This book describes the journey of finding the lost painting by Caravaggio, called “The Taking of Christ.” It also goes into more details about Caravaggio’s tumultuous life. It reads like a novel, full of twists and turns. The main characters were interesting. I learned a lot more about restoration of painting and techniques to authenticate a painting. An artist’s life, like Caravaggio’s, was fragile and at times suicidal. Living between feast and famish, Caravaggio was at his best when driven to the extreme, running away from the authority after killing a man in a fight.

The secret aristocratic, art society was revealed somewhat. The competition to find the lost painting was fierce.

I utterly enjoyed the audio book.

Mr. Darwin was a very careful man. Like a good scientist/engineer, he would check and double-check his data to prove his hypotheses. The hypotheses of evolution was and still is a difficult subject to prove, as it would like thousands and millions of years for evolution to take place. His painstaking work on barnacles and other species showed that he assumed a lot of pride in his work.

His peculiarity in dealing with deaths of loved ones and respected colleagues by not attending funeral services showed his deeply seated belief that our lives end at the time of death. There was no afterlife or heaven and hell to him. This ran into conflict with his religious wife, who gave births 10 children, 3 of those died at young age. Through his love for this children, he seemed to express deep dissonance that the afterlife doesn’t exist.

His rush to publish the “Origin of Species” as an abstract was prodded by another colleague, who had similarly reached the same conclusion about evolution/transmutation, and etc. This had resulted in a writing more concise and easy to understand than his other writing. (I haven’t read the “Origin of Species” yet. It’s on my to-do list).

Fortunately, Darwin had a rich father, who passed on to him lots of wealth and assets. This allowed him to concentrate on his research/field work. Without the wealth, Darwin may need to resort to academia that would probably put him in the same group as any others. His uniqueness may have been a byproduct of his financial independence.

For a man living in that era, it took a lot of courage to publish his work and his belief. Darwin may have been reluctant to go against the grain of the largely religious society, but he finally gave in to speak his mind, risking ridicule of others. How’s that different from a modern hero?

This is another interesting in-depth discussion of some interesting topics in micro-economics. It’s all about how people respond to incentives.

The surprise about the key ingredients for global warming is not even CO2 but water vapor. And the quick fix for the problem may be just pumping sulfide dioxide to the stratosphere 16 miles above the sea level. Some smart people at IV (Intellectual Venture) are working hard addressing the issue.

The fact that prostitution has lower value now compared to the 60~80 years ago because the “easier” sex nowadays. And the various kinds of sex fetch different price levels. In the epilogue, it was told that even monkeys respond to incentives and may even resort to prostitution if necessary.

Messing around with nature like reducing the likelihood of hurricanes could be as simple as putting some floaters on the ocean just to reduce the surface temperature by cycling the surface ocean layer to the lower layer.

Why the suicide bomber terrorists should buy life insurance? Because it could avoid being profiled as most terrorists don’t ever buy life insurance. Why bother?

The stories are interesting and I enjoyed listening the the audiobook.