Science & Technology Audiobooks

The Shetland Way: Community and Climate Crisis on my Father's Islands

A memoir and investigation exploring loss, community and the climate crisis in the Shetland Islands by environmental journalist Marianne Brown When Marianne Brown arrived in Voe, Shetland, to attend the funeral of her father, she had packed enough clothes to last a short trip. But this was February 2020, just weeks before the UK’s first lockdown, and she would be unable to leave for another six months. Shetland is a place bound together by community, history and culture. But when a huge windfarm is greenlit to export energy to mainland Scotland, it creates rifts between neighbours, friends and even families. One side supports the benefit to a planet spiralling into climate disaster; the other challenges the impact on an environment with an already struggling wildlife population. As an environmental journalist, Marianne is drawn to investigate this story of sustainable energy that is irrevocably tied to her grief. But nothing is ever straightforward, and she soon finds herself on a transformative journey into the heart of a debate that mirrors global concerns about how we save the planet.

Marianne Brown (Author), Marianne Brown, To Be Announced (Narrator)

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Something in the Woods Loves You

An inspiring blend of nature writing and memoir that explores nature's crucial role in our emotional and mental health Bats can hear shapes, plants can eat light, and bees can dance maps. When his life took him to a painfully dark place, the poet behind The Cryptonaturalist, Jarod K. Anderson, found comfort and redemption in these facts and the shift in perspective that comes from paying a new kind of attention to nature. Something in the Woods Loves You tells the story of the darkest stretch of a young person's life, and how deliberate and meditative encounters with plants and animals helped him see the light at every turn. Ranging from optimistic contemplations of mortality to appreciations of a single mushroom, Anderson has written a lyrical love letter to the natural world and given us the tools to see it all anew.

Jarod K. Anderson (Author), Jarod K. Anderson, Tbd (Narrator)

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The Criminal Mind

Brought to you by Penguin. An edge-of-your-seat journey into the darkest depths of the human mind from forensic psychiatrist Dr Duncan Harding - A likeable young girl who’s burnt her family home to the ground - A man with no memory of the night he killed his wife - A teenager whose visions and voices have had murderous effect One question binds these and others from the casebook of Britain’s leading forensic psychiatrist: Why? What drives a person to commit seemingly inexplicable crimes? Dr Duncan Harding is the person the police and the courts turn to for answers. An expert witness, he must try to establish a defendant’s mental state and motivation. And their fitness to stand trial. Growing up in a broken, violent home, Harding became a doctor because he wanted to be good and kind. It led him on a journey that has brought him face to face with psychopaths, taken him to the limits of his compassion and to the darkest corners of his own troubled past. But he’s never turned away nor given up hope. Mesmerising, insightful and redemptive, The Criminal Mind is his unforgettable story. ©2024 Duncan Harding (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Duncan Harding (Author), Duncan Harding, TBD (Narrator)

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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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The Burning Earth: A Material History of the Last 500 Years

Brought to you by Penguin. A paradigm-shifting global survey of how human history has reshaped the planet, and vice versa Ever since innovations in agriculture vastly expanded production of the staples of food energy, our remarkable achievements in reshaping nature have brought about an overwhelming expansion in the life chances of billions of people. Yet every technological innovation has also empowered humans to exploit each other and the planet with devastating brutality, twinning the stories of environment and of Empire, genocide and eco-cide, as with Spanish silver mining in Peru and British gold mining in South Africa. After the age of empire, new nations raced to make up lost ground, expanding human freedom at devastating ecological cost. Amrith’s environmental lens provides an essential new way of understanding war: as a massive reshaping of the earth through the global mobilization of natural resources, those resources including humans themselves. He also makes clear that migration is often a consequence of environmental harm. Reinterpreting a history previously seen from a Euro-and-anthropocentric viewpoint, Amrith relates in brilliant prose, and on the largest canvas, a magisterial, mind-altering epic - vibrant with stories, characters, vivid images and rich archival resources. ©2024 Sunil Amrith (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Sunil Amrith (Author), Esh Alladi, TBD (Narrator)

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The Into Unknown Skies: Eight Americans, One Race, and the First Flight Around the World

