-
Optimal Illusions
- The False Promise of Optimization
- Narrated by: Coco Krumme
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $15.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Right Kind of Wrong
- By: Amy C. Edmondson
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We used to think of failure as the opposite of success. Now, we’re often torn between two “failure cultures”: one that says to avoid failure at all costs, the other that says fail fast, fail often. The trouble is that both approaches lack the crucial distinctions to help us separate good failure from bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail well.
-
-
Very pop psy
- By Student-prime on 09-28-23
By: Amy C. Edmondson
-
Never Enough
- When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It
- By: Jennifer Breheny Wallace
- Narrated by: Jennifer Breheny Wallace
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the ever more competitive race to secure the best possible future, today’s students face unprecedented pressure to succeed. They jam-pack their schedules with AP classes, fill every waking hour with resume-padding activities, and even sabotage relationships with friends to “get ahead.” Family incomes and schedules are stretched to the breaking point by tutoring fees and athletic schedules. Yet this drive to optimize performance has only resulted in skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and even self-harm in America’s highest achieving schools.
-
-
If you live or work in one of these communities, you will see yourself
- By Paula on 09-04-23
-
The Geek Way
- The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results
- By: Andrew McAfee
- Narrated by: Andrew McAfee, Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is “being geeky?” It’s being a perennially curious person, one who's not afraid to tackle hard problems and embrace unconventional solutions. McAfee shows how the geeks have created a new culture based around four norms: science, ownership, speed, and openness. The geek way seems odd at first. It's not deferential to experts, fond of planning and process, afraid of mistakes, or obsessed with "winning." But it explains everything from why Montessori babies turn out to be creative tinkerers to how newcomers are disrupting industry after industry (and still just getting started).
-
-
Great strategy and culture book
- By Alex Sidorenko on 01-26-24
By: Andrew McAfee
-
Hidden Potential
- The Science of Achieving Greater Things
- By: Adam Grant
- Narrated by: Adam Grant, Maurice Ashley, R. A. Dickey, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distance we ourselves can travel. We underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.
-
-
Nope
- By Anna OConnor-McClure on 10-27-23
By: Adam Grant
-
The Art of Explanation
- How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence
- By: Ros Atkins
- Narrated by: Ros Atkins
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Explanation - conveying meaning - is an art. And the BBC presenter and journalist Ros Atkins, creator of the viral 'Ros Atkins on...' explainer videos, is something of a master of the form. In this book, Ros shares the secrets he has learned from years of working in high-pressure newsrooms, identifying the ten elements of a good explanation and the seven steps you need to take to express yourself as persuasively and accurately as possible.
-
-
Helpful information for organizing communication
- By Ilya on 03-26-24
By: Ros Atkins
-
When We Cease to Understand the World
- By: Benjamin Labatut, Adrian West - translator
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger - these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence.
-
-
the true heir w.g. sebald
- By Thomas on 12-23-21
By: Benjamin Labatut, and others
-
The Right Kind of Wrong
- By: Amy C. Edmondson
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We used to think of failure as the opposite of success. Now, we’re often torn between two “failure cultures”: one that says to avoid failure at all costs, the other that says fail fast, fail often. The trouble is that both approaches lack the crucial distinctions to help us separate good failure from bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail well.
-
-
Very pop psy
- By Student-prime on 09-28-23
By: Amy C. Edmondson
-
Never Enough
- When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It
- By: Jennifer Breheny Wallace
- Narrated by: Jennifer Breheny Wallace
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the ever more competitive race to secure the best possible future, today’s students face unprecedented pressure to succeed. They jam-pack their schedules with AP classes, fill every waking hour with resume-padding activities, and even sabotage relationships with friends to “get ahead.” Family incomes and schedules are stretched to the breaking point by tutoring fees and athletic schedules. Yet this drive to optimize performance has only resulted in skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and even self-harm in America’s highest achieving schools.
