Underbug
An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology
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Narrated by:
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Christina Moore
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By:
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Lisa Margonelli
About this listen
The award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli, national best-selling author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank, investigates the environmental and economic impact termites inflict on human societies in this fascinating examination of one of nature's most misunderstood insects.
Are we more like termites than we ever imagined? In Underbug, the award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli introduces us to the enigmatic creatures that collectively outweigh human beings 10 to one and consume $40 billion-worth of valuable stuff annually - and yet, in Margonelli's telling, seem weirdly familiar.
Over the course of a decade-long obsession with the little bugs, Margonelli pokes around termite mounds and high-tech research facilities, closely watching biologists, roboticists, and geneticists. Her globe-trotting journey veers into uncharted territory, from evolutionary theory to Edwardian science literature to the military industrial complex.
What begins as a natural history of the termite becomes a personal exploration of the unnatural future we're building, with darker observations on power, technology, historical trauma, and the limits of human cognition.
Whether in Namibia or Cambridge, Arizona or Australia, Margonelli turns up astounding facts and raises provocative questions. Is a termite an individual or a unit of a superorganism? Can we harness the termite's properties to change the world? If we build termite-like swarming robots, will they inevitably destroy us? Is it possible to think without having a mind?
Underbug burrows into these questions and many others - unearthing disquieting answers about the world's most underrated insect and what it means to be human.
©2018 Lisa Margonelli (P)2018 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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In The Lives of a Cell, Dr. Lewis Thomas opens up to the listener a universe of knowledge and perception that is perhaps not wholly unfamiliar to the research scientist; but the world he explores is also one of men and women, of complex interrelationships, old ironies, peculiar powers, and intricate languages that give identity to the alienated and direction to the dependent. This remarkable work offers a subtle, bold vision of humankind and the world around us - a sense of what gives life - from a writer who seems to draw grace and strength from the very substance of his subject.
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So enlightening and enjoyable!
- By Flora on 03-15-18
By: Lewis Thomas
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In Search of the Canary Tree
- The Story of a Scientist, a Cypress, and a Changing World
- By: Lauren E. Oakes
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Several years ago, ecologist Lauren E. Oakes set out from California for Alaska's old-growth forests to hunt for a dying tree: the yellow-cedar. With climate change as the culprit, the death of this species meant loss for many Alaskans. Oakes and her research team wanted to chronicle how plants and people could cope with their rapidly changing world. Amidst the standing dead, she discovered the resiliency of forgotten forests, flourishing again in the wake of destruction, and a diverse community of people who persevered to create new relationships with the emerging environment.
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Moving and inspiring
- By Catherine A Gould on 05-26-19
By: Lauren E. Oakes
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The Wonder of Birds
- What They Tell Us About Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future
- By: Jim Robbins
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds, Jim Robbins posits, are our most vital connection to nature. They compel us to look to the skies, both literally and metaphorically, draw us out into nature to seek their beauty, and let us experience vicariously what it is like to be weightless. Birds have helped us in so many of our human endeavors: learning to fly, providing clothing and food, and helping us better understand the human brain and body.
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Stories about birds with something for everyone
- By D on 07-24-17
By: Jim Robbins
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The Smart Swarm
- By: Peter Miller
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In a world where speed and flexibility are valued more than ever, leaders from the corporate boardroom to the military are looking for answers from seemingly unlikely experts - the ones in the grass, in the air, in the lakes, and in the woods. In this innovative audiobook, veteran National Geographic editor Peter Miller shows how swarm species, such as ants, bees, and fish, can teach us to tackle some of the most complex conundrums in business, politics, and technology.
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FLOCK TO THIS BOOK!
- By serine on 04-25-16
By: Peter Miller
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The Beak of the Finch
- A Story of Evolution in Our Time
- By: Jonathan Weiner
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spend 20 years on Daphne Major, an island in the Galapagos, studying natural selection. They recognize each individual bird on the island, when there are 400 at the time of the author's visit or when there are over a thousand. They have observed about 20 generations of finches - continuously.Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
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Fascinating in-depth look at evolution in action
- By Philip on 05-15-11
By: Jonathan Weiner
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Everything All at Once
- How to Unleash Your Inner Nerd, Tap into Radical Curiosity and Solve Any Problem
- By: Bill Nye
- Narrated by: Bill Nye
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Everything All at Once is an exciting, inspiring call to unleash the power of the nerd mindset that exists within us all. Nye believes we'll never be able to tackle our society's biggest, most complex problems if we don't even know how to solve the small ones. Step by step, he shows his listeners the key tools behind his everything-all-at-once approach: radical curiosity, a deep desire for a better future, and a willingness to take the actions needed to make it a reality.