Equal parts The Right Stuff and The Boys in the Boat, Into Unknown Skies tells the unbelievable history of the 1924 race to circumnavigate the globe for the first time by air, a nail-biting contest that pitted underdog US pilots against their better-funded European rivals, created technology that changed aviation, and convinced America that its future was in the sky. In the early 1920s, America’s faith in aviation was in shambles. Twenty years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight, most Americans believed airplanes were for delivering the mail or performing daredevil stunts in front of crowds. The dream of commercial air travel remained just that. Even the American military was a skeptic—rather than pay to bring its planes back from Europe following World War I, the War Department chose to burn most of them instead. All that changed with a single race in 1924. It was not just any race, though—it was a race to become the first to circle the globe in an airplane, pitting a team of four underdog American pilots against the best aviators in the world from England, Italy, Portugal, France, and Argentina. Rooted in the same daring spirit that pushed early twentieth-century explorers to attempt crossings of the Antarctic ice or locate the source of the Nile, this race was an adventure unlike anything the world had seen before. The obstacles were daunting—from experimental planes, to dangerous landings in uncharted territory, to the simple navigational gauges that could lead pilots hundreds of miles off course. Failure seemed all but guaranteed—the suspense less about who would win than how many would perish for the honor of being the first. Now on the race’s centennial, award-winning author David K. Randall tells the story of this riveting, long-forgotten race. Through larger-than-life characters, treacherous landings, disease, and ultimately triumph, Into Unknown Skies demonstrates how one race returned America to aviation greatness. A story of underdog teammates, bold exploration, and American ingenuity, Into Unknown Skies is an untold adventure tale showing the power of flight to bring the world together.

David K. Randall, David Randall (Author), Adam Verner, TBD (Narrator)

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MoneyGPT: How ChatGPT is Attacking Markets and What You Can Do to Protect Your Wealth

James Rickards (Author), James Rickards, 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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Lucid Dying: The New Science Revolutionizing How We Understand Life and Death

From internationally renowned expert in resuscitation and near-death experience Sam Parnia, MD, PhD, comes a groundbreaking look at what happens to us when we die, based on the largest-ever research study run on near-death experiences What happens to us when we die? For millennia, we've sought the answers, and we've hoped to find them in near-death experiences. But while those answers have come haphazardly and can't be trusted, groundbreaking research is now formalizing our understanding of death in new and thrilling ways. At the frontlines of that research is Dr. Sam Parnia. Lucid Dying is the first book to formally explore what happens to the human mind and consciousness not only in the period leading up to death, but also during and after death. Using data derived from multiple scientific studies, Dr. Parnia shows that the entity we refer to as consciousness-our Self-does not seem to become annihilated at the moment of death. In fact, during death, our consciousness follows a very specific narrative arc, in which we relive our lives not only from our own experiences, but from the perspective of everyone we've interacted with. What follows is a purposeful review of our own actions, thoughts, and intentions towards others. These studies also show that there is a universal experience of death that is meaningful, transcendent, positive, and transformative-not hallucinatory, delusional, or illusory as previously imagined. With empirical research and gripping anecdotes that explore the notion of a collective unconsciousness. Dr. Parnia shows how we can access this deeper wisdom to lead more intentional lives.

Sam Parnia (Author), Brian Nishii, TBD (Narrator)

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Chasing Fog

Laura Pashby (Author), Laura Pashby, TBD (Narrator)

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The Ghost Lake

Wendy Pratt (Author), To Be Announced, Wendy Pratt (Narrator)

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Sharks Don't Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist

From a marine biologist and co-founder of Minorities in Shark Sciences, a powerful debut memoir: the uplifting story of a young Black scientist's challenging journey to flourish outside the traditional confines of academia, inspired by her innate connection to nature's most misunderstood animal-the shark. You never forget your first shark. For Jasmin Graham, it was a little bonnethead, a type of hammerhead shark: three feet long, gray with a white underbelly, rough-skinned, strongly muscled, and beautiful. Jasmin fell in love: with sharks, and with science. Though she tried to follow the traditional path to becoming a marine biologist, she soon found that, in a field where it was harder to find other young women of color than the elusive elasmobranchii (sharks, rays, skates, and sawfish) she sought, navigating the choppy waters of traditional academic study was no longer worth it. So Jasmin quit. But that didn't mean abandoning her passion: rather, Jasmin sought to pursue it in another way, joining with three other Black women to form Minorities in Shark Sciences (MISS), an organization dedicated to providing support and opportunities for other young women of color pursuing the fascinating and environmentally essential work of marine studies. Jasmin became an independent researcher: a rogue shark scientist, learning how to keep those endangered but precious sharks swimming free-just like her. Sharks Don't Sink is a riveting, moving, and ultimately triumphant memoir at the intersection of science and social justice: a guidebook to how we can all learn to respect and protect some of nature's most misunderstood and vulnerable creatures-and grant the same grace to ourselves.

Jasmin Graham (Author), Jasmin Graham, TBD (Narrator)

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