
On Muscle
The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters
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Narrated by:
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Bonnie Tsui
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By:
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Bonnie Tsui
About this listen
From the bestselling author of Why We Swim comes a mind-expanding exploration of muscle—from our ancient obsession with the ideal human form to the modern science of this amazing and adaptable tissue—that will change the way you think about what moves us through the world.
“Remarkable . . . A singular book about the true meanings of strength and flexibility, about our ability to define who we are and who we might be.”—Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes
In On Muscle, Bonnie Tsui brings her signature blend of science, culture, immersive reporting, and personal narrative to examine not just what muscles are but what they mean to us. Cardiac, smooth, skeletal—these three different types of muscle in our bodies make our hearts beat; push food through our intestines, blood through our vessels, babies out the uterus; attach to our bones and allow for motion. Tsui also traces how muscles have defined beauty—and how they have distorted it—through the ages, and how they play an essential role in our physical and mental health.
Tsui introduces us to the first female weightlifter to pick up the famed Scottish Dinnie Stones, then takes us on a 50-mile run through the Nevada desert that follows the path of escape from a Native boarding school—and gives the concept of endurance new meaning. She travels to Oslo, where cutting-edge research reveals how muscles help us bounce back after injury and illness, an important aspect of longevity. She jumps into the action with a historic Double Dutch club in Washington, D.C., to explain anew what Charles Darwin meant by the brain-body connection. Woven throughout are stories of Tsui’s childhood with her Chinese immigrant artist dad—a black belt in karate—who schools her from a young age in a kind of quirky, in-house Muscle Academy.
On Muscle shows us the poetry in the physical, and the surprising ways muscle can reveal what we’re capable of.
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Critic reviews
“Bonnie Tsui has done something remarkable. Fusing science writing, memoir, and essay, she has written a singular book about the true meanings of strength and flexibility, about our ability to define who we are and who we might be, and about what muscle means to the kind of people who rarely feature in stereotypical stories of strength and fitness. On Muscle is a truly moving ode to the tissues that move us.”—Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes and An Immense World
“Bonnie Tsui writes with uncommon elegance and warmth—about muscle, yes, but more than that, about movement and joy and the gorgeous, often surprising ways they entwine. On Muscle is literary and deeply personal, but also rigorously researched and powerfully inspiring. It made me want to run, jump, grab my bike, any one of which I would have done had I not at the same time been unable to stop reading.”—Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Stiff, Gulp, and Fuzz
“Only a seriously skilled storyweaver like Bonnie Tsui can combine science, sociology, and personal experience into a joyfully careening tale about something we all take for granted but none of us really understands. The genius of On Muscle is showing not only how physical strength animates our bodies, but every other aspect of life as well. You’re about to learn more about yourself and your world than you could ever imagine.”—Christopher McDougall, New York Times bestselling author of Born to Run
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Story
Bonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust until she found herself, in midlife, suddenly typing those words into an article she was writing. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father’s near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head-on. Then a chance encounter with a perfect bowl of borscht in Warsaw set Bonny on a journey to unearth her culinary lineage, and she began to dig for the roots of her food obsession, dish by dish.
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How to share an egg
- By Serina on 06-18-25
By: Bonny Reichert
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The Ocean's Menagerie
- How Earth's Strangest Creatures Reshape the Rules of Life
- By: Drew Harvell
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Ocean’s Menagerie, world-renowned marine ecologist Dr. Drew Harvell takes us diving from Hawaii to the Salish Sea, from St. Croix to Indonesia, to uncover the incredible underwater “superpowers” of spineless creatures: we meet corals many times stronger than steel or concrete, sponges who create potent chemical compounds to fight off disease, and sea stars who garden the coastlines, keeping all the other nearby species in perfect balance.
By: Drew Harvell
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The Acid Queen
- The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary
- By: Susannah Cahalan
- Narrated by: Susannah Cahalan
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosemary Woodruff Leary has been known only as the wife of Timothy Leary, the Harvard professor-turned-psychedelic high priest, whose jailbreak captivated the counterculture and whose life on the run with Rosemary inflamed the government. But Rosemary was more than a mere accessory. She was a beatnik, a psychonaut, and a true believer who tested the limits of her mind and the expectations for women of her time.
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Important story/History.
- By Frank Lucido on 07-01-25
By: Susannah Cahalan
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Ballistic
- The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance
- By: Henry Abbott
- Narrated by: Andrew Joseph Perez
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Blending cutting-edge science with gripping storytelling, award-winning data journalist and competitive amateur athlete Henry Abbott reveals that we are on the cusp of a new era in sports medicine, built around the science of ballistic movements—leaping and landing—and the unique fingerprint of your body's physics. Abbott's inspiring narrative tells the story of sports scientist Dr. Marcus Elliott and the Peak Performance Project (P3), who use technology to study how athletes move and why they get hurt.
By: Henry Abbott
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Stronger
- How to build strength: the secret to a longer, healthier life
- By: David Vaux
- Narrated by: Guy Slocombe
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Renowned Osteopath David Vaux unveils decades of scientific research on strength and the musculoskeletal system. He explains why getting stronger is one of the simplest, cheapest and most life-changing things you can do - and unveils a simple ten-step strength plan that will empower you to embark on your journey towards a stronger and healthier life. Stronger is the definitive guide to unlocking a life full of vitality and health, explaining the what, why and how strength is key to longevity right up to your last day on this planet.
