
The Art of Uncertainty
How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck
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
3 months free
Buy for $21.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
David Spiegelhalter
About this listen
How dangerous is our diet? How much of sports falls into the realm of luck? When authorities categorize a given event as "highly likely"—how likely is that, really? Whether we're trying to decide if the benefits of a new medication are worth the chance of side effects or if artificial intelligence truly threatens humanity, our lives are riddled with uncertainties both everyday and existential—yet it can be difficult to know how to properly weigh all those unknowns. In The Art of Uncertainty, renowned statistician David Spiegelhalter shows how we can become better at dealing with what we don't know to make smarter choices in a world so full of puzzling variables.
In lucid, lively prose, Spiegelhalter guides us through the principles of probability, illustrating how they can help us think more analytically about everything from medical advice to sports to climate change forecasts. He demonstrates how taking a mathematical approach to phenomena we might otherwise attribute to fate or luck can help us sort hidden patterns from mere coincidences, better evaluate cause and effect, and predict what's likely to happen in the future.
Sparkling with wit and fascinating real-world examples, this is an essential guide to navigating uncertainty while also retaining the humility to admit what we don't, or simply cannot, know.
©2024 David Spiegelhalter (P)2024 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Corporation in the 21st Century
- Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business Is Wrong
- By: John Kay
- Narrated by: Peter Wicks
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Kay's incisive overhaul of our ideas about business redefines our understanding of successful commercial activity and the corporation—and describes how we have come to "love the product" as we "hate the producer." This is a brilliant and original work from one of the greatest economists.
-
-
Disjointed and disappointing.
- By Amazon Customer on 06-25-25
By: John Kay
-
Bye Bye I Love You
- The Story of Our First and Last Words
- By: Michael Erard
- Narrated by: Stephen Caffrey
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With our earliest utterances, we announce ourselves—and are recognized—as persons ready for social life. With our final ones, we mark where others must release us to death's embrace. In Bye Bye I Love You, linguist and author Michael Erard explores these phenomena, commonly called "first words" and "last words," uncovering their cultural, historical, and biological entanglements and honoring their deep private significance.
-
-
Might be interesting if the narrator could read better
- By Robert K Keim on 07-01-25
By: Michael Erard
-
The Optimist
- By: Keach Hagey
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk.
-
-
The author is a big fan of Sam
- By Timpboy on 06-28-25
By: Keach Hagey
-
The Art of Statistics
- How to Learn from Data
- By: David Spiegelhalter
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Statistics are everywhere, as integral to science as they are to business, and in the popular media hundreds of times a day. In this age of big data, a basic grasp of statistical literacy is more important than ever if we want to separate the fact from the fiction, the ostentatious embellishments from the raw evidence - and even more so if we hope to participate in the future, rather than being simple bystanders.
-
-
very good statistics overview
- By Tom on 11-29-19
-
Peak Human
- What We Can Learn from History’s Greatest Civilizations
- By: Johan Norberg
- Narrated by: Andrew Cullum
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All golden ages are marked by periods of spectacular cultural flourishing, scientific exploration, technological achievement and economic growth; yet no two are the same. Their beliefs, societies and place in the wider world all vary. Despite this, all previous golden ages have ended, whether it be because of external pressures or internal fracturing; too much hubris or too little wariness.
-
-
The consist threads that knit the central theme.
- By C. D. on 06-11-25
By: Johan Norberg
-
Fatherhood
- A History of Love and Power
- By: Augustine Sedgewick
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Fatherhood, celebrated historian Augustine Sedgewick explains how this style of parenting emerged in the first place, why it has changed over time, and whether it will endure as we know it, despite its extraordinary costs. Told through the lives of emblematic fathers like Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Henry VIII, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud, this is an ambitious yet intimate look at how masculinity has evolved and how men have come to hold disproportionate power by expanding and reinforcing the power of fathers in times of crisis.
-
The Corporation in the 21st Century
- Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business Is Wrong
- By: John Kay
- Narrated by: Peter Wicks
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Kay's incisive overhaul of our ideas about business redefines our understanding of successful commercial activity and the corporation—and describes how we have come to "love the product" as we "hate the producer." This is a brilliant and original work from one of the greatest economists.
