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Pandora's Seed
- The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization
- Narrated by: Spencer Wells
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
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Publisher's summary
This new book by Spencer Wells, the internationally known geneticist, anthropologist, author, and director of the Genographic Project, focuses on the seminal event in human history: mankind's decision to become farmers rather than hunter-gatherers.
What do terrorism, pandemic disease, and global warming have in common? To find the answer we need to go back 10 millennia, to the wheat fields of the Fertile Crescent and the rice paddies of southern China. It was at that point that our species made a radical shift in its way of life. We had spent millions of years of evolution eking out a living as hunter-gatherers. When we learned how to control our food supply, though, we became as gods - we controlled the world rather than it controlling us. But with godliness comes responsibility. By sowing seeds thousands of years ago, we were also sowing a new culture - one that has come with many unforeseen costs.
Taking us on a 10,000-year tour of human history and a globe-trotting fact-finding mission, Pandora's Seed charts the rise to power of Homo agriculturis and the effect this radical shift in lifestyle has had on us. Focusing on three key trends as the final stages of the agricultural population explosion play out over this century, Wells speculates on the significance of our newfound ability to modify our genomes to better suit our unnatural culture, fast-forwarding our biological adaptation to the world we have created. But what do we stand to lose in the process?
Climate change, a direct result of billions of people living in a culture of excess accumulation, threatens the global social and ecological fabric. It will force a key shift in our behavior, as we learn to take the welfare of future generations into account. Finally, the rise of religious fundamentalism over the past half-century is explained as part of a backlash against many of the trends set in motion by the agricultural population explosion and its inherent inequality.
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- By: Gregg Braden
- Narrated by: Gregg Braden
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A new world is emerging before our eyes, while the unsustainable world of the past struggles to continue. Both worlds reflect the beliefs of our past. Both exist - but only for now. Which world do you choose? Best-selling author and visionary scientist Gregg Braden suggests that the hottest issues that divide us as families, nations, and civilizations-seemingly separate concerns such as war, terror, abortion, suicide, genocide, the death penalty, poverty, economic collapse, and nuclear war - are actually related.
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Good Information
- By David on 08-13-12
By: Gregg Braden
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The Story of the Human Body
- Evolution, Health, and Disease
- By: Daniel Lieberman
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman - chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a leader in the field - gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years, even as it shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning this paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease.
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Could Have Been Good, but...
- By Trebla on 04-08-18
By: Daniel Lieberman
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The Vertical Farm
- Feeding the World in the 21st Century
- By: Dickson Despommier
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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When Columbia professor Dickson Despommier set out to solve America's food, water, and energy crises, he didn't just think big - he thought up. The vertical farm has excited scientists, architects, and politicians around the globe. These farms, grown inside skyscrapers, would provide solutions to many of the serious problems we currently face.
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Excellent Brainstorming - Not reality
- By Texas Community Project on 01-25-11
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How to Build a Dinosaur
- Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever
- By: Jack Horner, James Gorman
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In movies, in novels, in comic strips, and on television, we've all seen dinosaurs - or at least somebody's educated guess of what they would look like. But what if it were possible to build, or grow, a real dinosaur without finding ancient DNA? Jack Horner, the scientist who advised Steven Spielberg on the blockbuster film Jurassic Park and a pioneer in bringing paleontology into the 21st century, teams up with the editor of the New York Times's Science Times section to reveal exactly what's in store.
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Good book but misplaced title
- By Robert on 06-19-15
By: Jack Horner, and others
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Guns, Germs and Steel
- The Fate of Human Societies
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Doug Ordunio
- Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology.
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Compelling pre-history and emergent history
- By Doug on 08-25-11
By: Jared Diamond
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Overheated
- How Climate Change Will Cause Floods, Famine, War, and Disease
- By: Andrew T. Guzman
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Deniers of climate change sometimes quip that claims about global warming are more about political science than climate science. They are wrong on the science, but may be right with respect to its political implications. A hotter world, writes Andrew Guzman, will bring unprecedented migrations, famine, war, and disease. It will be a social and political disaster of the first order.
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A must read!
- By Ted on 03-22-15
By: Andrew T. Guzman
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Denialism
- How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives
- By: Michael Specter
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter has twice won the Global Health Council’s Excellence in Media Award, as well as the Science Journalism Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In Denialism, he fervently argues that people are turning away from new technologies and engaging in a kind of magical thinking that is hindering scientific progress.
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A compelling read
- By S on 05-17-11
By: Michael Specter
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A Troublesome Inheritance
- Genes, Race, and Human History
- By: Nicholas Wade
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory. Inconveniently, as Nicholas Wade argues in A Troublesome Inheritance, the consensus view cannot be right. And in fact, we know that populations have changed in the past few thousand years - to be lactose tolerant, for example, and to survive at high altitudes.
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This is NOT Racism!...
- By Douglas on 06-01-14
By: Nicholas Wade
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Know This
- Today's Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries, and Developments
- By: John Brockman
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman, Dan John Miller
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Scientific developments radically alter our understanding of the world. Whether it's technology, climate change, health research, or the latest revelations of neuroscience, physics, or psychology, science has, as Edge editor John Brockman says, "become a big story, if not the big story". In that spirit this new addition to Edge.org's fascinating series asks a powerful and provocative question: What do you consider the most interesting and important recent scientific news?