-
-
If you live or work in one of these communities, you will see yourself
- By Paula on 09-04-23
-
The Geek Way
- The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results
- By: Andrew McAfee
- Narrated by: Andrew McAfee, Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is “being geeky?” It’s being a perennially curious person, one who's not afraid to tackle hard problems and embrace unconventional solutions. McAfee shows how the geeks have created a new culture based around four norms: science, ownership, speed, and openness. The geek way seems odd at first. It's not deferential to experts, fond of planning and process, afraid of mistakes, or obsessed with "winning." But it explains everything from why Montessori babies turn out to be creative tinkerers to how newcomers are disrupting industry after industry (and still just getting started).
-
-
Great strategy and culture book
- By Alex Sidorenko on 01-26-24
By: Andrew McAfee
-
Hidden Potential
- The Science of Achieving Greater Things
- By: Adam Grant
- Narrated by: Adam Grant, Maurice Ashley, R. A. Dickey, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distance we ourselves can travel. We underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.
-
-
Nope
- By Anna OConnor-McClure on 10-27-23
By: Adam Grant
-
The Art of Explanation
- How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence
- By: Ros Atkins
- Narrated by: Ros Atkins
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Explanation - conveying meaning - is an art. And the BBC presenter and journalist Ros Atkins, creator of the viral 'Ros Atkins on...' explainer videos, is something of a master of the form. In this book, Ros shares the secrets he has learned from years of working in high-pressure newsrooms, identifying the ten elements of a good explanation and the seven steps you need to take to express yourself as persuasively and accurately as possible.
-
-
Helpful information for organizing communication
- By Ilya on 03-26-24
By: Ros Atkins
-
When We Cease to Understand the World
- By: Benjamin Labatut, Adrian West - translator
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger - these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence.
-
-
the true heir w.g. sebald
- By Thomas on 12-23-21
By: Benjamin Labatut, and others
-
Master of Change
- How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You
- By: Brad Stulberg
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From social disruptions like economic recessions, pandemics, and new technologies to individual disruptions like getting married, career transitions, and becoming a parent, we undergo change and transformation—both good and bad—regularly. Change is not the exception, it’s the rule. Yet we endlessly fight it, often viewing it as a threat to our stability and sense of self. Master of Change flips this script on its head and offers a path for embracing and even growing from life’s constant instability.
-
-
Disappointed
- By Sonja on 09-21-23
By: Brad Stulberg
-
Elon Musk
- By: Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb, Walter Isaacson
- Length: 20 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist.
-
-
megalomania on display
- By JP on 09-12-23
By: Walter Isaacson
-
Going Infinite
- The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Michael Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side? In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking listeners into the mind of Bankman-Fried.
-
-
really expected more rigor from Michael Lewis
- By Wowhello on 10-04-23
By: Michael Lewis
-
Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
-
-
Abridged - no Appendix!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-02-23
-
The Coming Wave
- Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma
- By: Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar - contributor
- Narrated by: Mustafa Suleyman
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. None of us are prepared. As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the center of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies.
-
-
Click bait
- By Buyer on 09-11-23
By: Mustafa Suleyman, and others
-
Think Faster, Talk Smarter
- How to Speak Successfully When You're Put on the Spot
- By: Matt Abrahams
- Narrated by: Matt Abrahams
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Many of us dread having to convey our ideas to others, often feeling ill-equipped, anxious, and awkward. Public speaking experts help by focusing on planned communication experiences such as slide presentations, pitches, or formal talks. Yet, most of our professional and personal communication occurs in spontaneous situations that creep up on us and all too often leave us flustered and stumbling for words. Stanford lecturer, podcast host, and communication expert Matt Abrahams provides tangible, actionable skills to help even the most anxious of speakers succeed when speaking spontaneously.
