Biology

The Selfish Gene

• UNABRIDGED (16 hrs and 16 mins)
• By Richard Dawkins
• Narrated By Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward

Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands to rethink their beliefs about life.

Obsessed: America's Food Addiction - and My Own

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 18 mins)
• By Mika Brzezinski
• Narrated By Mika Brzezinski
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Mika Brzezinski is at war against obesity. She believes the fearsome subjects of food, diet, and body image are "radioactive" in America, and getting worse. On Morning Joe, she is often so adamant about improving America’s eating habits that some people have dubbed her "the food Nazi". What they don’t know is that Mika wages a personal fight against food every day, and in Obsessed, she describes her history of food obsession, distorted body image, and her struggle to be thin. She believes it is time we stop blaming and shaming ourselves and look at the real culprits - the food we eat and our addiction to it.

Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 57 mins)
• By Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha
• Narrated By Allyson Johnson, Jonathan Davis, Christopher Ryan
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science - as well as religious and cultural institutions - has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing....

The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 13 mins)
• By Temple Grandin, Richard Panek
• Narrated By Andrea Gallo

Temple Grandin teaches listeners the science of the autistic brain, and with it the history and sociology of autism. By being autistic--by being able to look from the inside out and from the outside in--the author's insights are not just unique, they're groundbreaking. According to Temple, our understanding of autism has been perhaps fundamentally wrong for the past 70 years.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 28 mins)
• By Mary Roach
• Narrated By Sandra Burr
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

The study of sexual physiology has been a paying career or a diverting sideline for scientists as far-ranging as Leonardo da Vinci and James Watson. The research has taken place behind the closed doors of laboratories, brothels, MRI centers, pig farms, sex-toy R&D labs, and Alfred Kinsey's attic.

Mary Roach, "The funniest science writer in the country", devoted the past two years to stepping behind those doors. In Bonk, Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to slowly make the bedroom a more satisfying place.

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 44 mins)
• By Richard Dawkins
• Narrated By Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward

The Blind Watchmaker, knowledgably narrated by author Richard Dawkins, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the 18th-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte.