Social Science Audiobooks | Non-Fiction

The Darwinian Trap: The Hidden Evolutionary Forces That Explain Our World (and Threaten Our Future)

A provocative exploration of how humans are wired to seek short-term success at the expense of long-term survival-an evolutionary 'glitch" that explains everything from toxic workplaces to climate change In this eye-opening work, entrepreneur and philosopher Kristian Rönn argues that today's biggest challenges-climate change, fake news, artificial intelligence, even terrible bosses-are less the work of 'bad people' doing 'bad things' than the product of fundamental evolutionary forces. These forces compel us to act-but often in short-sighted ways that disadvantage others and imperil our own future prosperity. Rönn calls these deeply rooted impulses "Darwinian demons.' Left unchecked, their consequences will grow in magnitude as the power of technology accelerates. In short, evolution has set a trap for us. How can we avoid it? Rönn, who previously worked at the Future of Humanity Institute (the intellectual hub that has produced groundbreaking books including Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom and The Precipice by Toby Ord), shows that we must learn to cooperate in new ways if we are to surmount these Darwinian optimization traps, whether in the workplace or to solve our biggest existential threats. Evolution may be to blame for the trap-but humans need not fall for it. Our salvation, he writes, will involve the creation of new systems that understand, track, and manage what humankind values most. Bold, brilliant, and ultimately optimistic, The Darwinian Trap is a new lens on humanity's past, present, and future-and a call to rethink our priorities for the sake of generations to come.

Kristian Rönn (Author), Jamie Renell, TBD (Narrator)

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When Freedom Is the Question, Abolition Is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Liberation

An esteemed activist invites us to consider the complex idea of abolition as much more than a strategy or a set of tactics-at a deeper level, abolition is an entire political framework, culture, and orientation Blending history and political theory and weaving in examples from literature, social movements, and his personal life, this book is a useful resource and primer for those interested in fighting for social justice. Guided by questions like what is freedom?, how do we get free?, and what are the freedom dreams that encourage us and drive us forward?, esteemed activist Bill Ayers explores the concept of freedom in eight essays: - Freedom/Unfreedom takes off from the Black Freedom Movement in the 20th Century as a template for social justice movements that followed, and begins to illuminate the idea of freedom in light of what folks come together to oppose. - Freedom's Paradox offers examples of a contradiction (from Frederick Douglass to the French Resistance to the Panthers)-even, or especially, in the most dire circumstances, people testify to "being free" at the moment they identify and unite to oppose unfreedom. - Social Freedom/Individual Liberty directly takes on the link between the individual and the social when freedom is the question. - Freedom, Anarchism, and Socialism takes off from the idea that freedom without socialism is predation and exploitation, and that socialism without freedom is bondage and subjugation. - Freedom, Truth, and Repair considers reparations as a necessary step in any honest attempt toward authentic reconciliation. - Organizing Freedom is a primer on organizing, strategy, and tactics for freedom fighters. - Teach Freedom considers what an education for free people entails. - Freedom and Abolition connects an enriched understanding of what freedom entails with an embrace of abolitionist politics.

Bill Ayers (Author), Bill Ayers, TBD (Narrator)

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Burdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis

An urgent investigation of student debt in America revealing the corrupt systems, rotten policies, and bad actors that have created a $1.7 trillion crisis. College costs more today than ever and is worth less. Tuition at public colleges has more than tripled in the past 50 years. Over the same period student debt has grown from virtually nothing to more than $1.7 trillion, second only to home mortgages. Skyrocketing student-loan burdens are leading an entire generation to put off the traditional milestones of adulthood: buying homes, getting married, starting families, and saving for retirement. The burden weighs heavier on women and black Americans, and with almost 10 percent of student debtors now over the age of 60, it is a crisis no longer limited to the young. Ryann Liebenthal’s Burdened tells the maddening story of how the power plays of legislators and presidents, the commodification of higher ed, and the rapacious practices of for-profit colleges and private lenders have created today’s student-debt lava pit. As the notion of student-loan cancellation percolates into the political mainstream, Liebenthal offers a deeply researched, sweeping narrative of our broken system. Rather than give in to despair, she boldly charts a way out, offering hopeful solutions to this seemingly unfixable problem.

