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What Is a Human?
- Language, Mind, and Culture
- Narrated by: Michael Puttonen
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
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Publisher's summary
In a sweeping synthesis of new research in a number of different disciplines, this book argues that we humans are not who we think we are. As he explores the interconnections between cutting-edge work in bioanthropology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, human language and learning, and beyond, James Paul Gee advances, also, a personal philosophy of language, learning, and culture, informed by his decades of work across linguistics and the social sciences. Gee argues that our schools, institutions, legal systems, and societies are designed for creatures that do not exist, thus resulting in multiple, interacting crises, such as climate change, failing institutions, and the rise of nationalist nationalism.
As Gee constructs an understanding of the human that takes into account our social, collective, and historical nature, as established by recent research, he inspires listeners to reflect for themselves on the very question of who we are—a key consideration for anyone interested in society, government, schools, health, activism, culture and diversity, or even just survival.
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Story
Most of us have instinctive evidence the world is ending - balmy December days, face-to-face conversation replaced with heads-to-screens zomboidism, a world at constant war, a political system in disarray. We hear some myths and lies so frequently that they feel like truths: Civilization is humankind’s greatest accomplishment. Progress is undeniable. Count your blessings. You’re lucky to be alive here and now. Civilized to Death counters the idea that progress is inherently good, arguing that the "progress" defining our age is analogous to an advancing disease.
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Congintive Dissonance
- By Konnor C on 12-06-19
By: Christopher Ryan
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Virus of the Mind
- The New Science of the Meme
- By: Richard Brodie
- Narrated by: Richard Brodie
- Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins
- Abridged
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Virus of the Mind is the first popular work devoted to the science of memetics, a controversial new field that transcends psychology, biology, anthropology, and cognitive science. Memetics is the science of memes, the invisible but very real DNA of human society. Here, the author carefully builds on the work of scientists Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett, and others who have become fascinated with memes and their potential impact on our lives.
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The "Memes Explain Everything" Meme.
- By Nelson Alexander on 02-20-10
By: Richard Brodie
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Irrationality
- A History of the Dark Side of Reason
- By: Justin E. H. Smith
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal”. But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today - from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump - Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite.
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A good brain workout
- By ThomasC on 04-09-19
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Riveted
- The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe
- By: Jim Davies
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Professor Jim Davies's fascinating and highly accessible book, Riveted, reveals the evolutionary underpinnings of why we find things compelling. Drawing on work from philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, psychology, economics, computer science, and biology, Davies offers a comprehensive explanation to show that in spite of the differences between the many things that we find compelling, they have similar effects on our minds and brains.
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Fun and excellent listen!
- By Alejandro Franco on 04-13-18
By: Jim Davies
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The New Breed
- What Our History with Animals Reveals About Our Future with Robots
- By: Kate Darling
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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There has been a lot of ink devoted to discussions of how robots will replace us and take our jobs. But MIT Media Lab researcher and technology policy expert Kate Darling argues just the opposite, and that treating robots with a bit of humanity, more like the way we treat animals, will actually serve us better.
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The book is interesting, and makes good points, but Kate darling forgot about slavery in history
- By jeremy on 10-24-21
By: Kate Darling
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Bronze Age Mindset
- By: Bronze Age Pervert
- Narrated by: Adam Smith
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Some say that this work, found in a safe-box in the port area of Kowloon, was dictated because Bronze Age Pervert refuses to learn what he calls "the low and plebeian art of writing". It isn't known how this work was transcribed. The contents are pure dynamite. He explains that you live in ant farm. That you are observed by the lords of lies, ritually probed. Ancient man had something you have lost: confidence in his instincts and strength, knowledge in his blood. BAP shows how the Bronze Age mind-set can set you free from this iron prison and help you embark on the path of power.
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Mandatory Reading For All Men
- By Anonymous User on 11-20-18
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The Worm at the Core
- On the Role of Death in Life
- By: Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, Tom Pyszczynski
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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More than 100 years ago, the American philosopher William James wrote that the knowledge that we must die is "the worm at the core" of the human condition - a universally shared fear that informs all our thoughts and actions, from the great art we create to the devastating wars we wage.
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Skeptical at first, but they won me over.
