Spineless
The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone
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Narrated by:
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Juli Berwald
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By:
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Juli Berwald
About this listen
"A book full of wonders." (Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk)
"Witty, insightful.... The story of jellyfish...is a significant part of the environmental story. Berwald's engaging account of these delicate, often ignored creatures shows how much they matter to our oceans' future." (New York Times Book Review)
Jellyfish have been swimming in our oceans for well over half a billion years, longer than any other animal that lives on the planet. They make a venom so toxic that it can kill a human in three minutes. Their sting - microscopic spears that pierce with five million times the acceleration of gravity - is the fastest known motion in the animal kingdom. Made of roughly 95 percent water, some jellies are barely perceptible virtuosos of disguise, while others glow with a luminescence that has revolutionized biotechnology. Yet until recently, jellyfish were largely ignored by science, and they remain among the most poorly understood of ocean dwellers.
More than a decade ago, Juli Berwald left a career in ocean science to raise a family in landlocked Austin, Texas, but jellyfish drew her back to the sea. Recent, massive blooms of billions of jellyfish have clogged power plants, decimated fisheries, and caused millions of dollars of damage. Driven by questions about how overfishing, coastal development, and climate change were contributing to a jellyfish population explosion, Juli embarked on a scientific odyssey.
She traveled the globe to meet the biologist who devote their careers to jellies, hitched rides on Japanese fishing boats to see giant jellyfish in the wild, raised jellyfish in her dining room, and throughout it all marveled at the complexity of these alluring and ominous biological wonders.
Gracefully blending personal memoir with crystal-clear distillations of science, Spineless is the story of how Juli learned to navigate and ultimately embrace her ambition, her curiosity, and her passion for the natural world. She discovers that jellyfish science is more than just a quest for answers. It’s a call to realize our collective responsibility for the planet we share.
©2017 Juli Berwald (P)2017 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Editorial reviews
Editors Select, November 2017
I was completely charmed by this science memoir about jellyfish and chasing your dreams. Juli Berwald's love of marine biology was reawakened when she started contributing to National Geographic to help support her family. Quickly becoming obsessed with jellyfish, she set out on an unexpected journey to find out if jellies thrive in climate change - and whether that's disastrous for humans. The result is this audiobook, full of charming anecdotes about what happens to baby jellies hatched in space, why jellyfish kiss their wounds better, and her three pet jellies named "Peanut", "Butter", and "Jelly". Her narration isn't super polished, which makes it all the more endearing - I love moments when you can hear her laughing quietly to herself. —Rachel, Audible Editor
Critic reviews
“Spineless is as mesmerizing, surprising, and beautiful as the jellyfish itself. Every page contains some astonishing treasure. If you cherish the sea, if you care about the environment, if you relish life on this sweet, blue planet, you will love this book.” (Sy Montgomery, New York Times best-selling author of The Soul of an Octopus)
"Thoroughly engaging.... Berwald shows us a kind of natural science in which beauty and wonder, scientific investigation and the varied shapes of human lives are bound closely together. I love Spineless for that, and also for its inspiring call to follow your own star." (Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk)
“Berwald’s engaging book is part memoir, part pop science, weaving together stories of her own twisting academic path along with fascinating, vivid details about the delicate creatures.” (New York Times Book Review)
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Read and released.
- By Darwin8u on 11-14-14
By: John McPhee
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The Dragon Behind the Glass
- A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World's Most Coveted Fish
- By: Emily Voigt
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
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A young man is murdered for his prized pet fish. An Asian tycoon buys a single specimen for $150,000. Meanwhile, a pet detective chases smugglers through the streets of New York. Delving into an outlandish realm of obsession, paranoia, and criminality, The Dragon Behind the Glass tells the story of a fish like none other: a powerful predator dating to the age of the dinosaurs.
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A "must read" for all fish professionals.
- By Fishgen on 06-26-16
By: Emily Voigt
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Feathers
- The Evolution of a Natural Miracle
- By: Thor Hanson
- Narrated by: Andy Ingalls
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: Aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told. In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us?
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Fantastic Science and Fun
- By Chris Reich on 12-28-14
By: Thor Hanson
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The Log from the Sea of Cortez
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
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The Log from the Sea of Cortez is the exciting day-by-day account of Steinbeck's trip to the Gulf of California with biologist Ed Ricketts. Drawn from the longer Sea of Cortez, it is a wonderful combination of science, philosophy, and high-spirited adventure.
