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This Explains Everything
- Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee, Michelle Ford, Peter Berkrot, Antony Ferguson
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
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Publisher's summary
In This Explains Everything, John Brockman, founder and publisher of Edge.org, asked experts in numerous fields and disciplines to come up with their favorite explanations for everyday occurrences. Why do we recognize patterns? Is there such a thing as positive stress? Are we genetically programmed to be in conflict with each other? Those are just some of the 150 questions that the world's best scientific minds answer with elegant simplicity.
With contributions from Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, Nassim Taleb, Brian Eno, Steven Pinker, and more, everything is explained in fun, uncomplicated terms that make the most complex concepts easy to comprehend.
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The Upright Thinkers
- The Human Journey From Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos
- By: Leonard Mlodinow
- Narrated by: Leonard Mlodinow
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In this fascinating and illuminating work, Leonard Mlodinow guides us through the critical eras and events in the development of science, all of which, he demonstrates, were propelled forward by humankind's collective struggle to know. From the birth of reasoning and culture to the formation of the studies of physics, chemistry, biology, and modern-day quantum physics, we come to see that much of our progress can be attributed to simple questions - why? how? - bravely asked.
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10/10 Got What I Wanted.
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By: Leonard Mlodinow
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The Science of Discworld
- A Novel
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- Narrated by: Michael Fenton Stevens, Stephen Briggs
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
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Not just another science audiobook and not just another Discworld novella, The Science of Discworld is a creative, mind-bending mash-up of fiction and fact, that offers a wizard’s-eye view of our world that will forever change how you look at the universe.
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Not the best Pratchett, but gets there in the end
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13 Things That Don't Make Sense
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Science starts to get interesting when things don't make sense. Science's best-kept secret is that there are experimental results and reliable data that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. If history is any precedent, we should look to today's inexplicable results to forecast the future of science. Michael Brooks heads to the scientific frontier to meet 13 modern-day anomalies and discover tomorrow's breakthroughs.
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10 interesting chapters-read epiloge first
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Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
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Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful “imagination-extenders and focus-holders” meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will.
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Loved it, but some philosophy background needed.
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Spooky Action at a Distance
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What is space? It isn't a question that most of us normally stop to ask. Space is the venue of physics; it's where things exist, where they move and take shape. Yet over the past few decades, physicists have discovered a phenomenon that operates outside the confines of space and time. The phenomenon - the ability of one particle to affect another instantly across the vastness of space - appears to be almost magical.
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Rambling but Asks Good Questions
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Throughout his distinguished and unconventional career, engineer-turned-molecular-biologist Douglas Axe has been asking the questions that much of the scientific community would rather silence. Now, he presents his conclusions in this brave and pioneering book. Axe argues that the key to understanding our origin is the "design intuition" - the innate belief held by all humans that tasks we would need knowledge to accomplish can be accomplished only by someone who has that knowledge.
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Seductively Challenge what are consider facts
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Your Brain Is a Time Machine
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In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell and perceive time. The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological flow and enables "mental time travel" - simulations of future and past events.
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Great book on an underrated subject
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Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in the face of this vast expanse. Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal.
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Uneven
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The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven's Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science. There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall.
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Too Political
- By Allan on 12-14-11
By: Lisa Randall
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What listeners say about This Explains Everything
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- serine
- 02-14-16
At the edge of physics but not biology
Very similar to Brockman's The Universe (one of my favorites). Once again, Brockman gathers all the greats and puts their ideas into one book. There were ~150 essays. Each answered the question, "What do you consider to be the most beautiful, deep, and elegant theory ?" The book got off to a rough start. Sadly Brockman began with essays from scientists who have become science deniers. For example, epigenetiphobe Dawkins was prominently featured early on and set the tone for the reader. I usually picture Brockman as progressive and existing on the cutting Edge. Starting with Dawkins made me wonder if the world was perhaps ready for a newer, younger, and more edgy editor than John Brockman (how long do we have to pay homage to people like Dawkins who work so hard at keeping other scientists down? Stop treating him like a king and make room for more progressive minds).
Despite initially setting the wrong tone, Brockman managed to wow his reader yet again with great summaries of the most important theories known to humans. Zimbardo's essay was laughable. His essay should have been titled, "The size of my ego is bigger than the size of the universe." At least Brockman shoved it in the middle, allowing the reader to brush it off and move on to better ideas. The majority of this book was filled with extremely passionate people discussing the most meaningful ideas the human brain can comprehend. Essay topics included information theory, the creation of the universe (John Mather's essay was my personal favorite), epigenetics, various psychological phenomenon, evolution, and so on. Very wide scope. Very enjoyable. A must read.
