n 1963, Stephen Hawking contracted motor neurone disease and was given two years to live. Yet he went on to Cambridge to become a brilliant researcher and Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College.

This set covers 10 x 15 minute series on Radio 4 which was part of a two-week "Brain Season".

It explains in clear terms the latest discoveries in neuroscience. In this unprecedented journey, covering over 2,500 years of development in our understanding of what it is to be human.

In A Short History of Nearly Everything, beloved author Bill Bryson confronts his greatest challenge yet: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves.

In 1913, English physicist Henry Moseley established an elegant method for 'counting' the elements. Soon afterwards, it became clear that there were precisely seven elements missing from the periodic table―those that had yet to be isolated among the 92 naturally occurring elements from hydrogen (#1) to uranium (#92).

A Genius Performance by Derek Jacobi!

Ask a dozen people to name a genius and the odds are that 'Einstein' will spring to their lips. Ask them the meaning of 'relativity' and few of them will be able to tell you what it is.

In this astonishing and startling audiobook, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government ....

We are obsessed with our health, yet we are constantly bombarded with inaccurate, contradictory and misleading information. Ben Goldacre dismantles the dodgy science behind some of the great drug trials

Drawing on the lives of five great scientists, this "scholarly, insightful, and beautifully written book" (Martin Rees, author of From Here to Infinity) illuminates the path to scientific discovery.

Cancer is the second biggest killer in the world, but few of us understand how it works or how we treat it. In this illuminating introductory audiobook, Paul Scotting explains the science behind the disease and explores why some of us are more likely to develop it than others.

For most people, thoughtful behaviour and common decency are in short supply, or simply forgotten in hurried lives of emails, mobile phones and multi-tasking.

In CHOOSING CIVILITY, civility expert P M Forni identifies the 25 rules that are most essential in connecting effectively and happily with others.

In the past, we filled our free time with the tools at our disposal. Television became a kind of universal part-time job, and sitcoms and soap operas sponged up our cognitive surplus: the collective surfeit of time, intellect and energy at our disposal.

An expose of the current state of psychiatry that reveals how the pursuit of pharmaceutical riches has compromised the patients' well-being. In an effort to enlighten a new generation about its growing reliance on psychiatry, this illuminating volume investigates why psychiatry has become the ....

Neil deGrasse Tyson has a talent for explaining the mysteries of outer space with stunning clarity and almost childlike enthusiasm. This collection of his essays from Natural History magazine explores a myriad of cosmic topics, from astral life at the frontiers of astrobiology to the movie industry's feeble efforts to get its images of night skies right.

How easy is it to fall off a log? Where is the middle of nowhere? Do we really have no bananas?

Over the past few years, devastating tsunamis off the coast of the Indian Ocean have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Even more alarmingly, scientists predict that these tsunamis, as well as a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, will be striking with even greater frequency and may eventually threaten Hawaii, California, and Oregon.

For decades we have been taught that fat is bad for us, carbohydrates better, and that the key to a healthy weight is eating less and exercising more. Yet despite this advice, we have seen unprecedented epidemics of obesity and diabetes.

Our gut is as important as our brain or heart, yet we know very little about how it works and many of us are too embarrassed to ask questions. In Gut, Giulia Enders breaks this taboo, revealing the latest science on how much our digestive system has to offer.

The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way.

Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy—both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively.

From the New York Times?bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You, a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas. In this volume, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life ..............

This riveting audio explains history's most exciting discoveries. In this series, listeners will travel back in time, experiencing the lives and cultures of some of the world's greatest scientists.

The study of life and its existence in the universe, known as astrobiology, is now one of the hottest areas of both popular science and serious academic research, fusing biology, chemistry, astrophysics, and geology. Lewis Dartnell tours its latest findings, and explores some of the most fascinating ....

One of the nation's most popular presenters examines twenty marvels of the natural world from his extraordinary and pioneering experiences.

What was Sir David's first pet? Which animal would he most like to be? What creature lays 'the biggest egg in the world'? How do you communicate with an ancient nomadic community in Fiji? And what did Sir David do when confronted by a ten-foot-long reptile?

How does your personality shape your life , and what, if anything, can you do about it?Are you hardwired for happiness, or born to brood? Do you think you're in charge of your future, or do you surf the waves of unknowable fate? Would you be happier, or just less socially adept,

In clinical trials, it's called the placebo effect. But patients treated with placebos don't just feel better. It's not just 'in their heads'. They can heal their bodies by healing their thoughts. For years, pioneers in the medical community have been extolling the virtues of the mind's power to heal the body.

Why do many flowers have five or eight petals, but very few six or seven? Why do snowflakes have sixfold symmetry? Why do tigers have stripes but leopards have spots? Mathematics is to nature as Sherlock Holmes is to evidence.

""On the Origin of Species" must be high on any serious list of the most important and influential books ever written. On its first publication in 1859, Thomas Henry Huxley exclaimed 'How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that.'

Patrick Moore's Astronomy will ensure you recognize what you are seeing in the night sky. You will investigate the sun, moon, planets comets and stars and learn how to observe them. This comprehensive guide, complete with star charts, will map out the skies and allow you to impress your friends with your knowledge of the sky at night.

In this technology-driven age, it’s tempting to believe that science can solve every mystery. After all, science has cured countless diseases and even sent humans into space. But as Jonah Lehrer argues in this sparkling debut, science is not the only path to knowledge. In fact, when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first.

Hear a day in the life of the Amazonian rainforest, a continuous sequence of beautiful and exotic sounds. From dawn till dusk the magic of the rainforest unfolds, with rare birds, monkeys, insects, frogs and toads. There is an afternoon equatorial rainstorm, and the evening chorus of birds once ....

A Genius Performance by Stephen Fry!

