What is meaning? How does it arise? Where is it found in the world? In recent years, philosophers and scientists have answered these questions in different ways. Some see meaning as a uniquely human achievement, others extend it to trees, microbes, and even to the bonding of DNA and RNA molecules. In this groundbreaking book, Gary Tomlinson defines a middle path. Combining emergent thinking about evolution, new research on animal behaviors, and theories of information and signs, he tracks meanin...
Nov 14, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 209
The debate about whether mental health law should be abolished or reformed is one that is highly charged and to which there are no easy solutions. In Mental Health Law: Abolish Or Reform? (Oxford UP, 2021), Dr Kay Wilson does not shy away from these controversial debates. Examining the work that dignity can do, she makes the case for an holistic interpretation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In thinking about mental health reform, she provides a core framework which...
Nov 11, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 204
Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Humanizing Mental Health Policy and Practice (Routledge, 2023) brings together a global community of mental health professionals to offer an impassioned defense of relationship-based depth psychotherapy. Expressing ideas that are integral to the mission of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN), the authors demonstrate a shared vision of a world where this therapy is accessible to all communities. They also articulate the difficulties created by...
Nov 07, 2023•52 min•Ep. 220
Over the past 40 years, lawmakers in America's two major political parties have taken increasingly extreme positions on ideological issues. Voters from the two parties have become increasingly distinct and hostile to one another along the lines of race, religion, geography, and culture. In Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), Dr. Dannagal Goldthwaite Young illustrates how political leaders and media organizations capitalize on s...
Nov 06, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 683
Should your doctor prescribe a placebo for you, instead of conventional medicine? And if she did, would it work? Is the double-blind placebo-controlled paradigm really the gold standard for medical research? Placebos are the most widely used treatments in the history of medicine. Thousands of studies show that they can be effective and make us happier and healthier. Yet confusion about what placebos are and how to measure their effects prevents some doctors from using them to help patients. Mean...
Nov 05, 2023•33 min•Ep. 105
For the last twenty-thousand years, dogs and people have shared a unique bond in the animal kingdom. In How Our Love of Dogs Creates Social Conflict (Lexington Books, 2022), Dr. James K. Beggan uses symbolic interaction to examine the meaning that dogs have for people as friends and family members. Although many animal rights advocates express dismay over the subordinate status ownership implies, the author argues that ownership creates a powerful psychological connection that makes it easier fo...
Nov 03, 2023•51 min•Ep. 58
Drawings and sequential images are so pervasive in contemporary society that we may take their understanding for granted. But how transparent are they really, and how universally are they understood? Combining recent advances from linguistics, cognitive science, and clinical psychology, Who Understands Comics?: Questioning the Universality of Visual Language Comprehension (Bloomsbury, 2020) argues that visual narratives involve greater complexity and require a lot more decoding than widely thoug...
Oct 30, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 3
Even before the Covid pandemic began in 2020, chronic loneliness was a private experience of profound anguish that had become a public health crisis. Since then it has reached new heights. Loneliness assumes many forms, from enduring physical isolation to feeling rejected because of difference, and it can have devastating consequences for our physical and mental health. Jeremy Nobel founded Project UnLonely to bring creativity as well as social and medical strategies to address this societal pro...
Oct 24, 2023•49 min•Ep. 4
Is it really harder to pay attention to something than it used to be? No doubt the world is getting faster, and social media platforms are so good at grabbing attention. But how real is the problem and in particular, does it impact our creativity? Carolyn Dicey Jennings is based at the University of California, Merced, and has just co-written a chapter called “Attention, Technology, and Creativity” in a book called Scenes of Attention: Essays on Mind, Time, and the Senses published by Columbia U...
Oct 24, 2023•41 min•Ep. 83
Note: This episode contains a discussion of suicide. A list of resources is available below. In Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide (Temple UP, 2023), Alexandre Baril argues that suicidal people are oppressed by what he calls structural suicidism, a hidden oppression that, until now, has been unnamed and under-theorized. Each year, suicidism and its preventionist script and strategies reproduce violence and cause additional harm and death among suici...
Oct 20, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 177
For two decades, Sébastien Tutenges has conducted research in bars, nightclubs, festivals, drug dens, nightlife resorts, and underground dance parties in a quest to answer a fundamental question: Why do people across cultures gather regularly to intoxicate themselves? Vivid and at times deeply personal, Intoxication: An Ethnography of Effervescent Revelry (Rutgers UP, 2022) offers new insights into a wide variety of intoxicating experiences, from the intimate feeling of connection among concertg...
