Science

Why Does E=MC2 and Why Should We Care

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 3 mins)
• By Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw
• Narrated By Jeff Forshaw

In one of the most exciting and accessible explanations of The Theory of Relativity in recent years, Professors Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw go on a journey to the frontier of 21st century science to consider the real meaning behind the iconic sequence of symbols that make up Einstein's most famous equation, exploring the principles of physics through everyday life.

How Not to Die: Discover the foods scientifically proven to prevent and reverse disease

• UNABRIDGED (17 hrs and 10 mins)
• By Michael Greger, Gene Stone
• Narrated By To Be Announced

Why rely on drugs and surgery to cure you of life-threatening disease when the right decisions can prevent you from falling ill to begin with? How Not to Die gives effective, scientifically proven nutritional advice to prevent our biggest killers - heart disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes - and reveals the astounding health benefits that simple dietary choices can provide.

Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 36 mins)
• By Bruce Pascoe
• Narrated By Bruce Pascoe
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Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the 'hunter-gatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession. Accomplished author Bruce Pascoe provides compelling evidence from the diaries of early explorers that suggests that systems of food production and land management have been understated in modern retellings of Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required.

Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 41 mins)
• By Richard Dawkins
• Narrated By Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward, Gillian Somerscales

Richard Dawkins - author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and The God Delusion - is one of science's greatest communicators. This anthology of more than 40 pieces is a kaleidoscopic argument for the power and the glory of science. Breathtaking, brilliant and passionate, these essays, journalism, lectures and letters make an unanswerable case for the wonder of scientific discovery and its power to stir the imagination.

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 31 mins)
• By Joshua Foer
• Narrated By Mike Chamberlain
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, Joshua Foer's part-memoir, part-guide on mastering your memory. Read by Mike Chamberlain. On average, people squander forty days annually trying to remember things they’ve forgotten. Joshua Foer used to be one of those people. But after a year of training, he found himself in the finals of the U.S.

Forces of Nature

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 15 mins)
• By Professor Brian Cox, Andrew Cohen
• Narrated By Samuel West
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Professor Brian Cox uncovers some of the most extraordinary natural events on Earth and in the universe and beyond. From the immensity of the universe and the roundness of Earth to the form of every single snowflake, the forces of nature shape everything we see. Pushed to extremes, the results are astonishing. In seeking to understand the everyday world, the colours, structure, behaviour and history of our home, we develop the knowledge and techniques necessary to step beyond the everyday.

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 45 mins)
• By Chris Hadfield
• Narrated By Chris Hadfield

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth is an inspirational memoir of space exploration and hard-won wisdom, from an astronaut who has spent a lifetime making the impossible a reality. Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4,000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft, and become a YouTube sensation with his performance of David Bowie's ‘Space Oddity' in space.

Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 14 mins)
• By Helen Czerski
• Narrated By Chloe Massey
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What is it that helps both scorpions and cyclists to survive? What do raw eggs and gyroscopes have in common? And why does it matter? In an age of string theory, fluid dynamics and biophysics, it can seem as if the science of our world is for only specialists and academics. Not so, insists Helen Czerski - and in this sparkling new audiobook she explores the patterns and connections that illustrate the grandest theories in the smallest everyday objects and experiences.

All Creatures Great and Small: The Classic Memoirs of a Yorkshire Country Vet

• UNABRIDGED (15 hrs and 41 mins)
• By James Herriot
• Narrated By Christopher Timothy
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The inspiration for the BBC series of the same name. Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College, to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offer an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world. But from his erratic new colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, to incomprehensible farmers, herds of semiferal cattle, a pig called Nugent and an overweight Pekingese called Tricki Woo, James find he is on a learning curve as steep as the hills around him.

A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics: A Neuroscientist on How to Make Sense of a Complex World

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 9 mins)
• By Daniel Levitin
• Narrated By Dan Piraro
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

We live in a world of information overload. Facts and figures on absolutely everything are at our fingertips but are too often biased, distorted, or outright lies. From unemployment figures to voting polls, IQ tests to divorce rates, we're bombarded by seemingly plausible statistics on how people live and what they think. In a world where anyone can become an expert at the click of a button, being able to see through the tricks played with statistics is more necessary than ever before.