-
-
It has improved a lot my communication skills
- By Anonymous User on 12-12-23
By: Matt Abrahams
-
How Not to Be a Politician
- A Memoir
- By: Rory Stewart
- Narrated by: Rory Stewart
- Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rory Stewart was an unlikely politician. He was best known for his two-year walk across Asia—in which he crossed Afghanistan, essentially solo, in the months after 9/11—and for his service, as a diplomat in Iraq, and Afghanistan. But in 2009, he abandoned his chair at Harvard University to stand for a seat in Parliament, representing the communities and farms of the Lake District and the Scottish border—one of the most isolated and beautiful districts in England.
-
-
How to increase and reinforce your cynicism about British politics
- By BayouBrit on 03-24-24
By: Rory Stewart
-
How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement
- By: Fredrik deBoer
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2020, while the COVID-19 pandemic raged, the US was hit by a ripple of political discontent the likes of which had not been seen since the 1960s. The spark was the viral video of the horrific police murder of an unarmed Black man. The killing of George Floyd galvanized a nation already reeling from COVID and a toxic political cycle. Tens of thousands poured into the streets to protest. The entire country suddenly seemed to be roaring for change in one voice. Then nothing much happened. Fredrik deBoer explores why these passionate movements failed and how they could succeed in the future.
-
-
Short and not so sweet
- By Amanda Venegas on 09-08-23
By: Fredrik deBoer
-
Underground Empire
- How America Weaponized the World Economy
- By: Henry Farrell, Abraham Newman
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A deeply researched investigation that reveals how the United States is like a spider at the heart of an international web of surveillance and control, which it weaves in the form of globe-spanning networks such as fiber optic cables and obscure payment systems.
-
-
Fantastic, Relevant, and Important.
- By Amazon Customer on 10-29-23
By: Henry Farrell, and others
-
Your Face Belongs to Us
- A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It
- By: Kashmir Hill
- Narrated by: Kashmir Hill
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill was skeptical when she got a tip about a mysterious app called Clearview AI that claimed it could, with 99 percent accuracy, identify anyone based on just one snapshot of their face. The app could supposedly scan a face and, in just seconds, surface every detail of a person’s online life: their name, social media profiles, friends and family members, home address, and photos that they might not have even known existed.
-
-
Interesting yet drawn out and somewhat disorganized
- By Amazon Customer on 04-14-24
By: Kashmir Hill
-
The Perfection Trap
- Embracing the Power of Good Enough
- By: Thomas Curran
- Narrated by: Sid Sagar
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Today, burnout and depression are at record levels, driven by a combination of intense workplace competition, oppressively ubiquitous social media encouraging comparisons with others, the quest for elite credentials, and helicopter parenting. Society continually broadcasts the need to want more, and to be perfect. Gathering a wide range of contemporary evidence, Curran calls for both introspection and broader, societal change. He shows what we can do as individuals to resist the modern-day pressure to be perfect, and in so doing, win for ourselves a more purposeful and contented life.
-
-
The Answers I Didn’t Know I Needed
- By John on 08-14-23
By: Thomas Curran
-
Material World
- The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization
- By: Ed Conway
- Narrated by: Ed Conway
- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future. In Material World, Ed Conway embarks on an epic journey across continents, cultures, and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth—traveling from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates.
-
-
Insightful
- By Sam on 01-17-24
By: Ed Conway
Publisher's summary
How optimization took over the world and the urgent case for a new approach
Optimization is the driving principle of our modern world. We now can manufacture, transport, and organize things more cheaply and faster than ever. Optimized models underlie everything from airline schedules to dating site matches. We strive for efficiency in our daily lives, obsessed with productivity and optimal performance. How did a mathematical concept take on such outsize cultural shape? And what is lost when efficiency is gained?
Optimal Illusions traces the fascinating history of optimization from its roots in America’s founding principles to its modern manifestations, found in colorful stories of oil tycoons, wildlife ecologists, Silicon Valley technologists, lifestyle gurus, sugar beet farmers, and poker players. Optimization is now deeply embedded in the technologies and assumptions that have come to comprise not only our material reality but what we make of it.
