Evolution Gone Wrong
The Curious Reasons Why Our Bodies Work (Or Don't)
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Evolution Gone Wrong
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Narrated by:
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Joe Knezevich
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By:
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Alex Bezzerides
About this listen
A fascinating, irreverent guide to human evolution and what it means for our bodies today
An eye-opening look into why our bodies work—or don't—the way they do. From blurry vision to crooked teeth, ACLs that tear at alarming rates and spines that seem to spend a lifetime falling apart, it's a curious thing that human beings have beaten the odds as a species. After all, we're the only survivors on our branch of the tree of life. Why is it that human mothers have such a life-endangering experience giving birth? And why are there entire medical specialties for teeth and feet? In this funny, wide-ranging and often surprising book, biologist Alex Bezzerides tells us just where we inherited our adaptable, achy, brilliant bodies in the process of evolution.
The book traces the delightfully unexpected answers to these questions and many more:
Why do we blink?
Why don't our teeth regularly fit in our mouths?
Why do women menstruate when so many other mammals don't?
Why did humans stand up on two legs in the first place?
©2021 Alexander Bezzerides (P)2021 Harlequin Enterprises, LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 97
Just over 125,000 years ago, humanity was going extinct until a dramatic shift occurred—Homo sapiens started tracking the tides in order to eat the nearby oysters. Before long, they’d pulled themselves back from the brink of extinction. The human brain, and its evolutionary journey, is unlike anything else in history. In A History of the Human Brain, Bret Stetka takes listeners through that far-reaching journey. He also tackles the question of where the brain will take us next, exploring the burgeoning concepts of epigenetics and new technologies like CRISPR.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating survey of the evolution of the human brain
- By Cosmos on 03-30-21
By: Bret Stetka
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Origins
- How Earth's History Shaped Human History
- By: Lewis Dartnell
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 614
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 543
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 539
When we talk about human history, we often focus on great leaders, population forces, and decisive wars. But how has the earth itself determined our destiny? Our planet wobbles, driving changes in climate that forced the transition from nomadism to farming. Mountainous terrain led to the development of democracy in Greece. Atmospheric circulation patterns later on shaped the progression of global exploration, colonization, and trade. Even today, voting behavior in the southeast United States ultimately follows the underlying pattern of 75 million-year-old sediments from an ancient sea.
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5 out of 5 stars
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GREAT Book with a Narrator Who's Falling Asleep
- By aaron on 08-02-20
By: Lewis Dartnell
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Patient Zero
- A Curious History of the World's Worst Diseases
- By: Lydia Kang MD, Nate Pedersen
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 132
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 120
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 119
From the masters of storytelling-meets-science, Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks—how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us. Written in the authors’ lively style, chapters include gripping medical stories about a particular disease or virus—smallpox, Bubonic plague, polio, HIV—that combine “Patient Zero” narratives, or the human stories behind outbreaks, with historical examinations of missteps, milestones, scientific theories, and more.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Can’t listen to the reader
- By Doug Clyde on 07-21-22
By: Lydia Kang MD, and others
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The Genesis Machine
- Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology
- By: Amy Webb, Andrew Hessel
- Narrated by: Amy Webb, Andrew Hessel, Tim Campbell, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 254
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 224
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 221
Synthetic biology promises to reveal how life is created and how it can be re-created, enabling scientists to rewrite the rules of our reality. It could help us, for example, heal without prescription medications, grow meat without harvesting animals, or confront our looming climate catastrophe. Synthetic biology will determine the ways in which we conceive future generations and how we define family, how we identify disease and treat aging, where we make our homes, and how we nourish ourselves.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Thought provoking but politically biased
- By Andy on 07-02-22
By: Amy Webb, and others
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Bernoulli's Fallacy
- Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science
- By: Aubrey Clayton
- Narrated by: Tim H. Dixon
- Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 136
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 121
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 121
Aubrey Clayton traces the history of how statistics went astray, beginning with the groundbreaking work of the 17th-century mathematician Jacob Bernoulli and winding through gambling, astronomy, and genetics. Clayton recounts the feuds among rival schools of statistics, exploring the surprisingly human problems that gave rise to the discipline and the all-too-human shortcomings that derailed it.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Rigorously Bayesian
- By Anonymous User on 01-25-22
By: Aubrey Clayton
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The Characters of Creation
- The Men, Women, Creatures, and Serpent Present at the Beginning of the World
- By: Daniel Darling
- Narrated by: Tim Mullins
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 5
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 5
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Story5 out of 5 stars 5
Most Christians are familiar with the opening words of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” But push beyond those iconic words, and sometimes the details get a little hazy. And strange. God walked around in a garden? Eve was made from Adam’s rib? A talking serpent? And what the in the world were the “Nephilim”? In The Characters of Creation, Daniel Darling re-introduces listeners to the story they thought they knew.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good summary of the Genesis
- By Roseclan on 04-20-25
By: Daniel Darling
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Arabs
- A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes, and Empires
- By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 25 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 294
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 258
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 258
This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia.
