Audiobooks narrated by Michael Butler Murray

Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul

Something's gone badly awry with environmentalism. We faithfully separate our waste into different streams, but wonder whether it really makes a difference. Global companies announce their commitment to carbon negativity while simultaneously sponsoring oil conferences. American businesses, communities, and individuals assiduously measure their carbon footprints, then implement voluntary emissions-reduction programs, all while trumpeting their do-gooderism. The problem is, none of this—whether individual efforts or corporate sustainability tactics—will make a dent in solving the civilizational threat of climate change. We only pretend it will, at our peril. As Auden Schendler argues in this provocative, powerful book, we're living a big green lie. The hard truth is that much of the modern environmental road map could have been written by the fossil fuel industry specifically to avoid disrupting the status quo. But there is another truth: while ineffective or duplicitous environmentalism has become standard practice, we all have friends and family we love and care about, whose future depends on solving the problem of climate change. Conscience tells us we have an obligation to repair the world. How can our common dreams be so at odds with our daily practice? And how might we meld our spirit and our passion to create a better future?

Auden Schendler (Author), Michael Butler Murray (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Ultimate Guide to Responsible Franchising: Identifying and Investigating the Right Franchise to

In The Ultimate Guide to Responsible Franchising, straight-shooting author Joe Mathews delivers a practical and hands-on 'how-to' guide for aspiring franchisees seeking to start their own businesses. In the book, you'll explore real-life stories from the franchising trenches that illustrate how to effectively look past the obvious and dig deep into the bones of a franchise to establish fit, predict success, and mitigate risk. You'll discover the personality types most likely to experience success and failure at franchising and identify the entrepreneurial traits that can expose you to additional risk. You'll also find all the info you need to know about franchising before you start looking for the right fit; strategies for properly and fully investigating a franchise opportunity in your area; and techniques for conducting proper diligence to determine a franchisor's skills and viability. Perfect for budding entrepreneurs, founders, and other business-minded professionals, as well as employees, leaders, and suppliers to franchise brands who want a better understanding and appreciation for how franchising works, The Ultimate Guide to Responsible Franchising will earn a place on the bookshelves of anyone serious about opening their own franchise as well as those who have already begun their franchising journeys.

Joe Mathews (Author), Michael Butler Murray (Narrator)

Audiobook

NeuroAI: Winning the Minds of Consumers with Neuroscience Powered GenAi

Neuroscience-powered GenAI enables massive impact on everything from medicine to marketing, entertainment to education, flavors to fragrances, and much more. Simply by blending cutting edge neuroscience with bleeding edge GenAI. Put humanity back at the center of GenAI. NeuroAI is the master guide for everyone seeking to understand this breakthrough technology; what it is, how it works, and most especially how to put it to work for competitive advantage in the marketplace. The book explores key topics, including: ● How the non-conscious mind interacts with GenAI to trigger the most relevant and impactful consumer responses ● How activating desireGPT, the brain's desire framework, strongly drives purchase intent and brand loyalty ● How a wide range of consumer product categories worldwide are applying neuroscience-powered GenAI to foster innovation, spur sales, and build brands ● And more For business leaders and all who seek expert insight and practical guidance on how to harness this astounding technology with maximum effect for business and personal success, NeuroAI serves as an inspiring and accessible resource for successful marketing in the Age of the Machine.

A.K. Pradeep, Anirudh Acharya, Rajat Chakravarty, Ratnakar Dev (Author), Michael Butler Murray (Narrator)

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Jimi and Me: The Experience of a Lifetime

In 1969, a twenty-something screenwriter with one movie credit to his name is approached by Jimi Hendrix's management after the legendary guitarist saw the obscure indie film in London and wanted to collaborate on a project of his own. Jonathan Stathakis had no idea how thrilling the next eighteen months would be, as he and Hendrix formed not just a working partnership but a unique friendship. Hendrix ushered Jonathan into his world, where plenty of sex and drugs surrounded the rock 'n' roll. From Woodstock to Electric Ladyland, Jonathan leads listeners inside one of the craziest trips ever taken in music history. While writing their script, Jonathan and Hendrix talked about life and where their roads were leading. Hendrix the performer was a flamboyant unpredictable force of nature. But Hendrix the friend was a thoughtful, frustrated, dedicated artist who oftentimes just needed somebody to talk to. Sadly, Hendrix's journey ended far too soon, and his last phone call to Jonathan—just two days before his death in London—almost seemed to foretell his fate. With many never-before-told stories, Jimi Hendrix comes back to life as you've never experienced him before. Backstage, on stage, and everyplace in between, get ready to ride through the purple haze and experience one of the most creative and powerful cultural eras in history.