Coco Krumme’s work in mathematical modeling has made her acutely aware of optimization’s overreach. Streamlined systems are less resilient and more at risk of failure. They limit our options and narrow our perspectives. The malaise of living in an optimized society can feel profoundly inhumane. Optimal Illusions exposes the sizable bargains we have made in the name of optimization and asks us to consider what comes next.
Critic reviews
“Provocative, brisk and refreshingly nontechnical” —Wall Street Journal
“A fascinating book, both deeply researched and deeply felt, Optimal Illusions is an elegy to all we’ve sacrificed to the religion of efficiency and economies of scale. But it is also a quietly hopeful guide to the more human, interdependent, imperfect yet uplifting world that might come next.” —Oliver Burkeman, New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
“Combining her training as a mathematician with a keen critical eye, Coco Krumme provides a deep and arresting look into the outsized role of optimization in our everyday lives. An incredibly timely book!” —Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and A World Without Email
Related to this topic
-
Superintelligence
- Paths, Dangers, Strategies
- By: Nick Bostrom
- Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life. The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful - possibly beyond our control.
-
-
Colossus: The Forbin Project is coming
- By Gary on 09-12-14
By: Nick Bostrom
-
YouTube Secrets
- The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money as a Video Influencer
- By: Sean Cannell, Benji Travis
- Narrated by: Sean Cannell, Benji Travis
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
YouTube sensations and best-selling authors Sean Cannell and Benji Travis take your YouTube channel from slow and dormant to accelerated and engaged, using premium and updated YouTube growth tips for creators, business owners, digital entrepreneurs, and influencers. This is the ultimate game plan to grow a following and make money with the power of video.
-
-
Don't use a credit on this. Moderately passable
- By Scott on 08-04-19
By: Sean Cannell, and others
-
Glow Kids
- How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids - and How to Break the Trance
- By: Nicholas Kardaras PhD
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Glow Kids, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras will examine how technology - more specifically, age-inappropriate screen tech, with all of its glowing ubiquity - has profoundly affected the brains of an entire generation. Brain imaging research is showing that stimulating glowing screens are as dopaminergic (dopamine activating) to the brain’s pleasure center as sex. And a growing mountain of clinical research correlates screen tech with disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression, and even psychosis.
-
-
Fear Mongering - a modern day Mazes and Monsters
- By Veronica on 11-03-20
-
The Grid
- The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future
- By: Gretchen Bakke
- Narrated by: Emily Caudwell
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with, a jerry-built structure now so rickety and near collapse that a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt. The grid is now under threat from a new source: renewable and variable energy, which puts stress on its logics as much as its components.
-
-
A disappointment
- By Ronald on 09-24-16
By: Gretchen Bakke
-
Slenderman
- Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls
- By: Kathleen Hale
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On May 31, 2014, in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, two 12-year-old girls attempted to stab their classmate to death. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier’s violence was extreme, but what seemed even more frightening was that they committed their crime under the influence of a figure born by the internet: the so-called “Slenderman”. Yet the even more urgent aspect of the story, that the children involved suffered from undiagnosed mental illnesses, often went overlooked in coverage of the case.
-
-
Excellent narration
- By Pink Amy on 08-21-22
By: Kathleen Hale
-
Doom Guy
- Life in First Person
- By: John Romero
- Narrated by: John Romero
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Doom Guy: Life in First Person is the long-awaited autobiography of gaming’s original rock star and the cocreator of DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein—some of the most recognizable and important titles in video game history. Credited with the invention of the first-person shooter, a genre that continues to dominate the market today, he is gaming royalty. Told in remarkable detail, a byproduct of his hyperthymesia, Romero recounts his storied career.
-
-
Intimate stories of gaming history in First Person
- By Emyli on 07-28-23
By: John Romero
-
Superintelligence
- Paths, Dangers, Strategies
- By: Nick Bostrom
- Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life. The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful - possibly beyond our control.