The Moral Landscape

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 47 mins)
• By Sam Harris
• Narrated By Sam Harris

Sam Harris has discovered that most people, from secular scientists to religious fundamentalists, agree on one point: science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, science’s failure to address questions of meaning and morality has become the primary justification for religious faith.The underlying claim is that while science is the best authority on the workings of the physical universe, religion is the best authority on meaning, values, morality, and leading a good life.

Other Minds: The Octopus and The Evolution of Intelligent Life

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 43 mins)
• By Peter Godfrey-Smith
• Narrated By Peter Noble
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A philosopher dons a wet suit and journeys into the depths of consciousness. Peter Godfrey-Smith is a leading philosopher of science. He is also a scuba diver whose underwater videos of warring octopuses have attracted wide notice. In this audiobook he brings his parallel careers together to tell a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself.

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 26 mins)
• By Adam Rutherford
• Narrated By Adam Rutherford

This is a story about you. It is the history of who you are and how you came to be. It is unique to you, as it is for every one of the 100 billion modern humans who has ever drawn breath. But it is also our collective story, because in each of our genomes we carry the history of the whole of our species.

Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs and 47 mins)
• By Ben Goldacre
• Narrated By Jot Davies

'Bad Science’ hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science, becoming a 400,000 copy bestseller. Now Ben Goldacre puts the $600bn global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. What he reveals is a fascinating, terrifying mess.

The Secret Life of the Mind: How Our Brain Thinks, Feels and Decides

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 20 mins)
• By Mariano Sigman
• Narrated By Peter Noble

A vast yet compact view of cognitive neuroscience, a groundbreaking, personal and comprehensive guide into understanding our thoughts. In the last 20 years, Mariano Sigman has journeyed to the core of the brain, an organ formed by nearly an infinity of neurons that manufacture how we perceive, reason, feel, dream and communicate. After more than two decades of research, he has zoomed out from a thorough excursion to the neurons to seeing the brain from afar, where thoughts begin to take shape.

Einstein's Greatest Mistake: The Life of a Flawed Genius

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 31 mins)
• By David Bodanis
• Narrated By Roger Davis
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Widely considered the greatest genius of all time, Albert Einstein revolutionised our understanding of the cosmos with his general theory of relativity and helped to lead us into the atomic age. Yet in the final decades of his life he was also ignored by most working scientists, his ideas opposed by even his closest friends. This stunning downfall can be traced to Einstein's earliest successes and to personal qualities that were at first his best assets.

The Lord God Made Them All: The Classic Memoirs of a Yorkshire Country Vet

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 30 mins)
• By James Herriot
• Narrated By Christopher Timothy
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The fourth volume of memoirs from the author who inspired the BBC series All Creatures Great and Small. Finally home from London after his wartime service in the RAF, James Herriot is settling back into life as a country vet. While the world has changed after the war, the blunt Yorkshire clients and menagerie of beasts with weird and wonderful ailments remain the same.

River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 11 mins)
• By Richard Dawkins
• Narrated By Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

The number-one Sunday Times best seller. A fascinating explanation of how evolution works from best-selling author of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins. Complete and unabridged and read by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward. The river of Dawkins' title is a river of DNA, flowing through time from the beginning of life on Earth to the present and onwards.

The Gene: An Intimate History

• UNABRIDGED (19 hrs and 27 mins)
• By Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Narrated By Dennis Boutsikaris
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The Gene is the story of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in our history, from best-selling, prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee. Spanning the globe and several centuries, The Gene is the story of the quest to decipher the master code that makes and defines humans, that governs our form and function. The story of the gene begins in an obscure Augustinian abbey in Moravia in 1856, where a monk stumbles on the idea of a 'unit of heredity'.

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 33 mins)
• By Henry Marsh
• Narrated By Jim Barclay
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What is it really like to be a brain surgeon, to hold someone's life in your hands, to drill down into the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? In this brutally honest account, one of the country's top neurosurgeons reveals what it is to play god in life-and-death situations. Henry Marsh gives us a rare insight into the intense drama of the operating theatre and the exquisite complexity of the human brain.

