
The Secret of Our Success
How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Yen
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By:
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Joseph Henrich
About this listen
Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments.
What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? This book shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains - on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations.
Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscientific findings, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
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Every entrepreneur should read this book!!
- By Nicole Thomas on 07-02-23
By: Melinda Emerson
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Just One Thing
- How simple changes can transform your life
- By: Dr Michael Mosley
- Narrated by: Dr Michael Mosley
- Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Did you know that eating chocolate can help your heart, that singing can give you a natural 'high' and that having more houseplants can boost your productivity and brain power? Dr Michael Mosley unearths a range of Just One Things, whose impacts are so surprising and intriguing you will be desperate to try them out. He chats to experts, road tests all his tips and even enlists the help of some special guests to help you find that one small thing that could really make a difference to how you feel every day.
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Nothing new here
- By Joan on 03-04-24
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The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind
- My Tale of Madness and Recovery
- By: Barbara K. Lipska, Elaine McArdle - contributor
- Narrated by: Emma Powell
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2015, Barbara Lipska - a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness - was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, her frontal lobe, the seat of cognition, began shutting down. She descended into madness, exhibiting dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms that terrified her family and coworkers. But miraculously, the immunotherapy her doctors had prescribed worked quickly. Just eight weeks after her nightmare began, Lipska returned to normal. With one difference: she remembered her brush with madness with exquisite clarity.
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Be Prepared To Feel Insane--
- By Gillian on 04-11-18
By: Barbara K. Lipska, and others
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A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
- The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Adam Rutherford
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In our unique genomes, every one of us carries the story of our species - births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. But those stories have always been locked away - until now. Who are our ancestors? Where did they come from? Geneticists have suddenly become historians, and the hard evidence in our DNA has completely upended what we thought we knew about ourselves. Acclaimed science writer Adam Rutherford explains exactly how genomics is completely rewriting the human story - from 100,000 years ago to the present.
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I wish this book was in American high schools.
- By melody sheldon on 03-31-19
By: Adam Rutherford
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Energy and Civilization
- A History
- By: Vaclav Smil
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 20 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel-driven civilization and offers listeners a magisterial overview of humanity's energy eras.
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Not a good format for this book
- By C. Hoogeboom on 05-19-18
By: Vaclav Smil
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Hope in the Dark
- Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
- By: Rebecca Solnit
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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With Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide knowledge of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable.
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Hope indeed!
- By Carolinebp on 04-21-17
By: Rebecca Solnit
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The Language Instinct
- How the Mind Creates Language
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 18 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association....
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Absolutely Amazing and Interesting
- By J. C. on 10-28-12
By: Steven Pinker
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The Moral Animal
- Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
- By: Robert Wright
- Narrated by: Greg Thornton
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Are men literally born to cheat? Does monogamy actually serve women's interests? These are among the questions that have made The Moral Animal one of the most provocative science books in recent years. Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics - as well as their implications for our moral codes and public policies.
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Ridiculously Insightful
- By Liron on 10-25-10
By: Robert Wright
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Stuck
- How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity
- By: Yoni Appelbaum
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In this illuminating debut, Yoni Appelbaum, historian and journalist for The Atlantic, shows us that this idea has been under attack since reformers first developed zoning laws to ghettoize Chinese Americans in nineteenth-century Modesto, California. The century of legal segregation that ensued—from the zoning laws enacted to force Jewish workers back into New York’s Lower East Side to the private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in Flint, Michigan to Jane Jacobs’ efforts to protect her vision of the West Village.
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land of opportunity
- By Anonymous User on 03-16-25
By: Yoni Appelbaum
What listeners say about The Secret of Our Success
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- Colin McCaffrey
- 06-12-23
Great subject, clumsy delivery
The narrator at times sounds almost like they’re imitating an old times radio announcer. The material is compelling enough that I sat through most of the book suffering through the narration. This is one I may buy in physical form so I can skip through all the foreshadowing of what’s to come in future chapters. Some of the earlier chapters seem to be nothing but talking about what the author will talk about later. It gets a little annoying.
However, the fundamental concepts of cultural evolution are very clearly laid out. It is made evident how foundational cultural evolution is to our species in almost every aspect of our human lives. I found the material fascinating, and has triggered many avenues of further research and study for me.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Gregory Stark
- 08-23-21
Enjoyed it, but narration was lacking
Combination of a very dry narrator and some sections of the book that were very detailed and pedantic had me snoozing a bit at times, but the bulk of it laid out his thesis very well and gave me a new perspective on human nature and how it evolved
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- C. L. Ray
- 10-03-21
Culture and Human Evolution
The idea that culture has been one of the driving forces in human evolution is truly fascinating and the author has made some compelling arguments. For example, his argument that cultural learning created a change in human biology that lead to psychological adaptations for learning from other people makes sense to me and has opened my eyes to a new way of understanding the current behavior of the human species.
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- Daniel
- 10-07-18
Excellent book
Excellent book on culture-gene coevolution. It’s a must read for everyone who works in the domain of culture or simply wants to better understand culture. The audio performance is great too
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3 people found this helpful
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- Stanton
- 08-18-18
One of the rare accessible, paradigm-shifting books!
I think this book will appeal to both academics and the general public. However, some of the evolutionary concepts *might* require a little extra work (e.g. Wikipedia) for some non-scientific folks.
For me this book significantly shifted my perspective and understanding of the “human story” in a major and permanent way. Other books that had that level of impact on me were “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman and Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel”.
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6 people found this helpful
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- dixon
- 07-10-19
Great book, but audio is way too quiet. Can barely heart with AirPods in the city streets
Great book, but audio is way too quiet. Can barely heart with AirPods in the city streets
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- Owen Davis
- 01-04-24
Clear and compelling argument and richly detailed analysis
Fascinating and convincing book. Not my field but still of great interest. Henrich does a great job of moving the book along through complex theoretical discussions and breaking down difficult concepts. Highly recommended for anyone interested in human evolution, psychology, and culture.
Some have complained about the narrator but I think he’s very good. A bit of an old timey radio voice vibe, yes, but his delivery is clear and expressive. His vocal patterns make the technical material more digestible and it’s clear he understands the gist of what he’s saying.
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- Atis
- 11-18-19
One teacher leads to degredation
Nice book. I loved it. Best idea I' ve got is - learn from many teachers not one, if You want to be the best in something.
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- Yoshi Tryba
- 05-02-22
MUST READ - absolutely fundamental
I have a long list of nonfiction books that I love. this is now the book I'm going to recommend ahead of all the others.
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- Aleksei
- 09-17-19
Brilliant
Clear and consistent narrative of who we are and how we got here. Eye opening!
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