
Birds, Sex and Beauty
The Extraordinary Implications of Charles Darwin's Strangest Idea
No se pudo agregar al carrito
Add to Cart failed.
Error al Agregar a Lista de Deseos.
Error al eliminar de la lista de deseos.
Error al añadir a tu biblioteca
Error al seguir el podcast
Error al dejar de seguir el podcast

Compra ahora por $24.29
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrado por:
-
Matt Ridley
-
De:
-
Matt Ridley
Acerca de esta escucha
""[An] intriguing philosophical journey into a critical issue within evolutionary theory that for too long has remained unresolved."" —Wall Street Journal
Matt Ridley is one of our finest science writers. This book is a treat for bird lovers and evolutionary biologists alike.” —Richard Dawkins, author of The Genetic Book of The Dead and The God Delusion
The New York Times bestselling author of Genome and The Evolution of Everything revisits Darwin’s revelatory theory of mate choice through the close study of the peculiar rituals of birds, and considers how this mating process complicates our own view of human evolution.
In all animals, mating is a deal. But few creatures behave as if sex is a simple, even mutually beneficial, transaction. Many more treat it with reverence, suspicion, angst, and violence. In the case of the Black Grouse, the bird at the center of Matt Ridley’s investigation, the males dance and sing for hours a day, for several exhausting months, in an arduous and even deadly ritual called a “lek.” To prepare for the ordeal, they grow, preen and display fancy, twisted, bold-colored feathers. When achieved, consummation with a female takes seconds. So why the months of practice and preparation that is elaborate, extravagant, exhausting and elegant?
The full answer remains a mystery. Evolutionary biologists can explain why males are generally the eager sellers, females the discriminating buyers. But they struggle to explain why, in some species, this extravagance goes beyond the mere gaudy, taking on bizarre shapes, postures, and behavior. And further, why these bird displays seem beautiful to us humans, a species with seemingly no skin in the game.
Using an early morning “lek"" as his starting point, Ridley explores the scientific research into the evolution of bright colors, exotic ornaments, and elaborate displays in birds around the world. Charles Darwin thought the purpose of such displays was to ""charm"" females. Though Darwin’s theory was initially dismissed and buried for decades, recent scientific research has proven him newly right—there is a powerful evolutionary force quite distinct from natural selection: mate choice. In Birds, Sex and Beauty, Ridley reopens the history of Darwin’s vexed theory, laying bare a century of disagreement about an idea so powerful, so weird, and so wonderful, we may have yet to fully understand its implications.
©2025 Matt Ridley (P)2025 HarperCollins PublishersLos oyentes también disfrutaron...
-
Waves in an Impossible Sea
- How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean
- De: Matt Strassler
- Narrado por: Christopher Grove
- Duración: 11 h y 31 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
In Waves in an Impossible Sea, physicist Matt Strassler tells a startling tale of elementary particles, human experience, and empty space. He begins with a simple mystery of motion. When we drive at highway speeds with the windows down, the wind beats against our faces. Yet our planet hurtles through the cosmos at 150 miles per second, and we feel nothing of it. How can our voyage be so tranquil when, as Einstein discovered, matter warps space, and space deflects matter? The answer, Strassler reveals, is that empty space is a sea, albeit a paradoxically strange one.
-
-
No pdf
- De Mark en 01-14-25
De: Matt Strassler
-
House of Huawei
- The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company
- De: Eva Dou
- Narrado por: Nancy Wu
- Duración: 11 h y 40 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
On the coast of southern China, an eccentric entrepreneur spent three decades steadily building an obscure telecom company into one of the world’s most powerful technological empires with hardly anyone noticing. This all changed in December 2018, when the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ female scion, sparked an international hostage standoff, poured fuel on the US-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the global spotlight.
-
-
Excellent work
- De Suzi en 05-26-25
De: Eva Dou
-
Open Socrates
- The Case for a Philosophical Life
- De: Agnes Callard
- Narrado por: Agnes Callard
- Duración: 12 h y 14 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Socrates has been hiding in plain sight. We call him the father of Western philosophy, but what exactly are his philosophical views? He is famous for his humility, but readers often find him arrogant and condescending. We parrot his claim that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” yet take no steps to live examined ones. In Open Socrates, acclaimed philosopher Agnes Callard recovers the radical move at the center of Socrates’ thought, and shows why it is still the way to a good life.
