Showing titles in Social Sciences

You were either fit and trim or you weren't working hard enough. Your body was how you conveyed wealth and status to your peers, it was a personality trait, a symbol of goodness and values: an ethical ideal. In recent decades women have made momentous progress fighting the patriarchy, yet they are held to ever-stricter, more punishing physical standards. Self-worth still plummets, and eating disorders are more deadly for how easily they are dismissed. 

Our brains do their best to help us out, but every so often they can be real assholes - having meltdowns, getting addicted to things, or shutting down completely at the worst possible moments. Your brain knows it's not good to do these things, but it can't help it sometimes - especially if it's obsessing about trauma it can't overcome. That's where this life-changing book comes in. With humor, patience, science, and lots of good-ole swearing, Dr. Faith explains what's going on in your skull, and talks you through the process of retraining your brain to respond appropriately....

For much of the 20th and 21st centuries, women’s sexuality was an uncharted territory in science, studied far less frequently - and far less seriously - than its male counterpart. That is, until Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are, which used groundbreaking science and research to prove that the most important factor in creating and sustaining a sex life filled with confidence and joy is not what the parts are or how they’re organized but how you feel about them.

Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best-selling Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, envisions a not-too-distant world in which we face a new set of challenges. Now, in Homo Deus, he examines our future with his trademark blend of science, history, philosophy and every discipline in between. Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the 21st century - from overcoming death to creating artificial life.

National treasure and renowned wit Stephen Fry explores the highways and byways of the English language in these celebrated programmes. In each episode, Fry explores the oddities and celebrates the curiosities of the language we use. His love of words is indulged with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity at all times. From puns and metaphors to clichés and gibberish, this famously witty, incisive and engaging series explores the joys of the English language.

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers" - the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing.

The most popular guide ever about raising boys is back, significantly updated to help raise sons in a world that offers gender equality, respect, and a whole new kind of man but is still haunted by toxic masculinity. You’ll find cutting-edge science about the "physical fours", the "emotional eights" and how puberty can be turned into a positive time, along with hundreds of other practical tips for raising a son.   

Have you ever found yourself struggling with information overload? Have you ever felt both overworked and underutilised? Do you ever feel busy but not productive? If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is to become an essentialist. In Essentialism, Greg McKeown, CEO of a leadership and strategy agency in Silicon Valley who has run courses at Apple, Google and Facebook, shows you how to achieve what he calls the disciplined pursuit of less.

The routine traffic stop that ends in tragedy. The spy who spends years undetected at the highest levels of the Pentagon. The false conviction of Amanda Knox. Why do we so often get other people wrong? Why is it so hard to detect a lie, read a face or judge a stranger's motives? Through a series of encounters and misunderstandings - from history, psychology and infamous legal cases - Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual adventure into the darker side of human nature, where strangers are never simple and misreading them can have disastrous consequences.

Since early 2020, the world has experienced a series of catastrophic events - a global pandemic caused by a so-called novel coronavirus; international lockdowns and border closings causing widespread business closures, economic collapse, and massive unemployment; and an unprecedented curtailment of civil liberties and freedoms in the name of keeping people safe by locking them up in their homes.

Tarana Burke and Dr Brené Brown bring together a dynamic group of Black writers, organisers, artists, academics and cultural figures to discuss the topics the two have dedicated their lives to understanding and teaching: vulnerability and shame resilience.

In the past half-century, women have revolutionised the way they work and live. But men’s lives have changed remarkably little. Why? Is it because men don’t want to change? Or is it because, every day in various ways, they are told they shouldn’t? In Men at Work, Annabel Crabb deploys political observation, workplace research and her characteristic humour and intelligence to argue that gender equity cannot be achieved until men are as free to leave the workplace (when their lives demand it) as women are to enter it. 

They’re wearing ball gowns, they’re debutantes... and they’re black. The debs’ ball is a controversial colonial export but can it be empowering too? Australia’s most celebrated young playwright Nakkiah Lui and actress Miranda Tapsell put on their hats and gloves to find out. Nakkiah and Miranda are angry, young, vocal, Aboriginal and very, very funny. Join them on their journey, starting with a lesson on teatime etiquette in London where it all began, as they follow the debutante trail and discover that First Nations women across the globe have made this tradition their own.

 Raising Girls in the Twenty-First Century is Steve Biddulph’s warm, wise and up-to-the-minute look at how to help your daughter - at every age, from baby to teen. Girls today need to be strong but also keep their hearts open. Steve brings the very best help from around the globe to build girls’ self-belief in a world that often wants to tear them down. 

 Women Don't Owe You Pretty is the ultimate audiobook for anyone who wants to challenge the out-dated narratives supplied to us by the patriarchy. Through Florence's story you will learn how to protect your energy, discover that you are the love of your own life and realise that today is a wonderful day to dump them.

Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology.

Drawing from her work as a psychoanalyst and cantadora (keeper of old stories), Dr. Estes uses myths and folktales to illustrate how societies systematically strip away the feminine spirit. Through an exploration into the nature of the wild woman archetype, Dr. Estes helps listeners rediscover and free their own wild nature.

Some crimes are so horrific they attract the harshest punishment possible: a sentence that means the guilty will die behind bars. From ‘the Crossbow Cannibal’ to Moors murderer Myra Hindley, journalist Julian Druker explores the cases of eight criminals with whole life orders and asks what this means for the criminals and society. Told through archive news coverage of these crimes, this series explores the judicial and sentencing processes, as well as the legal, ethical and political dimensions of whole life orders.

How does trauma affect a child's mind - and how can that mind recover? In the classic The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Dr. Perry explains what happens to the brains of children exposed to extreme stress and shares their lessons of courage, humanity, and hope. Only when we understand the science of the mind and the power of love and nurturing can we hope to heal the spirit of even the most wounded child. 

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers.