Stress is our internal response to an experience that our brain perceives as threatening or challenging. Trauma is our response to an experience in which we feel powerless or lacking agency. Until now, researchers have treated these conditions as different, but they actually lie along a continuum. In Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma (Avery Press, 2020), Dr. Elizabeth Stanley explains the significance of this continuum, how it affects ...
May 27, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 54
Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite bad, even fatal, consequences for the people who hold them? In The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread (Yale University Press, 2018), Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false beliefs. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs m...
May 20, 2020•40 min•Ep. 49
Consider a couple with an infant (or two) whose lives have become so harried and difficult the marriage is falling apart. Would it be ethical for them to take oxytocin to help them renew their emotional bonds, or would this be an unethical evasion of the hard work that keeping a marriage going requires? What if someone has sexual desires that they consider immoral – should they be able to take a drug to suppress those desires, or alternatively can society force them to? Debates about the ethics ...
May 11, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 218
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris , J ames T. Campbell , and Alfred L. Brophy , is the first edited collection of scholarly essays devoted solely to the histories and legacies of this subject on North American campuses and in their Atlantic contexts. Gathering together contributions from scholars, activists, and administrators, the volume combines two broad bodies of work: (1) historically based interdisciplinary re...
Apr 28, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 193
During this global pandemic, many of us will experience trauma, which the authors define as a severely stressful life-altering event. A traumatic event is like an earthquake, shattering an individual’s coherent world-view the way an earthquake can shatter the foundations of buildings. A traumatic event is undesirable in the extreme and significant enough to challenge “ the basic assumptions about one’s future and how to move toward that future…such as the loss of loved ones, of cherished roles o...
Apr 21, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 100
Alzheimer'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 dis...
Apr 20, 2020•49 min•Ep. 135
Do 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 bei...
Apr 14, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 215
George 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 inc...
Apr 08, 2020•36 min•Ep. 99
On 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 of ...
Apr 07, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 68
Brain 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 Disease: ...
Apr 06, 2020•42 min•Ep. 18
The 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 with...
Apr 06, 2020•53 min•Ep. 80
Psychiatry 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 through ...
Apr 03, 2020•1 hr
Why 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 indivi...
Mar 30, 2020•47 min•Ep. 131
Paradox 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 Cook...
Mar 30, 2020•52 min•Ep. 46
We 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 ps...
Mar 03, 2020•50 min•Ep. 70
Since 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 lif...
Mar 02, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 57
How 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 identities...
Feb 25, 2020•42 min•Ep. 154
If 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 more ...
Feb 24, 2020•36 min•Ep. 99
In 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 reinforce...
Feb 12, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 108
Activists 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 ai...
Feb 10, 2020•43 min•Ep. 98
David 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 Uni...
Feb 04, 2020•1 hr 53 min•Ep. 64
If 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 same s...
Jan 30, 2020•40 min•Ep. 103
With 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 the...
Jan 29, 2020•34 min•Ep. 95
The 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 provide...
Jan 27, 2020•41 min•Ep. 48
Today 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 World ...
Jan 23, 2020•48 min•Ep. 95
Dementia 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 of ...
Jan 22, 2020•37 min•Ep. 94
In 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 int...
Jan 21, 2020•37 min•Ep. 683
Imagination 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 functioning...
Jan 15, 2020•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 145
Dr. 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 incarce...
Dec 18, 2019•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 121
Long-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 coll...
Dec 18, 2019•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 75
