検索キーワード： 制作 "Penguin Audio" 科学・工学

Fermenting is one of the most ancient, nutritious and cheap techniques for preparing and preserving food and drink. With little more than time, patience and basic equipment, the humblest of ingredients can be transformed into nutritious foods with an astonishing range of benefits for our gut health, immunity and daily mood. Including practical tips and some of his favourite recipes, Ferment cuts through myths and misunderstanding to help us navigate the fascinating world of ferments and shows how they can help improve our health, our meal times and our planet.

Mat Watson knows everything there is to know about cars. In his 25-year career as a motor journalist, he has driven and tested every vehicle under the sun, from engineering marvels such as the Bugatti Chiron and Ferrari F50, to the grand-touring stalwarts of highways and motorways the world over – to absolute crapheaps which should never have made it out of the factory gates. He has crawled into hundreds of boots, peered under thousands of bonnets, kicked tens of thousands of tyres, and has perfected a nose for what makes a beautiful, brilliant and, sometimes truly atrocious, car.

Taking us on an awe-inspiring journey through deep history and across the globe, The Genius of Trees restores trees to their rightful position not as victims of our negligence but as ingenious, stunningly inventive agents in a grand ecological narrative. At once transporting and expert, this eye-opening, mind-expanding journey into the inner lives of nature’s most powerful plant is a profoundly new and original way of understanding both the miracles trees perform and the glories of our natural world.

In The Nuclear Age, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy paints an intricate picture of a world governed by fear. From the first artificial splitting of the atom in 1917 and the race to create the first atomic bomb in World War II, through the fraught arms race of the Cold War, to the imperialism, neo-colonial motivation and wars being waged today, the threat posed by nuclear weapons is as pertinent as ever.

Since their advent, antibiotics have saved millions of lives, marking one of the greatest medical advances in our history. Dangerous Miracle weaves together the grand arc of the evolution of antibiotics over millions of years with a history of the past century: first as we mined the earth for naturally occurring antibiotic molecules, then as we learned to synthesise our own.

In this original, revelatory and exuberant book, Jay Griffiths explores how animals can have a role in every level of healing, from the individual to the collective, guiding us in how we might create societies that are healthier, fairer and kinder. Wolves may be teachers of ethics; monkeys and dogs can object to unfairness and bees take collective decisions. Animals are irresistible medicine for a healthy culture, animating the arts with spectacular vitality and verve, as poetry knows.

Drawing on maritime stories from various languages and continents – from Brazil and Southeast Africa to India and the Philippines – Wreckers shares dramatic tales of the sea and the events on land that followed. This offers an alternative timeline for the century after Columbus’ 1492 voyage and sheds light on the fractures and fault lines that accompanied the increasing geographical range of European ships.

Spotlighting more than fifty breeds of chicken, from the classy Ancona to the lavishly laced Wyandotte, Arthur Parkinson shares everything you need to know about each breed’s attributes, behaviour, quirks and qualities. Later in the book he offers detailed advice that will equip you with the practical skills to look after hens in your own garden, whether the most common breeds or the most perilously rare – for as Arthur notes, if we don’t celebrate all hens great and small, the lesser-known varieties may well disappear.

Every spring during the Qingming Festival, people return to their home villages in China to sweep the tombs of their ancestors, making offerings of food and incense to prevent them from becoming hungry ghosts that could cause misfortune. Yet for the past century, a time ruptured by war and revolution, many tombs have been left unattended. Following a record year of wildfires, Alice Mah returns to her family’s rice village in South China, and discovers that her ancestors are almost forgotten, and there are no tombs left to sweep. Instead, there are incalculable clan debts to be paid.

With so many conflicting headlines out there, it’s tough to sort fact from fiction when it comes to climate change and the solutions we need for a cleaner future. The first piece of good news is that data scientist Hannah Ritchie is here with answers, and the steps we need to take now. Using simple, clear data, she tackles questions such as, ‘Is it too late?’, ‘Won’t we run out of minerals?’ and ‘Are we too polarised?’. The second piece of good news: the truth is way more hopeful than you might think.

We are surrounded by big claims for how to enhance our immunity. But the one thing the science is clear on is that everyone's immune system is entirely unique. So how do we tell the myths from the facts? And is there anything we can actually do to benefit our immune health? World-leading immunologist Daniel M. Davis has the answers in this truly authoritative and highly accessible, myth-busting guide to the effects of stress, age, exercise, weight, nutrition, sleep and mental health on our immune health.

A neuroscientist’s guide to boosting your brain health by living a more connected life, and thriving in a post-interaction world.

Through historical records, revealing interviews, and unflinching statistics, Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon, hosts of the podcast The War on Cars, and former host Aaron Naparstek unpack the scale of damage that cars cause, the forces that have created our current crisis and are invested in perpetuating it, and the way that the fight for better transportation is deeply linked to the fight for a more equitable and just society.

The multiverse and the quantum realm are fictional plot devices made popular by some of our favorite superheroes. But what if science-fiction may actually be science-fact? The truth is that many of the fantastical elements we see on the screen are based in real science. And in The Physics of Superheroes: Hollywood Edition, acclaimed physics professor and superhero nerd James Kakalios explains it all.

In The Social Lives of Birds, evolutionary biologist and author of Slow Birding Joan Strassmann examines what it means for birds of a feather to flock together. Some birds sleep together. Some join the foraging groups of other species. Some are only social during breeding season, forming nesting colonies in trees, cliffs, and sandbanks. Some are altruistic, helping to rear young that are not their own. Some males perform mating dances together.

Darwin considered humans one part of the web of life, not the apex of a natural hierarchy. Yet today many maintain that we are the most intelligent, virtuous, successful species that ever lived. This flawed thinking enables us to exploit the earth towards our own exclusive ends, throwing us into a perilous planetary imbalance. But is this view and way of life inevitable? The Arrogant Ape shows that human exceptionalism is an ideology that relies more on human culture than our biology, more on delusion and faith than on evidence.

Nutrition isn’t rocket science; it’s harder. There are new diet fads, bold claims about superfoods and articles promising the secrets to lasting weight-loss and longevity. The more advice we hear about diet, the less clarity we have about what to eat. In Food Intelligence, award-winning health journalist, Julia Belluz, and leading nutritional scientist, Kevin Hall, cut through the myths about nutrition to deliver the definitive book on food, diet, metabolism and healthy eating.

The latest research in neuroscience and psychology suggests that the brain is doing the same thing that the scientists are: using past experiences to build theories of how the world works, and using these models to predict and make sense of it. Through this process, your brain constructs the reality that you live in. In this book Daniel Yon takes the research one step further, uncovering how your brain colours your perception of the world, the judgements you make about other people and the beliefs you form about yourself.

Newfoundland, 1919. Buffeted by winds, an unwieldy aircraft – made mainly from wood and stiff linen – struggled to take off from the North American island’s rocky slopes. Cramped side by side in its open cockpit were two men, freezing cold and barely able to move but resolute. They had a dream: to be the first in human history to fly, non-stop, across the Atlantic Ocean. But there were three other teams competing against them, and as the waves raged a few miles below, memories of wartime crashes resurfaced . . .

What if climate change isn’t an environmental challenge, but an energy challenge? In this visionary book, Dr Tim Gregory urges us to rethink the path to net zero. He argues that the solution to climate change lies not simply in replacing fossil fuels with renewables, but in fully embracing another energy source that emits zero carbon dioxide: nuclear power.