English | ASIN: B099XBSTYS | 2021 | 8 hours and 13 minutes |MP3|M4B | 226 MB
Most of us, no matter how rational we think we are, have a lucky charm, a good-luck ritual, or some other custom we follow in the hope that it will lead to a good result. Is the idea of luckiness just a way in which we try to impose order on chaos? Do we live in a world of flukes and coincidences, good and bad breaks, with outcomes as random as a roll of the dice - or can our beliefs help change our luck? What Are the Chances? reveals how psychology and neuroscience explain the significance of the idea of luck.
Barbara Blatchley explores how people react to random events in a range of circumstances, examining the evidence that the belief in luck helps us cope with a lack of control. She tells the stories of lucky and unlucky people - who won the lottery multiple times, survived seven brushes with death, or found an apparently cursed Neanderthal mummy - as well as the accidental discoveries that fundamentally changed what we know about the brain. Blatchley considers our frequent misunderstanding of randomness, the history of luckiness in different cultures and religions, the surprising benefits of magical thinking, and many other topics. Offering a new view of how the brain handles the unexpected, What Are the Chances? shows why an arguably irrational belief can - fingers crossed - help us as we struggle with an unpredictable world.

English | ASIN: B08QXYBNJP | 2021 | 7 hours and 13 minutes |MP3|M4B | 198 MB
From a young, award-winning scientist, a look at one of the most compelling and historic turning points of our time - the race to harness the power of the stars and produce controlled fusion, creating a practically unlimited supply of clean energy. The most important energy-making process in the universe takes place inside stars. The ability to duplicate that process in a lab, once thought out of reach, may now be closer than we think. Today, all across the world teams of scientists are being assembled by the world's boldest entrepreneurs, big business, and governments to solve what is the most difficult technological challenge humanity has ever faced: building the equivalent of a star on earth. If their plans to capture star power are successful, they will unlock thousands, potentially millions, of years of clean, carbon-free energy.
Not only would controlled nuclear fusion go a long way toward solving the climate crisis, it could help make other highly desired technological ambitions possible - like journeying to the stars. Given the rising alarm over deterioration of the environment and the strides being made in laser and magnetic field technology, powerful momentum is gathering behind fusion and the possibilities it offers. Arthur Turrell is an award-winning young plasma physicist with a unique talent for making complex science accessible. In The Star Builders, he describes fascinating star machines with 10 times as many parts as the NASA Space Shuttle and structures that extend over 400 acres. And he spotlights the individuals, firms, and institutions racing for the finish line: science-minded entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel, companies like Goldman Sachs and Google, universities like Oxford and MIT, and virtually every rich nation. It's an exciting and game-changing international quest that, when completed, will make all of us winners.

English | ASIN: B08C5NXLRW | 2020 | 6 hours and 35 minutes |MP3|M4B | 181 MB
Welcome to the new old age! There has never been a better time, in all of history, to grow old. But will your brain age as well as the rest of you? Judith Horstman presents a realistic and encouraging overview of the well-aged brain, a sobering look at what can go wrong, and the latest in what neuroscience is finding might help you - and your brain - stay healthy longer. Culled from articles in Scientific American and Scientific American Mind as well as current research, the book explains how your brain grows and the changes to expect in a healthy aging brain.
There's plenty of good news. While your brain does slow down with passing years, far from disintegrating, the healthy mature brain fades quite slowly. Short-term memory may not be what it once was, but the elder brain remains able to change and learn well into old age. And myths of a miserable old age are just that. In fact, studies show that for many, happiness increases after the age of 70. A new and positive message about growing older, The Scientific American Healthy Aging Brain is an indispensable user's manual on how preserve what you've got, minimize what you've lost, and optimize the vigor and health of your brain as you grow older.

English | ASIN: B09BK98F6J | 2021 | 9 hours and 15 minutes |MP3|M4B | 254 MB
Actions have consequences - and the ability to learn from them revolutionized life on Earth. While it's easy enough to see that consequences are important (where would we be without positive reinforcement?), few have heard there's a science of consequences, with principles that affect us every day. Despite their variety, consequences appear to follow a common set of scientific principles and share some similar effects in the brain - such as the "pleasure centers".
Indeed, learning from consequences predictably restructures the brain and even activates genes. Applications are everywhere - working, learning, free addicts of their habits, and treat depression. Ultimately, this science helps us address our biggest societal challenges. Ten years in the making, The Science of Consequences takes an interdisciplinary approach to show how something so deceptively simple can help make sense of so much.

English | ASIN: B08PVYZ727 | 2021 |MP3|M4B | ~10:02:00 | 284 MB
Peter L. Bergen, James Langton (Narrator), "The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden"
The world's leading expert on Osama bin Laden delivers for the first time the definitive biography of a man who set the course of American foreign policy for the 21st century, and whose ideological heirs we continue to battle today.

