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The Random Factor
- How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
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Publisher's summary
UNCOVERS HOW TRULY RANDOM THE WORLD IS BY CHALLENGING NOTIONS OF PREDICTABILITY AND RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM
It’s comforting to think that we can be successful because we work hard, climb ladders, and get what we deserve, but each of us has been profoundly touched by randomness. Chance is shown to play a crucial role in shaping outcomes across history, throughout the natural world, and in our everyday lives. In The Random Factor, Mark Robert Rank draws from a wealth of evidence, including interviews and research, to explain how luck and chance play out and reveals how we can use these lessons to guide our personal lives and public policies.
This book traverses luck from macro to micro, from events like the Cuban Missile Crisis to our personal encounters and relationships. Rank also delves into the class and race dynamics of chance, emphasizing the stark disparities it brings to light.
This transformative book prompts a new understanding of the twists and turns in our daily lives and encourages readers to fully appreciate the surprising world of randomness in which we live.
Critic reviews
“A fantastic read. Mark Robert Rank deftly brings together insights from a wide range of studies and everyday experiences to show the underappreciated role that randomness plays in all aspects of social life. Accessible and entertaining, the book provides a valuable new perspective on contemporary inequality.”—Michael Sauder, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Iowa
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Story
The Mountains Are High is a beautifully written, candid memoir about how reevaluating what is really important and taking a leap of faith to reach it can genuinely transform your life. As one of the ‘new migrants' tells Alec when he arrives: it is easy to change your environment, far more difficult to change your mind.
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Incredibly well-written account of life in a far-flung corner of western China
- By colin flahive on 06-28-24
By: Alec Ash
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Sing Like Fish
- How Sound Rules Life Under Water
- By: Amorina Kingdon
- Narrated by: Angelina Rocca
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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For centuries, humans ignored sound in the “silent world” of the ocean, assuming that what we couldn’t perceive, didn’t exist. But we couldn’t have been more wrong. Marine scientists now have the technology to record and study the complex interplay of the myriad sounds in the sea. Finally, we can trace how sounds travel with the currents, bounce from the seafloor and surface, bend with the temperature and even saltiness; how sounds help marine life survive; and how human noise can transform entire marine ecosystems.
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Good solid science mixed with storytelling.
- By Hawaiian 54 on 10-04-24
By: Amorina Kingdon
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Molds, Mushrooms, and Medicines
- Our Lifelong Relationship with Fungi
- By: Nicholas P. Money
- Narrated by: Nicholas P. Money
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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From beneficial yeasts that aid digestion to toxic molds that cause disease, we are constantly navigating a world filled with fungi. Molds, Mushrooms, and Medicines explores the amazing ways fungi interact with our bodies, showing how our health and well-being depend on an immense ecosystem of yeasts and molds inside and all around us.
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Police Deception and Dishonesty
- The Logic of Lying
- By: Luke William Hunt
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Through a rich discussion of literature and case studies, he shows that there are compelling reasons to think that the police's widespread use of proactive deception and dishonesty is inconsistent with fundamental norms of political morality—especially norms regarding fraud and the rule of law. Although there are times and places for dishonesty and deception in policing, Hunt evocatively illustrates why those times and places should be much more limited than current practices suggest.
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Algorithms of Armageddon
- The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Future Wars
- By: George Galdorisi, Sam J. Tangredi, Robert O. Work - foreword by
- Narrated by: Lyle Blaker
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Neither a protest against AI, nor a speculative work on how AI could replace humans, Algorithms of Armageddon provides a time-critical understanding of why AI is being implemented through state weaponization, the realities for the global power balance, and more importantly, U.S. national security.
By: George Galdorisi, and others
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Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge
- By: Karl Popper
- Narrated by: Martyn Swain
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In a letter of 1932, Karl Popper described Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie–The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge–as ‘…a child of crises, above all of …the crisis of physics.' The two fundamental problems of knowledge that lie at the center of the book are the problem of induction, that although we are able to observe only a limited number of particular events, science nevertheless advances unrestricted universal statements; and the problem of demarcation, which asks for a separating line between empirical science and non-science.
By: Karl Popper