How to Be Animal cover art

How to Be Animal

A New History of What It Means to Be Human

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How to Be Animal

By: Melanie Challenger
Narrated by: Melanie Challenger
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About this listen

Humans are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive and baffling animals on the planet. But how well do we really know ourselves?

How to Be Animal writes a remarkable story of what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our psychology is a profound struggle with being animal. As well as piecing together the mystery of how this psychology evolved, the book examines the wide-reaching ways in which it affects our lives, from our politics to the ways we distance ourselves from other species. We travel from the origins of homo sapiens through the agrarian and industrial revolutions, the age of the internet and on to futures of AI and human-machine interface. We examine how technology influences our sense of our own animal nature and our relationship with the other species with whom we share this fragile planet.

Drawing on new evidence from a wide range of disciplines, Challenger proposes that being an animal is a process, beautiful and unpredictable and that we have a chance to tell ourselves a new story, to realise that if we matter, so does everything else.

©2020 Melanie Challenger (P)2020 Canongate Books Ltd Anthropology Social Sciences Technology Solar System

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Most relevant
Easy to listen to and understand yet could change your worldview forever. We are so used to the narrative of human uniqueness, human superiority and the paramount importance of the mind that the theories here seem almost subversive. But they matter and are persuasively put. Challenger shows why material reality matters and why the world beyond our mind matters. Fascinating book.

Illuminating and thought-provoking yet accessible

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I've just devoured this book. An amazing scientific, emotional meditation on being human and animal - read by the author it felt like a work of art. Amazing

What a perception shifting experience.

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brings together a fantastic range of research with heartfelt thinking, making a compelling case for rethinking humanity

brilliantly put together

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