- By Tory Giddens on 06-07-20
By: Jeff Greenberg, and others
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On Freedom
- Four Songs of Care and Constraint
- By: Maggie Nelson
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice, and well-being, or is freedom's long star turn coming to a close? Does a continued obsession with the term enliven and emancipate, or reflect a deepening nihilism (or both)? On Freedom examines such questions by tracing the concept's complexities in four distinct realms: art, sex, drugs, and climate.
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Just great
- By Kristi Strong on 12-14-21
By: Maggie Nelson
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The Mind Club
- Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters
- By: Daniel M. Wegner, Kurt Gray
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Nothing seems more real than the minds of other people. When you consider what your boss is thinking or whether your spouse is happy, you are admitting them into the "mind club". It's easy to assume other humans can think and feel, but what about a cow, a computer, a corporation? What kinds of minds do they have? Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray are award-winning psychologists who have discovered that minds - while incredibly important - are a matter of perception.
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Who is the self in me? Am I part of something bigger?
- By Philomath on 03-24-16
By: Daniel M. Wegner, and others
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Why Smart People Hurt
- A Guide for the Bright, the Sensitive, and the Creative
- By: Eric Maisel
- Narrated by: Seth Podowitz
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The challenges smart and creative people encounter - from scientific researchers and genius award winners to best-selling novelists, Broadway actors, high-powered attorneys, and academics - often include anxiety, overthinking, mania, sadness, and despair. In Why Smart People Hurt, natural psychology specialist and creativity coach Dr. Eric Maisel draws on his many years of work with the best and the brightest to pinpoint these often devastating challenges and offer solutions based on the groundbreaking principles and practices of natural psychology.
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Stunningly Unintelligent
- By john burke on 05-22-21
By: Eric Maisel
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What It Means to Be Moral
- Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life
- By: Phil Zuckerman
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life, Phil Zuckerman argues that morality does not come from God. Rather, it comes from us: our brains, our evolutionary past, our ongoing cultural development, our social experiences, and our ability to reason, reflect, and be sensitive to the suffering of others.
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Praise for Faith No More
- By Amazon Customer on 12-08-19
By: Phil Zuckerman
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Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain
- By: Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Narrated by: Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Have you ever wondered why you have a brain? Let renowned neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett demystify that big gray blob between your ears. In seven short essays (plus a bite-sized story about how brains evolved), this slim, entertaining, and accessible collection reveals mind-expanding lessons from the front lines of neuroscience research. You'll learn where brains came from, how they're structured (and why it matters), and how yours works in tandem with other brains to create everything you experience.
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slow reader & little bit of a Wokie
- By darren on 06-01-21
What listeners say about What Is a Human?
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- A.M.
- 09-04-24
I reccommend this for detatched, objective minds
Michael Puttonen has a lovely narrative voice. I appreciate how he approached this book with his performance.
However, the work itself was not engaging enough to keep my attention. Often the writer will arrive at a point, define the point with a more accurate linguistic term than what is commonly used, build up a detailed metaphor to show the term in practice and then repeat the thesis in a myriad of ways to drive that definition home. However, conclusions felt like an afterthought when those arrived and the meandering nature of this expository approach left me -- I really hate to say this -- bored.
For example, communities are interesting when described as "transacting swarms" and how that could be illustrated when it comes to insects and how they work in community, but that does not really delve into what that means for humans when those transactions result in the oppression of those without social advantage (i.e. how does a transacting swarm thrive when subjected to classism, racism, or sexism to oppress portions of the swarm for the short term benefit of a smaller portion of the swarm). If the point was made, then I missed it over the repetitive use of "transacting swarm" throughout the chapter as the point was driven home over and over again of how this definition works to help explain a facet of human nature.
In the books, I got as far as the concept of "fetish" as an alternate, non-sexual way of describing the mechanics of belief systems. It reached a passage about the value "fetish" attributed to money, where the narrator had to repeat several common sayings about money (i.e. "Time is Money." "It takes Money to Make Money", "Money is power.", etc etc.)... and that's when I realized I was bored. I could not make it past chapter 7. Perhaps there are great insights toward the middle and end of the book -- things that could connect these ideas to the seemingly chaotic nature of humans -- but I was not engaged in the meandering path enough to do so.
If this is a subject of study that interests you, if you are familiar with the author and his theories, if you have an objective, logical mind and wish for a new view on terminology in how some human concepts can be described in more interesting ways -- this may be the book for you. The narrator is certainly worth it.
