World-Whizzing Facts
Awesome Earth Questions Answered
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Narrated by:
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Emily Grossman
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By:
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Emily Grossman
About this listen
Bloomsbury presents World-whizzing Facts written and read by Emily Grossman.
Never mind the kids, I’ve had an education from listening to this book! ... Recommended for any budding scientists, eco-warriors or fans of weird facts' Rachel Riley, TV presenter and mathematician
‘The best way to get out of being bored is discovering something new. The great thing about this book is it whizzes you off to a world of facts you had never heard of. Result: not being bored. Result!’ Michael Rosen, Children’s poet and author
‘Every page bursting with fantastic facts you never thought you needed to know. Indispensable, planet-saving, fact-tastic fun for all the family!’ Dallas Campbell, BBC Science presenter
In this new book, TV science expert Dr Emily Grossman answers incredible and important questions about our natural world. You’ll find out silly things like why some animals do square-shaped poos and which direction a dog is likely to face while weeing, but you’ll also learn what climate change and wildlife loss are actually doing to our planet and what YOU can do to help.
Covering a diverse range of key science topics, from human biology and animals and plants to the weather and space, Dr Emily shows listeners why Earth is so weird and wonderfully great. Did you know there's a planet in our solar system where it actually rains diamonds? Imagine that! If you lived there, you'd always be picking them out of your hair, your pockets and probably your pants!
Dr Emily also tackles Earth's BIGGEST problem: climate change. Through clear, sensitive explanations, you’ll find out what is actually happening to our Earth and what this means for both humans and wildlife – and what we can all do to help!
Written by TV science expert, STEM ambassador and advocate for women in science Dr Emily Grossman, this book will make your eyebrows rise, your jaw drop and your world WHIZZ! It will also give you hope about our future and how we can ALL make a difference.
‘I love this book! It's funny, accessible and quirky and has exactly the right balance of questions and information to light the flame of scientific inquiry in young minds. A must-listen for all budding young scientists’ Lucy Hawking, Children’s science author
‘Since we got this book, all my kids want to talk about is diamond rain, tuna fish eyeballs and how to save the planet … thank goodness Emily has written down the answers to their insatiably curious questions in a single handy and hilarious volume’ Helen Arney, Science presenter, comedian and author
Emily Grossman's first book Brain-fizzing Facts: Awesome Science Questions Answered was shortlisted for the Teach Primary Book Awards 2020.
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Story
Many people will remember that Rachel Carson predicted a silent spring, but she also warned of a fruitless fall, a time with no pollination and no fruit. The fruitless fall nearly became a reality when, in 2007, beekeepers watched 30 billion bees mysteriously die. And they continue to disappear. The remaining pollinators, essential to the cultivation of a third of American crops, are now trucked across the country and flown around the world, pushing them ever closer to collapse.
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Compulsory Reading - Share with Everyone!
- By Charles Koenen on 04-12-20
By: Rowan Jacobsen
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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
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Biomimicry
- Innovation Inspired by Nature
- By: Janine M. Benyus
- Narrated by: Callie Beaulieu
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Biomimicry is rapidly transforming life on earth. Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world. Janine Benyus takes listeners into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; and many more examples.
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Dated but good
- By stephen taylor on 09-05-21
By: Janine M. Benyus
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Slime
- How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us
- By: Ruth Kassinger
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In Slime we'll meet the algae innovators working toward a sustainable future: from seaweed farmers in South Korea, to scientists using it to clean the dead zones in our waterways, to the entrepreneurs fighting to bring algae fuel and plastics to market. Ruth Kassinger takes listeners on an around-the-world, behind-the-scenes, and into-the-kitchen tour. Whether you thought algae was just the gunk in your fish tank or you eat seaweed with your oatmeal, Slime will delight and amaze with its stories of the good, the bad, and the up-and-coming.
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Fairly entertaining and informative...but
- By Timothy on 08-27-19
By: Ruth Kassinger
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Silent Earth
- Averting the Insect Apocalypse
- By: Dave Goulson
- Narrated by: Dave Goulson
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking environmental classic Silent Spring, an award-winning entomologist and conservationist explains the importance of insects to our survival and offers a clarion call to avoid a looming ecological disaster of our own making.
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Important book for all
- By Wren Jen on 03-24-24
By: Dave Goulson
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The Soil Will Save Us
- How Scientists, Farmers, and Ranchers Are Tending the Soil to Reverse Global Warming
- By: Kristin Ohlson
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming. Her discoveries and vivid storytelling will revolutionize the way we think about our food, our landscapes, our plants, and our relationship to Earth.