-
-
Colossus: The Forbin Project is coming
- By Gary on 09-12-14
By: Nick Bostrom
-
YouTube Secrets
- The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money as a Video Influencer
- By: Sean Cannell, Benji Travis
- Narrated by: Sean Cannell, Benji Travis
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
YouTube sensations and best-selling authors Sean Cannell and Benji Travis take your YouTube channel from slow and dormant to accelerated and engaged, using premium and updated YouTube growth tips for creators, business owners, digital entrepreneurs, and influencers. This is the ultimate game plan to grow a following and make money with the power of video.
-
-
Don't use a credit on this. Moderately passable
- By Scott on 08-04-19
By: Sean Cannell, and others
-
Glow Kids
- How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids - and How to Break the Trance
- By: Nicholas Kardaras PhD
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Glow Kids, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras will examine how technology - more specifically, age-inappropriate screen tech, with all of its glowing ubiquity - has profoundly affected the brains of an entire generation. Brain imaging research is showing that stimulating glowing screens are as dopaminergic (dopamine activating) to the brain’s pleasure center as sex. And a growing mountain of clinical research correlates screen tech with disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression, and even psychosis.
-
-
Fear Mongering - a modern day Mazes and Monsters
- By Veronica on 11-03-20
-
The Grid
- The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future
- By: Gretchen Bakke
- Narrated by: Emily Caudwell
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with, a jerry-built structure now so rickety and near collapse that a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt. The grid is now under threat from a new source: renewable and variable energy, which puts stress on its logics as much as its components.
-
-
A disappointment
- By Ronald on 09-24-16
By: Gretchen Bakke
-
Slenderman
- Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls
- By: Kathleen Hale
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On May 31, 2014, in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, two 12-year-old girls attempted to stab their classmate to death. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier’s violence was extreme, but what seemed even more frightening was that they committed their crime under the influence of a figure born by the internet: the so-called “Slenderman”. Yet the even more urgent aspect of the story, that the children involved suffered from undiagnosed mental illnesses, often went overlooked in coverage of the case.
-
-
Excellent narration
- By Pink Amy on 08-21-22
By: Kathleen Hale
-
Doom Guy
- Life in First Person
- By: John Romero
- Narrated by: John Romero
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Doom Guy: Life in First Person is the long-awaited autobiography of gaming’s original rock star and the cocreator of DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein—some of the most recognizable and important titles in video game history. Credited with the invention of the first-person shooter, a genre that continues to dominate the market today, he is gaming royalty. Told in remarkable detail, a byproduct of his hyperthymesia, Romero recounts his storied career.
-
-
Intimate stories of gaming history in First Person
- By Emyli on 07-28-23
By: John Romero
-
Alan Turing: The Enigma
- By: Andrew Hodges
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
- Length: 30 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay liberation by decades--all before his suicide at age forty-one. This classic biography of the founder of computer science, reissued on the centenary of his birth with a substantial new preface by the author, is the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life.
-
-
A Fantastic Biography For The Patient Listener
- By Sara on 02-22-15
By: Andrew Hodges
-
Super Pumped
- The Battle for Uber
- By: Mike Isaac
- Narrated by: Holter Graham, Mike Isaac
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A New York Times technology correspondent presents the dramatic rise and fall of Uber, set against the rapid upheaval in Silicon Valley during the mobile era. Based on hundreds of interviews with current and former Uber employees, along with previously unpublished documents, Super Pumped is a pause-resisting story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth, and bad behavior, that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic 12-month periods in American corporate history.
-
-
A forced narrative and a bad version of Bad Blood
- By Benji on 09-09-19
By: Mike Isaac
-
Recoding History: Audacious Women Who Shaped Our Digital World
- By: Treefort Media
- Narrated by: Reshma Saujani
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Recoding History: The Audacious Women Who Shaped Our Digital World is an immersive look into the lives of some of computer history's most ingenious and audacious women. Pulling from the Computer History Museum’s archives and hosted by Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code, listeners will learn and laugh along with these great minds as they recount their stories in their own words.
