Global Health

A definitive history of mescaline that explores its mind-altering effects across cultures, from ancient America to Western modernity. Mescaline became a popular sensation in the mid-20th century through Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, after which the word "psychedelic" was coined to describe it. Its story, however, extends deep into prehistory: The earliest Andean cultures depicted mescaline-containing cacti in their temples.

Are you tired of dealing with unexplained health issues, stubborn weight gain, or mental health issues? Do you feel overwhelmed by conflicting health advice and wonder how to make lasting changes? If you’re ready to discover the true power of your gut and transform your life from the inside out, "The Gut Revolution" is your step-by-step roadmap to understanding and optimizing your gut for a happier, healthier life.

Imagine a world in which the excess energy from one business would be used to heat another. Where buildings need less and less energy around the world, and where “regenerative” commercial buildings – ones that create more energy than they use – are being designed. A world in which...

"The Greatest Story Ever ToldDispute over land and kingdom may lie at the heart of this story of war between cousins-the Pandavas and the Kouravas-but the Mahabharata is about conflicts of dharma. These conflicts are immense and various, singular and commonplace. Throughout the epic, characters...

In a teaching memoir like no other, Mara J James invites listeners into a courageous exploration of family, mental health, and personal awakening. With unflinching honesty, she guides her listeners through her family's unique journeys—beginning with the individual challenges faced by her children and culminating in the unexpected revelation of her own bipolar disorder diagnosis. What begins as a story about supporting her loved ones transforms into a deeper discovery: the realization that true healing and mindful parenting cannot exist without first turning inward.

In this book, you’ll discover the eight dimensions of total “wellness”. Jeremy calls them “The Wellness 8”. Wellness is more than just an absence of physical ailments. We can be physically healthy and still not be “well”. If we are emotionally, socially, or spiritually sick, we are not “well”. When people ask how we are doing, we want to be able to say, “I’m well!” - and mean it in every way. We want to be emotionally, financially, intellectually, socially, and spiritually well, in addition to being physically well.

Traveling with Sugar reframes the rising diabetes epidemic as part of a 500-year-old global history of sweetness and power. Amid eerie injuries, changing bodies, amputated limbs, and untimely deaths, many people across the Caribbean and Central America simply call the affliction "sugar" - or, as some say in Belize, "traveling with sugar". A decade in the making, this audiobook unfolds as a series of cronicas - a word meaning both slow-moving story and slow-moving disease.

Bizarre illnesses and plagues that kill people in the most unspeakable ways. Obsessive and inspired efforts by scientists to solve mysteries and save lives. From The Hot Zone to The Demon in the Freezer and beyond, Richard Preston’s bestselling works have mesmerized readers everywhere by...

An investigation into our complicated 8-decade-long relationship with nuclear technology, from the bomb to nuclear accidents to nuclear waste. From Hiroshima to Chernobyl, Fukushima to the growing legacy of lethal radioactive waste, humanity’s struggle to conquer atomic energy is rife with...

A case for why regionalization, not globalization, has been the biggest economic trend of the past forty years.

“Lucid, quietly urgent, and relentlessly logical . . . this is Bigthink with a capital B.” —The New York Times Book Review “Common Wealth explains the most basic economic reckoning that the world faces.” —Al Gore, winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and former vice president of...

Big Pharma is more interested in profit than health. This was made clear as governments rushed to produce vaccines during the Covid pandemic. Behind the much-trumpeted scientific breakthroughs, major companies found new ways of gouging billions from governments in the West while abandoning the Global South. But this is only the latest episode in a long history of financializing medicine—from Purdue's rapacious marketing of highly addictive OxyContin through Martin Shkreli's hiking the price of a lifesaving drug to the 4.5 million South Africans needlessly deprived of HIV/AIDS medication.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “[A] masterpiece . . . an astonishing book that will leave you questioning your own life and political views.”—USA Today “If any one person can be given credit for transforming the medical establishment’s thinking about health care for the destitute...

Self awareness is a fundamental principle in changing your mindset and loving yourself, especially when years of therapy, antidepressants and self-help books fall short. As a functional depressive, Dr. Andrea Pennington enjoyed a high powered media career with all the outer appearances of success. But she was miserable inside. After years of battling ‘Imposter Syndrome’ and constantly striving for perfection, a spiritual awakening prompted her to break free and live as her Authentic Self.

A New York Times Editors' Choice A Next Big Idea Club and Sierra Magazine Must-Read Book A Behavioral Scientist’s Notable Book of 2024 A Financial Times Best Summer Book A Bookshop Most Notable Science Book of 2024 A deeply reported, eye-opening book about climate change, our brains, and the...

“A journey into the origins of COVID-19 and the discovery of vaccines and potential cures . . . I learned so much that I didn’t know before—above all, I met the subtle warriors of the laboratory who are working to save all of us from the horror of new pandemics.”—Richard Preston...

When Kinari Webb first traveled to Indonesian Borneo at 21 to study orangutans, she was both awestruck by the beauty of her surroundings and heartbroken by the rain forest destruction she witnessed. As she got to know the local communities, she realized that their need to pay for expensive health care led directly to the rampant logging, which in turn imperiled their health and safety even further. Webb realized her true calling was at the intersection of medicine and conservation.

Dr. Ann McLannly blames herself for her niece’s tragic death. And after her mother dies, this young doctor volunteers with an international aid organization for a mission in Rwanda. Pressed into a grueling work schedule with limited facilities, she has little time to adjust. Still, she forges relationships with the remarkable people she meets and finds herself drawn into a relationship with a priest, who introduces her to a Catholic orphanage that needs a physician to care for the growing number of orphans.

Award-winning New York Times reporter Donald G. McNeil, Jr. reflects on twenty-five years of covering pandemics—how governments react to them, how the media covers them, how they are exploited, and what we can do to prepare for the next one—in this “fascinating, ferocious fusillade against...

From the bestselling author of The Little Book of Mindfulness. Meditation is an easy way to bring more peace and tranquillity into your life. Packed with practical advice, useful meditations and affirming thoughts, this little book teaches you how to be happier, healthier and more relaxed -...