-
-
Fascinating Philosophy
- De A. F. Davis en 06-10-25
De: Agnes Callard
-
The Demon in the Machine
- How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life
- De: Paul Davies
- Narrado por: Nigel Patterson
- Duración: 9 h y 13 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
What is life? In this penetrating and wide-ranging book, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name; it is a domain where biology, computing, logic, chemistry, quantum physics, and nanotechnology intersect.
-
-
Thought Provoking
- De Amazon Customer en 08-26-24
De: Paul Davies
-
Waste Wars
- The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash
- De: Alexander Clapp
- Narrado por: Greg Lockett
- Duración: 12 h y 46 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing. Disputes about what to do with the millions of tons of garbage generated every day have given rise to waste wars waged almost everywhere you look. Some are border skirmishes. Others hustle trash across thousands of miles and multiple oceans. But no matter the scale, one thing is true about almost all of them: few people have any idea they're happening.
-
-
Great writer of awful reality
- De Tracie B. en 04-15-25
De: Alexander Clapp
-
Churchill's Citadel
- Chartwell and the Gatherings Before the Storm
- De: Katherine Carter
- Narrado por: Harrie Dobby
- Duración: 12 h y 58 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
In the 1930s, amidst an impending crisis in Europe, Winston Churchill found himself out of government and with little power. In these years, Chartwell, his country home in Kent, became the headquarters of his campaign against Nazi Germany. He invited trusted advisors and informants, including Albert Einstein and T. E. Lawrence, who could strengthen his hand as he worked tirelessly to sound the alarm at the prospect of war.
-
-
Excellent Book, Narrator Good but “Admirality”??
- De J P. Rich en 04-02-25
De: Katherine Carter
-
Waves in an Impossible Sea
- How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean
- De: Matt Strassler
- Narrado por: Christopher Grove
- Duración: 11 h y 31 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
In Waves in an Impossible Sea, physicist Matt Strassler tells a startling tale of elementary particles, human experience, and empty space. He begins with a simple mystery of motion. When we drive at highway speeds with the windows down, the wind beats against our faces. Yet our planet hurtles through the cosmos at 150 miles per second, and we feel nothing of it. How can our voyage be so tranquil when, as Einstein discovered, matter warps space, and space deflects matter? The answer, Strassler reveals, is that empty space is a sea, albeit a paradoxically strange one.
-
-
No pdf
- De Mark en 01-14-25
De: Matt Strassler
-
House of Huawei
- The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company
- De: Eva Dou
- Narrado por: Nancy Wu
- Duración: 11 h y 40 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
On the coast of southern China, an eccentric entrepreneur spent three decades steadily building an obscure telecom company into one of the world’s most powerful technological empires with hardly anyone noticing. This all changed in December 2018, when the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ female scion, sparked an international hostage standoff, poured fuel on the US-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the global spotlight.
-
-
Excellent work
- De Suzi en 05-26-25
De: Eva Dou
-
Open Socrates
- The Case for a Philosophical Life
- De: Agnes Callard
- Narrado por: Agnes Callard
- Duración: 12 h y 14 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Socrates has been hiding in plain sight. We call him the father of Western philosophy, but what exactly are his philosophical views? He is famous for his humility, but readers often find him arrogant and condescending. We parrot his claim that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” yet take no steps to live examined ones. In Open Socrates, acclaimed philosopher Agnes Callard recovers the radical move at the center of Socrates’ thought, and shows why it is still the way to a good life.
-
-
Fascinating Philosophy
- De A. F. Davis en 06-10-25
De: Agnes Callard
-
The Demon in the Machine
- How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life
- De: Paul Davies
- Narrado por: Nigel Patterson
- Duración: 9 h y 13 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
What is life? In this penetrating and wide-ranging book, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name; it is a domain where biology, computing, logic, chemistry, quantum physics, and nanotechnology intersect.
