History & Philosophy

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to...

Read by the author. Will technology change what it means to be human? You don't have to be a computer scientist to have discerning conversations about artificial intelligence and technology. We all wonder where we're headed. Even now, technological innovations and machine learning have a daily...

How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Find out....

The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology....

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning...

The follow-up to celebrated grief expert, neuroscientist, and psychologist Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor’s The Grieving Brain focuses on the impact of grief—and life’s other major stressors—on the human body. Coping with death and grief is one of the most painful human experiences. While...

The author of the best seller The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch, explores the four most fundamental strands of human knowledge: quantum physics, and the theories of knowledge, computation, and evolution - and their unexpected connections....

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is essential listening for understanding the history, philosophy, and evolution of science....

Ignition! is the inside story of the Cold War era search for a rocket propellant which could be trusted to take man into space. A favorite of Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, listeners will want to tune into this "really good book on rocket[s]," available for the first time in audio. Ignition!...

Today’s “machine-learning” systems, trained by data, are so effective that we’ve invited them to see and hear for us―and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing.

Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate...

In 20 captivating lectures, Professor Suzanne Pilaar Birch shares her expertise and passion for discovery as she peels back the years to expose the emergence and lives of early humans....

*An instant New York Times Bestseller* *Publishers Weekly #1 Most Anticipated Science Book of Spring 2016* "You will be enthralled." — Wall Street Journal "A tour de force." — Salon.com Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern...

The companion book to COURSERA's wildly popular massive open online course "Learning How to Learn" Whether you are a student struggling to fulfill a math or science requirement, or you are embarking on a career change that requires a new skill set, A Mind for Numbers offers the tools you need...

A special tenth anniversary edition of the million-copy bestseller What If? from the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd is revised and annotated with answers to important questions you never thought to ask.

Bloomsbury presents A Crack in Everything by Marcus Chown, read by Clive Mantle. What is space? What is time? Where did the universe come from? The answers to mankind’s most enduring questions may lie in science’s greatest enigma: black holes. A black hole is a region of space where gravity...

One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind examines where the self comes from – and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. “I Am a Strange Loop is a work of rigorous thinking, but it’s also an extraordinary tribute to the memory of romantic love: The Year of...

Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen....

How well do you know the ground beneath your feet? A primer for every Earth resident, by Harvard’s acclaimed geologist. “A sublime chronicle of our planet." –Booklist, STARRED review Odds are, where you’re standing was once cooking under a roiling sea of lava, crushed by a towering sheet...

In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language....

From Brian Greene, one of the world's leading physicists, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes us look at reality in a completely different way. Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time...

The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind.

"Correlation does not imply causation". This mantra has been invoked by scientists for decades and has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. But today, that taboo is dead....

Analogy is the core of all thinking. This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling with the mysteries of human thought for over 30 years. Now, with...

A Harvard biologist and master inventor explores how new biotechnologies will enable us to bring species back from the dead, unlock vast supplies of renewable energy, and extend human life. In Regenesis, George Church and science writer Ed Regis explore the possibilities of the emerging field of...

By most popular accounts, the universe started with a bang some 13.8 billion years ago. But what happened before the Big Bang? And how do we know it happened at all? Here prominent cosmologist Niayesh Afshordi and science communicator Phil Halper offer a tour of the peculiar possibilities...

Illness is not simply a matter of biology. Our thoughts, conscious or otherwise, can make us feel pain or become unwell. If you experienced side effects from your Covid vaccine, the chances are that these were caused by your belief that you would experience them. When a nurse tells you 'this is...

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. Imagine an AI diagnoses cancer before a doctor can. It saves lives. Yet at the same moment, another AI decides which news you see – and which you don't. Is that progress? Or control? An algorithm that, like an invisible conductor, directs billions of...

A brilliant foray into the nature of information, of history, and of making meaning in the face of death and decay. Our lives are collections of information—from mundane official documents, poignant family photos, and random artifacts to the cues embodied in our genes. Never is this more...

Discover the fascinating science that shapes our world. Written for curious minds and complete newcomers, Chemistry for Beginners by Hereward Carrington provides a clear, engaging introduction to the principles of chemistry and the remarkable discoveries that transformed humanity's understanding...