-
-
Disjointed and disappointing.
- By Amazon Customer on 06-25-25
By: John Kay
-
Bye Bye I Love You
- The Story of Our First and Last Words
- By: Michael Erard
- Narrated by: Stephen Caffrey
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With our earliest utterances, we announce ourselves—and are recognized—as persons ready for social life. With our final ones, we mark where others must release us to death's embrace. In Bye Bye I Love You, linguist and author Michael Erard explores these phenomena, commonly called "first words" and "last words," uncovering their cultural, historical, and biological entanglements and honoring their deep private significance.
-
-
Might be interesting if the narrator could read better
- By Robert K Keim on 07-01-25
By: Michael Erard
-
The Optimist
- By: Keach Hagey
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk.
-
-
The author is a big fan of Sam
- By Timpboy on 06-28-25
By: Keach Hagey
-
The Art of Statistics
- How to Learn from Data
- By: David Spiegelhalter
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Statistics are everywhere, as integral to science as they are to business, and in the popular media hundreds of times a day. In this age of big data, a basic grasp of statistical literacy is more important than ever if we want to separate the fact from the fiction, the ostentatious embellishments from the raw evidence - and even more so if we hope to participate in the future, rather than being simple bystanders.
-
-
very good statistics overview
- By Tom on 11-29-19
-
Peak Human
- What We Can Learn from History’s Greatest Civilizations
- By: Johan Norberg
- Narrated by: Andrew Cullum
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All golden ages are marked by periods of spectacular cultural flourishing, scientific exploration, technological achievement and economic growth; yet no two are the same. Their beliefs, societies and place in the wider world all vary. Despite this, all previous golden ages have ended, whether it be because of external pressures or internal fracturing; too much hubris or too little wariness.
-
-
The consist threads that knit the central theme.
- By C. D. on 06-11-25
By: Johan Norberg
-
Fatherhood
- A History of Love and Power
- By: Augustine Sedgewick
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Fatherhood, celebrated historian Augustine Sedgewick explains how this style of parenting emerged in the first place, why it has changed over time, and whether it will endure as we know it, despite its extraordinary costs. Told through the lives of emblematic fathers like Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Henry VIII, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud, this is an ambitious yet intimate look at how masculinity has evolved and how men have come to hold disproportionate power by expanding and reinforcing the power of fathers in times of crisis.
-
Losing Big
- America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling
- By: Jonathan D. Cohen
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Losing Big, historian Jonathan D. Cohen lays out the astonishing emergence of online sports gambling, from sportsbook executives drafting legislation to an addicted gambler confessing their $300,000 losses. Sports gambling is here to stay, and the stakes could not be higher. Losing Big explains how this brewing crisis came to be, and how it can be addressed before new generations get hooked.
-
-
Easy, short, informative
- By Ezra on 04-02-25
-
Perfect Bet
- How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck out of Gambling
- By: Adam Kucharski
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the simple to the intricate and the audacious to the absurd, Adam Kucharski reveals the long and tangled history between betting and science and explains why gambling continues to generate insights into luck and decision making today. Covering exploits and ideas from across the globe, he meets the teams behind hedge funds that capitalize on inaccurate sports betting odds and explains how PhD-level pundits are using methods originally developed for the US nuclear program to predict sports results.
-
-
Nontechnical, wandering far beyond "gaming"
- By Philo on 04-02-16
By: Adam Kucharski
-
Mathematica
- A Secret World of Intuition and Curiosity
- By: David Bessis, Kevin Frey - translator
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Math has a reputation for being inaccessible. People think that it requires a special gift or that comprehension is a matter of genes. Yet, the greatest mathematicians throughout history, from Rene Descartes to Alexander Grothendieck, have insisted that this is not the case.
