Library Guides: Audiobooks: Fun Audiobooks and Podcasts

Audiobooks

Fitness and Health Audiobooks

Endure

For each of the physical limits that Hutchinson explores--pain, muscle, oxygen, heat, thirst, fuel--he carefully disentangles the delicate interplay of mind and body by telling the riveting stories of men and women who've pushed their own limits in extraordinary ways.

Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes

This book disentangles old myths and gender bias from the very real science that can help women achieve their athletic potential at any stage of their lives, from youth to adulthood, including through pregnancy, menopause, and beyond.

Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding

If exercise is healthy (so good for you!), why do many people dislike or avoid it? These engaging stories and explanations will revolutionize the way you think about exercising—not to mention sitting, sleeping, sprinting, weight lifting, playing, fighting, walking, jogging, and even dancing.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America's Stolen Land

Growing up in Washington, Noe Álvarez worked at an apple-packing plant alongside his mother, who "slouched over a conveyor belt of fruit, shoulder to shoulder with mothers conditioned to believe this was all they could do with their lives."

Love Your Gut: An Easy-to-Digest Guide to Health and Happiness from the Inside Out

Seventy million Americans suffer from gut-related issues, diagnosed or otherwise. But it's not just about gut symptoms: Whatever our wellness goals are—weight management, improved fitness, healthier skin, stronger immunity, or even happiness—gut microbes can be our best allies.

The Mind-Gut Connection by Emeran Mayer, MD

The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health

While the dialogue between the gut and the brain has been recognized by ancient healing traditions, including Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, Western medicine has failed to appreciate the complexity of how the brain, gut, and more recently, the microbiome, communicate with one another.

The Age-Proof Brain

Debunking common misinformation, The Age-Proof Brain offers new, breakthrough science-supported strategies to improve memory and productivity; increase energy and boost your mood; reduce the risk of anxiety and depression; form healthy habits to supercharge your brain; and prevent non-genetic Alzheimer's and dementia.

Ah-Choo!

Scientists call this the Golden Age of the Common Cold because Americans suffer up to a billion colds each year, resulting in 40 million days of missed work and school and 100 million doctor visits. They've also learned over the past decade much more about what cold viruses are, what they do to the human body, and how symptoms can be addressed.

Genius Foods

Lugavere uncovers the stunning link between our dietary and lifestyle choices and our brain health, revealing how the foods you eat directly affect your ability to focus, learn, remember, create, analyze new ideas, and maintain a healthy, balanced mood.

Podcasts

This American Life
This American Life: New to TAL... Start Here
New Listeners are recommended to start with this list of favorite stories.
Book Lounge by Libby
Libby's podcast all about books!
Behind the Mic: Narrators, Authors, and Producers on the Magic of Audiobooks | Book Lounge Season 1 - Episode 1
Welcome to the very first episode of Book Lounge by Libby! We’re kicking things off with an ode to audiobooks—the voices, the stories, and the behind-the-scenes magic that makes them so special.

New Audiobooks on Libby

The American Plague

Compelling and terrifying, The American Plague depicts the story of yellow fever and its reign in this country-and in Africa, where even today it strikes thousands every year. With "arresting tales of heroism," it is a story as much about the nature of human beings as it is about the nature of disease.

A History of The World in Six Plagues

Princeton-trained historian Edna Bonhomme's examination of humanity's disastrous treatment of pandemic disease takes us across place and time from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania, and from plantation-era America to our modern COVID-19-scarred world to unravel shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in the face of disease.

How Doctors Think

This book describes the warning signs of flawed medical thinking and offers intelligent questions patients can ask.On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong-with catastrophic consequences.

There Plant Eyes

A genre-defying work, There Plant Eyes reveals just how essential blindness and vision are to humanity’s understanding of itself and the world.
*Includes a downloadable PDF containing the notes and bibliography from the book

On Call In The Arctic

Imagine a young doctor, trained in the latest medical knowledge and state-of-the-art equipment, suddenly transported back to one of the world's most isolated and unforgiving environments—Nome, Alaska. That's what happen to Dr. Sims.

Rough Sleepers

Kidder spent five years following Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues as they work with thousands of homeless patients. Kidder explores how Jim O’Connell and a dedicated group of people have improved countless lives by facing and addressing one of American society’s most difficult problems, instead of looking away.

Medical Terminology for Health Professionals 4.0

Divided into all the key areas of human biology, such as cardiovascular, muscular, skeletal, lymphatic, and more, this audiobook offers a powerful insight into all the essential medical terms.

Estrogen Matters

Updated findings on estrogen's benefits on heart, brain, bones, and longevity. A critical review of the alternative products and medications being marketed to treat symptoms of menopause. A sobering and revelatory read, Estrogen Matters sets the record straight on estrogen's benefits, providing a light to guide women through this inevitable phase of life.

Hot and Bothered

Menopause isn't a disease, but a natural, normal life transition. Dunn peels back the layers on this still-mystifying topic with her trademark humor and unpacks the science on both hormonal and nonhormonal treatments. * This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF of resources from the book.

All Consuming

Food dominates our every waking minute: Hype restaurants. Allrecipes. The Great British Bake Off. In this dazzling cultural history, bestselling food writer Ruby Tandoh (author of Cook As You Are) traces how—and why—we’ve all become foodies.

