Please note: This audiobook has been created using AI voice.
Five Weeks in a Balloon tells the tale of three Englishmen who attempt to cross Africa, from east to west, in a balloon. Dr. Ferguson is the rational scientist leading the trio, accompanied by loyal sidekick Joe and the doctor's sporting friend Kennedy.
The three embark on many adventures: They encounter natives and dangerous animals, experience problems with their ballooning technology, and struggle with the winds and the weather. Throughout the novel, the author liberally sprinkles descriptions of flora, fauna, and geography, as seen through nineteenth century eyes.
Though this is Verne's first published book, he already demonstrates much of the formula that drive his later works: the welldefined characters led by a rational scientist, the focus on science and technology, and of course the adventurefilled plot.
The novel, first published in 1863, was topical for its time, as European interest in African exploration was strong. At the time the book was published, David Livingstone was midstexploration in southeast Africa, and Burton and Speke had recently returned from exploring the Great Lakes region. The novel itself contains many references to actual expeditions that would have been current or recent for the original readers of the novel.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 In late 2017, an artificial intelligence program developed by Google DeepMind defeated the most powerful chess program in the world. The tactics AlphaZero deployed were unorthodox, but it did so because it predicted they would maximize its probability of winning.
#2 MIT's AI was able to identify a new antibiotic that had not been discovered by humans. It did not just process data more quickly than humanly possible, but it also detected aspects of reality humans have not detected or cannot detect.
#3 Generative models, like GPT-3, are difficult to evaluate because they do not solve specific problems. They generate possible responses to various inputs, and their results seem uncannily human.
#4 AI, the technology that can perform tasks that require human-level intelligence, has rapidly become a reality. It is becoming ubiquitous, and humans are developing new and exceedingly powerful mechanisms for exploring and organizing reality.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I learned that sociopaths are made, while psychopaths are born with a smaller amygdala that doesn't feel anxiety or fear. I would never choose psychopathy, because I believe that it is not the answer to our exhaustion. Some anxiety is normal, and some is chemical and genetic.
#2 The more people are part of the hype cycle, and the higher the stakes of performing, the more anxiety is likely to be experienced. It is to be expected. The question we must ask ourselves is: How much of our anxiety is inherent and chemical, and how much is learned and accidentally perpetuated.
#3 It's OK to have anxiety. It's OK to get stressed. We're human. Life is scary. But it's also OK to try to manage your anxiety and support your mental health. The expectation that we can and should be completely curing ourselves of anxiety with just a little self-help can become toxic in its own way.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The first Americans were Beringians, who were fully modern in every genetic and physical sense. They came from the west, and as sea levels rose, some headed east into a land that no humans had ever seen before.
#2 The first Americans, the ancestors of today's Americans, were able to succeed in their new land because they were able to gather together many different talents and insights around a campfire.
#3 The human niche is the particular way we interact with and find a way to make a living in our environment. We have evolved to be extremely adaptable, ingenious, and exploitative, which has allowed us to specialize in everything over the course of hundreds of thousands of years.
#4 The campfire is a tool that allows humans to exchange ideas, which is what makes us a superspecies. We are able to transcend our individual limitations, and focus on our trade while being sustained by the specialized labor of others.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I am an actress who was born and raised in Los Angeles. I have had a charmed life, with my parents always being on film sets and taking me to exciting places. On October 20, 1995, my parents died in a fatal heart attack. I developed the belief that when I love someone, they die.
#2 I had graduated from high school in 2007, and was so excited for the summer. I had just moved into a new condo, and was ready for a new chapter. But when I love someone, they die.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The Lopers were homeward bound. They had traveled nearly 15,000 miles to adopt a two-year-old girl in Kazakhstan. They had spent their life savings and dealt with bureaucrats in three different countries, but now they had Alexandria.
#2 The unseasonably warm weather in Gander was all anyone could talk about. The mayor, Claude Elliott, liked to start his morning at Tim Horton's, a Canadian equivalent of Starbucks.
#3 The mayor of Gander, Elliott, was making the morning rounds in his patrol car. He knew how important it was to keep in touch with what people were talking about. The local economy was another coffee-klatch topic.
#4 Fudge was sitting in his patrol car in the parking lot of the curling club when he heard about the radio broadcast. A plane had crashed into one of the towers in New York, possibly caused by an airplane crashing into the North Tower.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I am shy. I've never asked a question in a large lecture hall. I've always rolled my shopping cart back to its place of origin if there's no more half-and-half on the counter at the coffee shop.
