New York Times-bestselling author of Endure Alex Hutchinson returns with a fresh, provocative investigation into how exploration, uncertainty, and risk shape our behavior and help us find meaning.
Off the beaten path, following unmarked trails, we are wired to explore. More than just a need to get outside, the search for the unknown is a primal urge that has shaped the history of our species and continues to mold our behavior in ways we are only beginning to understand. In fact, the latest neuroscience suggests that exploration in any formâwhether itâs trying a new restaurant, changing careers, or deciding to run a marathonâis an essential ingredient of human life. Exploration, it turns out, isnât merely a hobbyâitâs our story.
In this much-anticipated follow-up to his New York Times bestseller Endure, Alex Hutchinson refutes the myth that, in our fully mapped digital world, the age of exploration is dead. Instead, the itch to discover new things persists in all of us, expressed not just on the slopes of Everest but in the ways we work, play, and live. From paddling the lost rivers of the northern Canadian wilderness to the ocean-spanning voyages of the Polynesians to the search for next-generation quantum computers, The Explorerâs Gene combines riveting stories of exploration with cutting-edge insights from behavioral psychology and neuroscience, making a powerful case that our lives are betterâmore productive, more meaningful, and more funâwhen we break our habits and chart a new path.
