Showing results by narrator "Tom Merrill" in All Categories

We are living in the first era in history where human language has become a direct interface to machine intelligence. Not through wires. Not through syntax-heavy programming. Not through complex command lines. But through conversation. The prompt is no longer a simple instruction. It is architecture. It is design. It is leverage. The most powerful AI systems in the world—ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Gemini, Lovable—do not merely respond to commands. They interpret structure. They infer intent. They simulate reasoning. They generate strategy.

The city of Cincinnati is rotting. The only cure is West. The only chance is to turn back. In the wreckage of the Green Rot—a spore that turns the infected into fast, unpredictable "Twitchers"—Dennis and his tight-knit crew have one iron-clad rule: Drive. Don't look back. The East is a tomb, and two hundred miles of cracked, dangerous highway is all that separates them from the promised haven of the Empty Haul.

Poppi survived the heart attack that should have killed him, but surviving isn't the same as living. Narrowly escaping death didn't make him careful. It caused him to question everything. The routine of daily life. His personal choices. The idea of playing it safe. But his first time gambling led him to an unexpected rhythm along the Las Vegas Strip. Casino to casino. Machine to machine. Dice rattled behind plexiglass. The illusion of control settled in his chest. A ritual that became his treadmill.

Say a name out loud. Cicero. Feynman. Your grandmother. Something has just happened that nobody can fully explain: a noise made in a room has reached out and fastened onto one specific thing in the universe, and it has done so even if almost everything you believe about that thing is wrong. Saul Kripke spent his career on the question of how that trick works, and his answer took the ground out from under two generations of philosophers. Names, he argued, are not shorthand for descriptions. They are anchors.

For five centuries we have told ourselves a flattering story: that the peoples who lived along the Great Lakes and across the Canadian Shield were simple, and that the newcomers who arrived by ship were advanced. This book takes that story apart, gently and completely. Every society that has ever lasted had to solve the same short list of problems. It had to feed its people, keep them warm, bring them clean water, move them across distance, remember its laws, defend its homes, settle its quarrels, and teach its children who they were.

Who will bank the millions after Louie Duquesne dies —his quarrelsome offspring with their dark moods and age-old resentments, or his friend and advisor Pastor Mike, whose church has racked up unsurmountable debt? The Duquesne siblings gather in the family home to lash out and lay blame as their father faces his final days, while the pastor, waiting anxiously, confronts a shameful secret of his own. Private Property is the first novel in a quartet of books titled The Sonoran Quartet which observes and reports on all the troubles, joys, and scandals of a southwestern community.

On the twenty-eighth of February, two thousand and twenty-six, an artificial intelligence system helped designate a girls' elementary school in the southern Iranian town of Minab as a military target. One hundred and sixty-eight people died, most of them schoolchildren. The system was working as designed. That is the problem. This book argues that the danger of artificial intelligence has been catastrophically misdiagnosed.

What if the greatest philosophical treatises ever written were not treatises at all, but tragedies performed on a wooden stage in sixteenth-century London? In Shakespeare’s Tragic Mirror, Boris Kriger takes listeners on a provocative journey through eight of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies — Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus — revealing them not as museum pieces of English literature, but as living instruments of self-knowledge.

Arthur Pendelton receives an email confirming his death. Not a mistake. Not a warning. A finalized insurance payout. Five million dollars. Already claimed. By his wife. Ten years earlier, a storm swallowed his sailboat without a trace. No body was ever found, but the system moved on—death certificate issued, claim processed, case closed. Now Arthur is alive. And according to every official record, he shouldn’t be.

When a sealed corridor is uncovered during renovations at Winterbourne House, archivist Lucian Reeve is summoned to examine a trunk of forgotten letters hidden for more than half a century. What begins as a matter of authentication soon reveals a carefully buried history—one shaped by forbidden love, surveillance, and a family’s determination to preserve its own version of the past.

A quiet mountain town. A historic inn. A death no one wants investigated. Freelance journalist Avery Mitchell comes to Prospect, Colorado to write a feel-good feature about a former mining town reinventing itself. Nestled among towering peaks and old Victorian buildings, Prospect seems like the perfect place to catch her breath—and remember why she became a writer in the first place. Then one of the inn’s guests disappears. When his body is discovered near an abandoned mine high on Eagle Ridge, authorities quickly rule the death an accident.

Fort Knox is one of those rare phrases that has escaped its physical boundaries and entered everyday language. It is spoken casually, often without thought, as a shorthand for something impenetrable, something absolute. To say that something is “as safe as Fort Knox” is to suggest that it is beyond reach, beyond threat, beyond question. Yet the reality behind this familiar expression is far more grounded, far more human, and far more structured than the myth allows. Fort Knox is not an ancient fortress shaped by centuries of siege and legend.

There is a question that every human civilization has asked independently, in its own language, through its own mythology and ritual and architecture. No culture discovered it from another. No migration carried it. It arose, separately, in every corner of the inhabited world.

In 2006, five privileged teenagers stood at the edge of a quarry and made a choice that would shape the rest of their lives. Amy McKinney went into the water. The truth did not. Twenty years later, the “Golden Five” are pillars of the North Shore—an architect, a nurse, a corporate titan, a detective, and a schoolteacher. They built careers, reputations, and families on a foundation of silence. Then the envelopes begin to arrive. Photographs from the bottom of the quarry. Objects thought lost to silt. Fractions counting them down.

When yoga instructor Ava leads nine students from her San Diego studio to Patagonia's legendary Futaleufú River, she promises them transformation—the real kind, not the Instagram version. What she doesn't mention is that real transformation always costs something. Claire, barely holding herself together after losing custody of her children, is running from a life she can no longer bear. Peter's boyfriend gave him an ultimatum: do something that scares you, or lose me. Linda, a psychiatrist who can't control her own panic attacks, needs to remember what it feels like not to be in charge.

The Trials of Nuremberg: Holding Evil Accountable is a powerful and lucid account of the moment the world chose justice over vengeance, truth over denial, and the rule of law over the rule of fear.

Spanning thousands of years, from ancient tribes to modern independence, The History of Ukraine is a captivating journey through one of Europe’s most resilient and fascinating nations. This beautifully written book reveals how Ukraine — a land of golden plains, powerful rivers, and determined people — became a symbol of endurance, courage, and hope.

Society Without People is the first major scholarly analysis of the profound social and cultural effects of emerging technologies such as generative AI and the Metaverse. Using an approachable style and compelling scenarios, Pieper and Nelson examine the potential ways these technologies will shape identity, institutions, relationships, communities, power, and personhood itself in the near future. Introducing the theory of Gamism, the authors suggest that the logic of games could serve as the new ideology governing this strange, exciting world.

The author of this book has crafted an accessible introduction that demystifies machine learning without sacrificing accuracy or depth. By focusing on intuitive explanations, practical examples, and real-world applications, this guide bridges the gap between complex technical concepts and practical understanding. Whether you're a student considering a career in technology, a professional looking to understand how AI might impact your industry, or simply a curious individual wanting to understand the algorithms that increasingly shape our world, this book provides the foundation you need.

ChatGPT Unleashed is an accessible, practical guide designed for anyone curious about how to make the most of AI today. There’s no need for a computer science degree or tech background. All you need is a willingness to engage, experiment, and explore. The future is already here—and it talks back.