New Books in Psychology
1,038 episodes - English - Latest episode: 26 days ago - ★★★★ - 44 ratingsInterviews with Psychologists about their New Books
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Episodes
Max Bennett, "A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, Ai, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains" (Mariner Books, 2023)
April 01, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourA Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, Ai, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains (Mariner Books, 2023) tells two fascinating stories. One is the evolution of nervous systems. It started 600 million years ago, when the first brains evolved in tiny worms. The other one is humans' quest to create more and more intelligent systems. This story begins in 1951 with the first reinforcement learning algorithm trying to mimic neural networks. Max Bennett is an AI entrepreneur and neurosc...
Greg Wrenn, "Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis" (Regalo Press, 2024)
March 27, 2024 08:00 - 52 minutesA dazzling, evidence-based account of one man’s quest to heal from complex PTSD by turning to endangered coral reefs and psychedelic plants after traditional therapies failed—and his awakening to the need for us to heal the planet as well. Professor Greg Wrenn likes to tell his nature-writing students, “The ecological is personal, and the personal is ecological.” What he’s never told them is how he’s lived out those correspondences to heal from childhood abuse at the hands of his mother. Mot...
Neil Gong, "Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
March 27, 2024 08:00 - 41 minutesSociologist Neil M. Gong explains why mental health treatment in Los Angeles rarely succeeds, for the rich, the poor, and everyone in between. In 2022, Los Angeles became the US county with the largest population of unhoused people, drawing a stark contrast with the wealth on display in its opulent neighborhoods. In Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles (U Chicago Press, 2024), sociologist Neil M. Gong traces the divide between the haves and ...
Maggie Hennefeld, "Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema" (Columbia UP, 2024)
March 25, 2024 08:00 - 59 minutesCan you really die from laughing too hard? Between 1870 and 1920, hundreds of women suffered such a fate—or so a slew of sensationalist obituaries would have us believe. How could laughter be fatal, and what do these reports of women’s risible deaths tell us about the politics of female joy? In Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema (Columbia University Press, 2024), Dr. Maggie Hennefeld reveals the forgotten histories of “hysterical laughter,” exploring how women’s amusement has...
Charlie Hertzog Young, "Spinning Out: Climate Change, Mental Health and Fighting for a Better Future" (Footnote Press, 2023)
March 19, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourCharlie Hertzog Young became a climate activist in his early teens. His journey led him onto airport runways and into the halls of power, but also to a serious mental health breakdown. He had to rebuild himself physically and psychologically, before focusing his efforts on collective mental recovery in response to a planet in crisis. Spinning Out: Climate Change, Mental Health and Fighting for a Better Future (Footnote Press, 2023) explores how climate chaos and the failure of those in power ...
Kenneth Miller, "Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep" (Hachette Books, 2023)
March 08, 2024 09:00 - 39 minutesWhy do we sleep? How can we improve our sleep? A century ago, sleep was considered a state of nothingness—even a primitive habit that we could learn to overcome. Then, an immigrant scientist and his assistant spent a month in the depths of a Kentucky cave, making nationwide headlines and thrusting sleep science to the forefront of our consciousness. In the 1920s, Nathaniel Kleitman founded the world’s first dedicated sleep lab at the University of Chicago, where he subjected research particip...
Thomas Metzinger, "The Elephant and the Blind: The Experience of Pure Consciousness: Philosophy, Science, and 500+ Experiential Reports" (MIT Press, 2024)
March 06, 2024 09:00 - 51 minutesWhat if our goal had not been to land on Mars, but in pure consciousness? The experience of pure consciousness—what does it look like? What is the essence of human consciousness? In The Elephant and the Blind. The Experience of Pure Consciousness: Philosophy, Science, and 500+ Experiential Reports (MIT Press, 2024)," influential philosopher Thomas Metzinger, one of the world's leading researchers on consciousness, brings together more than 500 experiential reports to offer the world's first c...
Doris Brothers and Jon Sletvold, "A New Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice and Supervision: Talking Bodies" (Routledge, 2023)
March 05, 2024 09:00 - 53 minutesBy viewing psychoanalysis through the lens of embodiment, Brothers and Sletvold suggest a shift away from traditional concept-based theory and offer new ways to understand traumatic experiences, to describe the therapeutic exchange and to enhance the supervisory process. Since traditional psychoanalytic language does not readily lend itself to embodied experience, the authors place particular emphasis on the words I, you, we and world, to describe the flow of human attention. Offering new ins...
