The Kingdom of Speech
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The Kingdom of Speech
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Narrated by:
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Robert Petkoff
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By:
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Tom Wolfe
About this listen
The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong.
Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech - not evolution - is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements.
From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman who beat Darwin to the theory of natural selection but later renounced it, through the controversial work of modern-day anthropologist Daniel Everett, who defies the current wisdom that language is hardwired in humans, Wolfe examines the solemn, long-faced, laugh-out-loud zigzags of Darwinism, old and neo, and finds it irrelevant here in the Kingdom of Speech.
©2016 Tom Wolfe (P)2016 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Not just another science audiobook and not just another Discworld novella, The Science of Discworld is a creative, mind-bending mash-up of fiction and fact, that offers a wizard’s-eye view of our world that will forever change how you look at the universe.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Not the best Pratchett, but gets there in the end
- By Rachel on 07-30-14
By: Terry Pratchett, and others
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The Complete (Short) Guide to Absolutely Everything
- Adventures in Math and Science
- By: Adam Rutherford, Hannah Fry
- Narrated by: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide listeners through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Humour and understandability.
- By Chris B on 09-08-24
By: Adam Rutherford, and others
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The Clockwork Universe
- Isaac Newton, The Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World
- By: Edward Dolnick
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 3,892
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,313
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Story4 out of 5 stars 3,325
The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with natures most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Calculus Ergo Modernity
- By Nelson Alexander on 07-09-11
By: Edward Dolnick
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The Book That Changed America
- How Darwin's Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation
- By: Randall Fuller
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
The compelling story of the effect of Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species on a diverse group of American writers, abolitionists, and social reformers, including Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott, in 1860.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Oversold
- By Roger on 03-03-17
By: Randall Fuller
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Time, Love, Memory
- A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior
- By: Jonathan Weiner
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
Jonathan Weiner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Beak of the Finch, brings his brilliant reporting skills to the story of Seymour Benzer, the Brooklyn-born maverick scientist whose study of genetics and experiments with fruit fly genes has helped revolutionize or knowledge of the connections between DNA and behavior both animal and human.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This is a profound science book
- By Timothy A. Smith on 05-12-10
By: Jonathan Weiner
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The Pun Also Rises
- How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics
- By: John Pollack
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 56
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Story4 out of 5 stars 54
The Pun Also Rises is an authoritative yet playful exploration of a practice that is common, in one form or another, to virtually every language on earth. At once entertaining and educational, this engaging book answers fundamental questions: Just what is a pun, and why do people make them? How did punning impact the development of human language, and how did that drive creativity and progress? And why, after centuries of decline, does the pun still matter?
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3 out of 5 stars
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Punderful Little Book
- By B. Lane on 01-10-13
By: John Pollack
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The Belief Instinct
- The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life
- By: Jesse Bering
- Narrated by: Jesse Bering
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 89
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 86
Why is belief so hard to shake? Despite our best attempts to embrace rational thought and reject superstition, we often find ourselves appealing to unseen forces that guide our destiny, wondering who might be watching us as we go about our lives, and imagining what might come after death. In this lively and masterfully argued new book, Jesse Bering unveils the psychological underpinnings of why we believe.
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5 out of 5 stars
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engaging and insightful
- By juliagee on 01-02-15
By: Jesse Bering
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A Mind at Play
- How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
- By: Rob Goodman, Jimmy Soni
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 525
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 448
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 448
Claude Shannon was a tinkerer, a playful wunderkind, a groundbreaking polymath, and a digital pioneer whose insights made the Information Age possible. He constructed fire-breathing trumpets and customized unicycles, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots, but he also wrote the seminal text of the Digital Revolution. That work allowed scientists to measure and manipulate information as objectively as any physical object. His work gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.
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3 out of 5 stars
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I wanted more information about Information Theory
- By Bonny on 05-08-18
By: Rob Goodman, and others
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Expanded Universe, Vol. 2
- By: Robert A. Heinlein
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 94
Robert A. Heinlein has been hailed as one of the most forward-thinking science fiction writers of all time, and Expanded Universe (presented in two volumes) offers the perfect collection of his works to provide listeners with true insights into his uniquely creative mind.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I Nostradamus type warning for today
- By mort on 06-26-18
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The Cosmic Serpent
- DNA and the Origins of Knowledge
- By: Jeremy Narby
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,751
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,570
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,561
This adventure in science and imagination, which the Medical Tribune said might herald "a Copernican revolution for the life sciences", leads the listener through unexplored jungles and uncharted aspects of mind to the heart of knowledge. In a first-person narrative of scientific discovery that opens new perspectives on biology, anthropology, and the limits of rationalism, The Cosmic Serpent reveals how startlingly different the world around us appears when we open our minds to it.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Very Good Religious Text
- By Blair K. Hartman on 08-09-17
By: Jeremy Narby
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The Star Diaries
- Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy
- By: Stanislaw Lem
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 138
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 120
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Story4 out of 5 stars 120
Ijon Tichy, Lem's Candide of the Cosmos, encounters bizarre civilizations and creatures in space that serve to satirize science, the rational mind, theology, and other icons of human pride.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Gulliver in Space
- By Joe Kraus on 12-29-18
By: Stanislaw Lem
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Ask a Historian
- 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know
- By: Greg Jenner
- Narrated by: Dan Schreiber, Greg Jenner, Janina Ramirez, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
Responding to fifty genuine questions from the public, Greg Jenner takes you on an entertaining tour through history from the Stone Age to the Swinging Sixties, revealing the best and most surprising stories, facts and historical characters from the past. From ancient joke books, African empires and the invention of meringues, to mummies, mirrors and menstrual pads—Ask A Historian is a deliciously amusing and informative smorgasbord of historical curiosities.
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5 out of 5 stars
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best bonus content ever!
- By Matthew K Wendelken on 03-24-22
By: Greg Jenner
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Time Travel
- A History
- By: James Gleick
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 509
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 449
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Story4 out of 5 stars 442
James Gleick's story begins at the turn of the 20th century, with the young H. G. Wells writing and rewriting the fantastic tale that became his first book, an international sensation: The Time Machine. A host of forces were converging to transmute the human understanding of time, some philosophical and some technological - the electric telegraph, the steam railroad, the discovery of buried civilizations, and the perfection of clocks.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fiction gives us Truth by connecting the dots
- By Gary on 04-21-17
By: James Gleick
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Great Scientists and Their Discoveries
- By: David Angus
- Narrated by: Benjamin Soames, Clare Corbett
- Length: 2 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
Nine remarkable men produced inventions that changed the world. The printing press, the telephone, powered flight, recording and others have made the modern world what it is. But who were the men who had these ideas and made reality of them? As David Angus shows, they were very different - quiet, boisterous, confident, withdrawn - but all had a moment of vision allied to single-minded determination to battle through numerous prototypes and produced something that really worked. This is a fascinating account for younger listeners.
By: David Angus
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The Story Paradox
- How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears Them Down
- By: Jonathan Gottschall
- Narrated by: Joshua Kane
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to storytelling we can no longer ignore. Storytelling, the very tradition that built human civilization, may be the thing that destroys it.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A bit of a mixed bag with some amazing discussion
- By Justin on 04-27-22
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The Pump House Gang
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