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1 person found this helpful
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- mark martin
- 01-17-15
Great and full of ideas
This was a great book but Peter Berkrot is not a good narrator for non fiction. He has a snarky Catcher in the Rye type of voice. Emotion and deprecation detracts from discussions of quarks and black holes
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-21-17
Great premise, but book really does not deliver
I thought the premise of the book was excellent - ask various luminaries of the academic world about the scientific theory they find to be most beautiful or elegant
The trouble is
1 ) About 1/3 of the responses are about Darwin's theory of evolution (making it repetitive)
2 ) I found it a bit lacking in genuine insight. Its like asking a load of guitarists what their favourite guitar solo is.... they will all have one, but might not be able to articulate why it affects them so deeply, or where its beauty lies - even thought they know it well. .Thats what I find in this book
Overall it was OK, but fell far short of my expectations!
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8 people found this helpful
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- jodi
- 03-01-15
Listen to it over and over
And. Learn something new every time. fantastic!
Great
Grest
And. Learn something new every time. fantastic!
Great
Grest
Why do I have to type so many words to get this accepted?
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- Georgi D
- 06-28-19
great info
This is a great book. it has tons of information about life with great explanations.
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- Braeden
- 06-03-16
needs to be read in small chunks,
needs to be read in small chunks, too often I was left thinking about the last one only to miss the proceeding essay.
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- Gary
- 02-15-14
An ode to science by making you feel the science
A series of essays that read like an ode to science. Good poetry makes you feel your way to understanding, and these essays let you understand by feeling and just gives enough to whet you curiosity on the topic and give you further ideas for further listening.
This book would make a great first science book for the listener since it covers wide areas of science by making the listener feel the topic but not enough to fully understand or assimilate. As for me, the book makes a great last book in science to listen to because it summarizes superbly the 100 or so science books I've listened to (and reviewed) over the last 3 years. Now, I finally realize it's time for me to move on to other kinds of books to discover about our place in the universe.
One of the narrators of this book, Peter Berkrot, read "Confessions of a Crap Artist". You know it's a great narrator when your mind goes back to something he had read (over six months ago) and you give the narrator that personality he had from the other book. That character in "Crap Artist" makes the truly bizarre the normal, and his reading of the strange in science by making it normal made the listening experience all the more enjoyable.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Troy Blackford
- 09-18-15
Amazing Insight. Dreadful Narration.
If you could sum up This Explains Everything in three words, what would they be?
Deep, Beautiful, Elegant
What did you like best about this story?
A huge number of essays from a great number of thinkers covering an amazing amount of topics.
What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?
The two British narrators did a fine job. The two American narrators were extremely irritating, to the point that they might have done the worst narration job I've ever heard. The American man sounded like a cross between the Dateline narrator and a joke on a Simpsons show, and the woman sounded like she was reading a nursery rhyme instead of a science book.
Man: "We live among the stahhhrs, in the vastness of schpaaaaaaayyyyyce." Like it was a movie trailer.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
The topics covered were extremely fascinating.
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- dennis
- 07-15-14
Terrible book....
What disappointed you about This Explains Everything?
No story at all, just compilations of other people thoughts about great discoveries.
What was most disappointing about John Brockman’s story?
Again there was no story and I LOVE science and still couldn't understand allot of the reports. I needed a dictionary to listen to this and this is the first book I've ever EVER said that about after reading over a thousand books I would guess.
Would you listen to another book narrated by the narrators?
This book turned me off so badly I want nothing to do with ANYTHING from this book again.
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from This Explains Everything?
I would cut out the first 200 pages and then leave out the last 80 pages as well!!
Any additional comments?
I didn't like this book at all.. as you needed a degree in language and 10 other sciences to understand this text and some of the chapters were embarrassing they were so poor.
I got almost nothing from this giant grab bag of all kinds of things thrown together and couldn't follow most of it. Worst book...no ...second worst book I ever bought.
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- BWC
- 09-21-21
The heirogant stroking themselves.
This has brought the "intellectuals" an opportunity to declare their faith in self. They declare their belief starting with knowledge moving to theory and then extrapolating far beyond the the extent data. They clearly believe in science which is an error.
the scientific method is effective. Every conclusion is subject to change based on additional data. everything scientist hail as truth now must be viewed only as the best we can do so far. Scientific truth has continuously evolved since the beginning of time and I personally suspect that we have only begun to see the picture.
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