Jonathan Stathakis (Author), Michael Butler Murray (Narrator)

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For the Win, Revised and Updated Edition: The Power of Gamification and Game Thinking in Business, E

For thousands of years, we've created things called games that tap the tremendous psychic power of fun. In a revised and updated edition of For the Win, authors Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter argue that applying the lessons of gamification could change your business, the way you learn or teach, and even your life. Werbach and Hunter explain how games can be used as a valuable tool to address serious pursuits like marketing, productivity enhancement, education, innovation, customer engagement, human resources, and sustainability. They reveal how, why, and when gamification works-and what not to do. Discover the successes-and failures-of organizations that are using gamification: - How a South Korean company called Neofect is using gamification to help people recover from strokes - How a tool called SuperBetter has demonstrated significant results treating depression, concussion symptoms, and the mental health harms of the COVID-19 pandemic through game thinking - How the ride-hailing giant Uber once used gamification to influence their drivers to work longer hours than they otherwise wanted to, causing swift backlash.

Dan Hunter, Kevin Werbach (Author), Michael Butler Murray (Narrator)

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Taxocracy: What You Don't Know About Taxes and How They Rule Your Daily Life

Did you ever wonder why the costs of health care, housing, and college tuition keep going up? Or how your neighbor could afford that fancy electric car? Or why there are so many hard seltzers on the market? Your first guess might not be 'taxes,' but they play a big role. We live in a world ruled by taxes—a taxocracy. History is full of misguided tax policies that led to 'see-through' buildings, tax-free attics, three-wheeled cars, women in children's clothing, and baked chips to go along with our hard seltzer. Written by former Tax Foundation CEO Scott Hodge, Taxocracy: What You Don't Know About Taxes and How They Rule Your Daily Life uses amusing lessons from past tax policies gone wrong to explore how the US tax code caused serious consequences, affecting how we get our health insurance, the price of a college education, what car we buy, where we bank, and, in some cases, even when we die. Taxocracy outlines economic principles for designing a tax code that doesn't rule our daily lives—a tax code that promotes economic growth, free-enterprise, and takes the politics out of tax policy.

Scott Hodge (Author), Michael Butler Murray (Narrator)

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Lifehouse: Building Care in the Long Emergency

How to reclaim power in a time of perpetual crisis We are living through a Long Emergency: a near-continuous train of pandemics, heatwaves, droughts, resource wars, and other climate-driven disasters. In Lifehouse, Adam Greenfield asks what might happen if the tactics and networks of care that spring up in response to these times might be brought together in a single, coherent way of life? Using examples from the Black Panthers' 'survival programs,' the astonishingly effective Occupy Sandy disaster-relief effort, and the neighborhood-based mutual aid groups that sustained many during COVID lockdowns to the large-scale, self-organized polities of municipalist Spain and Kurdish Rojava, Greenfield argues for rethinking local power as a bulwark against despair-a way to discover and develop the individual and collective capacities that have gone underutilized during all the long years of late capitalism, and a means for thriving in the face of impending catastrophe.

Adam Greenfield (Author), Michael Butler Murray (Narrator)

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Buying a Business For Dummies

Prospect, evaluate, purchase, and grow an existing business Buying a Business For Dummies guides you through the process of becoming an entrepreneur without starting from scratch. Before you purchase an existing business, you'll need to know what types of opportunities are out there, how to identify the right fit for your goals, and which strategies to use as you negotiate the deal and manage a smooth transition. This book gives you step-by-step advice on all of that. What about actually running the business successfully? You're covered there, too, with clear information on executing a smooth ownership transition and growing your new business. Let this friendly Dummies guide be your mentor as you embark on your business ownership adventure. - Know what's involved in buying a business and see if it's for you - Evaluate your risk tolerance and identify businesses worth buying - Negotiating a great deal and managing a seamless handover - Making changes to your new business-without making enemies Buying a Business For Dummies is a great starting point for entrepreneurs interested in a lower-risk route to business ownership.

