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Stuff Matters
- Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
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Why is glass see-through? What makes elastic stretchy? Why does a paper clip bend? These are the sorts of questions that Mark Miodownik is constantly asking himself. A globally renowned materials scientist, Miodownik has spent his life exploring objects as ordinary as an envelope and as unexpected as concrete cloth, uncovering the fascinating secrets that hold together our physical world. From the teacup to the jet engine, the silicon chip to the paper clip, the plastic in our appliances to the elastic in our underpants, our lives are overflowing with materials. Full of enthralling tales of the miracles of engineering that permeate our lives, Stuff Matters will make you see stuff in a whole new way.
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How does soap know what's dirt? How do magnets work? Why do ice cubes crackle in your glass? And how can you keep them quiet? These are questions that torment us all. Now Robert L. Wolke, professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, provides definitive - and amazingly simple - explanations for the mysteries of everyday life.
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A funny thing happened on the way to a great book
- By Joseph on 10-01-12
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Proof
- The Science of Booze
- By: Adam Rogers
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
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Story
In Proof, Adam Rogers reveals alcohol as a miracle of science, going deep into the pleasures of making and drinking booze—and the effects of the latter. The people who make and sell alcohol may talk about history and tradition, but alcohol production is really powered by physics, molecular biology, organic chemistry, and a bit of metallurgy—and our taste for those products is a melding of psychology and neurobiology.
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Great listening to all about booze
- By Atila on 08-02-14
By: Adam Rogers
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The Second Book of General Ignorance
- Everything You Think You Know Is (Still) Wrong
- By: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Just when you thought that it was safe to start showing off again, John Lloyd and John Mitchinson are back with another busload of mistakes and misunderstandings. Here is a new collection of simple, perfectly obvious questions you'll be quite certain you know the answers to. Whether it's history, science, sports, geography, literature, language, medicine, the classics, or common wisdom, you'll be astonished to discover that everything you thought you knew is still hopelessly wrong.
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It's all stuff from QI
- By Bonnie Kennedy on 04-07-21
By: John Lloyd, and others
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The Book of General Ignorance
- By: John Mitchinson, John Lloyd
- Narrated by: uncredited
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Abridged
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Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the heave-ho in this humorous, downright humiliating book of reeducation based on the phenomenal British best seller. Challenging what most of us assume to be verifiable truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature, and more, The Book of General Ignorance is a witty “gotcha” compendium of how little we actually know about anything. It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school.
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Interesting.
- By A. Hawkbird on 12-07-08
By: John Mitchinson, and others
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No Immediate Danger
- Carbon Ideologies, Volume One
- By: William T. Vollmann
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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In his nonfiction, William T. Vollmann has won acclaim as a singular voice tackling some of the most important issues of our age. Now, Vollmann turns to a topic that will define the generations to come - the factors and human actions that have led to global warming. Vollmann begins No Immediate Danger by examining and quantifying the many causes of climate change, from industrial manufacturing and agricultural practices to fossil fuel extraction, economic demand for electric power, and the justifiable yearning of people all over the world to live in comfort.
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Look at the brightside always and die in a dream!
- By Darwin8u on 04-14-19
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A Little History of the World
- By: E. H. Gombrich
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
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E. H. Gombrich's world history, an international best seller now available in English for the first time, is a text dominated not by dates and facts but by the sweep of experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements, and an acute witness to its frailties.
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an enlightening book; very well read
- By A.B.Oxford on 06-03-06
By: E. H. Gombrich
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Ignition!
- An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants
- By: John Drury Clark, Isaac Asimov - foreward
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
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Ignition! is the story of the search for a rocket propellant which could be trusted to take man into space. This search was a hazardous enterprise carried out by rival labs who worked against the known laws of nature, with no guarantee of success or safety. John Drury Clark writes with irreverent and eyewitness immediacy about the development of the explosive fuels strong enough to negate the relentless restraints of gravity. The resulting volume is as much a memoir as a work of history, sharing a behind-the-scenes view of an enterprise that eventually took men to the moon.
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Science man lists names of chemicals for 9 hours
- By Adrian on 05-06-19
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Rust
- The Longest War
- By: Jonathan Waldman
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
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In Rust journalist Jonathan Waldman travels from Key West, Florida, to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to meet the colorful and often reclusive people concerned with corrosion. He sneaks into an abandoned steelworks with a brave artist and nearly gets kicked out of Can School. Across the Arctic he follows a massive high-tech robot, hunting for rust in the Alaska pipeline.