Ryann Liebenthal (Author), Eileen Stevens, Tbd (Narrator)

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The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them

Brought to you by Penguin. Richly imaginative and powerfully empathetic, an intimate portrait of five remarkable Black men, and a meditation on race, estrangement and the search for home. In the western imagination, a Black man is always a stranger. Outsider, foreigner, intruder, alien. One who remains associated with their origins irrespective of how far they have travelled from them. One who is not an individual in their own right but the representative of a type. What kind of performance is required for a person to survive this condition? And what happens beneath the mask? In answer, Ekow Eshun conjures the voices of five very different men. Ira Aldridge: nineteenth century actor and playwright. Matthew Henson: polar explorer. Frantz Fanon: psychiatrist and political philosopher. Malcolm X: activist leader. Justin Fashanu: million-pound footballer. Each a trailblazer in his field. Each haunted by a sense of isolation and exile. Each reaching for a better future. Ekow Eshun tells their stories with breathtaking lyricism and empathy, capturing both the hostility and the beauty they experienced in the world. And he locates them within a wider landscape of Black art, culture, history and politics which stretches from Africa to Europe to North America and the Caribbean. As he moves through this landscape, he maps its thematic contours and fault lines, uncovering traces of the monstrous and the fantastic, of exile and escape, of conflict and vulnerability, and of the totemic central figure of the stranger. ©2024 Ekow Eshun (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Ekow Eshun (Author), Ako Mitchell, Ekow Eshun, TBD (Narrator)

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Nexus: FROM THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SAPIENS

Brought to you by Penguin. The story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Sapiens. For the last 100,000 years, humans have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI – a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. If we are so wise, why are we so self-destructive? NEXUS considers how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age through the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence. Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. NEXUS explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and of rediscovering our shared humanity. Praise for Yuval Noah Harari ‘The great thinker of our age’ The Times on 21 Lessons for the 21st Century ‘Interesting and provocative’ Barack Obama on Sapiens ‘One of my favourite writers and thinkers’ Natalie Portman on Sapiens ‘Sweeps the cobwebs out of your brain . . . Radiates power and clarity’ Sunday Times on Sapiens ‘It altered how I view our species and our world’ Guardian on Sapiens ©2024 Yuval Noah Harari (P) 2024 Penguin Audio

Yuval Noah Harari (Author), TBD, Vidish Athavale (Narrator)

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From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire

The politics of grief, in an era marked by loss, shows us how we can find our humanity once more. From one of our most vital and far-seeing social critics. Our era is one of significant and substantial loss, yet we barely have time to acknowledge it. The losses range from the personal grief of a single COVID death to the planetary disaster wrought by climate change. We are in an age of unraveling hopes and expectations, of dreams curtailed, of aspirations desiccated. What can we do? This is capitalism's death phase. It has become clear that the cost of wealth creation for a few is enormous destruction for others. The marginalized and the vulnerable have been feeling the crisis for a long time, but it is increasingly coming for all of us. At the same time, we are denied the means of mourning the futures that are being so brutally curtailed. At such a moment, taking the time to grieve is a radical act. Through in-depth reporting intertwined with memoir, Sarah Jaffe shows how public memorialization has become more than a refusal or a protest: it is a path to imagining a better world. When we are able to mourn the lives, the homes, the worlds we have lost, we are better prepared to fight for a transformed future.

Sarah Jaffe (Author), Sarah Jaffe, TBD (Narrator)

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The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story

A thrilling, novelistic work of journalism that uncovers the remarkable and hidden story of Marty Goddard, the woman who invented the rape kit, changed the course of how we treat sexual assault forever, and then vanished from the record. The idea came to Marty Goddard in 1971. She was working at a crisis hotline, haunted by the stories of survivors and plagued by two principle questions: Why were so many predators getting away with crimes? And, how do we stop them? In the coming years, Marty set off a massive campaign that lobbied to have sexual assault treated and investigated as the crime that it is. By creating the first rape kit, she revolutionized forensics. The kit would live on as one of the most powerful and effective tools for bringing perpetrators to justice. Marty, however, and any record of her, simply disappeared. The Secret History of the Rape Kit chronicles the story of one journalist's mission to uncover the story and woman behind an invention that transformed the lives of women the country over. As Pagan Kennedy peels back the layers behind the history of the kit and Marty's life, she falls into a deeper and deeper obsession. As she pursues this overlooked but critical story from our past, she dives into the inequities built into our patent system and our understanding of technological progress, the problematic and gendered history of forensics, and sexual forensics in particular, the misogyny that runs rampant in police departments, the legacy of Marty's invention and the failings that persist in how we prosecute rape. And, as Pagan unearths who Marty really was, and what happened to her, she reflects on her own experiences with sexual assault, and how one forgotten woman's legacy could have saved her, as it has so many.

