Mental Health Science

Nobody needs telling that there isn't enough time. We're obsessed by our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Yet we rarely make the conscious connection that these problems only trouble us in the first place, thanks to the ultimate time-management problem: the challenge of how best to use our 4,000 weeks. Four Thousand Weeks is an uplifting, engrossing and deeply realistic exploration of this problem.

In this classic evaluation of play that has become a “must-listen” for those in game design, Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga defines play as the central activity in flourishing societies. Like civilization, play requires structure and participants willing to create within limits. Starting with Plato, Huizinga traces the contribution of Homo Ludens, or “man the player” through medieval times, the Renaissance, and into our modern civilization.

By the end of on average day in the early 21st century, human beings searching the Internet will amass eight trillion gigabytes of data. This staggering amount of information - unprecedented in history - can tell us a great deal about who we are - the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than 20 years ago seemed unfathomable.

All humans, but no other species, have the capacity to create and understand language. It provides structure to our thoughts, allowing us to plan, communicate, and create new ideas, without limit. Yet we have only finite experiences, and our languages have finite stores of words. Where does our linguistic creativity come from? How does the endless scope of language emerge from our limited selves? Drawing on research from neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics, David Adger takes the listener on a journey to the hidden structure behind all we say (or sign) and understand.

Tarana Burke and Dr. Brené Brown bring together a dynamic group of Black writers, organizers, artists, academics, and cultural figures to discuss the topics the two have dedicated their lives to understanding and teaching: vulnerability and shame resilience.

The beloved actor shares fascinating and powerful lessons from the science of communication and teaches listeners to improve the way they relate to others using improv games, storytelling, and their own innate mind-reading abilities. With his trademark humor and frankness, Alan Alda explains what makes the out-of-the-box techniques he developed after his years as the host of Scientific American Frontiers so effective.

The Science of Likability takes over 60 seminal scientific and psychological studies and breaks them down into real, usable guidelines and tips to create the presence you have always wanted. Every piece of advice in this book to increase your social standing and likability factor is 100 percent backed by in-depth, peer-reviewed research. Learn how subconsciously make yourself likable, trustworthy, and intelligent. You can get a new haircut and wardrobe, and you can even learn funny jokes. But likability is something more.

En El poder de los hábitos, el premiado periodista Charles Duhigg nos lleva al límite de los descubrimientos científicos que explican por qué existen los hábitos, cómo nos condicionan y cómo cambiarlos. Combinando información exhaustiva con descripciones fascinantes, Duhigg presenta una manera completamente nueva de entender la naturaleza humana y su potencial. En esencia, El poder de los hábitos contiene un mensaje estimulante.

The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power.

Tribalism is our most misunderstood buzzword. We’ve all heard pundits bemoan its rise, and it’s been blamed for everything from political polarization to workplace discrimination. But as acclaimed cultural psychologist and Columbia professor Michael Morris argues, our tribal instincts are humanity’s secret weapon. Ours is the only species that lives in tribes: groups glued together by their distinctive cultures that can grow to a scale far beyond clans and bands. Morris argues that our psychology is wired by evolution in three distinctive ways.

What if your best days weren’t left to chance, but something you could control and activate at will? Most of us want to be a little happier, a little more focused, and a lot less stressed. We want simple approaches that are easy to fold into our everyday lives. In Sharp, you’ll discover dozens of evidence-backed strategies to help you unlock your potential and enhance your performance—whether at work, school, home, or in relationships. Cognitive scientist Therese Huston unpacks the latest neuroscience research to deliver a gold mine of techniques to help you feel your sharpest.

In Blue Mind, Wallace J. Nichols revolutionizes how we think about these questions, revealing the remarkable truth about the benefits of being in, on, under, or simply near water. Combining cutting-edge neuroscience with compelling personal stories from top athletes, leading scientists, military veterans, and gifted artists, he shows how proximity to water can improve performance, increase calm, diminish anxiety, and increase professional success.

First published in 1621, and hardly ever out of print since, it is a huge, varied, idiosyncratic, entertaining and learned survey of the experience of melancholy, seen from just about every possible angle that could be imagined. The Anatomy of Melancholy, presented here with all the original quotations in English, is, at last, available on audiobook in its entirety.

When Columbia University doctor Kelli Harding began her clinical practice, she never intended to explore the invisible factors behind our health. But then there were the rabbits. In 1978, a seemingly straightforward experiment designed to establish the relationship between high blood cholesterol and heart health in rabbits discovered that kindness — in the form of a particularly nurturing post-doc who pet and spoke to the lab rabbits as she fed them — made the difference between a heart attack and a healthy heart.

Something else other than freedom of choice and the means to indulge our desires must govern our emotional health and wellbeing. Indeed, research confirms that human beings make consistently inaccurate prediction about what will make them happy. New York Times bestselling author, Dr. David J. Lieberman explores the secret to happiness; and shows listeners how they wake up happy each and every day, for the rest of their lives. Listen to The Science of Happiness now, and look forward to a happier tomorrow.

Joseph Campbell famously defined myth as “other people’s religion.” But he also said that one of the basic functions of myth is to help each individual through the journey of life, providing a sort of travel guide or map to reach fulfillment - or, as he called it, bliss. For Campbell, many of the world’s most powerful myths support the individual’s heroic path toward bliss. In Pathways to Bliss, Campbell examines this personal, psychological side of myth.

Fat Talk argues for a reclaiming of “fat,” which is not synonymous with “unhealthy,” “inactive,” or “lazy.” Talking to researchers and activists, as well as parents and kids across a broad swath of the country, Sole-Smith lays bare how America’s focus on solving the “childhood obesity epidemic” has perpetuated a second crisis of disordered eating and body hatred for kids of all sizes. She exposes our society’s internalized fatphobia and elucidates how and why we need to stop “preventing obesity” and start supporting kids in the bodies they have.

A compelling memoir by ABC News correspondent James Longman in which he discusses mental illness and trauma in families, what the latest genetic science is telling us, and how to not only persevere but thrive.

Masochism is sexy, human, reviled, worshipped, and can be delightfully bizarre. Deliberate and consensual pain has been with us for millennia, encompassing everyone from Black Plague flagellants to ballerinas dancing on broken bones to competitive eaters choking down hot peppers while they cry. Masochism is a part of us. It lives inside workaholics, tattoo enthusiasts, and all manner of garden variety pain-seekers.

We know of psychopaths from chilling headlines and stories in the news and movies - from Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy to Hannibal Lecter and Dexter Morgan. As Dr. Kent Kiehl shows, psychopaths can be identified by a checklist of symptoms that includes pathological lying; lack of empathy, guilt, and remorse; grandiose sense of self-worth; manipulation; and failure to accept one’s actions. But why do psychopaths behave the way they do? Is it the result of their environment - how they were raised - or is there a genetic component to their lack of conscience?