Showing titles in Science & Engineering

The key to living a happier, healthier life is inside us. Our gut is almost as important to us as our brain or our heart, yet we know very little about how it works. In Gut, Giulia Enders shows that rather than the utilitarian and - let's be honest - somewhat embarrassing body part we imagine it to be, it is one of the most complex, important, and even miraculous parts of our anatomy.

I am 93. I've had an extraordinary life. It's only now that I appreciate how extraordinary. As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world - but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day - the loss of our planet's wild places, its biodiversity. I have been witness to this decline.

In one of the most exciting and accessible explanations of The Theory of Relativity in recent years, Professors Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw go on a journey to the frontier of 21st century science to consider the real meaning behind the iconic sequence of symbols that make up Einstein's most famous equation, exploring the principles of physics through everyday life.

Sleep is one of the most important aspects of our life, health and longevity and yet it is increasingly neglected in 21st century society, with devastating consequences: every major disease in the developed world - Alzheimer's, cancer, obesity, diabetes - has very strong causal links to deficient sleep. Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep, or what good it served, or why its absence is so damaging to our health. Compared to the other basic drives in life - eating, drinking and reproducing - the purpose of sleep remained elusive.

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, shares what he has learnt in more than a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address climate problems. He explains how the world can work to build the tools it needs to get to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions - investing in research, inventing new technologies and deploying them quickly at a large scale. Gates is optimistic that the world can prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis.  

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's fascinating and humorous quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. He takes subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry, and particle physics, and aims to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. In the company of some extraordinary scientists, Bill Bryson reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

We are constantly bombarded with inaccurate, contradictory and sometimes misleading information - until now. Ben Goldacre masterfully dismantles the dubious science behind some of the great drug trials, court cases and missed opportunities of our time. He also shows us the fascinating story of how we know what we know, and gives us the tools to uncover bad science for ourselves.

The enthusiasm for and expectation of happiness are so widespread today that fundamental questions about it are often overlooked. For starters, the most basic question of all: where does happiness come from? Is it your brain - a mere concoction of chemicals or network of neurons? Is it in fact your gut? (Spoiler alert: yes. Sort of) Or is it external? Is it love or sex or money or success? And what are these doing to our brains anyway? In The Happy Brain, Neuroscientist Dean Burnett delves into our most private selves to investigate what causes happiness.

In the best-selling, prize-winning A Short History of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson achieved the seemingly impossible by making the science of our world both understandable and entertaining to millions of people around the globe. Now he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological makeup.

We're living through a golden age of paleontological research that, in the last couple of decades, has radically changed our understanding of dinosaurs. Through candid interviews with the world’s top paleontologists, Professor Ben Garrod reveals new dinosaur facts from cutting edge research into the greatest animals ever to walk the planet. 

Join lauded marine biologist Dr. Sarika Cullis-Suzuki for an intimate tour of the wild heart of the nation. From the Tombstone Mountains of the Yukon Territory to the glowing grasslands of Saskatchewan, each episode is alive with the buzzes, warbles, and howls of Canadian wildlife. Cullis-Suzuki is your guide, painting a picture of the landscapes around you while letting you in on the wilderness stories unfolding.

The author of the beloved number one best seller The Shepherd's Life returns with a stirring history of family, loss and the land over three generations on a Lake District farm. James Rebanks was taught by his grandfather to work the land the old way. Their family farm in the Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, that landscape had profoundly changed. 

Lucy Hawking, daughter of Professor Stephen Hawking, invites listeners to the launch of a new space age. Fuelled by commercial finance and looking for new horizons, this is a revolutionary change from the old era in which superpowers competed for supremacy in space. Lucy is accompanied by Peter Diamandis, founder of the XPRIZE, which kickstarted the privatised space, and Kellie Gerardi, a spaceflight industry professional and trainee astronaut, as well as visionaries at the forefront of this new age of space travel.

Kids love the ocean - it’s mysterious and unknown, home to monsters of the imagination and some of the most fascinating life forms on the planet. But while many grown-ups might love being by or on the sea, how much do we actually know about the world beneath the waves? In this follow-up to A Grown-Up Guide to Dinosaurs, evolutionary biologist, Professor Ben Garrod, takes the listener on an oceanic journey from the beginning of life on Earth to the present day, discovering what the ocean actually is and why it’s so important in the evolutionary history of life.

Neither plant nor animal, it is found throughout the earth, the air and our bodies. It can be microscopic, yet also accounts for the largest organisms ever recorded, living for millennia and weighing tens of thousands of tonnes. Its ability to digest rock enabled the first life on land, it can survive unprotected in space and it thrives amidst nuclear radiation. In this captivating adventure, Merlin Sheldrake explores the spectacular and neglected world of fungi: endlessly surprising organisms that sustain nearly all living systems.

In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell and perceive time. The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological flow and enables "mental time travel" - simulations of future and past events.

Was there a beginning of time? Could time run backwards? Is the universe infinite, or does it have boundaries? These are just some of the questions considered in an internationally acclaimed masterpiece by one of the world's greatest thinkers. It begins by reviewing the great theories of the cosmos, from Newton to Einstein, before delving into the secrets which still lie at the heart of space and time, from the big bang to black holes, via spiral galaxies and strong theory.

Why do you lose arguments with people who know MUCH LESS than you? Why can you recognise that woman, from that thing...but can't remember her name? And why, after your last break-up, did you find yourself in the foetal position on the sofa for days, moving only to wipe the snot and tears haphazardly from your face? Here's why: the idiot brain. For something supposedly so brilliant and evolutionarily advanced, the human brain is pretty messy, fallible and disorganised.

This is the story of how your life shapes your brain and how your brain shapes your life. Locked in the silence and darkness of your skull, the brain fashions the rich narratives of your reality and your identity. Join renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman for a journey into the questions at the heart of our existence. What is reality? Who are 'you'? How do you make decisions? Why does your brain need other people? How is technology poised to change what it means to be human?

As the country's top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right - and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?