Personal Science

Globalization means that we need to be prepared to interact with people from a wide range of cultures. But it's impossible to learn the particular customs and traits of every culture you might regularly come into contact with. Cultural Intelligence teaches techniques that will allow you to function effectively in any culture. Instead of providing a laundry list of culturally specific dos and don'ts, Thomas and Inkson show how to pay attention in a mindful and creative way to cues in cross-cultural situations.

The inequity of domestic life is one of the most profound and perplexing conundrums of our time. In an era of seemingly unprecedented feminist activism, enlightenment, and change, data shows that one area of gender inequality stubbornly remains: the unequal amount of parental work that falls on women, no matter their class or professional status.

In Bringing up Bébé, journalist and mother Pamela Druckerman investigated a society of good sleepers, gourmet eaters, and mostly calm parents. She set out to learn how the French achieve all this, while telling the story of her own young family in Paris. Bébé Day by Day distills the lessons of Bringing up Bébé into an easy-to-listen-to guide for parents and caregivers.

"Did I sound stupid?" "Should I have sent that email?" "How do I look?" Many of us spend a lot of time feeling self-conscious and comparing ourselves to others. Why do we judge ourselves so relentlessly? Why do we strive so hard to be special or successful, or to avoid feeling rejected? When psychologist and mindfulness expert Dr. Ronald Siegel realized that he, as well as most of his clients, was caught in a cycle of endless self-evaluation, he decided to do something about it.

Imagine you're sitting on a cushion with your legs crossed, ready to tap into unlimited joy. There's just one problem: You can't get comfortable (let alone still), and your head is full of way too many thoughts. The problem is not with meditation, or you, though - the issue may be with your approach. When properly understood and practiced, meditation should feel easy, calming, and comfortable. In Bliss More, maverick instructor Light Watkins provides the tools for making it E.A.S.Y. (Embrace, Accept, Surrender, Yield).

Jessica Slice’s disability is exactly what her child needed as a newborn. After becoming disabled a handful of years prior from a shift in her autonomic nervous system, Jessica had done the hard work of disentangling her worth from productivity and learning how to prepare for an unpredictable and fragile world. Blending her experience of becoming disabled in adulthood and later becoming a parent with interviews, social research, and disability studies, Slice describes what the landscape is like for disabled parents.

You get ready to die the way you get ready for a trip. Start by realizing you don't know the way. Listen to a few travel guides. Study the language, look at maps, gather equipment. Let yourself imagine what it will be like. Pack your bags. This book is one of those travel guides - a guide to preparing for your own death and the deaths of people close to you. The fact of death is hard to believe. Sallie Tisdale explores our fears and all the ways death and talking about death make us uncomfortable - but she also explores its intimacies and joys.

Acclaimed author, process-oriented therapist, and earlier Jungian analyst Arnold Mindell teaches us how to find the power to make our own choices and control our own lives. Drawing on his experiences with "witch-doctors" and shamans in Africa, Japan, Russia, and India, Mindell leads us on a "death walk" through our worst fears and deepest emotional crises to wake our inner shaman - which he calls our "dreamingbody." Methods for tapping the wisdom hidden in crises free our own internal sorcery for use in our daily lives. These methods enable us to become whole from within and to avoid the phantoms of unrealistic hopes and desires that limit our lives.

One of the main topics of cultural conversation during the last decade was the supposed "fertility crisis" and whether modern women could figure out a way to have it all - a successful, demanding career and the required 2.3 children - before their biological clocks stopped ticking. Now, however, conversation has turned to whether it's necessary to have it all (see Anne-Marie Slaughter) or, perhaps more controversial, whether children are really a requirement for a fulfilling life.

In Raising Conservative Kids in a Woke City, two moms living in the bluest of cities offer practical guidance, parenting strategies, and humorous commentary to help parents immunize their children against Woke infection. In whichever zip code or tax bracket you dwell, there’s hope for parents who seek to indoctrinate their kids into conservatism—that is, kids who understand historical, economic, and biological reality. This book coaches parents in the how, when, and who of teaching children to think about the world rightly.

The defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967-1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe's people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than 40 years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa's most fateful events.

It's easy to fall into a bad relationship with dating today, especially for single women. From living in fear of being "ghosted" to enduring endless well-meaning questions about why you haven't found Mr. Right yet, it's tough to be unattached without feeling you're somehow inadequate or doomed to spend life alone and depressed!

From the number-one New York Times best-selling author of Primates of Park Avenue, a bold, timely reconsideration of female infidelity that will upend everything you thought you knew about women and sex. In Untrue, feminist author and cultural critic Wednesday Martin takes us on a bold, fascinating journey to reveal the unexpected evolutionary legacy and social realities that drive female faithlessness, while laying bare our motivations to contain women who step out.

Big Goals: The Science of Setting Them, Achieving Them, and Creating Your Best Life delves deeply into effective goal setting practices for both personal growth and corporate excellence, empowering individuals across all ages to pursue their ambitions with a newfound sense of confidence and mastery. Listeners of this book will gain a nuanced understanding of the little-known science of goal setting, with practical tools and unique worksheets to use on their goal-achieving journey.

Conventional interviewing advice doesn’t work. That’s what Anna Papalia learned through years of experience as an HR professional, consultant for Fortune 500 companies, and teacher at the Fox School of Business. None of the existing tools work for one simple reason: they don’t get to the heart of what actually makes a great interview—self-awareness. At its core, an interview is a set of questions about you. If you don’t know yourself, you won’t do well.

Are you in a relationship? Used to be? Want to be? Just want to have better sex or date better? This book is your antidote to typical sex, dating, and relationship rules. Dr. Faith, best-selling author of Unf*ck Your Brain, cuts through the crap with sharp guidelines on how to be a human being in an adult, loving, intimate relationship, with yourself and other people. If you're looking to heal from past wounds, make better choices, or improve an existing relationship, this book is for you!

A close friendship is one of the most influential and important relationships a human life can contain. Anyone will tell you that! But for all the rosy sentiments surrounding friendship, most people don’t talk much about what it really takes to stay close for the long haul. Now two friends, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, tell the story of their equally messy and life-affirming big friendship in this honest and hilarious book that chronicles their first decade in one another’s lives.

Of the many critical conversations we will all have throughout our lifetime, few are as important as the ones discussing death—yet few of these conversations are actually happening. Let's Talk About Death (over Dinner) offers keen, practical advice on how to have these conversations—not just at the dinner table, but anywhere. There's no one right way to talk about death, but Hebb shares time- and dinner-tested prompts to use as conversation starters, ranging from the spiritual to the practical, from analytical to downright funny and surprising.

Why can salamanders grow new legs, and young children grow new fingertips, but adult humans can't regenerate? What is the electricity that flows through the human body? Is it the same thing that the Chinese call Qi? If so, what does Chinese medicine know that Western medicine ignores? Dan Keown's highly accessible, witty, and original book shows how Western medicine validates the theories of Chinese medicine and how Chinese medicine explains the mysteries of the body that Western medicine largely ignores.

As an enthusiastic participant in the Maker Movement, Mick Ebeling has found countless ways to create simple new do-it-yourself technologies. But Ebeling has always dreamed big and soon realized that by ignoring that little voice of doubt in his head, his hobby could have the potential to actually help people surmount seemingly impossible odds. From crafting prosthetics for a young Sudanese boy who lost his hands in a bombing to a machine that allowed a paralyzed artist to draw again, Ebeling soon saw that nothing is actually impossible.