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Nuts and Bolts
- Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way)
- Narrated by: Roma Agrawal
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
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Nuts and Bolts
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Publisher's summary
A structural engineer examines the seven most basic building blocks of engineering that have shaped the modern world.
Some of engineering's mightiest achievements are small in scale, even hidden—and yet, without them, the complex machinery on which our modern world runs would not exist. In Nuts and Bolts, Roma Agrawal examines seven of these extraordinary elements: the nail, the wheel, the spring, the lens, the magnet, the string, and the pump.
From the physics behind both Roman nails and modern skyscrapers to rudimentary springs that inspired lithium batteries, Agrawal shows us how even the most sophisticated items are built on the foundations of these ancient and fundamental breakthroughs in engineering. Agrawal explores an array of intricate technologies—dishwashers, spacesuits, microscopes, suspension bridges, breast pumps—making surprising connections and explaining how they work. Along the way, she recounts the stories of remarkable scientists and engineers from all over the world, and reveals how engineering has fundamentally changed the way we live.
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- How It All Works
- By: Ron B. Davis, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Ron B. Davis
- Length: 30 hrs and 6 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 501
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 396
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 392
Chemistry and Our Universe: How It All Works is your in-depth introduction to this vital field, taught through 60 engaging half-hour lectures that are suitable for any background or none at all. Covering a year’s worth of introductory general chemistry at the college level, plus intriguing topics that are rarely discussed in the classroom, this amazingly comprehensive course requires nothing more advanced than high-school math. Your guide is Professor Ron B. Davis, Jr., a research chemist and award-winning teacher at Georgetown University.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Professor, Hard to Follow.
- By Jen on 05-14-19
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Inspired
- How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, Second Edition
- By: Marty Cagan
- Narrated by: Marty Cagan
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,627
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,138
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,112
How do today's most successful tech companies - Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla - design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently from the vast majority of tech companies. In Inspired, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides listeners with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great book, terrible audio wanted to ask a refund
- By Srikanth Ramanujam on 11-15-18
By: Marty Cagan
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The Selfish Gene
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8,858
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7,489
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 7,411
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Better than print!
- By J. D. May on 07-31-12
By: Richard Dawkins
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Zombified: Real-World Lessons from Fictional Apocalypses
- By: Athena Aktipis, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Athena Aktipis
- Length: 2 hrs and 33 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 307
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 270
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 270
Athena Aktipis of Arizona State University is a self-professed apocalypse enthusiast, and as the host of the podcast Zombified, she knows the undead inside and out. With Zombified: Real-World Lessons from Fictional Apocalypses, she’s compiled her research and insights into a fascinating Audible Original that will have you thinking deeper about all those shambling, brain-hungry corpses in pop culture—not to mention our everyday lives. Drawing on years of research on zombies and zombification, these six lessons offer a fun way to explore and understand the many forces that influence us.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good attempt, lackluster execution
- By R. MCRACKAN on 10-14-23
By: Athena Aktipis, and others
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Letters from an Astrophysicist
- By: Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Narrated by: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Vikas Adam, Piper Goodeve, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,054
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,780
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,762
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has attracted one of the world’s largest online followings with his fascinating, widely accessible insights into science and our universe. Now, Tyson invites us to go behind the scenes of his public fame by unveiling his candid correspondence with people across the globe who have sought him out in search of answers. In this hand-picked collection of 100 letters, Tyson draws upon cosmic perspectives to address a vast array of questions about science, faith, philosophy, life, and of course, Pluto.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Dear Neil...
- By Tina G. on 10-14-19
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Welcome to the Universe
- An Astrophysical Tour
- By: Michael A. Strauss, J. Richard Gott, Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,344
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,192
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,187
Welcome to the Universe is a personal guided tour of the cosmos by three of today's leading astrophysicists. Inspired by the enormously popular introductory astronomy course that Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott taught together at Princeton, this book covers it all - from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes, wormholes, and time travel.
