-
Your Brain Is a Time Machine
- The Neuroscience and Physics of Time
- Narrated by: Aaron Abano
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

pick 2 free titles with trial.
Buy for $17.35
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 Order of Time
- By: Carlo Rovelli
- Narrated by: Benedict Cumberbatch
- Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. For most listeners, this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it appears. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where, at the most fundamental level, time disappears.
-
-
Rovelli is a Genius
- By Mike on 05-11-18
By: Carlo Rovelli
-
Something Deeply Hidden
- Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of 20th-century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: Physics has been in crisis since 1927.
-
-
The Best Layperson Book on Quantum Physics
- By Conrad Barski on 09-11-19
By: Sean Carroll
-
A Thousand Brains
- A New Theory of Intelligence
- By: Jeff Hawkins, Richard Dawkins - foreword
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell, Richard Dawkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence? Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses map-like structures to build a model of the world - not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought.
-
-
Starts out good, ends up a train wreck
- By Warren on 03-15-21
By: Jeff Hawkins, and others
-
The Happiness Hypothesis
- By: Jonathan Haidt
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Happiness Hypothesis is about ten Great Ideas. Each chapter is an attempt to savor one idea that has been discovered by several of the world's civilizations - to question it in light of what we now know from scientific research, and to extract from it the lessons that still apply to our modern lives and illuminate the causes of human flourishing. Award-winning psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Righteous Mind, shows how a deeper understanding of the world's philosophical wisdom and its enduring maxims can enrich and even transform our lives.
-
-
Amazing book, terrible choice in voice.
- By JAMES on 02-05-19
By: Jonathan Haidt
-
I Contain Multitudes
- The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
- By: Ed Yong
- Narrated by: Charlie Anson
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joining the ranks of popular science classics like The Botany of Desire and The Selfish Gene, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin - a "microbe's-eye view" of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on Earth.
-
-
Undoes what you've learned from the headlines
- By Tristan on 10-14-16
By: Ed Yong
-
The Science of Storytelling
- By: Will Storr
- Narrated by: James Clamp
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How do master storytellers compel us? There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story, but few have used a scientific approach. In The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr applies dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to our myths and archetypes to show how we can tell better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers - and also our brains - create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change.
-
-
A great portal into human psychology
- By Stephanie Romer on 02-13-21
By: Will Storr
-
The Order of Time
- By: Carlo Rovelli
- Narrated by: Benedict Cumberbatch
- Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. For most listeners, this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it appears. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where, at the most fundamental level, time disappears.
-
-
Rovelli is a Genius
- By Mike on 05-11-18
By: Carlo Rovelli
-
Something Deeply Hidden
- Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of 20th-century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: Physics has been in crisis since 1927.
-
-
The Best Layperson Book on Quantum Physics
- By Conrad Barski on 09-11-19
By: Sean Carroll
-
A Thousand Brains
- A New Theory of Intelligence
- By: Jeff Hawkins, Richard Dawkins - foreword
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell, Richard Dawkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence? Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses map-like structures to build a model of the world - not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought.
-
-
Starts out good, ends up a train wreck
- By Warren on 03-15-21
By: Jeff Hawkins, and others
-
The Happiness Hypothesis
- By: Jonathan Haidt
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Happiness Hypothesis is about ten Great Ideas. Each chapter is an attempt to savor one idea that has been discovered by several of the world's civilizations - to question it in light of what we now know from scientific research, and to extract from it the lessons that still apply to our modern lives and illuminate the causes of human flourishing. Award-winning psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Righteous Mind, shows how a deeper understanding of the world's philosophical wisdom and its enduring maxims can enrich and even transform our lives.
-
-
Amazing book, terrible choice in voice.
- By JAMES on 02-05-19
By: Jonathan Haidt
-
I Contain Multitudes
- The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
- By: Ed Yong
- Narrated by: Charlie Anson
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joining the ranks of popular science classics like The Botany of Desire and The Selfish Gene, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin - a "microbe's-eye view" of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on Earth.
-
-
Undoes what you've learned from the headlines
- By Tristan on 10-14-16
By: Ed Yong
-
The Science of Storytelling
- By: Will Storr
- Narrated by: James Clamp
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How do master storytellers compel us? There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story, but few have used a scientific approach. In The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr applies dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to our myths and archetypes to show how we can tell better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers - and also our brains - create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change.
