Listen free for 30 days
-
The Deep History of Ourselves
- The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Categories: Science & Engineering, Science
People who bought this also bought...
-
Anxious
- Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety
- By: Joseph LeDoux
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Collectively, anxiety disorders are our most prevalent psychiatric problem, affecting about 40 million adults in the United States. In Anxious, Joseph LeDoux, whose NYU lab has been at the forefront of research efforts to understand and treat fear and anxiety, explains the range of these disorders, their origins, and discoveries that can restore sufferers to normalcy. LeDoux's groundbreaking premise is that we've been thinking about fear and anxiety in the wrong way.
-
The Case Against Reality
- Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes
- By: Donald Hoffman
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth? Hoffman grapples with these questions and more over the course of this eye-opening work.
-
-
mind blowing
- By Jadedragon on 19-09-19
-
I Am a Strange Loop
- By: Douglas R. Hofstadter
- Narrated by: Greg Baglia
- Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop" - a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called "I". The "I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.
-
-
tedious
- By J Westwood on 07-01-20
-
The Strange Order of Things
- Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
- By: Antonio Damasio
- Narrated by: Steve West, Antonio Damasio
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Strange Order of Things is a pathbreaking investigation into homeostasis, the condition that regulates human physiology within the range that makes possible not only the survival but also the flourishing of life. Antonio Damasio makes clear that we descend biologically, psychologically, and even socially from a long lineage that begins with single living cells; that our minds and cultures are linked by an invisible thread to the ways and means of ancient unicellular life and other primitive life-forms.
-
-
Great listen
- By jazzygy on 05-08-18
-
Something Deeply Hidden
- Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of 20th-century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: Physics has been in crisis since 1927.
-
-
Brilliant but not for beginners
- By Qaestor on 25-12-19
-
Rethinking Consciousness
- A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience
- By: Michael S. A. Graziano
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this eye-opening work, Graziano accessibly explores how this sense of an inner being led to empathy and formed us into social beings. The theory may point the way to engineers for building consciousness artificially. Graziano discusses what a future with artificial consciousness might be like, including both advantages and risks, and what AI might mean for our evolutionary future.
-
-
insightful
- By arinze onyiah on 18-06-20
-
Anxious
- Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety
- By: Joseph LeDoux
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Collectively, anxiety disorders are our most prevalent psychiatric problem, affecting about 40 million adults in the United States. In Anxious, Joseph LeDoux, whose NYU lab has been at the forefront of research efforts to understand and treat fear and anxiety, explains the range of these disorders, their origins, and discoveries that can restore sufferers to normalcy. LeDoux's groundbreaking premise is that we've been thinking about fear and anxiety in the wrong way.
-
The Case Against Reality
- Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes
- By: Donald Hoffman
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth? Hoffman grapples with these questions and more over the course of this eye-opening work.
-
-
mind blowing
- By Jadedragon on 19-09-19
-
I Am a Strange Loop
- By: Douglas R. Hofstadter
- Narrated by: Greg Baglia
- Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop" - a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called "I". The "I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.
-
-
tedious
- By J Westwood on 07-01-20
-
The Strange Order of Things
- Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
- By: Antonio Damasio
- Narrated by: Steve West, Antonio Damasio
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Strange Order of Things is a pathbreaking investigation into homeostasis, the condition that regulates human physiology within the range that makes possible not only the survival but also the flourishing of life. Antonio Damasio makes clear that we descend biologically, psychologically, and even socially from a long lineage that begins with single living cells; that our minds and cultures are linked by an invisible thread to the ways and means of ancient unicellular life and other primitive life-forms.
-
-
Great listen
- By jazzygy on 05-08-18
-
Something Deeply Hidden
- Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of 20th-century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: Physics has been in crisis since 1927.
-
-
Brilliant but not for beginners
- By Qaestor on 25-12-19
-
Rethinking Consciousness
- A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience
- By: Michael S. A. Graziano
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this eye-opening work, Graziano accessibly explores how this sense of an inner being led to empathy and formed us into social beings. The theory may point the way to engineers for building consciousness artificially. Graziano discusses what a future with artificial consciousness might be like, including both advantages and risks, and what AI might mean for our evolutionary future.
