
On Air
The Triumph and Tumult of NPR
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $26.24
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Stephen Graybill
-
Steve Oney
-
By:
-
Steve Oney
About this listen
An epic, decade-long reported history of National Public Radio that reveals the unlikely story of one of America’s most celebrated but least understood media empires.
Founded in 1970, NPR is America’s most powerful broadcast news network. Despite being overshadowed by the larger and more glamorous PBS, public radio has long been home to shows such as All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and This American Life that captivate millions of listeners in homes, cars, and workplaces across the nation. NPR and its hosts are a cultural force and a trusted voice, and they have created a mode of journalism and storytelling that helps Americans understand the world in which we live. In On Air, a book fourteen years in the making, journalist Steve Oney tells the dramatic history of this institution, tracing the comings and goings of legendary on-air talents (Bob Edwards, Susan Stamberg, Ira Glass, Cokie Roberts, and many others) and the rise and fall and occasional rise again of brilliant and sometimes venal executives. It depicts how NPR created a medium for extraordinary journalism—in which reporters and producers use microphones as paintbrushes and the voices of people around the world as the soundtrack of stories both global and local.
Featuring details on the controversial firing of Juan Williams, the sloppy dismissal of Bob Edwards, and a $230 million bequest by Joan B. Kroc, widow of the founder of McDonalds, On Air also chronicles NPR’s daring shift into the digital world and its early embrace of podcasting formats, establishing the network as a formidable media empire. Fascinating, revelatory, and irresistibly dishy, this is a riveting account of NPR’s unlikely launch, chaotic ascent, and ultimate triumph—a must-listen for anyone interested in the history of public radio and its impact on American culture.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Meltdown
- Greed, Scandal, and the Collapse of Credit Suisse
- By: Duncan Mavin
- Narrated by: Charles Armstrong
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Credit Suisse was a 166-year-old bastion of global banking. But a veneer of high-class service disguised a darker, much dirtier reality. From its sterile Zurich headquarters, Credit Suisse banked dictators and drug dealers, hid stolen Nazi gold, and helped corrupt bankers fleece the firm's own clients of billions of dollars. Its top executives oversaw a global operation that laundered money for autocrats; they hired spies to track one another through the cobbled streets of the Swiss financial capital; and they helped clients hide their money from the world's tax authorities.
By: Duncan Mavin
-
Antisemitism in America
- A Warning
- By: Chuck Schumer
- Narrated by: Chuck Schumer
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the first time in generations, antisemitism has become a daily reality in America, and it’s getting worse. Jewish synagogues and their congregants are targeted and sometimes killed by extremists, Jewish students are harassed and attacked on campus, conspiracy theories about Jews have gone mainstream on social media, and debates over Israel have veered into dangerous territory. Senator Chuck Schumer tackles the historical, political, cultural, and international forces that have led to the alarming rise of antisemitism in America in the 21st Century.
-
-
Captivating
- By StarboardMountain on 03-24-25
By: Chuck Schumer
-
Original Sin
- President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again
- By: Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson
- Narrated by: Jake Tapper
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From two of America’s most respected journalists, an unflinching and explosive reckoning with one of the most fateful decisions in American political history: Joe Biden’s run for reelection despite evidence of his serious decline—amid desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration
By: Jake Tapper, and others
-
Checkpoint Charlie
- The Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
- By: Iain MacGregor
- Narrated by: Dugald Bruce Lockhart
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A powerful, fascinating, and groundbreaking history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the US confronted the USSR during the Cold War.
-
-
Hard to follow
- By J.Brock on 03-07-21
By: Iain MacGregor
-
The Antidote
- A Novel
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Elena Rey, Sophie Amoss, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell comes a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories.
-
-
So disappointed
- By Sarah T on 04-02-25
By: Karen Russell
-
Propaganda Girls
- The Secret War of the Women in the OSS
- By: Lisa Rogak
- Narrated by: Samara Naeymi
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was of course one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. These four women, each fascinating in her own right, together contributed to one of the most covert and successful military campaigns in WWII.
-
-
fascinating
- By Debra Clinton on 04-07-25
By: Lisa Rogak
-
Meltdown
- Greed, Scandal, and the Collapse of Credit Suisse
- By: Duncan Mavin
- Narrated by: Charles Armstrong
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Credit Suisse was a 166-year-old bastion of global banking. But a veneer of high-class service disguised a darker, much dirtier reality. From its sterile Zurich headquarters, Credit Suisse banked dictators and drug dealers, hid stolen Nazi gold, and helped corrupt bankers fleece the firm's own clients of billions of dollars. Its top executives oversaw a global operation that laundered money for autocrats; they hired spies to track one another through the cobbled streets of the Swiss financial capital; and they helped clients hide their money from the world's tax authorities.
By: Duncan Mavin
-
Antisemitism in America
- A Warning
- By: Chuck Schumer
- Narrated by: Chuck Schumer
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the first time in generations, antisemitism has become a daily reality in America, and it’s getting worse. Jewish synagogues and their congregants are targeted and sometimes killed by extremists, Jewish students are harassed and attacked on campus, conspiracy theories about Jews have gone mainstream on social media, and debates over Israel have veered into dangerous territory. Senator Chuck Schumer tackles the historical, political, cultural, and international forces that have led to the alarming rise of antisemitism in America in the 21st Century.
-
-
Captivating
- By StarboardMountain on 03-24-25
By: Chuck Schumer
-
Original Sin
- President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again
- By: Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson
- Narrated by: Jake Tapper
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From two of America’s most respected journalists, an unflinching and explosive reckoning with one of the most fateful decisions in American political history: Joe Biden’s run for reelection despite evidence of his serious decline—amid desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration
By: Jake Tapper, and others
-
Checkpoint Charlie
- The Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
- By: Iain MacGregor
- Narrated by: Dugald Bruce Lockhart
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A powerful, fascinating, and groundbreaking history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the US confronted the USSR during the Cold War.
-
-
Hard to follow
- By J.Brock on 03-07-21
By: Iain MacGregor
-
The Antidote
- A Novel
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Elena Rey, Sophie Amoss, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell comes a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories.
-
-
So disappointed
- By Sarah T on 04-02-25
By: Karen Russell
-
Propaganda Girls
- The Secret War of the Women in the OSS
- By: Lisa Rogak
- Narrated by: Samara Naeymi
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was of course one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. These four women, each fascinating in her own right, together contributed to one of the most covert and successful military campaigns in WWII.
-
-
fascinating
- By Debra Clinton on 04-07-25
By: Lisa Rogak
-
Owned
- How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left
- By: Eoin Higgins
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Owned is the story of the underreported and growing collusion between new wealth and new journalism. In recent years, right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks have turned to media as their next investment and source of influence. Their cronies are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi—once known as idealistic and left-leaning voices, now beneficiaries of Silicon Valley largesse. Together, this new alliance aims to exploit the failings of traditional journalism and undermine the very idea of an independent and fact-based fourth estate.
-
-
More of a screed than an analysis
- By Jamie on 03-01-25
By: Eoin Higgins
-
The Pardon
- The Politics of Presidential Mercy
- By: Jeffrey Toobin
- Narrated by: Jeffrey Toobin
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The power of the presidential pardon has our national attention now more than ever before. In The Pardon, New York Times bestselling author and CNN legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin provides a timely and compelling narrative of the most controversial presidential pardon in American history—Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, revealing the profound implications for our current political landscape, and how it is already affecting the legacies of both Presidents Biden and Trump.
-
-
Toobin should stick to Zoom meetings
- By Steven Frank on 03-18-25
By: Jeffrey Toobin
-
Hiroshima
- The Last Witnesses (Embers, Book 1)
- By: M. G. Sheftall
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 17 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this vividly rendered historical narrative, M. G. Sheftall layers the stories of hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors—in harrowing detail, to give a minute-by-minute report of August 6, 1945, in the leadup and aftermath of the world-changing bombing mission of Paul Tibbets, Enola Gay, and Little Boy.
