The Polymath
Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility
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The Polymath
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Narrated by:
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Waqas Ahmed
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By:
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Waqas Ahmed
About this listen
Every human is born with multifarious potential. Why, then, do parents, schools, and employers insist that we restrict our many talents and interests - that we "specialize" in just one?
We've been sold a myth, that to "specialize" is the only way to pursue truth, identity, or even a livelihood. Yet specialization is nothing but an outdated system that fosters ignorance, exploitation, and disillusionment and thwarts creativity, opportunity, and progress.
Following a series of exchanges with the world's greatest historians, futurists, philosophers, and scientists, Waqas Ahmed has weaved together a narrative of history and a vision for the future that seeks to disrupt this prevailing system of unwarranted "hyper-specialization".
In The Polymath, Waqas shows us that there is another way of thinking and being. Through an approach that is both philosophical and practical, he sets out a cognitive journey towards reclaiming your innate polymathic state. Going further, he proposes nothing less than a cultural revolution in our education and professional structures, whereby everyone is encouraged to express themselves in multiple ways and fulfill their many-sided potential.
©2018 Waqas Ahmed (P)2019 Gildan MediaListeners also enjoyed...
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- The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief
- By: George M. Marsden
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 91
In the aftermath of World War II, the United States stood at a precipice. The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life, but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the country's traditional moral character. As award-winning historian George M. Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, postwar Americans looked to the country's secular liberalelites for guidance in this precarious time, but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Such a relevant book to our current world
- By Adam Shields on 09-14-16
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High Weirdness
- Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
- By: Erik Davis
- Narrated by: Erik Davis
- Length: 20 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 215
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 174
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 171
A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the 1970s. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality - but how did their writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America?
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5 out of 5 stars
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High Weirdness
- By Amazon Customer on 09-17-20
By: Erik Davis
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The Master and His Emissary
- The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
- By: Iain McGilchrist
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 27 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 575
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 472
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 465
This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain - the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the "rational" side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The Master and His Emissary
- By Michael on 11-07-20
By: Iain McGilchrist
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Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers
- The Ideas That Have Shaped Our World
- By: Philip Stokes
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4 out of 5 stars 93
This engaging and accessible book invites the listener to explore the questions and arguments of philosophy through the work of 100 of the greatest thinkers within the Western intellectual tradition - covering philosophical, scientific, political, and religious thought over a period of 2500 years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Unpretentious, honest, with a big picture
- By Mike S. on 05-29-17
By: Philip Stokes
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In Defense of History
- By: Richard J. Evans
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story5 out of 5 stars 35
Richard J. Evans shows us how historians manage to extract meaning from the recalcitrant past. To materials that are frustratingly meager, or overwhelmingly profuse, they bring an array of tools that range from agreed-upon rules of documentation to the critical application of social and economic theory, all employed with the aim of reconstructing a verifiable, usable past. Evans defends this commitment to historical knowledge from the attacks of postmodernist critics who deny the possibility of achieving any kind of certain knowledge about the past.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Enlightening
- By David A on 07-03-18
By: Richard J. Evans
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Not for Profit
- Why Democracy Needs the Humanities
- By: Martha C. Nussbaum
- Narrated by: Tamara Marston
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story5 out of 5 stars 36
In this short and powerful book, celebrated philosopher Martha Nussbaum makes a passionate case for the importance of the liberal arts at all levels of education. Historically, the humanities have been central to education because they have been seen as essential for creating competent democratic citizens. But recently, Nussbaum argues, thinking about the aims of education has gone disturbingly awry in the United States and abroad.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Not for Profit
- By elemarteacher on 07-21-17
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How to Save the West
- Ancient Wisdom for 5 Modern Crises
- By: Spencer Klavan
- Narrated by: Spencer Klavan
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 188
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 171
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Story5 out of 5 stars 169
It has been proclaimed many times, but perhaps never more convincingly than now, when every news cycle seems to deliver further confirmation of a world gone mad. Is this the endgame? Author Spencer Klavan is a classicist, with a Ph.D. from Oxford, and a deep understanding of the West. His analysis: The situation is dire. But every crisis we face today, we have faced before. And we can surmount each one. Klavan brings to the West’s defense the insights of Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, and the Founding Fathers to show that in the wisdom of the past lies hope for the future.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Spectacular! A must read!