-
-
A great portal into human psychology
- By Stephanie Romer on 02-13-21
By: Will Storr
-
Smarter Faster Better
- The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business
- By: Charles Duhigg
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing on the latest findings in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics - as well as the experiences of CEOs, educational reformers, four-star generals, FBI agents, airplane pilots, and Broadway songwriters - this painstakingly researched book explains that the most productive people, companies, and organizations don't merely act differently. They view the world, and their choices, in profoundly different ways.
-
-
Read the last chapter first
- By A. Yoshida on 04-29-16
By: Charles Duhigg
-
Think Like a Rocket Scientist
- Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life
- By: Ozan Varol
- Narrated by: Ozan Varol
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rocket science is often celebrated as the ultimate triumph of technology. But it's not. Rather, it's the apex of a certain thought process - a way to imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. It's the same thought process that enabled Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind, that allows spacecraft to travel millions of miles through outer space and land on a precise spot, and that brings us closer to colonizing other planets.
-
-
Incrementally new perspectives on rehashed themes
- By James S. on 06-13-20
By: Ozan Varol
-
The Third Chimpanzee
- The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 15 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We human beings share 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees. Yet humans are the dominant species on the planet - having founded civilizations and religions, developed intricate and diverse forms of communication, learned science, built cities, and created breathtaking works of art - while chimps remain animals concerned primarily with the basic necessities of survival. What is it about that two percent difference in DNA that has created such a divergence between evolutionary cousins?
-
-
Up to the usual high standard
- By Mark on 09-04-12
By: Jared Diamond
-
Barking up the Wrong Tree
- The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong
- By: Eric Barker
- Narrated by: Roger Wayne
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By looking at what separates the extremely successful from the rest of us, we learn what we can do to be more like them - and find out, in some cases, why it's good that we aren't. Barking up the Wrong Tree draws on startling statistics and surprising anecdotes to help you understand what works and what doesn't, so you can stop guessing at success and start living the life you want.
-
-
Teaching to live a life, but how?
- By Medgeniva on 09-02-17
By: Eric Barker
-
Humble Pi
- When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World
- By: Matt Parker
- Narrated by: Matt Parker
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Exploring and explaining a litany of glitches, near misses, and mathematical mishaps involving the internet, big data, elections, street signs, lotteries, the Roman Empire, and an Olympic team, Matt Parker uncovers the bizarre ways math trips us up, and what this reveals about its essential place in our world. Getting it wrong has never been more fun.
-
-
Fascinating & enlightening even for da mathphobic✏️
- By C. White on 01-23-20
By: Matt Parker
-
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe
- How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake
- By: Steven Novella, Bob Novella - contributor, Cara Santa Maria - contributor, and others
- Narrated by: Steven Novella
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is your map through this maze of modern life. Here Dr. Steven Novella and friends will explain the tenets of skeptical thinking and debunk some of the biggest scientific myths, fallacies, and conspiracy theories - from anti-vaccines to homeopathy, UFO sightings to N-rays. You'll learn the difference between science and pseudoscience, essential critical thinking skills, ways to discuss conspiracy theories with that crazy co-worker of yours, and how to combat sloppy reasoning, bad arguments, and superstitious thinking.
-
-
Condescending & ridiculing to those who differ
- By Bookworm on 04-15-19
By: Steven Novella, and others
-
Unwinding Anxiety
- New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind
- By: Judson Brewer
- Narrated by: Judson Brewer
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We are living through one of the most anxious periods any of us can remember. Whether facing issues as public as a pandemic or as personal as having kids at home and fighting the urge to reach for the wine bottle every night, we are feeling overwhelmed and out of control. But in this timely book, Judson Brewer explains how to uproot anxiety at its source using brain-based techniques and small hacks accessible to anyone.
