
When We Cease to Understand the World
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Narrated by:
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Adam Barr
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By:
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Benjamín Labatut
About this listen
Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize.
A Guardian Fiction Book of the year.
Sometimes discovery brings destruction.
When We Cease to Understand the World shows us great minds striking out into dangerous, uncharted terrain.
Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger: these are among the luminaries into whose troubled minds we are thrust as they grapple with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, they alienate friends and lovers, they descend into isolated states of madness. Some of their discoveries revolutionise our world for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.
With breakneck pace and wondrous detail, Benjamín Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to break open the stories of scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.
©2020 Benjamín Labatut (P)2021 Pushkin PressListeners also enjoyed...
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The Employees
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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-
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- By Jordan on 07-02-23
By: Olga Ravn
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Illuminations
- Essays and Reflections
- By: Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walter Benjamin was an icon of criticism, renowned for his insight on art, literature, and philosophy. This volume includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and Brecht’s epic theater. Illuminations also includes his penetrating study “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his theses on the philosophy of history.
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- Why DNA Matters for Social Equality
- By: Kathryn Paige Harden
- Narrated by: Katherine Fenton
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Genetic Lottery, Harden introduces listeners to the latest genetic science, dismantling dangerous ideas about racial superiority and challenging us to grapple with what equality really means in a world where people are born different. Weaving together personal stories with scientific evidence, Harden shows why our refusal to recognize the power of DNA perpetuates the myth of meritocracy, and argues that we must acknowledge the role of genetic luck if we are ever to create a fair society.
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- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.
-
-
Gergo Danka and Eva Magyar are excellent narrators
- By Barbara S on 11-04-23
By: Benjamin Labatut
-
The Hard Problem
- By: Tom Stoppard
- Narrated by: Eddie Cahill, Rosie Fellner, Adhir Kalyan, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 47 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hilary believes fervently that consciousness is more than the sum of our biology. When she receives a position at a prestigious think tank, she develops a novel experiment to prove that humans are intrinsically altruistic, but the results are something she never anticipated.
-
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- By Amazon Customer on 07-01-22
By: Tom Stoppard
Critic reviews
A monstrous and brilliant book.
-- Philip Pullman
Wholly mesmerising and revelatory... Completely fascinating.
-- William Boyd
What listeners say about When We Cease to Understand the World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Andreas
- 04-16-23
Read of the year
This is a beautifully written, mind expanding book that to me is the read of the year.
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Story
- Kit Mclean
- 01-05-23
Amazing, informative
Beautifully woven story around real events and influential people. A factual based fiction book. Starts with almost no fiction and adds more embellishment as the story progresses. A treasure for nerds with a love of literature.
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Overall
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- Zeynep
- 03-14-23
Science for better or worse
Thank you Benjamin Labatut for telling the stories of science, for better or worse,
in such a brilliant way.
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- caspar
- 01-15-24
Not a fan of how reality and fiction are blended
Performance is great, as is the writing style. Personally, I didn't enjoy how fact and fiction are blended together. Also, the author seems convinced that truly genius breakthroughs require a scientist to push themself to the edge of the abyss. An overdone trope imo.
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