Philosophy audiobooks

Strangers Drowning

By: Larissa MacFarquhar

Narrated by: Larissa MacFarquhar

Length: 9 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

What does it mean to devote yourself wholly to helping others? In Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar seeks out people living lives of extreme ethical commitment and tells their deeply intimate stories; their stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their recklessness; their joys and defeats and wrenching dilemmas.

A... Read more

The Tao of Willie

By: Willie Nelson & Turk Pipkin

Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte, Turk Pipkin & Willie Nelson

Length: 4 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

Born in small-town Texas during the Great Depression, Willie Nelson was raised to believe in helping his neighbors and living without pretense. After many hardscrabble years as a poorly paid songwriter (often watching his work become a gold mine for other performers), Willie finally found his own voice?the gentle but unmistakably honest sound... Read more

The Second Book of the Tao

By: Stephen Mitchell

Narrated by: Stephen Mitchell

Length: 2 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

"A twenty-first-century form of ancient wisdom . . . Mitchell's flights, his paradoxes, his wonderful riffs are brilliant and liberating." -Pico Iyer

The most widely translated book in world literature after the Bible, Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is the classic manual on the art of living. Following the phenomenal success of... Read more

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

By: Joseph Murphy

Narrated by: Jason Culp

Length: 6 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind introduces and explains the mind-focusing techniques that remove the subconscious obstacles that prevent us from achieving the success we want-and deserve. This authorized edition of Dr. Murphy's keystone work is the first premium mass market edition to feature additional commentary drawn from his unpublished... Read more

Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates

By: Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein

Narrated by: Thomas Cathcart

Length: 4 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

From the authors of the bestselling Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . ., a new book on the meaning of death (and life, too). Read more

The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice

By: George Martin

Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm

Length: 22 minutes

Abridged: No

You will never see war the same way after reading this extraordinary retelling of an ancient Greek fable about a tragically unnecessary battle between mice and frogs. With haunting illustrations, this miniature masterpiece ranks with Animal Farm as one of the greatest parables of human foibles.  Originally published in 1962, The Battle of the... Read more

The Case for God

By: Karen Armstrong

Narrated by: Karen Armstrong

Length: 16 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

Moving from the Paleolithic age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the great lengths to which humankind has gone in order to experience a sacred reality that it called by many names, such as God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. Focusing especially on Christianity but including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese spiritualities,... Read more

Half Empty

By: David Rakoff

Narrated by: David Rakoff

Length: 6 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

The inimitably witty David Rakoff, New York Times bestselling author of Don’t Get Too Comfortable, defends the commonsensical notion that you should always assume the worst, because you’ll never be disappointed.

In this deeply funny (and, no kidding, wise and poignant) book, Rakoff examines the realities of our sunny,  gosh­... Read more

The Most Human Human

By: Brian Christian

Narrated by: Brian Christian

Length: 9 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

The Most Human Human is a provocative, exuberant, and profound exploration of the ways in which computers are reshaping our ideas of what it means to be human. Its starting point is the annual Turing Test, which pits artificial intelligence programs against people to determine if computers can “think.”

Named for computer pioneer Alan Turing,... Read more

The Ecstasy of Influence

By: Jonathan Lethem

Narrated by: Jonathan Lethem

Length: 16 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

What’s a novelist supposed to do with contemporary culture? And what’s contemporary culture sup­posed to do with novelists? In The Ecstasy of Influence, Jonathan Lethem, tangling with what he calls the “white elephant” role of the writer as public intellectual, arrives at an astonishing range of answers.

A constellation of previously published... Read more

Just Babies

By: Paul Bloom

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

Length: 6 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

A leading cognitive scientist argues that a deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bone.
 
From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates. Many of us take for granted that babies are born selfish and that it is the role of society—and especially parents—to transform... Read more

Assholes

By: Aaron James

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

Length: 6 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

In the spirit of the mega-selling On Bullshit, philosopher Aaron James presents a theory of the asshole that is both intellectually provocative and existentially necessary.

