The Universe Within
Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People
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Narrated by:
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Marc Cashman
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By:
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Neil Shubin
About this listen
From one of our finest and most popular science writers, the best-selling author of Your Inner Fish, comes the answer to a scientific mystery story as big as the world itself: How have astronomical events that took place millions of years ago created the unique qualities of the human species?
In his last book, Neil Shubin delved into the amazing connections between human anatomy—our hands, our jaws—and the structures in the fish that first took over land 375 million years ago. Now, with his trademark clarity and exuberance, he takes an even more expansive approach to the question of why we are the way we are. Starting once again with fossils, Shubin turns his gaze skyward. He shows how the entirety of the universe's 14-billion-year history can be seen in our bodies. From our very molecular composition (a result of stellar events at the origin of our solar system), he makes clear, through the working of our eyes, how the evolution of the cosmos has had profound effects on the development of human life on earth.
©2013 Neil Shubin (P)2013 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A volume of truly inspired science writing…Shubin deftly balances breadth and depth in his search for a ‘sublimely beautiful truth.’” (Publishers Weekly)
"A truly delightful story of how human beings and life on Earth are connected to the wider universe. We don't observe reality from outside; we're embedded deeply within in it, and it shows. Neil Shubin is a sure-handed and entertaining guide to the big picture of how we came to be." (Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and author of The Particle at the End of the Universe)
“From the finest scientific detail to the biggest picture, Shubin understands who we are and why we are here, and even what we need to do to keep going. The magic of his writing is that you can open to any page and in a paragraph or two witness an entire revelation. If you really want your mind blown, read the whole thing. Shubin weaves very human stories into an earthly and universal narrative that without this book might seem too vast or two miniscule to matter.” (Craig Childs, author of Apocalyptic Planet)
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Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how did it come to be? Even in an age of cloning and artificial biology, the remarkable truth remains: Nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we still missing a vital ingredient in its creation?
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More woo than new
- By Gary on 09-09-15
By: Johnjoe McFadden, and others
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Beyond
- Our Future in Space
- By: Chris Impey
- Narrated by: Julie McKay
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Beyond dares to imagine a fantastic future for humans in space - and then reminds us that we're already there. Human exploration has been an unceasing engine of technological progress, from the first homo sapiens to leave our African cradle to a future in which mankind promises to settle another world. Beyond tells the epic story of humanity leaving home - and how humans will soon thrive in the vast universe beyond the Earth.
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OTHER WORLDS
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 01-10-16
By: Chris Impey
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Origin Story
- A Big History of Everything
- By: David Christian
- Narrated by: Jamie Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day - and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History", the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.
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A brilliant achievement, must read/listen
- By 11104 on 09-05-18
By: David Christian
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Exoplanets
- Diamond Worlds, Super Earths, Pulsar Planets, and the New Search for Life Beyond Our Solar System
- By: Michael Summers
- Narrated by: Jon Bennett
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Since its 2009 launch, the Kepler satellite has discovered more than 2,000 exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. More exoplanets are being discovered all the time, remarkable in their variety. Astronomer Michael Summers and physicist James Trefil explore these remarkable recent discoveries: planets revolving around pulsars, planets made of diamond, planets that are mostly water, and numerous rogue planets wandering through the emptiness of space.
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FINALLY, an Attention-Grabbing Planet Book!
- By aaron on 05-11-17
By: Michael Summers
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Forces of Nature
- By: Professor Brian Cox, Andrew Cohen
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Professor Brian Cox uncovers some of the most extraordinary natural events on Earth and in the universe and beyond. From the immensity of the universe and the roundness of Earth to the form of every single snowflake, the forces of nature shape everything we see. Pushed to extremes, the results are astonishing. In seeking to understand the everyday world, the colours, structure, behaviour and history of our home, we develop the knowledge and techniques necessary to step beyond the everyday.
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Complicated in its simplicity
- By Philomath on 06-13-17
By: Professor Brian Cox, and others
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How to Build a Dinosaur
- Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever
- By: Jack Horner, James Gorman
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In movies, in novels, in comic strips, and on television, we've all seen dinosaurs - or at least somebody's educated guess of what they would look like. But what if it were possible to build, or grow, a real dinosaur without finding ancient DNA? Jack Horner, the scientist who advised Steven Spielberg on the blockbuster film Jurassic Park and a pioneer in bringing paleontology into the 21st century, teams up with the editor of the New York Times's Science Times section to reveal exactly what's in store.
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Good book but misplaced title
- By Robert on 06-19-15
By: Jack Horner, and others
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The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
- A New History of a Lost World
- By: Steve Brusatte
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this stunning narrative spanning more than 200 million years, Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field - discovering 10 new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork - masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy.
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"The Rise of the Scientists Who Study Dinosaurs"
- By Daniel Powell on 09-16-18
By: Steve Brusatte
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Remarkable Creatures
- Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species
- By: Sean B. Carroll
- Narrated by: Jim Bond
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vastly off the mark. And what we believed to be the history of our own species consisted of fantastic myths and fairy tales; fossils, known for millennia, were seen as the bones of dragons and other imagined creatures. How did we learn so much so quickly? Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fancies with the even more remarkable real story of how our world evolved.
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A Remarkable Journey
- By Michael Dowd on 03-22-09
By: Sean B. Carroll
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When the Earth Had Two Moons
- Cannibal Planets, Icy Giants, Dirty Comets, Dreadful Orbits, and the Origins of the Night Sky
- By: Erik Asphaug
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1959, the Soviet probe Luna 3 took the first photos of the far side of the Moon. Even in their poor resolution, the images stunned scientists: The far side is an enormous mountainous expanse, not the vast lava plains seen from Earth. Subsequent missions have confirmed this in much greater detail. How could this be, and what might it tell us about our own place in the universe? As it turns out, quite a lot. When the Earth Had Two Moons is an astonishing exploration of planet formation and the origins of life by one of the world’s most innovative planetary geologists.