-
-
EXCELLENT
- By JK on 04-29-25
By: M. G. Sheftall
-
The Last of His Kind
- Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness
- By: Andy McCullough
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
More than any baseball player of his generation, Clayton Kershaw has embodied the burden of athletic greatness, the prizes and perils that await those who strive for it all. He is a three-time Cy Young award winner, the first pitcher to win National League MVP since Bob Gibson, and a surefire, first-ballot Hall of Famer. Many of his peers consider him the greatest pitcher to ever climb atop a big-league mound.
-
-
Last of his kind is one of a kind
- By Anonymous User on 01-28-25
By: Andy McCullough
-
Waste Wars
- The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash
- By: Alexander Clapp
- Narrated by: Greg Lockett
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
Great writer of awful reality
- By Tracie B. on 04-15-25
By: Alexander Clapp
-
Who Is Government?
- The Untold Story of Public Service
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Michael Lewis, Sarah Vowell, John Lanchester, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone. Michael Lewis invited his favorite writers, including Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell, to join him in finding someone doing an interesting job for the government and writing about them.
-
-
Imagine what we could achieve if we actually understood
- By Anonymous User on 03-24-25
By: Michael Lewis
-
The Human Scale
- A Novel
- By: Lawrence Wright
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tony Malik, a half-Irish, half-Arab FBI agent based in New York, specializes in tracking money from drug and arms deals. His life takes a dramatic turn when a long-term relationship ends and his job hangs in the balance. Amid personal turmoil, Malik becomes intrigued by his Palestinian father's past. He decides to visit his ancestral homeland for his niece's wedding, accepting a seemingly simple FBI assignment along the way.
-
-
A History Lesson within a Mystery/Thriller
- By Kat on 04-20-25
By: Lawrence Wright
-
Raising Hare
- A Memoir
- By: Chloe Dalton
- Narrated by: Louise Brealey
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end and gave birth to leverets in your study. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality.
-
-
A beautiful reading of a heartfelt story. I didn’t want it to end.
- By Sparrow on 04-02-25
By: Chloe Dalton
-
The World She Edited
- Katharine S. White at The New Yorker
- By: Amy Reading
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 20 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker’s midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was only a few months old. Over the next thirty-six years, White would transform the publication into a literary powerhouse. This exquisite biography brings to life the remarkable relationships White fostered with her writers and how these relationships nurtured an astonishing array of literary talent.
-
-
A deep dive into a literary life
- By AMC on 10-27-24
By: Amy Reading
-
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
- By: Omar El Akkad
- Narrated by: Omar El Akkad
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege.
-
-
Outstanding - Should be required reading
- By Steve Siegmund on 03-19-25
By: Omar El Akkad
-
The Last Manager
- How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball
- By: John W. Miller
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before the Moneyball Era, the Earl of Baltimore reigned over baseball. History’s feistiest and most colorful manager, Earl Weaver transformed the sport by collecting and analyzing data in visionary ways, ultimately winning more games than anybody else during his time running the Orioles from 1968 to 1982. When Weaver was hired by the Orioles, managers were still seen as coaches and inspirational leaders, more teachers of the game than strategists. Weaver invented new ways of building baseball teams, prioritizing on-base average, elite defense, and strike throwing.
-
-
THE EARL OF BALTIMORE... ALWAYS A TREAT!
- By USA VETERAN on 03-21-25
By: John W. Miller
-
When the Going Was Good
- An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines
- By: Graydon Carter, James Fox - contributor
- Narrated by: Graydon Carter
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Graydon Carter was offered the editorship of Vanity Fair in 1992, he knew he faced an uphill battle—how to make the esteemed and long-established magazine his own. Not only was he confronted with a staff that he perceived to be loyal to the previous regime, but he arrived only a few years after launching Spy magazine, which gloried in skewering the celebrated and powerful—the very people Vanity Fair venerated.
-
-
A lucky man
- By Dassha1 on 03-30-25
By: Graydon Carter, and others
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Man Nobody Killed
- Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart's New York
- By: Elon Green
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At twenty-five years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay, and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980’s New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall. Witnesses reported officers beating him with Billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after thirteen days in a coma.