-
-
Breaking the Glass Ceiling
- By Dt on 03-03-24
By: Treefort Media
-
Algorithms of Oppression
- How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
- By: Safiya Umoja Noble
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Run a Google search for “black girls” - what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls”, the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society. In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities.
-
-
Read this book. Tell everyone you know about it.
- By Joshua Daniel-Wariya on 06-06-19
-
The Box
- How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
- By: Marc Levinson
- Narrated by: Adam Lofbomm
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried 58 shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about.
-
-
Fascinating Topic sometimes lost in minutiae
- By zombie64 on 07-15-14
By: Marc Levinson
-
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
- 25th Anniversary Edition
- By: Steven Levy
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.
-
-
Remember Why You Got Into Computing
- By Dan Collins on 07-01-16
By: Steven Levy
-
The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide
- How to Learn Programming Languages Quickly, Ace Your Programming Interview, and Land Your Software Developer Dream Job
- By: John Sonmez
- Narrated by: John Sonmez
- Length: 20 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Technical knowledge alone isn't enough - increase your software development income by leveling up your soft skills Early in his software developer career, John Sonmez discovered that technical knowledge alone isn't enough to break through to the next income level - developers need "soft skills" like the ability to learn new technologies just in time, communicate clearly with management and consulting clients, negotiate a fair hourly rate, and unite teammates and coworkers in working toward a common goal.
-
-
The Complete Bro-grammer's Career Guide
- By Leels on 09-18-19
By: John Sonmez
-
Social Media Marketing Workbook: 2024 Edition - How to Use Social Media for Business
- By: Jason McDonald PhD
- Narrated by: Michael Goodrick
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Learn social media marketing in plain English—step by step! Buy the workbook used at Stanford Continuing Studies to teach social media marketing for business. The 2023 updated edition—all info verified and a new chapter on TikTok, plus revisions on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other major platforms....
-
-
Great SM Reference
- By Anne on 12-31-18
-
The Master Switch
- The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
- By: Tim Wu
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Could history repeat itself, with one giant entity taking control of American information? Most consider the Internet Age to be a moment of unprecedented freedom in communications and culture. But as Tim Wu shows, each major new medium, from telephone to cable, arrived on a similar wave of idealistic optimism only to become, eventually, the object of industrial consolidation profoundly affecting how Americans communicate.
-
-
Great Read
- By Roy on 11-12-10
By: Tim Wu
-
Prediction Machines
- The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence
- By: Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Artificial intelligence does the seemingly impossible - driving cars, trading stocks, and teaching children. But facing the sea change that AI will bring can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people plan their lives for a world so different from what we know? In Prediction Machines, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI as a drop in the cost of prediction. With this single, masterful stroke, they lift the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and show how basic tools from economics provide clarity about the AI revolution and a basis for action by CEOs, managers, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs.
-
-
Not sure what I was expecting, but underwhelmed
- By William J Brown on 09-27-18
By: Ajay Agrawal, and others
-
The Book of Satoshi
- The Collected Writings of Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto, 1st Edition
- By: Phil Champagne
- Narrated by: Stephanie Murphy
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Book of Satoshi, the collected writings of Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of the bitcoin. The foreword was written by Jeff Berwick.
-
-
Great historic read that'll teach the blockchain
- By Peter Hanson on 05-19-16
By: Phil Champagne
-
Who's Raising the Kids?
- Big Tech, Big Business, and the Lives of Children
- By: Susan Linn
- Narrated by: Susan Linn
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, digital technologies had become deeply embedded in children’s lives, despite a growing body of research detailing the harms of excessive immersion in the unregulated, powerfully seductive, profit-driven world of the “kid-tech” industry. In Who’s Raising the Kids? Linn—one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of Big Tech and big business on children—explores the roots and consequences of this monumental shift toward a digitized, commercialized childhood, focusing on kids’ values, relationships, and learning.