-
-
Thought Provoking
- De Amazon Customer en 08-26-24
De: Paul Davies
-
Waste Wars
- The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash
- De: Alexander Clapp
- Narrado por: Greg Lockett
- Duración: 12 h y 46 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing. Disputes about what to do with the millions of tons of garbage generated every day have given rise to waste wars waged almost everywhere you look. Some are border skirmishes. Others hustle trash across thousands of miles and multiple oceans. But no matter the scale, one thing is true about almost all of them: few people have any idea they're happening.
-
-
Great writer of awful reality
- De Tracie B. en 04-15-25
De: Alexander Clapp
-
Churchill's Citadel
- Chartwell and the Gatherings Before the Storm
- De: Katherine Carter
- Narrado por: Harrie Dobby
- Duración: 12 h y 58 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
In the 1930s, amidst an impending crisis in Europe, Winston Churchill found himself out of government and with little power. In these years, Chartwell, his country home in Kent, became the headquarters of his campaign against Nazi Germany. He invited trusted advisors and informants, including Albert Einstein and T. E. Lawrence, who could strengthen his hand as he worked tirelessly to sound the alarm at the prospect of war.
-
-
Excellent Book, Narrator Good but “Admirality”??
- De J P. Rich en 04-02-25
De: Katherine Carter
-
Pronoun Trouble
- The Story of Us in Seven Little Words
- De: John McWhorter
- Narrado por: John McWhorter
- Duración: 4 h y 43 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
With his trademark humor and flair, bestselling linguist John McWhorter busts the myths and shares the history of the most controversial language topic of our times: pronouns.
-
-
the single best linguistics book I've ever read
- De Jeremy en 05-19-25
De: John McWhorter
-
Waste Land
- A World in Permanent Crisis
- De: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrado por: Robert Petkoff
- Duración: 6 h y 42 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
We are entering a new era of global cataclysm in which the world faces a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement, the end of both monarchy and empire, and countless other dangers. In Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and author of more than twenty books on world affairs, incisively explains how we got here and where we are going.
-
-
Climate / Population Alarmism in a Mask
- De ElovesK en 02-07-25
De: Robert D. Kaplan
-
Everything Is Tuberculosis
- The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
- De: John Green
- Narrado por: John Green
- Duración: 5 h y 35 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, preventable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year. In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story.
-
-
Powerful, Heartbreaking, Informative, Inspiring, Hopeful.
- De Kendall R. Genier en 03-25-25
De: John Green
-
Making Sense of Chaos
- A Better Economics for a Better World
- De: J. Doyne Farmer
- Narrado por: J. Doyne Farmer
- Duración: 9 h y 38 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Many books have been written about J. Doyne Farmer and his work, but this is the first in his own words. It presents a manifesto for how to do economics better. In this tale of science and ideas, Farmer fuses his profound knowledge and expertise with stories from his life to explain how we can bring a scientific revolution to bear on the economic conundrums facing society.
-
-
A Very Important Book and a Great Story of Perseverence
- De Amazon Customer en 02-20-25
De: J. Doyne Farmer
-
Shamanism
- The Timeless Religion
- De: Manvir Singh
- Narrado por: Frits Zernike
- Duración: 8 h y 18 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Traveling from Indonesia to the Colombian Amazon, living with shamans and observing music, drug use, and indigenous curing ceremonies, anthropologist Manvir Singh journeys into one of the most mysterious religious traditions. Fundamentally, shamans are specialists who use altered states to engage with unseen realms and provide services like healing and divination. As Singh shows, shamanism’s appeal stems from its psychological resonance.
-
-
An absolute triumph.
- De Nina Sreshta en 06-04-25
De: Manvir Singh
-
Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids
- Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think
- De: Bryan Caplan
- Narrado por: Brian Arens
- Duración: 6 h y 39 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
We've needlessly turned parenting into an unpleasant chore. Parents invest more time and money in their kids than ever, but the shocking lesson of twin and adoption research is that upbringing is much less important than genetics in the long run. These revelations have surprising implications for how we parent and how we spend time with our kids. The big lesson: Mold your kids less and enjoy your life more. Your kids will still turn out fine. Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids is a book of practical big ideas.
