
Oxygen
The Molecule That Made the World
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Narrated by:
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Nigel Patterson
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By:
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Nick Lane
About this listen
Three hundred million years ago, in Carboniferous times, dragonflies grew as big as seagulls, with wingspans of nearly a meter. Researchers claim they could have flown only if the air had contained more oxygen than today - probably as much as 35 percent. Giant spiders, tree ferns, marine rock formations, and fossil charcoals all tell the same story. High oxygen levels may also explain the global firestorm that contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs after the asteroid impact.
The strange and profound effects that oxygen has had on the evolution of life pose a riddle that this audiobook sets out to answer. Oxygen is a toxic gas. Divers breathing pure oxygen at depth suffer from convulsions and lung injury. Fruit flies raised at twice the normal atmospheric levels of oxygen live half as long as their siblings. Reactive forms of oxygen, known as free radicals, are thought to cause aging in people. Yet if atmospheric oxygen reached 35 percent in the Carboniferous, why did it promote exuberant growth instead of rapid aging and death?
Oxygen takes the listener on an enthralling journey, as gripping as a thriller, as it unravels the unexpected ways in which oxygen spurred the evolution of life and death.
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An extraordinary look at life by a Physicist
- By Philomath on 01-25-19
By: Erwin Schrödinger, and others
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Kinds of Minds
- Toward an Understanding of Consciousness
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Combining ideas from philosophy, artificial intelligence, and neurobiology, Daniel Dennett leads the listener on a fascinating journey of inquiry, exploring such intriguing possibilities as: Can any of us really know what is going on in someone else's mind? What distinguishes the human mind from the minds of animals, especially those capable of complex behavior? If such animals, for instance, were magically given the power of language, would their communities evolve an intelligence as subtly discriminating as ours?
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Life on a Young Planet
- The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth
- By: Andrew H. Knoll
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Australopithecines, dinosaurs, trilobites - such fossils conjure up images of lost worlds filled with vanished organisms. But in the full history of life, ancient animals, even the trilobites, form only the half-billion-year tip of a nearly four-billion-year iceberg. Andrew Knoll explores the deep history of life from its origins on a young planet to the incredible Cambrian explosion, presenting a compelling new explanation for the emergence of biological novelty.
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The Earliest Life
- By Arden on 02-16-20
By: Andrew H. Knoll
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Spark
- The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life
- By: Timothy J. Jorgensen
- Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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When we think of electricity, we likely imagine the energy humming inside our home appliances or lighting up our electronic devices - or perhaps we envision the lightning-streaked clouds of a stormy sky. But electricity is more than an external source of power, heat, or illumination. Life at its essence is nothing if not electrical.
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The best book on electricity.
- By Anonymous User on 01-10-22
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When Life Nearly Died
- The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time
- By: Michael J. Benton
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Today it is common knowledge that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite impact 65 million years ago that killed half of all species then living. It is far less widely understood that a much greater catastrophe took place at the end of the Permian period 251 million years ago: at least 90 percent of life on earth was destroyed. When Life Nearly Died documents not only what happened during this gigantic mass extinction, but also the recent renewal of the idea of catastrophism.
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Obscurity to Enlightenment - A Mystery Revealed
- By Dipam on 03-18-21
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The Story of the Earth in 25 Rocks
- Tales of Important Geological Puzzles and the People Who Solved Them
- By: Donald R. Prothero
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The Story of the Earth in 25 Rocks tells the fascinating stories behind the discoveries that shook the foundations of geology. In 25 chapters, Donald R. Prothero recounts the scientific detective work that shaped our understanding of geology, from the unearthing of exemplary specimens to tectonic shifts in how we view the inner workings of our planet.
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More about scientists than science
- By Aunt Vee on 06-14-20
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The Ancestor's Tale
- A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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In The Ancestor's Tale, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins offers a masterwork: an exhilarating reverse tour through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginnings of life four billion years ago. Throughout the journey, Dawkins spins entertaining, insightful stories and sheds light on topics such as speciation, sexual selection, and extinction. The Ancestor's Tale is at once an essential education in evolutionary theory and riveting in its telling.
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Please do an unabridged version!
- By MovieExpertise on 09-29-16
By: Richard Dawkins
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From Bacteria to Bach and Back
- The Evolution of Minds
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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What is human consciousness, and how is it possible? This question fascinates thinking people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. From Bacteria to Bach and Back is Daniel C. Dennett's brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains, and human culture.
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The only other review was so bad that I wrote this
- By Adam on 02-13-17
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The Emperor's New Mind
- Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics
- By: Roger Penrose
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. The book's central concern is what philosophers call the "mind-body problem". Penrose examines what physics and mathematics can tell us about how the mind works, what they can't, and what we need to know to understand the physical processes of consciousness.
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One one zero zero zero zero zero one zero zero ...
