New Books in Psychology
1,051 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 10 hours ago - ★★★★ - 44 ratingsInterviews with Psychologists about their New Books
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Episodes
Baptiste Brossard, "Forgetting Items: The Social Experience of Alzheimer’s Disease" (Indiana UP, 2019)
April 20, 2020 08:00 - 51 minutesAlzheimer's disease has not only profound medical consequences for the individual experiencing it but a life-changing impact on those around them. From the moment a person is suspected to be suffering from Alzheimer's or another form of dementia, the interactions they encounter progressively change. Baptiste Brossard's new book Forgetting Items: The Social Experience of Alzheimer’s Disease (Indiana University Press, 2019) focuses on that social experience of Alzheimer's, delineating the ways ...
Peter Carruthers, "Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest" (Oxford UP, 2019)
April 14, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourDo nonhuman animals have phenomenally conscious mental states? For example, do they have the types of conscious experiences we have when, in our case, we experience the smell of cinnamon or the redness of a ripe tomato? In Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest (Oxford University Press, 2019), Peter Carruthers argues that there is no fact of the matter as to whether they do or not. On Carruthers’ view, nonhuman animals have those types of consciousness identified as ...
George Scialabba, "How To Be Depressed" (U Penn Press, 2020)
April 08, 2020 08:00 - 35 minutesGeorge Scialabba is a prolific critic and essayist known for his incisive, wide-ranging commentary on literature, philosophy, religion, and politics. He is also, like millions of others, a lifelong sufferer from clinical depression. In How To Be Depressed (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), Scialabba presents an edited selection of his mental health records spanning decades of treatment, framed by an introduction and an interview with renowned podcaster Christopher Lydon. The book also ...
Amy Koerber, “From Hysteria to Hormones: A Rhetorical History" (Penn State UP, 2018)
April 07, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourOn this episode of New Books in Language, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews Dr. Amy Koerber (she/hers), Professor at Texas Tech University, on the groundbreaking book From Hysteria to Hormones: A Rhetorical History (Penn State University Press, 2018). Filled with fresh takes on classical rhetorical theories, From Hysteria is an engaging exploration of the study of “women’s problems” (take the air quote seriously there). Dr. Koerber shows that the boundary between older, nonscientific ways ...
Anna Arstein-Kerslake, "Restoring Voice to People with Cognitive Disabilities: Realizing the Right to Equal Recognition Before the Law" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
April 06, 2020 08:00 - 55 minutesThe right to decision making is important for all people. It allows us to choose how to we our lives – both on a daily basis, and also in terms of how we wish to express ourselves, to live in accordance with our values and desires. However, the right to make decisions has been, and continues to be, routinely denied to people with disabilities – sometimes by family members and carers, or by institutions and courts. In this conversation, Anna Arstein-Kerslake discusses situations where people w...
Ray Dorsey, "Ending Parkinson's Disease: A Prescription for Action" (Public Affairs, 2020)
April 06, 2020 08:00 - 42 minutesBrain diseases are now the world's leading source of disability. The fastest growing of these is Parkinson's: the number of impacted patients has doubled to more than six million over the last twenty-five years and is projected to double again by 2040. Harmful pesticides that increase the risk of Parkinson's continue to proliferate, many people remain undiagnosed and untreated, research funding stagnates, and the most effective treatment is now a half century old. In Ending Parkinson's Diseas...
Owen Whooley, "On the Heels of Ignorance: Psychiatry and the Politics of Not Knowing" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
April 03, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourPsychiatry has always aimed to peer deep into the human mind, daring to cast light on its darkest corners and untangle its thorniest knots, often invoking the latest medical science in doing so. But, as Owen Whooley’s sweeping new book tells us, peering deep into the human mind is, well, really hard. On the Heels of Ignorance: Psychiatry and the Politics of Not Knowing (University Chicago Press, 2019) begins with psychiatry’s formal inception in the United States in the 1840s and moves throug...