-
-
insightful
- By arinze onyiah on 18-06-20
-
Complexity
- The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
- By: M. Mitchel Waldrop
- Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell--and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today.
-
-
A simply told story of complexity
- By Tim on 21-07-20
-
The Consciousness Instinct
- Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind
- By: Michael S. Gazzaniga
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How do neurons turn into minds? The problem of consciousness has gnawed at us for millennia. In the last century there have been massive breakthroughs that have rewritten the science of the brain, and yet the puzzles faced by the ancient Greeks are still present. In The Consciousness Instinct, the neuroscience pioneer Michael S. Gazzaniga puts the latest research in conversation with the history of human thinking about the mind, giving a big-picture view of what science has revealed about consciousness.
-
The Idea of the Brain
- A History
- By: Matthew Cobb
- Narrated by: Joe Jameson
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the story of our quest to understand the most mysterious object in the universe. Today we tend to picture the brain as a computer. Earlier scientists thought about it in their own technological terms: as a telephone switchboard, or a clock, or all manner of fantastic mechanical or hydraulic devices. Could the right metaphor unlock the brain's deepest secrets once and for all? Galloping through centuries of wild speculation and ingenious, sometimes macabre anatomical investigations, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb reveals how we came to our present state of knowledge.
-
-
Stunning overview and history of neuroscience
- By Coolade on 10-04-20
-
The WEIRDest People in the World
- How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
- By: Joseph Henrich
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church.
-
The Emperor's New Mind
- Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics
- By: Roger Penrose
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. The book's central concern is what philosophers call the "mind-body problem". Penrose examines what physics and mathematics can tell us about how the mind works, what they can't, and what we need to know to understand the physical processes of consciousness.
-
-
no thought to reading the equations
- By Jay van Rensburg on 27-11-19
-
The Big Picture
- On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?
-
-
More about Philosophy and its history than science
- By Amazon Customer on 06-04-20
-
Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain
- By: Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Narrated by: Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Have you ever wondered why you have a brain? Let renowned neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett demystify that big gray blob between your ears. In seven short essays (plus a bite-sized story about how brains evolved), this slim, entertaining, and accessible collection reveals mind-expanding lessons from the front lines of neuroscience research. You'll learn where brains came from, how they're structured (and why it matters), and how yours works in tandem with other brains to create everything you experience.
-
-
An overview not an extra insight
- By Amazon Customer on 16-12-20
-
The Stuff of Thought
- Language as a Window into Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: John Chancer
- Length: 21 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Steven Pinker looks at how the relationship between words and thoughts can help us understand who we are. Why do so many swear words involve topics like sex, bodily functions, or the divine? Why do some children's names thrive while others fall out of favour? Why do we threaten and bribe and seduce in such elaborate, often comical ways? How can a choice of metaphor damn a politician or start a war? And why do we rarely say what we actually mean?
-
-
Great for language enthusiasts!
- By Marie Čechová on 17-11-19
-
Conscious
- A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind
- By: Annaka Harris
- Narrated by: Annaka Harris
- Length: 2 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This mind-expanding dive into the mystery of consciousness is an illuminating meditation on the self, free will, and felt experience.
-
-
Panpsychism
- By ron murp on 21-04-20
-
The Self Illusion
- Why There Is No "You" Inside Your Head
- By: Bruce Hood
- Narrated by: Bruce Hood
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Self Illusion provides a fascinating examination of how the latest science shows that our individual concept of a self is in fact an illusion. Most of us believe that we possess a self - an internal individual who resides inside our bodies, making decisions, authoring actions and possessing free will. The feeling that a single, unified, enduring self inhabits the body is compelling and inescapable. But that sovereignty of the self is increasingly under threat from science as our understanding of the brain advances.
-
-
Well written, well read! I enjoyed disagreeing.