However, if you see the fascinating cover and check it out as a subjective mood reader like me, you may be bored. This is not the sort of non-fiction book you'd read as you would an interesting podcast on an obscure topic. Nor are the concepts too complex to wrap your head around. It's simply... rather detached and meandering. It might leave you wondering what the point is to consider human concepts with different terminology.
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- Kevin L. Nenstiel
- 01-30-23
Humanity as a Man-Made Phenomenon
Like “freedom” or “democracy,” most people think we have a working definition of “humanity” in our heads, and it works adequately most of the time. But this loosey-goosey approach to human essentialism has caused negative outcomes throughout history. War and slavery have let powerful people strip the social designations of humanity from strangers, while belief in human exceptionalism currently threatens humanity’s very existence through anthropogenic climate change.
In his youth, James Paul Gee initially trained for the priesthood, but after losing his faith, he earned a Ph.D. in linguistics. This duality probably influenced the interdisciplinary nature of his subsequent activities, such as the tacitly public nature of literacy, or the social interpretation of video games. This book, written as Gee retired from active academia shortly before the pandemic, is the culmination of his life’s work.
Gee identifies human nature through a balance of extremes. Each human is utterly unique, he writes, but unique human attributes manifest themselves mainly through social context. Therefore we are separate, circumscribed by the limits of our senses in the world, but we’re never truly separate, as we rely utterly on relationships with other humans and the natural world. We lack “free will,” a sludgy and imprecise term, but that lack doesn’t justify determinism.
Past attempts to define humanity have fallen down on the lack of nuance inherent in brevity. Recall Plato defining a human as a “featherless biped,” and Diogenes responding by brandishing a plucked chicken. Gee makes no such mistake here. His definition of humanity sprawls over 200 pages, sometimes narrowly focused on precise scientific outcomes, other times expanding to encompass philosophic maunderings and autobiographical anecdotes. Brevity isn’t Gee’s weakness.
Humans, to Gee, exist in community; he uses termite mounds as his metaphor (sometimes stretched to breaking). Obviously we rely upon others to divide labor, collaborate on labor, and amplify our thought processes. But we don’t just exist in community; we are ourselves communities, what Gee calls “transacting swarms,” made up of our microbiomes and our relationship with the earth. We live in termite mounds, and we are termite mounds.
But Gee distrusts the mechanistic materialism of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. Just as humans have organic biomes, we have “spiritomes,” the complex nest of spiritual realities in which humans dwell, individually and collectively. Though Gee, a lapsed Catholic, flinches from capital-T Truth claims, he believes human spiritual subjectivity is real enough to matter in making life-altering decisions. We all have relationships with evidently noncorporeal realities.
To this point, Gee’s thesis draws heavily on research from other thinkers academically grounded in the physical sciences. Not surprisingly, as a linguist, Gee’s anthropology becomes most dense and detailed when discussing how language shapes the human mental structure. Gee admits coming from a Chomskian generative linguistic background—fascinating but often abstruse. But exactly how his linguistic background shapes humans may surprise you.
Gee admits never reading poetry until after achieving his doctorate. How he studied linguistics without at least a historical survey of poetic metaphor eludes me, but whatever. Gee waxes rhapsodic about what a revelation it was discovering poetry in adulthood, unclouded by state-school “skillz drillz.” The unsullied joy he describes bespeaks a wonder that we who still read poetry often struggle to recapture. I’m downright jealous.
Despite his sometimes scientistic mindset, the humanities offer Gee’s greatest insight into the relationship between our outside, communal world, and the strictly internal neural landscape of senses and higher reasoning. We perceive the world according to our senses, and also according to our ability to describe it to others. His lavish fondness for poetry, especially Emily Dickinson, bespeaks a worldview in which subjectivity isn’t a weakness, but a defining trait.
To his credit, Gee doesn’t pretend his definition is more binding or global than it actually is. He acknowledges that any definition of humanity is provisional and circumscribed by the author’s background and prior knowledge. His language is colored by nuance and the frequent need to walk a tightrope between seemingly contradictory positions. He invites informed readers to challenge and refine his definition of humanity; he doesn’t just stand pat.
Now past seventy, Gee clearly writes with one eye angled toward how posterity will remember him. He clearly intends this volume as a capstone of his academic career. He finished writing in the months leading up to the pandemic, and one wonders how this book might’ve looked just six months later. Yet as a prolegomenon to future humanistic studies, Gee offers an exciting, readable, and purely joyful philosophic consideration.
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