Stephen Fry first travelled to Peru to investigate Paddington Bear's origins in the BBC documentary, "Paddington Bear: The Early Years". However, the surprise star of the show turned out to be a real live bear named Yogi. 

Analyzes the psychological and cultural factors that cause many people to be obsessed with attaining unrealistically slender physical proportions.

A brilliant examination into how the internet is profoundly changing the way we think.

In this groundbreaking book, Wired writer Clive Thompson argues that the internet is boosting our brainpower, encouraging new ways of thinking, and making us more not less intelligent as is so often claimed.

A brilliant examination into how the internet is profoundly changing the way we think.

In this groundbreaking book, Wired writer Clive Thompson argues that the internet is boosting our brainpower, encouraging new ways of thinking, and making us more not less intelligent as is so often claimed.

Dr James Hansen, the world's leading scientist on climate issues, speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: the planet is hurtling to a climatic point of no return. Hansen - whose climate predictions have come to pass again and again, beginning in the 1980s when he first warned US Congress about global warming - is the single most credible voice on the subject worldwide.

Jason Padgett was an ordinary, not terribly bright, 41-year-old working in his father's furniture shop when he was the victim of a brutal mugging outside a karaoke bar in 2002.

That same night his stepfather died of cancer, and two weeks later his only brother went missing (his body was discovered three year later).

Why would a casino try and stop you from losing? How can a mathematical formula find your future spouse? Would you know if a statistical analysis blackballed you from a job you wanted?

The Ancestor's Tale is a pilgrimage back through time; a journey on which we meet up with fellow pilgrims as we and they converge on our common ancestors. Chimpanzees join us at about 6 million years in the past, orangutans at 14 million years, as we stride on together, a growing band. The journey provides the setting for a collection of some 40 tales. Each explores an aspect of evolutionary biology through the stories of characters met along the way.

From a bestselling author and the most-followed psychologist on Twitter, this "intriguing new slant to personal transformation" (Kirkus Reviews) shows you how to take control of your life in an instant. Victorian philosopher William James had a theory about emotion and behavior:

How feminine values can solve our toughest problems and build a more prosperous future Among 64,000 people surveyed in thirteen nations, two thirds feel the world would be a better place if men thought more like women.

Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers' genes far and wide.

If ever there was an audiobook to make you switch off your television set, ‘The Dangerous Book for Boys’ is it.

Packed with fascinating facts and tantalising trivia. Includes an introduction read by Conn Iggulden.

The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic.

The classic personal account of Watson and Crick s groundbreaking discovery of the structure of DNA, now with an introduction by Sylvia Nasar, author of "A Beautiful Mind."

For two hundred years a noble Venetian family has suffered from an inherited disease that strikes their members in middle age, stealing their sleep, eating holes in their brains, and ending their lives in a matter of months. In Papua New Guinea, a primitive tribe is nearly obliterated by a sickness whose chief symptom is uncontrollable laughter.

The truth about the Ebola Virus. This book looks into the current information about this shocking virus and how the US Government have been involved. Facinating listen!

In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves ...

Finally, we are learning that simplicity equals sanity.

We're rebelling against technology that's too complicated, DVD players with too many menus, and software accompanied by 75-megabyte "read me" manuals.

The Making of the Fittest This history of DNA offers listeners a tour of the massive DNA record of three billion years of evolution to see how the fittest are made. This work argues for evolution as it examines immortal genes, fossil genes, and genes that bear the scars of past battles with horrible diseases.

Is morality universal? Why are men less faithful than women? Why do some businesses succeed while others collapse?

If we have a natural impulse to empathise and care for each other, why are there psychopaths? Neuroscientist and economist Paul Zak has spent 10 years researching to answer these questions and discovering the chemical driver of our behaviour.

A highly readable account of the way in which emotionally charged theories about the causes of autism

The world was shocked when a computer, Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov, arguably the greatest human chess player ever to have lived. This remarkable victory, and other, more day-to-day innovations, beg serious questions: what are the limits of what computers can do Can they think Do they learn

A stunning synthesis of hidden science and lost prophecies, The Hidden Science of Lost Civilisations exposes many great secrets: DNA transformation, consciousness science, wormholes, stargate travel, scared geometry, ancient conspiracies, multidimensional time, the Maya calendar and a stunning new model of galactic energy fields triggering mental, biological and spiritual evolution.

In his new book human paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall argues that a long tradition of "human exceptionalism" in paleoanthropology has distorted the picture of human evolution. Drawing partly on his own career - from young scientist in awe of his elders to crotchety elder statesman -

P.M. Forni is America's civility expert. In his first two books he taught readers the rules of civil behaviour and ways of responding to rudeness.

In "The Thinking Life", he looks at the importance of thinking in our lives: how we do it, why we don't do enough of it and why we need to do more of it because, for Forni, serious thinking leads to the good life.

Unravelling the latest amazing breakthroughs in theoretical physics, Stephen Hawking guides the reader through the evolution of Einsteinian physics to a universe of ten dimensions and a so-called theory of everything.

Stephen Hawking is an intellectual icon, known not only for the adventurousness of his ideas but for the clarity and wit with which he expresses them.

His phenomenal multi-million-copy bestseller A Brief History of Time introduced the fascinating landscape of theoretical physics to readers all over the world.

A dramatic rendering of life aboard a whale-saving pirate ship traces the efforts of a vigilante crew to stop illegal Japanese whaling in the Antarctica seas, in an account that profiles the Sea Shepherd Society of radical environmentalists and the charismatic captain Paul Watson.

Have you ever wondered why onions make us cry?

Do you believe bananas contain more calories as they ripen and get sweeter?

This sequel to the best-selling What Einstein Told His Cook continues Robert L. Wolke's investigations into the science behind our foods.