-
-
Fascinating
- De Douglas Morton en 06-04-25
De: Bryan Caplan
-
A Brief History of Earth
- Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters
- De: Andrew H. Knoll
- Narrado por: Tom Parks
- Duración: 4 h y 57 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, renowned geologist Andrew H. Knoll delivers a rigorous yet accessible biography of Earth, charting our home planet's epic 4.6 billion-year story. Placing 21st-century climate change in deep context, A Brief History of Earth is an indispensable look at where we’ve been and where we’re going.
-
-
Very chilling and well thought out
- De Colin Bump en 05-21-21
De: Andrew H. Knoll
-
The Blind Spot
- Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience
- De: Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson
- Narrado por: Perry Daniels
- Duración: 11 h y 59 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
The Blind Spot goes where no science book goes, urging us to create a new scientific culture that views ourselves both as an expression of nature and as a source of nature's self-understanding, so that humanity can flourish in the new millennium.
-
-
Good book.
- De Daniel L Mercer en 08-01-24
De: Adam Frank, y otros
-
Space Oddities
- The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe
- De: Harry Cliff
- Narrado por: Harry Cliff
- Duración: 7 h y 51 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Something strange is going on in the cosmos. Scientists are uncovering a catalogue of weird phenomena that simply can’t be explained by our long-established theories of the universe. After decades of fruitless searching, could we finally be catching glimpses of a profound new view of our physical world? Or are we being fooled by cruel tricks of the data? In Space Oddities, Harry Cliff, a physicist who does cutting-edge work on the Large Hadron Collider, provides a riveting look at the universe’s most confounding puzzles.
-
-
as compelling as a mystery novel and very informative
- De jimpgh@aol.com en 04-22-24
De: Harry Cliff
-
Abundance
- De: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
- Narrado por: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
- Duración: 7 h y 14 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all.
-
-
Advice to the Democratic Party from Klein & Thompson
- De Betsy Fowler en 03-31-25
De: Ezra Klein, y otros
-
A History of the Human Brain
- From the Sea Sponge to CRISPR, How Our Brain Evolved
- De: Bret Stetka
- Narrado por: Sean Pratt
- Duración: 7 h y 54 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Just over 125,000 years ago, humanity was going extinct until a dramatic shift occurred—Homo sapiens started tracking the tides in order to eat the nearby oysters. Before long, they’d pulled themselves back from the brink of extinction. The human brain, and its evolutionary journey, is unlike anything else in history. In A History of the Human Brain, Bret Stetka takes listeners through that far-reaching journey. He also tackles the question of where the brain will take us next, exploring the burgeoning concepts of epigenetics and new technologies like CRISPR.
-
-
Fascinating survey of the evolution of the human brain
- De Cosmos en 03-30-21
De: Bret Stetka
-
The Sound and the Fury
- De: William Faulkner
- Narrado por: Sean Pratt
- Duración: 9 h y 39 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
The Sound and The Fury is the story of a family of Southern aristocrats on the brink of personal and financial ruin. Set in Jefferson, Mississippi, in the first third of the 20th century, the novel centers on the Compson family, former Southern aristocrats who are struggling to deal with the dissolution of their family and its reputation. Over the course of the 30 years or so relayed in the novel, the family falls into financial ruin, loses its religious faith and the respect of the town of Jefferson, and many of them die tragically.
De: William Faulkner
Las personas que vieron esto también vieron...
-
The Evolution of Everything
- How New Ideas Emerge
- De: Matt Ridley
- Narrado por: Steven Crossley
- Duración: 13 h y 9 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch - the endless fascination human beings have with design rather than evolution, with direction rather than emergence. Drawing on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics, and philosophy, Matt Ridley's wide-ranging, highly opinionated opus demolishes conventional assumptions that major scientific and social imperatives are dictated by those on high.
-
-
Brilliant!
- De Winfield en 12-16-15
De: Matt Ridley
-
The Rational Optimist
- How Prosperity Evolves
- De: Matt Ridley
- Narrado por: L. J. Ganser
- Duración: 13 h y 37 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
-
-
Personal
- De Robert F. Jones en 09-15-17
De: Matt Ridley
-
Genome
- The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
- De: Matt Ridley
- Narrado por: Simon Prebble
- Duración: 12 h y 20 m
- Grabación Original
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Arguably the most significant scientific discovery of the new century, the mapping of the 23 pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome raises almost as many questions as it answers - questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, about longevity, and about free will. Questions that will affect the rest of your life. Matt Ridley here probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome.