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Pete and Repeat and Re-repeat
- By Daniel L on 02-25-18
By: John Brockman
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The Creative Spark
- How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional
- By: Agustín Fuentes
- Narrated by: Agustín Fuentes
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Jared Diamond's million-copy-selling classic Guns, Germs, and Steel, a bold new synthesis of paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and anthropology that overturns misconceptions about race, war and peace, and human nature itself, answering an age-old question: What made humans so exceptional among all the species on Earth? Creativity. It is the secret of what makes humans special, hiding in plain sight.
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What's new?
- By Mark on 05-02-17
By: Agustín Fuentes
What listeners say about Pandora's Seed
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sharlene
- 09-12-12
Fascinating
I have already recommended this book to many Spencer Wells fans from his books to his documentaries (The Human Family Tree and The Journey of Man). If you care about anthropology, DNA, culture, the past or the future then you will find this fascinating.
Now, Spencer, as someone who is captivated by your work, I ask that you get a director when reading next time that makes you "pump it up" a little with more energy as well as stay on the mic more.
I listen to many audible books and for some reason Spencer is not as loud as the others and I have to turn our little plug-in computer speakers as loud as they will go. Others with more savvy set ups will have NO problem.
That said, do not let that stop you from getting this book. It's great and we will listen to it again and again, especially as my children get a little older. I am even gifting it to 2 friends for the holidays.
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1 person found this helpful
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- John Bailey
- 01-21-11
Should be required reading in anthropology courses
This is the book I've been wanting to write for years. These topics are my areas of academic interest, and I think Wells "gets it". Understanding people and our behavior tells us exactly how we got where we are, and ONLY understanding can help save us from our own nature.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Steve
- 12-21-10
Really good well presented
The book was really good and for having a lot of fact and data it was very easy to take it in and think about it.
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- David
- 03-03-11
Disappointing
Although this started off pretty interesting, the second half of the book was a digression into a manifesto on the author's social views. By the end of the book I was tired of the preaching and was looking forward to it being over.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Roy
- 08-01-10
The Costs of Civilization
I always look for books that will inform me in areas which are unfamiliar. So, it was a delight to listen to Spencer Well's Pandora's Seed. A geneticist, Wells orients thte reader to the beginings of agriculture perhaps 10,000 years ago. He moves forward through the centuries to finally, and importantly, tell us about the rise in obesity, diabetes, malaria an even dental decay. This book which is well written and nicely read by the author will be of general interest and the scientifically minded as well. If I can follow the history and arguments presented, any reader can. Give this one a try.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Sean
- 08-23-12
5 Stars
Would you consider the audio edition of Pandora's Seed to be better than the print version?
Loved the audio but the print version would be great to annotate. There were so many insightful parts of this book that it may be the only lengthy audio book I replay in my collection. It was absolutely fascinating.
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- Alan
- 06-23-10
Short and unfocused, but often quite interesting.
Pandora's Seed, while containing all the essential ingredients to make me giddy - Natufians, evolutionary history, the rise and fall of empires - never quite congealed into a focused or inventive text. Because of its breadth, it skipped quickly between topics without any of the depth and insight that a reader expects from an expert-in-his-field like Spencer Wells. The overall effect of such a scatter-shot tour of the agriculture revolution's fallout, is that of a mash-up of the works other more inspired texts of authors such as Jared Diamond, Michael Pollan and Karen Armstrong. Still though a great premise and largely successful effort.
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15 people found this helpful
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- Jenny
- 06-17-10
thought provoking and packed with information
I ordered this book after watching the Daily Show and enjoyed it immensely. The scope and breadth of topics and ideas is almost overwhelming, and the author is challenged to ponder numerous ethical conundrums.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Jeremy Jones
- 02-04-11
Decent for sciency stuff, but kind of boring
I was looking for more information on evolutionary diets and our ancestors. As well as health and environmental costs of agriculture. Not exactly what I was looking for.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Ellen
- 10-25-10
Interesting, especially first part
I agree with some of the other reviews--the depth fell off in the latter part of the book. However, I learned some things I hadn't known before--especially the idea that infectious disease only began to plague humanity after agriculture and living in groups. The part about which genes have made the most difference was also informative. I liked the way he explained mutations, but I wish he'd write another book and explain it in even simpler terms for the many people who don't seem to understand evolution because they don't understand how mutations work. Case in point: Recently a politician asked why apes are not still evolving into humans. People laughed, then quietly admitted they didn't quite understand either. I really think people do not understand mutations and how they contribute to evolution...obviously I don't either, but this book does a pretty good job of explaining. This needs to be on TV on a really accessible visual chart or something, so people will quit asking questions like that politician did. I've seen Wells on TV; he could do it. Speaking of which, if he ever wants a second career, he could totally be the best narrator on here. He was so much easier to understand and had better timing and inflection than the narrator of the last book I listened to.
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2 people found this helpful