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Metazoa
- Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind
- Narrated by: Mitch Riley, Peter Godfrey-Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
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Publisher's summary
This program is read by Peter Godfrey-Smith with Mitch Riley.
The scuba-diving philosopher who wrote Other Minds explores the origins of animal consciousness.
Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom — the Metazoa— they can teach us much about the evolutionary origins of not only our bodies, but also our minds.
In his acclaimed 2016 book, Other Minds, the philosopher and scuba diver Peter Godfrey-Smith explored the mind of the octopus — the closest thing to an intelligent alien on Earth. In Metazoa, Godfrey-Smith expands his inquiry to animals at large, investigating the evolution of subjective experience with the assistance of far-flung species. As he delves into what it feels like to perceive and interact with the world as other life-forms do, Godfrey-Smith shows that the appearance of the animal body well over half a billion years ago was a profound innovation that set life upon a new path. In accessible, riveting prose, he charts the ways that subsequent evolutionary developments — eyes that track, for example, and bodies that move through and manipulate the environment — shaped the subjective lives of animals. Following the evolutionary paths of a glass sponge, soft coral, banded shrimp, octopus, and fish, then moving onto land and the world of insects, birds, and primates like ourselves, Metazoa gathers their stories together in a way that bridges the gap between mind and matter, addressing one of the most vexing philosophical problems: that of consciousness.
Combining vivid animal encounters with philosophical reflections and the latest news from biology, Metazoa reveals that even in our high-tech, AI-driven times, there is no understanding our minds without understanding nerves, muscles, and active bodies. The story that results is as rich and vibrant as life itself.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Consciousness is our gateway to experience: it enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine: philosophers have for centuries declared this mental entity so mysterious as to be impenetrable to science. In The Ravenous Brain, neuroscientist Daniel Bor departs sharply from this historical view, and proposes a new model for how consciousness works.
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Effectively demystifies consciousness
- By Gary on 11-18-12
By: Daniel Bor
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The Spike
- An Epic Journey Through the Brain in 2.1 Seconds
- By: Mark Humphries
- Narrated by: Anand Jagatia
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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This audiobook narrated by Anand Jagatia tells the extraordinary story of a neural impulse and what it reveals about how our brains work.
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Read this a year ago, very handy info
- By Philip Savva on 08-10-21
By: Mark Humphries
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Consciousness and the Social Brain
- By: Michael S. A. Graziano
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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What is consciousness and how can a brain, a mere collection of neurons, create it? In Consciousness and the Social Brain, Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano lays out an audacious new theory to account for the deepest mystery of them all. In Graziano's theory, the machinery that attributes awareness to others also attributes it to oneself. Damage that machinery and you disrupt your own awareness. Graziano discusses the science, the evidence, the philosophy, and the surprising implications of this new theory.
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Cutting edge...
- By Douglas on 08-07-14
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Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain
- By: Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Narrated by: Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Have you ever wondered why you have a brain? Let renowned neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett demystify that big gray blob between your ears. In seven short essays (plus a bite-sized story about how brains evolved), this slim, entertaining, and accessible collection reveals mind-expanding lessons from the front lines of neuroscience research. You'll learn where brains came from, how they're structured (and why it matters), and how yours works in tandem with other brains to create everything you experience.
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slow reader & little bit of a Wokie
- By darren on 06-01-21
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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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On Intelligence
- By: Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee
- Narrated by: Jeff Hawkins, Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, has reshaped our relationship to computers. Now he stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke, with a new understanding of intelligence itself.
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Epiphany
- By James on 03-14-05
By: Jeff Hawkins, and others
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Louder Than Words
- The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning
- By: Benjamin K. Bergen
- Narrated by: Benjamin K. Bergen
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Whether it’s brusque, convincing, fraught with emotion, or dripping with innuendo, language is fundamentally a tool for conveying meaning - a uniquely human magic trick in which you vibrate your vocal cords to make your innermost thoughts pop up in someone else’s mind. You can use it to talk about all sorts of things - from your new labradoodle puppy to the expansive gardens at Versailles, from Roger Federer’s backhand to things that don’t exist at all, like flying pigs.
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Fun But Technical--Glad I Got It On Sale
- By Gillian on 05-22-17
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The Complete (Short) Guide to Absolutely Everything
- Adventures in Math and Science
- By: Adam Rutherford, Hannah Fry
- Narrated by: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide listeners through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe.
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Enthralling facts, great delivery!
- By Skip on 04-11-24
By: Adam Rutherford, and others
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The Ego Tunnel
- The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
- By: Thomas Metzinger
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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We're used to thinking about the self as an independent entity, something that we either have or are. In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims otherwise: No such thing as a self exists. The conscious self is the content of a model created by our brain - an internal image, but one we cannot experience as an image. Everything we experience is "a virtual self in a virtual reality." But if the self is not "real," why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct it?
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non-specialist literature at its best
- By Esmeralda on 03-17-10
By: Thomas Metzinger
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Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?
- A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain
- By: Timothy Verstynen, Bradley Voytek
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?, neuroscientists and zombie enthusiasts Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek apply their neuro-know-how to dissect the puzzle of what has happened to the zombie brain to make the undead act differently than their human prey. Combining tongue-in-cheek analysis with modern neuroscientific principles, Verstynen and Voytek show how zombism can be understood in terms of current knowledge regarding how the brain works.
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Fun and informative; brilliant reading
- By Robert on 12-25-14
By: Timothy Verstynen, and others
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Why Evolution Is True
- By: Jerry A. Coyne
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Why evolution is more than just a theory: it is a fact. In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant "intelligent design", there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned: the evidence, the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection.