-
-
Great General Creativity Guide (w' math as a lens)
- By V. Bandy on 07-19-24
By: David Bessis, and others
-
Beartooth
- A Novel
- By: Callan Wink
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beartooth is a novel about two survivalist brothers in desperate straits, who are lured into committing a crime in Yellowstone National Park. Thad and Hazen, long ago abandoned by their wayward mother, are drowning in medical bills and notices about back taxes. They live alone in an aging, timber house hand-built into the leeside of the Beartooth Mountains. Thad’s the older brother, responsible, a loner, the caretaker of Hazen, who is a little . . . different.
-
-
Hard-Scrabble Living on Yellowstone’s Edge
- By WLC on 02-11-25
By: Callan Wink
-
The Thinking Machine
- Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip
- By: Stephen Witt
- Narrated by: Stephen Witt
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In June of 2024, thirty-one years after its founding in a Denny’s restaurant, Nvidia became the most valuable corporation on Earth. The Thinking Machine is the astonishing story of how a designer of video game equipment conquered the market for AI hardware, and in the process re-invented the computer. Essential to Nvidia’s meteoric success is its visionary CEO Jensen Huang, who more than a decade ago, on the basis of a few promising scientific results, bet his entire company on AI.
-
-
A wonderful book!
- By John K. Clark on 04-13-25
By: Stephen Witt
-
Chokepoints
- American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare
- By: Edward Fishman
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 17 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It used to be that ravaging another country’s economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities. Now all it takes is a statement posted online by the U.S. government. In Chokepoints, Edward Fishman, a former top State Department sanctions official, takes us deep into the back rooms of power to reveal the untold history of the last two decades of U.S. foreign policy, in which America renounced the gospel of globalization and waged a new kind of economic war.
-
-
Impressive
- By Harry Helbock on 06-17-25
By: Edward Fishman
-
Proof
- The Art and Science of Certainty
- By: Adam Kucharski
- Narrated by: Nathaniel Priestley
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An award-winning mathematician shows how we prove what’s true, and what to do when we can’t.
By: Adam Kucharski
-
May Contain Lies
- How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases and What We Can Do About It
- By: Alex Edmans
- Narrated by: Alex Edmands
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this eye-opening book, renowned economist Alex Edmans teaches us how to separate fact from fiction. Using colorful examples—from a wellness guru's tragic but fabricated backstory to the blunders that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster to the diet that ensnared millions yet hastened its founder's death—Edmans highlights the biases that cause us to mistake statements for facts, facts for data, data for evidence, and evidence for proof.
-
-
His own bias against women
- By Jane Derebery on 07-21-24
By: Alex Edmans
-
Everything Is Predictable
- How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World
- By: Tom Chivers
- Narrated by: Tom Chivers
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At its simplest, Bayes’s theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event. But in Everything Is Predictable, Tom Chivers lays out how it affects every aspect of our lives. He explains why highly accurate screening tests can lead to false positives and how a failure to account for it in court has put innocent people in jail. A cornerstone of rational thought, many argue that Bayes’s theorem is a description of almost everything. But who was the man who lent his name to this theorem?
-
-
I was looking forward to this. What a disappointment.
- By Alessandro Fadini on 06-28-24
By: Tom Chivers
-
How Countries Go Broke
- The Big Cycle
- By: Ray Dalio
- Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb, Ray Dalio
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How Countries Go Broke shows how debt problems are related to the other forces—political within countries, geopolitical between countries, natural (droughts, floods, and pandemics), and technological (most importantly, AI)—that together are causing what Dalio calls the “Overall Big Cycle” changes in the world order. By listening this audiobook, you will improve your understanding of what’s happening now and what to do about it.
-
-
Horrible narration
- By Anonymous on 06-08-25
By: Ray Dalio
-
The Archaeology of Knowledge
- And the Discourse on Language
- By: Michel Foucault
- Narrated by: James Gillies
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Madness, sexuality, power, knowledge—are these facts of life or simply parts of speech? In a series of works of astonishing brilliance, historian Michel Foucault excavated the hidden assumptions that govern the way we live and the way we think. The Archaeology of Knowledge begins at the level of things aid and moves quickly to illuminate the connections between knowledge, language, and action in a style at once profound and personal. A summing up of Foucault's own methodological assumptions, this book is also a first step toward a genealogy of the way we live now.
