Earth Sciences

A Radio 4 Book Club Selection.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's fascinating and humorous quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization....

Cosmos is one of the bestselling science books of all time. In clear-eyed prose, Sagan reveals a jewel-like blue world inhabited by a life form that is just beginning to discover its own identity and to venture into the vast ocean of space....

Shinrin-Yoku, or forest bathing, is the practice of spending time in the forest for better health, happiness and a sense of calm....

Few places have been as influential as the Indian subcontinent in shaping the course of life on Earth. Yet its evolution has remained largely unchronicled. Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent fills this gap....

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson’s quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization....

The Science of the Ocean offers up riches from every corner of the ocean, from coral reefs and mangrove swamps to icy fjords and deep-ocean trenches, and from great whales to the microscopic beauty of plankton....

In this mesmerizing debut, award-winning palaeontologist Thomas Halliday gives us a breath-taking up close encounter with worlds that are normally unimaginably distant....

In an age of string theory, fluid dynamics and biophysics, it can seem as if the science of our world is for only specialists and academics. Not so, insists Helen Czerski....

Oxygen takes the listener on an enthralling journey, as gripping as a thriller, as it unravels the unexpected ways in which oxygen spurred the evolution of life and death....

This audiobook narrated by Christopher Ragland describes the revolution in science that is transforming our understanding of extinct life....

Himalaya is one of the world's most extraordinary geophysical, historical, environmental and social regions. Historian John Keay introduces us to the myriad mysteries of this vast, confounding and utterly fascinating corner of the planet....

In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability - at the level of literature, history, and politics - to grasp the scale and violence of climate change....

In the final book of his astonishing career, Carl Sagan brilliantly examines the burning questions of our lives, our world, and the universe around us....

Fifty thousand years ago, we were not the only species of human in the world. There were at least four others, including the Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonesis and the Denisovans. At the forefront of the latter's ground-breaking discovery was Oxford Professor Tom Higham....

Audible takes you on a journey through the Earth, to experience our planet in a way you’ve never encountered before....

A riveting story about a visionary researcher and the nature of scientific inquiry, Neanderthal Man offers rich insight into the fundamental question of who we are....

A series of glasses of transparent liquids is in front of you: but which will quench your thirst and which will kill you? And why? Find out....

Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte weaves together the history and evolution of our mammal forebears with stories of the scientists whose fieldwork and discoveries underlie our knowledge....

The Greeks and Romans were well aware that a different breed of creatures once inhabited their lands. They frequently encountered fossilized bones of long-extinct species, and they developed sophisticated concepts to explain them, expressed in mythological stories....

When leading Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt began working in the 1980s, scientists thought they knew all the conceivable forms of matter. The Second Kind of Impossible is the story of Steinhardt’s 35-year-long quest to challenge conventional wisdom....

When we talk about human history, we focus on great leaders, mass migration and decisive wars. But how has the Earth itself determined our destiny? How has our planet made us? Find out.... 

Sixty-six million years ago the dinosaurs were wiped from the face of the earth....

Helen Gordon turns a novelist's eye on the extraordinary scientists who are piecing together our planetary drama....

World renowned scientist, Dr. Gerald Pollack, takes us on a fantastic voyage through water, showing us a hidden universe teeming with physical activity - providing simple explanations for common everyday phenomena, which you have inevitably seen but not really understood....

Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward....

This audiobook narrated by Christopher Ragland describes the revolution in science that is transforming our understanding of extinct life.

This volume, aimed at the general audience, presents life and times of the amazing animals that inhabited Earth more than 500 million years ago. The Cambrian Period was a critical time in Earth's history. During this immense span of time nearly every modern group of animals appeared. Although life had been around for more than 2 million millennia, Cambrian rocks preserve the record of the first appearance of complex animals with eyes, protective skeletons, antennae, and complex ecologies.

Hace unos 4.000 millones de años apareció la vida en la Tierra. ¿Cuál es la historia de su evolución? ¿Era inevitable la vida? ¿Y la raza humana? ¿La habría habitado algún otro ser inteligente, si no hubiera habido humanos? ¿Qué patrones usa el mecanismo evolutivo? ¿La evolución avanza hacia adelante como una flecha?

A fascinating, comprehensive, accessible account of conodont fossils—one of paleontology's greatest mysteries. Simon J. Knell takes the listener on a journey through 150 years of scientific thinking, imagining, and arguing. Slowly the animal begins to reveal traces of itself: its lifestyle, its remarkable evolution, its witnessing of great catastrophes, its movements over the surface of the planet, and finally its anatomy. Today the conodont animal remains perhaps the most disputed creature in the zoological world.

Nur zwei große Lebensräume unserer Erde sind scheinbar über lange Zeiträume hinweg gleich geblieben: der Dschungel und das Meer. Doch selbst die Landmassen, auf denen der Urwald liegt, haben sich aufgrund der Kontinentalverschiebungen verändert, und die Aufspal­tung und Verschmelzung der Kontinente hatten Auswirkungen auf die Ausdehnung der warmen, flachen Küstenmeere.