Baptiste Brossard, "Why do We Hurt Ourselves? Understanding Self-Harm in Social Life" (Indiana UP, 2018)
March 30, 2020 08:00 - 50 minutesWhy does an estimated 5% of the general population intentionally and repeatedly hurt themselves? What are the reasons certain people resort to self-injury as a way to manage their daily lives? In Why do We Hurt Ourselves? Understanding Self-Harm in Social Life (Indiana University Press, 2018), sociologist Baptiste Brossard draws on a five-year survey of self-injurers and suggests that the answers can be traced to social, more than personal, causes. Self-injury is not a matter of disturbed ind...
Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)
March 30, 2020 08:00 - 54 minutesParadox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like rabbits or hats. Paradox works in the abstract, with words and concepts and symbols, to create the illusion of contradiction. There are no contradictions in reality, but there can appear to be. In Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy (MIT Press, 2020), Matt C...
Great Books: Peter Brooks on Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents"
March 03, 2020 09:00 - 52 minutesWe want to be happy, we want to get what we want, we want to love and be loved. But life, even when our basic needs are met, often makes us unhappy. You can't always get what you want, Freud noted in his 1930 short book, Civilization and its Discontents. Our desires are foiled not by bad luck, our failures, or the environment -- but by the civilization meant to make life better. So why isn't civilization set up to maximize our happiness and pleasure? Why does more civilization also mean more ...
Elise Berman, "Talking Like Children: Language and the Production of Age in the Marshall Islands" (Oxford UP, 2019)
March 02, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourSince World War II, the fate of the Marshal Islands has been tied to the United States. The Marshalls were a site of military testing, host a US military base, and many Marshallese migrate to the US to pursue education and economic opportunity. Yet there are few books about Marshallese culture which are short and readable. In Talking Like Children: Language and the Production of Age in the Marshall Islands (Oxford University Press, 2019), Elise Berman shows us the complexities of Marshallese ...
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
February 25, 2020 09:00 - 42 minutesHow does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McMaster University, provides a unique sociological analysis of how critics confront the different types of uncertainty associated with their practice. The book explores how reviewers get matched to books, the ethics and etiquette of negative reviews and ‘punching up’, along with professional identitie...
Sarah Fawn Montgomery, "Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir" (Mad Creek Books, 2018)
February 24, 2020 09:00 - 38 minutesIf you live in America, chances are good you’ve heard the term “mental health crisis” bandied about in the media. While true that anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders seem to be on the rise—especially among young people—resources for addressing them remain scarce and stigmatized, and the conditions themselves remain poorly understood. Even doctors and scientists don’t have all the answers. For example, is the development of a mood disorder the product of nature or nurture? Why are mo...
Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider, "Why Does Patriarchy Persist?" (Polity, 2018)
February 10, 2020 09:00 - 42 minutesActivists have been working to dismantle patriarchal structures since the feminist and civil rights movements of the last century, and yet we continue to struggle with patriarchy today. In their new book, Why Does Patriarchy Persist? (Polity, 2018), Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider use psychoanalysis and psychology as frameworks for understanding the vexingly enduring power of this social structure. They offer a cogent and eye-opening theory addressing the fear of loss against which patriarchy...
David Adger, "Language Unlimited: The Science Behind Our Most Creative Power" (Oxford UP, 2019)
February 04, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourDavid Adger is Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London, where he is Head of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film. He has served as President of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain since 2015, and has authored a number of monographs on syntactic theory, in addition to the widely used undergraduate textbook Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach (Oxford University Press, 2003). In his book, Language Unlimited: The Science Behind Our Most Creative Power (Oxford ...
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)
January 30, 2020 09:00 - 39 minutesIf you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years working on a PhD, or if you’re a faculty member whose career has basically consisted of higher ed, switching isn’t so easy. PhD holders are mostly trained to work as professors, and making easy connections to other careers is no mean feat. Because the people you know were generally trained to do the sam...
Eleanor Gordon-Smith, "Stop Being Reasonable: How We Really Change Our Minds" (PublicAffairs, 2019)
January 29, 2020 09:00 - 34 minutesWith today's furious political and cultural divisions, it's easy to shake our heads in exasperation at those who disagree with us. In this episode with Australian writer and philosopher, Eleanor Gordon-Smith, we take a journey to the limits of human reason. Her compelling new book, Stop Being Reasonable: How We Really Change Our Minds (PublicAffairs, 2019) features six high-stakes personal stories of successful persuasion that illustrate what most of us get wrong about rationality. "Hearing t...