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A must read!
- By Rob on 08-19-24
By: David Vaux
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Apocalypse
- How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures
- By: Lizzie Wade
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A drought lasts for decades, a disease rips through a city, a civilization collapses. When we finally uncover the ruins, we ask: What happened? The good news is, we’ve been here before. History is long, and people have already confronted just about every apocalypse we’re facing today. But these days, archaeologists are getting better at seeing stories of survival, transformation, and even progress hidden within those histories of collapse and destruction. Perhaps, we begin to see, apocalypses do not destroy worlds, but create them anew.
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On human resilience
- By Molly on 06-05-25
By: Lizzie Wade
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The Mother Code
- My Story of Love, Loss, and the Myths That Shape Us
- By: Ruthie Ackerman
- Narrated by: Ruthie Ackerman
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Ruthie Ackerman had long believed that the decision to not have children was a radical act. She’d grown up being told that she came from a long line of women who had abandoned their kids and feared she would pass on her half-brother’s rare genetic disorder. So when she marries a man who doesn’t want children, she hopes she can be happy without any. But a voice in her head keeps returning to the question: What if mothering can be a radical act too?
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The Mother Code = Motherhood in Modern America
- By Allison Suzanne Davis on 06-26-25
By: Ruthie Ackerman
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Stronger Than Yesterday
- 169 Insights for Transforming Your Body, Mind, and Motivation
- By: Michael Matthews
- Narrated by: Michael Matthews
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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You aren’t stuck with the body you have. You can make it better, even if you’ve mishandled it, and it’s far simpler than many people believe. Because here’s the truth: Every day, your body’s biology is changing. It’s getting stronger or weaker, younger or older, healthier or sicker, and the driving factor behind these changes isn’t your genes, environment, or even your age—it’s your lifestyle.
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A fun listen
- By avichai kalij on 10-28-24
By: Michael Matthews
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You Didn't Hear This from Me
- (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip
- By: Kelsey McKinney
- Narrated by: Kelsey McKinney
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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As the pandemic forced us to socialize at a distance, Kelsey McKinney was mourning the juicy updates and jaw-dropping stories she’d typically collect over drinks with friends—and from her hunger, the blockbuster Normal Gossip podcast was born. With listenership in the millions, Kelsey found herself thinking more critically about gossip as a form, and wanting to better understand the role it plays in our culture. In You Didn't Hear This From Me, McKinney explores the murkiness of everyday storytelling.
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Breaking down gossip
- By JASmall on 04-30-25
By: Kelsey McKinney
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What Is Ancient History?
- By: Walter Scheidel
- Narrated by: Michael Langan
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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It's easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk of extinction. In What Is Ancient History?, Walter Scheidel presents a compelling case for a new kind of ancient history—a global history that captures antiquity's pivotal role as a decisive phase in human development, one that provided the shared foundation of our world and continues to shape our lives today.
By: Walter Scheidel
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The Narrowing
- A Journey Through Anxiety and the Body
- By: Alexandra Shaker PhD
- Narrated by: Alexandra Shaker PhD
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Most of us are intimately familiar with anxiety, and with its increasing hold on our minds, our hopes and plans, and our bodies. But how well do we really understand it, and what can we do to transform it into something new—into resilience, or courage, or creativity? In this extraordinary book, Dr. Alexandra Shaker, a clinical psychologist, takes us on a journey through the body—from brain to blood to heart to guts—to examine the connections between our emotional, psychological, and physical lives.
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A must read for anyone interested in and/or experiencing anxiety!
- By George S. on 05-02-25
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More Everything Forever
- AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity
- By: Adam Becker
- Narrated by: Greg Tremblay
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Tech billionaires have decided that they should determine our futures for us. According to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and more, the only good future for humanity is one powered by technology: trillions of humans living in space, functionally immortal, served by superintelligent AIs. In More Everything Forever, science writer Adam Becker investigates these wildly implausible and often profoundly immoral visions of tomorrow—and shows why, in reality, there is no good evidence that they will, or should, come to pass.
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Puts words to thoughts that have been haunting me
- By Ellen L. on 04-24-25
By: Adam Becker
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Hope Dies Last
- Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future
- By: Alan Weisman
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Alan Weisman
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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A remedy to climate anxiety by one of the most important voices on humanity’s relationship with the Earth, Hope Dies Last fills a crucial gap in the global conversation: Having reached a point of no return in our climate confrontation, how do we feel, behave, act, plan, and dream as we approach a future decidedly different from what we had expected?
By: Alan Weisman
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Memory Lane
- The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember
- By: Gillian Murphy, Ciara Greene
- Narrated by: Emily Schwing
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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We tend to think of our memories as impressions of the past that remain fully intact, preserved somewhere inside our brains. In fact, we construct and reconstruct our memories every time we attempt to recall them. Memory Lane introduces listeners to the cutting-edge science of human memory, revealing how our recollections of the past are constantly adapting and changing, and why a faulty memory isn't always a bad thing.
By: Gillian Murphy, and others
Muscle wisdom
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