5/25/2023 0 Comments Best audiobook to learn spanish![]() ![]() “Paradise becomes something different in every neighbor’s head,” Iyer narrates in a soft-spoken accent that betrays his peripatetic upbringing. To any regular reader of the news, North Korea, Iran, Jerusalem and the aboriginal communities of Australia may seem unlikely contenders for paradise, but Iyer’s purpose in visiting those places is to reveal how so much of the way we see the world (and the utopian beyond) comes from who we are and where we happen to be standing when we see it. Spoiler alert: Iyer doesn’t find a universal paradise, per se, but he does provide hours of thought-provoking meditations on what it means to speak of paradise. In THE HALF KNOWN LIFE: In Search of Paradise (Penguin Audio, 5 hours, 55 minutes), Iyer flexes his remarkable skill of reading between the lines of passing conversations to extract profound meaning and draw connections between disparate places across the world. This amorphous, abstract concept is the subject of the latest book by the travel writer and novelist Pico Iyer. When immortality on Earth doesn’t work out, there’s always paradise to depend on. As he writes, “We’re all in it together and that also means any progress made is applicable to all of us.” While he doesn’t necessarily support all the bizarre experiments scientists have carried out in a quest for the secret to longevity, Brendborg does view the overall undertaking as a noble one. Narrated by Joe Leat in a tone that channels Brendborg’s own clear enthusiasm for the material, this is a rare quick and easy tour of hard science told in a way that is addictive and enriching.īrendborg brings a casual, and often funny, tone to a deadly serious topic, explaining why naked mole rats (“imagine the rat from your worst nightmares and then keep going”) make such good test subjects what we have to learn from studying “zombie cells” and how the jellyfish in the audiobook’s title, a tiny species we’re only beginning to understand, are able to revert to its polyp stage when they’re stressed, giving a whole new meaning to “starting over.” While this isn’t a self-help book, there are real takeaways for anyone looking to live a longer life, backed up by medical science rather than savvy marketing. When the conquistador Juan Ponce de León supposedly set out in search of the aforementioned elixir of life, he was really channeling a human obsession that’s been around as long as we’ve been smart enough to realize the finite nature of time: “How to ‘die young’ as late as possible.” That’s how Nicklas Brendborg, the Danish molecular biologist and author of JELLYFISH AGE BACKWARDS: Nature’s Secrets to Longevity (Hachette Audio, 7 hours, 15 minutes), puts it in his fascinating exploration of the science of getting older - and the lengths we’ve gone to trying to stop aging from happening. Thankfully, three new audiobooks make it just a little easier to navigate the depths. The reality of humanity’s great quests is, of course, more complicated and nuanced than those tendencies suggest. Writer’s block is debilitating - this one I know from experience - so we often sit around, waiting in vain for inspiration to strike like a lightning bolt. The afterlife is mysterious, so prophets and poets have for millenniums conjured visions of a land of plenty awaiting us when the lights inevitably go out. Aging is scary, so intrepid (and murderous) Spanish explorers trekked into the swamps of Florida in search of the fabled Fountain of Youth. When it comes to life’s big questions, humans are quick to look for shortcuts.
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