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Rambling, mile wide, inch deep treatment of a subject
- By Charles Phillips on 10-17-18
By: Kristin Ohlson
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The Ocean of Life
- The Fate of Man and the Sea
- By: Callum Roberts
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Who can forget the sense of wonder with which they discovered the creatures of the deep? In this vibrant hymn to the sea, Callum Roberts - one of the world’s foremost conservation biologists - leads listeners on a fascinating tour of mankind’s relationship to the sea, from the earliest traces of water on Earth to the oceans as we know them today. In the process, Roberts looks at how the taming of the oceans has shaped human civilization and affected marine life. Like Four Fish and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Ocean of Life takes a long view to tell a story in which each one of us has a role to play.
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Immediate fan of Mr Roberts
- By Anna on 06-25-24
By: Callum Roberts
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Parasite Rex
- Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and the darkest shadows of science. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer takes listeners on a fantastic voyage into the secret universe of these extraordinary life forms that are not only among the most highly evolved on Earth, but make up the majority of life's diversity. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the parasite-riddled war zone of southern Sudan, Zimmer introduces an array of amazing creatures that invade their hosts, prey on them from within, and control their behavior.
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Fascinating and Horrible
- By David A on 10-09-18
By: Carl Zimmer
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Superlative
- The Biology of Extremes
- By: Matthew D. LaPlante
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The world's largest land mammal could help us end cancer. The fastest bird is showing us how to solve a century-old engineering mystery. The oldest tree is giving us insights into climate change. The loudest whale is offering clues about the impact of solar storms. For a long time, scientists ignored superlative life forms as outliers. Increasingly, though, researchers are coming to see great value in studying plants and animals that exist on the outermost edges of the bell curve.
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Fascinating survey of amazing biology
- By Nerd's-eye view on 12-06-19
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The Second Book of General Ignorance
- Everything You Think You Know Is (Still) Wrong
- By: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Just when you thought that it was safe to start showing off again, John Lloyd and John Mitchinson are back with another busload of mistakes and misunderstandings. Here is a new collection of simple, perfectly obvious questions you'll be quite certain you know the answers to. Whether it's history, science, sports, geography, literature, language, medicine, the classics, or common wisdom, you'll be astonished to discover that everything you thought you knew is still hopelessly wrong.
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It's all stuff from QI
- By Bonnie Kennedy on 04-07-21
By: John Lloyd, and others
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Mycophilia
- Revelations From the Weird World of Mushrooms
- By: Eugenia Bone
- Narrated by: Aimee Jolson
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In Mycophilia, accomplished food writer and cookbook author Eugenia Bone examines the role of fungi as exotic delicacy, curative, poison, and hallucinogen, and ultimately discovers that a greater understanding of fungi is key to facing many challenges of the 21st century.
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Absolutely awful, insufferable, racist author
- By Rs 🦇 on 11-25-19
By: Eugenia Bone
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The Tree
- A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter
- By: Colin Tudge
- Narrated by: Enn Reitel
- Length: 19 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented writing. There are Douglas firs as tall as skyscrapers and a banyan tree in Calcutta as big as a football field. From the tallest to the smallest, trees inspire wonder in all of us, and in The Tree, Colin Tudge travels around the world - throughout the United States, the Costa Rican rain forest, Panama and Brazil, India, New Zealand, China, and most of Europe - bringing to life stories and facts about the trees around us.
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Not the book described in the Audible summary
- By E. Miller on 04-28-17
By: Colin Tudge
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Teaming with Microbes
- The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web
- By: Jeff Lowenfels, Wayne Lewis
- Narrated by: Chris Lutkin
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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When we use chemical fertilizers, we injure the microbial life that sustains plants and then become increasingly dependent on an arsenal of toxic substances. Teaming with Microbes offers an alternative to this vicious circle and details how to garden in a way that strengthens, rather than destroys, the soil food web. You’ll discover that healthy soil is teeming with life - not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms.
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Poor delivery
- By Brian C. on 06-05-20
By: Jeff Lowenfels, and others
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Water in Plain Sight
- Hope for a Thirsty World
- By: Judith D. Schwartz
- Narrated by: Tia Rider
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Water scarcity is on everyone's mind. Long taken for granted, water availability has entered the realm of economics, politics, and people's food and lifestyle choices. But as anxiety mounts - even as a swath of California farmland has been left fallow and extremist groups worldwide exploit the desperation of people losing livelihoods to desertification - many are finding new routes to water security with key implications for food access, economic resilience, and climate change.
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Crucial solutions
- By Shane Emanuelle on 07-25-19
What listeners say about World-Whizzing Facts
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Stephanie Isaacson
- 11-03-23
it's good not much else to say 'bout it
a I
green cup in a small world with a wide variety of the facts that Wizz the world (I haven't been drinking)
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