Nature & Ecology

Axolotls are nature's ultimate Peter Pan—amphibians that never transform past the larval stage. Found only in Mexico’s ancient lake system of Xochimilco, they've survived since the time of the Aztecs, a people who considered them sacred. In this episode, we glide through the cool, dark water with an axolotl, meandering through the floating gardens these charming creatures call home.

Sixty years ago in the snowy valleys of Japan, a young snow monkey discovered a hotel’s hot spring, and others in her troop soon joined her. Now, generations of families have built their routines around their own hot springs. In this episode, we follow a young snow monkey as her troop leaps from rock to rock toward their favorite activity in winter: a long steamy soak.

In a quiet forest in Sweden, a cluster of Amanita muscaria mushrooms, with their iconic red caps dotted with white spots, push through a bed of soft reindeer moss. These crimson fungi interact with all manner of species in the forest—including a squirrel, who takes a nibble and wanders away in an altered state. These enchanted mushrooms also form partnerships with the trees, trading nutrients under the soil.

"The perfect Christmas present!" LORRAINE KELLY "You'll love this book. In fact, I confidently forecast it" RICHARD MADELEY Most of us talk about the weather every day - it shapes our lives, our cities, even our history - but how much do we really know about it? In Come Rain or Shine...

Since 2020, Lee Asher has rescued more than 1,000 dogs and reached social media popularity with the pack at The Asher House, a nonprofit animal sanctuary in Oregon. In this audiobook, Asher shares the intimate journey that led him to rescue animals and inspire others to do good in the world, from his tumultuous childhood struggling with ADHD and bullies to a crushing corporate job that urged him to find his true purpose.

The natural world is burning. Time is running out. You know the story. So what possible role could something as flimsy as fiction play? From the pioneering pen of a continually visionary writer, Burning Snowflake is a rallying cry. Shrug off restrictions. Imagine radically. See fiction for what...

When Bob the robin flew into Tony's life, it was the beginning of an incredible friendship that captured the nation's heart. Now Tony is back in the garden - and he's making more feathered friends. In this book, Tony continues to work in the garden as he tells the story of charming encounters...

Henry David Thoreau’s Wild Apples is a luminous, invigorating walk through orchards, woodlots, and memory. Using the untamed apple as his compass, Thoreau ranges from ancient myth to New England fence lines, celebrating the rugged beauty, sharp flavor, and stubborn independence of nature...

An unforgettable adventure of love, survival and the call of the wild. For more than fifty years, the enchanting tale of Joy Adamson and Elsa, the lioness, has mesmerized readers across the globe. Rescued as an orphaned cub and raised at Joy's home in Kenya, Elsa found a home and a mother in Joy...

A forest almanac for our time, rooted in a full year observing a rural woodland and its birds. Tapper’s groundbreaking first book How to Love a Forest offered a pragmatic and hopeful vision for our relationship with forests and other ecosystems. His new book, The Forest Year, lives inside the...

The Wildlife Year will help you reconnect with nature and take a walk on the wild side, wherever you live. Nature is right on your doorstep. Whether you’re in the countryside, city or somewhere in between, there is wildlife everywhere if you know where to look. And while it’s trickier to find in some places than others, nature can thrive in the most surprising spaces. The Wildlife Year is a gentle introduction to the events that mark the natural cycle of the year.

New York Times best-selling author and world-renowned primatologist Frans de Waal traces the dramatic changes in humanity’s perception of animals over the past half-century. How humans think about animals—and our place among them—has undergone a seismic change. Breaking old scientific...

Not quite land and not quite water, boglands have long been dismissed as wastelands. Come closer and a strange truth emerges: These wild, eerie landscapes stretch our minds, hold the history of humanity, and will shape the future of our planet. In Bogland, acclaimed ecologist Merritt R. Turetsky...

A rare collection of Beatrix Potter's own botanical art, and an exploration of the role these plants played in her personal and literary life. Beatrix Potter's Botanical collects and showcases 65 plants and fungi that Beatrix Potter made special study of in her often-overlooked career as a...

What happens when the life you've built no longer feels like the life meant for you? When you feel drawn towards something wilder and more alive? Anna McCracken felt a calling to not just change her life, but to run away with the wolves. Clearly, this was a terrifying prospect, so she ignored it...

A deep look into the way we interact with plants and how they can help us release our trauma, fears, and personal stress. Our Shadow consists of all of the unpleasant, even traumatic experiences that we encounter in our lives. It is where we store the pain of things that happen to us and how...

Your journey into the horse’s brain begins here. Horse Brain Science (Simplified) is the doorway into equine neuroscience and the starting point for the Horse Brain Science Library. In clear, scientifically accurate language, Dr. Stephen Peters explains how the horse’s brain senses, predicts...

In this provocative reimagining of what it is to be a plant, an evolutionary biologist draws on a lifetime of research to offer a beguiling behind-the-scenes perspective on how plants really work—and how we truly depend on leaves for our survival. For readers of Entangled Life and An Immense...

In A History of the World in Twelve Beans, food writer and history buff Joël Broekaert reveals how beans have profoundly shaped human history, culture, and society, through millennia and across continents. Beans have been long dismissed as the "common person's food"—a cheap and nutritious...

A human history of birds—charting how our lives have been intimately connected with these winged creatures since we first evolved out of the trees From the ancient Egyptian mummified ibises to Yankee Doodle’s famous feathered cap, to the more obscure Arm and Hammer Company bird cards tucked...

Bloomsbury presents Born to Be Wild, written and read by Andrew Westoll. An investigation into how zoos fail to protect the animals they work to save. Few places on Earth force us to reckon with the power we wield over the natural world quite like the modern zoo. Yet, for all our handwringing...

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. The largest brain that has ever existed on Earth belongs to a sperm whale. It is about six times heavier than a human brain, and it spends its life a kilometer down, in total darkness, talking. Sperm whales trade rapid patterns of clicks for hours...

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. The world has a plan for many disasters but almost none for a threat that is far more likely to strike first. A volcano does not have to be near anyone to hurt them. The largest eruptions throw sulfur into the upper atmosphere and dim the sun across the...

A national television meteorologist. A camera operator. A flooded SUV. Minutes from death. When Hurricane Ian made landfall on Fort Myers Beach on September 28, 2022, Scott Withers was live in the field — broadcasting warnings he'd spent days preparing. Then the surge came faster than anyone...

The Farm is a lyrical and entertaining journey to the heart of rural life in New Zealand from one of our greatest living writers. When Bruce Ansley visited a friend on a sheep farm on Banks Peninsula, they pointed out a property for sale, down by the water. Down a drive curving through sycamores...