From the No. 1 bestselling author of What If? - the man who created xkcd and explained the laws of science with cartoons - comes a series of brilliantly simple diagrams ('blueprints' if you want to be complicated about it) that show how important things work: from the nuclear bomb to the biro. It's good to know what the parts of a thing are called, but it's much more interesting to know what they do. Richard Feynman once said that if you can't explain something to a first-year student, you don't really get it. In Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe takes a quantum leap past this: he explains things using only drawings and a vocabulary of just our 1,000 (or the ten hundred) most common words. Many of the things we use every day - like our food-heating radio boxes ('microwaves'), our very tall roads ('bridges'), and our computer rooms ('datacentres') - are strange to us. So are the other worlds around our sun (the solar system), the big flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates), and even the stuff inside us (cells). Where do these things come from? How do they work? What do they look like if you open them up? And what would happen if we heated them up, cooled them down, pointed them in a different direction, or pressed this button? In Thing Explainer, Munroe gives us the answers to these questions and many, many more. Funny, interesting, and always understandable, this book is for anyone -- age 5 to 105 -- who has ever wondered how things work, and why.

Blood is life, its complex composition is finely attuned to our vital needs and functions. Blood can also signify death, while 'bloody' is a curse. Arising from the 2021 Darwin College Lectures, this volume invites leading thinkers on the subject to explore the many meanings of blood across a diverse range of disciplines. Through the eyes of artist Marc Quinn, the paradoxical nature of blood plays with the notion of self. Through those of geneticist Walter Bodmer, it becomes a scientific reality: bloodlines and diaspora capture our notions of community. The transfer of blood between bodies, as Rose George relates, can save lives, or as we learn from Claire Roddie can cure cancer. Tim Pedley and Stuart Egginton explore the extraordinary complexity of blood as a critical biological fluid. Sarah Read examines the intimate connection between blood and womanhood, as Carol Senf does in her consideration of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.

The third volume in Leonard Susskind's one-of-a-kind physics series cracks open Einstein's special relativity and field theory In the first two books in his wildly popular The Theoretical Minimum series, world-class physicist Leonard Susskind provided a brilliant first course in classical and quantum mechanics, offering readers not an oversimplified introduction, but the real thing - everything you need to start doing physics, and nothing more. Now, thankfully, Susskind and his former student Art Friedman are back, this time to introduce readers to special relativity and classical field theory. At last, waves, forces and particles will be demystified. Using their typical brand of relatively simple maths, enlightening sketches and the same fictional counterparts, Art and Lenny, Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory takes us on an enlightening journey through a world now governed by the laws of special relativity. Starting in their new watering hole, Hermann's Hideaway, with a lesson on relativity, Art and Lenny walk us through the complexities of Einstein's famous theory. Combining rigor with humour, Susskind and Friedman guarantee that Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory will become part of the reader's physics toolbox.

'A tour de force . . . an important, affecting and effective book' ALASTAIR CAMPBELL '[A] gorgeous and urgent book' STEVEN PINKER 'MENDING THE MIND reminds us that, despite our hazy understanding of depression, and despite the true horror of the illness, some hope for recovery remains' THE TIMES Sadness is an inevitable part of life, but for most people it will usually alternate or coexist with happy times. Clinical depression, on the other hand, is a mental disorder that causes torment and anguish. It has no moments of relief. It unhinges us from everything we thought we knew about the world and makes us strangers to those we love. It is the predominant mental-health problem worldwide, affecting more than 250 million people. More than a fifth of the population of the UK report symptoms of depression or anxiety. Yet how much do we really know of the condition and of ways to treat it? In MENDING THE MIND, Oliver Kamm recounts what it's like to be mentally ill with severe depression, and he details the route by which, with professional help, he was able to make a full recovery. His experience prompted him to find out all he could about a condition that has afflicted humanity throughout recorded history. He explains the progress of science in understanding depression, and the insights into the condition that have been provided by writers and artists through the ages. His message is hopeful: though depression is a real and devastating illness, the mind and its disorders are yielding to scientific inquiry, and effective psychological, psychiatric and pharmacological treatments are already available. Candid, revelatory and deeply versed in current scientific research, MENDING THE MIND sets out in plain language how the scourge of clinical depression can be countered and may eventually be overcome.

