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Louder Than Words
- The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning
- Narrated by: Benjamin K. Bergen
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
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Publisher's summary
Whether it’s brusque, convincing, fraught with emotion, or dripping with innuendo, language is fundamentally a tool for conveying meaning - a uniquely human magic trick in which you vibrate your vocal cords to make your innermost thoughts pop up in someone else’s mind. You can use it to talk about all sorts of things - from your new labradoodle puppy to the expansive gardens at Versailles, from Roger Federer’s backhand to things that don’t exist at all, like flying pigs.
And when you talk, your listener fills in lots of details you didn’t mention - the curliness of the dog’s fur or the vast statuary on the grounds of the French palace. What’s the trick behind this magic? How does meaning work? In Louder than Words, cognitive scientist Benjamin Bergen draws together a decade’s worth of research in psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to offer a new theory of how our minds make meaning. When we hear words and sentences, Bergen contends, we engage the parts of our brain that we use for perception and action, repurposing these evolutionarily older networks to create simulations in our minds. These embodied simulations, as they're called, are what makes it possible for us to become better baseball players by merely visualizing a well-executed swing; what allows us to remember which cupboard the diapers are in without looking, and what makes it so hard to talk on a cell phone while we’re driving on the highway. Meaning is more than just knowing definitions of words, as others have previously argued. In understanding language, our brains engage in a creative process of constructing rich mental worlds in which we see, hear, feel, and act. Through whimsical examples and ingenious experiments, Bergen leads us on a virtual tour of the new science of embodied cognition. A brilliant account of our human capacity to understand language, Louder than Words will profoundly change how you read, speak, and listen.
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Smart Thinking
- Three Essential Keys to Solve Problems, Innovate, and Get Things Done
- By: Art Markman
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Think smart people are just born that way? Think again. Drawing on diverse studies of the mind, from psychology to linguistics, philosophy, and learning science, Art Markman, Ph.D., demonstrates the difference between "smart thinking" and raw intelligence, showing listeners how memory works, how to learn effectively, and how to use knowledge to get things done. He then introduces his own three-part formula for listeners to employ "smart thinking" in their daily lives.
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I feel asleep in class
- By Lee on 12-14-12
By: Art Markman
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Mindwise
- Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want
- By: Nicholas Epley
- Narrated by: Nicholas Epley
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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You are a mind reader, born with an extraordinary ability to understand what others think, feel, believe, want, and know. It's a sixth sense you use every day, in every personal and professional relationship you have. At its best, this ability allows you to achieve the most important goal in almost any life: connecting, deeply and intimately and honestly, to other human beings. At its worst, it is a source of misunderstanding and unnecessary conflict, leading to damaged relationships and broken dreams. How good are you at knowing the minds of others?
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Finally gave up - no real point
- By Thomas on 05-12-14
By: Nicholas Epley
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Mastermind
- How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes
- By: Maria Konnikova
- Narrated by: Karen Saltus
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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No fictional character is more renowned for his powers of thought and observation than Sherlock Holmes. But is his extraordinary intellect merely a gift of fiction, or can we learn to cultivate these abilities ourselves, to improve our lives at work and at home? We can, says psychologist and journalist Maria Konnikova, and in Mastermind she shows us how. Beginning with the "brain attic", Konnikova unpacks the mental strategies that lead to clearer thinking and deeper insights.
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Mindless: How to Regurgitate Useless Information
- By CC on 02-12-13
By: Maria Konnikova
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Riveted
- The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe
- By: Jim Davies
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Professor Jim Davies's fascinating and highly accessible book, Riveted, reveals the evolutionary underpinnings of why we find things compelling. Drawing on work from philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, psychology, economics, computer science, and biology, Davies offers a comprehensive explanation to show that in spite of the differences between the many things that we find compelling, they have similar effects on our minds and brains.
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Fun and excellent listen!
- By Alejandro Franco on 04-13-18
By: Jim Davies
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The Performance Cortex
- How Neuroscience Is Redefining Athletic Genius
- By: Zach Schonbrun
- Narrated by: Thomas Vincent Kelly
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Why couldn't Michael Jordan, master athlete that he was, hit a baseball? Why can't modern robotics come close to replicating the dexterity of a five-year-old? Why do good quarterbacks always seem to know where their receivers are?In this deeply researched book, sports and business reporter Zach Schonbrun explores what actually drives human movement and its spectacular potential. The groundbreaking work of two neuroscientists in Major League Baseball is only the beginning.
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Excellent!
- By MD on 07-01-23
By: Zach Schonbrun
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Your Brain Is a Time Machine
- The Neuroscience and Physics of Time
- By: Dean Buonomano
- Narrated by: Aaron Abano
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell and perceive time. The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological flow and enables "mental time travel" - simulations of future and past events.