By: Elon Green
-
Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age
- A Forgotten History of the Occult
- By: Raphael Cormack
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The interwar period was a golden age for the occult. Spiritualists, clairvoyants, fakirs, Theosophists, mind readers, and Jinn summoners all set out to assure the masses that just as newly discovered invisible forces of electricity and magnetism determined the world of science, unseen powers commanded an unknown realm of human potential. Drawing on untapped sources in Arabic in addition to European ones, Raphael Cormack follows two of the most unusual and charismatic figures of this age.
By: Raphael Cormack
-
Shamans and Robots
- On Ritual, the Placebo Effect, and Artificial Consciousness
- By: Roger Bartra, Gusti Gould - translator
- Narrated by: Asa Siegel
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This book is a profound exploration of the external influences that shape human consciousness, from healing rituals to digital devices. In this voyage through thousands of years of psychosomatic healing, distinguished anthropologist and sociologist Roger Bartra examines the placebo effect as a key to our understanding of human consciousness. Shamans and Robots demonstrates how biology and technology become intertwined within human culture by using the various histories of ritual and symbolic healing to speculate about future developments in artificial intelligence.
By: Roger Bartra, and others
-
Feminism in the Wild
- How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behavior
- By: Melina Packer, Ambika Kamath
- Narrated by: Diana Blue
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer reveal how scientists studying animal behavior have long projected human norms and values onto animals while seeking to understand them. When scientific studies conclude that these norms and values are natural in animals, it makes it easier to think of them as natural in humans too. And because scientists, historically and to this day, largely belong to elite, powerful segments of society, the norms and values embedded into animal behavior science match those of the already powerful.
By: Melina Packer, and others
-
Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels
- Insulting the President, from Washington to Trump
- By: Edwin L. Battistella
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Insulting the president is an American tradition. From Washington to Trump, presidents have been called "lazy," "feeble," "pusillanimous," and more. Our leaders have been derided as "ignoramuses," "idiots," "morons," and "fatheads," and have been compared to all manner of animals - worms and whales and hyenas, sad jellyfish, strutting crows, lap dogs, reptiles, and monkeys. Political insults tell us what we value in our leaders by showing how we devalue them. In Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels, linguist Edwin Battistella collects over 500 insults aimed at American presidents.
-
The Last Manager
- How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball
- By: John W. Miller
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before the Moneyball Era, the Earl of Baltimore reigned over baseball. History’s feistiest and most colorful manager, Earl Weaver transformed the sport by collecting and analyzing data in visionary ways, ultimately winning more games than anybody else during his time running the Orioles from 1968 to 1982. When Weaver was hired by the Orioles, managers were still seen as coaches and inspirational leaders, more teachers of the game than strategists. Weaver invented new ways of building baseball teams, prioritizing on-base average, elite defense, and strike throwing.
-
-
THE EARL OF BALTIMORE... ALWAYS A TREAT!
- By USA VETERAN on 03-21-25
By: John W. Miller
-
The Man Nobody Killed
- Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart's New York
- By: Elon Green
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At twenty-five years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay, and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980’s New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall. Witnesses reported officers beating him with Billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after thirteen days in a coma.
By: Elon Green
-
Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age
- A Forgotten History of the Occult
- By: Raphael Cormack
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The interwar period was a golden age for the occult. Spiritualists, clairvoyants, fakirs, Theosophists, mind readers, and Jinn summoners all set out to assure the masses that just as newly discovered invisible forces of electricity and magnetism determined the world of science, unseen powers commanded an unknown realm of human potential. Drawing on untapped sources in Arabic in addition to European ones, Raphael Cormack follows two of the most unusual and charismatic figures of this age.
By: Raphael Cormack
-
Shamans and Robots
- On Ritual, the Placebo Effect, and Artificial Consciousness
- By: Roger Bartra, Gusti Gould - translator
- Narrated by: Asa Siegel
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This book is a profound exploration of the external influences that shape human consciousness, from healing rituals to digital devices. In this voyage through thousands of years of psychosomatic healing, distinguished anthropologist and sociologist Roger Bartra examines the placebo effect as a key to our understanding of human consciousness. Shamans and Robots demonstrates how biology and technology become intertwined within human culture by using the various histories of ritual and symbolic healing to speculate about future developments in artificial intelligence.