Sunday Times bestseller We have a lifetime's association with our bodies, but for many of us they remain uncharted territory. In Adventures in Human Being, Gavin Francis leads the reader on a journey through health and illness, offering insights on everything from the ribbed surface of the brain to the secret workings of the heart and the womb; from the pulse of life at the wrist to the unique engineering of the foot. Drawing on his own experiences as a doctor and GP, he blends first-hand case studies with reflections on the way the body has been imagined and portrayed over the millennia. If the body is a foreign country, then to practise medicine is to explore new territory: Francis leads the reader on an adventure through what it means to be human. Both a user's guide to the body and a celebration of its elegance, this book will transform the way you think about being alive, whether in sickness or in health. Published in association with the Wellcome Collection. WELLCOME COLLECTION Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries. wellcomecollection.org

Did you know your irises are lying to you and all human eyes are actually brown? Want to know the absolute worst way to die, according to science? Did you know that a smoking psychedelic toad milk could alleviate depression for up to four weeks? 117 Things You Should F*#king Know About Your World tells you the answers to these questions and many more weird and wonderful facts about the universe. Split into the site's different subject areas of environment, technology, space, health and medicine, plants and animals, physics and chemistry, this is the ultimate science book. With 25 million social media followers, I F*#king Love Science is the world's favourite source of science on the web. From missing nuclear weapons and Facebook secret files to the world's smallest computer and why you should wrap your car keys in tinfoil, this is the book that only the world's leading source of crazy-but-true stories could produce.

A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022 'A thrilling deep-dive through our evolutionary past, and a witty and learned commentary on why we are the way we are - and what wisdom we've lost along the way' Cal Flynn, author of Islands of Abandonment 'A wild ride: brave, outrageous, hilarious, helpful and urgent ... essential reading' Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Lives What kind of creature is a human? If we don't know what we are, how can we know how to act? Charles Foster sets out to understand what a human is, inhabiting the sensory worlds of humans at three pivotal moments in our history. Foster begins his quest with his son in a Derbyshire wood, trying to find a way of experiencing the world that recognises the deep expanse of time when we understood ourselves as hunter-gatherers, and when modern consciousness was first ignited. From there he travels to the Neolithic, a way of being defined by fences, farms, sky gods and slaughterhouses, and finally to the Enlightenment, when we decided that the universe was a machine and we were soulless cogs within it.

AN INTRIGUING AND BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF YORICK WILKS' INSIDERS GUIDE TO AI The benefits and potential nightmares of artificial intelligence have long inspired science-fiction writers, but in a world where most of us carry a portable device that knows infinitely more than we do, these are increasingly real concerns. Artificial Intelligence is the essential companion to this unsettling science. It surveys the history, philosophies, and current state of AI, and asks key questions such as how should robots think, and can machines really learn? With subjects ranging from the World Wide Web to artificial companions, the book considers such ethical issues as automated warfare, internet surveillance, and fake news, speculating on just how far robots will infiltrate our future. This illustrated edition combines compelling photographs with 'circuit-board' infographics to lift the curtain on the hidden world of AI.

Who is the 'Devil'? And what is he due? The Devil is anyone who disagrees with you. And what he is due is the right to speak his mind. He must have this for your own safety's sake because his freedom is inextricably tied to your own. If he can be censored, why shouldn't you be censored? If we put barriers up to silence 'unpleasant' ideas, what's to stop the silencing of any discussion? This book is a full-throated defense of free speech and open inquiry in politics, science, and culture by the New York Times bestselling author and skeptic Michael Shermer. The new collection of essays and articles takes the Devil by the horns by tackling five key themes: free thought and free speech, politics and society, scientific humanism, religion, and the ideas of controversial intellectuals. For our own sake, we must give the Devil his due.

'A rich feast of his essays, reviews, forewords, squibs and conversations, in which talent and passion are married to deep knowledge.' Matt Ridley 'Enjoy the unfailing clarity of his thought and prose, as well as the grandeur of his vision of life on Earth.' - Mark Cocker, Spectator 'Richard Dawkins is a thunderously gifted science writer.' Sunday Times Including conversations with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley and more, this is an essential guide to the most exciting ideas of our time and their proponents from our most brilliant science communicator. Books Do Furnish a Life is divided by theme, including celebrating nature, exploring humanity, and interrogating faith. For the first time, it brings together Richard Dawkins' forewords, afterwords and introductions to the work of some of the leading thinkers of our age - Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Jacob Bronowski, Lewis Wolpert - with a selection of his reviews to provide an electrifying celebration of science writing, both fiction and non-fiction. It is also a sparkling addition to Dawkins' own remarkable canon of work. Plenty of other scientists write well, but no one writes like Dawkins... here is Dawkins the teacher, the scholar, the polemicist, the joker, the aesthete, the poet, the satirist, the man of compassion as well as indignation, the slayer of superstition and, above all, the scientist. - Areo Magazine

An exploration of the transformative ways in which nature has inspired the technological advancement of humankind. Biomimetics literally means emulating biology - and in a broader sense the term covers technological advances where the original inspiration came from nature. The Earth is a vast laboratory where the mechanisms of natural selection have enabled evolutionary solutions to be developed to a wide range of problems. In this new title in the Hot Science series, science writer Brian Clegg looks at how humans have piggybacked on natural experimentation, redeploying a solution to create things that make our lives easier. He looks at how the hooks on burdock seeds inspired the creation of Velcro, how the stickiness of the feet of geckos and frogs has been used to create gripping surfaces, such as tyre treads, and how even the most basic optical enhancement in the form of spectacles is itself a form of biomimetics.