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3 out of 5 stars
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All About What We Know About the Universe - ALL
- By J.B. on 02-17-17
By: Michael A. Strauss, and others
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The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality
- By: Don Lincoln, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Don Lincoln
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,620
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,428
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,426
At the end of his career, Albert Einstein was pursuing a dream far more ambitious than the theory of relativity. He was trying to find an equation that explained all physical reality - a theory of everything. Experimental physicist and award-winning educator Dr. Don Lincoln takes you on this exciting journey in The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality. Suitable for the intellectually curious at all levels and assuming no background beyond basic high-school math, these 24 half-hour lectures cover recent developments at the forefront of particle physics and cosmology.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Audible’s Best Science Offering, A Gem
- By MikeB on 12-08-18
By: Don Lincoln, and others
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The Last Season
- By: Eric Blehm
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,161
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,826
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,827
Destined to become a classic of adventure literature, The Last Season examines the extraordinary life of legendary backcountry ranger Randy Morgenson and his mysterious disappearance in California's unforgiving Sierra Nevada - mountains as perilous as they are beautiful. Eric Blehm's masterful work is a gripping detective story interwoven with the riveting biography of a complicated, original, and wholly fascinating man.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Well Written Character Study of an NPS Ranger
- By Kathy in CA on 06-23-16
By: Eric Blehm
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The Quantum Universe
- (And Why Anything That Can Happen, Does)
- By: Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 78
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
In The Quantum Universe, Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw approach the world of quantum mechanics in the same way they did in Why Does E=mc2? and make fundamental scientific principles accessible - and fascinating - to everyone.The subatomic realm has a reputation for weirdness, spawning any number of profound misunderstandings, journeys into Eastern mysticism, and woolly pronouncements on the interconnectedness of all things. Cox and Forshaw's contention? There is no need for quantum mechanics to be viewed this way.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Not suitable as an audio book
- By SPN on 03-29-22
By: Brian Cox, and others
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Breaking the Spell
- Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 749
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 655
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 642
For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why - and how - it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Reader Actually Enhances A Great Book!
- By Don Caliente on 07-14-14
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Great For Understanding How Things Fail
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Physical infrastructure in the United States is crumbling. The American Society of Civil Engineers has, in its latest report, given American roads and bridges a grade of D and C+, respectively, and has described roughly 65,000 bridges in the United States as 'structurally deficient'. This crisis - and one need look no further than the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota to see that it is indeed a crisis - shows little sign of abating short of a massive change in attitude amongst politicians and the American public.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well put
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The World of Sugar
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For most of history, humans did without refined sugar. Granulated sugar was first produced in India around the sixth century BC, yet for almost 2,500 years afterward sugar remained marginal in the diets of most people. Then, suddenly, it was everywhere. How did sugar find its way into almost all the food we eat, fostering illness and ecological crisis along the way? The World of Sugar begins with the earliest evidence of sugar production.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Important work well-told
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Krakatoa
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The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round die planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great subject, great writing, great voice
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Isaac Newton
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James Gleick has long been fascinated by the making of science: how ideas order visible appearances, how equations can give meaning to molecular and stellar phenomena, how theories can transform what we see. In Chaos, he chronicled the emergence of a new way of looking at dynamic systems; in Genius, he portrayed the wondrous dimensions of Richard Feymnan's mind.
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1 out of 5 stars
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BRUTAL
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A Brief History of Timekeeping
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Predating written language and marching on through human history, the desire for ever-better timekeeping has spurred technological innovation and sparked theories that radically reshaped our understanding of the universe and our place in it.
By: Chad Orzel
What listeners say about Nuts and Bolts
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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
- Sam
- 01-17-24
Brilliant Analysis
Everything around us is something we take for granted. Everything that is great and magnificent starts out small.
Seeing how common these objects are and how their basic understanding has led to numerous marvels and discoveries is quite interesting. Empirical instances and prospective future initiatives.
Written so skillfully that a sixth grader could understand it.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- R. LeBlanc
- 02-21-24
An articulate view of stuff
Roma Agrawal is an engineer, and, as an engineer myself, I can relate to how she parses her view of reality. Many of her explanations are somewhat obvious, but she covers more complex objects and systems with a surprising ability to convey the essence of how something works without becoming ensnared with details that would be too tedious for most readers to follow. As an engineer, I tend to explain in too much detail, only sometimes realizing it is time to back off when seeing my audience glazing over. It seems few are as interested in the fine details as I am :-) Of course, to make our machines function, we must acknowledge that the devil is in the details, and we can't gloss over them. But when explaining these things, it is important to convey the main concepts, and it is OK to leave some details for the student to sort out.
Roma took me deeper than I had seen before in several cases, and I learned some interesting things. But, even when the subject was somewhat mundane, and I fully understood it, Roma's clear and articulate voice was pleasant to follow, even when I had to interpret some English pronunciations that are quite foreign to this American.
Roma's concept for this book is unusual and clever. I enjoyed having her read it to me.
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