Science - Biological

THE ALARMING HISTORY OF MEDICINE

by Richard Gordon

read by Michael St. John

running time 10hrs

A well written account of the advances in medicine from Ancient Greek times to the present day by the author of the humorous "Doctor" series.

BE MORE HUMAN: HOW TO TRANSFORM YOUR LIFESTYLE FOR OPTIMUM HEALTH, HAPPINESS AND VITALITY

by Tony Riddle

read by Tony Riddle

running time 6hrs 30mins

Be More Human explores the importance of reconnecting with our natural state and help us learn how to meet our true needs and live more naturally. Tony Riddle (@thenaturallifestylist) explores how the majority of us do not sit, breathe, eat, sleep or move as nature intended, and so we're actively going against our biology. This audiobook will help us all to reassess our habits and tap back into our natural rhythms and ways of being to optimise our mental and physical wellbeing, reduce stress, sit correctly, breathe better and improve our quality of sleep. We can't all live in nature, but we can all live more naturally and learn how to thrive instead of just survive.

CIRCULATION: WILLIAM HARVEY'S REVOLUTIONARY IDEA

by Thomas Wright

read by Barry Wilsher

running time 7hrs 50mins

William Harvey’s theory on the circulation of the blood had a huge impact on anatomy and modern biology. This vivid biography shows how he drew inspiration from the world around him and features a cast of historical characters , including John Donne, Francis Bacon and Charles 1, Harvey’s patron and witness to many of his experiments.

DARWIN - IN A NUTSHELL

by Peter Whitfield

read by Peter Whitfield

running time 1hr 15mins

Peter Whitfield explains how Darwin came to his revolutionary views following his voyage on the Beagle, and his initial reluctance to publish his findings.

THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

read by John Hobday

running time 24hrs 30mins

Siddhartha Mukherjee, doctor, researcher and award-winning science writer, examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is a lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with, and perished from, for more than five thousand years.

FENCING PARADISE

by Richard Mabey

read by Bob Wildgust

running time 8hrs 40mins

Richard Mabey explores our landscape seeing nature as it is rather than for human convenience.

THE GREAT WHITE SOUTH

by Herbert G. Ponting

read by Richard Simpson

running time 13hrs

A vivid account by photographer Ponting of his journey with Captain Scott to the Antarctic, a voyage from which Scott did not return. The descriptions of these men's lives in harsh conditions, howling wind storms with sub zero temperatures, and the tragedy at the end is a reminder of our fragile existence in this harsh environment.

THE HEDGEHOG HANDBOOK

by Sally Coulthard

read by Pauline Beale

running time 2hrs

Full to the brim with fascinating insights and countryside lore, The Hedgehog Handbook explores different facets of this much-admired mammal – from its wildlife habits to its literary heritage, how different cultures have viewed the hedgehog and what we can do to help preserve this icon of rural life. Includes the poem 'THE LAST HEDGEHOG' by Pam Ayres, narrated by Anne Marlow.

AN IMMENSE WORLD: HOW ANIMAL SENSES REVEAL THE HIDDEN WORLD AROUND US

by Ed Yong

read by Ed Yong

running time 14hrs 30mins

An Immense World will take us on an insider's tour of the natural world by describing the biology, physics and chemistry animals use to perceive it. We may lack some of their senses, but our own super-sense lies in our ability to understand theirs. And in the face of the largest extinction event since the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, our only hope of saving other species is bound up with our ability to see what they see, and feel what they feel.

JELLYFISH AGE BACKWARDS: NATURE'S SECRET TO LONGEVITY

by Nicklas Brendborg

read by Joe Leat

running time 7hrs 30mins

Molecular biologist Nicklas Brendborg takes us on a journey from farthest reaches of the globe to the most cutting-edge research to explore what nature has to teach us about longevity. From immortal lobsters, backwards-aging jellyfish and the centuries-old Greenland shark to the woman who successfully edited her own DNA in search of immortality, Jellyfish Age Backwards brings together everything the natural world and science have to offer on the mystery of ageing.

LIFE, ALMOST

by Jennie Agg

read by Jennie Agg

running time 10hrs 14mins

After losing four pregnancies with no obvious cause Jennie Agg set out to understand why miscarriage remains such a profoundly misunderstood under-researched and under-acknowledged experience. Part-memoir part-scientific investigation Life Almost documents Agg's path to motherhood and her search for answers. Tracing each tentative step of her fifth pregnancy - as her body becomes a creature she does not wish to spook - Agg dismantles the myths that we unquestioningly accept about our reproductive lives: A Why are we told miscarriage can't be prevented when half of all miscarriages are of perfectly healthy embryos? A Why is it normal not to tell anyone you're pregnant for the first three months? A Why don't we know why labour starts? Drawing on pioneering research and interviews with world-leading experts Life Almost is a ground-breaking book that will change how you think about miscarriage and a moving reflection on grief and love at the edge of life as we understand it.

