Wellness Culture

Why do political leaders become entangled in so many sex scandals? How did the US military inadvertently help make San Francisco a mecca of gay culture? And what was the original purpose of vibrators? Find out the answers to all these questions and more as journalist Ross Benes delves into the complicated relationship between everyday human life - including religion, politics, and technology - and our sexuality.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans have dieted at some point in their lives. But upwards of 90 percent of people who intentionally lose weight gain it back within five years. And as many as 66 percent of people who embark on weight-loss efforts end up gaining more weight than they lost. If dieting is so clearly ineffective, why are we so obsessed with it? The culprit is diet culture, a system of beliefs that equates thinness to health and moral virtue, promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status, and demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others.

Much of what we know about the greatest medical disaster ever, the Black Plague of the fourteenth century, is wrong. The details of the Plague etched in the minds of terrified schoolchildren the hideous black welts, the high fever, and the final, awful end by respiratory failure are more or less accurate. But what the Plague really was, and how it made history, remain shrouded in a haze of myths.

Status signaling isn’t just the province of the immature or insecure but a fundamental human need to secure social standing. It drives our behavior, forms our tastes, determines what we buy, and ultimately shapes who we are. It’s what’s behind “cool” and what drives fashion, music, food, sports, slang, travel, hairstyles, and dog breeds—and even the outsize influence of unpopular things with the “right” audience.

Embracing the revival of psychedelic research and the discovery of new therapeutic uses, clinical psychologist Dr. Richard Louis Miller discusses what is happening today in psychedelic medicine - and what will happen in the future - with top researchers and thinkers in this field. Dr. Miller and his contributors cover the tumultuous history of early psychedelic research brought to a halt 50 years ago by the US government as well as offering non-technical summaries of the most recent studies with MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca.

From the Sunday Times top ten best-selling author of The Psychopath Test, a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world's most underappreciated forces: shame. "It's about the terror, isn't it?" "The terror of what?" I said. "The terror of being found out." For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world, meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made jokes on social media that came out badly or made mistakes at work.

The hookup is now part of college life. Yet the drunken encounter we always hear about tells only a fraction of the story. Rising above misinformation and moralizing, Lisa Wade offers the definitive account of this new sexual culture and demonstrates that the truth is both more heartening and more harrowing than we thought. Offering invaluable insights for parents, educators, and students, Wade situates hookup culture within the history of sexuality, the evolution of higher education, and the unfinished feminist revolution.

When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos.

Fat Talk argues for a reclaiming of “fat,” which is not synonymous with “unhealthy,” “inactive,” or “lazy.” Talking to researchers and activists, as well as parents and kids across a broad swath of the country, Sole-Smith lays bare how America’s focus on solving the “childhood obesity epidemic” has perpetuated a second crisis of disordered eating and body hatred for kids of all sizes. She exposes our society’s internalized fatphobia and elucidates how and why we need to stop “preventing obesity” and start supporting kids in the bodies they have.

Women of all ages are using cannabis to feel and look better. For rookies and experienced marijuana users alike, this lively, information-filled audiobook is just the supportive guide you need to find the right dose to relieve anxiety, depression, and inflammation, and mitigate the onset of dementia and other signs of aging. Plus boost moods, ease aches, even lose weight, and get restful sleep. And a dose just for fun? Well, that works, too!

What to listen to after What to Expect.... A badass, feminist, and personal deep-dive into the science and culture of pregnancy and early motherhood that debunks myths and dated assumptions, offering guidance and camaraderie to women navigating one of the biggest and most profound changes in their lives. Like most first-time mothers, Angela Garbes was filled with questions when she became pregnant. What exactly is a placenta? How does a body go into labor? Why is breast best? What are the signs and effects of postpartum depression?

In 2015 Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC's popular podcast and radio show Note to Self, led tens of thousands of listeners through an experiment to help them unplug from their devices, get bored, jump-start their creativity, and change their lives. Bored and Brilliant builds on that experiment to show us how to rethink our gadget use to live better and smarter in this new digital ecosystem. In this fascinating new audiobook, Manoush explains the connection between boredom and original thinking.

Writer and therapist Sahaj Kaur Kohli grew up knowing exactly what it means to straddle multiple cultures at once. Like many children of immigrants, she has often found herself plagued by questions: Can I establish my own values and embrace where I come from? Is prioritizing my mental health really rejecting my culture? How do I set boundaries and care for myself when family and community mean everything? Even after becoming a therapist herself, she saw those same gaps in the mental health world, leading her to wonder, like so many children of immigrants: what about us?

In typical Caulfield manner, it isn't enough to simply interview experts and read the current studies (which he does). He tries celebrity-recommended beauty routines and diets. After attending a modeling competition, he enrolls in an assessment/audition for a modelling agency in Hollywood. In his quest to understand the relationship between celebrity and culture and our individual health choices, he follows celebrity Twitter feeds, scans gossip blogs, and forces himself to read every issue - cover to cover - of People magazine, for an entire year.

What will your 100-year life look like? Does the thought of working for 60 or 70 years fill you with dread? Or can you see the potential for a more stimulating future as a result of having so much extra time? Many of us have been raised on the traditional notion of a three-stage approach to our working lives: education, followed by work and then retirement. But this well-established pathway is already beginning to collapse.

This audiobook is Nick Carter's autobiography and self-help hybrid, in which he chronicles his struggles with a dysfunctional family and the unimaginable rigors of becoming an internationally successful pop-star at the age of 12. From his battle with addiction to serious health complications and the pain of his younger sister's tragic death, Nick leaves nothing to the imagination and offers true and heartfelt advice to help listeners overcome obstacles in their own lives.

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.

Map of the Soul: 7 is a capstone of a three-album project intended to reveal the inner landscape of the human soul that is packed with rich symbolism and woven together with BTS’s signature sound and moves. Starting with the lyrics, this book launches into a deep, engaging examination of the album in the light of the psychology of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. The many layers of meaning embedded in the number 7 are brought to light, along with several fundamental concepts of Jungian psychology.

After a period of tremendous upheaval, it is necessary for organizations to transform alongside their employees and welcome new ways of working. While it is impossible to predict which changes will be successful, it is crucial for leaders to now ask: what should work look like to achieve productive, healthy, and safe organizations? In Brave New Workplace, Julian Barling argues that we should focus on creating environments in which employees can flourish, rather than relying on the resiliency of workers to withstand difficult working conditions.

To his successful examinations of some of the most powerful forces in modern life - envy, ambition, snobbery, friendship - the keen observer and critic Joseph Epstein now adds Gossip. No trivial matter, despite its reputation, gossip, he argues, is an eternal and necessary human enterprise. Proving that he himself is a master of the art, Epstein serves up delightful mini-biographies of the Great Gossips of the Western World along with many choice bits from his own experience. He also makes a powerful case that gossip has morphed into a corrosive new-school version.