Genetic Science

Just over 125,000 years ago, humanity was going extinct until a dramatic shift occurred—Homo sapiens started tracking the tides in order to eat the nearby oysters. Before long, they’d pulled themselves back from the brink of extinction. The human brain, and its evolutionary journey, is unlike anything else in history. In A History of the Human Brain, Bret Stetka takes listeners through that far-reaching journey. He also tackles the question of where the brain will take us next, exploring the burgeoning con­cepts of epigenetics and new technologies like CRISPR.

Joe begins seeing strange flashes. Ghosts of images, overlaid atop his own vision. Actions he could have taken but didn’t. Worse, the visions are increasing in scope and frequency. Believing he’s going mad, he confronts the scientist, only to discover the implant’s shocking origin.

Under threat of destruction or servitude to the Empire, facing the fleets of the Ragnar, Finth, and Thack Delos, and the larger force of the Thandol, Mirikami prepares the Federation for all-out war. The Planetary Union, allied with the Federation, receives a squadron of new technology Federation Scouts equipped with gravity controlled weapons. They conduct a preemptive strike on a Thandol base. The emperor blames it on the Federation, unaware of the PU's existence, and orders simultaneous attacks.

Nathan Longton enjoys a quiet life running a café in Preston until Lan Nguyen, a beautiful, panicked student, stumbles into his world. She’s being followed, haunted by a voice she can’t explain… and wearing a necklace identical to Nathan’s. Their connection is no coincidence. With help from Ollie, his sarcastic, tech-savvy best friend, and Marcus, a jaded ex-scientist with a knack for cutting through the madness (and everyone’s patience), Nathan begins to uncover the truth: Project Janus Origin, a secretive experiment in mind control, memory manipulation, and human identity.

Engrossing and captivating, Editing Humanity takes listeners inside the fascinating world of a new gene editing technology called CRISPR, a high-powered genetic toolkit that enables scientists to not only engineer but to edit the DNA of any organism down to the individual building blocks of the genetic code. Davies introduces listeners to arguably the most profound scientific breakthrough of our time. He tracks the scientists on the front lines of its research to the patients whose powerful stories bring the narrative movingly to human scale.

The world’s only superhero was discovered in 1969. No others were ever found. Until now. With Station destroyed and their friends dead, might Daniel and Abos finally be allowed some peace? Yeah, right. Daniel’s talents are needed by a UN department taking on the bad guys, including rogue halfheroes. Abos is searching for more of her species. She soon finds she’s not the only one looking. There’s a new threat that no one saw coming. And halfheroes are being targeted. When Daniel goes missing, it’s down to Abos to find out what’s going on and try to stop it.

When Jennifer Doudna was a sixth grader in Hilo, Hawaii, she came home from school one afternoon and found a book on her bed. It was The Double Helix, James Watson’s account of how he and Francis Crick had discovered the structure of DNA, the spiral-staircase molecule that carries the genetic instruction code for all forms of life. This book guided Jennifer Doudna to focus her studies not on DNA, but on what seemed to take a backseat in biochemistry: figuring out the structure of RNA, a closely related molecule that enables the genetic instructions coded in DNA to express themselves.

When people started to develop superpowers, the world changed forever. Me? I wasn't one of the lucky ones with powers. So I had to develop more mundane skills, skills which have taken me across the globe on dangerous missions. But there are some missions I’ve always had to refuse. I've never been able to take on a super. They're just too powerful. They're gods, whereas I'm just a man, even with all my knowledge and training. All that changes after I discover my dad's secret research project.

We colonized 700 planets. Humankind enjoyed the benefits of expansion room and the end of wars. We even disbanded our military. Then the Krall found us. The Krall have used thousands of years of combat to select the genes of the strongest and fastest warriors. They are a species determined to dominate the entire galaxy, through destruction and annihilation of every opponent.

Koban is an uninhabited high-gravity planet with impossibly fast savage animals, which employ organic superconducting nerves. This deadly world is where the Krall tested humans for war capability.

