Engineering Technology

Harvard geometer and Fields medalist Shing-Tung Yau has provided a mathematical foundation for string theory, offered new insights into black holes, and mathematically demonstrated the stability of our universe. In this autobiography, Yau reflects on his improbable journey to becoming one of the world’s most distinguished mathematicians. With complicated ideas explained for a broad audience, listeners not only get insights into the life of an eminent mathematician, but also an accessible way to understand advanced and highly abstract concepts in mathematics and theoretical physics.

We are now on the doorstep of a fourth change brought about by two technologies: AI and robotics. The Fourth Age provides extraordinary background information on how we got to this point, and how - rather than what - we should think about the topics we’ll soon all be facing: machine consciousness, automation, employment, creative computers, radical life extension, artificial life, AI ethics, the future of warfare, superintelligence, and the implications of extreme prosperity.

Un homme qui a profondément changé notre vision du monde S'il est quelqu'un que l'on peut qualifier de génie, c'est certainement Einstein. Il a façonné la physique du XXème siècle. Non seulement ses découvertes ont permis l'avènement de notre univers technologique (électronique, laser, énergie nucléaire, etc.), mais surtout, il a profondément modifié notre conception du monde. Il y a un avant Einstein et un après Einstein qui se prolonge aujourd'hui puisque ses théories n'ont pas, pour l'essentiel, été démenties. Inventeur des deux grandes théories du XXe : relativité et théorie quantique.

Making earth science accessible and entertaining, The Wondrous Workings of Planet Earth explains how our planet works - and how we can protect it - from its diverse ecosystems and their inhabitants to the levels of ecology, the importance of biodiversity, the cycles of nature, and more. Science- and nature-loving listeners of all ages will delight in this utterly charming guide to our amazing home.

How do you spot a robot mimicking a human? How do you recognize and deactivate a rebel servant robot? How do you escape a murderous "smart" house, or evade a swarm of marauding robotic flies? In this dryly hilarious survival guide, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson teaches worried humans the secrets to quashing a robot mutiny.

You eat organic and non-GMO food. You only drink purified water. You take care of yourself and your family's health. But could there be a silent, invisible danger causing potential harm to you and your loved ones? There could. And it's called electromagnetic frequency (EMF) radiation and its one of fastest growing health issues facing our society. EMF radiation produced by modern technology such as cell phones, tablets, laptops, Wi-Fi, and smart meters is an emerging health threat.

A worldwide race is on to perfect the next engine of economic growth, the advanced lithium-ion battery. It will power the electric car, relieve global warming, and catapult the winner into a new era of economic and political mastery. Can the United States win? Steve LeVine was granted unprecedented access to a secret federal laboratory outside Chicago, where a group of geniuses is trying to solve this next monumental task of physics. But these scientists - almost all foreign born - are not alone.

Have you ever stared into the night sky, full of stars and planets? As a kid, Neil deGrasse Tyson was star-struck when he first visited a planetarium. The universe was calling him. Tyson pursued his interest in astronomy and studied to be an astrophysicist. In 1996, he became the director of New York's Hayden Planetarium. He is passionate about teaching people about the universe. Known for making science fun and easy to understand, he has hosted and appeared on TV shows such as Nova ScienceNow and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The discovery of DNA’s structure is the story of five towering minds in pursuit of the advancement of science, and for almost all of them, the prospect of fame and immortality: Watson, Crick, Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins, and Linus Pauling. Howard Markel skillfully recreates the intense intellectual journey, and fraught personal relationships, that ultimately led to a spectacular breakthrough. But it is Rosalind Franklin - fiercely determined, relentless, and an outsider at Cambridge and the University of London in the 1950s - who becomes a focal point for Markel.

As a kid, Aomawa Shields was always bumping into things, her neck craned up at the sky, dreaming of becoming an astronaut. A year into an astrophysics PhD program, plagued by self-doubt and discouraged by a white male professor who suggested that she—a young Black woman who also loved fashion, makeup, and the arts—didn’t belong, she left astronomy and pursued acting professionally for a decade, before a day job working for NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope drew her back to the stars.

Jailed as a scapegoat for Stalin's famines, Vavilov had traveled over five continents, collected hundreds of thousands of seeds in an effort to outline the ancient centers of agricultural diversity. Gary Paul Nabhan weaves together Vavilov's story with his own expeditions to Earth's richest agricultural landscapes and the cultures that tend them.

If you've replaced a computer lately - or a cell phone, a camera, a television - chances are, the old one still worked. And chances are even greater that the latest model won't last as long as the one it replaced. Welcome to the world of planned obsolescence - a business model, a way of life, and a uniquely American invention that this eye-opening book explores from its beginnings to its perilous implications for the very near future.

As Nazi Germany launched its campaign of racial terror and pushed the world toward war, three misfits banded together to challenge Hitler’s dominance at the apex of motorsport: the Grand Prix. Their quest for redemption culminated in a remarkable race that is still talked about in racing circles to this day - but which, soon after it ended, Hitler attempted to completely erase from history.

Charles Darwin did not deliberately set out to be the destroyer of mythical beliefs,” some of which, in his early days as a young Christian, he had previously espoused. He was a modest man who liked to avoid controversy of any kind, yet paradoxically, he was to be the cause of the greatest controversy in the history of science and religion.When Darwin embarked on the HMS Beagle in late December 1831, bound for the southern hemisphere, he could not have imagined that the experience would lead him to formulate a theory that would totally revolutionize the way in which we viewed the natural world.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and author of the classic The First Three Minutes, Weinberg shares his views on some of the most fundamental and fascinating aspects of physics and the universe. But he does not seclude science behind disciplinary walls or shy away from politics, taking on what he sees as the folly of manned spaceflight, the harms of inequality, and the importance of public goods. His point of view is rationalist, realist, reductionist, and devoutly secularist.

In the gripping Never Panic Early, Fred Haise, Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 13, offers a detailed firsthand account of when disaster struck three days into his mission to the moon. An oxygen tank exploded, a crewmate uttered the now iconic words, “Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and the world anxiously watched as one of history’s most incredible rescue missions unfolded. Haise brings listeners into the heart of his experience on the challenging mission—considered NASA’s finest hour—and reflects on his life and career as an Apollo astronaut.

New York Times, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, Discover bestselling author Steven Kotler has written extensively about those pivotal moments when science fiction became science fact...and fundamentally reshaped the world. Now he gathers the best of his best, updated and expanded upon, to guide listeners on a mind-bending tour of the far frontier, and how these advances are radically transforming our lives.

Do you have a need for speed? Does power make your heart pound? In Zoom It, you’ll invent a gas-powered boat, a catapult, an electric car, and many other amazing moving contraptions. When it comes to inventing, your imagination has no limits!

From quantum computing to VR training, and from 3D-printing to brain-computer interface, new technologies are reshaping business on the factory floor and in the C-suite. What should you and your company be doing now to take advantage of the new opportunities these technologies are creating - and avoid falling victim to disruption? The Year in Tech, 2022 will help you understand what the latest and most important tech innovations mean for your organization and how you can use them to compete and win in today's turbulent business environment.

On the evening of April 13, 1970, the three astronauts aboard Apollo 13 were just hours from the third lunar landing in history. But as they soared through space, 200,000 miles from Earth, an explosion badly damaged their spacecraft. Thirteen is the shocking and miraculous true story of how the astronauts and ground crew guided Apollo 13 back to Earth. Expanding on dispatches written for The New Yorker, Henry S. F. Cooper Jr. brings listeners unparalleled detail on the moment-by-moment developments of one of NASA’s most dramatic missions.