Oct 19, 2023•48 min•Ep. 315
Bullies, bad bosses, human traffickers, and mean girls all manipulate their victims without lifting a finger. This sinister form of mind control is known in the psychoanalytical community as projective identification and blame shifting. Many millions of Americans suffer from this kind of abuse, but they don’t have to anymore—escape and healing is possible. It’s Not Me, It’s You! How Narcissists Get What They Want and How To Stop Them (Cascade, 2023) will guide readers on their path to exiting to...
Oct 15, 2023•37 min•Ep. 215
Today we have a group session (read: an hour and a half) with the authors Adam Blum, Peter Goldberg, and Michal Levin discussing their new book Here I’m Alive: The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis (Columbia University Press, 2023). Acknowledging that “We’re not the first to think about music in the clinical situation” the authors focused on the analytic project “as a kind of music in its own right.” With an interest in sensory, non-representational experiences. “We settled on music as a primord...
Oct 15, 2023•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 219
Motivational interviewing (MI) is a professional practice, a behavioral therapy, and a self-professed conversation style that encourages clients to talk themselves into change. Originally developed to treat alcoholics, MI quickly spread into a variety of professional fields including corrections, medicine, and sanitation. In Working the Difference: Science, Spirit, and the Spread of Motivational Interviewing (U Chicago Press, 2023), E. Summerson Carr focuses on the training and dissemination of ...
Oct 14, 2023•53 min•Ep. 207
Today I talked to Jenni Silverstein and Elizabeth Bechard about their study (co-authored wiht Jennifer Walker) "What are the Impacts of Concern about Climate Change on the Emotional Dimensions of Parents’ Mental Health? A Literature Review" published in the Journal of Health Care Communications (September, 2023). Jenni Silverstein is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Infant-Family Mental Health Specialist, working at the intersection of Climate Justice and Early Childhood Mental Health. Eliz...
Oct 11, 2023•53 min•Ep. 214
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviews Rob Schneider, Professor of History at Indiana University-Bloomington, about the political effects of resentment. Schneider begins by discussing the psychological complexity of resentment and then delves into its understanding by other authors such as Nietzsche and its relationship with Catholicism. Moving forward, Schneider discusses how resentment is related to identity politics and how some sectors of the populatio...
Oct 10, 2023•39 min•Ep. 126
What makes fad diets so appealing to so many people? And how did these fads become so central to conversations about food and nutrition? Anxious Eaters: Why We Fall for Fad Diets (Columbia University Press, 2022) shows that fad diets are popular because they fulfill crucial social and psychological needs―which is also why they tend to fail. Authors Janet Chrzan and Kima Cargill bring together anthropology, psychology, and nutrition to explore what these programs promise yet rarely fulfill for di...
Oct 09, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 132
Conflict and trauma remain among the most prevalent themes in film and literature. Comics has never avoided such narratives, and comics artists are writing them in ways that are both different from and complementary to literature and film. Harriet E. H. Earle brings together two distinct areas of research—trauma studies and comics studies—to provide a new interpretation of a long-standing theme. Focusing on representations of conflict in American comics after the Vietnam War, Earle claims that t...
Oct 08, 2023•55 min•Ep. 167
Mass shootings have become a defining issue of our time. Whenever the latest act of newsworthy violence occurs, mental illness is inevitably cited as a preeminent cause by members of the news media and political sphere alike. Eric B. Elbogen and Nico Verykoukis's book Violence and Mental Illness: Rethinking Risk Factors and Enhancing Public Safety (NYU Press, 2023) exposes how mental illness is vastly overemphasized in popular discussion of mass violence, which in turn makes us all less safe. Th...
Oct 08, 2023•34 min•Ep. 213
Is free will an illusion? Is addiction a brain disease? Should we enhance our brains beyond normal? Neuroethics: Agency in the Age of Brain Science (Oxford UP, 2023) blends philosophical analysis with modern brain science to address these and other critical questions through captivating cases. The result is a nuanced view of human agency as surprisingly diverse and flexible. With a lively and accessible writing style, Neuroethics is an indispensable resource for students and scholars in both the...