-
-
Very abstract
- By John D. Murphy on 07-06-25
By: Michel Foucault
-
The Last Days of Budapest
- The Destruction of Europe's Most Cosmopolitan Capital in World War II
- By: Adam LeBor
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 17 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Budapest, autumn 1943. After four years of war, Hungary was firmly allied with Nazi Germany. Budapest swirled with intrigue and betrayal, home to spies and agents of every kind. But the city remained an oasis in the midst of conflict where Allied POWs and Polish and Jewish refugees found sanctuary. All that came to an end in March 1944 when the Nazis invaded. By the summer Allied bombers were pounding Budapest’s grand boulevards and historic squares.
-
-
Outstanding and harrowing
- By Greg Russell on 06-19-25
By: Adam LeBor
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Art of Uncertainty
- How to Live in the Mystery of Life and Love It
- By: Dennis Merritt Jones
- Narrated by: Tim Andres Pabon
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if we could learn to accept I don't know and embrace the possibility that the future is full of mystery, excitement, and unlimited opportunity? The Art of Uncertainty is an invitation to the listener to consider its essential message: learning to love the unknown by staying present in the moment....The only thing we can control is our next thought. What if we could learn how to be at peace with uncertainty and embrace the possibility that the future is full of mystery, excitement, and unlimited opportunity?
-
-
love love love!!!
- By Tramani on 03-08-15
-
The Corporation in the 21st Century
- Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business Is Wrong
- By: John Kay
- Narrated by: Peter Wicks
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Kay's incisive overhaul of our ideas about business redefines our understanding of successful commercial activity and the corporation—and describes how we have come to "love the product" as we "hate the producer." This is a brilliant and original work from one of the greatest economists.
-
-
Disjointed and disappointing.
- By Amazon Customer on 06-25-25
By: John Kay
-
The Art of Statistics
- How to Learn from Data
- By: David Spiegelhalter
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Statistics are everywhere, as integral to science as they are to business, and in the popular media hundreds of times a day. In this age of big data, a basic grasp of statistical literacy is more important than ever if we want to separate the fact from the fiction, the ostentatious embellishments from the raw evidence - and even more so if we hope to participate in the future, rather than being simple bystanders.
-
-
very good statistics overview
- By Tom on 11-29-19
-
More and More and More
- An All-Consuming History of Energy
- By: Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
- Narrated by: Richard Trinder
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We have long been taught that humanity’s relationship with energy is one of progress, with wood superseded by coal, coal by oil, oil by nuclear—until at some future point everything will be replaced by “green” energy. But the long-held belief in transition and sustainability is completely untrue, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argues. More and More and More demolishes this disastrous fallacy, showing how our industrial age and beyond has in fact been powered by an ever-greater accumulation of each major energy source feeding off the others.
-
The Upside of Uncertainty
- A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown
- By: Nathan Furr, Susannah Harmon Furr
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Upside of Uncertainty, INSEAD professor Nathan Furr and entrepreneur Susannah Harmon Furr provide a sweeping guide to embracing uncertainty and transforming it into a force for good. Drawing from hundreds of interviews, along with pioneering research in psychology, innovation, and behavioral economics, Nathan and Susannah provide dozens of tools—including mental models, techniques, and reflections—for seeing the upside of uncertainty, developing a vision for what to do next, and opening ourselves up to new possibilities.
-
-
Real World Usable Advice
- By Nathan & Kira Huggins on 02-23-24
By: Nathan Furr, and others
-
The Optimist
- By: Keach Hagey
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk.
-
-
The author is a big fan of Sam
- By Timpboy on 06-28-25
By: Keach Hagey
-
The Art of Uncertainty
- How to Live in the Mystery of Life and Love It
- By: Dennis Merritt Jones
- Narrated by: Tim Andres Pabon
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if we could learn to accept I don't know and embrace the possibility that the future is full of mystery, excitement, and unlimited opportunity? The Art of Uncertainty is an invitation to the listener to consider its essential message: learning to love the unknown by staying present in the moment....The only thing we can control is our next thought. What if we could learn how to be at peace with uncertainty and embrace the possibility that the future is full of mystery, excitement, and unlimited opportunity?