-
-
Great advice on practical steps
- By Shanika Anderson on 10-26-22
By: Susan Linn
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Right Kind of Wrong
- By: Amy C. Edmondson
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We used to think of failure as the opposite of success. Now, we’re often torn between two “failure cultures”: one that says to avoid failure at all costs, the other that says fail fast, fail often. The trouble is that both approaches lack the crucial distinctions to help us separate good failure from bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail well.
-
-
Very pop psy
- By Student-prime on 09-28-23
By: Amy C. Edmondson
-
The Art of Explanation
- How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence
- By: Ros Atkins
- Narrated by: Ros Atkins
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Explanation - conveying meaning - is an art. And the BBC presenter and journalist Ros Atkins, creator of the viral 'Ros Atkins on...' explainer videos, is something of a master of the form. In this book, Ros shares the secrets he has learned from years of working in high-pressure newsrooms, identifying the ten elements of a good explanation and the seven steps you need to take to express yourself as persuasively and accurately as possible.
-
-
Helpful information for organizing communication
- By Ilya on 03-26-24
By: Ros Atkins
-
How Infrastructure Works
- Inside the Systems That Shape Our World
- By: Deb Chachra
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A soaring bridge is an obvious infrastructural feat, but so are the mostly hidden reservoirs, transformers, sewers, cables, and pipes that deliver water, energy, and information to wherever we need it. When these systems work well, they hide in plain sight. Engineer and materials scientist Deb Chachra takes listeners on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, just how much we rely on them—but also whom they work well for, and who pays the costs.
-
-
Intelligent and Thoughtful
- By Thomas Taylor on 11-28-23
By: Deb Chachra
-
The Paradox of Choice
- Why More is Less
- By: Barry Schwartz
- Narrated by: Ken Kliban
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counterintuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on the important ones and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.
-
-
The Tyranny of Pop Economics
- By Darwin8u on 10-28-13
By: Barry Schwartz
-
Nudge: The Final Edition
- Improving Decisions About Money, Health, and the Environment
- By: Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the original publication of Nudge more than a decade ago, the title has entered the vocabulary of businesspeople, policy makers, engaged citizens, and consumers everywhere. The book has given rise to more than 200 "nudge units" in governments around the world and countless groups of behavioral scientists in every part of the economy. It has taught us how to use thoughtful "choice architecture" - a concept the authors invented - to help us make better decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society.
-
-
Doesn’t include a Pdf of the images the book calls out
- By John O'Connell on 08-03-21
By: Richard H. Thaler, and others
-
The Friction Project
- How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder
- By: Robert I. Sutton, Huggy Rao
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Every organization is plagued by destructive friction. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, and leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make things even worse. Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, The Friction Project by bestselling authors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao teaches readers how to become “friction fixers.”
-
-
Just WOW!
- By Ashley Dale on 04-17-24
By: Robert I. Sutton, and others
-
The Right Kind of Wrong
- By: Amy C. Edmondson
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We used to think of failure as the opposite of success. Now, we’re often torn between two “failure cultures”: one that says to avoid failure at all costs, the other that says fail fast, fail often. The trouble is that both approaches lack the crucial distinctions to help us separate good failure from bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail well.
-
-
Very pop psy
- By Student-prime on 09-28-23
By: Amy C. Edmondson
-
The Art of Explanation
- How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence
- By: Ros Atkins
- Narrated by: Ros Atkins
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Explanation - conveying meaning - is an art. And the BBC presenter and journalist Ros Atkins, creator of the viral 'Ros Atkins on...' explainer videos, is something of a master of the form. In this book, Ros shares the secrets he has learned from years of working in high-pressure newsrooms, identifying the ten elements of a good explanation and the seven steps you need to take to express yourself as persuasively and accurately as possible.
-
-
Helpful information for organizing communication
- By Ilya on 03-26-24
By: Ros Atkins
-
How Infrastructure Works
- Inside the Systems That Shape Our World
- By: Deb Chachra
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A soaring bridge is an obvious infrastructural feat, but so are the mostly hidden reservoirs, transformers, sewers, cables, and pipes that deliver water, energy, and information to wherever we need it. When these systems work well, they hide in plain sight. Engineer and materials scientist Deb Chachra takes listeners on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, just how much we rely on them—but also whom they work well for, and who pays the costs.