Jodie Jackson, “You Are What You Read: Why Changing Your Media Diet Can Change The World” (Unbound, 2019)
January 27, 2020 09:00 - 40 minutesThe old mantra “if it bleeds it leads” is alive and well in today’s media landscape. In fact, social media and up-to-the-second news have made it easier than ever to ingest a constant stream of information about the world. In her book, You Are What You Read: Why Changing Your Media Diet Can Change The World (Unbound, 2019), Jodie Jackson argues that this type of news consumption leads to feelings of anger and helplessness. The book, and this conversation, outline how solutions journalism prov...
Christina Adams, "Camel Crazy" (New World Library, 2019)
January 23, 2020 09:00 - 50 minutesToday I’m speaking with author Christina Adams, and Adams has something of a surprising muse: camels. That’s right, camels. One hump, two humps, crossing the Egyptian desert or the Siberian tundra. Adams’ muse is surprising, because she lives, like many of us, in North America—Orange County, California, to be exact. That’s not the place where you’d expect someone to develop a deep fascination and a deep respect for camels. And yet this improbability makes Adams’ new book Camel Crazy (New Worl...
Nicci Gerrard, "The Last Ocean: A Journey Through Memory and Forgetting" (Penguin, 2019)
January 22, 2020 09:00 - 36 minutesDementia provokes profound moral questions about our society and the meaning of life itself. How much are we connected to one another? In what ways are we distant and separated? What does it mean to have a self? How can we offer dignity to those who suffer from Alzheimer's and other forms of this terrible disease? Worldwide around 50 million people have dementia. The US Centers for Disease Control estimates that the U.S. total is more than five million. The numbers are growing with the aging ...
Rachel Chrastil, "How to Be Childless: A History and Philosophy of Life Without Children" (Oxford UP, 2019)
January 21, 2020 09:00 - 36 minutesIn this episode, Jana Byars talks with Rachel Chrastil, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and member of the history department at Xavier University, about her newest book, How to Be Childless: A History and Philosophy of Life Without Children (Oxford University Press, 2019). This book is, at its heart, a history book, exploring the most personal of women’s decisions from the 1500s on. It also makes a stab at providing childless women with a narrative to support their own choices. From the i...
Jonathan Erickson, "Imagination in the Western Psyche: From Ancient Greece to Modern Neuroscience" (Routledge, 2019)
January 15, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourImagination is one of the most important elements of being human, but is most often assumed we know what it is, while rarely being analyzed. Here with me today is Jonathan Erickson to discuss his recent book Imagination in the Western Psyche: From Ancient Greece to Modern Neuroscience (Routledge, 2019). The book looks at various theories of imagination through history, and then looks at what neuroscience can tell us about the functioning of imagination, as well as looking at what the function...
Babette Becker, "I Should Have Been Music" (Page Publishing, 2018)
December 18, 2019 09:00 - 1 hourDr. Babette Becker’s memoir I Should Have Been Music (Page Publishing, 2018) recounts her experience as a patient in four different mental hospitals from 1957 to 1960. It was a time when little was known about mental illness, except the shame and horror of it, and nothing was known about early childhood trauma. Passed from hospital to hospital carrying several severe classic diagnostic labels, she narrowly missed being sent to a State hospital where, if not for luck, she might have been incar...
Taylor Pendergrass, "Six by Ten: Stories from Solitary" (Haymarket Books, 2018)
December 18, 2019 09:00 - 1 hourLong-term solitary confinement meets the legal definition of torture, and yet solitary confinement is used in every state in the United States. People are placed in solitary confinement for a variety of reasons, and long-term solitary confinement can have a harmful effect on mental and physical health. Reform is happening, but the use of solitary confinement is still a problem in the US. Taylor Pendergrass, a lawyer who works on criminal justice reform for the ACLU, has spent over a decade co...