-
-
Truly Life Changing
- By adodson on 03-09-21
By: Judson Brewer
-
How I Built This
- The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs
- By: Guy Raz
- Narrated by: Guy Raz
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Great ideas often come from a simple spark: A soccer player on the New Zealand national team notices all the unused wool his country produces and figures out a way to turn them into shoes (Allbirds). A former Buddhist monk decides the very best way to spread his mindfulness teachings is by launching an app (Headspace). A sandwich cart vendor finds a way to reuse leftover pita bread and turns it into a multimillion-dollar business (Stacy’s Pita Chips).
-
-
GET THIS BOOK!
- By Mattye LaSuer on 01-16-21
By: Guy Raz
-
A Life on Our Planet
- My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future
- By: Sir David Attenborough, Jonnie Hughes
- Narrated by: Sir David Attenborough
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this scientifically informed account of the changes occurring in the world over the last century, award-winning broadcaster and natural historian Sir David Attenborough shares a lifetime of wisdom and a hopeful vision for the future.
-
-
Engaging, powerful, hopeful, visionary.
- By K. Stark on 10-15-20
By: Sir David Attenborough, and others
-
Brain Bugs
- How the Brain’s Flaws Shape Our Lives
- By: Dean Buonomano
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With its trillions of connections, the human brain is more beautiful and complex than anything we could ever build, but it’s far from perfect: our memory is unreliable; we can’t multiply large sums in our heads; advertising manipulates our judgment; we tend to distrust people who are different from us; supernatural beliefs and superstitions are hard to shake; we prefer instant gratification to long-term gain; and what we presume to be rational decisions are often anything but.
-
-
Superficial, but mostly correct
- By Sean on 09-03-11
By: Dean Buonomano
-
How To
- Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems
- By: Randall Munroe
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.
-
-
Bad Ideas So BAD They Are NEARLY Irresistable! 🤓
- By C. White on 09-03-19
By: Randall Munroe
-
Reality Is Not What It Seems
- The Journey to Quantum Gravity
- By: Carlo Rovelli, Simon Carnell - translator, Erica Segre - translator
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times best-selling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and Helgoland, a closer look at the mind-bending nature of the Universe. What are the elementary ingredients of the world? Do time and space exist? And what exactly is reality? Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has spent his life exploring these questions. He tells us how our understanding of reality has changed over the centuries and how physicists think about the structure of the Universe today.
-
-
Most compelling physics book in at least 10 years!
- By Kyle on 02-03-17
By: Carlo Rovelli, and others
Publisher's Summary
A leading neuroscientist embarks on a groundbreaking exploration of how time works inside the brain.
In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell and perceive time. The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological flow and enables "mental time travel" - simulations of future and past events. These functions are essential not only to our daily lives but to the evolution of the human race: without the ability to anticipate the future, mankind would never have crafted tools or invented agriculture. The brain was designed to navigate our continuously changing world by predicting what will happen and when.
Buonomano combines neuroscience expertise with a far-ranging, multidisciplinary approach. With engaging style, he illuminates such concepts as consciousness, spacetime, and relativity while addressing profound questions that have long occupied scientists and philosophers alike. What is time? Is our sense of time's passage an illusion? Does free will exist, or is the future predetermined? In pursuing the answers, Buonomano reveals as much about the fascinating architecture of the human brain as he does about the intricacies of time itself. This virtuosic work of popular science leads to an astonishing realization: Your brain is, at its core, a time machine.
More from the same
Author
What listeners say about Your Brain Is a Time Machine
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Neuron
- 05-09-17
Great book on an underrated subject
I feel obliged to admit that, like the author, I am a scientist working on the neuroscience of timing. There are not many non-fiction books about time, behavior and neuroscience and therefore I simply had to read this book. And I am glad I did.
The book begins with a summary of the psychology, philosophy, pharmacology and physiology of time. The author has an excellent grasp of the issues at stake and the importance of doing research on these topics. How do humans measure short and long time intervals? What is the shortest time interval that we can detect? How does our body know when to go to bed and get up again, and how accurate is this circadian clock? How do drugs affect our time perception, and what does that tell us about the brain? How can neurons or neural networks detect measure time? I don’t agree with everything he says about the neuroscience of timing. However, it was a joy to read these chapters and, on their own, these six chapters justified the time and money spent on this book. During my own studies, I have read tons of studies on timing employing a broad spectrum of different techniques. This book helped me connect the dots and get a bird eyes view which is something that can get lost in science.
