Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/519941 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Living on Earth: Life, Consciousness and the Making of the Natural World

Author: Peter Godfrey-Smith

Narrator: Peter Godfrey-Smith

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 59 minutes

Release date: August 15, 2024

Genres: Animals & Nature

Publisher's Summary:

The eagerly anticipated conclusion to Peter Godfrey-Smith’s three-part exploration of the origins of intelligence on Earth, which began with the bestselling Other Minds in 2018 and continued with Metazoa in 2020. The eagerly anticipated conclusion to Peter Godfrey-Smith’s three-part exploration of the origins of intelligence on Earth, which began with the bestselling Other Minds in 2018 and continued with Metazoa in 2020. Peter Godfrey-Smith, the scuba-diving philosopher, examined the evolution of sentience in Other Minds. In Metazoa he asked how that consciousness shaped and was shaped by animal bodies. Now, in Living on Earth, he takes that line of questioning a step further, asking, how has life shaped and been shaped by our planet? He visits the largest living stromatolite fields, examples of how cyanobacteria began belching oxygen into the atmosphere as they converted carbon dioxide and water into living matter using the sun's light. The extraordinary increase in oxygen in the atmosphere resulted in an explosion in the diversity of life. And so began a riotous tangle of coevolution between plants and animals, as each changed the environment around them allowing others to utilise these new ecosystems and thus new species to evolve. From cyanobacteria, through algae on to ferns or trees or grasses, and from protists , through invertebrates and fish through the dinosaurs and on to birds and mammals – our planet has seen an explosion of life forms, all reacting to their environment and all creating new environments that allow other life to evolve. In our own evolutionary line, an initially unremarkable mammal changed in new ways, evolving to come out of the trees to inhabit new savannas and then onto inhabit the whole planet. One of the most adaptable species ever found on Earth, and arguably the species causing the most change, humans are still part of this 3.8 billion year history of life forms changing the world around them. In Living on Earth, Godfrey-Smith takes us on a grand tour of the history of life on earth. He visits Rwandan gorillas and Australian bowerbirds, returns to coral reefs and octopus dens, considers the impact of language and writing, and weighs the responsibilities our unique powers bring with them, as they relate to factory farming, habitat preservation, climate change, and the use of animals in experiments. Living on Earth shows that Humans belong to the infinitely complex system that is the Earth, and our minds are products of that system, but we are also an acting force within it. We are creatures of Earth, but we hold Earth's future in our hands. It is a responsibility that we must all understand and accept.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/536865 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Long Lived Plants and Animals

Author: Martin K Ettington

Narrator: Martin K. Ettington

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 0 hours 41 minutes

Release date: March 5, 2024

Genres: Animals & Nature

Publisher's Summary:

I’ve written a number of books on longevity and immortality. But I’ve only had some partial chapters on long lived plants and animals. This is an important subject because all of this life is based on the same DNA code we have in our own bodies. If this life can live for hundreds or thousands of years then this says that it is possible for humanity to live that long also. Here I’ve researched and included lots of specimens of animal and plant life which represent the extremes of longevity for widely varying life. This book covers the plant, animal kingdoms and includes lifeforms which are essentially immortal. Also, it is just fascinating to see who the longest lived mammals are, the oldest fish, and what about trees and bushes which have been around for thousands of years.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/544013 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Windswept: Life, Nature and Deep Time in the Scottish Highlands

Author: Annie Worsley

Narrator: Carolyn Bonnyman

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 52 minutes

Release date: August 3, 2023

Genres: Animals & Nature

Publisher's Summary:

‘Windswept is a wonderful work, prose painted in bold, bright strokes like a Scottish Colourist's canvas’ ROBERT MACFARLANE ‘An instant classic of British nature-writing’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH A few years ago, Annie Worsley traded a busy life in academia to take on a small-holding or croft on the west coast of Scotland. It is a land ruled by great elemental forces – light, wind and water – that hold sway over how land forms, where the sea sits and what grows. Windswept explores what it means to live in this rugged, awe-inspiring place of unquenchable spirit and wild weather. Walk with Annie as she lays quartz stones in the river to reflect the moonlight and attract salmon, as she watches otters play tag across the beach, as she is awoken by the feral bellowing of stags. Travel back in time to the epic story of how Scotland’s valleys were carved by glaciers, rivers scythed paths through mountains, how the earliest people found a way of life in the Highlands – and how she then found a home there millennia later. With stunning imagery and lyrical prose, Windswept evokes a place where nature reigns supreme and humans must learn to adapt. It is her paean to a beloved place, one richer with colour, sound and life than perhaps anywhere else in the UK.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/551274 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Chasing Shadows: My Life Tracking the Great White Shark

Author: Ret Talbot, Greg Skomal

Narrator: Jamie Renell

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 14 hours 17 minutes

Release date: July 11, 2023

Genres: Animals & Nature

Publisher's Summary:

Dr. Greg Skomal, one of the leading great white shark experts in the country, reveals the true nature of these mysterious apex predators, as well as the fascinating story behind their history and startling resurgence With its quaint villages, local restaurants serving up lobster rolls, and miles and miles of warm, sandy beaches, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is famous for being America’s carefree seaside getaway. But in August 2012, the first confirmed white shark attack in almost eighty years occurred in the region. As shark sightings quickly began to increase on Cape Cod and elsewhere, and large beachside billboards warning about the growing shark population became a common sight, a boogie boarder died after being attacked by a great white shark in Cape Cod’s shallow waters. What had changed to cause news of human-shark interactions to go from being a rarity to being the new normal? As some citizens called for shark culls, nets, drone surveillance, and other extreme solutions, interactions between local residents and scientists, politicians, and those responsible for public safety became tense and frantic. Dr. Greg Skomal, a shark biologist whose lifelong passion has been to gain a more refined understanding of great white sharks, was at the center of it all. This is the story of the great white shark’s return to the eastern seaboard, told through the life of the scientist who found himself in the oftentimes thankless position of having to balance conservation efforts and the drive to do important science with panic and fear in the court of public opinion. Greg has spent decades on a quest to tag, track, and demystify this animal, using every high- and low-tech method at his disposal, including those he invented, and he frequently comes face-to-face with these shadows of the deep. He leaves no stone unturned in his pursuit of the secrets behind the largely unknown lives of these charismatic creatures and in his duty to solve the intricate puzzle of how humans can coexist alongside them. Chasing Shadows is a too-rare conservation success story about restoring an apex predator to an ecosystem that provides a profound, new understanding of a beast so notoriously fierce that it’s nearly impossible to imagine how vulnerable it truly is. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/550504 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Age of Cats: From the Savannah to Your Sofa

Author: Jonathan B. Losos

Narrator: Jonathan B. Losos

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 11 hours 21 minutes

Release date: May 2, 2023

Genres: Animals & Nature

Publisher's Summary:

The past, present and future of the world's most popular and beloved pet, from a leading evolutionary biologist and great cat lover. ‘Engaging and wide-ranging … The Age of Cats is a readable and informed exploration of the wildcat that lurks within Fluffy’ Washington Post Why don’t lions meow? Why does my cat leave a dead mouse at my feet? And why is a pet ocelot a bad idea? Jonathan B. Losos unravels the secrets of the cat using all the tools of modern technology, from GPS tracking (you’ll be amazed where they roam) and genomics (what is your so-called Siamese cat, really?) to forensic archaeology. He tells the story of the cat’s domestication (if you can call it that) and gives us a cat's-eye view of the world today. Along the way we also meet their wild cousins, whose behaviours are eerily similar to even the sweetest of house cats. Drawing on his own research and life in his multi-cat household, Losos deciphers complex science and history and explores how selection, both natural and artificial, over the millennia has shaped the contemporary cat. Yet the cat, ever a predator, still seems to have only one paw out of the wild, and readily reverts to its feral ways as it occupies new habitats around the world. Looking ahead, this charming and intelligent book suggests what the future may hold for the special bond between Felis catus and Homo sapiens.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/546667 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Jellyfish Age Backwards: Nature's Secrets to Longevity