Sarah Handley-Cousins, "Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North" (U Georgia Press, 2019)
December 05, 2019 09:00 - 48 minutesAll wars, in a practical sense, center on the destruction of the human body, and in Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North (University of Georgia Press, 2019), Sarah Handley-Cousins, a clinical assistant professor at the University at Buffalo, shows how disability was a necessary by-product of the U.S. Civil War. Handley-Cousins argues that disability in the Civil War North extended far past amputations and highlights how wartime disability ranged from the temporary to the chronic,...
Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)
December 03, 2019 09:00 - 57 minutesWe’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous―and easier to share than ever. We associate charts with science and reason; the flashy visuals are both appealing and persuasive. Pie charts, maps, bar and line graphs, and scatter plots (to name a few) can better inform us, revealing patterns and trends hidden behind the numbers we encounter in our lives. In short...
Nir Eyal, "Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
November 25, 2019 09:00 - 56 minutesA former advisor to tech companies on how to make their products habit-forming, Nir Eyal found that his own smartphone use was adversely affecting his family life. He took a deep dive into research and literature on the subject, and emerged with this new book (with Julie Li), Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life (Bloomsbury, 2019). The takes his expertise and applies it to consumers, to give us all a fighting chance to maintain control of our lives – online and o...
Susan Opotow, "New York After 9/11" (Fordham UP, 2019)
November 19, 2019 09:00 - 34 minutesThe impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the country have been widely discussed—but what about the impact on New York City, specifically? In their new anthology, New York After 9/11 (Fordham University Press, 2018), Susan Opotow and Zachary Baron Shemtob examine how life in New York City was drastically altered as examined from various perspectives such as psychology, public health, medicine, architecture, and others. For our interview, Susan Opotow and I discuss the long-term effect of 9/...
Richard Robb, "Willful: How We Choose What We Do" (Yale UP, 2019)
November 18, 2019 09:00 - 42 minutesTired of the mechanical, narrowly rational human behavior of the Chicago school, but not exactly comforted by the emphasis on irrational activity in behavioral economics? So am I. Richard Robb, professor at Columbia and fund manager, offers a third way. In Willful: How We Choose What We Do (Yale University Press, 2019), Robb develops the notion of "for itself" behavior and decision making that can't be reduced to the algorithms of calculating machines, or even those that are adjusted for huma...
Brett Kahr, "Bombs in the Consulting Room: Surviving Psychological Shrapnel" (Routledge, 2019
November 15, 2019 09:00 - 1 hour"I’m very happy to say I really really do love psychoanalysis. I think the insights are absolutely genius and I don’t think that I would be able to do any of my work if I didn’t have those ideas readily available to me." In Bombs in the Consulting Room: Surviving Psychological Shrapnel (Routledge 2019), Professor Brett Kahr takes us on a tour de force through the rough fringes of clinical practice. He portrays his work with forensic and non-verbal patients, with sado-masochistic couples and d...
Wendy Gonaver, "The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840–1880" (UNC Press, 2019)
November 15, 2019 09:00 - 56 minutesDr. Wendy Gonaver discusses her book, The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840-1880 (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), the Eastern Lunatic Asylum in Virginia, and the roles that race, the institution of slavery, and slave labor played in the development of psychiatric diagnosis and care through the nineteenth century and beyond. Though the origins of asylums can be traced to Europe, the systematic segregation of the mentally ill into specialized institutions...
Claire Edington, "Beyond the Asylum: Mental Illness in French Colonial Vietnam" (Cornell UP, 2019)
November 13, 2019 09:00 - 1 hourBoth colonies and insane asylums are well known institutions of power. But what of asylums in Europe’s early 20th-century colonial empires? How did they operate? Who was confined in them? Who worked there? What was daily life like in such an institution? How did Western medical experts and the colonized population understand mental illness and its treatment? How did colonial racism impact mental illness? In this episode we chat with Claire Edington, Assistant Professor of History at the Unive...
Carlo Bonomi, "The Cut and the Building of Psychoanalysis, Vol. I," (Routledge, 2017)
November 07, 2019 09:00 - 57 minutesCarlo Bonomi's two-volume set dreams the foundation of psychoanalysis as it writes its history. The work animates the reader's imagination, inviting them to journey the interwoven paths of Sigmund Freud's associations, anxieties and conflicts. These books tackle what has often remained hidden both in the historical writing about psychoanalysis and in Freud's explicit account of castration: the practice of female genital mutilation, pervasive in major European cities as treatment for hysteria ...
Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing
November 03, 2019 09:00 - 40 minutesAs you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might called "fundamental research." Their authors--dedicated researchers one and all--provide the scholarly stuff upon which many non-fiction trade books are based. So when you are reading, say, a popular history, you are often reading UP books at one remove. Of course, some UP books are also bestseller...
Ira Helderman, "Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion" (UNC Press, 2019)
October 24, 2019 08:00 - 1 hourBuddhism and psychotherapy have been in conversation since the days of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Erich Fromm. Today, when practices drawn from Buddhism have entered the mainstream, that conversation continues in multiple dimensions. In Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Ira Helderman looks at the ways psychotherapists, some of them also active as leaders of Dharma communities, have engaged Buddhi...
J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
October 24, 2019 08:00 - 32 minutesThe things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not necessarily make us good teachers. Jessamyn Neuhaus’s Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers (West Virginia University Press, 2019) helps us to identify and embrace that geekiness in us and then offers practical, step-by-step guidelines for ho...
Logan Thompson, "Beyond the Content: Mindfulness as a Test Prep Advantage" (Kaplan Publishing, 2019)
October 10, 2019 08:00 - 52 minutesMost test prep books, textbooks, and classes miss the mark by only focusing on strategy and content. This essential guide tackles the other half of test prep: mindfulness and your mental performance. Mindfulness is widely embraced in the business and athletic communities as a valuable technique to optimize performance. Author Logan Thompson, an expert in both test prep and mindfulness, says that it's about time the test prep community embraces it as well. In his book, Beyond the Content: Mind...
Christopher Willard, "Raising Resilience, The Wisdom and Science of Happy Families and Thriving Children" (Sounds True, 2017)
October 07, 2019 08:00 - 43 minutesIn every spiritual tradition, we find teachings on the virtues and qualities that we most want to pass on to our kids―such as generosity, kindness, honesty, determination, and patience. Today, a growing body of research from neuroscience and social psychology supports these teachings, offering insights into cultivating these virtues in ourselves and in our families. In his new book Raising Resilience: The Wisdom and Science of Happy Families and Thriving Children (Sounds True, 2017), Christop...
Matthew McKay and Aprilia West, "Emotion Efficacy Therapy" (Context Press, 2016)
September 30, 2019 08:00 - 55 minutesHaving emotions is part of being human. And yet, at times we may find emotions overwhelming, or find ourselves acting in ways that are out of alignment with our values, especially when we are emotionally triggered. It is important for all of us to learn to respond effectively to emotions and choose their actions in accordance with our values. Emotional Efficacy Therapy (EET) is a powerful and effective model for working with emotion regulation disorders, such as depression, anxiety, post-trau...
Emily Oster, "Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, From Birth to Preschool" (Penguin, 2019)
September 26, 2019 08:00 - 1 hourAs any new parent knows, there is an abundance of often-conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends, and strangers on the internet. From the earliest days, parents get the message that they must make certain choices around feeding, sleep, and schedule or all will be lost. There's a rule—or three—for everything. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the trade-offs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision? In this episode, cross-posted from t...
Judith Grisel, "Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction" (Doubleday, 2019)
September 19, 2019 08:00 - 1 hourNot a lot of authors go from spending their early twenties homeless and addicted to cocaine to becoming one of the world’s leading researchers on the neuroscience of addiction. But Dr. Judith Grisel, in her new book Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction (Doubleday, 2019), uses her personal story to illuminate the ways in which the brain, in collusion with social and biological factors, makes addiction possible. In our discussion, Grisel outlines the effects of different d...
Steven C. Hayes, "A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters" (Avery Group, 2019)
September 11, 2019 08:00 - 1 hourIn his landmark new book, A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters (Avery Publishing Group, 2019), Dr. Steven C. Hayes, the originator and pioneering researcher into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) lays out the psychological flexibility skills that make it one of the most powerful approaches research has yet to offer. These skills have been shown to help even where other approaches have failed. Science shows that they are useful in virtually every area--mental health (anxiet...