Louis Rothschild, "Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons: Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities" (Karnac, 2023)
March 04, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourToday I spoke with Dr. Louis Rothschild about his new book Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities (Karnac, 2024). Our conversation moved freely between theory, generational attitudes, thinkers, and personal vignettes. What is a good enough father? What is the difference between a man of achievement and a man of power? Who is the father of the mother’s mind? What happens when a father enables holding? How is masculinity valued by other men? What is meant by...
Mimi Khúc, "dear elia: Letters from the Asian American Abyss" (Duke UP, 2023)
March 03, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourMimi Khúc is a PhD, writer, scholar, and teacher of things unwell. She is currently the Co-Editor of The Asian American Literary Review and an adjunct lecturer in Disability Studies at Georgetown University. Her work includes Open in Emergency, a hybrid book-arts project decolonizing Asian American mental health; the Asian American Tarot, a reimagined deck of tarot cards; and the Open in Emergency Initiative, an ongoing national project developing mental health arts programming with universit...
Anna Dako, "Dances with Sheep: On RePairing the HumanNature Condition in Felt Thinking and Moving towards Wellbeing" (Intellect Books, 2023)
March 03, 2024 09:00 - 58 minutesAnna Dako,'s book Dances with Sheep: On RePairing the HumanNature Condition in Felt Thinking and Moving towards Wellbeing (Intellect Books, 2023) presents the methodology of Felt Thinking in Movement as an eco-somatic practice inspired by re-thinking nature of being human, as well as contextualises it within wider frameworks of cultural, philosophical and therapeutic viewpoints on wellbeing. Felt Thinking is a self-inquiry practice grounded in somatic movement experience that originates in si...
Dominique Scarfone, "The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche" (Unconscious in Translation, 2023)
February 29, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourThe Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche (Unconscious in Translation, 2023) compiles papers written by Dominique Scarfone. Each paper is followed by a conversation about the paper between the author and Avgi Saketopoulou. "I propose we have a conversation after each of your essays as a way to engage your work, to ask for clarifications on the reader's behalf, and to multiply the entry points to your thinking. I imagine that these conversations will work cumulat...
Aaron J. Jackson, "Worlds of Care: The Emotional Lives of Fathers Caring for Children with Disabilities" (U California Press, 2021)
February 25, 2024 09:00 - 31 minutesVulnerable narratives of fatherhood are few and far between; rarer still is an ethnography that delves into the practical and emotional realities of intensive caregiving. Grounded in the intimate everyday lives of men caring for children with major physical and intellectual disabilities, Worlds of Care: The Emotional Lives of Fathers Caring for Children with Disabilities (U California Press, 2021) undertakes an exploration of how men shape their identities in the context of caregiving. Anthro...
Sten Grillner, "The Brain in Motion: From Microcircuits to Global Brain Function" (MIT Press, 2023)
February 23, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourC. S. Sherrington said “All the brain can do is to move things". The Brain in Motion: From Microcircuits to Global Brain Function (MIT Press, 2023) shows how much the brain can do "just" by moving things. It gives an amazing overview of the large variety of motor behaviors and the cellular basis of them. It reveals how motor circuits provide the underlying mechanism not just for walking or jumping, but also for breath or chewing. The book emphasizes the evolutionary perspective. It demonstrat...
Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There
February 22, 2024 09:00 - 52 minutesToday’s book is: Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2024), by Tali Sharot and Cass R. Sunstein, a book that asks why stimulating jobs and breathtaking works of art lose their sparkle after a while. People stop noticing what is most wonderful in their own lives. They also stop noticing what is terrible, due to something called habituation. Because of habituation, people get used to dirty air, become unconcerned by their own misconduct, and bec...
Torsa Ghosal, "Out of Mind: Mode, Mediation, and Cognition in Twenty-First-Century Narrative" (Ohio State UP, 2021)
February 20, 2024 05:00 - 52 minutesWhat is the relationship between aesthetic presentation of thought and scientific conceptions of cognition? Torsa Ghosal’s Out of Mind: Mode, Mediation, and Cognition in Twenty-First-Century Narrative (Ohio State UP, 2021) answers this question by offering incisive commentary on a range of contemporary fictions that combine language, maps, photographs, and other images to portray thought. Situating literature within groundbreaking debates on memory, perception, abstraction, and computation, G...
