Audiobooks Narrated by Amy Webb

The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology

What if the miracle that created mRNA vaccines is less a once-in-lifetime event and more the harbinger of the emerging age of synthetic biology? This fusion of biology and computers has a singular goal: to gain access to cells in order to write new--and possibly better--biological code.  Synthetic biology promises to reveal how life is created and how it can be re-created, enabling scientists to rewrite the rules of our reality. It could help us, for example, heal without prescription medications, grow meat without harvesting animals, or confront our looming climate catastrophe. Synthetic biology will determine the ways in which we conceive future generations and how we define family, how we identify disease and treat aging, where we make our homes, and how we nourish ourselves. Soon, we will program living, biological structures as though they were tiny computers.  But who should decide how to engineer living organisms? Whether engineered organisms should be planted, farmed, and released into the wild? Should there be limits to human enhancements? Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel's riveting examination of synthetic biology and the bioeconomy provide the background for thinking through the upcoming risks and moral dilemmas posed by redesigning life, as well as the vast opportunities waiting for us on the horizon.  

Amy Webb, Andrew Hessel (Author), Amanda Dolan, Amy Webb, Andrew Hessel, Landon Woodson, Tim Campbell (Narrator)

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Data, A Love Story

A lively, thought-provoking memoir about how one woman "gamed" online dating sites like JDate, OKCupid and eHarmony - and met her eventual husband. After yet another online dating disaster, Amy Webb was about to cancel her JDate membership when an epiphany struck: It wasn't that her standards were too high, as women are often told, but that she wasn't evaluating the right data in suitors' profiles. That night Webb, an award-winning journalist and digital-strategy expert, made a detailed, exhaustive list of what she did and didn't want in a mate. The result: seventy-two requirements ranging from the expected (smart, funny) to the super-specific (likes selected musicals: Chess, Les Misérables. Not Cats. Must not like Cats!). Next she turned to her own profile. In order to craft the most compelling online presentation, she needed to assess the competition-so she signed on to JDate again, this time as a man. Using the same gift for data strategy that made her company the top in its field, she found the key words that were digital man magnets, analyzed photos, and studied the timing of women's messages, then adjusted her (female) profile to make the most of that intel. Then began the deluge-dozens of men wanted to meet her, men who actually met her requirements. Among them: her future husband, now the father of her child. Forty million people date online each year. Most don't find true love. Thanks to Data, a Love Story, their odds just got a whole lot better.

Amy Webb (Author), Amy Webb, Brian Woolf (Narrator)

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