
The Genesis Machine
Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology
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Narrated by:
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Amy Webb
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Andrew Hessel
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Tim Campbell
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Landon Woodson
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Amanda Dolan
About this listen
What if the miracle that created mRNA vaccines is less a once-in-lifetime event and more the harbinger of the emerging age of synthetic biology? This fusion of biology and computers has a singular goal: to gain access to cells in order to write new—and possibly better—biological code.
Synthetic biology promises to reveal how life is created and how it can be re-created, enabling scientists to rewrite the rules of our reality. It could help us, for example, heal without prescription medications, grow meat without harvesting animals, or confront our looming climate catastrophe. Synthetic biology will determine the ways in which we conceive future generations and how we define family, how we identify disease and treat aging, where we make our homes, and how we nourish ourselves. Soon, we will program living, biological structures as though they were tiny computers.
But who should decide how to engineer living organisms? Whether engineered organisms should be planted, farmed, and released into the wild? Should there be limits to human enhancements? Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel’s riveting examination of synthetic biology and the bioeconomy provide the background for thinking through the upcoming risks and moral dilemmas posed by redesigning life, as well as the vast opportunities waiting for us on the horizon.
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Magic Medicine is an armchair traveler's guide to all substances psychedelic! Listeners will learn about their properties, use, lore, place in history, and their current research and applications as medicine.
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Excellent summary of history and modern uses of psychedelics
- By Jill Anne on 12-22-24
By: Cody Johnson
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Fascinate, Revised and Updated
- How to Make Your Brand Impossible to Resist
- By: Sally Hogshead
- Narrated by: Sally Hogshead
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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A newly revised and updated edition of the influential guide that explores one of the most powerful ways to attract attention and influence behavior - fascination - and how businesses, products, and ideas can become irresistible to consumers. In an oversaturated culture defined by limited time and focus, how do we draw attention to our messages, our ideas, and our products when we have only seconds to compete?
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Motivational, but lacks substance!
- By Melanie Iannaggi on 09-15-17
By: Sally Hogshead
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With the End in Mind
- Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial
- By: Kathryn Mannix
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Carling, Kathryn Mannix
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Modern medical technology is allowing us to live longer and fuller lives than ever before. But with changes in the way we understand medicine come changes in the way we understand death. Once a familiar and gentle process, death has come to be something from which we shy away, preferring to fight it desperately than to accept its inevitability. Palliative care has a long tradition in Britain, where Dr. Kathryn Mannix has practiced it for 30 years. In this book, she shares beautifully crafted stories from a lifetime of caring for the dying.
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Wonderful book!
- By Randall Roth on 01-29-18
By: Kathryn Mannix
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The Secret Knowledge of Water
- There Are Two Easy Ways to Die in the Desert: Thirst and Drowning
- By: Craig Childs
- Narrated by: Craig Childs
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Deserts are environments that can be inhospitable even to seasoned explorers. Craig Childs has spent years in the deserts of the American West, and his treks through arid lands in search of water reveal the natural world at its most extreme.
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This book is fantastic
- By Jamesdcawley on 04-09-20
By: Craig Childs
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This Isn't Happening
- Radiohead's "Kid A" and the Beginning of the 21st Century
- By: Steven Hyden
- Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1999, as the end of an old century loomed, five musicians entered a recording studio in Paris without a deadline. Their band was widely recognized as the best and most forward-thinking in rock, a rarefied status granting them the time, money, and space to make a masterpiece. But Radiohead didn't want to make another rock record. Instead, they set out to create the future.
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Amazing read but…
- By Alexis Feldman on 06-01-21
By: Steven Hyden
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The Social Skills Toolkit (4 Books in 1): How to Read People, Speak with Influence, Become Charismatic, and Make Friends Instantly
- How to be More Likable and Charismatic, Book 37
- By: Patrick King
- Narrated by: Russell Newton
- Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Bestselling author Patrick King brings you four of his acclaimed books in one volume - to enhance your relationships, revitalize your social life, relate to people better, and bring more overall joy to your life. Patrick King has thousands of 5-star reviews, many from mental health professionals and psychologists, praising his insight, approach, and actionable advice. Start your journey now.
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Must read for improving communication skills
- By MK on 12-11-24
By: Patrick King
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This Isn't Going to End Well
- The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew
- By: Daniel Wallace
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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If we’re lucky, we all encounter at least one person whose life elevates and inspires our own. For acclaimed novelist Daniel Wallace, he had one hero and inspiration for so much of what followed: his longtime friend and brother-in-law William Nealy. Seemingly perfect, impossibly cool, William was James Dean, Clint Eastwood, and MacGyver all rolled into one, an acclaimed outdoorsman, a famous cartoonist, an accomplished author, a master of all he undertook, William was the ideal that Daniel sought to emulate.
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Lovely, Deep Hearted True Story
- By DebS on 06-24-23
By: Daniel Wallace
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The Formula
- Unlocking the Secrets to Raising Highly Successful Children
- By: Ronald F. Ferguson, Tatsha Robertson
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Formula: Unlocking the Secrets to Raising Highly Successful Children, Harvard economist Ronald Ferguson, named in a New York Times profile as the foremost expert on the US educational "achievement gap," along with award-winning journalist Tatsha Robertson, reveal an intriguing blueprint for helping children from all types of backgrounds become successful adults.
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would recommend
- By Marcia on 02-25-20
By: Ronald F. Ferguson, and others
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The Ghost Forest
- Racists, Radicals, and Real Estate in the California Redwoods
- By: Greg King
- Narrated by: Galen Osier
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In this gripping historical memoir, journalist and famed redwood activist Greg King examines how investors and a growing U.S. economy drove the timber industry to cut down all but 4 percent of the original two-million-acre redwood ecosystem. King first examined redwood logging in the 1980s—as an award-winning reporter. What he found in the woods convinced him to leap the line of neutrality and become an activist dedicated to saving the very last ancient redwood groves remaining in private hands.
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How the world’s most magnificent forest was destroyed!
- By John on 09-06-23
By: Greg King
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Tip of the Spear
- The Incredible Story of an Injured Green Beret's Return to Battle
- By: Ryan Hendrickson
- Narrated by: Brock Vickers
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The inspiring true story of a US Special Forces soldier who was medically retired after stepping on an IED and his incredible return to active duty. An engaging and harrowing account, Tip of the Spear tells the amazing story of one Green Beret's indomitable spirit.
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Amazing story
- By Laura Gonzales on 08-09-20
By: Ryan Hendrickson
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The Power of Awareness
- And Other Secrets from the World's Foremost Spies, Detectives, and Special Operators on How to Stay Safe and Save Your Life
- By: Dan Schilling
- Narrated by: Dan Schilling
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In his empowering book, Dan Schilling shares how to identify and avoid threats using situational awareness and intuition just like the pros. Told with wit and wisdom, this compelling guide uses harrowing stories from Dan's special operations career and those of other experts to outline six easily implemented rules you can apply anywhere to improve your personal safety.
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Good information but a miss on delivery possibly
- By HonestBuyer on 04-30-23
By: Dan Schilling
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Origins
- How Earth's History Shaped Human History
- By: Lewis Dartnell
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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When we talk about human history, we often focus on great leaders, population forces, and decisive wars. But how has the earth itself determined our destiny? Our planet wobbles, driving changes in climate that forced the transition from nomadism to farming. Mountainous terrain led to the development of democracy in Greece. Atmospheric circulation patterns later on shaped the progression of global exploration, colonization, and trade. Even today, voting behavior in the southeast United States ultimately follows the underlying pattern of 75 million-year-old sediments from an ancient sea.
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GREAT Book with a Narrator Who's Falling Asleep
- By aaron on 08-02-20
By: Lewis Dartnell
What listeners say about The Genesis Machine
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- Jennifer Thomas
- 01-10-25
Fascinating
this is fascinating and inspiring review of bio engineering with substantial commentary as to possible future outcomes. The book is highly educational and didactic, and it is designed to be highly accessible (not too technical) the authors' sense of excitement and inspiration and passion for the topic is rather contagious and it will inspire you to think about a possible better future with the use of synthetic biology. Whether you are against or for genetic engineering this book is chalk full of examples stories and ideas that will fascinate. I would particularly recommend it for someone who is against GMO's because I think that they accessible scientific information might inform their views.
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- John D. Furber
- 04-16-22
Mostly accurate, worthwhile, informative
A comprehensive exploration of this important field. The authors got most of the facts right. The readers were good, easy to listen to. Only mispronounced a few technical terms. But if you have to choose only one, I recommend "The Code Breaker" by Walter Isaacson, about CRISPR and Jennifer Doudna.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Brian Garrett
- 05-17-22
The future is going to be crazy
Definitely lots of very interesting vectors the biological future is going to be taking. I'm hoping that some of the items they are working on are going to have a direct benefit to my longevity, but I'm afraid it's going to happen slightly slower than I want it to. Of course the darker side of this is the "dark science" that could be used in a negative way on humanity. Definitely a good read IMHO.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Rockin' Horse
- 03-11-22
A Warning
This book contains science surveyed without an agenda. It can be scary to hear facts
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1 person found this helpful
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- Andy
- 07-02-22
Thought provoking but politically biased
Very thought provoking and worth reading. The text lacks some level of detail to support its claims but does offer some broad brush speculations. Readers should be aware of obvious left wing political bias throughout the text, painting a less than balanced picture of events as well as obviously biased views of potential futures.
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7 people found this helpful
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- J
- 02-21-22
Great book on the possibilities of the future of Human biology
Preordered this a few months back because I’ve enjoy the previous works of Amy Webb. I’m in the tech industry but haven’t had any exposure to biological sciences since college about 10 years ago. The scenarios laid out may seem outlandish but if you see the real world examples cited throughout the book then they begin to seem plausible and realistic. The narrator did a great job and definitely recommend anyone to take a listen to it if they’re willing to have an open mind.
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- Rupert
- 04-17-22
Frightening
Evolution continues while some contemplates if it's true. There are the applications of so many methods within our universe yet we continue to think of God as a magician.
Thank you Amy and Andrew. And let's hail the TWIT audience, heard about this there.
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- Austin
- 05-24-22
Really good synthesis of the field with an informed perspective; bad solutions
The first 90% of the book was really great! Really informative history including even recent advancements in synthetic biology. The last 10% with their solutions leave a lot to be desired. They softly peddle the “COVID was a made in a Chinese lab” conspiracy to argue against gain-of-function research. That left a really bad taste in my mouth. Their other “solutions” were a bit oversimplistic.
However, the first 90% of the book, especially the scenarios toward the end, make it worth it.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Taylor Ono
- 03-21-22
An optimistic look at a terrifying future
The parts that actually focus on synthetic biology are very interesting but at many points the authors lose focus and wander off on tangents. Will definitely spend some time seeing if there is a better book on the subject
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- Anonymous
- 06-19-23
The book we need, but not the book we deserve
The intro and conclusion are the best parts because the main idea is stated. This book addresses a lot of important future issues. Unfortunately, it spends many hours meandering around the big ideas. This is both a must-read primer for all global citizens who will live to see the genesis machine take over, and also a bit of a disappointment.
6/10, Would Recommend
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