Nate Klemp, "Open: Living with an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World" (Sounds True, 2024)
February 19, 2024 09:00 - 57 minutesWith the avalanche of information we get every day, closing down our minds and hearts seems to be the only way to survive. We close down to our inner experience by compulsively checking our devices. We close down to others by getting caught in echo chambers of outrage. But what if there's another way? What if being more open to life is actually what brings us sanity and happiness? In this climate of distraction and division, Nate Klemp's Open: Living with an Expansive Mind in a Distracted Wor...
Paul Katsafanas, "Philosophy of Devotion: The Longing for Invulnerable Ideals" (Oxford UP, 2022)
February 13, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourWhy do some of our identity-defining commitments resist reason and critical reflection, and why do we persist in them even when they threaten our happiness, safety, and comfort? Paul Katsafanas argues in his book Philosophy of Devotion:The Longing for Invulnerable Ideals (Oxford UP, 2023) that these commitments involve an ethical stance that he calls devotion to sacred ideas. A sacred value is one that we cannot trade with ordinary values, or even consider trading off. When a value is sacred...
Joshua Paul Dale, "Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired our Brains and Conquered the World" (Profile Books, 2023)
February 10, 2024 09:00 - 34 minutesWhy are some things cute, and others not? What happens to our brains when we see something cute? And how did cuteness go global, from Hello Kitty to Disney characters? Cuteness is an area where culture and biology get tangled up. Seeing a cute animal triggers some of the most powerful psychological instincts we have - the ones that elicit our care and protection - but there is a deeper story behind the broad appeal of Japanese cats and saccharine greetings cards. In Irresistible: How Cuteness...
John Horgan, "Terrorist Minds: The Psychology of Violent Extremism from Al-Qaeda to the Far Right" ( Columbia UP, 2023)
February 08, 2024 09:00 - 36 minutesWhat makes a person want to become a terrorist? Who becomes involved in terrorism, and why? In what ways does participating in violent extremism change someone? And how can people become deradicalized? John Horgan―one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of terrorism―takes readers on a globe-spanning journey into the terrorist mindset. Drawing on groundbreaking personal interviews as well as decades of research from psychologists and others, he traces the pathways that lead people...
Vani Kant Borooah, "Economics, Religion and Happiness: God, Mammon and the Search for Spiritual and Financial Wealth" (Routledge, 2023)
February 05, 2024 09:00 - 43 minutesMany books on happiness suggest that we have considerable control over our level of happiness by doing or not doing specific things, like mediation, exercise, and maintaining social ties. Approaching happiness through the lens of economics, Vani Kant Borooah takes a different approach in his book Economics, Religion and Happiness: God, Mammon and the Search for Spiritual and Financial Wealth (Routledge, 2024). He argues that while it is true that we can take such actions to improve our relat...
Matthew Rubery, "Reader's Block: A History of Reading Differences" (Stanford UP, 2022)
January 28, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourMatthew Rubery's book Reader’s Block: A History of Reading Differences (Stanford UP, 2022) explores the influence neurodivergence has on the ways individuals read. This alternative history of reading is one of the few books which tells the stories of "atypical" readers and the impact had on their lives by neurological conditions affecting their ability to make sense of the printed word: from dyslexia, hyperlexia, and alexia to synesthesia, hallucinations, and dementia. Rubery's focus on neuro...
Ghostwriting Psychology and Overcoming Anxiety Associated with Writer’s Block
January 21, 2024 09:00 - 57 minutesBarbara Richter is an accomplished author, public speaker, French-to-English translator, and founder of DIYBook and In Ink Ghostwriting. Raised in a home steeped in books and greatly influenced by her father, an award-winning editor and National Book Award finalist, Barbara's upbringing richly nurtured her literary heritage and profoundly honed her critical thinking skills. Barbara’s multifaceted career, marked by her roles as the Managing Editor for Literary Features Syndicate, columnist for...
Harry van der Hulst, "A Mind for Language: An Introduction to the Innateness Debate" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
January 20, 2024 09:00 - 57 minutesHow does human language arise in the mind? To what extent is it innate, or something that is learned? How do these factors interact? The questions surrounding how we acquire language are some of the most fundamental about what it means to be human and have long been at the heart of linguistic theory. Harry van der Hulst's book A Mind for Language: An Introduction to the Innateness Debate (Cambridge UP, 2023) provides a comprehensive introduction to this fascinating debate, unravelling the ar...
