
The Deep History of Ourselves
The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains
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Narrated by:
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Fred Sanders
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By:
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Joseph LeDoux
About this listen
A leading neuroscientist offers a history of the evolution of the brain from unicellular organisms to the complexity of animals and human beings today
Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us and our ancestors in deep time. This pause-resisting survey of the whole of terrestrial evolution sheds new light on how nervous systems evolved in animals, how the brain developed, and what it means to be human.
In The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux argues that the key to understanding human behavior lies in viewing evolution through the prism of the first living organisms. By tracking the chain of the evolutionary timeline he shows how even the earliest single-cell organisms had to solve the same problems we and our cells have to solve each day. Along the way, LeDoux explores our place in nature, how the evolution of nervous systems enhanced the ability of organisms to survive and thrive, and how the emergence of what we humans understand as consciousness made our greatest and most horrendous achievements as a species possible.
*Includes a PDF of original reference illustrations from the text
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Joseph LeDoux (P)2019 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Readers have good reason to ponder LeDoux’s concluding challenge. [A] refreshingly lucid treatment of profound questions.” (Booklist, starred review)
“Plenty of popular authors describe the history of life, but LeDoux wants readers to remember as well as enjoy, so he divides his book into short, pithy chapters, each explaining a single evolutionary advance.... Like all good educators, the author begins simply.... [An] expert history of human behavior beginning at the beginning.” (Kirkus Reviews)
"Joseph LeDoux is the major scientist leading the current important effort to delineate the brain mechanisms of emotional states. In his most recent book, The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux attempts to connect the survival capacity of single-celled micro-organisms to the unique human capacity for survival. This capacity is importantly mediated by our ability to think, feel, and to contemplate not only our own past and future but the past and future of humankind. This is an extraordinary book. Indeed, as LeDoux points out, it is a deep history of ourselves." (Eric R. Kandel, Kavli Professor and University Professor, Columbia University; Senior Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; author of In Search of Memory and The Age of Insight; recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine)
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- By: Antonio Damasio
- Narrated by: Steve West, Antonio Damasio
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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The Strange Order of Things is a pathbreaking investigation into homeostasis, the condition that regulates human physiology within the range that makes possible not only the survival but also the flourishing of life. Antonio Damasio makes clear that we descend biologically, psychologically, and even socially from a long lineage that begins with single living cells; that our minds and cultures are linked by an invisible thread to the ways and means of ancient unicellular life and other primitive life-forms.
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Homeostasis and Metabolism give self awareness
- By Gary on 03-22-18
By: Antonio Damasio
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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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Waves in an Impossible Sea
- How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean
- By: Matt Strassler
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In Waves in an Impossible Sea, physicist Matt Strassler tells a startling tale of elementary particles, human experience, and empty space. He begins with a simple mystery of motion. When we drive at highway speeds with the windows down, the wind beats against our faces. Yet our planet hurtles through the cosmos at 150 miles per second, and we feel nothing of it. How can our voyage be so tranquil when, as Einstein discovered, matter warps space, and space deflects matter? The answer, Strassler reveals, is that empty space is a sea, albeit a paradoxically strange one.
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No pdf
- By Mark on 01-14-25
By: Matt Strassler
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Why We Remember
- Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters
- By: Charan Ranganath PhD
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins, Charan Ranganath PhD
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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A new understanding of memory is emerging from the latest scientific research. In Why We Remember, pioneering neuroscientist and psychologist Charan Ranganath radically reframes the way we think about the everyday act of remembering. Combining accessible language with cutting-edge research, he reveals the surprising ways our brains record the past and how we use that information to understand who we are in the present, and to imagine and plan for the future.
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The subject was interesting read in a calming tone
- By mjk on 04-05-25
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The Experience Machine
- How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality
- By: Andy Clark
- Narrated by: Andy Clark
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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For as long as we’ve studied human cognition, we’ve believed that our senses give us direct access to the world. What we see is what’s really there—or so the thinking goes. But new discoveries in neuroscience and psychology have turned this assumption on its head. What if rather than perceiving reality passively, your mind actively predicts it?
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About halfway through, it became propaganda
- By Jesse Helton on 08-13-23
By: Andy Clark
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How Emotions Are Made
- The Secret Life of the Brain
- By: Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose research overturns the long-standing belief that emotions are automatic, universal, and hardwired in different brain regions. Instead, Barrett shows, we construct each instance of emotion through a unique interplay of brain, body, and culture.
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Emotions are not things!!!!!!
- By Gary on 03-14-17
What listeners say about The Deep History of Ourselves
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- Ein besorgter Nutzer
- 07-30-23
Very interesting and convincing
The relationship between emotions and consciousness is discussed quite rigorously (starting with mono cellular organisms). Though I still would vouch for other animals also having emotions and consciousness the book convinced me that currently there is no hard scientific evidence to support this view (yet also none/not enough for the opposing view).
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- Daniel Moakley
- 01-19-21
loved it but I'm a nerd
Fascinating and unifying in my opinion. A great summary of brain evolution and incorporates the most current research to explain how emotions are necessarily conscious pattern-completions of situations we find ourselves in. Not sure what competing theories there are but this one is pretty interesting.
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4 people found this helpful
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- A. Lawson
- 02-19-22
Fascinating and Epic
An enjoyable and easy read if you have a minimal background in biology, although the sections with extensive discussion of brain regions may overwhelm.
I’m convinced of the bulk of his argument, although I think he fails to fully register the importance of emotional content carried in language, its likely exaptive primacy for linguistic development, and the implications of that.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Jef Szi
- 05-11-23
The Evolutionary Take I have been looking for
The depth and breadth here, particularly in matters of cognitive, consciousness and emotions has given me much validation, clarification and thought to chew on. Loved it
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2 people found this helpful
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- Kristin N Dion
- 11-07-21
Illuminating and fascinating
I loved listening to this book! Self awareness is useful, and awareness of other is useful to. The web is life has always been fascinating to me, and this book helped me weave together myriad bits of wisdom that I've gathered throughout the years into a more cohesive and agile framework of understanding.
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- david dunbar
- 01-04-22
The development of minds misconceptions
Ten plus hours to get to the idea and defend the actual idea that the book wants us to understand. All of this is worth it in the end. the idea of evolutionary development of emotion is as facinating as it is important to understand. The most important thing to take away from this book is that, in science, you must separate the things you believe from the things you find.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Luc
- 09-20-19
Will improve your understanding of the mind, evolution and consciousness
This is a solid book. Clean reasoning and unapologetically accurate. He doesn’t try to dum it down it might be challenging at points but I re-listened to a few of the chapters and in the end you understand. The begging and end are my fav parts
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7 people found this helpful
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- carlosuseche
- 10-04-19
Fantastic science book
Enjoyed and loved each chapter of this wonderful book. Very well written and pleasurable to read. The Deep History of Ourselves at its nutshell
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5 people found this helpful
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- Steven
- 05-07-20
This is one of the most important books I've read
This book is great. Now, I love books on the history of life as well as books on the brain and mind. This book melds the two in such enlightening ways that just about every single chapter I read is filled with insights into the synthesis of evolution and the nervous system. I can't rate this book's content any higher. I know it's a very niche subject and its not for everyone, but if your interesting in the subject matter at all, I recommend you give a try. I mean hell, if you don't like you can always return I suppose.
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5 people found this helpful
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- KC
- 01-16-23
I can’t explain well enough how important this book is.
I feel immensely grateful to have this book and fortunate enough to have come across it. I will read this book continually for some time.
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2 people found this helpful