#2 I went to Stanford with my parents. I was dropped off near the Stanford bookstore, where on rainy days my mom had brought me for hot cocoa and madeleines. I drank whiskey straight, unapologetically, freely.
#3 I was at a party, and I was bored. I began freestyle rapping about dry skin. I was extremely tired, and I had outgrown everything around me. I was lying in a narrow bed with plastic guardrails on each side, an adult crib.
#4 I always wondered why survivors understood other survivors so well. It wasn't the specifics of the assault that we had in common, but the moment after, when we are left alone and confused.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The first few years of integrating new parenthood into an already busy life were challenging for me. I was engaged in the constant, all-consuming work of running the lab, writing grants, conducting studies, teaching courses, and mentoring students.
#2 I was used to being able to study my way to success, but now I was unable to logic my way out of my problem. I couldn't analyze or think my way back from feeling out of step with my life. I realized that if I was unwilling to change my life, I would have to change my brain.
#3 I was born in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, and when I was a baby, my parents moved to the United States so that my father could complete his graduate work in engineering. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and as Indian kids, we knew there were only three acceptable professions for us: doctor, engineer, or accountant.
#4 My job was to take people who had suffered traumatic brain injuries outside for some fresh air. I got to know one of the patients particularly well. His name was Gordon, and he had been in a motorcycle accident. He would spend hours every night memorizing the motion of his hand as it pressed the lever.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Some couples fight about money, but my ex-husband and I didn't talk about it at all. We were completely clueless about our finances, and we had no clear purpose or bigger ambitions. We were constantly struggling to manage our money.
#2 When I was divorced, I felt heart-clenching failure. I had stripped away everything my son had known: a backyard, his own bedroom, his toys, and the swing set. I was in a constant panic about how my son was handling the new changes.
#3 Budgeting isn't about money. It's about you. It's about figuring out what you want from your money, and then using it to pursue those goals.
#4 Budgeting forces you to think about your finances in a different way because it requires you to decide what you want to accomplish with your money beyond simply paying the bills. You must define what success feels and looks like in your own life, and address the underlying issues that are causing your out-of-control spending.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 In 1945, the palace was transformed into a Soviet sanatorium for favored workers needing rest, quiet, and treatment for tuberculosis. The Nazis had stolen everything, even the brass doorknobs.
#2 By late 1944, British and American forces had liberated Rome, Paris, Brussels, and Athens from German and Italian occupation. The Red Army had marched westward across Poland and Romania. The three leaders were facing complicated questions about the end of the war in Europe.
#3 The leaders decided that the second conference would be held in the Mediterranean, but Stalin claimed his health was too fragile to travel any further than his own country's borders. The western leaders reluctantly agreed to meet him in the Crimea.
#4 The three leaders would gather at Yalta, and the Soviets had just three weeks to turn the ransacked villas into a site fit for one of the largest and most important international summits in history.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I had known Omar since I'd started working in Afghanistan, and he'd always dreamed of living in the West. His aspiration had grown urgent as the civil war intensified and his city was torn apart by bombings.
#2 I had been sleeping little since I returned from Sanaa, but my tiredness left me as the scene came into focus: the Hindu Kush snowcaps, the slums on the hillside, the Humvee with its turret pointed at the gate.
#3 Half the city was escaping that summer. Afghans were losing hope in their country's future, and were preparing to emigrate to America through the Special Immigrant Visa program.
#4 I wanted to go with Omar and document the refugee underground, so I proposed the idea to him. He needed to get asylum in Europe first, then come back for Laila. But while he was gone, her father might try to marry her off to someone else.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 As entrepreneurs, you must minimize the number of unknowns and navigate your team around the traps to the best of your ability. This is done on the front lines, not in the boardroom, where a strategy is set.
#2 The consequence of being late is that you have less time to meander. Since businesses can get their products in front of so many customers using digital tools, the consequences of being slow are massive.
#3 The Switchup approach is to leave your job and work the line at a restaurant, making minimum wage, to learn about the industry. This allows you to take the right amount of risk.
#4 Before you begin your testing, create a game plan. Test your assumptions systematically and find answers to the things you don't know. Support your trench experience with desk research.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The biggest thrill in life for today's teenagers is becoming competent on the video game. This is not normal, and it is creating an environment that is not conducive to future leaders.