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4 out of 5 stars
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“The hourglass that swallows you”
- By Jefferson on 05-22-21
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A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages
- The World Through Medieval Eyes
- By: Anthony Bale
- Narrated by: Esh Alladi
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 21
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 17
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Story4 out of 5 stars 17
In this vivid and alluring history, medievalist Anthony Bale invites listeners on an odyssey across the medieval world. Journeying alongside scholars, spies, and saints, from Western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes and the ends of the earth, Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Bit Academic
- By PG on 05-06-25
By: Anthony Bale
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The Storm Before the Storm
- The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic
- By: Mike Duncan
- Narrated by: Mike Duncan
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9,014
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 8,081
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 8,037
The Roman Republic was one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of civilization. After its founding in 509 BCE, the Romans refused to allow a single leader to seize control of the state and grab absolute power. The Roman commitment to cooperative government and peaceful transfers of power was unmatched in the history of the ancient world. But by the year 133 BCE, the republican system was unable to cope with the vast empire Rome now ruled.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting, albeit a bit dry
- By Aria on 11-14-17
By: Mike Duncan
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The Big Myth
- How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
- By: Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway
- Narrated by: Liza Seneca
- Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with 'big government' and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Refuting the Chicago School
- By Todd W. Laveen on 06-01-23
By: Naomi Oreskes, and others
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The Evolution of Desire
- By: David M. Buss
- Narrated by: Greg Tremblay
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1,102
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 927
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 921
If we all want love, why is there so much conflict in our most cherished relationships? To answer this question we must look into our evolutionary past, argues prominent psychologist David M. Buss. Based one of the largest studies of human mating ever undertaken, encompassing more than 10,000 people of all ages from 37 cultures worldwide, The Evolution of Desire is the first work to present a unified theory of human mating behavior.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Highly naive look on the nature of women
- By Xavier on 12-10-18
By: David M. Buss
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The Invention of Yesterday
- A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection
- By: Tamim Ansary
- Narrated by: Tamim Ansary
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 445
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 384
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Story5 out of 5 stars 381
Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative. Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories - to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Relaxed but packed with insight
- By Tad Davis on 02-14-20
By: Tamim Ansary
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The Rest Is History
- From Ancient Rome to Ronald Reagan—History's Most Curious Questions, Answered
- By: Goalhanger Podcasts Ltd
- Narrated by: Tom Holland, Dominic Sandbrook
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
This entertaining companion to the massively popular history podcast tackles everything from Alexander the Great to Agatha Christie, the Wars of the Roses to Watergate—with a unique blend of wit, wisdom, and good old-fashioned banter. Featuring an introduction from podcast hosts Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, this book cleverly demonstrates that the past—from modern to ancient and every time in between—is both closer to us than we might realize and bafflingly strange, all at once.
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5 out of 5 stars
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History is fun!
- By Brent Orrell on 03-10-24
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American Civil Wars
- A Continental History, 1850-1873
- By: Alan Taylor
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
The American Civil War stands at the center of the story, its military history and the drama of emancipation the highlights. Taylor relies on vivid characters to carry the story, from Joseph Hooker, whose timidity in crisis was exploited by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the Union defeat at Chancellorsville, to Martin Delany and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Black abolitionists whose critical work in Canada and the United States advanced emancipation and the enrollment of Black soldiers in Union armies.
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5 out of 5 stars
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fascinating!
- By Brandon Marken on 07-12-24
By: Alan Taylor
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The House of Government
- A Saga of the Russian Revolution
- By: Yuri Slezkine, Claire Bloom - director
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 45 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 185
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 163
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 162
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction. The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Inside saga of the leaders of Bolshevism & the USSR
- By Edward V. Blanchard on 11-05-17
By: Yuri Slezkine, and others
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Chasing Shadows
- My Life Tracking the Great White Shark
- By: Greg Skomal, Ret Talbot
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
With its quaint villages, local restaurants serving up lobster rolls, and miles and miles of warm, sandy beaches, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is famous for being America’s carefree seaside getaway. But in August 2012, the first confirmed shark attack in almost eighty years occurred in the region. As shark sightings quickly began to increase on Cape Cod and elsewhere and large beachside billboards warning about the growing shark population became a common sight, a boogie boarder died after being attacked by a great white shark in Cape Cod’s shallow waters.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Not just a boy who loves sharks!
- By Marianne O'Sullivan on 08-12-23
By: Greg Skomal, and others
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The Secret Knowledge of Water
- There Are Two Easy Ways to Die in the Desert: Thirst and Drowning
- By: Craig Childs
- Narrated by: Craig Childs
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 171
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 137
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 137
Deserts are environments that can be inhospitable even to seasoned explorers. Craig Childs has spent years in the deserts of the American West, and his treks through arid lands in search of water reveal the natural world at its most extreme.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This book is fantastic
- By Jamesdcawley on 04-09-20
By: Craig Childs
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What If? 10th Anniversary Edition
- Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
- By: Randall Munroe
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions: What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at ninety percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? What if everyone only had one soulmate? What would happen if the moon went away? In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A talented and intelligent author, artist, mathlete (want sum?)
- By Crag B. on 04-24-25
By: Randall Munroe
Thoroughly entertaining and enlightening
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Wonderful Overview of Why We Hurt & Can't See
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Very interesting
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Perfectly relatable for the moderately scientifically literate reader.
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Bezzerides engages the reader by asking (sometimes surprising) questions, keeps you curious, and makes you want to keep reading to see what comes next. You won’t be disappointed.
Answers questions you haven't thought of yet!
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oh! that makes sense.
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Evolution and us...
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Awesome!
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One of my favorites
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A must!
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