- By john galt on 12-10-19
By: Roger Penrose
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Conquering the Electron
- The Geniuses, Visionaries, Egomaniacs, and Scoundrels Who Built Our Electronic Age
- By: Derek Cheung, Eric Brach
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Want to know how AT&T's Bell Labs developed semiconductor technology - and how its leading scientists almost came to blows in the process? Want to understand how radio and television work - and why RCA drove their inventors to financial ruin and early graves? Conquering the Electron offers these stories and more, presenting each revolutionary technological advance right alongside blow-by-blow personal battles that all too often took place.
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Tech, science, engineering & the people behind it.
- By James S. on 05-29-20
By: Derek Cheung, and others
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Just Six Numbers
- The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe
- By: Martin J. Rees
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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There are deep connections between stars and atoms, between the cosmos and the microworld. Just six numbers, imprinted in the "Big Bang", determine the essential features of our entire physical world. Moreover, cosmic evolution is astonishingly sensitive to the values of these numbers. If any one of them were "untuned", there could be no stars and no life. This realization offers a radically new perspective on our universe, our place in it, and the nature of physical laws.
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Old Fine-Tuning Book
- By Michael on 12-16-18
By: Martin J. Rees
What listeners say about Oxygen
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- JJ Edwards
- 05-22-24
went deeper into the concept of oxygen
the voice actor is outstanding and helps make a difficult subject easier to listen to.
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- Wyatt
- 04-18-23
Super interesting but often dry
love the parts on the earth and evolution of life. The discussions of human disease often felt too tangential and some of the details got hard to follow in audio. On net, learned a bunch and enjoyed the book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- KatonsAmazon
- 04-09-21
Great read!
Nick Lane is one of my favourite authors. His story telling and writing style makes complex scientific concepts come to life, and easy to understand.
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- John A.
- 12-08-22
A great book
A wonderful book that I found to be developmental and maturative for a young man coming of age such as myself. I found this book to be highly relatable and I generally found it intelligent. I further highly recommend this book.
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- ZebraBear
- 09-09-20
A Story About Pretty Much Everything
Super interesting book that covers the formation of the earth, the beginning of life on our planet, evolution, genetics, health, lifestyle, diet, etc. Lot's of new information to me like:
1. LUCA, the last universal common ancestor or last universal cellular ancestor (LUCA), is the most recent population of organisms from which all organisms now living on Earth have a common descent, the most recent common ancestor of all current life on Earth.
2. The Great Oxidation Even or Catastrophe might not have been a catastrophe at all. Meaning, a surplus of oxygen in the atmosphere after the invention of photosynthesis might not have caused a mass extinction as has been widely speculated.
3. Photosynthesis evolved only once.
4. Were it not for the invention of photosynthesis, which created a surplus of oxygen in the atmosphere, which in turn helped to create an ozone layer, Earth would have lost it's liquid oceans to evaporation as happened to the liquid oceans on Mars and Venus. This also points to the fact that if life ever existed on Mars and Venus, it certainly never evolved the ability to photosynthesis.
5. Mitochondria, by taking up residence, or more likely, seeking refuge inside a the cell membrane, might have found a way to perpetuate the conditions of a low-oxygen environment from which it originally evolved as a bacteria billions of years ago! Whoa!
Finally, I listed to the audio book which was read by Nigel Patterson. Patterson might be my favorite narrator. I could listen to him read just about anything.
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20 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 12-02-20
The Very Best of The Best
This was the third and my favorite of books written by Nick Lane, my new favorite biochemist/author . This book with the “simple” title of Oxygen weaves together General chemistry, biochemistry, geochemistry, organic chemistry, plate tectonics , nutrition, life origin research...... the list is endless . Yet these seemingly minimally related topics are deftly woven together to cover most things I imagined might be covered in a book named after the element, and many more I never considered . A thoroughly enjoyable was to spend an entire day.
I’m sure to go back through it time and again!
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5 people found this helpful
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- Curmud the prof
- 06-07-22
A real tour de force!
I am a recently retired medical research scientist. I learned more from this audiobook than all my many tears of reading and publishing. It will be challenging for non-scientists, but is sprinkled with helpful metaphors. It is repetitive, as it must be to let the reader see the forest, beyond the many hundreds of trees which are examined.
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-21-21
Loved it
Such an outstanding review of a complex subject without dumbing it down. I think I shall listen to it multiple times.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Roger Utz
- 12-31-20
The science of where oxygen came from & adaption.
very comprehensive, full of science that had passed me bye since graduating College. A lot to still learn, it will be a better read during the next read.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Margaret
- 10-02-21
Exceeded my expectations; highly recommended
Very interesting how the author ties in so many seemingly unrelated topics but makes them an interesting part of the story. He was great at explaining the relationships at a level that made it interesting and understandable but w/o requiring a Masters degree in the subject matter or making it boring. I appreciated how he compared and evaluated various explanations and how he and others arrived at their conclusions.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in Earth's past, the relationship between various environmental conditions and the factors that affect them. or the cause and effect relationship between our environment and ourselves.
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2 people found this helpful