- By M.A. on 02-15-23
By: Spencer Klavan
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Science Education in the Early Roman Empire
- By: Richard Carrier
- Narrated by: Richard Carrier
- Length: 4 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
Throughout the Roman Empire cities held public speeches and lectures, had libraries, and teachers and professors in the sciences and the humanities, some subsidized by the state. There even existed something equivalent to universities, and medical and engineering schools. What were they like? What did they teach? Who got to attend them? In the first treatment of this subject ever published, Dr. Richard Carrier answers all these questions and more.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting
- By Leslie RP on 01-14-17
By: Richard Carrier
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Cosmos and Psyche
- Intimations of a New World View
- By: Richard Tarnas
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 25 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 52
From a philosopher whose magisterial history of Western thought was praised by Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith comes a brilliant new book that traces the connection between cosmic cycles and archetypal patterns of human experience. Drawing on years of research and on thinkers from Plato to Jung, Richard Tarnas explores the planetary correlations of epochal events like the French Revolution, the two world wars, and September 11. Cosmos and Psyche is a work of immense sophistication, deep learning, and lasting importance.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Compelling content; monochromatic narration
- By Melissa Chase on 04-14-21
By: Richard Tarnas
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The Art Instinct
- Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution
- By: Denis Dutton
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4 out of 5 stars 51
The Art Instinct combines two of the most fascinating and contentious disciplines, art and evolutionary science, in a provocative new work that will revolutionize the way art itself is perceived. Aesthetic taste, argues Denis Dutton, is an evolutionary trait, and is shaped by natural selection. It's not, as almost all contemporary art criticism and academic theory would have it, "socially constructed".
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5 out of 5 stars
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A breath of fresh air!
- By Michael on 02-19-14
By: Denis Dutton
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Time of the Magicians
- Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy
- By: Wolfram Eilenberger, Shaun Whiteside
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 143
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 117
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 116
The year is 1919. The horror of the First World War is fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin is trying to flee his overbearing father and floundering in his academic career, living hand to mouth as a critic. Wittgenstein, by contrast, has dramatically decided to divest himself of the monumental fortune he stands to inherit, in search of spiritual clarity.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Narrator butchers foreign many language quotations
- By William G. Brown on 08-31-20
By: Wolfram Eilenberger, and others
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Culture and Imperialism
- By: Edward Said
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 19 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 154
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 157
A landmark work from the intellectually auspicious author of Orientalism, this book explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. This classic study, the direct successor to Said's main work, is read by Peter Ganim ( Orientalism).
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5 out of 5 stars
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BRAVO, AUDIBLE!! WE NEED MORE SAID!! REAL BOOKS!!
- By AnthonyStevens on 02-27-11
By: Edward Said
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The Technological Society
- By: Jacques Ellul
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society has become a classic in its field, laying the groundwork for all other studies of technology and society that have followed. Ellul offers a penetrating analysis of our technological civilization, showing how technology - which began innocuously enough as a servant of humankind - threatens to overthrow humanity itself in its ongoing creation of an environment that meets its own ends. No conversation about the dangers of technology and its unavoidable effects on society can begin without a careful listening of this book.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A singular work.
- By Daniel S Hoffman on 06-20-21
By: Jacques Ellul
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Giving the Devil His Due
- Reflections of a Scientific Humanist
- By: Michael Shermer
- Narrated by: Michael Shermer
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 155
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 128
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 125
Who is the "Devil"? And what is he due? The devil is anyone who disagrees with you. And what he is due is the right to speak his mind. He must have this for your own safety's sake, because his freedom is inextricably tied to your own. If he can be censored, why shouldn't you be censored? If we put barriers up to silence "unpleasant" ideas, what's to stop the silencing of any discussion? This book is a full-throated defense of free speech and open inquiry in politics, science, and culture by the New York Times best-selling author and skeptic Michael Shermer.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Flawed Audio
- By Private on 04-10-20
By: Michael Shermer
What listeners say about The Polymath
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 01-27-20
Must Read!
Listening to this audiobook has been by far one of the most transcending and liberating experience I have ever had. It lifted my soul and mind to realize potential is life. Potentiality is in the cracks of what we make of it. The time is to make a great life for yourself by being true to your nature as a celestial being on this planet.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- RS
- 09-11-23
This book is worth listening to!
If you choose to get this book, I can assure you that you won’t be disappointed. I’ve listened to it twice, and I’m sure I will come back to listen to it again, even if only as a reference, This book is so jampacked with relevant information about so many people from so many cultures through history, that lived their lives in a way that was comparable to Leonardo da Vinci, or even to Michelangelo. It shows what we are all capable of and I was impacted by this book.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 11-25-20
Mastermind dictionary with feminism to be bought
Mic quality's well done with so much wind blown. A self-help flavored 'My favorite people' column following tiresome exaggerating of gender.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Adan Caballero
- 03-02-20
painful narration
the subject of the book is very good, just what i was looking for. but this fellow narrating his own stuff is painful!
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