-
-
Still useful today.
- De Gary en 05-21-12
De: Matt Ridley
-
The Origins of Virtue
- Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation
- De: Matt Ridley
- Narrado por: Jeff Loeb
- Duración: 10 h y 40 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
If, as Darwin suggests, evolution relentlessly encourages the survival of the fittest, why are humans compelled to live in cooperative, complex societies? In this fascinating examination of the roots of human trust and virtue, a zoologist and former American editor of The Economist reveals the results of recent studies that suggest that self-interest and mutual aid are not at all incompatible. In fact, he points out, our cooperative instincts may have evolved as part of mankind's natural selfish behavior - by exchanging favors we can benefit ourselves as well as others.
-
-
great book
- De ChandlerBlancaflor en 06-16-16
De: Matt Ridley
-
Viral
- The Search for the Origin of COVID-19
- De: Matt Ridley, Alina Chan
- Narrado por: Gavin Osborn
- Duración: 11 h y 16 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
A new virus descended on the human species in 2019 wreaking unprecedented havoc. Nearly two years into the pandemic, the crucial mystery of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not only unresolved but has deepened. In this uniquely insightful book, a scientist and a writer join forces to try to get to the bottom of how a virus whose closest relations live in bats in subtropical southern China somehow managed to begin spreading among people more than 1,500 kilometers away in the city of Wuhan.
-
-
A pivotal work in search of truth around the Covid19 virus in a world where facts got downgraded in favour of politics
- De Pal en 11-25-21
De: Matt Ridley, y otros
-
A History of the World in Six Plagues
- How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to Covid-19
- De: Edna Bonhomme
- Narrado por: Veronique Olin
- Duración: 10 h y 23 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
A History of the World in Six Plagues shows that throughout history, outbreaks of disease have been exacerbated by and gone on to further expand the racial, economic, and sociopolitical divides we allow to fester in times of good health. Princeton-trained historian Edna Bonhomme’s examination of humanity’s disastrous treatment of pandemic disease takes us across place and time from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania, and from plantation-era America to our modern COVID-19-scarred world to unravel shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in the face of disease.
-
-
Good story wrecked by silly language and a terrible narrator
- De Amazon Customer en 05-25-25
De: Edna Bonhomme
-
The Evolution of Everything
- How New Ideas Emerge
- De: Matt Ridley
- Narrado por: Steven Crossley
- Duración: 13 h y 9 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch - the endless fascination human beings have with design rather than evolution, with direction rather than emergence. Drawing on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics, and philosophy, Matt Ridley's wide-ranging, highly opinionated opus demolishes conventional assumptions that major scientific and social imperatives are dictated by those on high.
-
-
Brilliant!
- De Winfield en 12-16-15
De: Matt Ridley
-
The Rational Optimist
- How Prosperity Evolves
- De: Matt Ridley
- Narrado por: L. J. Ganser
- Duración: 13 h y 37 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
-
-
Personal
- De Robert F. Jones en 09-15-17
De: Matt Ridley
-
Genome
- The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
- De: Matt Ridley
- Narrado por: Simon Prebble
- Duración: 12 h y 20 m
- Grabación Original
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Arguably the most significant scientific discovery of the new century, the mapping of the 23 pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome raises almost as many questions as it answers - questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, about longevity, and about free will. Questions that will affect the rest of your life. Matt Ridley here probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome.
-
-
Still useful today.
- De Gary en 05-21-12
De: Matt Ridley
-
The Origins of Virtue
- Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation
- De: Matt Ridley
- Narrado por: Jeff Loeb
- Duración: 10 h y 40 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
If, as Darwin suggests, evolution relentlessly encourages the survival of the fittest, why are humans compelled to live in cooperative, complex societies? In this fascinating examination of the roots of human trust and virtue, a zoologist and former American editor of The Economist reveals the results of recent studies that suggest that self-interest and mutual aid are not at all incompatible. In fact, he points out, our cooperative instincts may have evolved as part of mankind's natural selfish behavior - by exchanging favors we can benefit ourselves as well as others.