THE MULTIFARIOUS MR BANKS: FROM BOTANY BAY TO KEW, THE NATURAL HISTORIAN WHO SHAPED THE WORLD

by Toby Musgrave

read by John Hobday

running time 18hrs

As official botanist on James Cook's first circumnavigation, the longest-serving president of the Royal Society, advisor to King George III, the 'father of Australia', and the man who established Kew as the world's leading botanical garden, Sir Joseph Banks was integral to the English Enlightenment. Yet he has not received the recognition that his multifarious achievements deserve. In this engaging account, Toby Musgrave reveals the true extent of Banks?s contributions to science and Britain. From an early age Banks pursued his passion for natural history through study and extensive travel, most famously on the HMS Endeavour. He went on to become a pivotal figure in the advancement of British scientific, economic, and colonial interests. With his enquiring, enterprising mind and extensive network of correspondents, Banks?s reputation and influence were global. Drawing widely on Banks's writings, Musgrave sheds light on Banks's profound impact on British science and empire in an age of rapid advancement.

THE NAKED APE

by Desmond Morris

read by Bob Rollett

running time 8hrs 30mins

Zoologist Desmond Morris presents man as a risen ape, remarkable in his resilience, energy and imagination, yet an animal nonetheless, in danger of forgetting his origins. With penetrating insights on man's beginnings, sex life, habits and our astonishing bonds to the animal kingdom.

ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

by Charles Darwin

read by Peter Wickham

running time 21hrs

Perhaps the most influential science book ever written, the controversial theory that populations evolve and adapt through a process known as natural selection led to heated scientific, philosophical and religious debate, revolutionising every discipline in its wake.

PATHOGENESIS

by Jonathan Kennedy

read by Jonathan Kennedy

running time 9hrs 27mins

Humans did not make history - we played host. This humbling and revelatory book shows how infectious disease has shaped humanity at every stage, from the first success of Homo sapiens over the equally intelligent Neanderthals to the fall of Rome and the rise of Islam. How did an Indonesian volcano help cause the Black Death, setting Europe on the road to capitalism? How could 168 men extract the largest ransom in history from an opposing army of eighty thousand? And why did the Industrial Revolution lead to the birth of the modern welfare state? The latest science reveals that infectious diseases are not just something that happens to us, but a fundamental part of who we are. Indeed, the only reason humans don't lay eggs is that a virus long ago inserted itself into our DNA, and there are as many bacteria in your body as there are human cells. We have been thinking about the survival of the fittest all wrong: evolution is not simply about human strength and intelligence, but about how we live and thrive in a world dominated by germs. By exploring the startling intimacy of our relationship with infectious diseases, Dr Jonathan Kennedy shows how they have been responsible for some of the seismic revolutions of the past 50,000 years. A major reassessment of world history, Pathogenesis also reveals how the crisis of a pandemic can offer vital opportunities for change.

REGENESIS: FEEDING THE WORLD WITHOUT DEVOURING THE PLANET

by George Monbiot

read by George Monbiot

running time 9hrs 30mins

People talk a lot about the problems with intensive farming. But the problem isn't the adjective. It's the noun. Around the world, farming has been wiping out vast habitats, depleting freshwater, polluting oceans, and accelerating global heating, while leaving millions undernourished and unfed. Increasingly, there are signs that the system itself is beginning to flicker. But, as George Monbiot shows us in this brilliant, bracingly original new book, there is another way. Regenesis is an exhilarating journey into a new possible future for food, people and the planet. Drawing on the revelatory, rapidly advancing science of soil ecology, Monbiot shows how the hidden biological universe beneath our feet could transform what we eat and how we grow it. Here, for the first time, is a profoundly hopeful, appetising and exciting vision of food: of revolutionary cultivation and cuisine that could nourish us all and restore our world of wonders.

SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND

by Yuval Noah Harari

read by Derek Perkins

running time 15hrs 30mins

100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. Here, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, palaeontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies.

THIS IS YOUR MIND ON PLANTS: OPIUM, CAFFEINE, MESCALINE

by Michael Pollan

read by Michael Pollan

running time 7hrs 37mins

Of all the many things humans rely on plants for, surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate, calm, or completely alter the qualities of our mental experience. In This Is Your Mind On Plants, Michael Pollan explores three very different drugs - opium, caffeine and mescaline - and throws the fundamental strangeness of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs, while consuming (or in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos. In a unique blend of history, science, memoir and reportage, Pollan shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively. In doing so, he proves that there is much more to say about these plants than simply debating their regulation, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. This ground-breaking and singular book holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds and our entanglement with the natural world.

UNNATURAL CAUSES

by Dr Richard Shepherd

read by Dr Richard Shepherd

running time 11hrs 45mins

As the country's top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right - and through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?

WALTER ROTHSCHILD: THE MAN, THE MUSEUM AND THE MENAGERIE

by Miriam Rothschild

read by Anne Marlow

running time 19hrs 30mins

Born into one of the wealthiest families in the world, Walter Rothschild became the best known zoologist of his day - and one of Britain's great eccentrics. His extraordinary life traversed the fields of politics and finance as well as zoology and it was packed with achievements and incident, from the establishment of his own private Museum to driving a team of zebra into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace. Miriam Rothschild has produced a compelling narrative which reveals the complexities and conflicts that this remarkable man faced during his life. Miriam Rothschild was the niece of Walter Rothschild.