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Almost too geeky for geeks
- By Norman B. Bernstein on 03-26-15
By: Jonathan Waldman
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The Complete (Short) Guide to Absolutely Everything
- Adventures in Math and Science
- By: Adam Rutherford, Hannah Fry
- Narrated by: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
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Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide listeners through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe.
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Humour and understandability.
- By Chris B on 09-08-24
By: Adam Rutherford, and others
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Richard Matthews
- Length: 18 hrs and 13 mins
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Performance
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Bill Bryson has been an enormously popular author both for his travel books and for his books on the English language. Now, this beloved comic genius turns his attention to science. Although he doesn't know anything about the subject (at first), he is eager to learn, and takes information that he gets from the world's leading experts and explains it to us in a way that makes it exciting and relevant.
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The Only Book I reread imediatley after reading
- By Andrew on 11-09-09
By: Bill Bryson
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Chernobyl 01:23:40
- The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster
- By: Andrew Leatherbarrow
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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At 01:23:40 on April 26th 1986, Alexander Akimov pressed the emergency shutdown button at Chernobyl's fourth nuclear reactor. It was an act that forced the permanent evacuation of a city, killed thousands, and crippled the Soviet Union. The event spawned decades of conflicting, exaggerated, and inaccurate stories.
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Lost in his own navel
- By Christopher on 10-17-16
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Five Billion Years of Solitude
- The Search for Life Among the Stars
- By: Lee Billings
- Narrated by: Lee Billings
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
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Since its formation nearly five billion years ago, our planet has been the sole living world in a vast and silent universe. Now, Earth's isolation is coming to an end. Over the past two decades, astronomers have discovered thousands of "exoplanets" orbiting other stars, including some that could be similar to our own world. Studying those distant planets for signs of life will be crucial to understanding life's intricate mysteries right here on Earth. In a firsthand account of this unfolding revolution, Lee Billings draws on interviews with top researchers.
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Bloated
- By Dr A on 01-09-14
By: Lee Billings
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Reporter Sam Kean reveals the periodic table as it’s never been seen before. Not only is it one of man's crowning scientific achievements, it's also a treasure trove of stories of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The infectious tales and astounding details in The Disappearing Spoon follow carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, the arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.
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Gases are all around us—they fill our lungs, power our movement, create stars, and warm our atmosphere. Often invisible and sometimes odorless, these ubiquitous substances are also the least understood materials in our world, and always have been. It wasn’t long ago that gases were seen as the work of ancient spirits: the sudden closing of a door after a change in airflow signaled a ghost’s presence. Scientists and engineers have struggled with their own gaseous demons.
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In Stuff Matters, Miodownik entertainingly examines the materials he encounters in a typical morning, from the steel in his razor and the graphite in his pencil to the foam in his sneakers and the concrete in a nearby skyscraper. He offers a compendium of the most astounding histories and marvelous scientific breakthroughs in the material world.
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Interesting facts, but the narrator's lacking
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In 1784, Thomas Jefferson struck a deal with one of his slaves, 19-year-old James Hemings. The founding father was traveling to Paris and wanted to bring James along for a particular purpose - to master the art of French cooking. In exchange for James's cooperation, Jefferson would grant his freedom. Thus began one of the strangest partnerships in United States history
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Periodic Tales
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Like the alphabet, the calendar, or the zodiac, the periodic table of the chemical elements has a permanent place in our imagination. But aside from the handful of common ones (iron, carbon, copper, gold), the elements themselves remain wrapped in mystery. We do not know what most of them look like, how they exist in nature, how they got their names, or of what use they are to us.
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The globetrotting naturalists of the 18th century were the geeks of their day: innovators and explorers who lived at the intersection of science and commerce. Foremost among them was Carl Linnaeus, a radical thinker who revolutionized biology. In What Linnaeus Saw, Karen Magnuson Beil chronicles Linnaeus's life and career in readable, relatable prose.
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An excellent biography
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Chemistry for Breakfast
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Chemistry for Breakfast is a perfect book for anyone who wants to deepen their understanding of chemistry without having prior knowledge of the science. With Mai as your guide, you'll find something fascinating everywhere around you.
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Great narrator, terrible book
- By Sean_chem on 01-23-22
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The Second Book of General Ignorance
- Everything You Think You Know Is (Still) Wrong
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- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
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Just when you thought that it was safe to start showing off again, John Lloyd and John Mitchinson are back with another busload of mistakes and misunderstandings. Here is a new collection of simple, perfectly obvious questions you'll be quite certain you know the answers to. Whether it's history, science, sports, geography, literature, language, medicine, the classics, or common wisdom, you'll be astonished to discover that everything you thought you knew is still hopelessly wrong.