-
-
Intelligent and Thoughtful
- By Thomas Taylor on 11-28-23
By: Deb Chachra
-
The Paradox of Choice
- Why More is Less
- By: Barry Schwartz
- Narrated by: Ken Kliban
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counterintuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on the important ones and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.
-
-
The Tyranny of Pop Economics
- By Darwin8u on 10-28-13
By: Barry Schwartz
-
Nudge: The Final Edition
- Improving Decisions About Money, Health, and the Environment
- By: Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the original publication of Nudge more than a decade ago, the title has entered the vocabulary of businesspeople, policy makers, engaged citizens, and consumers everywhere. The book has given rise to more than 200 "nudge units" in governments around the world and countless groups of behavioral scientists in every part of the economy. It has taught us how to use thoughtful "choice architecture" - a concept the authors invented - to help us make better decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society.
-
-
Doesn’t include a Pdf of the images the book calls out
- By John O'Connell on 08-03-21
By: Richard H. Thaler, and others
-
The Friction Project
- How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder
- By: Robert I. Sutton, Huggy Rao
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Every organization is plagued by destructive friction. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, and leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make things even worse. Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, The Friction Project by bestselling authors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao teaches readers how to become “friction fixers.”
-
-
Just WOW!
- By Ashley Dale on 04-17-24
By: Robert I. Sutton, and others
What listeners say about Optimal Illusions
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jim Nasium
- 10-19-23
Thoughtful and Insightful
This book expands systems thinking in a direction that is intuitive yet difficult to express. The author did an excellent job converting why it's not optimal for everything to be ceaselessly optimized, combining case studies, analysis, and discussion. She is also a terrific narrator!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 12-02-23
excellent partial portrait of the times
I highly recommend this book in a context of it being a memoir of a scattered and confused person in scattered and confusing times. that is not intended to be a criticism or a left-handed compliment. life is not easy and it is no small thing that the author has managed to survive. as a book to generate questions and to study cultural psychology it is a wonderful book. it is not however and exhaustively researched interdisciplinary analysis of technical or historical topics. this book illustrates the tragedy of how Americans are simply uneducated and profoundly ignorant of the rest of the world and anything from history, regardless of their paychecks, social status, educational degrees.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sarah Brown
- 12-02-23
A resonating reflection on the overapplication of optimization
The tie to optimization as more than a tool or method and as a part of our morality, culture, and history is something I’ve not heard expressed before. While at times the author’s disillusionment comes through strongly, sometimes that level of disillusionment is necessary to create the distance from things that were once so close up as to be unnoticeable, and her reflection on the state of our work and lives and values and how they have not only shaped the past but are forming the future—these are both affirming and thought provoking to sit with.
My one gripe with this audio version is the lack of volume balancing. It means you have to listen to the whole thing louder than usual to catch the quieter words. But if you don’t get the audio version, get this in print. It’s not a long one.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mike
- 12-29-23
Insightful and informative
Some rather lazy arguments made here but, as the author discloses at the end, this book is about narratives and story rather than a thorough examination. In that way, the author is no better than tech bros she dismantles. She just wants to sell us her “idea”.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- G Seath
- 11-21-23
Went to hammer school, now everything is a nail.
It’s not easy to write a book or to read it. For the performance a good clear microphone was used, that’s good. But, EVERY SENTeNce STaRts out LOUD and then fads to normal speech. This becomes very annoying, especially listening in the car as the soft end of the sentence is hard to hear. The book should be run through a dynamic compression to lessen this problem.
Optimization is seen by the author as an end to itself, it’s is not, but rather a tool to help the user get what they want, who ever they may be. To complain that a tool is the root of the problem and not the user is the most shallow understanding of what is going on.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!