検索キーワード： 制作 "Penguin Audio" 生物科学

How to Be Animal tells a remarkable story of what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our existence is a profound struggle with being animal. We possess a psychology that seeks separation between humanity and the rest of nature, and we have invented grand ideologies to magnify this. As well as piecing together the mystery of how this mindset evolved, Challenger's book examines the wide-reaching ways in which it affects our lives, from our politics to the way we distance ourselves from other species.

Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.

For most of us, the only thing we know about flies is that they're annoying, and our usual reaction is to try to kill them. In Super Fly, the myth-busting biologist Jonathan Balcombe shows the order Diptera in all of its diversity, illustrating the essential role that flies play in every ecosystem in the world as pollinators, waste-disposers, predators, and food source; and how flies continue to reshape our understanding of evolution.

Fifty thousand years ago, we were not the only species of human in the world. There were at least four others, including the Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonesis and the Denisovans. At the forefront of the latter's ground-breaking discovery was Oxford Professor Tom Higham. In The World Before Us, he explains the scientific and technological advancements.

How can the furniture in your home affect your wellbeing? What colour clothing will help you play sport better? And what simple trick will calm you after a tense day at work? In this revelatory book, pioneering and entertaining Oxford Professor Charles Spence shows how our senses change how we think and feel, and how by 'hacking' them we can reduce stress, become more productive and be happier.

Today many of us live indoor lives, disconnected from the natural world as never before. And yet nature remains deeply ingrained in our language, culture and consciousness. So what happens, asks acclaimed journalist Lucy Jones, as we lose our bond with the natural world-might we also be losing part of ourselves? Delicately observed and rigorously researched, Losing Eden is an enthralling journey through this new research, exploring how and why connecting with the living world can so drastically affect our health.

Of all the many things humans rely on plants for, surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate, calm, or completely alter the qualities of our mental experience. Michael Pollan explores three drugs - opium, caffeine and mescaline - and throws the fundamental strangeness of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs, while consuming them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants and the equally powerful taboos.

Birdsong in a Time of Silence is the story of a man rediscovering his passion for birdsong and nature. Narrated against the backdrop of the current pandemic, the book opens by acknowledging the new awareness of birds and birdsong that was made possible by the coincidence of spring and the experience of lockdown. Starting with a portrait of the blackbird - most prominent and articulate of the early spring singers - the book proceeds through 10 chapters to explore how birds sing, the variety of singing birds and more.

Inflamed journeys across the human body - through our digestive, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reproductive, immune and nervous systems - illuminating the hidden relationships between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems. This boldly original book shows how inflammation is connected not just to the food that we eat and the air that we breathe, but is also linked to the traumatic events we experience, the stories we tell, and the arts of diagnosis that physicians practice - and fail to practice - every day.

Over the past 20 years, Evolutionary Biologist Herman Pontzer has conducted ground-breaking studies across a range of settings, including pioneering fieldwork with Hadza hunter-gatherers in northern Tanzania. This book draws on his eye-opening research to show how, contrary to received wisdom, exercise does not increase our metabolism. Instead, we burn calories within a very narrow range: nearly 3,000 calories per day, no matter our activity level.

Lisa Miller has spent decades researching the effects of spirituality on the brain. In this book, she draws on her clinical experience and award-winning research to show how an active spiritual life can transform our physical and psychological wellbeing. Bringing scientific rigour to the most intangible aspect of our lives, Miller offers insights into the neurological basis for the increased resilience that comes with nurturing spirituality and highlights its measurable positive effects.

Although common, moles are mysterious: their habits are inscrutable, they are anatomically bizarre and they live completely alone. Marc Hamer has come closer to them than most, both through his long working life out in the Welsh countryside and his experiences of rural homelessness as a boy, sleeping in hedgerows. Over the years, Marc has learned a great deal about these small, velvet creatures who live in the dark beneath us and the myths that surround them, and his work has also led him to a wise and uplifting acceptance of the inevitable changes that we all face.

Environmental thought and politics have become parts of mainstream cultural life in Britain. The wish to protect wildlife is now a central goal for our society, but where did these ‘green’ ideas come from? And who created the cherished institutions, such as the National Trust or the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, that are now so embedded in public life, with millions of members?

Once commonly found in the marshes of Kent, the short-haired bumblebee is now extinct in the UK but still exists in the wilds of New Zealand, descended from a few queen bees shipped over in the 19th century. A Sting in the Tale tells the story of Goulson’s passionate drive to reintroduce it to its native land and contains groundbreaking research into these curious creatures, history’s relationship with the bumblebee, the disastrous effects intensive farming has had on our bee populations and the potential dangers if we are to continue down this path.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is the exciting day-by-day account of Steinbeck's trip to the Gulf of California with biologist Ed Ricketts. Drawn from the longer Sea of Cortez, it is a wonderful combination of science, philosophy, and high-spirited adventure.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku, the international best-selling author of Physics of the Impossible. Read by the actor Feodor Chin. Recording memories, mind reading, videotaping our dreams, mind control, avatars, and telekinesis - no longer are these feats of the mind solely the province of overheated science fiction. As Michio Kaku reveals, not only are they possible, but with the latest advances in brain science and recent astonishing breakthroughs in technology, they already exist.

The technology invented by psychiatrist Robert G. Heath at Tulane University in 1950s and 60s has been described as one of "the most controversial yet largely undocumented experiments in US history" - controversial to us because Heath's patients included incarcerated convicts and gay men to be 'cured' of their sexual preference; controversial in its day because his work was allegedly part of MKUltra, the CIA's notorious "mind control" project. As a result, Heath's cutting-edge research and legacy were put under lock and key, buried in Tulane's archives.

Why are conditions like autism, asthma, obesity, and allergies exploding at unprecedented rates? Why are we living longer, getting smarter, having far fewer kids? If Darwin were alive today, how would he explain this new world?

Visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term complexity can be misleading, however, because what makes West's discoveries so beautiful is that he has found an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities, and our businesses.

The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the 19th century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the 20th. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with 20 crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than 90 days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival.