
The Hidden Half of Nature
The Microbial Roots of Life and Health
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Narrated by:
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LJ Ganser
About this listen
A riveting exploration of how microbes are transforming the way we see nature and ourselves - and could revolutionize agriculture and medicine.
Prepare to set aside what you think you know about yourself and microbes. Good health - for people and for plants - depends on Earth's smallest creatures. The Hidden Half of Nature tells the story of our tangled relationship with microbes and their potential to revolutionize agriculture and medicine, from garden to gut.
When David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé decide to restore life into their barren yard by creating a garden, dead dirt threatens their dream. As a cure, they feed their soil a steady diet of organic matter. The results impress them. In short order, the much-maligned microbes transform their bleak yard into a flourishing Eden. Beneath their feet, beneficial microbes and plant roots continuously exchange a vast array of essential compounds. The authors soon learn that this miniaturized commerce is central to botanical life's master strategy for defense and health.
They are abruptly plunged further into investigating microbes when Biklé is diagnosed with cancer. Here, they discover an unsettling truth. An armada of bacteria (our microbiome) sails the seas of our gut, enabling our immune system to sort microbial friends from foes. But when our gut microbiome goes awry, our health can go with it. The authors also discover startling insights into the similarities between plant roots and the human gut.
We are not what we eat. We are all - for better or worse - the products of what our microbes eat. This leads to a radical reconceptualization of our relationship to the natural world: By cultivating beneficial microbes, we can rebuild soil fertility and help turn back the modern plague of chronic diseases. The Hidden Half of Nature reveals how to transform agriculture and medicine - by merging the mind of an ecologist with the care of a gardener and the skill of a doctor.
©2016 David R. Montgomery and Anne Bikle (P)2015 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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-
Story
There was a time when “universe” meant all there is. Everything. Yet, in recent years discoveries in physics and cosmology have led a number of scientists to conclude that our universe may be one among many. With crystal-clear prose and inspired use of analogy, Brian Greene shows how a range of different “multiverse” proposals emerges from theories developed to explain the most refined observations of both subatomic particles and the dark depths of space.
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This book & Greene's analogies connected Qs to As
- By Blair on 02-02-11
By: Brian Greene
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The Triumph of Seeds
- How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses & Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History
- By: Thor Hanson
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life, supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and the humble peppercorn drove the Age of Discovery, so did coffee beans help fuel the Enlightenment and cottonseed help spark the Industrial Revolution. And from the fall of Rome to the Arab Spring, the fate of nations continues to hinge on the seeds of a Middle Eastern grass known as wheat.
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Delightfully simplistic!
- By Adrian on 03-30-16
By: Thor Hanson
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Teaming with Fungi
- The Organic Grower's Guide to Mycorrhizae (Science for Gardeners, Book 6)
- By: Jeff Lowenfels
- Narrated by: Lane Hakel
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Almost every plant in a garden forms a relationship with fungi, and many plants would not exist without their fungal partners. By better understanding this relationship, home gardeners can take advantage of the benefits of fungi, which include an increased uptake in nutrients, resistance to drought, earlier fruiting, and more. This must-have guide will teach you how fungi interact with plants and how to best to employ them in your home garden.
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always great info from jeff
- By Amazon Customer on 11-21-22
By: Jeff Lowenfels
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The Rocks Don't Lie
- By: David R. Montgomery
- Narrated by: Gary Telles
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In Tibet, geologist David R. Montgomery heard a local story about a great flood that bore a striking similarity to Noah’s Flood. Intrigued, Montgomery began investigating theworld’s flood stories and - drawing from historic works by theologians, natural philosophers, and scientists - discovered the counterintuitive role Noah’s Flood played in the development of both geology and creationism.
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Very Educational
- By Male Perspective on 12-01-13
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The Fabric of the Cosmos
- Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
- By: Brian Greene
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 22 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past?
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Lucid, Revealing, Thorough
- By Matthew on 02-23-04
By: Brian Greene
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Mycelium Running
- How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World
- By: Paul Stamets
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
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Mycelium Running is a manual for the mycological rescue of the planet. That’s right: growing more mushrooms may be the best thing we can do to save the environment, and in this groundbreaking text from mushroom expert Paul Stamets, you’ll find out how. In this comprehensive guide, you’ll find chapters detailing each of these four exciting branches of what Stamets has coined “mycorestoration,” as well as chapters on the medicinal and nutritional properties of mushrooms, inoculation methods, log and stump culture, and species selection for various environmental purposes.
By: Paul Stamets
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Teaming with Nutrients
- The Organic Gardener's Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition
- By: Jeff Lowenfels, Wayne Lewis
- Narrated by: Chris Lutkin
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Most gardeners realize that plants need to be fed but know little to nothing about the nature of the nutrients involved or how they get into plants. Teaming with Nutrients explains how nutrients move into plants and what both macro-nutrients and micro-nutrients do once inside. It shows organic gardeners how to provide these essentials.
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Wow, narrator can't even pronounce nucleus.
