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Hearing, the first of our senses to develop in the womb, is also the most recent of our senses to appear in evolutionary terms. This episode explores how sound is produced and transmitted, how the human ear is designed to receive certain frequencies, and whether the physics of relative frequencies, together with the physical structure of the human ear, makes us hear some combinations of sounds more ‘deeply’ than others. We investigate how the brain interprets music, and why we hear some sounds as music; other sounds as noise.

The Monarch butterfly is the marathon runner of the insect world. Each year in May hundreds of millions take off from their winter quarters in Mexico to begin a perilously delicate 3000-mile journey north. Three months later by the human calendar (but three generations later in butterfly time) they return back through the United States to Mexico. We don't know how they navigate the annual route along identical fight paths, or how they pass on the knowledge of those routes to future generations making the return trip.

From Jim Holt, New York Times bestselling author of Why Does the World Exist', comes When Einstein Walked with Godel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought, an entertaining and accessible audiobook guide to the most profound scientific and mathematical ideas of recent centuries Does time exist' What is infinity' Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down' In this scintillating collection, Holt explores the human mind, the cosmos, and the thinkers who've tried to encompass the latter with the former.

A tale of obsession and daring. A contest between humankind and nature's fiercest phenomenon. The saga of the greatest storm chaser who ever lived. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the tornado was one of the last true mysteries of the modern world. It was a monster that ravaged the American heartland a thousand times each year, yet science's every effort to divine its inner workings had ended in failure. Researchers all but gave up, until the arrival of an outsider. In a field of PhDs, Tim Samaras didn't attend a day of college in his life.

Science fiction becomes reality in this Jurassic Park-like story of the genetic resurrection of an extinct species-the woolly mammoth-by the bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires and The 37th Parallel. "With his knack for turning narrative nonfiction into stories worthy of the best thriller fiction" (Omnivoracious), Ben Mezrich takes us on an exhilarating true adventure story from the icy terrain of Siberia to the cutting-edge genetic labs of Harvard University. A group of young scientists, under the guidance of Dr.

The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draws a picture of what it might be like to be a dog. What’s it like to be able to smell not just every bit of open food in the house but also to smell sadness in humans, or even the passage of time? How does a tiny dog manage to play successfully with a Great Dane?

Alexandra Horowitz, the author of the lively, highly informative New York Times bestselling blockbuster Inside of a Dog, explains how dogs perceive the world through their most spectacular organ-the nose-and how we humans can put our under-used sense of smell to work in surprising ways. What the dog sees and knows comes mostly through his nose, and the information that every dog takes in about the world just based on smell is unthinkably rich. To a dog, there is no such thing as "fresh air." Every gulp of air is full of information.

Kari Byron-former host of the wildly popular, iconic cult classic MythBusters-shows how to crash test your way through life, no lab coat required. Kari Byron's story hasn't been a straight line. She started out as a broke artist living in San Francisco, writing poems on a crowded bus on the way to one of her three jobs. Many curve balls, unexpected twists, and yes, literal and figurative explosions later, and she's one of the world's most respected women in science entertainment, blowing stuff up on national television and getting paid for it!

"There comes a time in the life of a subject when someone steps up and writes the book about it.

The latest volume in the bestselling series from Edge.org-dubbed "the world's smartest website" by The Guardian-brings together 206 of the world's most innovative thinkers to discuss the scientific concepts that everyone should know. As science informs public policy, decision making, and so many aspects of our everyday lives, a scientifically literate society is crucial. In that spirit, Edge.org publisher and author of Know This, John Brockman, asks 206 of the world's most brilliant minds the 2017 Edge Question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?