Chiara Russo Krauss, "Wundt, Avenarius and Scientific Psychology: A Debate at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)
September 10, 2019 08:00 - 1 hourAt the start of the 19th century, the field we now call psychology was still the branch of philosophy that studied the soul. How did psychology come to define itself as a separate area of inquiry, and how did it come to be a science? In Wundt, Avenarius and Scientific Psychology: A Debate at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Palgrave MacMillan 2019), Chiara Russo Krauss considers the conceptual foundations of psychology as a science in the conflicting views of Wilhelm Wundt and Richard Avena...
Harriet Washington, "A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind" (Little, Brown Spark, 2019)
September 09, 2019 08:00 - 48 minutesEnvironmental racism is visible not only as cancer clusters or the location of grocery stores. It is responsible for the reported gap in IQ scores between white Americans and Black, Latinx, and Native Americans. So argues science writer Harriet Washington in A Terrible to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind (Little, Brown Spark 2019). While acknowledging IQ is a biased and flawed metric, she contends it is useful for tracking cognitive damage. Using copious data a...
Holly Rogers, "The Mindful Twenty-Something" (New Harbinger, 2016)
September 03, 2019 08:00 - 56 minutesIn her book, The Mindful Twenty-Something (New Harbinger, 2016), Holly Rogers presents a unique, evidence based approach to help you make important life decisions with clarity and confidence. As cofounder of the extremely popular Koru Mindfulness program developed at Duke University, her work with students serves as inspiration for this book. As a twenty-something, you may feel like you are being pulled in dozen different directions. With the daily tumult, busyness, and major life changes y...
D. Berry and M. Borg, "Relationship Sanity: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Relationships" (Central Recovery Press, 2018)
August 14, 2019 08:00 - 44 minutesRelationships are hard, and it’s often because we defend ourselves against the very intimacy we seek by getting locked into problematic patterns of compulsive caretaking. Such was the topic of Mark Borg, Grant Brenner, and Daniel Berry’s first book, Irrelationship: How We Use Dysfunctional Relationships to Hide from Intimacy. These authors explain how to break out of such problematic patterns in their follow-up book, Relationship Sanity: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Relationships (Central...
Mike Jay, "Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic" (Yale UP, 2019)
August 07, 2019 08:00 - 30 minutesPsychedelics are not terribly new. And the drug mescaline is certainly not new. Mike Jay's new book, Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic (Yale University Press, 2019), tells two trippy stories: one that is about Indigenous use and another about Western society's adoption of the drug in culture and medicine. He discusses perceptions of mescaline in science, culture, and the psychedelic renaissance. The book - and the discussion - is eye-opening. Mike Jay is a freelance writer ...
Matt Oram, "The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy: LSD Psychotherapy in America" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018)
August 05, 2019 08:00 - 53 minutesAre we in the midst of a psychedelic renaissance? If so, what can we learn about the present moment through the history of psychedelic experiments in the past? Matt Oram discusses contemporary debates about LSD and MDMA and brings much-needed context with his new book, The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy: LSD Psychotherapy in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), Oram talks about the role of psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry as well the field of drug regulation. He underlines...
Quassim Cassam, "Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political" (Oxford UP, 2019)
August 01, 2019 08:00 - 1 hourSometimes people are blameworthy or otherwise not admirable because of what they believe. And sometimes they are blameworthy or otherwise not admirable because of how they believe – broadly, their ways of thinking, inquiring, handling evidence, and managing information. We sometimes criticize others for being careless, dogmatic, gullible, and so on. These evaluations often have the form of appraisals of the persons to whom they are applied. So, just as we might speak of intellectual virtues, ...
Naftali Rothenberg, "Rabbi Akiva’s Philosophy of Love" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
July 19, 2019 08:00 - 47 minutesIs love between man and woman the source of wisdom and the cornerstone of moral life? Naftali Rothenberg says it is, based on the works and life of the first century Jewish scholar and sage, Rabbi Akiva. In Rabbi Akiva’s Philosophy of Love (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) Rothenberg explores the philosophy of love through the thought and life of Rabbi Akiva whose life was transformed by the love of his wife, Rachel. From this starting point, Naftali Rothenberg conducts a thorough examination of the...