English | ASIN: B097W2TG5Z | 2021 | 5 hours and 21 minutes |MP3|M4B | 148 MB
Unlock the power of neuroscience to optimize your memory so you can stay mentally sharp. Do you feel like your memory isn't as great as it used to be? Do you sometimes find yourself walking into a room and forgetting why? Do you misplace things more often than you used to? As we age, our memory naturally declines - but there are scientifically proven ways to enhance brain and memory function. This book, grounded in cutting-edge neuroscience, will help you get started. The Neuroscience of Memory offers a seven-step memory-improvement program based on the latest research. You'll find powerful tools to optimize your brain and memory function, increase neural connections, and stay mentally sharp both now and in the long run.
You'll learn how to "feed your brain" with good nutrition and how exercise can help you maintain mental acuity. And finally, you'll discover how forming new memories is a key strategy for optimizing cognitive function and how managing stress can help you not only think better in critical moments, but also help you keep the brain cells you have. Whether you're looking for ways to improve your memory while you are young, have noticed that your memory is declining as you age and want to improve it, or are looking for resources for dealing with Alzheimer's (either for yourself or a loved one), this book will help you hold on to those treasured memories for as long as you possibly can.

English | ASIN: B099THLHGN | 2021 | 8 hours and 16 minutes |MP3|M4B | 228 MB
Misinformation and myths have attached themselves to the Egyptian pyramids since ancient Greece and Rome. While many Americans believe that the pyramids were built by aliens, archaeologists understand that the Giza pyramids were built by the pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty around 2450 BCE. So why is there such a disconnect between scholarly opinion and the popular view of Egypt? In The Legends of the Pyramids, Jason Colavito takes us back to Late Antique Egypt, where the replacement of polytheism with Christianity gave rise to local efforts to rewrite the stories of Egyptian history in the image of the Bible. When the Arab conquest absorbed Egypt into the Islamic community, these stories then passed into Islamic historiography and reentered the West. Colavito's The Legends of the Pyramids lays open pop culture's view of Egypt in movies, TV shows, popular books, and new age beliefs, detailing how the hidden history of Egypt has grown alongside the official history of archaeology and Egyptology.

[center]

English | ASIN: B08D3Z88D4 | 2021 | 8 hours and 5 minutes |MP3|M4B | 223 MB
From acclaimed Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell, the dramatic, untold story of student debt in America. In 1982, a new executive at Sallie Mae took home the company's financial documents to review. "You've got to be shitting me," he later told the company's CEO. "This place is a gold mine." Over the next four decades, the student loan industry that Sallie Mae and Congress created blew up into a crisis that would submerge a generation of Americans into $1.5 trillion in student debt. In The Debt Trap, Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell tells the untold story of the scandals, scams, predatory actors, and government malpractice that have created the behemoth that one of its original architects called a "monster".

[center]

English | ASIN: B099X8VK23 | 2021 | 8 hours and 38 minutes |MP3|M4B | 238 MB
Tells the story of the founding of American Christianity against the backdrop of devastating disease and of the Indigenous survivors who kept the nascent faith alive. Many scholars have come to think of the European Christian mission to the Americas as an inevitable success. But in its early period it was very much on the brink of failure. In 1576, Indigenous Mexican communities suffered a catastrophic epidemic that took almost two million lives and simultaneously left the colonial church in ruins. In the crisis and its immediate aftermath, Spanish missionaries and surviving pueblos de indios held radically different visions for the future of Christianity in the Americas.
The Church of the Dead offers a counter-history of American Christian origins. It centers the power of Indigenous Mexicans, showing how their Catholic faith remained intact even in the face of the faltering religious fervor of Spanish missionaries. While the Europeans grappled with their failure to stem the tide of death, succumbing to despair, Indigenous survivors worked to reconstruct the church. They reasserted ancestral territories as sovereign, with Indigenous Catholic states rivaling the jurisdiction of the diocese and the power of friars and bishops.

English | ASIN: B093HLHXNJ | 2021 | 8 hours and 56 minutes |MP3|M4B | 246 MB
From renowned yogi meditation teacher Rebecca Pacheco comes Still Life, offering an in-depth exploration of mindfulness and meditation misconceptions to arm the listener with inspirational and practical tools for cultivating a consistent mindfulness practice. For years Rebecca Pacheco has taught listeners and students alike how to embrace the wisdom of the yoga sutras and reap the mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits of the ancient tradition. Now, in Still Life, she turns her focus to mindfulness, demystifying a seemingly esoteric practice and giving listeners practical, real-life tools to implement mindfulness in their own lives - regardless of experience level or lifestyle. Still Life challenges listeners to dig deep and develop the tools that can ultimately lead to joy - including to waking up in the present, reclaiming the moment, and living life fully.

[center]