- By Jim Vaughan on 21-01-13
-
The Science of Information: From Language to Black Holes
- By: Benjamin Schumacher, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Benjamin Schumacher
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Science of Information: From Language to Black Holes covers the exciting concepts, history, and applications of information theory in 24 challenging and eye-opening half-hour lectures taught by Professor Benjamin Schumacher of Kenyon College. A prominent physicist and award-winning educator at one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges, Professor Schumacher is also a pioneer in the field of quantum information, which is the latest exciting development in this dynamic scientific field.
-
-
FASCINATING
- By Santiago on 07-05-20
-
Infinite Powers
- How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe
- By: Steven Strogatz
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves. Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes "backwards" sometimes; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS.
Summary
A leading neuroscientist offers a history of the evolution of the brain from unicellular organisms to the complexity of animals and human beings today
Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us and our ancestors in deep time. This pause-resisting survey of the whole of terrestrial evolution sheds new light on how nervous systems evolved in animals, how the brain developed, and what it means to be human.
In The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux argues that the key to understanding human behavior lies in viewing evolution through the prism of the first living organisms. By tracking the chain of the evolutionary timeline he shows how even the earliest single-cell organisms had to solve the same problems we and our cells have to solve each day. Along the way, LeDoux explores our place in nature, how the evolution of nervous systems enhanced the ability of organisms to survive and thrive, and how the emergence of what we humans understand as consciousness made our greatest and most horrendous achievements as a species possible.
*Includes a PDF of original reference illustrations from the text
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Critic reviews
"Readers have good reason to ponder LeDoux’s concluding challenge. [A] refreshingly lucid treatment of profound questions.” (Booklist, starred review)
“Plenty of popular authors describe the history of life, but LeDoux wants readers to remember as well as enjoy, so he divides his book into short, pithy chapters, each explaining a single evolutionary advance.... Like all good educators, the author begins simply.... [An] expert history of human behavior beginning at the beginning.” (Kirkus Reviews)
"Joseph LeDoux is the major scientist leading the current important effort to delineate the brain mechanisms of emotional states. In his most recent book, The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux attempts to connect the survival capacity of single-celled micro-organisms to the unique human capacity for survival. This capacity is importantly mediated by our ability to think, feel, and to contemplate not only our own past and future but the past and future of humankind. This is an extraordinary book. Indeed, as LeDoux points out, it is a deep history of ourselves." (Eric R. Kandel, Kavli Professor and University Professor, Columbia University; Senior Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; author of In Search of Memory and The Age of Insight; recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine)
More from the same
Author
Narrator
What listeners say about The Deep History of Ourselves
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Trebla
- 30-09-19
Skip the first 40 chapters
Really disappointing after listening to folks LeDoux often cites in his piece like Frans de Waal, or Michael Gazzaniga- both of whom write so well using data to make a credible case and explaining the consequence. LeDoux again and again tells us his opinion, while naming many fellow scientist but so very little of actual findings. This the kind of presentation that turns off people to science.
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Michael
- 04-03-20
Oversold
The author takes a long long time to make a rather simple point: emotions reflect, rather than cause the su!rvival instincts associated with them (such as freezing, increased heartbeat and flight). Interesting, I guess, but hardly worth the time he requires listeners to wait to get to it. Had he stated his thesis upfront I would have saved a tremendous amount of time spent wading through uninteresting material.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- carlosuseche
- 04-10-19
Fantastic science book
Enjoyed and loved each chapter of this wonderful book. Very well written and pleasurable to read. The Deep History of Ourselves at its nutshell
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Steven
- 07-05-20
This is one of the most important books I've read
This book is great. Now, I love books on the history of life as well as books on the brain and mind. This book melds the two in such enlightening ways that just about every single chapter I read is filled with insights into the synthesis of evolution and the nervous system. I can't rate this book's content any higher. I know it's a very niche subject and its not for everyone, but if your interesting in the subject matter at all, I recommend you give a try. I mean hell, if you don't like you can always return I suppose.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Luc
- 20-09-19
Will improve your understanding of the mind, evolution and consciousness
This is a solid book. Clean reasoning and unapologetically accurate. He doesn’t try to dum it down it might be challenging at points but I re-listened to a few of the chapters and in the end you understand. The begging and end are my fav parts
4 people found this helpful