Audiobooks by Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023

Award-winning writer, columnist, and journalists Carl Zimmer selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in 2022. “What's most compelling about a scientific story is the way it challenges us to think about the concepts we take for granted,” writes guest editor Carl Zimmer in his introduction. The essays in this year’s Best American Science and Nature Writing probe at the ordinary and urge us to think more deeply about our place in the world around us. From a hopeful portrait of a future for people with Alzheimer’s disease, to a fascinating exploration of the rise of nearsightedness in children, to the heroic story of a herd of cows that evaded a hurricane, these selections reveal how science and nature shape our everyday lives. With tremendous intelligence, clarity, and insight, this anthology offers an expansive look at where we are and where we are headed. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023 includes JESSICA CAMILLE AGUIRRE • VANESSA GREGORY • SABRINA IMBLER FERRIS JABR • MARION RENAULT • ELIZABETH SVOBODA NATALIE WOLCHOVER • SARAH ZHANG and others

Carl Zimmer, Jaime Green (Author), Em Grosland, Jeena Yi, Johnny Rey Diaz, Katharine Chin, Nikki Massoud, Shahjehan Khan (Narrator)

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O planetă plină de viruși

O carte accesibilă și fascinantă în același timp ce ne dezvăluie din secretele lumii nevăzute a virusurilor Carl Zimmer prezintă cele mai recente cercetări despre modul în care virușii guvernează întreaga noastră existență, modul în care au contribuit la nașterea primelor forme de viață, cum contribuie la producerea de noi boli, cum putem valorifica virușii pentru propriile noastre scopuri și cum virușii vor continua să influențeze soarta omenirii în anii următori. În acest inedit tur de introducere în frontierele biologiei ne vom îmbogăți perspectiva asupra vieții Parcurgând această carte, aflăm despre începuturile virusologiei, despre virusurile care provoacă răcelile obișnuite, despre virusul gripei și celebra gripă spaniolă, despre HPV, HIV, ebola, virusul variolei, West Nile, SARS, H5N1, COVID-19 și multe altele. Aflăm despre virusuri inofensive pentru animalele purtătoare ce devin mortale la oameni, despre interacțiunea unor virusuri cu bacteriile, suntem imersați în fascinanta lume acvatică a oceanelor cu neînchipuita și uluitoarea lor colecție de virusuri, aflăm despre recent descoperitele virusuri gigant și multe alte informații interesante.

Carl Zimmer (Author), Vlad Rădescu (Narrator)

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Parásitos: El extraño mundo de las criaturas más peligrosas de la naturaleza

Desde las junglas húmedas de Costa Rica hasta el fétido entorno de las zonas rebeldes del sur de Sudán, Carl Zimmer nos guía a través de un viaje por el universo de los parásitos, un mundo en el que habitamos sin ser conscientes. Así nos descubre no solo la forma de vida más exitosa del planeta, sino aquella que da forma a los ecosistemas y es el motor de la evolución. Zimmer nos muestra, pues, cuánto han evolucionado estos bichos, y relata la aterradora facilidad con que pueden devorar a quien los hospeda, e incluso controlar su conducta. Es el caso del siniestro Sacculina carcini, que lo devora todo del infortunado cangrejo que lo lleve dentro, salvo aquello que al cangrejo le haga falta para alimentarse. Porque el alimento acabará siendo para el parásito. O pensemos en la criatura unicelular Toxoplasma gondii, que puede invadir el cerebro humano e influir en su conducta para asegurarse la propia supervivencia. 'Zimmer deshecha la ilusión de un mundo sin parásitos; más práctico le parece aprender a convivir con ellos y a tenerlos a raya (…). Y si, después de su argumentación, el lector sigue considerando a esos seres una asquerosidad sin paliativos, el autor le invita a preguntarse: ¿no seremos nosotros el pináculo de la jerarquía parasitaria, la especie más ducha en succionar la vitalidad de nuestra anfitriona, la Tierra?' —El Mundo 'Una obra maestra.' —Los Angeles Weekly 'Zimmer es tan bueno que convierte un ensayo sobre criaturas asquerosas en una historia que usted no podrá dejar de leer hasta que llegue al último párrafo.' —Forbes

Carl Zimmer (Author), Roger Vidal (Narrator)