Eric Tyson Mba, Eric Tyson, Mba, Jim Schell (Author), Michael Butler Murray (Narrator)

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Polymath: The Life and Professions of Dr. Alex Comfort, Author of The Joy of Sex

Alex Comfort was a British poet, novelist, biologist, cultural critic, activist, and anarchist, and the author of the international bestseller, The Joy of Sex. He played a vital role in making gerontology (the study of aging) a viable branch of modern science, energizing the direct-action movement for nuclear disarmament, revitalizing anarchism as a political philosophy in the post-WWII decades, and persuading twelve million readers of his most popular book to banish guilt and anxiety from sex in favor of pleasure and closer human understanding. Comfort liked to say that everything he did was part of 'one big project': to bring about a new consciousness, grounded in science, of the importance of personal responsibility in human relationships, including the obligation to disobey when authority was being exercised abusively. Polymath traces the intersection in Comfort's life and work between biology and literature, anarchism and humanism, sex and sociality, and how his writings, research, and activism continue to shed critical light on the moral and political choices we make today. Laursen's book relates the event-filled life of a brilliant and complex figure, including his victory over a possibly career-ending disability, his tumultuous second marriage, his struggles with the scientific establishment, and the fascinating story of the making of The Joy of Sex.

Eric Laursen (Author), Michael Butler Murray (Narrator)

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DARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools

With its signature 'DARE to keep kids off drugs' slogan and iconic t-shirts, DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) was the most popular drug education program of the 1980s and 1990s. But behind the cultural phenomenon is the story of how DARE and other antidrug education programs brought the War on Drugs into schools and ensured that the velvet glove of antidrug education would be backed by the iron fist of rigorous policing and harsh sentencing. Max Felker-Kantor has assembled the first history of DARE, which began in Los Angeles in 1983 as a joint venture between the police department and the unified school district. By the mid-'90s, it was taught in seventy-five percent of school districts across the United States. DARE received near-universal praise from parents, educators, police officers, and politicians and left an indelible stamp on many millennial memories. But the program had more nefarious ends, and Felker-Kantor complicates simplistic narratives of the War on Drugs. He shows how policing entered US schools and framed drug use as the result of personal responsibility, moral failure, and poor behavior deserving of punishment rather than something deeply rooted in state retrenchment, the abandonment of social service provisions, and structures of social and economic inequality.

Max Felker-Kantor (Author), Michael Butler Murray (Narrator)

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The Stigma Trap: College-Educated, Experienced, and Long-Term Unemployed

After receiving a PhD in mathematics from MIT, Larry spent three decades working at prestigious companies in the tech industry. Initially he was not worried when he lost his job as part of a large layoff, but the prolonged unemployment that followed decimated his finances and nearly ended his marriage. Larry's story is not an anomaly. In The Stigma Trap, Ofer Sharone explains how the stigma of unemployment can render past educational and professional achievements irrelevant, and how it leaves all American workers vulnerable to becoming trapped in unemployment. Drawing on interviews with unemployed workers, job recruiters, and career coaches, Sharone brings to light the subtle ways that stigmatization prevents even the most educated and experienced workers from gaining middle-class jobs. Stigma also means that an American worker risks more than financial calamity from a protracted period of unemployment. One's closest relationships and sense of self are also on the line. Eye-opening and clearly written, The Stigma Trap is an essential listen for anyone who has experienced unemployment, has a family member or friend who is unemployed, or who wants to understand the forces that underlie the anxiety-filled lives of contemporary American workers.

Ofer Sharone (Author), Michael Butler Murray (Narrator)

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On Locations: Lessons Learned from My Life On Set with The Sopranos and in the Film Industry

This must-listen account of starting at the lowest rung on the production ladder among enormously famous and outrageously demanding people will be devoured for its insights, gossip, humor, and storytelling. Married and with a child, the author takes unpaid gigs to get a foot in the door and eventually ends up working on all seasons of The Sopranos, often named the best TV show ever. The show's setting and its creator's insistence on accuracy placed the native New Jersey author in the right place at the right time to become part of television history. Includes many stories about guest stars like Steve Buscemi, Peter Bogdanovich, and Lauren Bacall, as well as the beloved cast, including new tales of James Gandolfini, who Kamine first meets after David Chase casts him as the Dean of Admissions in the classic first season 'College' episode. Woven in is a personal story of home life and strife, achievement and frustration, anxiety and accomplishment. The book's epilogue brings listeners up to the moment as the author, after many more years as an anonymous everyman, eventually enjoys outsize professional success as executive producer of the HBO hit series created by Mike White, The White Lotus.

Mark Kamine (Author), Michael Butler Murray (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Michael Butler Murray