Showing results by publisher "audible originals" in Science & Engineering

In 1970, in one of the most infamous orca round-ups in history, an orca calf named Tokitae was taken from the islands off the coast of Seattle.

Sloths are the slowest mammals on earth. They can hardly see. They live in rainforests among jaguars, pumas, and countless other predators. Yet they survive. And they do it by being so incredibly slow, and living a life covered in algae. In this episode, we hang with a sloth in the jungle of Costa Rica as he spends a month digesting one single leaf, and we see the symbiosis and collaboration that surrounds him.

Athena Aktipis of Arizona State University is a self-professed apocalypse enthusiast, and as the host of the podcast Zombified, she knows the undead inside and out. With Zombified: Real-World Lessons from Fictional Apocalypses, she’s compiled her research and insights into a fascinating Audible Original that will have you thinking deeper about all those shambling, brain-hungry corpses in pop culture—not to mention our everyday lives. Drawing on years of research on zombies and zombification, these six lessons offer a fun way to explore and understand the many forces that influence us.

Fennec foxes’ ears can be up to half as long as their bodies. They use them to track movement across the Sahara Desert, including under the sand. In this episode, we follow a fox as he meanders home to his family through the sand dunes as they slowly shift with the wind.

Dogs are a familiar and comforting part of many of our lives. In this episode, we take a walk with a pet xoloitzcuintli, or Mexican hairless dog, as he greets his blocks by smell. Along the way, we learn the backstory of squirrels in U.S. cities and observe the very smart and clean neighborhood raccoon.

Elephants are the largest land animals in the world. They are also intensely social and have advanced long-term memories. In this episode, a parade of Asian elephants makes its way through the Sri Lankan forest to a lake for drinks and mud baths, stopping periodically for group naps. The female leading the parade uses infrasonic rumbles—inaudible to humans, but traveling as far as two miles along the surface of the Earth as seismic waves—to invite friends and family around the forest to join her at the reservoir.

Children's author and science communicator 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.

Across the six lessons of Reconnect with Nature: Lessons from the Natural World, author and conservationist Jennifer Verdolin draws on Indigenous traditions and contemporary science to inspire you to integrate more of the natural world into your life, no matter where you live. You’ll learn about our deep biological need for nature and about the influence that natural environments and other animals have on your day-to-day life. You’ll also be provided with activities and tools to help you be more observant about the natural world around you.

Technologically there's never been a better time to search for a new earth beyond our solar system.

The sun sinks over the Rio Grande, the mountains around it glow orange, and the world slows down. The Mexican free-tailed bats inside the Jornada Cave are just starting to stretch and murmur. In this episode, we visit the nursery where all the baby bats stay together, and we accompany a new mother as she journeys into the sky with the rest of her crew for a night of hunting bugs via echolocation.

Dung beetles might sound dirty, but the ancient Egyptians believed their god took the form of a dung beetle to roll the morning sun across the sky every day. In this episode, we roll with dung beetles around the world as they push their precious dung—often in balls many times larger than they are—over Florida pastures, Armenian highlands, and the vast South African savanna.

Brown bears lead deeply cyclical lives. They need to gain sometimes hundreds of pounds during the warmer months to prepare for winter hibernation, a lifestyle that brings them into frequent contact with many other species’ cycles. In this episode, we meander through the Alaska peninsula with a bear and her cubs as she teaches them to hunt salmon at the falls, dig for clams along the coastal mudflats, and use the regional rubbing tree.

Crows have long been the subject of folklore, likely because they’re strikingly similar to humans, leading lives rich in personality, intelligence, and relationships. In this episode, we fly the streets of Seattle with a crow as she grooms her mate, delivers what appears to be a gift, and finally commutes miles away from her territory to gather and chat with thousands of other crows before it’s time to roost for the night.

Two long-term friends explore despair, optimism and hope in the face of environmental change. Cate and Danny return with Season 2 of the acclaimed series Climate of Change where they interview guests along the way, discussing the challenges humankind faces and celebrate the ground-breaking work tackling the crisis.

“I love food” Nakkiah Lui says, and in the next breath whispers “so give us back our land”. In First Eat, a confrontational, raw and highly personal exploration of food politics, power and body sovereignty, Nakkiah Lui asks how our meals would look different if First Nations people owned the land from which the food came. First Eat is about more than just food, it’s an aural feast for a rich future.

Are we on the brink of discovering the first ever evidence that aliens exist? Join astronomer Professor Alan Duffy on his search to answer this question, as he speaks to a new generation of alien hunters embarking on the greatest hunt for extraterrestrials that’s ever been undertaken.

What happens when your family tells you one thing, but a DNA test tells you another? Georgina Lawton grew up in a loving family but she didn’t look like anyone else. She has dark eyes, curly hair and brown skin. Both her parents were white. Georgina took a DNA test. The results changed her life forever. With millions around the world using 'do-it-yourself' DNA testing kits, Georgina follows the stories of those learning to live with the results.

Irgendwie ist wirklich Alles Physik – und noch längst nicht alles erzählt. In der 11. Staffel von Sag mal, du als Physiker schrauben Johannes Kückens, Jens Schröder und Michael Büker an einem 3-D-Drucker herum, gehen auf die Suche nach dem wahren Wesen des elektrischen Stroms – und geben unserer Galaxie eine glatt 5 Sterne. Natürlich ist auch wieder Physik-Geschichte angesagt: Genies wie Johannes Kepler und Heinrich Hertz werden gewürdigt.

Some disasters arrive all of a sudden: a wave, a quake, a raging fire. Others are slow-moving, even subtle.

"Tutta la nostra scienza, in confronto con la realtà, è primitiva e infantile, e tuttavia è la cosa più preziosa che abbiamo". Albert Einstein
Massimo Polidoro, scrittore e divulgatore scientifico, ci conduce alla scoperta dei tanti modi in cui la scienza attraversa la nostra vita quotidiana, aiutandoci a capire quello che ognuno di noi dovrebbe conoscere.