-
-
love love love!!!
- By Tramani on 03-08-15
-
The Corporation in the 21st Century
- Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business Is Wrong
- By: John Kay
- Narrated by: Peter Wicks
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Kay's incisive overhaul of our ideas about business redefines our understanding of successful commercial activity and the corporation—and describes how we have come to "love the product" as we "hate the producer." This is a brilliant and original work from one of the greatest economists.
-
-
Disjointed and disappointing.
- By Amazon Customer on 06-25-25
By: John Kay
-
The Art of Statistics
- How to Learn from Data
- By: David Spiegelhalter
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Statistics are everywhere, as integral to science as they are to business, and in the popular media hundreds of times a day. In this age of big data, a basic grasp of statistical literacy is more important than ever if we want to separate the fact from the fiction, the ostentatious embellishments from the raw evidence - and even more so if we hope to participate in the future, rather than being simple bystanders.
-
-
very good statistics overview
- By Tom on 11-29-19
-
More and More and More
- An All-Consuming History of Energy
- By: Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
- Narrated by: Richard Trinder
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We have long been taught that humanity’s relationship with energy is one of progress, with wood superseded by coal, coal by oil, oil by nuclear—until at some future point everything will be replaced by “green” energy. But the long-held belief in transition and sustainability is completely untrue, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argues. More and More and More demolishes this disastrous fallacy, showing how our industrial age and beyond has in fact been powered by an ever-greater accumulation of each major energy source feeding off the others.
-
The Upside of Uncertainty
- A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown
- By: Nathan Furr, Susannah Harmon Furr
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Upside of Uncertainty, INSEAD professor Nathan Furr and entrepreneur Susannah Harmon Furr provide a sweeping guide to embracing uncertainty and transforming it into a force for good. Drawing from hundreds of interviews, along with pioneering research in psychology, innovation, and behavioral economics, Nathan and Susannah provide dozens of tools—including mental models, techniques, and reflections—for seeing the upside of uncertainty, developing a vision for what to do next, and opening ourselves up to new possibilities.
-
-
Real World Usable Advice
- By Nathan & Kira Huggins on 02-23-24
By: Nathan Furr, and others
-
The Optimist
- By: Keach Hagey
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk.
-
-
The author is a big fan of Sam
- By Timpboy on 06-28-25
By: Keach Hagey
-
How Economics Explains the World
- A Short History of Humanity
- By: Andrew Leigh
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This small book indeed tells a big story. It is the story of capitalism–of how our market system developed. It is the story of the discipline of economics, and some of the key figures who formed it. And it is the story of how economic forces have shaped world history. Why didn’t Africa colonize Europe instead of the other way around? What happened when countries erected trade and immigration barriers in the 1930s? Why did the Allies win World War II? You’ll find answers to these questions and more in How Economics Explains the World.
-
-
Horrible, It is like Ray Dalio’s gibberish
- By Robert Elliott on 05-02-25
By: Andrew Leigh
-
Fatherhood
- A History of Love and Power
- By: Augustine Sedgewick
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Fatherhood, celebrated historian Augustine Sedgewick explains how this style of parenting emerged in the first place, why it has changed over time, and whether it will endure as we know it, despite its extraordinary costs. Told through the lives of emblematic fathers like Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Henry VIII, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud, this is an ambitious yet intimate look at how masculinity has evolved and how men have come to hold disproportionate power by expanding and reinforcing the power of fathers in times of crisis.
-
Everything Is Predictable
- How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World
- By: Tom Chivers
- Narrated by: Tom Chivers
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At its simplest, Bayes’s theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event. But in Everything Is Predictable, Tom Chivers lays out how it affects every aspect of our lives. He explains why highly accurate screening tests can lead to false positives and how a failure to account for it in court has put innocent people in jail. A cornerstone of rational thought, many argue that Bayes’s theorem is a description of almost everything. But who was the man who lent his name to this theorem?
