
Starborn
How the Stars Made Us (and Who We Would Be Without Them)
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Narrated by:
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George Weightman
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By:
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Roberto Trotta
About this listen
A sweeping inquiry into how the night sky has shaped human history
For as long as humans have lived, we have lived beneath the stars. But under the glow of today’s artificial lighting, we have lost the intimacy our ancestors once shared with the cosmos.
In Starborn, cosmologist Roberto Trotta reveals how stargazing has shaped the course of human civilization. The stars have served as our timekeepers, our navigators, our muses—they were once even our gods. How radically different would we be, Trotta also asks, if our ancestors had looked up to the night sky and seen… nothing? He pairs the history of our starstruck species with a dramatic alternate version, a world without stars where our understanding of science, art, and ourselves would have been radically altered.
Revealing the hidden connections between astronomy and civilization, Starborn summons us to the marvelous sight that awaits us on a dark, clear night—to lose ourselves in the immeasurable vastness above.
©2023 Roberto Trotta (P)2023 Basic BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Trotta offers a stellar survey of the 'remarkable but often unrecognized' role played by stars and other cosmic bodies in human history... . The prose is evocative...and the history fascinates...it’s a stimulating take on how the heavens have shaped life on Earth."—Publishers Weekly
“A stunning and unforgettable voyage through the stars. Almost every page will make you gulp in astonishment. To be so authoritative and yet so readable and companionable is a rare and priceless achievement.”—Stephen Fry, actor
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Story
David Tatel has served nearly 30 years on America’s second highest court, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where many of our most crucial cases are resolved—or teed up for the Supreme Court. He has championed equal justice for his entire adult life; decided landmark environmental and voting cases; and embodied the ideal of what a great judge should be. Yet he has been blind for the past 50 of his 80-plus years.
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A wonderful and inspiring listen, a clear and compelling story
- By D on 06-13-24
By: David S. Tatel
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Knowing What We Know
- The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?
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Colorful anecdotes but tiring after a while.
- By Thumb Guy on 05-03-23
By: Simon Winchester
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This Idea Is Brilliant
- Lost, Overlooked, and Underappreciated Scientific Concepts Everyone Should Know
- By: John Brockman
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Charles Constant
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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As science informs public policy, decision making, and so many aspects of our everyday lives, a scientifically literate society is crucial. In that spirit, Edge.org publisher and author of Know This, John Brockman, asks 206 of the world's most brilliant minds the 2017 Edge Question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?
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Condensed Brilliance in Digestable Chunks
- By Andrew on 02-15-18
By: John Brockman
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The Universe Speaks in Numbers
- How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets
- By: Graham Farmelo
- Narrated by: Hugh Kermode
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the great insights of science is that the universe has an underlying order. The supreme goal of physicists is to understand this order through laws that describe the behavior of the most basic particles and the forces between them. For centuries, we have searched for these laws by studying the results of experiments. Since the 1970s, however, experiments at the world's most powerful atom-smashers have offered few new clues. So some of the world's leading physicists have looked to a different source of insight: modern mathematics.
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Great story and narration, but lacks rigor...
- By James S. on 05-31-19
By: Graham Farmelo
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The Power of Us
- Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony
- By: Jay J. Van Bavel PhD, Dominic J. Packer PhD
- Narrated by: Jay J. Van Bavel PhD, Dominic J. Packer PhD, Terrence Kidd
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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A revolutionary new understanding of identity, showing how our groups have a powerful influence on our feelings, beliefs, and behavior - and how these shared identities can inspire both personal change and social movements.
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Essential reading
- By Andre Vlok on 09-18-23
By: Jay J. Van Bavel PhD, and others
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Master of None
- How a Jack-of-All-Trades Can Still Reach the Top
- By: Clifford Hudson
- Narrated by: Clifford Hudson
- Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Most people don't need to be experts in their field. Yes, the successful know more than the average person about a particular topic, and they often possess a better-than-average ability with a particular skill set; but not everyone who is successful is an expert, he makes clear. And yet we continue to deeply value the expertise ideal. In Master of None, Hudson turns expertise on its head and shows that by embracing variety and becoming more versatile, anyone can succeed and become more open to different opportunities in life.
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Not great, not bad
- By Brian Sachetta on 01-27-21
By: Clifford Hudson
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The Five Talents That Really Matter
- How Great Leaders Drive Extraordinary Performance
- By: Barry Conchie, Sarah Dalton
- Narrated by: Barry Conchie
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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A former Gallup Global Leadership Research and Development leader and the New York Times bestselling coauthor of Strengths-Based Leadership draw from original research comprising interviews with high-performing global leaders to present for the first time a new model that demystifies the aura and complexity surrounding high performing leaders.
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Insightful, Practical, and Refreshingly Human
- By benjamin B. on 05-06-25
By: Barry Conchie, and others
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You Can't Screw This Up
- Why Eating Takeout, Enjoying Dessert, and Taking the Stress Out of Dieting Leads to Weight Loss That Lasts
- By: Adam Bornstein
- Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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What if the healthiest diet included the foods that were enjoyable and respectful of our stressful, overbooked lives? You couldn’t screw it up! Here’s a can’t-miss plan that will build unbreakable habits by incorporating mindset changes, easy restaurant options, and more from “the perfect person to blaze a better path” (Arnold Schwarzenegger).
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Finally! A magic pill ;-)
- By Dan Y on 05-25-23
By: Adam Bornstein
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Synchronicity
- The Epic Quest to Understand the Quantum Nature of Cause and Effect
- By: Paul Halpern
- Narrated by: Jeff Hoyt
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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By 100 years ago, it seemed clear that the speed of light was the fastest possible speed. Causality was safe. And then quantum mechanics happened, introducing spooky connections that seemed to circumvent the law of cause and effect. From Aristotle's Physics to quantum teleportation, learn about the scientific pursuit of instantaneous connections in this insightful examination of our world.
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Good enough for lay audience, but lacks depth
- By James S. on 10-12-20
By: Paul Halpern
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Mapping the Darkness
- The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep
- By: Kenneth Miller
- Narrated by: James Fouhey
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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A century ago, sleep was considered a state of nothingness—even a primitive habit that we could learn to overcome. Then, an immigrant scientist and his assistant spent a month in the depths of a Kentucky cave, making nationwide headlines and thrusting sleep science to the forefront of our consciousness. Award-winning journalist Kenneth Miller weaves together science and history to tell the story of four outsider scientists who took sleep science from fringe discipline to mainstream obsession through spectacular experiments, technological innovation, and single-minded commitment.
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Very detailed and interesting
- By Darcy on 01-24-24
By: Kenneth Miller
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Jellyfish Age Backwards
- Nature's Secrets to Longevity
- By: Nicklas Brendborg
- Narrated by: Joe Leat
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Recent advances in medicine and technology have expanded our understanding of aging across the animal kingdom, and our own timeless quest for the fountain of youth. Yet, despite modern humans living longer today than ever before, the public’s understanding of what is possible is limited to our species—until now. In this spunky, effervescent debut, the key to immortality is revealed to be a superpower within reach.
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Interesting for the non-scientist
- By Andrew Lim on 03-31-23
Interesting but flawed.
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An inspiring survey of cosmology and thoughts about the dark sky.
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The one thing I did like about the book is that it emphasizes the importance of the night sky and the stars in many realms. Dark skies are now fleeting, at least in the developed world.
There are efforts now being undertaken to certify dark sky parks and to curb the effect of urban lighting on the night sky. Significant change can happen through the adoption of outdoor lighting that points down. These are important and, it seems to me, should have been championed in the book. Efforts to preserve and expand dark skies in the U.S. and Europe are somewhat realistic, fit with the subject of the book, and might serve as a model for other cooperative efforts on environmental issues.
Instead, the author descends into an all too common Al Goreish lecture on general climate change. He calls for concerted world action against it--No mention of how that is going to happen with most of the world's population living under totalitarian regimes.
Disjointed and Disappointing in the End
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