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It's all stuff from QI
- By Bonnie Kennedy on 04-07-21
By: John Lloyd, and others
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A Million Years in a Day
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- By: Greg Jenner
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
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Who invented beds? When did we start cleaning our teeth? How old are wine and beer? Which came first: the toilet seat or toilet paper? What was the first clock? Every day, from the moment our alarm clock wakes us in the morning until our head hits our pillow at night, we all take part in rituals that are millennia old. Structured around one ordinary day, A Million Years in a Day reveals the astonishing origins and development of the daily practices we take for granted.
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Super interesting!
- By Brandon on 07-07-16
By: Greg Jenner
What listeners say about Stuff Matters
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Bernie Cullen
- 02-28-15
Understanding the material world
Where does Stuff Matters rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
I have listened to many great audiobooks and this is among them.
Any additional comments?
I would urge anyone who is studying chemistry, or anyone who wishes to develop a better understanding of the material world in which we live to listen to this book. It is amazingly straightforward and engaging, illustrating the mechanisims of our material existance. I was amazed by how little I knew about the physical world around me and the basic materials that I handle and use on a daily basis. I wish all my audiobooks were this intersting and informative.
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38 people found this helpful
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- Cheryl
- 05-12-15
Surprisingly interesting and concise - Excellent
On occasion I'll buy a business book or self-help type book only to put it down after an hour due to the repetitiveness of the material and the terrible narration. This book is neither repetitive or hard to listen to. The material is really interesting and the narrator does a great job of conveying the material in a light hearted - fun manner. I've found myself saying "Hey did you know..." Graphite and glass were my favorite materials.
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38 people found this helpful
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- Jonathan
- 10-07-15
Wish it was longer
I really enjoyed the mix of information and personal anecdotes. I wish there were more hopefully there will be a follow up.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Ralston
- 03-01-15
Fascinating
The author/narrator has a fascinating way of speaking, coupled with amusing and intriguing anecdotes. It's extremely informative and a fun read.
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- Leigh
- 04-06-18
Far more interesting that you might think
We don't give much though to the materials that surround us and from which our lives are shaped. Mark Miodownik does a fantastic job of bringing those ordinary bits of our world to life. Each chapter tells about a different material, giving insight into its discovery and how it attains its usefulness. It certainly gave me a new appreciation for the stuff around me.
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- suffrin' bastid
- 04-30-15
Fascinating!
Any additional comments?
A great collection of stuff that's just really neat to know, and full of things you'll find yourself telling people about at cocktail parties. What makes stainless steel stainless? What makes chocolate so special? Miodownik is totally absorbed in his subject, and it is infectious. Reminded me of how I thought about science as a kid: just one interesting thing after another. I have only a passing understanding of chemistry and physics, but the technical aspects were essentially quite comprehensible. I could get the gist of his point, though a more knowledgable person would get a bit more detail from it. Thoroughly enjoyable!
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- Benjamin
- 07-18-17
Fantastic Surprise
I wasn't sure what to expect when I started listening to this book, but I assure you it wasn't what I got! This book is a funny and fun look at some of the materials that make our world work. It includes a very accessible amount of the science behind the materials, along with personal anecdotes, and some downright goofy examples. Hearing about the author nearly coming to blows over his indignance about plastic not getting its due was wonderful! The only thing I wish was that it was longer! I hope this author keeps writing more. Performance was pretty good at capturing what I think was the author's original tone, too. A fantastic audio book that everyone should have in their library!
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- Twin
- 06-22-15
Fantastic
I'm a mechanical engineer and orthopedic surgeon, but the author makes this subject interesting and enjoyable for everyone. Great descriptive writing with just enough technical overview to make it interesting but avoid the boredom and fine detail of engineering texts. His selection of materials to talk about was varied and interesting. He delves into the history of the materials, their uses, and refinements. I have requested my teenage son and wife to read this, and they have added it to their reading lists.
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- Ron Fish
- 07-15-18
Surprisingly interesting...
At first, it was difficult to listen to the book and stay focused as I would put it on while I was trying to go to sleep. Then I realized this book contained a lot of very good content pertaining to real life materials, which I should listen to while I was attentive and not trying to fall sleep.
If you are of an engineering mindset, or are fascinated with learning how things work, then I’d recommend you give this book a listen.
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- Paul Warren
- 01-26-15
Not my favorite narration, but fascinating topic
I was sold after an interview on NPR, and the chapters on stainless steel and cement alone are worth it. Could have been a little better at stressing connections that are only really made out loud in closing, but highly recommend.
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