By: Roger Bartra, and others
-
Feminism in the Wild
- How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behavior
- By: Melina Packer, Ambika Kamath
- Narrated by: Diana Blue
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer reveal how scientists studying animal behavior have long projected human norms and values onto animals while seeking to understand them. When scientific studies conclude that these norms and values are natural in animals, it makes it easier to think of them as natural in humans too. And because scientists, historically and to this day, largely belong to elite, powerful segments of society, the norms and values embedded into animal behavior science match those of the already powerful.
By: Melina Packer, and others
-
Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels
- Insulting the President, from Washington to Trump
- By: Edwin L. Battistella
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Insulting the president is an American tradition. From Washington to Trump, presidents have been called "lazy," "feeble," "pusillanimous," and more. Our leaders have been derided as "ignoramuses," "idiots," "morons," and "fatheads," and have been compared to all manner of animals - worms and whales and hyenas, sad jellyfish, strutting crows, lap dogs, reptiles, and monkeys. Political insults tell us what we value in our leaders by showing how we devalue them. In Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels, linguist Edwin Battistella collects over 500 insults aimed at American presidents.
-
The Last Manager
- How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball
- By: John W. Miller
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before the Moneyball Era, the Earl of Baltimore reigned over baseball. History’s feistiest and most colorful manager, Earl Weaver transformed the sport by collecting and analyzing data in visionary ways, ultimately winning more games than anybody else during his time running the Orioles from 1968 to 1982. When Weaver was hired by the Orioles, managers were still seen as coaches and inspirational leaders, more teachers of the game than strategists. Weaver invented new ways of building baseball teams, prioritizing on-base average, elite defense, and strike throwing.
-
-
THE EARL OF BALTIMORE... ALWAYS A TREAT!
- By USA VETERAN on 03-21-25
By: John W. Miller
-
The Jews
- 5,000 Years and Counting
- By: Rob Kutner
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Jews: 5,000 Years and Counting is packed with Jew-facts, Jew-figures, and the original, never-before-seen documents from those who lived through Jewish history. Hear the transcript of the Biblical Patriarchs' and Matriarchs' Group Therapy Session! Sneak a peek at Moses's Secret Diary, or check out the awkward "I'm dumping you" text chain from Spain to the Jews in 1492! Collect and trade Rabbi Action Cards!
-
-
Informative and Entertaining
- By Mike on 03-19-25
By: Rob Kutner
-
Family Romance
- John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers
- By: Jean Strouse
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jean Strouse's Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers looks at twelve portraits of one English family painted by the expatriate American artist at the height of his career—and at the intersections of all these lives with the sparkle and strife of the Edwardian age.
By: Jean Strouse
-
The Unbiased Self
- The Psychology of Overcoming Cognitive Bias
- By: Erin Devers
- Narrated by: Erin Devers
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
So much human behavior can be explained by two motives: we want to be right, and we want to feel good about ourselves. But the tension between these two motives makes us especially vulnerable to bias—and bias distorts our view of the world and of ourselves and can keep us from doing even what we know is right. In The Unbiased Self, social psychologist Erin Devers lays out what psychology has discovered about bias and selfishness.
By: Erin Devers
-
Homestand
- Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America
- By: Will Bardenwerper
- Narrated by: Dan Bittner
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Batavia, New York—between Rochester and Buffalo—hosted its first professional baseball game in 1897. Despite decades of deindustrialization and evaporating middle-class jobs, the Batavia Muckdogs endured. When Major League Baseball cravenly shut them down in 2020—along with forty-one other minor league teams—the town fought back, reviving the Muckdogs as a summer league team comprised of college players.
-
-
Not Bull Durham nor The Circus of Baseball
- By Anonymous User on 05-04-25
-
Crescent Dawn
- The Rise of the Ottoman Empire and the Making of the Modern Age
- By: Si Sheppard
- Narrated by: Mark Elstob
- Length: 21 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Crescent Dawn features some of the legendary figures of the era – from Mehmet the Conqueror, and Suleiman the Magnificent on the Ottoman side, to Charles V and Vasco de Gama on the other – and some of the most exotic locales on Earth – from the sumptuous palaces of Constantinople to the bloody battlefields of the Balkans to the awe-inspiring mountains of Ethiopia. This is a colorful history that brings the great battles of the age to life and clearly shows how the western struggle against the Ottomans constituted the first truly world war.
