History

From the masters of storytelling-meets-science, Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks—how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us....

The extraordinary story of the Nazi-era scientific genius who discovered how cancer cells eat - and what it means for how we should....

With clear explanations of some of the most complex scientific endeavors in history, Mahaffey's book looks back at the atom's wild, secretive past and then toward its potentially bright future....

In 20 captivating lectures, Professor Suzanne Pilaar Birch shares her expertise and passion for discovery as she peels back the years to expose the emergence and lives of early humans....

How does the physics we know today link back to its origins as a liberal art in Ancient Greece? What is the path that leads from the old philosophy of nature and its concern with humankind's place in the universe to modern massive international projects? Listen to learn more....

From the New York Times-bestselling author comes a new volume on the history of human ingenuity—and its attendant breakthroughs and busts....

An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem....

With characteristic pungency and simplicity of style, the author of Sociobiology challenges old prejudices and current misconceptions about the nature-nurture debate....

An engaging and far-reaching exploration of refrigeration, tracing its evolution from scientific mystery to globe-spanning infrastructure, and an essential investigation into how it has remade our entire relationship with food—for better and for worse....

A literally world-changing book, Darwin put forward the anti-religious and scientific idea that humans in fact evolved over millions of generations from animals....

Journey to the ancient past with cutting-edge science and new data to discover how horses forever altered the course of human history.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is essential listening for understanding the history, philosophy, and evolution of science....

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....

The Slow Moon Climbs casts menopause, at last, in the positive light it deserves - not only as an essential life stage, but also as a key factor in the history of human flourishing....

We all make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. Not even some of the greatest geniuses in history, as Mario Livio tells us in this marvelous story of scientific error and breakthrough....

Science is a force for good in the world—at least usually. But sometimes, when obsession gets the better of scientists, they twist a noble pursuit into something sinister. Under this spell, knowledge isn’t everything, it’s the only thing—no matter the cost....

Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author Richard Rhodes reveals the fascinating history behind energy transitions over time - wood to coal to oil to electricity and beyond....

The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine....

In Charged, James Morton Turner unpacks the history of batteries to explore why solving "the battery problem" is critical to a clean energy transition.

The Blind Spot goes where no science book goes, urging us to create a new scientific culture that views ourselves both as an expression of nature and as a source of nature's self-understanding, so that humanity can flourish in the new millennium.

Ignition! is the story of the Cold War era search for a rocket propellant that could be trusted to take man into space. A favorite of Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, listeners will want to tune into this "really good book on rocket[s]," available for the first time in audio....

By calling everything into doubt, Descartes laid the foundations of modern philosophy....

Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, renowned geologist Andrew H. Knoll delivers a rigorous yet accessible biography of Earth, charting our home planet's epic 4.6 billion-year story....

Here Mises defends his all-important idea of methodological dualism: one approach to the hard sciences and another for the social sciences....

A journey through history's most famous limbs, organs, and appendages, from TikTok medical historian Dr Suzie Edge....