Pagan Kennedy (Author), Claire Danes, TBD (Narrator)

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Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Author), Alexis Pauline Gumbs, TBD (Narrator)

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Obitchuary: The Big Hot Book of Death

Based on the popular podcast, Obitchuary: The Big Hot Book of Death is a smart, funny look at the American culture of death and how we're remembered. It's safe to say everyone thinks about death-whether they want to or not. But have you ever wondered about what sort of keepsakes you can make with your remains, or given any thought to the most scandalous deathbed confessions throughout history? Well Madison Reyes and Spencer Henry have, and they've spent countless hours scouring the darkest corners of the internet, digging through newspaper archives, devouring documents, and picking the brains of death industry experts to bring you Obitchuary, a darkly funny and deeply poignant exploration of all things death. With chapters like 'Coffin Confessions,' "Executions to Die For," "The Last Word," and "If These Dolls Could Speak,' Madison and Spencer guide us through surprisingly colorful history, traditions, and contemporary practices. They also demystify taboo topics with incredible and hilarious details, including FUNerals, as they call them, cremations and themed funerals, famous body snatchers, and so much more. Shocking, macabre, hilarious, and moving, Obitchuary digs deep into the physical aspects of death while also carefully exploring what death says about our humanity, and the ways we choose to remember those we've lost. So go ahead, crack open the book--we know you're dying to read it.

Madison Reyes, Spencer Henry (Author), Annette Amelia Oliveira, Madison Reyes, Spencer Henry, TBD (Narrator)

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Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life

From esteemed journalist and scholar Joshua Leifer, a definitive look at the history and future of American Jewish identity and community from the tipping point we are living in Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life is Joshua Leifer's lively and deeply personal history of the fractured American Jewish present. Formed in the middle decades of the twentieth century, all the settled-upon pillars of American Jewish self-definition (Americanism, Zionism, and liberalism) have begun to falter in the first decades of the twenty-first. The binding trauma of Holocaust memory grows ever-more attenuated; soon there will no longer be any living survivors. After two millennia of Jewish life defined by diasporic existence, the majority of the world's Jews will live in a sovereign Jewish state by 2050. Against the backdrop of national political crises, resurgent global antisemitism, and ongoing wars in the Middle East, Leifer provides an illuminating and meticulously reported map of contemporary Jewish life as well as a sober conjecture about its future. Leifer begins with the history of Jewish immigrants in America, starting with the story of his own ancestry, the arrival from a Belarusian shtetl of his great-grandmother, Bessie, and following each subsequent generation as it conformed to the prevailing codes of American Jewish life. He then goes on to report on the state of today's burning Jewish issues, building on interviews with those living daily across the varied fault lines of the Jewish conversation. We meet Millennial Jewish racial justice organizers trying to build new communities grounded in social action; Orthodox political activists navigating the tensions between pragmatism and ideology; young liberal rabbis looking to "queer" the Torah through exegesis; Haredi men learning full-time at the world's largest yeshiva; progressive anti-Zionists attempting to separate Judaism from nationalism; and right-wing Israeli public intellectuals beginning to imagine a future without American Jews. While often coming to radically different conclusions, all are asking the same fundamental question: What will it mean to be Jewish in a seemingly unprecedented time? As it traverses the contemporary Jewish landscape through uncommon personal familiarity with the widest range of Jewish experience, Tablets Shattered also charts the universal quest to understand the increasingly divisive world we live in and build enduring communities amid historical and political rupture.

Joshua Leifer (Author), Eli Schiff, Elliot Schiff, TBD (Narrator)

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Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination

Webb Keane (Author), Mark Arnold, TBD (Narrator)

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Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives

Biggest Books to Look Out For in 2024 - The Guardian The Books of 2024 - Blackwells 'Loxton is the next big thing in history' - Dan Snow 'A whirlwind of historical energy . . . One of the brightest new stars of popular history' - Dan Jones At eighteen, your life is full of possibility. You have everything to look forward to - unless you've got the plague . . . In this unconventional and witty history, award-winning writer and broadcaster Alice Loxton delves into Britain's past, exploring the country though eighteen notable figures at this formative age. From a young Empress Matilda, already changing the fate of nations, to Richard Burton, the rugby-obsessed teenager who grew up in a Welsh mining town, each journey unpicks a different era of Britain. Irreverent and full of fascinating tidbits (Did you know Chaucer began his career as a scantily clad pageboy?), Loxton shows how the way a society treats its young, reveals much about its values and foibles. Seamlessly blending big history with engaging stories of royalty, explorers, writers and entertainers, Eighteen builds a rich mosaic of Britain's past, inviting a journey of discovery. Looking at the role of class, race, and raw ambition, Loxton also asks what lessons we can take for modern Britain - and why the answers might not be what you think.

Alice Loxton (Author), Alice Loxton, TBD (Narrator)

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Social Science Audiobooks in Non-Fiction