The book sidetracked a bit in chapter seven where Buonomano takes on the physics of time and the philosophical implications. Does time even exist, or is it (like many other things), a persuasive illusion that the brain construes to give us an advantage in evolution? Is presentism (only the ‘now’ exists) or eternalism (time is another dimension and ‘now’ is to time what ‘here’ is to space) the correct model of the universe? What does our subjective sense of time tell us about time itself? These more philosophically oriented questions are taken on, at depth, and Buonomano even gets into the ‘shooting particles in moving trains’ thought experiments to explain the implications of Einstein's theory of relativity. I, perhaps naively, did not expect to encounter so much of Einstein in this book, but in the author's defense, he does an excellent job of explaining the implications of relativity, and he even manages to link it back to the psychology and neuroscience of timing.
In the last chapter, the author returns to the core issues. He discusses whether animals plan for the future (they clearly do) and whether they reflect on the future in the same way that we do (debatable). We also get to meet the Pirahã tribe who, according to an anthropologist/missionary who lived with them, lives in the here and now. They were, for instance, quite unimpressed with Christianity when they realized that their visitor had never actually met Jesus. In the last chapter, the author also takes on free will. If time is just another dimension that we can, at least in theory, travel across, then that should logically mean that everything that is going to happen has already happened which presumably means there is no free will. Free will, the author suggests may only be the feeling associated with making decisions - just like we feel pain when we get painful stimulation.
All in all, if you are interested in time and its relation to human behavior - then this book is the book is for you.
71 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kent be Happier!
- 07-27-17
Well done research, interesting topic, but...
Well done book, but it becomes one of the most repetitive books I've ever read a he must rehash the same story and concept, one specific part in at least 15 different chapters. it's a good story he keeps rehashing, but the same point/story over and over just becomes too redundant (story of how black tar heroin came to the states ). take that one point out and it's excellent. terrific writing, great investigative journalism.
26 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- wbiro
- 02-06-21
A '10' for Cognitive Science, a '0' for Time
Score:
Time and the Philosophy of Time: Zero
At several points I wondered how long the author could talk without saying anything of significance. You get mountains of twaddle. The author also has no clue as to what time is (a tool for tracking change). He comes close once or twice, but falls back into popular misconceptions (that time is a component of the physical world - it is not, change is).
Cognitive and Neuroscience: Ten
He does present some interesting experiments in cognitive and neuroscience, but again, weaves in the unnecessary mysticism born of not realizing what time is (a tool, and not something 'mysterious' or 'an illusion').
22 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Philip
- 06-23-20
total waste of time
the book is banal. rudimentary. uninspired. I learned nothing of importance. The questions were ill formed and the answers were logical fallacies. Do yourself a favor and dodge this bullet.
14 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Alan Hatcher
- 06-02-17
Author drowns in the flow of time
The author presents very interesting facts and data about the physics and neuroscience of time, but in the that's all the reader is left. The author fails to adequately draw a conclusion
11 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ben Davis
- 12-12-20
Good parts and dull parts
There were sections of this book that were very rich and intriguing, but it took a while to pick up. I loved the physics chapter and the discussion of the implications of eternalism versus presentism, and how that connects to free will. After reading this book I’m more skeptical of the block universe than I was after Carlo Rovelli’s book, The Order of Time. This book made me think that time is created by our brains for evolutionary purposes rather than a physical property of the universe. Then again, I have no solid answers for what time is.
If you can push through the boring sections of this book, you will learn a lot. If you’re interested in psychology, then you might like the book more than I did. I just thought that all the lab rat experiments used in this book had results that were common sense and obvious. There is a lot of material covering stuff not directly related to time, but in the end it got better.
I’d recommend this book for someone who’s very into science (all fields) and less into philosophy. It’s a good book if you’re really wondering how time works in the brain, and is also curious about physics concepts that relate to time. The physics was my favorite part, but it only took up a small section of the book.
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Philomath
- 09-14-17
Time to read about time
The most common word used, but the least understood. What is time?
This book takes on the immensely difficult subject of time, from the subjective, the scientific, the philosophical, the historical, as well as famous quotes.
