In the last thirty years of his life Albert Einstein searched for a unified theory - a theory which could describe all the forces of nature in a single framework. But the time was not right for such a discovery in Einstein's day. Neither was the time right when, in 1988, Professor Stephen Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time in which he took us o...

From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates. Many of us take for granted that babies are born selfish and that it is the role of society-and especially parents-to transform them from little sociopaths into civilized beings. In Just Babies, Paul Bloom argues that humans...

We live in a world of stressors and many people go into a state of burnout at some point. If the stress that the individual must deal with on a long-term basis outweighs their chance and ability to rest; ME or CFS may very well be the result. This course aims to help with the understanding of these conditions. The first and third modules focus on k...

When the woman he loved was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer, science-writer George Johnson embarked on a journey to learn everything he could about the disease and the people who dedicate their lives to understanding and combating it. What he discovered is that a revolution is now under way - an explosion of new ideas about what cancer really is...

It's invisible. It's ever-present. Without it, you would die in minutes. And it has an epic story to tell. In Caesar's Last Breath, New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean takes us on a journey through the periodic table, around the globe, and across time to tell the story of the air we breathe, which, it turns out, is also the story of earth an...

Yuval Noah Harari, author of the bestselling Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, envisions a not-too-distant world in which we face a new set of challenges. Now, in Homo Deus, he examines our future with his trademark blend of science, history, philosophy and every discipline in between. Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares tha...

Dr. Geoff Bunn presents a journey through 5000 years of our understanding of the most complex thing in the known universe: the brain, in this major ten-part BBC Radio 4 series. In Episode 3, 'The Origin of Common Sense', the focus is on Ancient Rome with Galen's 'animal spirits' gently inflating the ventricles and making thought possible, and on ho...

From the hosts of the legendary BBC Radio 4 programme comes this irreverent celebration of scientific marvels - a hectic leap through the grand and bizarre ideas conjured up by human imagination, from dark matter to consciousness via neutrinos and earthworms. Prof Brian Cox and Robin Ince take the musings of the great and the good of British scienc...

What happens when you sneeze in space? Was it fun to do a space walk? How squashed were you in the capsule on the way back? What were your feelings as you looked down on Earth for the first time? Were you ever scared? Where to next-the Moon, Mars, or beyond? Based on his historic mission to the International Space Station, Ask an Astronaut is Tim P...

An introverted, unusual young boy, isolated by his obsessions and a loner at school, Chris Packham was only at home in the fields and woods around his suburban home. But when he stole a young kestrel from its nest, he was about to embark on a friendship that would teach him what it meant to love, and that would change him forever. In his rich, lyri...

What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut into the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? How do you live with the consequences of performing a potentially life-saving operation when it all goes wrong? In neurosurgery, more than in any other branch of medicine, the doctor's oath to...

Enough plastic is thrown away every year to circle the world 4 times. More than 8 million tonnes of plastic enter the oceans each year. 300 million tonnes of new plastic is produced every year. An estimated 15-51 trillion pieces of plastic now litter the world's oceans. 38.5 million plastic bottles are used every day in the UK. Without big action,...

Sunday Times Bestseller 'A paradigm-smashing chronicle of joyous entanglement' Charles Foster Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month (September) Are trees social beings? How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? In The Hidden Life of Trees Peter Wohlleben makes the case that the forest is a social network. He...

How does it feel to orbit the earth ten times faster than a speeding bullet? What's it like to eat, sleep and go to the toilet in space? And where to next - the Moon, Mars or beyond? Ask an Astronaut is Tim's personal guide to life in space, based on his historic Principia mission, and the thousands of questions he has been asked since his return t...

In January 2006, a month or two after my father died, I thought I saw him again - a momentary impression of an old man, a little stooped, setting off for a walk in his characteristic fawn corduroys and shabby quilted jacket. After teenage rifts it was walking that brought us closer as father and son; and this 'ghost' of Dad has been walking at my e...

The Times SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tel...

Penguin presents the audio edition of The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli, read by Benedict Cumberbatch. The bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics takes us on an enchanting journey to discover the meaning of time Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while sc...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Tamed, written and read by Alice Roberts. The extraordinary story of the species that became our allies. For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors depended on wild plants and animals for survival. They were hunter-gatherers, consummate foraging experts, taking the world as they found it. The...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Secret Life of the Owl by John Lewis-Stempel, read by Roy McMillan. 'Dusk is filling the valley. It is the time of the gloaming, the owl-light. Out in the wood, the resident tawny has started calling, Hoo-hoo-hoo-h-o-o-o.' There is something about owls. They feature in every major culture from the...

For four years John Lewis-Stempel managed the wood. He coppiced the trees and raised cows and pigs who roamed free there. This is the diary of the last year, by which time he had come to know it from the bottom of its beech roots to the tip of its oaks, and to know all the animals that lived there - the fox, the pheasants, the wood mice, the tawny...

Environmental thought and politics have become parts of mainstream cultural life in Britain. The wish to protect wildlife is now a central goal for our society, but where did these 'green' ideas come from? And who created the cherished institutions, such as the National Trust or the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, that are now so embedde...