What Decision Means
January 19, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourListen to Episode No.5 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois, and also Gang Wang, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is what decision means. Decision is no simple matter, whether the decider in question is human or mac...
Cross-Cultural Research on Gaming and “Gaming Disorder”
January 19, 2024 09:00 - 26 minutesIn 1998 the phrase “internet addiction” was first used to describe problematic prolonged internet use, and encompassed a wide range of online activities including reading news, connecting in chat rooms, viewing pornography, and gambling. Since then, particular focus has been placed on internet gaming, and in 2022 the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (11th edition) classified Gaming Disorder as a "mental disorder due to addictive behaviors." But as Dr. Veli-...
Tara Brach, "Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha" (Random House, 2004)
January 17, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourIt can be so easy to feel like we’re not enough or that we’re somehow insufficient. According to meditation teacher Tara Brach, this feeling of unworthiness is fundamentally a disease of separation, as it alienates us from ourselves and the people around us. For Brach, one way to free ourselves from this trance of unworthiness is the practice of radical acceptance. In the twentieth-anniversary edition of her classic book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha (Ran...
Mudita Nisker and Dan Clurman, "Let's Talk: An Essential Guide to Skillful Communication" (2022)
January 14, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourLet's Talk: An Essential Guide to Skillful Communication (2022) is a transformative guide to elevate your everyday conversations. Authored by Mudita Nisker and Dan Clurman, this practical handbook equips you with essential skills to navigate challenging topics, boost self-expression confidence, and foster respectful influence. Drawing from psychology, sociology, learning theory, and spiritual traditions, the book offers a comprehensive yet accessible approach to one-on-one communication. It's...
Krista K. Thomason, "Dancing with the Devil: Why Bad Feelings Make Life Good" (Oxford UP, 2023)
January 10, 2024 09:00 - 59 minutesHow could a good life include one with anger, or jealousy, or spite? In Dancing with the Devil: Why Bad Feelings Make Life Good (Oxford UP, 2023), Krista Thomason flips the script on popular ways of dealing with our emotions, including neo-Stoicism, mindfulness, and even the prosperity gospel. She makes the case that we should get rid of the double standard we have towards "good" and "bad" emotions, and that we should not aim to be emotional saints. Instead, because "bad" emotions are an esse...
Christian Coseru on Perceiving Reality
January 08, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourWhat does it mean to perceive and just how capable are we of perceiving reality? This is a core question in the work of Christian Coseru, who is today’s guest. He is the Lightsey Humanities chair and Professor of Philosophy at the College of Charleston. Christian works in the fields of philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy, especially Indian and Buddhist philosophy in dialogue with Western philosophy and cognitive science. He is the author of Perceiving Reality: Con...
Melanie Joy, "How to End Injustice Everywhere" (Lantern, 2023)
January 08, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourIn this eye-opening and compelling work, psychologist Melanie Joy reveals the common denominator driving all forms of injustice. The mentality that drives us to oppress and abuse humans is the same mentality that drives us to oppress and abuse nonhumans and the environment, as well as those in our own groups working for justice. How to End Injustice Everywhere: Understanding the Common Denominator Driving All Injustices, to Create a Better World for Humans, Animals, and the Planet (Lantern Pu...
Matthew Gutmann, "Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short" (Basic Books, 2019)
January 02, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourIn Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short (Basic Books, 2019), Matthew Gutmann examines how cultural expectations viewing men as violent and sex driven becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Dubious interpretations of the scientific study of the effects of testosterone, comparisons to the animal kingdom and the persistence of sex segregation reinforces ideas about what is natural. The idea that masculinity is the result of biology allows the “boys will be boys” excuse and reinfo...
Erika Dyck, "Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2018)
December 30, 2023 09:00 - 56 minutesToday I talked with historian Erika Dyck about Aldous Huxley, Humphry Osmond and their correspondence over a ten year period. Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018) is a collection of letters which were carefully curated by Erika and Cynthia Carson Bisbee, Paul Bisbee, and Patrick Farrell. During our discussion, Erika recounts the special relationship between two intellectual juggernauts, Huxley and Osmond, and their discu...