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Poorly written, poorly narrated
- By RickyF on 05-11-23
By: Erik Asphaug
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Catching Stardust
- Comets, Asteroids and the Birth of the Solar System
- By: Natalie Starkey
- Narrated by: Alison Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Icy, rocky, sometimes dusty, always mysterious – comets and asteroids are among the Solar System's very oldest inhabitants, formed within a swirling cloud of gas and dust in the area of space that eventually hosted the Sun and its planets. Locked within each of these extra-terrestrial objects is the 4.6-billion-year wisdom of Solar System events, and by studying them at close quarters using spacecraft we can coerce them into revealing their closely-guarded secrets. This offers us the chance to answer some fundamental questions about our planet and its inhabitants.
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A home run in space!
- By Rick B on 07-23-22
By: Natalie Starkey
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Please do an unabridged version!
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Brave Attempt
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100% Pure Attenborough
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Such a disappointment
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Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands to rethink their beliefs about life.
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Better than print!
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What listeners say about The Universe Within
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Blaine Byrum
- 07-23-24
Shubin Delivers
Fascinating as always. A complex, but simply explained interconnectedness between all of life and this little rock we live on.
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- William c l
- 08-01-15
Excellent history of earth and humans
History of early Earth and development of life with adaption of human dna changes due to life cycle changes.
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- Gary
- 02-14-13
Easy to follow and informative
Fun and easy to follow listen. Ties together Darwin's evolution of man with the evolution of the universe and some of its constituent parts. If your like me and you just can't get enough about evolution and our place in the universe (who among us can?), than I would recommend this short, well written and informative book.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Mark
- 01-17-13
Cosmic
I really enjoyed this book. It is packed with interesting popular science tit-bits, presented in an engaging style, interwoven with the author’s personal experiences and the lives of various scientists.
Don’t expect to learn anything revolutionary or ground-breaking. This book, in parts, is a science primer. There was some material I already knew pretty well, and some parts, such as his explanation of the causes of earth’s seasons, and the discussion of tectonic plates, I have known since geography classes at age 13. It is a bit like Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything.
I really enjoyed the sections covering the Big Bang, how elements are formed inside stars, and what it’s like on Neptune and Mars. His discussion of the effect of gravity on mammalian body size is compelling, and includes the following observation, which is typical of the author’s entertaining style: ‘if you drop a mouse down a 1000m mine shaft, it gets up and walks away; a rat is killed; a human is broken; a horse splashes!”.
The story meanders from subject to subject. It is ostensibly about the impact of the cosmos and the laws of physics on our daily lives, but sometimes it wanders off at a tangent and you forget the core theme of the book. For this reason, and the fact that I was distracted by hedge-cutting while I listened, I took the unprecedented step of listening to the book twice. I picked up a lot of interesting stuff that I’d missed first time around.
The narrator is excellent and, as long as you are not looking for anything too cerebral, this is great popular science.
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13 people found this helpful
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- Tyler C
- 07-24-14
The companion book to the Cosmos show
It is uncanny how aligned this book is with the first season of the Cosmos reboot. You could think of this as a companion book to that series, as it touches on all the same themes (plate tectonics, understanding of the stars, evolution, etc...) but with more complete information. It also helps that the author has direct experience as a field researcher and brings personal insight to many of the topics. If you want a deeper understanding of he sciences and the people that made its many discoveries, this is a great pick.
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- Lisa
- 04-23-13
Not new, but nicely interwoven disciplines
The joy of this book isn't the science it presents, which must be pretty well known for anyone who has even a passing interest in science. The joy of it is the combination of the knowledge into one large tapestry, making the information feel new and exciting. Bringing in information from physics and astrophysics, plate tectonics, evolutionary biology, genetics, and more the reader moves from the stars to a time when water was the happening place for life, and land was barren, to that great moment 200 million years ago when the birth of the Atlantic allowed for the oxygen necessary for mammalian gestation. If our high schoolers were reading science this fun, we might have more scientists.
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-02-24
Captlve presentation!
content was perfect. for all ages, even me at 90, I listen while walking 2 miles each day.
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- Ken
- 01-19-13
A guide to awakening the spirituality of science
Where does The Universe Within rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
It would be in the top 10. So many great audio books.
What did you like best about this story?
Fact based, The author took me step-by-step through the mystery, the beauty, the amazing insights of science.
When I finished, I was more grounded than ever and more spiritual as well.
I also felt that I should have spent the last thirty years in science rather than in the study of religion. Here is a religion that works. [Or, here is why so many religions do not work]
Have you listened to any of Marc Cashman’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I have not listened to Marc before - his voice is pleasing, his pace just right; his words are clear.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Yes, the Howling Monkeys and human color vision - I could see 2.9 million years of my development.
Any additional comments?
Any book that helps me grasp the complexities of evolution, is wanted.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Paul
- 07-11-14
See the PBS specials
This book was used as the source for a three part PBS serious: Your inner fish, Your inner reptile, your inner monkey. Sorry but I have to say it: See the PBS specials. At least, see them before reading/listening to this book. Perhaps it was because the audio does not use the author's own voice. The PBS series does. Why should we get less from an Audible book?
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- Dean Cameron
- 07-24-15
Fascinating
Clear explanation of the connectedness of life to cosmic evolution. Uses a narrative style that makes the topic accessible to non-scientists.
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