#2 Gather wood, and you will find a lot of satisfaction in the heart of a young person. This activity allows them to commune with the forest's bounty, its diversity of species, and the different properties of each.
#3 The American tradition of gathering firewood is a testament to the deep personal satisfaction, the physical, emotional, and spiritual affirmation that such work engenders. It is the ultimate self-actualization.
#4 The wood-gathering chore taught me both personal responsibility and dependability. If I got cold, it wasn't anyone's fault but my own. I had to think ahead, plan, and be aware of outside temperature that determined how much wood we would burn for the night.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Your children are their own handbook. They are constantly giving you clues about who they are and the personalized parenting they need from you. By innate, inner self, I mean your child's natural quality of moving, thinking, feeling, and relating to the world.
#2 To grandparents, educators, and others who want to become a Child Whisperer: This book will give you the insights and tools you need to support children in living true to their nature in any situation.
#3 The goal of this book is to help you become a Child Whisperer, someone who recognizes the messages children send every minute, even when they don't know how to say their needs out loud. When you become a Child Whisperer, you will understand what your children's rebellions, friendships, and joys mean about their true selves.
#4 A change in parenting approach doesn't just affect your own family, but it can also change the way you raise children and how you understand others and yourself. When you understand and honor your child's true nature, you can raise a child who feels capable, confident, and valuable in the world.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 If you've been struggling with pain for some time, you may feel as if your life is narrowing in on you. You may be honest with yourself and admit that you're not sure what to do about it. This book asks you to consider your own perspective on pain and your consciousness, and to explore what is really true for you.
#2 The third request is that you intend this book to make a difference in your life. You don't have to believe that it will, but we ask you to remain open to the possibility by answering yes to this question: While you are learning and trying out these methods, if you see in your actual experience the possibility of using them to transform your life for the better, will you be willing to move forward in that direction.
#3 We all have pain. We all have memories that are embarrassing, humiliating, or shameful. We tend to put on shiny, happy faces, pretending that everything is okay, but life is not all good.
#4 The problem is that the cues that evoked your reaction are almost anything: the ink on paper that made up the word shame, or a sunset that reminded you of your recent loss. You try to avoid pain itself, but unfortunately, some methods of avoiding pain are pathological in and of themselves.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 American politics offers the comforting illusion of stability. The Democratic and Republican parties have dominated elections since 1864, and it is easy to assume that our present is a rough match for our past, with the same complaints about politics today mirroring the complaints of past generations.
#2 Political parties are supposed to be the shortcuts that allow citizens to express their opinions on the matters that they don't understand. But in 1950, the American public was not being given the opportunity to choose between the two major parties, as they were offering a mush of policies.
#3 In 1950, the Republican governor of New York, Thomas Dewey, admitted that if the measure of a real political party was a unified organization with a national viewpoint on major issues, neither the Republican nor Democratic Party qualified.
#4 When there is a division between the parties, it is typically addressed through suppression or compromise. When there is a division within the party, however, it is typically addressed through conflict.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I had been trying to convert my interest in less into something I could study. From the start, I had studied ways that buildings and cities might use less energy, and produce fewer climate-changing emissions. I had homed in on the designers, finding that they use mental shortcuts.
#2 I was able to bring many of the other parents up to speed by explaining to them that subtraction is a way to change things. They were initially confused, but eventually understood.
#3 The three-to-one ratio was found when people were asked to change random musical notes, and when people were asked to improve a piece of writing. It was roughly the same three-to-one ratio when people were asked to transform a five-ingredient soup.
#4 The Lego experiment showed that people overwhelmingly add more than they subtract. We then created a situation that would inspire subtraction, asking participants to improve an itinerary for a day in Washington, D. C. Only one in four participants removed activities from the packed original.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other discipline. The field is full of people who see only the immediate effects of a policy, and ignore its long-term effects on all groups.
#2 The most common economic fallacies today are the result of ignoring this lesson. The opposite error is also possible: focusing only on the immediate consequences of an act or proposal.