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Great book on an underrated subject
- By Neuron on 05-09-17
By: Dean Buonomano
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The Intelligent Web
- Search, Smart Algorithms, and Big Data
- By: Gautam Shroff
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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As we use the Web for social networking, shopping, and news, we leave a personal trail. These days, linger over a Web page selling lamps, and they will turn up at the advertising margins as you move around the Internet, reminding you, tempting you to make that purchase. Search engines such as Google can now look deep into the data on the Web to pull out instances of the words you are looking for. And there are pages that collect and assess information to give you a snapshot of changing political opinion.
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Great book for learning about Deep learning
- By Darkpassenger on 04-16-15
By: Gautam Shroff
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Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?
- A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain
- By: Timothy Verstynen, Bradley Voytek
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?, neuroscientists and zombie enthusiasts Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek apply their neuro-know-how to dissect the puzzle of what has happened to the zombie brain to make the undead act differently than their human prey. Combining tongue-in-cheek analysis with modern neuroscientific principles, Verstynen and Voytek show how zombism can be understood in terms of current knowledge regarding how the brain works.
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Fun and informative; brilliant reading
- By Robert on 12-25-14
By: Timothy Verstynen, and others
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Undeniable
- How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed
- By: Douglas Axe
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout his distinguished and unconventional career, engineer-turned-molecular-biologist Douglas Axe has been asking the questions that much of the scientific community would rather silence. Now, he presents his conclusions in this brave and pioneering book. Axe argues that the key to understanding our origin is the "design intuition" - the innate belief held by all humans that tasks we would need knowledge to accomplish can be accomplished only by someone who has that knowledge.
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Seductively Challenge what are consider facts
- By Rafael Vila on 10-08-16
By: Douglas Axe
What listeners say about Louder Than Words
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Branton
- 03-26-24
A New Book for my list of Favs. Up there with Tomasello and McWhorter.
This book was informative yet creatively written. I pledged to listen to it over and over and over again, and to research all the articles mentioned on the text.
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- Henry
- 06-17-15
Too Technical for me
After the first 10 minutes I knew I was in over my head. I'm not a linguistics post grad looking for a new research project. I'm an average Joe looking for a little enlightenment. If you're not deep into language you may want to pass this book bye for something simpler.
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44 people found this helpful
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- Twang
- 06-13-17
Worth Reading!
Although the book needs editing it presents important reseach and is well worth the time.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Lawrence
- 08-31-19
funny and informative.
this book is an interesting mix of communication, neuroscience, and great humor. It adds a whole new dimension to my understanding how my mind works as well as allowing insight into what other people are doing. Though it is interesting to understand, it seems more flashy than useful at this point. I'm not sure what to do with the information, but it is comforting to have.
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-29-21
Fascinating - couldn't stop listening!
I learned so much about language and the brain! Such useful info! A must listen!
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- Teresa
- 07-17-19
Fascinating, though made my head hurt occasionally
The author does his best to make a complicated topic accessible to the layperson, but there were times that I needed a break so I could process what I had learned. He not only explains what he knows about our minds, but goes over how the information was puzzled out. Definitely a repeat listen.
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- Nicole
- 06-11-17
Performance
While this information is really interesting, the reader is speaking so hurriedly that I can't keep up with his thoughts at times! Seems he's over-caffeinated or something.
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- DeAndre & Shari
- 11-04-22
Fantastic!
Absolutely fantastic book! I would recommend it to anyone wanting to understand cognitive semantics and neurolinguistics.
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- Donald
- 01-09-14
Great Performance!
This book is top-notch, and by that, I mean the author uses a great deal of evidence to back up his thesis. Roughly speaking, the thesis is that cognition is "embodied" rather than merely computational. Those familiar with George Lakoff's work will find themselves on similar ground here, with the added benefit of more concrete evidence.
Benjamin K. Bergen's performance was also par excellence; especially so because, in my experience most authors are poor narrators.
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33 people found this helpful
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- Williamb
- 06-09-17
Science, story, narration
Benjamin is an excellent writer. He is an amazing narrator. Which makes it hard to believe that he is a serious scientist. I love the serious attention to scientific documentation of the amazing brain behavior associated with knowledge. He is meticulous in building a case for knowledge representation in the brain. At the same time his objective presentation allows the listener to draw his or her own conclusions. This book is a thorough treatment of the subject to date. I am inspired and intensely curious to learn more as more research is added to the body work on the subject.
I believe that any researcher or coder interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning should read this book, perhaps several times. The subtlety of representing concrete and abstract knowledge with the imperfect organ we call a brain can only serve to improve the science of machine learning. This, and successive work on the literal representation of knowledge will undoubtedly be key in the development of breakthrough computer thinking - meaning thinking computers.
I'd like to read more. I'd like to know the difference between speaking and listening across similar and diverse individuals. Another aspect I'd like to see explored is how much work it is to understand new and familiar concepts. Given brain plasticity, we don't all use the same brain parts for the same tasks. How does this affect knowledge representation? Please, Mr Bergen, write another book. You have my attention.
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2 people found this helpful