Justin

Someone who already knows about the subject and just wants equations he can't see.

There is no story -- at least for the first 30 minutes when I gave up. It's more like a math textbook, and that translates horribly to storytelling, especially for audio, when it requires looking at equations and mentions diagrams we can't see.

I don't know, but this narrator came off as pretentious which didn't help this subject.

These kinds of subjects -- quantum physics, relativity etc. -- can work but you have to tell a story. You can't get into equations and diagrams when you can't see them. For audio, you must tell a compelling story instead of just be a reference book.

Four similar books that know how to tell a story are: The Age of Entanglement, Quantum, Parallel Worlds, The Grand Design.

Fun, nostalgic, unique

The well-researched and detailed references to classic video games, such as the perfect game in Pac-Man and the bug in Tempest that gives you free lives.

When the first challenge was to beat the creature by playing the video game Joust. Me and my friend used to play that stand-up arcade game at a local gas station. It was awesome.

The author really understood the cultural references he was talking about. He must be my age, and he must have grown up with arcade games and the Apple II like me and my friends. Also, the references to obscure TV shows -- especially the Japanese show with Giant Robots that live in a volcano -- and pop music. The story was great, but maybe a bit too long. As much as I liked it early on, towards the end it held my attention less.

« Ready Player One » reminds me of « The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy » -- another 80s cultural reference. Overall, a fun and unusual story.

Interesting science, but too many personal references to anxiety about aging.

A little less emphasis on assuming the reading is in middle age and panicking about getting old.

I'm not sure

How exercise helps create new neurons. The brain is plastic and can grow new cells, and science is finally overcoming the dogma decreed in 1913 that the brain can't change.

The book often referenced getting old and then made a point about how the aging brain is actually not as badly in decline as we presumed. This had the ironic effect of creating anxiety by starting with the assumption that we all worry about aging. I'd rather she just explain the discoveries and tone down all the personal concerns. I'd mention it once on the back cover, to pique the interest of older folks who really have started to worry about dementia, but don't harp on it throughout the book and alienate younger people.

This is to biology what Quantum Mechanics was to Newtonian physics. It took physics 300 years to go beyond Newton, but it wasn't easy. Quantum Mechanics is still unintuitive and difficult to understand. Luckily, the way Bruce Lipton explains epigenetics makes it easier to understand life and evolution than current Darwinian theory. Instead of throwing everything out and starting from scratch, it builds on Darwin, making precisions on the mechanism of evolution, just as Quantum physics built on Newton.

The information is interesting, but it's not easy to listen to. Not enough storytelling I guess. The speaker's style is unusual. Gets better by the end.

A good listen, even though I sometimes didn't agree. The only irritation is the religious preaching. It should just be another argument, that the authors of these books failed in their utopian visions because they rejected God. Instead the author attempts to show us why they are evil because they didn't listen to their elders and religious tradition. Basically he seems to take it as a personal mission to demonize these books as opposed to just showing how they led to destructive ideas etc.

The narration is not really as bad as I expected based on previous reviews. The information is valuable enough to give it more than a minute's listen before giving up. For example, I got used to his voice after about 30 minutes and I retained lots of the material. Despite the voice I'm looking forward to listening to the whole 8 hours again.

The basic ideas are unique as far as spiritual teaching goes, and quite convincing and easy to observe in daily experience.