- By Jerry Bradley on 06-25-20
By: Jeff Lowenfels, and others
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The Book of Why
- The New Science of Cause and Effect
- By: Judea Pearl, Dana Mackenzie
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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"Correlation does not imply causation". This mantra has been invoked by scientists for decades and has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. But today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, sparked by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and placed causality - the study of cause and effect - on a firm scientific basis.
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Great book! Not a great audiobook.
- By rrwright on 05-30-18
By: Judea Pearl, and others
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For the Love of Soil
- Strategies to Regenerate Our Food Production Systems
- By: Nicole Masters
- Narrated by: Nicole Masters
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Learn a road map to healthy soil and revitalized food systems for powerfully addressing these times of challenge. This audiobook equips producers with knowledge, skills, and insights to regenerate ecosystem health and grow farm/ranch profits. Globally recognized soil advocate and agroecologist Nicole Masters delivers the solution to rewind the clock on this increasingly critical soil crisis in her first book For the Love of Soil. She argues we can no longer treat soil like dirt.
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More Narrative Than Prescriptive
- By Gardener David on 08-13-20
By: Nicole Masters
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Think Like an Ecosystem
- An Introduction to Permaculture, Water Systems, Soil Science and Landscape Design
- By: Amélie des Plantes
- Narrated by: Brian Pederson
- Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Permaculture makes the most use of what nature provides for us by using specific design strategies to maximize nature’s gifts, such as food, energy, and shelter. A counter to heavy industrial farming, permaculture is all about conscious planning that caters to the human needs while also respecting and healing the natural environment. At its core, it involves drawing inspiration from nature to build an ecosystem that thrives just like any other. If you want to start practicing permaculture and reap all its benefits, then you need to listen to this audiobook today!
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for goodness sake
- By Anonymous User on 02-14-24
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The Quantum Universe
- (And Why Anything That Can Happen, Does)
- By: Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Quantum Universe, Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw approach the world of quantum mechanics in the same way they did in Why Does E=mc2? and make fundamental scientific principles accessible - and fascinating - to everyone.The subatomic realm has a reputation for weirdness, spawning any number of profound misunderstandings, journeys into Eastern mysticism, and woolly pronouncements on the interconnectedness of all things. Cox and Forshaw's contention? There is no need for quantum mechanics to be viewed this way.
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Not suitable as an audio book
- By SPN on 03-29-22
By: Brian Cox, and others
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Parasite Rex
- Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and the darkest shadows of science. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer takes listeners on a fantastic voyage into the secret universe of these extraordinary life forms that are not only among the most highly evolved on Earth, but make up the majority of life's diversity. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the parasite-riddled war zone of southern Sudan, Zimmer introduces an array of amazing creatures that invade their hosts, prey on them from within, and control their behavior.
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Fascinating, Repetitive and reading disaster
- By Spiral, on 04-02-20
By: Carl Zimmer
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The One-Straw Revolution
- An Introduction to Natural Farming
- By: Masanobu Fukuoka, Larry Korn
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Call it "Zen and the Art of Farming" or a "Little Green Book", Masanobu Fukuoka's manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. At the same time, it is a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. As Wendell Berry writes in his preface, the book "is valuable to us because it is at once practical and philosophical."
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Fukuoka Hits a Home-Run.
- By philip d henderson on 06-23-18
By: Masanobu Fukuoka, and others
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes- I believe most people will benefit from realizing what big business agriculture has done to us as a result of industrialization on a massive scale in the 20th Century and that there is something that can be done about it in the backyardWhat other book might you compare The Hidden Half of Nature to and why?
The One Straw Revolution is a book that discusses no till farming and not putting chemical industry fertilizers in soil written by a Japanese Soil Scientist - Masanobu FukuokaHave you listened to any of LJ Ganser’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I have notWas this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes that would have been nice but not practicalAny additional comments?
Important that we begin to educate ourselves to improve our health and step away from industrialized healthcare and agriculture and this would also help our climate because it would restore the natural cycleProbably the secret to most of our chronic disease
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Great book on both soil and gut microbes.
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For even the casual listener, it provides enough key fundamentals to seed some new ideas. In others, understanding will drive a quest for more information and become a catalyst for change.
The audiobook was marred by a an able narrator who was unhappily paired to a subject with which he was unfamiliar. This led to some jarring mispronunciations. Further, his tone was somehow pugnacious. I kept being uncomfortably reminded of a bully I knew in grade school.
So I'll buy a hardback copy. You didn't know my bully and you might just love this book. Others, and it's not a bad idea, might just prefer a comic strip edition.
Great information only adequately read
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An extremely important book of the basic things in Life.
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There are a goodly number of fresh ideas and well delivered analysis of newer research.
Also a (pleasant) surprise is that the author takes a global view of the material, that is appropriately enough global in nature, rather than the usual single-track/single level presentation of an idea(s).
Like the book The Wisdom of Your Cells, The Hidden Half of Nature looks like one thing at the start and something much more thought provoking as it develops.
Don't miss this one.
Don't miss this one
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How little we know
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Excellent book!
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Life Changing!!
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Good all round
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very interesting read
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