Author: Nicklas Brendborg

Narrator: Joe Leat

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 7 hours 15 minutes

Release date: January 17, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.5 of Total 2

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2

Genres: Animals & Nature

Publisher's Summary:

This eye-opening book offers a "clear and captivating" (Dr. Kris Verburgh​)scientific deep dive into how plants and animals have already unlocked the secrets to immortality–and the lessons they hold for us all.  Recent advances in medicine and technology have expanded our understanding of aging across the animal kingdom, and our own timeless quest for the fountain of youth. Yet, despite modern humans living longer today than ever before, the public’s understanding of what is possible is limited to our species—until now. In this spunky, effervescent debut, the key to immortality is revealed to be a superpower within reach. With mind-bending stories from the natural world and our own, Jellyfish Age Backwards reveals lifespans we cannot imagine and physiological gifts that feel closer to magic than reality: - There is a Greenland shark that was 286 years old when the Titanic sank, and is currently 390, making it older than the United States. Scientists predict it will live for another 100 years. - Trees and lobsters don’t “age” in the way we know it. They simply get bigger and bigger. - There are forms of radiation that have been known to actually increase the lifespans of certain species, from tortoises to naked mole-rats. - There's a species of jellyfish, the size of a fingernail, that can age forwards, then, when threatened, age backwards and begin the process all over again. Mixing cutting-edge research and stories from habitats all around the world, molecular biologist Nicklas Brendborg explores extended life cycles in all its varieties. Along the way, we meet a man who fasted for over a year; a woman who edited her own DNA; redwoods that survive thousands of years; and in the soil of Easter Island, the key to eternal youth. Jellyfish Age Backwards is a love letter to the immense power of nature, and what the immortal lives of many of earth's animals and plants can teach us about the secrets to longevity. Shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize A New York Times Editor's Choice Pick A Sunday Times (UK) Best Book of the Year

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/544494 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening

Author: Douglas Brinkley

Narrator: Stephen Graybill

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 29 hours 24 minutes

Release date: November 15, 2022

Genres: Animals & Nature

Publisher's Summary:

New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed presidential historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties (1960-1973), telling the story of an indomitable generation that saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. With the detonation of the Trinity explosion in the New Mexico desert in 1945, the United States took control of Earth’s destiny for the first time. After the Truman administration dropped atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, a grim new epoch had arrived. During the early Cold War years, the federal government routinely detonated nuclear devices in the Nevada desert and the Marshall Islands. Not only was nuclear fallout a public health menace, but entire ecosystems were contaminated with radioactive materials. During the 1950s, an unprecedented postwar economic boom took hold, with America becoming the world’s leading hyperindustrial and military giant. But with this historic prosperity came a heavy cost: oceans began to die, wilderness vanished, the insecticide DDT poisoned ecosystems, wildlife perished, and chronic smog blighted major cities. In Silent Spring Revolution, Douglas Brinkley pays tribute to those who combated the mauling of the natural world in the Long Sixties: Rachel Carson (a marine biologist and author), David Brower (director of the Sierra Club), Barry Commoner (an environmental justice advocate), Coretta Scott King (an antinuclear activist), Stewart Udall (the secretary of the interior), William O. Douglas (Supreme Court justice), Cesar Chavez (a labor organizer), and other crusaders are profiled with verve and insight. Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962, depicted how detrimental DDT was to living creatures. The exposé launched an ecological revolution that inspired such landmark legislation as the Wilderness Act (1964), the Clean Air Acts (1963 and 1970), and the Endangered Species Acts (1966, 1969, and 1973). In intimate detail, Brinkley extrapolates on such epic events as the Donora (Pennsylvania) smog incident, JFK’s Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Great Lakes preservation, the Santa Barbara oil spill, and the first Earth Day. With the United States grappling with climate change and resource exhaustion, Douglas Brinkley’s meticulously researched and deftly written Silent Spring Revolution reminds us that a new generation of twenty-first-century environmentalists can save the planet from ruin. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/557130 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis

Author: Annie Proulx

Narrator: Gabra Zackman

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 5 hours 6 minutes

Release date: September 27, 2022

Genres: Animals & Nature

Publisher's Summary:

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week ‘A subject that could not be more important. A compact classic!’ Bill McKibben ‘I learned something new – and found something amazing – on every page’ Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx – whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth – comes an urgent and riveting history of wetlands, their ecological role and how the loss of them threatens the planet. Fens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries are the earth’s most desirable and dependable resources, and in four illuminating parts Proulx documents the emergence of their systemic destruction in the pursuit of profit and the consequent release of their stored carbon. Wide-ranging and idiosyncratic, Proulx’s explanation of wetlands takes readers to the fens of sixteenth-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay Lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire and America’s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and introduces the nineteenth-century explorers who launched the ravaging of the Amazon rainforest. Proulx was born in the 1930s, a time, as she says, when ‘in the ever-continuing name of progress, Western countries busily raped their own and other countries of minerals, timber, fish and wildlife.’ Fen, Bog & Swamp is both a revelatory history and an urgent plea for wetland reclamation from a writer whose passionate devotion to observing and preserving the environment is on glorious display. ‘Magnificent, bringing to life hitherto overlooked habitats’ Guardian ‘Proulx's sparkling book will open your eyes to humanity's reckless trashing of wetlands’ Telegraph ‘A haunting tribute … Proulx’s poetic description of these places, and peat itself, is a pleasure to read’ Financial Times

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/552892 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis

Author: Annie Proulx

Narrator: Gabra Zackman

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 5 hours 6 minutes

Release date: September 27, 2022

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 1

Genres: Animals & Nature

Publisher's Summary:

*Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and Literary Hub!* A Finalist for the 2022 NBCC Awards in Nonfiction, the 2023 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award, and the NEIBA 2023 New England Book Award* From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx, this riveting deep dive into the history of our wetlands and what their systematic destruction means for the planet “is both an enchanting work of nature writing and a rousing call to action” (Esquire). “I learned something new—and found something amazing—on every page.” —Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth’s survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit. In a vivid and revelatory journey through history, Proulx describes the fens of 16th-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire, and America’s Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. She introduces the early explorers who launched the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and writes of the diseases spawned in the wetlands—the Ague, malaria, Marsh Fever. A sobering look at the degradation of wetlands over centuries and the serious ecological consequences, this is “an unforgettable and unflinching tour of past and present, fixed on a subject that could not be more important” (Bill McKibben). “A stark but beautifully written Silent Spring–style warning from one of our greatest novelists.” —The Christian Science Monitor

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/555313 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Big Fix: Seven Practical Steps to Save our Planet

Author: Hal Harvey, Justin Gillis

Narrator: Sean Patrick Hopkins

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 18 minutes

Release date: September 20, 2022

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Animals & Nature

Publisher's Summary:

A “smart, honest, and down-to-earth” (Elizabeth Kolbert) citizen’s guide to the seven urgent changes that will really make a difference for our climate. If you think the only thing you can do to combat climate change is to install a smart thermostat or cook plant-based meat, you’re thinking too small. In The Big Fix, energy policy advisor Hal Harvey and longtime New York Times reporter Justin Gillis offer a new, hopeful way to engage with one of the greatest problems of our age. Writing in a lively, accessible style, the pair illuminate how the really big decisions that affect our climate get made—whether by the most obscure public utilities commissions or in the lofty halls of state capitols—and reveal how each of us can influence these decisions to deliver change. The pair focus on the seven areas of our political economy where ambitious but practical changes will have the greatest effect: from what kind of power plants to build to how much insulation new houses require to how efficient cars must be before they’re allowed on the road. Equal parts pragmatic and inspiring—and “full of illustrative stories and compelling evidence” (Al Gore)—The Big Fix provides an action plan for anyone serious about holding our governments accountable and saving our threatened planet.