Kevin Hood Gary, "Why Boredom Matters: Education, Leisure, and the Quest for a Meaningful Life" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
December 29, 2023 09:00 - 43 minutesBoredom is an enduring problem. In response, schools often do one or both of the following: first, they endorse what novelist Walker Percy describes as a 'boredom avoidance scheme,' adopting new initiative after new initiative in the hope that boredom can be outrun altogether, or second, they compel students to accept boring situations as an inevitable part of life. Both strategies avoid serious reflection on this universal and troubling state of mind. In Why Boredom Matters (Cambridge UP, 2...
Jeffrey Whyte, "The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War" (Oxford UP, 2023)
December 27, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourJeffrey Whyte's book The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War (Oxford UP, 2023) explores the history, politics, and geography of United States psychological warfare in the 20th century against the backdrop of the contemporary 'post-truth era'. From its origins in the Second World War, to the United States' counterinsurgency campaigns in Vietnam, Whyte traces how the theory and practice of psychological warfare transformed the re...
Helena Vissing, "Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Trauma Treatment for Perinatal Mental Health" (Routledge, 2023)
December 27, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourToday we spoke with Dr. Helena Vissing about her new book Somatic Maternal Healing Psychodynamic and Somatic Trauma Treatment for Perinatal Mental Health (Routledge, 2023). What does the research of neuro science, immunology and biology tell us about the complex links between trauma, stress, inflammatory responses, and postpartum depression? What are the somatic counter transferences specific to the perinatal transition? What is the difference between empowered mothering and feminist motherin...
Talking to Strangers: A Discussion with Psychotherapist Charlotte Fox Weber
December 21, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutesCan the kindness of strangers help with the loneliness crisis? Whether you are a student, staff, or have gone alt-ac, you’ve likely had to move at least once recently for your education and career goals. It can get lonely when family and friends are far away or they just don’t understand what you are doing with your life, and you are left wondering who you can talk to, who has your back, and who will be your people. In this episode, a podcaster and a psychotherapist sit down to talk about how...
Brian Brown and Virginia Kuulei Berndt, "Body Art" (Emerald Publishing, 2023)
December 19, 2023 09:00 - 40 minutesBody art, especially tattoos and piercings, has enjoyed an explosion of interest in recent years. However, the response of many health professionals and researchers to this phenomenon is often negative, as body art continues to be associated with issues ranging from ill mental health to offending behaviors. Arguing for a reappraisal of the diverse range of practices that fall under this heading, Brian Brown and Virginia (Ginger) Kuulei Berndt reconsider body art as an underappreciated yet acc...
Lawrence Sherman and Dennis Plies, "Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music" (Columbia UP, 2023)
December 16, 2023 09:00 - 43 minutesWhenever a person engages with music--when a piano student practices a scale, a jazz saxophonist riffs on a melody, a teenager sobs to a sad song, or a wedding guest gets down on the dance floor--countless neurons are firing. Playing an instrument requires all of the resources of the nervous system, including cognitive, sensory, and motor functions. Composition and improvisation are remarkable demonstrations of the brain's capacity for creativity. Something as seemingly simple as listening to...
Oren Jay Sofer, "Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love" (Shambhala, 2023)
December 10, 2023 09:00 - 53 minutesWhat is the role of contemplative practice in times of crisis? And how can meditation actually support us in meeting the greatest challenges of our time? Oren Jay Sofer takes up these questions in his new book, Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love (Shambhala, 2023). As a meditation teacher and a member of the Spirit Rock Teachers Council, Sofer has spent decades exploring the relationship between contemplative pr...
A Conversation with Austin Ratner, the New Editor of "The American Psychoanalyst"
December 06, 2023 09:00 - 55 minutesAustin Ratner has an interesting background. After graduating from medical school he decided to change careers. Rather than continuing in medicine he became a fiction writer. This shift seemed to be a good decision since he won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish literature for his first novel, The Jump Artist. He also wrote The Psychoanalyst’s Aversion to Proof which demonstrated his thorough understanding of Freud’s brilliance as well as some of the difficulties he encountered. Currently, Austin...
Emma K. Sutton, "William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
December 05, 2023 09:00 - 37 minutesEmma K. Sutton's William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician (U Chicago Press, 2023) is the first book to map William James's preoccupation with medical ideas, concerns, and values across the breadth of his work. William James is known as a nineteenth-century philosopher, psychologist, and psychical researcher. Less well-known is how his interest in medicine influenced his life and work, driving his ambition to change the way American society conceived of itself in body, mind, and...
Coleen T. Murphy, "How We Age: The Science of Longevity" (Princeton UP, 2023)
December 01, 2023 09:00 - 31 minutesAll of us would like to live longer, or to slow the debilitating effects of age. In How We Age: The Science of Longevity (Princeton UP, 2023), Coleen Murphy shows how recent research on longevity and aging may be bringing us closer to this goal. Murphy, a leading scholar of aging, explains that the study of model systems, particularly simple invertebrate animals, combined with breakthroughs in genomic methods, have allowed scientists to probe the molecular mechanisms of longevity and aging. U...
Christian B. Miller, "Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue" (Oxford UP, 2021)
November 30, 2023 09:00 - 57 minutesHonesty is an important virtue. Parents want to develop it in their children. Close relationships depend upon it. Employers value it in their employees. Surprisingly, however, philosophers have said very little about the virtue of honesty over the past fifty years. In Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue (Oxford UP, 2021), Christian B. Miller aims to draw much greater attention to this neglected virtue. The first part of the book looks at the concept of honesty. It tak...
Jonathan M. Depierro et al., "Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
November 29, 2023 09:00 - 38 minutesLife presents us all with challenges. Most of us at some point will be struck by major traumas such as the sudden death of a loved one, a debilitating disease, or a natural disaster. What differentiates us is how we respond. In this important book, three experts in trauma and resilience answer key questions such as What helps people adapt to life's most challenging situations?, How can you build up your own resilience?, and What do we know about the science of resilience? Combining cutting-e...
Astra Taylor, "The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart" (House of Anansi Press, 2023)
November 28, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThese days, everyone feels insecure. We are financially stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. The status quo isn’t working for anyone, even those who appear to have it all. What is going on? In The Age of Insecurity (House of Anansi Press, 2023), author and activist Astra Taylor exposes how seemingly disparate crises—rising inequality and declining mental health, the ecological emergency, and the threat of authoritarianism—originate from a social order built on insecurity. From home ownership...
Ran Zwigenberg, "Nuclear Minds: Cold War Psychological Science and the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
November 27, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourRan Zwigenberg’s Nuclear Minds: Cold War Psychological Science and the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (U Chicago Press, 2023) explores early efforts by the American military, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social scientists to understand the effects of the atomic bombings on the minds of those who had survived. In positioning the book as “a prehistory of PTSD,” Zwigenberg draws attention to the historicity of the idea of psychological “trauma” before the concept was institutionalized i...
The Future of Innovation: A Discussion with Min W. Jung
November 26, 2023 09:00 - 35 minutesHumans have been so dominant on Earth in large part because of their capacity to innovate – but how does that work exactly? Why can they innovate so much? That issue has been studied by Professor Min W. Jung from the Center for Synaptic Brain Dysfunctions at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea. He is the author of A Brain for Innovation: The Neuroscience of Imagination and Abstract Thinking (Columbia UP, 2023). Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones. Owen Bennett-Jon...
Dhwani Shah, "The Analyst's Torment: Unbearable Mental States in Countertransference" (Karnac Books, 2022)
November 25, 2023 09:00 - 55 minutesToday I spoke with Dr. Dhwani Shah about his new book The Analyst’s Torment: Unbearable Mental States in Countertransference (Karnac Books, 2022). The son of a sculptor mother and an internist father Shah has always been interested in subjectivity, aesthetics, art, and “how to find objectivity in subjectivity.” He began his practice with the fantasy that “I could understand things, I would know things and then I would be able to treat my patients, heal them, heal myself.” However, when his tw...
Joan A. Friedman, "Twins in Session: Case Histories in Treating Twinship Issues" (Rocky Pines Press, 2018)
November 24, 2023 09:00 - 57 minutesWhy would a twin sacrifice her own needs to make sure her same-age sibling is always cared for? What would cause a twin to have panic attacks when he and his brother go away to separate colleges? Why do some twins find it so difficult to develop friendships and romantic relationships? The "twin mystique" and twins' own expectations of their relationship contribute to their difficulties. A therapist who understands the psychology of twins can articulate what's going on between the siblings. Cl...