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Un planeta de virus

'Casi todo lo que usted siempre había querido saber, y un montón de cosas de las que seguramente preferiría no haberse enterado, sobre esos virus que tanto sufrimiento han causado a la humanidad.' —Forbes 'Carl Zimmer consigue, en apenas cien páginas, lo que a otros autores les cuesta hacer en quinientas: dar una nueva forma a nuestra comprensión de la realidad oculta en la existencia cotidiana. El pensamiento de Zimmer es conciso e iluminador.' —Booklist, reseña con estrella. 'Mientras escribo esto, a lo largo del año 2015, los científicos intentan adelantarse a las próximas pandemias. Nadie es capaz de predecir cuándo una cepa en particular llevará a cabo el salto, si acaso lo hará. Sin embargo, no estamos indefensos ante lo que la evolución pueda tenernos reservado. Contamos con recursos para contrarrestar la expansión de la gripe, como lavarnos las manos. Y los científicos están aprendiendo a fabricar vacunas más efectivas. Al menos, ya no tenemos que mirar hacia las estrellas en busca de protección.' —Carl Zimmer En esta breve pero sustanciosa historia, premiada por su excepcionalidad por la revista Choice, Carl Zimmer nos cuenta cómo los organismos más pequeños que la ciencia ha descubierto (y sobre cuya condición de 'seres vivos' no hay acuerdo), son capaces de ponerle freno a la humanidad entera. Y cuánto podemos aprender de la manera en que, en el pasado, ya los hemos derrotado. Solíamos estas más familiarizados con la gripe común, ahora sabemos un poco mejor qué otras cosas puede hacer un virus. Por ejemplo, que del cuerpo humano broten tantas verrugas que quien se ha contagiado parezca un árbol con corteza y raíces. Pero los virus han estado con nosotros durante tanto tiempo que, en parte, nos constituyen: el genoma humano contiene una gran cantidad de ADN de virus. Entretanto, los científicos siguen descubriendo nuevos tipos en todas partes: en el suelo, en los océanos y en cuevas a kilómetros de profundidad. Un planeta de virus presenta la investigación más reciente sobre cómo estos organismos dominan la vida en el planeta, eso que llamamos biosfera, cómo contribuyeron a sus primeras manifestaciones, cómo producen cada día nuevas enfermedades y cómo podemos aprovecharlos en nuestro beneficio. Un estudio fascinante que recorre amenazas como el Ébola y el MERS, y explica, entre otras muchas cuestiones, cómo el cambio climático puede provocar brotes incluso más mortales en el futuro.

Carl Zimmer (Author), Luis García Márquez (Narrator)

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A Planet of Viruses: Third Edition

In 2020, an invisible germ-a virus-wholly upended our lives. We're most familiar with the viruses that give us colds or Covid-19. But viruses also cause a vast range of other diseases, including one disorder that makes people sprout branch-like growths as if they were trees. Viruses have been a part of our lives for so long that we are actually part virus: the human genome contains more DNA from viruses than our own genes. Meanwhile, scientists are discovering viruses everywhere they look: in the soil, in the ocean, even in deep caves miles underground. Fully revised and updated, with a new chapter about coronaviruses and the spread of Covid-19, this third edition of Carl Zimmer's A Planet of Viruses pulls back the veil on this hidden world. It presents the latest research on how viruses hold sway over our lives and our biosphere, how viruses helped give rise to the first life-forms, how viruses are producing new diseases, how we can harness viruses for our own ends, and how viruses will continue to control our fate as long as life endures.

Carl Zimmer (Author), Stephen Bowlby (Narrator)

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Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive

This book is not just about life, but about discovery itself. It is about error and hubris, but also about wonder and the reach of science. And it is bookended with the ultimate question: How do we define the thing that defines us? - Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Gene We all assume we know what life is, but the more scientists learn about the living world – from protocells to brains, from zygotes to pandemic viruses – the harder they find it is to locate the edges of life, where it begins and ends. What exactly does it mean to be alive? Is a virus alive? Is a foetus? Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts – whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Life’s Edge is an utterly fascinating investigation by one of the most celebrated science writers of our time. Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to recreate life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It’s never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply. Have they made life in the lab? Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for hibernating bats in the Adirondacks, Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most bizarre. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting the obsession with Dr Frankenstein’s monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working on engineering life from the ground up.

Carl Zimmer (Author), Joe Ochman (Narrator)

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She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity

Shortlisted for the 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction She Has Her Mother's Laugh presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities . . . But, Zimmer argues, heredity isn't just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inherit genes from our ancestors - using a word that once referred to kingdoms and estates - but we inherit other things that matter as much or more to our lives, from microbes to technologies we use to make life more comfortable. We need a new definition of what heredity is and, through Carl Zimmer's lucid exposition and storytelling, this resounding tour de force delivers it. Weaving together historical and current scientific research, his own experience with his two daughters, and the kind of original reporting expected of one of the world's best science journalists, Zimmer ultimately unpacks urgent bioethical quandaries arising from new biomedical technologies, but also long-standing presumptions about who we really are and what we can pass on to future generations.

Carl Zimmer (Author), Joe Ochman (Narrator)

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Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures

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-which 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. He also vividly describes parasites that can change DNA, rewire the brain, make men more distrustful and women more outgoing, and turn hosts into the living dead. This comprehensive, gracefully written book brings parasites out into the open and uncovers what they can teach us all about the most fundamental survival tactics in the universe-the laws of Parasite Rex.

Carl Zimmer (Author), Charles Constant (Narrator)

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She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity

Award-winning, celebrated New York Times columnist and science writer Carl Zimmer presents a history of our understanding of heredity in this sweeping, resonating overview of a force that shaped human society--a force set to shape our future even more radically. She Has Her Mother's Laugh presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities... But, Zimmer writes, "Each of us carries an amalgam of fragments of DNA, stitched together from some of our many ancestors. Each piece has its own ancestry, traveling a different path back through human history. A particular fragment may sometimes be cause for worry, but most of our DNA influences who we are--our appearance, our height, our penchants--in inconceivably subtle ways." Heredity isn't just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inherit genes from our ancestors--using a word that once referred to kingdoms and estates--but we inherit other things that matter as much or more to our lives, from microbes to technologies we use to make life more comfortable. We need a new definition of what heredity is and, through Carl Zimmer's lucid exposition and storytelling, this resounding tour de force delivers it. Weaving historical and current scientific research, his own experience with his two daughters, and the kind of original reporting expected of one of the world's best science journalists, Zimmer ultimately unpacks urgent bioethical quandaries arising from new biomedical technologies, but also long-standing presumptions about who we really are and what we can pass on to future generations.

Carl Zimmer (Author), Joe Ochman (Narrator)

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