moments and forgotten figures who are calling out across time to be remembered. For fifteen years, Nate DiMeo has turned to the past to make sense of the way we live today, finding beauty and meaning in history’s dustier corners, holding things up to the light and weaving facts, keen insight, wit, and poignant observation into unforgettable tales.
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I Decided to Live as Me
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In a world where it can seem impossible to feel that you are ever good enough, and where it’s easy to judge yourself by the unrealistic standards of social media, I Decided to Live as Me offers guidance and encouragement for celebrating yourself and feeling comfortable in your own skin. With words of comfort Kim Suhyun has reached millions of people—including Jung Kook from the K-pop band BTS—who have found inspiration in her journey of self-love. She offers a checklist to guide you on your own journey.
By: Kim Suhyun, and others
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The Science of Menopause
- Understand Your Body, Make the Right Choices
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As we understand more each day about what hormone changes mean for women's long-term health, there is an urgent need for an evidence-based book that helps women understand what is happening to them so that they can make informed decisions. Should you take HRT? How common is early menopause? What causes brain fog? Can herbal supplements help? Featuring the latest research, The Science of Menopause tells you everything you need to know about menopause is, the symptoms to watch out for, and the treatments that may be able to help.
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The Black Utopians
- Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America
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How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black? These questions animate Aaron Robertson’s exploration of Black Americans' efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit—the city where he was born, and where one of the country’s most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start.
By: Aaron Robertson
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Shadow Work for Hot Messes
- Transform from Chaos to Clarity by Embracing Your Authentic Self
- By: Mandi Em
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It’s the next evolution of shadow work as only Mandi Em can deliver it. With introspective exercises and relatable guidance, this one-of-a-kind workbook helps you do the work to become a happier, healthier, and more empowered hot mess.
By: Mandi Em
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Vanishing Treasures
- A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Lenny Henry, Katherine Rundell
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The world is more astonishing, more miraculous, and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this brilliant and passionately persuasive book, Katherine Rundell takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's most awe-inspiring animals currently facing extinction. This urgent, inspiring book of essays dedicated to 23 unusual and underappreciated creatures is a clarion call insisting that we look at the world around us with new eyes.
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Wonder
- By R. Hellmann on 11-18-24
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Turning to Stone
- Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks
- By: Marcia Bjornerud
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Earth has been reinventing itself for more than four billion years, keeping a record of its experiments in the form of rocks. Yet most of us live our lives on the planet with no idea of its extraordinary history, unable to interpret the language of the rocks that surround us. Geologist Marcia Bjornerud believes that our lives can be enriched by understanding our heritage on this old and creative planet. Contrary to their reputation, rocks have eventful lives—and they intersect with our own in surprising ways.
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Very unusual book by a profound writer
- By F Shaw on 09-17-24
By: Marcia Bjornerud
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The Serviceberry
- By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
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As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity.
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Relevant, kind, challenging
- By Andrew Petro on 11-19-24
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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
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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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Life as No One Knows It
- The Physics of Life's Emergence
- By: Sara Imari Walker
- Narrated by: Sara Imari Walker
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
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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.
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very interesting
- By Sequoia Spencer on 08-09-24