Already faster and more powerful than the last 17 species that they have destroyed or subjugated, the Krall have set their sights on humankind. After testing humans on their future home world of Koban and finding them worthy opponents, the Krall start a war of slow extermination with the rest of humanity. The war is intended to last generations as they apply their own version of "natural selection" to cull their weaker warriors in combat, purifying the Krall gene pool with their finest warriors for breeding.

The idea of a missing link between humanity and our animal ancestors predates evolution and popular science and actually has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new fossil discoveries are often hailed in headlines as revealing the elusive transitional step, the moment when we stopped being "animal" and started being "human". In The Accidental Species, Henry Gee, longtime paleontology editor at Nature, takes aim at this misleading notion.

After an unfortunate accident, Handry is forced to wander a world he doesn't understand, searching for meaning. He soon discovers that the life he thought he knew is far stranger than he could even possibly imagine. Can an unlikely savior provide the answers to the questions he barely comprehends?

One of the biggest discoveries in physics, the quest for the Higgs boson demonstrates the value of a good theory. In July 2012, a Higgs-like particle was found near the energies scientists predicted. Now, armed with better evidence and better questions, the scientific process continues. In this audiobook, we’ve gathered our best reporting to explain that process - the theories, the search, the discovery, and the ongoing questions.

After surviving the onslaught of week one, Lucius has something to prove. He seeks to train under a living legend in hopes of being ready for the goblin siege. He isn’t the only one looking to train. As his competition grows in strength, he must push himself harder than ever before. Then, he unexpected happens. Players start to unlock abilities. There is only one thing to do when facing impossible odds - train harder!

Nicolelis undertakes the first attempt to explain the entirety of human history, culture, and civilization based on a series of recently uncovered key principles of brain function. This new cosmology is centered around three fundamental properties of the human brain: its insurmountable malleability to adapt and learn; its exquisite ability to allow multiple individuals to synchronize their minds around a task, goal, or belief; and its incomparable capacity for abstraction.

For generations, we've been taught that women and men differ in profound and important ways. Women are more sensitive and emotional, whereas men are more aggressive and sexual, because this or that region in the brains of women is smaller or larger than in men, or because they have more or less of this or that hormone. This story seems to provide us with a neat biological explanation for much of what we encounter in day-to-day life. But is it true? According to neuroscientist Daphna Joel, it's not.

In this book, evolutionary psychologist Dennis Krebs explains how virtuous behaviors such as altruism, justice, honesty, loyalty, self-control, purity, and respect for authority, have evolved in humans and other species. He argues that the key to solving puzzles of morality—such as what it is, how we acquire moral traits, why we sometimes behave badly, and how we make moral decisions—lies in figuring out what adaptive functions moral traits served in early human environments and how they are influenced by social learning, culture, and strategic social interactions in the modern world.

Unlock Genetics in 10 Concise Chapters is the perfect introductory guide, covering all of the essential foundations of genetics like genes, chromosomes, inheritance, evolution, epigenetics, and much more besides.

Our species has amassed unprecedented knowledge of nature, which we have tried to use to seize control of life and bend the planet to our will. In A Natural History of the Future, biologist Rob Dunn argues that such efforts are futile. We may see ourselves as life’s overlords, but we are instead at its mercy. In the evolution of antibiotic resistance, the power of natural selection to create biodiversity, and even the surprising life of the London Underground, Dunn finds laws of life that no human activity can annul.

The Blues are rapidly reproducing, growing more intelligent and lethal each day. With hundreds of millions still covering the earth, the future of humankind looks bleak. Yet Bruce and his Clan refuse to die without a fight to the bitter end. Meanwhile, the remnants of the US government are experimenting on Blues, teaching them how to fire weapons. It’s up to Bruce and his team to stop this atrocity before they lose the only advantage they have over the Blues. They have no idea that what they find will change the course of the human race forever.