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Elephant's on Acid comes a collection of the wackiest theories from science and history.

What if we’re living inside a black hole? What if we’ve already found extraterrestrial life? What if the dinosaurs died in a nuclear war? What if Jesus Christ was actually a mushroom?

In Psychedelic Apes, bestselling author Alex Boese will delve into the curious scientific subculture of weird theories. Thoroughly bizarre and contrary to the established norm, these ideas are often vehemently rejected by the intellectual community.

From the creation of the universe to the evolution of humans, the birth of civilization right through to our more recent past, Psychedelic Apes explores some of the craziest ideas from science and history and shows that, sometimes, even the weirdest theories may be proved true . . .

'This is the story of how your life shapes your brain, and how your brain shapes your life.' Join renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman on a whistle-stop tour of the inner cosmos. It's a journey that will take you into the world of extreme sports, criminal justice, genocide, brain surgery, robotics and the search for immortality. On the way, amidst the infinitely dense tangle of brain cells and their trillions of connections, something emerges that you might not have expected to see: you.

We evolved to eat berries rather than bagels, to live in mud huts rather than condos, to sprint barefoot rather than play football or did we? Are our bodies and brains truly at odds with modern life? Although it may seem as though we have barely had time to shed our hunter-gatherer legacy, biologist Marlene Zuk reveals that the story is not so simple. Popular theories about how our ancestors lived and why we should emulate them are often based on speculation, not scientific evidence.

Armed with a razor-sharp wit and brilliant, eye-opening research, Zuk takes us to the cutting edge of biology to show that evolution can work much faster than was previously realized, meaning that we are not biologically the same as our caveman ancestors. Contrary to what the glossy magazines would have us believe, we do not enjoy potato chips because they crunch just like the insects our forebears snacked on. And women don t go into shoe-shopping frenzies because their prehistoric foremothers gathered resources for their clans. As Zuk compellingly argues, such beliefs incorrectly assume that we re stuck finished evolving and have been for tens of thousands of years. She draws on fascinating evidence that examines everything from adults ability to drink milk to the texture of our ear wax to show that we ve actually never stopped evolving. Our nostalgic visions of an ideal evolutionary past in which we ate, lived, and reproduced as we were meant to fail to recognize that we were never perfectly suited to our environment. Evolution is about change, and every organism is full of trade-offs.

From debunking the caveman diet to unraveling gender stereotypes, Zuk delivers an engrossing analysis of widespread paleofantasies and the scientific evidence that undermines them, all the while broadening our understanding of our origins and what they can really tell us about our present and our future."

From the global impact of the Coronavirus to exploring the vast spread of the Australian bushfires, join authors Ian Goldin and Robert Muggah as they trace the ways in which our world has changed and the ways in which it will continue to change over the next hundred years.

Map-making is an ancient impulse. From the moment homo sapiens learnt to communicate we have used them to make sense of our surroundings. But as Albert Einstein once said, 'you can't use old maps to explore a new world.' And now, when the world is changing faster than ever before, our old maps are no longer fit for purpose.

Welcome to Terra Incognita. Based on decades of research, and combining mesmerising, state-of-the-art satellite maps with enlightening and passionately argued analysis, Ian and Robert chart humanity's impact on the planet, and the ways in which we can make a real impact to save it, and to thrive as a species.

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rn about: fires in the arctic; the impact of sea level rise on cities around the world; the truth about immigration - and why fears in the West are a myth; the counter-intuitive future of population rise; the miracles of health and education that are waiting around the corner, and the reality about inequality, and how we end it. The book traces the paths of peoples, cities, wars, climates and technologies, all on a global scale. Full of facts that will confound you, inform you, and ultimately empower you, Terra Incognita guides readers to a new place of understanding, rather than to a physical location.