The author delves into as much as one can do in a subject not easily understood. Whether you believe in presentism or externalism. The belief that only the present is real or the block universe where the past present and future are as real as each other, is discussed in detail.
A well worth read for anyone fascinated by time in all its aspects.
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- See Reverse
- 10-09-19
Profound Analysis of Time & the Brain
Having finished Carlo Rovelli's "Time", it was fascinating to hear Dean Buonomano's analysis of the interaction between the brain and the fabric of time. Buonomano starts off with the biological concepts, and the study of timing within the cells and brain of the human body. The author goes on to describe the foundations of "what time might be" with examples and stories which would be familiar to anyone who has studied General or Special Relativity. All in all - a must read for anyone trying to understand the current understanding of the nature of time and consciousness.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Cory
- 08-20-19
One of the Best Books Ever
I never write reviews but this book was too amazing not to. Huge neuroscience fan.
Doesn’t get any better.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- MiniLover
- 12-18-18
amazing book!
a must listen! very complete and enticing. I highly recommend it. combines science and biology.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- slipperychimp
- 10-30-18
Good but too much padding in the early chapters
This book came up as a suggested title after I listened to Carlo Rovelli's The Order of Time, as one of the few books available on the subject it is definitely worth a listen. I'd recommend listening to this one first though!
Be aware that the author does take a bit of a liberty by using the majority of the work to highlight things like how clocks have evolved in history, the language of time and other, albeit interesting items, but "The neuroscience and Physics of Time" doesn't really start until Chapter 8. Which was in my opinion a shame, it felt like a whole book of content was then condensed in to the five remaining chapters.
I became frustrated at times by the lack of explanation of some concepts, for example, quite some time is spent explaining Presentism and Eternalism at the beginning of the book, yet later on other new concepts are raised without any explanation at all. For example bringing in the Block Universe Theory by simply saying 'this supports the theory of the Block Universe' and talking around the concept, and referencing back to it, without ever actually explaining specifically what the Block Universe Theory is. Likewise again towards the end of the book, the author suddenly slips in a reference to "consciousness", and by the closing remarks “consciousness” features highly, yet there is no attempt made to define what the author actually means by their concept of consciousness. Again, because the later portions of the book seem a bit rushed, I feel an opportunity was missed to delve in to more aspects of the philosophy of time and consciousness. For example if time doesn't really exist, does consciousness? Are consciousness and time the same thing? Does one give rise to the other etc etc - except the author seems to assume everyone has the same understanding of what "consciousness" is and it's already a well defined established fact.
In short, I thought too much time was devoted to the 'fluffy' stuff, which was explained in great detail, and too little time to the real nitty-gritty with little explanation, which given the sub-title of the book, was quite disappointing. That said, anything that helps deepen our understanding of the world is without a doubt worth a listen, and this book does exactly that, it's given me a good few concepts to research further. Like other reviews have said you do need to devote your attention to it or you will find yourself rewinding quite often!
24 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Viktória Urbán
- 04-02-18
Interesting, but not an easy listen!
Some very interesting ideas, with lots of scientific expressions . Worth a listen, but prepare yourself that it's not an easy one. I guess if you have a more scientific background it's really good, however, if you don't, then you might end up scratching your head thinking:
"suprachiasmatic nucleus what?!".
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- I. Braich
- 07-13-21
Excellent
excellent and interesting topic . highly
recommend it.. narrated very well. great job. Thanks
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall

- Lewis
- 02-28-18
pretty interesting stuff to listen to.
i would recommend this to anyone who loves understanding the world and the human mind :)
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- 987Six
- 02-10-21
Amazing book well explained examples and detail
Chapters lead on from each other well. Good narrator. Would highly recommend to anyone from any background
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Mike
- 10-07-20
Mind blowing!
Loved it. This is a must for those on the jorney. Lots of food for thought. Enjoyed every second.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Doctina
- 08-30-21
mindblown 🤯
Definitely not what I anticipated (ironic...).