What does it mean for someone to be an asshole? The answer is not obvious, despite the fact that we are often personally stuck dealing with people for whom there is no... Read more

The Road to Character

By: David Brooks

Narrated by: Arthur Morey & David Brooks

Length: 12 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • David Brooks challenges us to rebalance the scales between the focus on external success—“résumé virtues”—and our core principles.
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST
 
With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that have brought millions of readers to his New York Times column... Read more

Healing and the Mind

By: Bill Moyers

Narrated by: Bill Moyers

Length: 5 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

In the best-selling companion volume to the PBS series, acclaimed television journalist Bill Moyers explores the fascinating, complex, powerful connection between mind and body in human health. Ancient medical science told us our minds and bodies are one. So did philosophers of old. Now, modern science and new research are helping us to... Read more

Sailing the Wine Dark Sea

By: Thomas Cahill

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 7 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, his fourth volume to explore “the hinges of history,” Thomas Cahill escorts the reader on another entertaining—and historically unassailable—journey through the landmarks of art and bloodshed that defined Greek culture nearly three millennia ago.

In the city-states of Athens and Sparta and throughout the Greek... Read more

Galileo's Daughter

By: Dava Sobel

Narrated by: George Guidall

Length: 10 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

Galileo Galilei was the foremost scientist of his day. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. His telescopes allowed him to reveal the heavens and enforce the astounding argument that the earth moves around the sun. For this belief, he was brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition,... Read more

The Prophet

By: Kahlil Gibran

Narrated by: Becky Ann Baker

Length: 1 hour 22 minutes

Abridged: No

Gibran considered The Prophet to be his greatest achievement. First published in 1923, The Prophet has been translated into more than twenty languages, and has become one of the beloved classics of our time. Cherished by millions, the universally inspiring words of The Prophet are here magnificently read aloud. Read more

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Narrated by: Joe Ochman

Length: 16 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, and The Bed of Procrustes.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the... Read more

Congratulations, by the way

By: George Saunders

Narrated by: George Saunders

Length: 12 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This inspiring meditation on kindness from the author of Lincoln in the Bardo is based on his popular commencement address.

Three months after George Saunders gave a graduation address at Syracuse University, a transcript of that speech was posted on the website of The New York Times, where its simple, uplifting... Read more

Trying Not to Try

By: Edward Slingerland

Narrated by: Marc Cashman

Length: 8 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

A deeply original exploration of the power of spontaneity—an ancient Chinese ideal that cognitive scientists are only now beginning to understand—and why it is so essential to our well-being
 
Why is it always hard to fall asleep the night before an important meeting? Or be charming and relaxed on a first date? What is it about a politician who... Read more

The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching

By: Thich Nhat Hanh

Narrated by: René Ruiz

Length: 9 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

With poetry and clarity, Thich Nhat Hanh imparts comforting wisdom about the nature of suffering and its role in creating compassion, love, and joy – all qualities of enlightenment. 

“Thich Nhat Hanh shows us the connection between personal, inner peace, and peace on earth.”—His Holiness the Dalai Lama

In The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, now... Read more

The Death of Right and Wrong

By: Tammy Bruce

Narrated by: Tammy Bruce

Length: 11 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

If you believe children should be seduced into warped sexual behavior by the Gay Elite, if you think confessed murderers should be set free by defense attorneys who know how to wield the race card, if you feel promiscuous gay men should be empowered to spread AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, don’t read this book.

But if you’ve always... Read more

The Voyage of the Beagle

By: Charles Darwin

Narrated by: David Case

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

In 1831, Charles Darwin embarked on an expedition that, in his own words, determined my whole career. The Voyage of the Beagle chronicles his five-year journey around the world and especially the coastal waters of South America as a naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle. While traveling through these unexplored countries collecting specimens, Darwin... Read more

Saint Augustine

By: Garry Wills

Narrated by: Alexander Adams

Length: 4 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

For centuries, Augustine's writings have moved and fascinated readers. With the keen eye of a writer whose own intellectual analysis won him a Pulitzer Prize, Gary Wills examines this famed fourth-century bishop and seminal thinker whose grounding in classical philosophy informed his interpretation of Christian doctrine. Saint Augustine explores... Read more