'Pontzer's findings have huge implications for our attitudes to exercise, diet and public health' Mark Webster, Sunday Times A myth-busting tour of the body's hidden foundations from a pioneering evolutionary biologist 'Public health strategies stubbornly cling to the simplistic armchair engineer's view of metabolism, hurting efforts to combat obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and the other diseases that are most likely to kill us' Herman Pontzer's ground-breaking research has revealed how, contrary to received wisdom, exercise does not increase our metabolism. Instead, we burn calories within a very narrow range: nearly 3,000 calories per day, no matter our activity level. In this book, he draws on twenty years of cutting-edge science to take a closer look at what happens to the energy we consume. Burn explores the ways in which metabolism controls every aspect of our health - from fertility to immune function - and reveals the truth about the dynamic system that sustains us. Filled with facts and memorable anecdotes, this book will change the way you think about food, exercise and what really matters for your health.

What are the mysterious numbers that unlock the secrets of the universe? In Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, leading theoretical physicist and YouTube star Tony Padilla takes us on an irreverent cosmic tour of the most extraordinary numbers in physics, using them to build a picture of how the universe works. These include Graham's number, which is so large that if you thought about it in the wrong way, your head would collapse into a singularity; TREE(3) and the mathematical games that could carry on until the universe reset itself; and 10^{-120}, which measures the desperately unlikely balance of energy the universe, and you, need to exist. Leading us down the rabbit hole to the inner workings of reality, Padilla demonstrates how these unusual numbers-big, small and worryingly infinite-are the key to unlocking such mind-bending phenomena as black holes, the holographic truth and the problem of the cosmological constant, where our two best theories of the universe come together with embarrassing consequences. Combining cutting-edge science with an entertaining cosmic quest, Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them is an electrifying, head-twisting guide to the most fundamental truths of the universe.

For fans of Oliver Sacks and Henry Marsh, a glimpse into the fascinating world of modern neurology by a leading expert in the field. As a trainee doctor, Andrew Lees was enthralled by his mentors: esteemed neurologists who combined the precision of mathematicians, the scrupulosity of entomologists and the solemnity of undertakers in their diagnoses and treatments. For them, there was no such thing as an unexplained symptom or psychosomatic problem-no difficult cases, only interesting ones-and it was only a matter of time before all disorders of the brain would be understood in terms of anatomical, electrical, and chemical connections. Today, this kind of "holistic neurology" is on the brink of extinction as a slavish adherence to protocols and algorithms-plus a worship of machines-runs the risk of destroying the key foundational clinical skills of listening, observation and imagination that have been at the heart of the discipline for over 150 years. In this series of brilliant, insightful, and autobiographical essays, Andrew Lees takes us on a kind of Sherlock Holmes tour of neurology, giving the reader insight into-and a defense of-the deep analytical tools that the best neurologists still rely on to diagnose patients: to heal minds and to fix brains.

OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD 'A remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain' Oliver Sacks 'Utterly wonderful . . . without question one of the most important books about the brain you will ever read; yet it is beautifully written, immensely approachable, and full of humanity' Iain McGilchrist MA, author of The Master and His Emissary Meet the ninety-year-old doctor who is still practicing medicine, the stroke victim who learned to move and talk again and the woman with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole. All these people had their lives transformed by the remarkable discovery that our brains can repair themselves through the power of positive thinking. Here bestselling author, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge reveals the secrets of the cutting-edge science of 'neuroplasticity'. He introduces incredible case histories - blind people helped to see, IQs raised and memories sharpened - and tells the stories of the maverick scientists who are overturning centuries of assumptions about the brain. This inspiring book will leave you with a sense of wonder at the capabilities of the mind, and the self-healing power that lies within all of us.

The full story of how our relationship with light shapes our health, productivity and mood.

'A sparkling and illuminating study, one of those rare books that could genuinely improve your life' Sunday Times

Since the dawn of time, humans have worshipped the sun. And with good reason. Our biology is set up to work in partnership with it. From our sleep cycles to our immune systems and our mental health, access to sunlight is crucial for living a happy and fulfilling life. New research suggests that our sun exposure over a lifetime - even before we were born - may shape our risk of developing a range of different illnesses, from depression to diabetes.

Bursting with cutting-edge science and eye-opening advice, Chasing the Sun explores the extraordinary significance of sunlight, from ancient solstice celebrations to modern sleep labs, and from the unexpected health benefits of sun exposure to what the Amish know about sleep that the rest of us don't.

As more of us move into light-polluted cities, spending our days in dim offices and our evenings watching brightly lit screens, we are in danger of losing something vital: our connection to the star that gave us life. It's a loss that could have far-reaching consequences that we're only just beginning to grasp.