-
-
I was looking forward to this. What a disappointment.
- By Alessandro Fadini on 06-28-24
By: Tom Chivers
-
Chokepoints
- American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare
- By: Edward Fishman
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 17 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It used to be that ravaging another country’s economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities. Now all it takes is a statement posted online by the U.S. government. In Chokepoints, Edward Fishman, a former top State Department sanctions official, takes us deep into the back rooms of power to reveal the untold history of the last two decades of U.S. foreign policy, in which America renounced the gospel of globalization and waged a new kind of economic war.
-
-
Impressive
- By Harry Helbock on 06-17-25
By: Edward Fishman
-
Bye Bye I Love You
- The Story of Our First and Last Words
- By: Michael Erard
- Narrated by: Stephen Caffrey
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With our earliest utterances, we announce ourselves—and are recognized—as persons ready for social life. With our final ones, we mark where others must release us to death's embrace. In Bye Bye I Love You, linguist and author Michael Erard explores these phenomena, commonly called "first words" and "last words," uncovering their cultural, historical, and biological entanglements and honoring their deep private significance.
-
-
Might be interesting if the narrator could read better
- By Robert K Keim on 07-01-25
By: Michael Erard
-
Proof
- The Art and Science of Certainty
- By: Adam Kucharski
- Narrated by: Nathaniel Priestley
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An award-winning mathematician shows how we prove what’s true, and what to do when we can’t.
By: Adam Kucharski
-
Metadata
- The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Jeffrey Pomerantz
- Narrated by: Steven Menasche
- Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When "metadata" became breaking news, appearing in stories about surveillance by the National Security Agency, many members of the public encountered this once-obscure term from information science for the first time. Should people be reassured that the NSA was "only" collecting metadata about phone calls - information about the caller, the recipient, the time, the duration, the location - and not recordings of the conversations themselves? Or does phone call metadata reveal more than it seems?
-
-
This Rocks!
- By M.Biblioswine on 07-31-20
-
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.
-
-
Horrifying Exposé
- By HappyatHeart on 06-24-25
By: Alexander Clapp
-
Peak Human
- What We Can Learn from History’s Greatest Civilizations
- By: Johan Norberg
- Narrated by: Andrew Cullum
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All golden ages are marked by periods of spectacular cultural flourishing, scientific exploration, technological achievement and economic growth; yet no two are the same. Their beliefs, societies and place in the wider world all vary. Despite this, all previous golden ages have ended, whether it be because of external pressures or internal fracturing; too much hubris or too little wariness.
-
-
The consist threads that knit the central theme.
- By C. D. on 06-11-25
By: Johan Norberg
-
Empire of AI
- Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
- By: Karen Hao
- Narrated by: Karen Hao
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?
-
-
Well-researched. Timely. Informative. Karen is brilliant and kind!
- By Kahlil Andrews on 05-25-25
By: Karen Hao
-
The Invention of Good and Evil
- A World History of Morality
- By: Hanno Sauer
- Narrated by: Callum Coates
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What makes us moral beings? How do we decide what is good and what is evil? And has it always been that way? Hanno Sauer's sweeping new history of humanity, covering five million years of our universal moral values, comes at a crucial moment of crisis for those values, and helps to explain how they arose—and why we need them. Modern societies are in crisis: a shared universal morality seems to be a thing of the past. Hanno Sauer explains why this appearance is deceptive: in fact, there are universal values that all people share.
-
-
Was good until author got political
- By c0stab on 03-01-25
By: Hanno Sauer
-
Psycholinguistics
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: Fernanda Ferreira
- Narrated by: Lisa S. Ware
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This Very Short Introduction to psycholinguistics is an accessible and engaging description of how people use language. Talking and understanding language probably seem like simple and straightforward skills, but research in psycholinguistics has shown that complex computations take place behind the scenes when you communicate with others. Recent debates concerning how AI tools such as ChatGPT work highlight some of these core questions about the language faculty and how it is that humans comprehend, produce, and learn language.
Terrific
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.