Science General

ABOUT THE SIZE OF IT

by Warwick Cairns

read by Christian Rodska

running time 2hrs 54mins

A serious but seriously funny book about measuring things that tells us how our weights and measures came about and how they were formed by the one guiding principle of measurement no one ever mentions.

BAD SCIENCE

by Ben Goldacre

read by Rupert Farley

running time 13hrs 15mins

Everyone has their own 'bad science' moments, encompassing everything from the useless pie charts on the back of cereal boxes to the use of the word 'visibly' in cosmetics adverts. Ben Goldacre takes the reader on a hilarious, invigorating and informative journey through the world of bad science.

CAT SENSE: THE FELINE ENIGMA REVEALED

by John Bradshaw

read by Jim Swingler

running time 13hrs

Cats need not so much our sympathy, but our understanding, if they are to continue to enjoy our companionship. The recent surge in feline science means we are now better equipped to understand them than ever before. Cat Sense offers us, for the first time, a true picture of one of humanity's closest and most enigmatic companions.

DO NO HARM

by Henry Marsh

read by Jim Barclay

running time 9hrs 45mins

One of the country's top neurosurgeons gives a rare insight into the intense drama of the operating theatre, the chaos and confusion of a modern hospital, the exquisite complexity of the human brain, and the blunt instrument that is the surgeon's knife, by comparison.

EIGHT IMPROBABLE POSSIBILITIES: THE MYSTERY OF THE MOON, AND OTHER IMPLAUSIBLE SCIENTIFIC TRUTHS

by John Gribbin

read by John Hobday

running time 4hrs

Echoing Sherlock Holmes' famous dictum, John Gribbin tells us: 'Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, is certainly possible, in the light of present scientific knowledge.' With that in mind, in his sequel to the hugely popular Six Impossible Things and Seven Pillars of Science, Gribbin turns his attention to some of the mind-bendingly improbable truths of science.

THE FACEMAKER

by Lindsey Fitzharris

read by Daniel Gilles

running time 8hrs

From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind's military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. The war caused carnage on an industrial scale, and the nature of trench warfare meant that thousands sustained facial injuries. In The Facemaker, award-winning historian Lindsey Fitzharris tells the true story of the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who dedicated himself to restoring the faces of a brutalized generation.

THE GRAND DESIGN

by Leonard Mlodinow & Stephen Hawking

read by Steve West

running time 4hrs 30mins

This book seeks to answer the age-old questions about the universe and the nature of reality with some of the latest theories on the subject. It explains model-dependent realism (the idea that there is no one version of reality) and the multiverse concept of reality in which there are many universes.

THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

by Peter Whitfield

read by Peter Whitfield

running time 5hrs

Peter Whitfield offers a fascinating overview of the major leaps forward in science across the ages. From the mathematical and medical advances of the ancient world, to the Scientific Revolution in the Renaissance, and the groundbreaking developments of the 20th century, he gives a precise chronological account of progress, woven together into an exciting story of intellectual discovery.

ICEMAN

by Brenda Fowler

read by Jim Swingler

running time 13hrs 20mins

In 1991 scientists announced the discovery of a well-preserved Stone Age man in an alpine glacier. He had been literally deep-frozen for 5,000 years. This is the story of what happened next.

LONGITUDE

by Dava Sobel

read by Patricia Knight-Webb

running time 5hrs 15mins

In 1714 clockmaker John Harrison took up the challenge to solve the longitude problem, and thus began a 40 year obsession and epic scientific quest to build the perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer.

MAKING NUMBERS COUNT

by Karla Starr & Chip Heath

read by Kathe Mazur

running time 4hrs 30mins

Drawing on years of research into making ideas stick, Chip Heath and Karla Starr outline six critical principles that will give anyone the tools to communicate numbers with more transparency and meaning. Using concepts such as simplicity, concreteness and familiarity, they show us how to transform hard numbers into their most engaging form, allowing us to bring more data, more naturally, into decisions in our schools, our workplaces and our society.