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Beautiful Book
- By Stuart on 10-07-17
By: John Steinbeck
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In Search of the Canary Tree
- The Story of a Scientist, a Cypress, and a Changing World
- By: Lauren E. Oakes
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
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Several years ago, ecologist Lauren E. Oakes set out from California for Alaska's old-growth forests to hunt for a dying tree: the yellow-cedar. With climate change as the culprit, the death of this species meant loss for many Alaskans. Oakes and her research team wanted to chronicle how plants and people could cope with their rapidly changing world. Amidst the standing dead, she discovered the resiliency of forgotten forests, flourishing again in the wake of destruction, and a diverse community of people who persevered to create new relationships with the emerging environment.
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Moving and inspiring
- By Catherine A Gould on 05-26-19
By: Lauren E. Oakes
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Superlative
- The Biology of Extremes
- By: Matthew D. LaPlante
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
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The world's largest land mammal could help us end cancer. The fastest bird is showing us how to solve a century-old engineering mystery. The oldest tree is giving us insights into climate change. The loudest whale is offering clues about the impact of solar storms. For a long time, scientists ignored superlative life forms as outliers. Increasingly, though, researchers are coming to see great value in studying plants and animals that exist on the outermost edges of the bell curve.
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Fascinating survey of amazing biology
- By Nerd's-eye view on 12-06-19
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How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls
- Animal Movement and the Robots of the Future
- By: David Hu
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Insects walk on water, snakes slither, and fish swim. Animals move with astounding grace, speed, and versatility: how do they do it, and what can we learn from them? In How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls, David Hu takes listeners on an accessible, wondrous journey into the world of animal motion. From basement labs at MIT to the rain forests of Panama, Hu shows how animals have adapted and evolved to traverse their environments, taking advantage of physical laws with results that are startling and ingenious.
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Fun, entertaining, hilarious, and informative
- By Susan T on 11-04-19
By: David Hu
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Camouflage
- By: Joe Haldeman
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The artifact is found seven miles below the surface of the sea and beneath 40 more feet of sand. The Navy's efforts to raise a wrecked submarine uncover it - and set in motion a scientific race to retrieve it, to discover just what it is and where it came from. Denser than any substance known to man, it has broken every drill bit they've tried on it and will not budge an inch. It resists every effort to breach it - or communicate with it.
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Loved it!
- By Nathan Caroland on 09-21-08
By: Joe Haldeman
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Visit Sunny Chernobyl
- And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places
- By: Andrew Blackwell
- Narrated by: Ax Norman
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
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For most of us, traveling means visiting the most beautiful places on Earth - Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon. It’s rare to book a plane ticket to visit the lifeless moonscape of Canada’s oil sand strip mines, or to seek out the Chinese city of Linfen, legendary as the most polluted in the world. But in Visit Sunny Chernobyl, Andrew Blackwell embraces a different kind of travel, taking a jaunt through the most gruesomely polluted places on Earth.
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Better than I predicted
- By Paul Luthi on 08-23-13
By: Andrew Blackwell
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Wild Ones
- A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America
- By: Jon Mooallem
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
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Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America’s endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor. So Jon Mooallem ventures into the field, often taking his daughter with him, to move beyond childlike fascination and make those creatures feel more real. Wild Ones is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects it.
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The line between conservation and domestication...
- By Bonny on 04-02-14
By: Jon Mooallem
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The Beak of the Finch
- A Story of Evolution in Our Time
- By: Jonathan Weiner
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
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Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spend 20 years on Daphne Major, an island in the Galapagos, studying natural selection. They recognize each individual bird on the island, when there are 400 at the time of the author's visit or when there are over a thousand. They have observed about 20 generations of finches - continuously.Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
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Fascinating in-depth look at evolution in action
- By Philip on 05-15-11
By: Jonathan Weiner
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The Ocean of Life
- The Fate of Man and the Sea
- By: Callum Roberts
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Who can forget the sense of wonder with which they discovered the creatures of the deep? In this vibrant hymn to the sea, Callum Roberts - one of the world’s foremost conservation biologists - leads listeners on a fascinating tour of mankind’s relationship to the sea, from the earliest traces of water on Earth to the oceans as we know them today. In the process, Roberts looks at how the taming of the oceans has shaped human civilization and affected marine life. Like Four Fish and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Ocean of Life takes a long view to tell a story in which each one of us has a role to play.
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Immediate fan of Mr Roberts
- By Anna on 06-25-24
By: Callum Roberts
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War of the Whales
- A True Story
- By: Joshua Horwitz
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
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War of the Whales is the gripping tale of a crusading attorney who stumbles on one of the US Navy’s best-kept secrets: a submarine detection system that floods entire ocean basins with high-intensity sound - and drives whales onto beaches. As Joel Reynolds launches a legal fight to expose and challenge the Navy program, marine biologist Ken Balcomb witnesses a mysterious mass stranding of whales near his research station in the Bahamas.