-
-
great book
- De ChandlerBlancaflor en 06-16-16
De: Matt Ridley
-
Viral
- The Search for the Origin of COVID-19
- De: Matt Ridley, Alina Chan
- Narrado por: Gavin Osborn
- Duración: 11 h y 16 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
A new virus descended on the human species in 2019 wreaking unprecedented havoc. Nearly two years into the pandemic, the crucial mystery of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not only unresolved but has deepened. In this uniquely insightful book, a scientist and a writer join forces to try to get to the bottom of how a virus whose closest relations live in bats in subtropical southern China somehow managed to begin spreading among people more than 1,500 kilometers away in the city of Wuhan.
-
-
A pivotal work in search of truth around the Covid19 virus in a world where facts got downgraded in favour of politics
- De Pal en 11-25-21
De: Matt Ridley, y otros
-
A History of the World in Six Plagues
- How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to Covid-19
- De: Edna Bonhomme
- Narrado por: Veronique Olin
- Duración: 10 h y 23 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
A History of the World in Six Plagues shows that throughout history, outbreaks of disease have been exacerbated by and gone on to further expand the racial, economic, and sociopolitical divides we allow to fester in times of good health. Princeton-trained historian Edna Bonhomme’s examination of humanity’s disastrous treatment of pandemic disease takes us across place and time from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania, and from plantation-era America to our modern COVID-19-scarred world to unravel shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in the face of disease.
-
-
Good story wrecked by silly language and a terrible narrator
- De Amazon Customer en 05-25-25
De: Edna Bonhomme
-
Killed by a Traffic Engineer
- Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies Our Transportation System
- De: Wes Marshall
- Narrado por: Stephen R. Thorne
- Duración: 15 h y 2 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
In Killed by a Traffic Engineer, civil engineering professor Wes Marshall shines a spotlight on how little science there is behind the way that our streets are engineered, which leaves safety as an afterthought. While traffic engineers are not trying to cause deliberate harm to anyone, he explains, they are guilty of creating a transportation system whose designs remain largely based on plausible, but unproven, conjecture.
De: Wes Marshall
-
How Innovation Works
- And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
- De: Matt Ridley
- Narrado por: Matt Ridley
- Duración: 12 h y 34 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. Forget short-term symptoms like Donald Trump and Brexit, it is innovation itself that explains them and that will itself shape the 21st century for good and ill. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen, hard to summon into existence to order, yet inevitable and inexorable when it does happen.
-
-
Bad scholarship and bias that overwhelms his facts
- De RickyF en 07-01-20
De: Matt Ridley
-
Hoodwinked
- How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults
- De: Mara Einstein PhD, Douglas Rushkoff - foreword
- Narrado por: Mara Einstein
- Duración: 10 h y 43 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
From viral leggings to must-have apps, Dr. Mara Einstein exposes the hidden parallels between cult manipulation and modern marketing strategies in this eye-opening investigation. Drawing from her unique background as both a former MTV marketing executive and a respected media studies professor, she reveals how companies weaponize psychology to transform casual customers into devoted followers.
-
-
Good content but poor audio
- De MICHAEL en 05-15-25
De: Mara Einstein PhD, y otros
-
Apostate
- Stories of Deconversion
- De: Liz Teo, Suzanne Adams, Stephanie Moser Smith, y otros
- Narrado por: Sarah Bacaller
- Duración: 10 h y 59 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
If you’re wondering whether there’s life on the other side of deconversion, or if you’re trying desperately to understand a loved one who is losing their faith—this book is for you. Edited by philosophy of religion scholar, Sarah Bacaller, with a foreword by Bart Campolo (the first humanist chaplain at the University of Southern California), this book offers gripping insights into the deepest aspects of the deconversion journey.
De: Liz Teo, y otros
-
Banned Books
- The World's Most Controversial Books, Past, and Present
- De: DK
- Narrado por: Charles Armstrong
- Duración: 3 h y 16 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Banned Books explores why some of the world's most important literary classics and seminal non-fiction titles were once deemed too controversial for the public—whether for challenging racial or sexual norms, satirizing public figures, or simply being deemed unfit for young audiences. From the banning of All Quiet on the Western Front and the repeated suppression of On the Origin of the Species, to the uproar provoked by Lady Chatterley's Lover, entries offer a fascinating chronological account of censorship.
