Health & Psychology
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22 summaries
Altered Traits
A science journalist and a neuroscientist sort the hype from the hard evidence to show how meditation can lastingly change who we are.
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
A journalist plugs his own nose for ten days to show why breathing slowly and through the nose may be one of the most overlooked foundations of health.
Burnout
Twin sisters explain why stress stays stuck in the body, why women burn out in a rigged game, and the simple, shared ways to recover.
Come As You Are
Sex educator Emily Nagoski uses the science of accelerators, brakes and context to show women that their sexuality is not broken, only theirs.
Count Down
A leading reproductive epidemiologist explains why sperm counts in the West have halved in forty years, what everyday chemicals have to do with it, and what you can change at home.
Dopamine Nation
Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke explains why chasing pleasure leaves us in pain, and how abstinence, self-binding and honesty restore balance.
Emotional Agility
A Harvard psychologist shows how to face hard feelings, step back from them and act on your values through small, deliberate changes.
Goodnight Insomnia
Gregg D. Jacobs's six-week, drug-free CBT program retrains thoughts and habits to end chronic insomnia.
How to Change Your Mind
A skeptical journalist explores the science, history and first-hand experience of psychedelics, and what they reveal about the mind, the ego and healing.
Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic
An orthodontist and an evolutionary biologist argue that modern life is shrinking our jaws, crowding our teeth and narrowing our airways, and that parents can do something about it early.
Man's Search for Meaning
A Viennese psychiatrist's account of surviving the Nazi camps, and the idea he carried out of them: people can bear almost anything if they have a reason to.
Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body
Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman's 47-protocol field manual for sleep, exercise, stress, food, light, focus and personal growth, built on one rule: behavior first, molecules second.
Tell Your Children
A former New York Times reporter argues that marijuana causes psychosis and violence and that legalization has outrun the science, a case many experts dispute.
The Anxious Generation
Jonathan Haidt argues that smartphones, social media and overprotective parenting have rewired childhood since about 2010, and lays out a collective plan to give kids back a play-based childhood.
The Circadian Code
Salk Institute scientist Satchin Panda argues that when you eat, sleep, see light and move matters as much as what you do, and shows how to reset the body's internal clocks.
The Coddling of the American Mind
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue that three bad ideas and a culture of overprotection are leaving a generation of students more fragile, more anxious and more divided.
The Molecule of More
A psychiatrist and a writer show how dopamine, the brain's chemical of anticipation, drives our love lives, ambitions, addictions, creativity and politics, and why lasting happiness means balancing it with the chemicals of the present.
The Obesity Code
A kidney specialist argues that obesity is driven by insulin, not calories, and that eating real food less often, with regular fasting, is the lasting fix.
The Real Anthony Fauci
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s heavily footnoted and widely disputed case that Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates and the drug industry put profit and power ahead of public health, from AIDS to COVID-19.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman shows how two modes of thought, a fast intuitive one and a slow deliberate one, shape our judgments and choices, and how to catch the mistakes the fast one makes.
Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic
Psychiatrist Paul Conti argues that trauma spreads like a hidden disease through people, families and whole societies, and that knowledge, compassion and community can treat it and even prevent it.
Why We Sleep
Berkeley neuroscientist Matthew Walker makes the case that sleep is the foundation of memory, mood, immunity and a long life, and shows how to get more of it.