Showing titles in Natural History

In Slime we'll meet the algae innovators working toward a sustainable future: from seaweed farmers in South Korea, to scientists using it to clean the dead zones in our waterways, to the entrepreneurs fighting to bring algae fuel and plastics to market. Ruth Kassinger takes listeners on an around-the-world, behind-the-scenes, and into-the-kitchen tour. Whether you thought algae was just the gunk in your fish tank or you eat seaweed with your oatmeal, Slime will delight and amaze with its stories of the good, the bad, and the up-and-coming.

Rivers, more than any road, technology, or political leader, have shaped the course of human civilization. They have opened frontiers, founded cities, settled borders, and fed billions. They promote life, forge peace, grant power, and can capriciously destroy everything in their path. Even today, rivers remain a powerful global force - one that is more critical than ever to our future. In Rivers of Power, geographer Laurence C. Smith explores the timeless yet underappreciated relationship between rivers and civilization as we know it.

In this groundbreaking approach to the evolution of all life, Richard Dawkins shows how the body, behaviour, and genes of every living creature can be read as a book – an archive of the worlds of its ancestors. A perfectly camouflaged desert lizard has a desiccated landscape of sand and stones ‘painted’ on its back. Its skin can be read as a description of ancient deserts in which its ancestors survived – and, before that, of the worlds of its more remote ancestors: a genetic book of the dead.

Did you know a new dinosaur is discovered almost every week? Keep up with the latest dinosaur discoveries and science with I Know Dino. Have fun and relax with hosts Garret and Sabrina each week as they explore the latest dinosaur news, chat with paleontology experts, dive deep into a “dinosaur of the day,” go down Oryctodromeus burrows with their fun facts, answer your burning questions, and connect dinosaurs to topics ranging from chocolate to the Titanic and more! Educational and entertaining, I Know Dino is a must listen dinosaur paleontology podcast for experts and newcomers ...

Flowers, and the fruits that follow, feed, clothe, sustain, and inspire all humanity. Flowers are used to celebrate all-important occasions, to express love, and are also the basis of global industries. Americans buy 10 million flowers a day, and perfumes are a worldwide industry worth $30 billion annually. Stephen Buchmann takes us along on an exploratory journey of the roles flowers play in the production of our foods, spices, medicines, and perfumes while simultaneously bringing joy and health.

For thousands of years, humans have been the architects of the natural world. Our activities have permanently altered the environment – for good and for bad. Nature’s Ghosts examines how the planet would have looked before humans scrubbed away its diversity: from landscapes carved out by megafauna to the primeval forests that emerged following the last ice age, and from the eagle-haunted skies of the Dark Ages to the flower-decked farms of more recent centuries.

Sadhguru, fundador de la Fundación Isha, es un yogui, místico y maestro espiritual con una diferencia. Su vida y su obra, una fascinante mezcla de profundidad y pragmatismo, nos recuerdan que las ciencias internas no son filosofías esotéricas de un pasado obsoleto, sino una ciencia contemporánea de vital importancia para nuestros tiempos.

The ocean teems with life that thrives under difficult situations in unusual environments. The Extreme Life of the Sea takes listeners to the absolute limits of the ocean world - the fastest and deepest, the hottest and oldest creatures of the oceans. It dives into the icy Arctic and boiling hydrothermal vents - and exposes the eternal darkness of the deepest undersea trenches - to show how marine life thrives against the odds. This thrilling book brings to life the sea's most extreme species, and tells their stories as characters in the drama of the oceans.

The story of how our ancestors made the first tentative steps towards becoming human, how we lost our fur but gained language, fire and tools, and how we strode out of Africa, invented farming and cities and ultimately created modern civilisation. Where did we come from? Where are we going? Homo sapiens is the most successful, the most widespread and the most influential species ever to walk the Earth.

If fresh water is to be treasured, the Great Lakes are the mother lode. No bodies of water can compare to them. One of them, Superior, is the largest lake on earth, and the five lakes together contain a fifth of the world's supply of standing fresh water. Their surface area of 95,000 square miles is greater than New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island combined. They are so vast that they dominate much of the geography, climate, and history of North America. In one way or another, they affect the lives of tens of millions.

The world is full of mystery. Man's hubris would have you believe that the world is mapped, it is explained, it has been conquered. But many would disagree. We believe the world still has mystery. That there are layers upon layers of the world that remain unexplored and unexplained. That there is still magic and mystery all around us.. if only we would open our eyes and our hearts to understand. Paranormal Portal explores the many mysteries that still persist. Discussing theory, testimonial and possibility in an open forum for all to take part.. ENTER THE PARANORMAL PORTAL.. if you dare...

Celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the first half of the 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; and moves to a brilliant, eccentric geologist named William Buckland.

In this paradigm-shattering book, biologist Mark W. Moffett draws on findings in psychology, sociology, and anthropology to explain the social adaptations that bind societies. He explores how the tension between identity and anonymity defines how societies develop, function, and fail. Surpassing Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, The Human Swarm reveals how mankind created sprawling civilizations of unrivaled complexity - and what it will take to sustain them.

Principles of Geology [1830] is a groundbreaking classic of science. Mentioned in Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, glowingly, it captivated such contemporaries as Melville, Emerson, Tennyson, and George Eliot. It is now here for a new generation interested in Earth Science, climate and sustainability.

The Monarch Butterfly Migration focuses a wider lens on the effects of climate change and the tensions between advocacy and scientific accuracy. This book reminds us to notice the natural wonders in our own backyards.

A podcast about how we understand the world, scientifically and as humans. Each conversation brings together visionaries from the worlds of arts, sciences, humanities, and technology discussing the nature of reality and how we collaborate to create the future. Hosted by Dr Brian Keating, Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego. For show notes go to: https://briankeating.com/podcast

It is difficult to conceive of the vast scale of the history of life on Earth, from the very first living organisms sparking into life in hydrothermal deep-sea vents to the dizzying diversity of life today. The evolution of life is a sweeping epic of a tale, with twists and turns, surprising heroes and unlikely survivors. The Earth beautifully distils this complex story into a meaningful scale. In taking a closer look at 47 carefully selected organisms over 15 periods in our planetary history, this audiobook tells the whole story of life on Earth.

David Christian is renowned for pioneering the emerging discipline of Big History, which surveys the whole of the past. With Future Stories, he casts his sharp analytical eye forward, offering an introduction to the strange world of the future, and a guide to what we think we know about it at all scales, from the individual to the cosmological. Christian consults theologians, philosophers, scientists, statisticians, and scholars as he explores how we prepare for uncertain futures, including the future of human evolution, artificial intelligence, interstellar travel, and more.

In his main work, the best-selling Worlds in Collision, Immanuel Velikovsky gave a detailed reconstruction of two global natural catastrophes based on information handed down by our ancestors. He mentions there that, as part of his intensive research, he found numerous indications of even more catastrophes that took place earlier in the history of mankind.

Not far from Seattle skyscrapers live 150-year-old clams, more than 250 species of fish, and underwater kelp forests as complex as any terrestrial ecosystem. For millennia, vibrant Coast Salish communities have lived beside these waters dense with nutrient-rich foods, with cultures intertwined through exchanges across the waterways. Transformed by settlement and resource extraction, Puget Sound and its future health now depend on a better understanding of the region's ecological complexities.