Audiobooks Narrated by Chris Morris

The Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope: The History of the World’s Most Important

By the time the Hubble telescope reached orbit, it was already the world’s most famous telescope, but it was also the most scorned. The telescope cost nearly $2 billion more to complete than anticipated, and to make matters worse, the first images it sent back were skewed. However, within about a year of fixing it, the telescope captured images of a major event in the solar system. In July 1994, the telescope provided a firsthand observation of a comet, Shoemaker-Levy 9, breaking apart and slamming into Jupiter. The comet broke into about two dozen pieces, some of them more than a mile wide, and hit the giant planet with the force of millions of atomic bombs.In addition to capturing the streaking comet breaking up and colliding with Jupiter, the telescope captured images of the impact marks that were left on Jupiter’s surface, helping astronomers study Jupiter’s atmosphere and debris left by major impacts. The increase in excitement was palpable. Scientists had viewed much of the universe through Hubble, almost as it was when it was formed, but they learned that none of these galaxies were the first ones formed. Then ultimately realized that “Hubble wasn’t the right instrument to detect those first galaxies.” “The farther we can see in space, the farther we can see in time…and that’s not a metaphor. That’s actually literally true,” explained scientist Amber Straughn. The Webb Space Telescope represents “looking in a part of space that we’ve never seen before.” The telescope will be able to detect the earliest galaxies because of its unparalleled sensitivity. Another factor is the kind of light it will collect, “light that our eyes aren’t designed to see.”

Charles River Editors (Author), Chris Morris (Narrator)

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Assassinating Adolf Hitler and Reinhard Heydrich: The History of the Attempts to Kill the Nazi Dicta

Like other totalitarian regimes, the leader of the Nazis kept an iron grip on power in part by making sure nobody else could attain too much of it, leading to purges of high-ranking officials in the Nazi party. Of these purges, the most notorious was the Night of the Long Knives, a purge in the summer of 1934 that came about when Hitler ordered the surprise executions of several dozen leaders of the SA.  Though the concept of tyrannicide remained so foreign to German culture that the word only appeared in the national language after World War II, as the war progressed and Germany's fortunes faltered, more individuals and groups plotted the death of Hitler. Through it all, Hitler eluded many of the attempts on his life, often without ever realizing his risk. Most plotters escaped undetected, baffled by the randomness and secretive nature of Hitler's movements. The Fuhrer frequently canceled prearranged engagements, arrived at other locations with only a few minutes' advance notice, used different trains than originally planned, and generally proved constantly unpredictable. Beyond all his precautions, the Fuhrer sometimes almost appeared protected by incredible luck. During the early stages of the war, Heydrich often walked the streets of Prague alone or with just one or two escorts, and he also favored an open-topped Mercedes 320-C convertible, which left him fully exposed to snipers, bomb throwers, and the like. That would be all the good fortune a British-trained team of Czech assassins would need on May 27th, 1942. Even though the assassination attempt was mostly botched (to the extent that the assassins initially assumed they had failed), shrapnel from an anti-tank grenade caused the top Nazi official severe injuries, killing him a little over a week later. 

Charles River Editors (Author), Chris Morris (Narrator)

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Sulla and Gaius Marius: The Lives and Legacies of the Leaders Who Fought Rome’s First Civil War

Caesar is still remembered for winning a civil war and helping bring about the end of the Roman Republic, leaving a line of emperors in its place, but it’s quite possible that none of what Caesar did would’ve happened without the template for such actions being set 40 years earlier. At the time, when Caesar was in his teens, war was being waged both on the Italian peninsula and abroad, with domestic politics pitting the conservative, aristocratic optimates against the populist, reformist populares, and this tension ultimately escalated into an all-out war. One of the leading populares was Caesar’s uncle, Gaius Marius, a military visionary who had restructured the legions and extended the privileges of land ownership and citizenship to legionaries on condition of successful completion of a fixed term of service. In the late 2nd century BCE, Marius had waged a successful campaign against several Germanic tribes, and after earning eternal fame in the Eternal City, Marius was appointed a consul several times. In 88 BCE, he entered into conflict with his erstwhile protégé, the optimate Sulla, over command of the army to be dispatched against Mithridates VI of Pontus, a long-time enemy of Rome and its Greek allies.   Ironically, Marius’s reforms had made the legions fiercely loyal to their individual generals rather than the state, which allowed Sulla to march his army against Rome and force Marius into exile. With that, Rome’s first civil war was officially underway, but Sulla’s triumph proved short-lived. Just as Sulla departed for a campaign, Marius returned at the head of a scratch army of veterans and mercenaries, taking over the city and purging it of Sulla’s optimate supporters, and though Marius died in 86 BCE, his party remained in power. 

Charles River Editors (Author), Chris Morris (Narrator)

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Why Bother?

1994 saw one of Peter Cook's most acclaimed performances since his 1960s' heyday. Chris Morris' surreal and inventive questions brought out the very best of eccentric aristocrat Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling - a character whom Cook had carried with him through 'Beyond the Fringe' and 'Not Only... But Also...' to his latter years. These five interviews recall Streeb-Greebling's early years (sent to prison at the age of four by his father) and his life before and after the incident with the eels. It looks back at his days of extreme comfort in a Japanese POW camp and his attempts to mediate in the Rodney King LA riots. Streeb-Greebling discusses his habit of strangling business partners, reveals his plans to capitalise on his discovery of the fossilised remains of the infant Christ and attempts to begin an extremely tedious anecdote about bee-keeping.

Chris Morris, Peter Cook (Author), Chris Morris, Peter Cook (Narrator)

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