By: Si Sheppard
-
Funny Because It's True
- How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire
- By: Christine Wenc
- Narrated by: Christine Wenc
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1988, a band of University of Wisconsin–Madison undergrads and dropouts began publishing a free weekly newspaper with no editorial stance other than “You Are Dumb.” Just wanting to make a few bucks, they wound up becoming the bedrock of modern satire over the course of twenty years, changing the way we consume both our comedy and our news. The Onion served as a hilarious and brutally perceptive satire of the absurdity and horrors of late twentieth-century American life and grew into a global phenomenon.
-
-
Her lack of knowledge.
- By Anonymous User on 04-20-25
By: Christine Wenc
-
Rot
- An Imperial History of the Irish Famine
- By: Padraic X. Scanlan
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1845, European potato fields from Spain to Scandinavia were attacked by a novel pathogen. But it was only in Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom, that the blight’s devastation reached apocalyptic levels, leaving more than a million people dead and forcing millions more to emigrate. In Rot, historian Padraic X. Scanlan offers the definitive account of the Great Famine, showing how Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom and the British Empire made it uniquely vulnerable to starvation.
-
-
Really great work of history
- By Anonymous User on 04-12-25
-
Red Scare
- Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America
- By: Clay Risen
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 15 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An urgent, accessible, and important history, Red Scare reveals an all-too-familiar pattern of illiberal conspiracy-mongering and political and cultural backlash that speaks directly to the antagonism and divisiveness of our contemporary moment. Drawing upon newly declassified documents, journalist Clay Risen recounts how politicians like Joseph McCarthy, with the help of an extended network of other government officials and organizations, systematically ruined thousands of lives in their deluded pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies.
-
-
Very disappointing narrator
- By DB on 04-19-25
By: Clay Risen
-
Trespassers at the Golden Gate
- A True Account of Love, Murder, and Madness in Gilded-Age San Francisco
- By: Gary Krist
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shortly before dusk on November 3, 1870, just as the ferryboat El Capitan was pulling away from its slip into San Francisco Bay, a woman clad in black emerged from the shadows and strode across the crowded deck. Reaching under her veil, she drew a small pistol and aimed it directly at a well-dressed man sitting quietly with his wife and children. The woman fired a single bullet into his chest. “I did it and I don’t deny it,” she said when arrested shortly thereafter. “He ruined me and my daughter.”
-
-
Story of a City
- By Suzanna on 04-29-25
By: Gary Krist
-
Mark Twain
- By: Ron Chernow
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 44 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain.
By: Ron Chernow
-
The Next One Is for You
- A True Story of Guns, Country, and the IRA's Secret American Army
- By: Ali Watkins
- Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Northern Ireland, 1975. Violence has erupted on the streets of Belfast. After years as a guerilla army, the IRA is clashing with Loyalist gangs and heavily armed British soldiers. But the Troubles have spilled beyond the island: An ocean away, in the heart of Philadelphia’s Irish enclave, a teenage girl finds a letter in her mailbox. Inside is a bullet, and the message is clear: The next one is for you or your family. As reporter Ali Watkins reveals, the conflict in Northern Ireland might have gone very differently had it not been for a small ragtag band of gunrunners in the United States.
-
-
A factual reporting with the tone of a suspense novel
- By John T F on 05-01-25
By: Ali Watkins
-
A Study in Secrets
- Last Chance Academy, Book 1
- By: Debbi Michiko Florence
- Narrated by: Mirai
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ever since her mom passed away, twelve-year-old Megumi “Meg” Mizuno has been spiraling. After too many low grades and cut classes, she’s been expelled from school—apparently, everyone else has moved past her grief and expects the same from her. Her dad secures her a spot at the prestigious Leland Chase Academy, a boarding school in the middle-of-nowhere New York, called the Last Chance Academy by its student body. At first, Leland Chase seems like an average, if very strict, boarding school. Then, one night, a mysterious envelope appears under her door.