Oct 07, 2023•56 min•Ep. 25
Why did triceratops have horns? Why did World War I occur? Why does Romeo love Juliet? And, most importantly, why ask why? In Why?: The Philosophy Behind the Question (Stanford UP, 2023), philosopher Philippe Huneman describes the different meanings of "why," and how those meanings can, and should (or should not), be conflated. As Huneman outlines, there are three basic meanings of why: the cause of an event, the reason of a belief, and the reason why I do what I do (the purpose). Each of these ...
Oct 03, 2023•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 414
Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency--or free will--is an illusion. In Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will (Princeton UP, 2023), leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that we are not mere machines responding to physical forces but agents ...
Oct 01, 2023•32 min•Ep. 71
Build healthy boundaries, manage difficult relationships, and live a happy life in accordance with your personal values with this unique, activity-based supplement to start or support your therapy practice. Setting boundaries can be tough—you don’t want to disappoint other people, but you also don’t want to be stuck in a situation that makes you uncomfortable or unhappy. The good news is that setting healthy boundaries is really a good thing that can make you happier and strengthen those relatio...
Sep 29, 2023•45 min•Ep. 212
Traci Cipriano's book The Thriving Lawyer: A Multidimensional Model of Well-Being for a Sustainable Legal Profession (Routledge, 2023) is based on an innovative model, grounded in science. This book serves as a resource for promoting well-being and culture-change in the legal community by educating about pertinent issues impacting lawyers, and how to address them. It is a roadmap, highlighting the many over-arching and inter-connected aspects of well-being, and enabling readers to identify and t...
Sep 29, 2023•31 min•Ep. 211
Video games are temporal artifacts: They change with time as players interact with them in accordance with rules. In Time and Space in Video Games: A Cognitive-Formalist Approach (Transcript, 2020), Federico Alvarez Igarzábal investigates the formal aspects of video games that determine how these changes are produced and sequenced. Theories of time perception drawn from the cognitive sciences lay the groundwork for an in-depth analysis of these features, making for a comprehensive account of tim...
Sep 23, 2023•45 min•Ep. 111
With no known cause or cure despite a century of research, Alzheimer's disease is a true medical mystery. In Mediating Alzheimer's: Cognition and Personhood (U Minnesota Press, 2022), Scott Selberg examines the nature of this enduring national health crisis by looking at the disease's relationship to media and representation. He shows how collective investments in different kinds of media have historically shaped how we understand, treat, and live with this disease. Selberg demonstrates how the ...
Sep 21, 2023•44 min•Ep. 34
Drawing on deep reserves of experience and theoretical and research knowledge, Nancy McWilliams presents a fresh perspective on psychodynamic supervision in this highly instructive work. In Psychoanalytic Supervision (Guilford Publications, 2021) , McWilliams examines the role of the supervisor in developing the therapist's clinical skills, giving support, helping to formulate and monitor treatment goals, and providing input on ethical dilemmas. Filled with candid clinical examples, the book add...
Sep 20, 2023•59 min•Ep. 218
Children of all ages are abused in every country in the world, by members of every society, culture, religion, and socio-economic class. About 120 million children under twenty, or one child in ten, report sexual abuse. We often blame children for their own abuse instead of holding the perpetrators responsible for their crimes. When perpetrators are prosecuted, punishments are rarely severe. Remarkably, we sometimes justify child sex abuse, or even facilitate it, allowing it to continue, not onl...
Sep 16, 2023•56 min•Ep. 37
Matisyahu Shulman's Reimagining Repentance: Experiencing the High Holidays Through the Lens of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Kodesh, 2023) is unique in its attempt to bridge Torah content on the High Holidays with modern psychological theory about change. The book reviews the major themes of each part of the High Holidays and explores psychological principles related to each theme. The text contains clinical anecdotes weaved with Torah ideas and will be both a meaningful and enjoyable read ...
Sep 14, 2023•56 min•Ep. 439
Technosleep: Frontiers, Fictions, Futures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) draws on a variety of substantive examples from science, technology, medicine, literature, and popular culture to highlight how a new technoscientifically mediated and modified phase and form of technosleep is now in the making – in the global north at least; and to discuss the consequences for our relationships to sleep, the values we accord sleep and the very nature and normativities of sleep itself. The authors discuss how t...
Sep 14, 2023•33 min•Ep. 308