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Bill Nye is awesome, but skip this one
- By Evan on 08-15-17
By: Bill Nye
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The Thing with Feathers
- The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human
- By: Noah Strycker
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds are highly intelligent animals, yet their intelligence is dramatically different from our own and has been little understood. As we learn more about the secrets of bird life, we are unlocking fascinating insights into memory, relationships, game theory, and the nature of intelligence itself. The Thing with Feathers explores the astonishing homing abilities of pigeons, the good deeds of fairy-wrens, the influential flocking abilities of starlings, the deft artistry of bowerbirds, the extraordinary memories of nutcrackers, and other mysteries.
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Interesting book, terrible reader
- By MGM123 on 03-16-18
By: Noah Strycker
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Feathers
- The Evolution of a Natural Miracle
- By: Thor Hanson
- Narrated by: Andy Ingalls
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: Aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told. In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us?
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Fantastic Science and Fun
- By Chris Reich on 12-28-14
By: Thor Hanson
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Letters to a Young Scientist
- By: Edward O. Wilxon
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career - both his successes and his failures - and his motivations for becoming a biologist.
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Long on biography, short on advice
- By A. Mandelin on 08-02-18
By: Edward O. Wilxon
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The Science of Discworld
- A Novel
- By: Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen
- Narrated by: Michael Fenton Stevens, Stephen Briggs
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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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
- By Rachel on 07-30-14
By: Terry Pratchett, and others
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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
What listeners say about Underbug
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Nicholas Stancioff
- 09-23-18
Blind Termites hold the keys, we make our future blindly
A tale of survival, a musing of the difficulty to capture reality, a thoughtful analysis of the limits of technology, the consequences of not thinking through its consequences and a stark warning of the dehumanization of “us” through autonomous weapons. Exhilarating and depressing.
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3 people found this helpful
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- JohnDoe
- 10-07-18
Could have been a great book with good editor.
Reads like honeysuckle. Very uncoordinated. Not arranged in any way. Jumps from one time frame /topic to another.
Subject itself is very engaging. Author obviously knowledgeable, committed scientist / person.
I finally gave up. I'd like to listen a heavily revised support subsequent version
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2 people found this helpful
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- Natacha Ruck
- 02-26-22
Brain candy
This is a fantastic foray into a foreign world that reveals so much about science and humanity. The author is witty, thorough and kind. She makes a strong case for the deep paradigm shifting gain we make from the study of termites. This is fun engaging and mind expanding.
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1 person found this helpful
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- GentlyLovedBooks
- 02-13-19
Started Strong
This was intensely fascinating at first, then nothing happened! It could have been shorter with more info relating to the title. I did find the author's relationships with and descriptions of the scientists to be intriguing, but I felt it was another story, another book entirely.
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1 person found this helpful
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- David Elliott
- 10-14-22
A Heavy Lift Lightened By Many Legs
Lisa Margonelli diligently pursues where her subject leads her, to the arcania of living systems, a swarm intelligence perspective on neuroscience - "perhaps this" rather than some "just so" for children.
Where the topic get's thick she sustains the narrative with wit & human warmth, including a view into that peculiar world, academia & it's oddball geniuses. It's tough going variously, tho surely less so than for the scientists puzzling the topic out.
I mean, I too didn't rewind at her discussion of diploid chromosomes (termites & humans) vs the half diploid honeybee - familar ground from my local beekeepers association. But hard facts are hardly an authors "fault" vs readers who'd rather she'd just given Jiminy Cricket a new cartoon - with a smart phone & a updated beat.
If you can't stand the kitchen go Uber some Burger King.
John McPhee faced similar from an early editor, which McPhee addressed by baring down on him until he acquiesced to the master.
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- E S Bridgewater
- 01-31-19
Spoiled by Wanderings Into Politics
Only limited information about termites. The author has the usual scattered diatribes against modernity and the way humans ruin the natural world.
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2 people found this helpful