Why the Universe Exists: How Particle Physics Unlocks the Secrets of Everything

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 54 mins)
• By New Scientist
• Narrated By Mark Elstob

As you read this, billions of neutrinos from the sun are passing through your body, antimatter is sprouting from your dinner and the core of your being is a chaotic mess of particles known only as quarks and gluons. If the recent discovery of the Higgs boson piqued your interest, then Why the Universe Exists will take you deeper into the world of particle physics, with leading physicists and New Scientist exploring how the universe functions at the smallest scales.

How to Be Human: Consciousness, Language and 48 More Things That Make You You

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs and 1 min)
• By New Scientist
• Narrated By David Thorpe
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What is it that makes us human? Is it language, imagination, morality, or is it that we cook and wear shoes? Or perhaps we are less human than we think - Neanderthal and Denisovan genes can be found within all of us! Once again, New Scientist have all of the unexpected answers, and - just as they did for the universe in The Origin of (Almost) Everything - they take us on a tour around the human body and brain, taking in everything from evolution to email, from the Stone Age to Spotify.

The Science of Food: An Exploration of What We Eat and How We Cook

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 27 mins)
• By Marty Jopson
• Narrated By Marty Jopson
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

In this fascinating and easily digestible book, The One Show's resident scientist Marty Jopson takes us on a mouthwatering tour of the 21st-century kitchen and the everyday food miracles that we all take for granted. Ever wondered what modified starch is and why it's in so much of the food we buy? What do instant mash and freeze-dried coffee have in common? What's the real truth behind the five-second rule?

September 2017

• HIGHLIGHTS (1 hr and 17 mins)
• By Scientific American
• Narrated By Mark Moran

In this issue: "Promiscuous Men, Chaste Women and Other Gender Myths": The notion that behavioral differences between the sexes are innate and immutable does not hold up under scrutiny. "Is there a 'Female' Brain?": The debate over whether men and women have meaningfully different brains could have profound implications for health and personal identity. "When Sex and Gender Collide": Studies of transgender kids are revealing fascinating insights about gender in the brain. "Not Just for Men": Researchers must dig deeper into gender differences before they can provide better treatments.

Dan Dare: 21st Century Spaceman

• UNABRIDGED (48 mins)
• By B7 Media, Boffin Media
• Narrated By Richard Hollingham

Science journalist Richard Hollingham explores whether the reality of space exploration is catching up with the Dan Dare universe. Featuring interviews with the cast, director and lead writer about re-inventing Dare for the 21st century, Richard even meets a real rocket scientist who owes his career to the pilot of the future.

Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 41 mins)
• By Richard Dawkins
• Narrated By Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward, Gillian Somerscales

Richard Dawkins - author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and The God Delusion - is one of science's greatest communicators. This anthology of more than 40 pieces is a kaleidoscopic argument for the power and the glory of science. Breathtaking, brilliant and passionate, these essays, journalism, lectures and letters make an unanswerable case for the wonder of scientific discovery and its power to stir the imagination.

New Scientist: The Origin of (Almost) Everything: From the Big Bang to Belly-button Fluff

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 36 mins)
• By New Scientist, Graham Lawton, Stephen Hawking
• Narrated By David Thorpe

A journey through life, the universe and everything. From what actually happened in the big bang to the accidental discovery of Post-it notes, science is packed with surprising discoveries. Did you know, for instance, that if you were to get too close to a black hole it would suck you up like a noodle (it's called spaghettification), why your keyboard is laid out in QWERTY (it's not to make it easier to type) or whether the invention of the wheel was less important to civilisation than the bag (think about it)? New Scientist does.

The Netocrats (Futurica Trilogy 1)

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 21 mins)
• By Jan Söderqvist, Alexander Bard
• Narrated By Bert Deivert

History is always written from the perspective of the ruling or rising elite at the time of writing. Concepts like The Stone Age, The Bronze Age, et cetera, were of course unknown during those periods that used to be called the stone age and the bronze age. They were invented during the 19th century to make sense of a development that seemed to reach its climax with industrialisation and the modern factory.