Fascinating nonetheless and, GPS workings? Mind Blown 🤯
Gets metaphysical at the end too.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Kindle Customer
- 06-02-21
Thought provoking
Ienjoyed this audio book. Interesting and thought provoking theories that has given me much to think about.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- neil maycock
- 03-03-21
Boring! Unless You Are Into Maths &. Physics
Bored me to tears! Made me angry. Had to finish it! Didn’t enjoy it at all.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- David Adams
- 12-30-20
an interesting listen~☆
a look at time and the physics of time,. A great narrator brings this story to life~☆
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- "animoller"
- 01-16-21
Really interesting, had to listen to it 3 times!
I really enjoyed this audio book. This type of topic is really my favourite stuff - it kinda hurts your brain when you think about it and try to really understand it! My only complaints are that: some of the language is very eurocentric/male-centric and I would have loved to have heard more about how non-white cultures tell time, I would have loved a bit more of a summation at the end of the book of the key points as this is pretty heavy reading for a non-scientist (but still incredibly interesting), and at times the narrator was a bit robotic.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- G Peilon
- 12-16-21
Excellent
Wide ranging and deep. A fascinating book on the human brain and its role in grasping time.
-
Overall

- Anonymous User
- 05-16-19
Interesting read
Covered a mixture of neuroscience theories related to time perception and also covered some physics of time.
I found I learnt a number of new perspectives of the neural mechanisms behind time. I found the physics of time difficult to follow at times (probably the nature of the topic) I think it's easier to read a physical copy for those sections as they take a while to digest.
Narration was good.
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Something Deeply Hidden
- Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of 20th-century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: Physics has been in crisis since 1927.
-
-
The Best Layperson Book on Quantum Physics
- By Conrad Barski on 09-11-19
By: Sean Carroll
-
A Thousand Brains
- A New Theory of Intelligence
- By: Jeff Hawkins, Richard Dawkins - foreword
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell, Richard Dawkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence? Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses map-like structures to build a model of the world - not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought.
-
-
Starts out good, ends up a train wreck
- By Warren on 03-15-21
By: Jeff Hawkins, and others
-
I Contain Multitudes
- The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
- By: Ed Yong
- Narrated by: Charlie Anson
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joining the ranks of popular science classics like The Botany of Desire and The Selfish Gene, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin - a "microbe's-eye view" of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on Earth.
-
-
Undoes what you've learned from the headlines
- By Tristan on 10-14-16
By: Ed Yong
-
The Order of Time
- By: Carlo Rovelli
- Narrated by: Benedict Cumberbatch
- Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. For most listeners, this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it appears. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where, at the most fundamental level, time disappears.
-
-
Rovelli is a Genius
- By Mike on 05-11-18
By: Carlo Rovelli
-
The Science of Storytelling
- By: Will Storr
- Narrated by: James Clamp
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How do master storytellers compel us? There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story, but few have used a scientific approach. In The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr applies dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to our myths and archetypes to show how we can tell better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers - and also our brains - create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change.
-
-
A great portal into human psychology
- By Stephanie Romer on 02-13-21
By: Will Storr
-
The Third Chimpanzee
- The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 15 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We human beings share 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees. Yet humans are the dominant species on the planet - having founded civilizations and religions, developed intricate and diverse forms of communication, learned science, built cities, and created breathtaking works of art - while chimps remain animals concerned primarily with the basic necessities of survival. What is it about that two percent difference in DNA that has created such a divergence between evolutionary cousins?
-
-
Up to the usual high standard
- By Mark on 09-04-12
By: Jared Diamond
-
Something Deeply Hidden
- Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of 20th-century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: Physics has been in crisis since 1927.
-
-
The Best Layperson Book on Quantum Physics
- By Conrad Barski on 09-11-19
By: Sean Carroll
-
A Thousand Brains
- A New Theory of Intelligence
- By: Jeff Hawkins, Richard Dawkins - foreword
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell, Richard Dawkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence? Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses map-like structures to build a model of the world - not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought.
-
-
Starts out good, ends up a train wreck
- By Warren on 03-15-21
By: Jeff Hawkins, and others
-
I Contain Multitudes
- The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
- By: Ed Yong
- Narrated by: Charlie Anson
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joining the ranks of popular science classics like The Botany of Desire and The Selfish Gene, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin - a "microbe's-eye view" of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on Earth.
-
-
Undoes what you've learned from the headlines
- By Tristan on 10-14-16
By: Ed Yong