A fresh look at electricity and its powerful role in life on Earth 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. The story of how we came to understand electricity's essential role in all life is rooted in our observations of its influences on the body-influences governed by the body's central nervous system. Spark explains the science of electricity from this fresh, biological perspective. Through vivid tales of scientists and individuals-from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk-Timothy Jorgensen shows how our views of electricity and the nervous system evolved in tandem, and how progress in one area enabled advancements in the other. He explains how these developments have allowed us to understand-and replicate-the ways electricity enables the body's essential functions of sight, hearing, touch, and movement itself. Throughout, Jorgensen examines our fascination with electricity and how it can help or harm us. He explores a broad range of topics and events, including the Nobel Prize-winning discoveries of the electron and neuron, the history of experimentation involving electricity's effects on the body, and recent breakthroughs in the use of electricity to treat disease. Filled with gripping adventures in scientific exploration, Spark offers an indispensable look at electricity, how it works, and how it animates our lives from within and without.

An NRC Handelsblad Book of the Year "Offers rich discussions of olfactory perception, the conscious and subconscious impacts of smell on behavior and emotion." -Science Decades of cognition research have shown that external stimuli "spark" neural patterns in particular regions of the brain. We think of the brain as a space we can map: here it responds to faces, there it perceives a sensation. But the sense of smell-only recently attracting broader attention in neuroscience-doesn't work this way. So what does the nose tell the brain, and how does the brain understand it? A. S. Barwich turned to experts in neuroscience, psychology, chemistry, and perfumery in an effort to understand the mechanics and meaning of odors. She discovered that scents are often fickle, and do not line up with well-defined neural regions. Upending existing theories of perception, Smellosophy offers a new model for understanding how the brain senses and processes odors. "A beguiling analysis of olfactory experience that is fast becoming a core reference work in the field." -Irish Times "Lively, authoritative...Aims to rehabilitate smell's neglected and marginalized status." -Wall Street Journal "This is a special book...It teaches readers a lot about olfaction. It teaches us even more about what philosophy can be." -Times Literary Supplement

A fully updated edition of one of the most original accounts of evolution ever written, featuring new fractal diagrams, six new 'tales' and the latest scientific developments. THE ANCESTOR'S TALE is a dazzling, four-billion-year pilgrimage to the origins of life: Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong take us on an exhilarating reverse journey through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginnings of life. It is a journey happily interrupted by meetings of fellow modern animals (as well as plants, fungi and bacteria) similarly tracing their evolutionary path back through history. As each evolutionary pilgrim tells their tale, Dawkins and Wong shed light on topics such as speciation, sexual selection and extinction. Written with unparalleled wit, clarity and intelligence; taking in new scientific discoveries of the past decade; and including new 'tales', illustrations and fractal diagrams, THE ANCESTOR'S TALE shows us how remarkable we are, how astonishing our history, and how intimate our relationship with the rest of the living world.

Why do some people like a certain aroma and others hate it? Is smell personal or cultural? How does it affect our choices and our actions?

The Scent of Desire is the definitive psychological study of the importance of smell in our lives, from nourishment to procreation to our relationships with other people and the world at large. Located in the same part of the brain that processes emotion, memory, and motivation, this most essential of senses is imperative to our physical and emotional well-being. It was crucial to our ancestors' existence and it remains so today, profoundly shaping our emotional, physical, and even sexual lives.

One of the world's leading experts on the psychology of smell, Rachel Herz investigates how smell functions, what purpose it serves, and how inextricably it is linked to our survival in this compelling, surprising, delightfully informative appreciation of the wonders of this sadly neglected sense.

'Endlessly fascinating and full of surprises. Easily one of my books of the year' BILL BRYSON The myth-busting science behind our modern attitudes to exercise: what our bodies really need, why it matters, and its effects on health and wellbeing. In industrialized nations, our sedentary lifestyles have contributed to skyrocketing rates of obesity and diseases like diabetes. A key remedy, we are told, is exercise - voluntary physical activity for the sake of health. However, most of us struggle to stay fit, and our attitudes to exercise are plagued by misconceptions, finger-pointing and anxiety. But, as Daniel Lieberman shows in Exercised, the first book of its kind by a leading scientific expert, we never evolved to exercise. We are hardwired for moderate exertion throughout each day, not triathlons or treadmills. Drawing on over a decade of high-level scientific research and eye-opening insights from evolutionary biology and anthropology, Lieberman explains precisely how exercise can promote health; debunks persistent myths about sitting, speed, strength and endurance; and points the way towards more enjoyable and physically active living in the modern world. 'Myth-busting, illuminating, brilliant - Lieberman will completely change the way you think about your body' Professor ALICE ROBERTS, presenter of Our Incredible Human Journey