-
-
Important topic
- De Nick en 04-16-24
De: DK
-
Supermassive
- Black Holes at the Beginning and End of the Universe
- De: James Trefil, Shobita Satyapal
- Narrado por: Fred Sanders
- Duración: 7 h y 59 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Led by physicist James Trefil and astrophysicist Shobita Satyapal, this book traverses the incredible history of black holes and introduces contemporary developments and theories on still unanswered questions about the enigmatic objects. From the early work of Albert Einstein and Karl Schwarzschild to an insider look at black hole-galaxy connection research led by co-author Satyapa, the comprehensive book surveys an exciting and evolving branch of space science.
-
-
Technical, dry with some interesting bits
- De Chris Brooks en 03-12-25
De: James Trefil, y otros
-
Funny Because It's True
- How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire
- De: Christine Wenc
- Narrado por: Christine Wenc
- Duración: 12 h
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
In 1988, a band of University of Wisconsin–Madison undergrads and dropouts began publishing a free weekly newspaper with no editorial stance other than “You Are Dumb.” Just wanting to make a few bucks, they wound up becoming the bedrock of modern satire over the course of twenty years, changing the way we consume both our comedy and our news. The Onion served as a hilarious and brutally perceptive satire of the absurdity and horrors of late twentieth-century American life and grew into a global phenomenon.
-
-
Her lack of knowledge.
- De Anonymous User en 04-20-25
De: Christine Wenc
-
Life as No One Knows It
- The Physics of Life's Emergence
- De: Sara Imari Walker
- Narrado por: Sara Imari Walker
- Duración: 7 h y 20 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life originates or the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might look like. In Life as No One Knows It, physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is.
-
-
Fascinating thought patterns
- De John linden en 09-10-24
-
Stronger
- The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives
- De: Michael Joseph Gross
- Narrado por: Dan Woren
- Duración: 15 h y 8 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Stronger tells a story of breathtaking scope, from the battlefields of the Trojan War in Homer’s Iliad, where muscles enter the scene of world literature; to the all-but-forgotten Victorian-era gyms on both sides of the Atlantic, where women build strength and muscle by lifting heavy weights; to a retirement home in Boston where a young doctor makes the astonishing discovery that frail ninety-year-olds can experience the same relative gains of strength and muscle as thirty-year-olds if they lift weights.
-
The Social Genome
- The New Science of Nature and Nurture
- De: Dalton Conley
- Narrado por: Christopher Douyard
- Duración: 8 h y 8 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Sociogenomics brings together advances in molecular genetics and traditional social and behavioral science. The key tool is the polygenic index, which allows us to analyze DNA to measure a child's genetic potential. Today, we can estimate a child's adult height, how far they will go in school, and their weight as an adult—all from a cheek swab, finger prick, or vial of saliva. Dalton Conley and other researchers are using this new science to shed light on the ways in which genes shape our world, influencing how each person both creates and responds to the environment around them.
De: Dalton Conley
-
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
- De: Erving Goffman
- Narrado por: Graham Halstead
- Duración: 9 h y 30 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
A notable contribution to our understanding of ourselves. This audiobook explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and control the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience.
-
-
Institutionalising racism & sexism, a “how to” guide
- De Jasmine Fox en 06-24-21
De: Erving Goffman
-
Carbon
- The Book of Life
- De: Paul Hawken
- Narrado por: Peter Coyote
- Duración: 6 h y 38 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Carbon is the only element that animates the entirety of the living world. Though comprising a tiny fraction of Earth’s composition, our planet is lifeless without it. Yet it is maligned as the driver of climate change, scorned as an errant element blamed for the possible demise of civilization. Here, Paul Hawken looks at the flow of life through the lens of carbon. Embracing a panoramic view of carbon’s omnipresence, he explores how this ubiquitous and essential element extends into every aperture of existence and shapes the entire fabric of life.
-
-
Fascinating and inspiring
- De Lisa en 06-09-25
De: Paul Hawken