Good Food, Bad Diet

Empowering, inclusive, smart, and a must-have, Good Food, Bad Diet will give you the tools to reject diets, repair your relationship with food, and lose weight so you can move on with your life.

Body Respect

It's time for a cease-fire in the war against obesity.Dr. Linda Bacon and Dr. Lucy Aphramor's Body Respect debunks common myths about weight, including the misconceptions that BMI can accurately measure health, that fatness necessarily leads to disease, and that dieting will improve health.

Replaceable You

The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what’s available—sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies and breasts from petroleum by-products. Today we’re attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. How are we doing? Are we there yet?

Vagina Obscura

The Latin term for the female genitalia, pudendum, means "parts for which you should be ashamed." Until 1651, ovaries were called female testicles. The fallopian tubes are named for a man. Named, claimed, and shamed: Welcome to the story of the female body, as penned by men.

Every Living Thing

In Every Living Thing, Jason Roberts weaves a sweeping, unforgettable narrative spell, exploring the intertwined lives and legacies of Linnaeus and Buffon—as well as the groundbreaking, often fatal adventures of their acolytes—to trace an arc of insight and discovery that extends across three centuries into the present day.

Why We Swim

Humans, unlike other animals that are drawn to water, are not natural-born swimmers. We must be taught. Our evolutionary ancestors learned for survival; now in the twenty-first century, we swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranha-infested rivers to test our limits.

American Sherlock

Known as the "American Sherlock Holmes," Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of America's greatest—and first—forensic scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing evidence, and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost supernatural.

Surrounded by Idiots

Do you ever think you're the only one making any sense? Or tried to reason with your partner with disastrous results? Do long, rambling answers drive you crazy? Or does your colleague's abrasive manner rub you the wrong way? You are not alone.

Inclusion

This book will teach you how to address and understand your biases, how to get better at noticing and responding to microaggressions, and why being an inclusive colleague will spark more productive and rewarding relationships with your coworkers and boss.

Are You Mad at Me?

Psychotherapist Meg Josephson is here to show you that people-pleasing is not a personality trait. It's a common survival mechanism known as "fawning": an instinct often learned in childhood to become more appealing to a perceived threat in order to feel safe. Yet many people are stuck in this way of being for their whole lives. Includes a mindfulness meditation led by the author!

Women Waking Up

In Women Waking Up, Wendy Valentine doesn't just challenge the outdated narrative of decline and invisibility at midlife — she blows it up and replaces it with a bold, badass manifesto for reinvention.

Beyond Anxiety

In Beyond Anxiety, Dr. Martha Beck explains why anxiety is skyrocketing around you, and likely within you. She also tells you how to not only reduce your anxiety but use it to propel you into a life filled with peace, meaning, and joy.

The First-Time Manager

The essential resource for new managers who want to foster a safe, inclusive, and productive space for their teams.

It's Time to Talk about Race at Work

Many white leaders want to create change but don't know how to do so appropriately and effectively. How do you know where the blind spots are that can create obstacles for people of color? Your intentions may be sincere and heartfelt, but intentions aren't enough.

Beyond Discomfort

Talk to anyone about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and it sparks a whole range of emotions. Why? Because DEI, at its very core, is about values and beliefs, and it's about change. So it is no surprise then, that despite putting in place a DEI strategy and multiple initiatives, so many organizations get stuck.

Lost and Found

One spring morning, Kathryn Schulz went to lunch with a stranger and fell in love. But as the two of them began building a life together, Schulz's beloved father went into the hospital with a minor heart condition and never came out. Newly in love yet also newly bereft, Schulz was left contending simultaneously with wild joy and terrible grief.

The Dry Season

From Melissa Febos, the national bestselling author of Girlhood, comes an examination of the solitude, freedoms, and feminist heroes she discovered during a year of celibacy and a wise and transformative look at relationships and self-knowledge.

Salt in My Soul

The diaries of a remarkable young woman who was determined to live a meaningful and happy life despite her struggle with cystic fibrosis and a rare superbug—from age fifteen to her death at the age of twenty-five—the inspiration for the original streaming documentary Salt in My Soul

The Velvet Rage

Drawing on contemporary psychological research, the author's own journey, and the stories of many of his friends and clients, Velvet Rage addresses the myth of gay pride and outlines three stages to emotional well-being for gay men.

The Gay Revolution

The fight for gay, lesbian, and trans civil rights-the years of outrageous injustice, the early battles, the heartbreaking defeats, and the victories beyond the dreams of the gay rights pioneers-is the most important civil rights issue of the present day.

These Strange New Minds

An insider look at the Large Language Models (LLMs) that are revolutionizing our relationship to technology, exploring their surprising history, what they can and should do for us today, and where they will go in the future—from an AI pioneer and neuroscientist

We the People

The U.S. Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world―and one of the most difficult to amend. At what cost? In this landmark, lavishly illustrated book, Harvard professor of history and law Jill Lepore argues that the philosophy of amendment is foundational to American constitutionalism.

No More Tears

Filled with shocking and infuriating but utterly necessary revelations, No More Tears is a landmark work of investigative journalism that lays bare the deeply rooted corruption behind the image of babies bathing with a smile.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.