
Some Assembly Required
Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA
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Narrated by:
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Marc Cashman
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By:
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Neil Shubin
About this listen
An exciting and accessible new view of the evolution of human and animal life on Earth. From the author of national bestseller, Your Inner Fish, this extraordinary journey of discovery spans centuries, as explorers and scientists seek to understand the origins of life's immense diversity.
“Fossils, DNA, scientists with a penchant for suits of armor - what’s not to love?” (BBC Wildlife Magazine)
Over billions of years, ancient fish evolved to walk on land, reptiles transformed into birds that fly, and apelike primates evolved into humans that walk on two legs, talk, and write. For more than a century, paleontologists have traveled the globe to find fossils that show how such changes have happened.
We have now arrived at a remarkable moment - prehistoric fossils coupled with new DNA technology have given us the tools to answer some of the basic questions of our existence: How do big changes in evolution happen? Is our presence on Earth the product of mere chance? This new science reveals a multibillion-year evolutionary history filled with twists and turns, trial and error, accident and invention.
In Some Assembly Required, Neil Shubin takes listeners on a journey of discovery spanning centuries, as explorers and scientists seek to understand the origins of life's immense diversity.
©2020 Neil Shubin (P)2020 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"An engaging, must-read for anyone with an interest in evolution." (Library Journal starred review)
"A rollicking ride.... It’s light of touch, anecdote-rich and funny...satisfyingly informative.... Fossils, DNA, scientists with a penchant for suits of armour - what’s not to love?" (BBC Wildlife Magazine)
"Another winner from Dr. Shubin, who skillfully and thoughtfully steers us through the incredibly fascinating world of DNA and fossils. Dr. Shubin’s clear and engaging writing rewards us with a deeper understanding of how all life on our planet is interconnected. Steeped in the paradigm of evolutionary theory, he inspires us to think more deeply about our connectedness with the natural world. Charles Darwin would applaud Dr. Shubin’s clear explanations and insightful rendering of the incontrovertible evidence for the evolution of all life on planet Earth." (Donald Johanson, director, Institute of Human Origins; discoverer of "Lucy")
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The Song of the Cell
- An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human
- By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of The Emperor of All Maladies, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and The Gene, a #1 New York Times bestseller, comes his most spectacular book yet, an exploration of medicine and our radical new ability to manipulate cells. Rich with Mukherjee’s revelatory and exhilarating stories of scientists, doctors, and the patients whose lives may be saved by their work, The Song of the Cell is the third book in this extraordinary writer’s exploration of what it means to be human.
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Beyond Words Wonderful
- By Lynn on 11-27-22
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Against the Grain
- A Deep History of the Earliest States
- By: James C. Scott
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.
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World without Women
- By Paul Richards on 04-28-18
By: James C. Scott
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The Blind Watchmaker
- Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The Blind Watchmaker, knowledgably narrated by author Richard Dawkins, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the 18th-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte.
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Challenging textbook more than an enjoyable listen
- By Eric on 01-15-12
By: Richard Dawkins
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Why Evolution Is True
- By: Jerry A. Coyne
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Why evolution is more than just a theory: it is a fact. In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant "intelligent design", there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned: the evidence, the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection.
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As great as everyone says it is
- By Joseph on 12-01-10
By: Jerry A. Coyne
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Who We Are and How We Got Here
- By: David Reich
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Geneticists like David Reich have made astounding advances in the field of genomics, which is proving to be as important as archaeology, linguistics, and written records as a means to understand our ancestry. In Who We Are and How We Got Here, Reich allows listeners to discover how the human genome provides not only all the information a human embryo needs to develop but also the hidden story of our species.
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Great Book, No Maps Available thru Audible
- By Jane W. on 07-15-18
By: David Reich
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Bernoulli's Fallacy
- Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science
- By: Aubrey Clayton
- Narrated by: Tim H. Dixon
- Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Aubrey Clayton traces the history of how statistics went astray, beginning with the groundbreaking work of the 17th-century mathematician Jacob Bernoulli and winding through gambling, astronomy, and genetics. Clayton recounts the feuds among rival schools of statistics, exploring the surprisingly human problems that gave rise to the discipline and the all-too-human shortcomings that derailed it.
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Rigorously Bayesian
- By Anonymous User on 01-25-22
By: Aubrey Clayton
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Entangled Life
- How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures
- By: Merlin Sheldrake
- Narrated by: Merlin Sheldrake
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave.
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Mycology for Everyone
- By Cephalopods Revenge on 05-12-20
By: Merlin Sheldrake
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The Demon in the Machine
- How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life
- By: Paul Davies
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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What is life? In this penetrating and wide-ranging book, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name; it is a domain where biology, computing, logic, chemistry, quantum physics, and nanotechnology intersect.
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Thought Provoking
- By Amazon Customer on 08-26-24
By: Paul Davies
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The Hidden Life of Trees
- What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World
- By: Peter Wohlleben
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? Research is now suggesting trees are capable of much more than we have ever known. In The Hidden Life of Trees, forester Peter Wohlleben puts groundbreaking scientific discoveries into a language everyone can relate to.
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Tree Hugger
- By Darwin8u on 04-18-19
By: Peter Wohlleben
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Nexus
- A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
- By: Yuval Noah Harari
- Narrated by: Vidish Athavale
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive? Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world.
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Painfully boring
- By 80s Kid on 09-18-24
By the way, Dr. Shubin still upholds the prevailing understanding of the origin of cancer cells, which attributes them to random DNA mutations. However, based on the compelling arguments presented in his book, it might be worth considering the perspectives of Dr. Thomas Seyfred (author of "Cancer as a Metabolic Disease") and Dr. Jason Fung (author of "The Cancer Code"). They argue that cancer cells result from mitochondrial dysfunction or damage caused by metabolic challenges such as poor diet, lack of exercise, and pollution. In this state, the cells behave like prokaryotic cells, relying on fermentative glycolysis to survive. This uncontrolled multiplication, evasion of the immune system, metastasis, and resistance to antitumoral drugs lead to similarities between the behavior of cancer cells and bacteria. It's fascinating to consider the idea that our cells possess genetic codes that enable them to mimic bacteria and become cancer cells, as suggested by the ideas of Shubin.
Great insights about evolutionary biology
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very good book about how life evolved
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some aspects of the history of evolution
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Excellent and engaging
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Outstanding like his first book
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intuitive prospective of development
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an absolute must-read
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A good listen
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The book describes DNA and the genes as these intricate building blocks that have randomly (with the help of environment and survival of the fittest) changed over millions and billions of years to eventually create us humans. He describes how fish evolved into amphibians, which evolved into reptiles, which evolved into birds and mammals.
Current scientists are just at the beginning of understanding how all our genes work, and how that affects our brains. As our scientists continue to understand how DNA and genes work, we may eventually find out how to fully utilize the DNA programming language to create amazing biological enhancements.
The book doesn’t talk much about how DNA came into being. But that is where the debate begins between intelligent design and random series of events. The book does talk about what if the dinosaurs hadn’t had a mass extinction, and uses the analogy of “It’s a Wonderful Life” movie, where God via his angel, Clarence, shows George Bailey what life would be like if George hadn’t existed.
For me, this book explains very well what DNA is, and how genes can change to form new life. We will need more genetic research scientists to keep improving our knowledge in this area. No matter if this DNA programming language was created from a stew of chemicals and elements, or an intelligent designer created it, this DNA language is what we have now, and need to continue to do the deep fundamental research. This will help humanity the most!! (ie. Finding out how to stop cancer and viruses before they kill us, ect).
the great DNA programming language
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Great
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