ONE SMALL STEP: A BBC MOON LANDING COLLECTION

by Miscellaneous authors

read by Miscellaneous

running time 9hrs

On July 20th 1969, for the first time in history, man walked on the moon. Over 50 years later, this 'giant leap for mankind' still captures our imagination, and in this 4-part collection, we bring together some of the most fascinating and insightful BBC documentaries about our ever-changing relationship with our only natural satellite.

THE PERIODIC TABLE

by Primo Levi

read by Neville Jason

running time 9hrs 30mins

Consisting of twenty-one short stories, each possessing the name of a chemical element, this collection tells of the author’s experiences as a Jewish-Italian chemist before, during and after Auschwitz. In luminous, clear, and unfailingly beautiful prose, it has been named the best science book ever by the Royal Institution of Great Britain and is considered to be Levi’s crowning achievement.

RUTHERFORD AND FRY'S COMPLETE GUIDE TO ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING

by Adam Rutherford & Hannah Fry

read by Adam Rutherford

running time 7hrs 2mins

In Rutherford and Fry's comprehensive guidebook, they tell the complete story of the universe and absolutely everything in it - skipping over some of the boring parts. This is a celebration of the weirdness of the cosmos, the strangeness of humans and the fact that amid all the mess, we can somehow make sense of life. Our brains have evolved to tell us all sorts of things that feel intuitively right but just aren't true: the world looks flat, the stars seem fixed in the heavenly firmament, a day is 24 hours... This book is crammed full of tales of how stuff really works. With the power of science, Rutherford and Fry show us how to bypass our monkey-brains, taking us on a journey from the origin of time and space, via planets, galaxies, evolution, the dinosaurs, all the way into our minds, and wrestling with some truly head-scratching questions that only science can answer: What is time, and where does it come from? Why are animals the size and shape they are? How horoscopes work (Spoiler: they don't, but you think they do )Does my dog love me? Why nothing is truly round? Do you need your eyes to see?

A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING

by Bill Bryson

read by Richard Ratcliffe

running time 20hrs

In his attempt to understand everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilisation, Bill Bryson has looked at complex scientific theories and made them comprehensible to everyone. He has also revealed the world in a way most of us have never seen before.

UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW: SCIENCE, DELUSION AND THE APPETITE FOR WONDER

by Richard Dawkins

read by John Hobday

running time 15hrs

Keats accused Newton of destroying the poetry of the rainbow by explaining the origin of its colours. Here, Richard Dawkins argues that Keats could not have been more mistaken, and shows how an understanding of science enhances our wonder of the world. He argues that mysteries do not lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution is often more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering even deeper mysteries.

VAXXERS

by Catherine Green & Sarah Gilbert

read by Miscellaneous

running time 9hrs 30mins

On 1st January 2020, Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at Oxford University, read an article about four people in China with a strange pneumonia. Within two weeks, she and her team had designed a vaccine against a pathogen that no one had ever seen before. Less than 12 months later, vaccination was rolled out across the world to save millions of lives from COVID-19. In Vaxxers, we hear directly from Professor Gilbert and her colleague, Dr Catherine Green, as they reveal the inside story of making the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and the cutting-edge science and sheer hard work behind it. This is their story of fighting a pandemic as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Sarah and Cath share the heart-stopping moments in the eye of the storm, they separate fact from fiction, they explain how they made a safe vaccine in record time with the eyes of the world watching and they give us hope for the future. Vaxxers invites us into the lab to find out how science will save us from this pandemic, and how we can prepare for the inevitable next one.

WATCHING THE ENGLISH

by Kate Fox

read by Jill Johnson

running time 18hrs

Kate Fox takes a revealing look at the quirks, habits and foibles of the English people. From the most famous traits through to the most bizarre reflex reactions, she discovers what these unwritten behaviour codes tell us about Englishness.