Genius Machines

In this series opener, listeners meet Jack and his foster siblings, Ava and Matt, who are orphans. But they're not your typical kind of orphans - they're geniuses. Well, Ava and Matt are, which sometimes makes life difficult for 12-year-old Jack. Ava speaks multiple languages and builds robots for fun, and Matt is into astronomy and a whiz at math. As for Jack, it's hard to stand out when he's surrounded by geniuses all the time.

To his colleagues, Richard Feynman was not so much a genius as he was a full-blown magician: someone who “does things that nobody else could do and that seem completely unexpected.” The path he cleared for twentieth-century physics led from the making of the atomic bomb to a Nobel...

In science fiction, artificial intelligence takes the shape of computers that can speak like people, think for themselves, and sometimes act against us. Reality of course is vastly different, though in many ways computers surpass their fictional counterparts. This book reviews work in the field and covers topics from chess-playing to quantum computing. The writers tackle how to make computers more powerful, how we define consciousness, what the hard problems are, and even how computers might be built once the limits of silicon chips have been reached.

Imagine unleashing your creativity by letting your imagination enjoy the benefits of the type of mental play that helped inspire the theory of relativity. Or evaluating your business climate with the combination of keen observation and an open mind that yielded the theory of evolution. Or...

What Harry Potter did for magic, Max Einstein does for kids' imaginations! Max leads a group of kid geniuses in this #1 New York Times bestseller officially approved by the Albert Einstein archives. Max Einstein is not your typical genius. She ... Hacks the computer system at NYU to attend...

From the former editor of Slate and CEO of Atlas Obscura comes the unbelievable story of “the Nobel Prize sperm bank” and the children it produced—“a superb book about the quest for genius and, ultimately, family” (Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Talking to Strangers)...

Every Friday the 13th, sixth grade genius and inventor extraordinaire Nate Bannister does three not-so-smart things to keep life interesting. This time he taught a caterpillar math, mailed a love letter, and supersized his cat, Proton, before turning him invisible. As Nate and his new (well, only) friend, Delphine, race to stop Proton from crushing everyone and everything in town, they come face-to-face with Sir Jakob Maculte (the 27th lord of Mayberry Castle and leader of the nefarious Red Death Tea Society).