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Legal Drama - better than fiction
- By W. P. Brown on 08-23-14
By: Joshua Horwitz
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The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
- A New History of a Lost World
- By: Steve Brusatte
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In this stunning narrative spanning more than 200 million years, Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field - discovering 10 new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork - masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy.
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"The Rise of the Scientists Who Study Dinosaurs"
- By Daniel Powell on 09-16-18
By: Steve Brusatte
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Sealab
- America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor
- By: Ben Hellwarth
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
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Sealab is the underwater Right Stuff: the compelling story of how a U.S. Navy program sought to develop the marine equivalent of the space station - and forever changed man's relationship to the sea. While NASA was trying to put a man on the moon, the U.S. Navy launched a series of daring experiments to prove that divers could live and work from a sea-floor base.
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An excellent story of adventure and discovery.
- By R. Smith on 08-11-15
By: Ben Hellwarth
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What listeners say about Spineless
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sal
- 12-20-21
Astounding!
I love the way she wrote about jellyfish as well as the big part they played in her life. It was awe inspiring to learn about her life just as much as it was to learn about jellyfish. Great listen!! And I also bought a physical copy too :)
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- Maryann
- 12-20-17
Love this book
Any additional comments?
I wasn't sure I would be able to listen to the book at first. The author reads it instead of a professional and drove me crazy at first with strange pauses. She has a good voice and projects her enthusiasm for the subject and after a few pages I was hooked on the book and not worrying about the reading. I love science books about living creatures but had no idea this subject has so much interesting information. Great book!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Benito Rodriguez
- 02-27-23
Great audio book
I wasn’t sure at first about this audio book but after listening to it I’m glad I did. Yes Juli does talk about herself but I find myself very inspired by it, and no at all bored like other people had said in reviews.
I leaned a lot and I can’t not thank you enough for sharing your life experiences and knowledge.
Thank you!
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- Anonymous User
- 06-28-18
The closest thing to a jellyfish textbook
As someone that is looking to pursue a career in studying jellyfish it is incredibly difficult to find an easily digestible source of information on jellyfish. This book served as both a jumping off point for deep diving into topics and as bastion of information. Paired with Julie Berwalds story of finding a love for science once again "Spineless" certainly furthered my passion for jellyfish.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Shawn Oueinsteen
- 01-09-19
Autobiography of Juli Jellyfish
This is half autobiography of Juli Berwald and half treatise on the science of jellyfish. Berwald reads it well and there is joy in her voice for much of it that wouldn't come with a professional reader, but it is obvious she is not a trained reader, which would have been better.
As a character in her own book, she starts out wondering about global warming and jellyfish, but that gets lost along the way,. She obviously has disgust for global warming, but leaves the reader confused as to what to do about it and how it relates to jellyfish.
It's reasonably pleasant to listen to, mostly due to the autobiography, But even that is confused. She has a doctorate in science, but doesn't work as a scientist and regrets it. The autobiography doesn't resolve that and doesn't get enough into her life to know where she may go with her degree and her regret.
So the book, itself, is spineless. It's somewhat enjoyable, it teaches a lot about jellyfish, but it wobbles all over like jelly.
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1 person found this helpful
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- JessTB
- 01-09-18
Well-written, strange feedback in narration
Well-written. The narrator/author is good, but somehow sounds mechanical, which makes it hard to listen to after a while.
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- anemone
- 11-29-17
Jellyfish
Jellyfish are so interesting and wonderful when put in this context and I am glad that Juli Berwald provide all this information on one of my favorite animals.
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3 people found this helpful
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- R. Pongracz
- 01-02-19
Great narrative and science
This is my favorite new genre: science wrapped in an interesting narrative. Great reading from the author, excellent story, enough in depth science. Learned a ton. Even more inspired (and saddened) by the work we have to do to save our oceans and planet.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Rae
- 08-07-18
Spineless but not without backbone!
I originally went back to college to study marine biology. How I ended up wrenching on aircraft is a convoluted story, one I don't have the patience to explain nor do I think you want to hear/read. But this book helped satisfy that craving and tugs at my heart strings. My heart will always be with marine biology over all else. Juli Berwald is now my hero for doing what I can't/couldn't. Thank you for such an amazing book, Mrs. Berwald! You are truly inspiring.
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- Zeb
- 05-04-18
More daily diary than scientific news
Large sections about what she was wearing or eating and her political opinions that detracted from the jellyfish.
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