Wellness Culture

In the American moral vernacular, we have a whole thesaurus for victims of exploitation. They are suckers (born every minute), fools (not suffered gladly), dupes, marks, chumps, pawns, and losers. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Cultural stories about suckers abound too: the Trojan Horse, the Boy Who Cried Wolf, the Emperor’s New Clothes, even Hansel and Gretel. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Don’t go out with him; he only wants one thing.

When Johnson went to work for the US Antarctic Program (devoted to scientific research and education in support of the national interest in the Antarctic), he figured he'd find adventure, beauty, penguins, and lofty-minded scientists. Instead he found boredom, alcohol, and bureaucracy. As a dishwasher and garbage man at McMurdo Station, Johnson quickly shed his illusions about Antarctica.

Best-selling, award-winning writer Simon Garfield returns with an enthralling investigation of humans’ peculiar fascination with small things - and what small things tell us about our larger world.

Never mind the high-profile cases of athletes Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong. Steroids and other pharmaceuticals are being sold and consumed in life-threatening quantities online and through the backrooms of gyms and fitness centres, and the people buying them range from teen girls trying to look good on Instagram to middle-aged men who can't say goodbye to their youthful physiques. This is a vivid, eye-opening and compassionate journey alongside a young doctor as he discovers an underworld of misinformation and misdirected ambition, drug abuse and lives cut short.

Joy, Inc. offers an inside look at how Sheridan and Menlo created a joyful culture, and shows how any organization can follow their methods for a more passionate team and sustainable, profitable results. Sheridan also shows how to run smarter meetings and build cultural training into your hiring process. Joy, Inc. offers an inspirational blueprint for listeners in any field who want a committed, energizing atmosphere at work - leading to sustainable business results.

Mindfulness isn't anything that we think; it's what we don't think. Mindfulness isn't something that other people do; it's something that we all do. Mindfulness is an ancient, life-enhancing, healing technique that can help us remember our natural state of happiness and health, even if we think we are too modern and too busy to prioritize what's really important--being fully alive and fully alive to our full life potential.

Martin A. Lee traces the dramatic social history of marijuana, from its origins to its emergence in the 1960s as a defining force in a culture war that has never ceased. Lee describes how the illicit marijuana subculture overcame government opposition and morphed into a dynamic, multibillion-dollar industry. Colorful, illuminating, and at times irreverent, this is a fascinating listen for recreational users and patients, students and doctors, musicians and accountants, Baby Boomers and their kids, and anyone who has ever wondered about the secret life of this ubiquitous herb.

One box of chemicals mistaken for another. Ingredients intended to be life-sustaining are instead life-taking. Families in shock, healthcare providers reeling, and fingers starting to point. A large healthcare system's reputation hangs in the balance while decisions need to be made, quickly. More questions than answers. People have to be held accountable—does this mean they get fired? Should the media and therefore the public be informed? What are family members and the providers involved feeling? When the dust settles, will remaining patients be more safe or less safe?

What happened next? It's the question Jill Stark has been asked most often since the publication of her acclaimed memoir, High Sobriety. Now, in this updated and extended 10th Anniversary edition, narrated this time by Jill herself, she retells and continues her story.

Do games hold the secret to better productivity? If you’ve ever found yourself engrossed in Angry Birds, Call of Duty, or a plain old crossword puzzle when you should have been doing something more productive, you know how easily games hold our attention. Hardcore gamers have spent the equivalent of 5.93 million years playing World of Warcraft while the world collectively devotes about 5 million hours per day to Angry Birds. A colossal waste of time? Perhaps. But what if and use it for more creative and valuable pursuits?

Temperament is the single most pervasive aspect of us and our fellow human beings. We notice it; we gossip about it; we make judgments based on it; we unconsciously shape our lives around it. In The Temperamental Thread, developmental psychologist Jerome Kagan draws on decades of research to describe the nature of temperament-the in-born traits that underlie our responses to experience.

Few topics are more contested today than gender identity. Complex issues like gender dysphoria are reduced to slogans and sound bites. And while the war rages over language, institutions, and political allegiances, transgender individuals are the ones who end up being the casualties. Mark Yarhouse, an expert in sexual identity and therapy, challenges the church to rise above the political hostilities and listen to people's stories. Yarhouse offers a Christian perspective on transgender issues that eschews simplistic answers and appreciates the psychological and theological complexity.

Integrating Geek Culture into Therapeutic Practice: The Clinician's Guide to Geek Therapy, the 2nd Edition, is a comprehensive compendium of how Geek Therapy clinicians and scholars currently use a variety of games, media artifacts, and other geek culture items in therapeutic context and intervention. Even more important, the authors within this book are currently at the forefront of their research fields and are accordingly considered experts within the growing field of Geek Therapy clinical practice.

Diet culture is facing a reckoning, and intuitive eating has been leading the charge. The movement has taken the internet by storm, encouraging us to stop dieting and make food choices that feel good for our bodies rather than follow influencers and their shakes. But intuitive eating is missing a key ingredient: culture. Like many movements, intuitive eating has become co-opted by a select few—placing the focus on “mainstream” food while discounting cultural cuisines.

From the best-selling author of You Just Don't Understand comes another groundbreaking examination of the way we communicate - in public, in the media, in politics, in our courtrooms and classrooms - letting us see in a new way forces that are powerfully shaping our lives.

In the groundbreaking tradition of In the Dream House and The Collected Schizophrenias, a gorgeously illustrated speculative memoir that draws upon the Japanese myth of the Hyakki Yagyo—the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons—to shift the cultural narrative around mental illness, grief, and remembrance.

What is new about how teenagers communicate through services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Do social media affect the quality of teens' lives? In this eye-opening book, youth culture and technology expert Danah Boyd uncovers some of the major myths regarding teens' use of social media. She explores tropes about identity, privacy, safety, danger, and bullying. Ultimately, Boyd argues that society fails young people when paternalism and protectionism hinder teenagers' ability to become informed, thoughtful, and engaged citizens through their online interactions.

Americans have traditionally placed great value on self-reliance and fortitude. Recent decades, however, have seen the rise of a therapeutic ethic that views Americans as emotionally underdeveloped, requiring the ministrations of mental-health professionals to cope with life's vicissitudes. Today, having a book for every ailment, a counselor for every crisis, a lawsuit for every grievance, and a TV show for every problem degrades one's native ability to cope with life's challenges.

The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido examines the scandal-strafed decade when our public and private lives began to blur due to the rise of the web, reality television, and the wholesale tabloidization of pop culture. In this comprehensive and often hilarious time capsule, David Friend combines detailed reporting with first-person accounts from many of the decade's singular personalities, from Anita Hill to Monica Lewinsky, Lorena Bobbitt to Heidi Fleiss, Jesse Jackson to key members of the Clinton, Dole, and Bush teams.

Two world wars, the Civil Rights movement, and a Jheri curl later, Blacks in America continue to have a complex and convoluted relationship with their hair. From the antebellum practice of shaving the head in an attempt to pass as a "free" person to the 2013 uproar over an Ohio school that banned Afro puffs, the issues surrounding Black hair continue to linger as we move through the 21stst century.