#3 The basic lesson of economics is to understand and recognize the fallacies that stand in the way of understanding and recognizing the lessons. Through examples, we can learn to detect and avoid the crudest and most blatant fallacies first, and then some of the most sophisticated and elusive.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 You will be able to speak hypnotically without a script when you learn how to do it effortlessly and quickly. The words and language patterns are applicable to everything, not just your client sessions. The more you use them, the more natural it becomes.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Richard, the son of the Black Prince, was born in 1367. His mother, who had been a widow when she married Edward the Black Prince, had no doubts that the boy was the most beautiful baby ever born in a royal bed. His father shared this satisfaction, but he did not smile often.
#2 The Black Prince's second son, Richard of Bordeaux, was born in 1330. The prince acted quickly because he had only a few hours left before he began his costly and injudicious Spanish adventure. He announced that two of his favorite campaign companions, Sir Guichard d'Angle and Sir Simon Burley, would share the tutoring of the little prince.
#3 Richard of Bordeaux was a king who had been raised by his mother. He was a perceptive child, and he developed a taste for the artistic aspects of life when he was young. He was not fit to lead the proud but unlettered baronage of England.
#4 The Black Prince's days were numbered. He had returned from Spain with a walnut-colored face from exposure to the Castilian sun, and his physicians advised that he return home immediately. He prepared reluctantly to leave the softer airs of Bordeaux for what he remembered as the rigors of England.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Barack Obama was driving to work at the Thompson Center, a government building in Chicago, when he heard the news about the planes crashing into the World Trade Center towers. He thought it was a poor Cessna pilot who had screwed up badly.
#2 As Obama left the Thompson Center, his eyes moved involuntarily up to the Sears Tower. The city's landmark skyscraper now loomed like a giant target.
#3 When the president saw Morell that morning, he had already taken a few minutes to read from his Bible, had jogged in the darkness around the Colony golf course, and had dressed and eaten his breakfast. The briefing that day had concerned China and Russia.
#4 The attacks provoked something primal and self-protective. Just seventy-one minutes after the North Tower was hit, hundreds of miles west of New York City and high over Pennsylvania, the passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 scrambled to attack the men who had hijacked their plane. It crashed in a field just east of Pittsburgh.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The picture painters of the mass media are creating landscapes that deliberately hide the real picture. You will learn how to see through the camouflage and see the donkey, the cart, and the boy who have been there all along.
#2 There are only two theories of history: things happen by accident, or they happen because they are planned and somebody causes them to happen. In reality, it is the accidental theory of history preached in the unhallowed Halls of Ivy which should be ridiculed.
#3 The most effective way to refute the conspiratorial theory of history is to use ridicule and satire. These extremely potent weapons can be used to avoid any honest attempt at refuting the facts. Most people will keep quiet, and those who do not will be labeled paranoid.
#4 There are some members of the intellectual elite who believe in the conspiratorial theory of history. Professor Carroll Quigley, for example, taught at the Liberal Establishment's academic meccas of Princeton and Harvard.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I was a bright, playful child, too young and energetic to understand fear. I spent a lot of time in front of the hallway mirror, examining my eyes to discover where the fear was hiding. I was three generations living in the same house: Baba-jan and Nanah-jan, their four daughters, my aunts Kurbra, Hajar, Zahra, and Azizah, my uncles Naseer and Basheer, and me.
#2 I was a wild, stubborn baby spider who always wanted to escape the confines of my mother's web. I never tired of the struggle to get outside. I was always looking for a chance to sneak into our walled garden.
#3 When the cease-fires were over, our entertainment was collecting pinecones or running among the tanks, playing hide-and-seek with the boys. When we couldn't find the boys, the Russian soldiers would point to their hiding spots.
#4 During the war, I played with a doll that my grandmother had made for me. I was overjoyed when the tailor shop down the street took a direct hit, as it meant I could get new clothes for my doll.
Please note:This audiobook has been generated using AI Voice. This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The four-page draft executive order, leaked to the press, outlined plans to establish a government-wide initiative to respect religious freedom. It would have allowed any person or organization to refuse to transact business with someone based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status.
#2 The draft executive order I had in my hand would have allowed Christian adoption agencies to refuse to place children with non-Christians, and would permit social services contractors to turn away clients based on their sexual activity or gender identity.
#3 Despite pleas from conservatives, Trump took months to make a decision, and in the end signed a more general edict that granted legal protections specially crafted for his Christian right allies.
#4 Trump signed an order that broadened religious liberties, allowing people to discriminate against others based on their religion. He was not just a reliable politician for them to praise, but also a divine leader sent by God to save America.