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As great as everyone says it is
- By Joseph on 12-01-10
By: Jerry A. Coyne
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Your Brain Is a Time Machine
- The Neuroscience and Physics of Time
- By: Dean Buonomano
- Narrated by: Aaron Abano
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell and perceive time. The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological flow and enables "mental time travel" - simulations of future and past events.
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Great book on an underrated subject
- By Neuron on 05-09-17
By: Dean Buonomano
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The Science of Rick and Morty
- The Unofficial Guide to Earth's Stupidest Show
- By: Matt Brady
- Narrated by: Joe Hempel
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Blending biology, chemistry, and physics basics with accessible - and witty-prose, The Science of Rick and Morty equips you with the scientific foundation to thoroughly understand Rick's experiments from the show, such as how we can use dark matter and energy, just what is intelligence hacking, and whether or not you can really control a cockroach's nervous system with your tongue. Perfect for longtime and new fans of the show, this is the ultimate segue into discovering more about our complicated and fascinating universe.
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Some good science in here?
- By Darin Harbert on 02-06-20
By: Matt Brady
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Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling.
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First 75% Really Great. Last Part Not as Much.
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Some of the best philosophers in the world gather in surprising places—preschools and playgrounds. They debate questions about metaphysics and morality, even though they’ve never heard those words and can’t tie their shoes. They’re kids. And as University of Michigan professor of philosophy and law Scott Hershovitz shows, they can help grown-ups solve some of life’s greatest mysteries.
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Explore the inner world of plants and its fascinating relation to mankind, as uncovered by the latest discoveries of science. A perennial best seller! In this truly revolutionary and beloved work, drawn from remarkable research, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird cast light on the rich psychic universe of plants. Now available in a new edition, The Secret Life of Plants explores plants' response to human care and nurturing, their ability to communicate with man, plants' surprising reaction to music, their lie-detection abilities, their creative powers, and much more.
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Skeptics beware. Lots of psychobabble.
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The Tangled Tree
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In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection - a type of HGT. In The Tangled Tree David Quammen chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them.
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Very Enjoyable and Readable
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The Secret Lives of Bats
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A lifetime of adventures with bats around the world reveals why these special and imperiled creatures should be protected rather than feared.
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Very Disappointing
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Symphony in C
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An enchanting biography of the most resonant - and most necessary - chemical element on Earth. Carbon. It's in the fibers in your hair, the timbers in your walls, the food that you eat, and the air that you breathe. It's worth billions as a luxury and half a trillion as a necessity, but there are still mysteries yet to be solved about the element that can be both diamond and coal. Where does it come from, what does it do, and why, above all, does life need it?
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There is a Caveat
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By: Robert M. Hazen
What listeners say about Metazoa
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Inez
- 12-17-23
VERY IMPRESSIVE
I listened to it as Smith's follow up book. I wanted more of the Marine Biology. So much of this went right over my head.
I need to start with some beginner's books. I did enjoy the parts I could stretch my shriveled old brain around.
i LOVE THE LEAFY SEADRAGON ON THE COVER. That's reason enough to buy the book.
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- Jason
- 03-14-22
A primer on the evolution of consciousness
An enlightening story of Earth's life and how it came to be self aware.
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- Craig
- 01-06-22
well written, easy to listen to
peters voice is pleasant, i feel that anyone reading his works would be inadequate. i do appreciate the work being done by this man, and consideration should be given to animal with a gradient or levels of consciousness. however towards the end peter makes a couple assertions in that robots/ ai cannot be made conscious by replicating the patterns of human mind. it is asserted that there's something still missing from them which cannot be simulated, i feel this assertion is unfounded and had no supporting argument, which later on he acknowledges robots may one day become conscious(making that whole segmentkind of useless as it supported nothing else). besides that end piece, this is a great read for anyone interested in ethics and animal rights.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Tom
- 11-29-21
Fascinating Journey through Philosophy and Biology
As in his book, Other Minds, a wonderful experience watching his mind work and his theories unfurl. More thoughts to follow, but my favorite takeaway is Our Mind is a Garden of things that arise and things that we furnish.
In this amazing book he traces the evolutionary journey of the rise of consciousness from sponges and soft corals through arthropods and cephalopods to Humans. Even more importantly he proposes a theory of the Human Experiential Profile that transcends the mechanical storm of cell to cell communication to encompass all of Felt Experience.
Listening to his narration really captures his fascination with his topic and the incredible detail he brings to his research. Five Stars *****
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- Anonymous User
- 11-09-21
Mind-Body
Metazoa speaks to one of the most fundamental questions in Philosophy - the relationship between the mind and body. Even stating the question that way objectifies the mind, which is a disservice to the point of the book. The person who listens to this book needs to be ready for a lot of detail, but that detail is fascinating if one is interested in the point of the book. Peter Godfrey-Smith does a masterful job of examining an old question in a new way.
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- SJR
- 07-02-22
Wonderful
How and when did mind come about through evolution? Pleasurable stimulating journey of philosophy and science.
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- Okan Tezucar
- 02-22-23
What a story
We’ll done with all the necessary details and true facts. Recommend for all book lovers
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- Lor
- 03-21-23
Beautifully written
Peter Godfrey-Smith is a gifted writer. He strings ordinary words into exquisitely beautiful sentences. His ideas are thoroughly and sensitively thought out. I want to read everything he’s written!
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- Wilg Flanders
- 02-28-21
outstanding
Best book I have read or listened to this year. Although I have been reading related information for decades, this book brought me new facts and a new perspective. I am still processing what that new perspective means for how I view the world and what my moral obligations are to other forms of life.
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8 people found this helpful
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- DD
- 02-05-22
Detailed review with important concepts
This book starts slow and moves slow in the beginning but the concepts are developed and the thesis of thought is important to consider and be exposed to.
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