Mental Health Science

If you’ve ever felt ineffective, invisible, or inarticulate, chances are you weren’t actually any of those things. Those feelings may instead have been the result of a lack of awareness we all seem to have for how our words, actions, and even our mere presence affect other people. In You Have More Influence Than You Think, social psychologist Vanessa Bohns draws from her original research to illustrate why we fail to recognize the influence we have, and how that lack of awareness can lead us to miss opportunities or accidentally misuse our power.

The study of sexual physiology has been a paying career or a diverting sideline for scientists as far-ranging as Leonardo da Vinci and James Watson. The research has taken place behind the closed doors of laboratories, brothels, MRI centers, pig farms, sex-toy R&D labs, and Alfred Kinsey's attic.

Mary Roach, "The funniest science writer in the country", devoted the past two years to stepping behind those doors. In Bonk, Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to slowly make the bedroom a more satisfying place.

Using a mix of psychology, science, self-help, and a decade of groundbreaking research, Dr. Piers Steel, internationally recognized as the foremost authority on procrastination, explains why procrastination is dangerously on the rise and tells us how to overcome the destructive patterns that affect our health and happiness to create more positive lives.

What if your best days weren’t left to chance, but something you could control and activate at will? Most of us want to be a little happier, a little more focused, and a lot less stressed. We want simple approaches that are easy to fold into our everyday lives. In Sharp, you’ll discover dozens of evidence-backed strategies to help you unlock your potential and enhance your performance—whether at work, school, home, or in relationships. Cognitive scientist Therese Huston unpacks the latest neuroscience research to deliver a gold mine of techniques to help you feel your sharpest.

Bats can hear shapes, plants can eat light, and bees can dance maps. When his life took him to a painfully dark place, the poet behind The CryptoNaturalist, Jarod K. Anderson, found comfort and redemption in these facts and the shift in perspective that comes from paying a new kind of attention to nature. Something in the Woods Loves You tells the story of the darkest stretch of a young person’s life, and how deliberate and meditative encounters with plants and animals helped him see the light at every turn.

In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In Feeling & Knowing, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large.

For decades, modern medicine has predominantly focused on restoring health to a conventionally “normal” state for our age and medical history. But shouldn’t we aim to go beyond normal? Whether you’re twenty or eighty years old, have experienced a stroke, battle PTSD, or want to excel as an athlete or top executive, recent breakthroughs in molecular biology have granted us the means not just to repair but to enhance our physical and mental capacities.

Transform Your Mind and Body: The Ultimate Guide to Mental Wellness Through Exercise In a world overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, and burnout, exercise is your secret weapon—not just for physical fitness, but for unlocking mental resilience, clarity, and joy. How Exercise Transforms Mental Health isn’t about grueling workouts or unrealistic goals. It’s a science-backed, compassionate roadmap to building a sustainable relationship with movement that heals your mind as it strengthens your body. Discover how to: ✅ Rewire your brain chemistry with exercise—boost endorphins, dopamine, ...

As a celebrated cultural critic and a writer for national publications like The Atlantic and Harper's, Alan Jacobs has spent his adult life belonging to communities that often clash in America's culture wars. And in his years of confronting the big issues that divide us - political, social, religious - Jacobs has learned that many of our fiercest disputes occur not because we're doomed to be divided, but because the people involved simply aren't thinking.

America has made mental illness a crime. Jails in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago each house more people with mental illnesses than any hospital. In this revelatory book, journalist Alisa Roth goes deep inside the criminal justice system to tell how and why it has become a warehouse where inmates are denied proper treatment, abused, and punished in ways that make them sicker. Through intimate stories of people in the system and those trying to fix it, Roth reveals the hidden forces behind this crisis and suggests how a fairer and more humane approach might look.

Are you living the life you thought you always wanted but feel that something is still missing? Do you think you should be happier than you are, considering all that you have? Have you achieved your professional or personal goals but still feel racked with insecurities, anxiety, or depression...and can't figure out why? Psychiatrist Anna Yusim knows just how you feel. Not only has she struggled with these feelings herself, but she has also worked with patients who have expressed the same bewildering concern.

Anxiety is a survival skill gone haywire. It happens when our brain is working so hard to protect us that it forgets to notice that the danger has passed. It feels like choking, stifling, smothering, tingling, panicking - our brains cut out and we start to make bad decisions - all normal anxiety reactions. Dr. Faith G. Harper, author of the best-selling This is Your Brain on Depression packs a ton of knowledge and help into this practical manual.

More than 100 years ago, the American philosopher William James wrote that the knowledge that we must die is "the worm at the core" of the human condition - a universally shared fear that informs all our thoughts and actions, from the great art we create to the devastating wars we wage.

In Rule Makers, Rule Breakers celebrated cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand takes us on an epic journey through human cultures, offering a startling new view of the world and ourselves. With a mix of brilliantly conceived studies and surprising on-the-ground discoveries, she shows that much of the diversity in the way we think and act derives from a key difference - how tightly or loosely we adhere to social norms.

Master the Positive Art of Seduction and Get What You Want Without Manipulation, Deception, or Games Have you ever felt like you struggle to influence others in a way that feels natural and ethical? Do you wish you had the confidence, presence, and charm to captivate people effortlessly? What if you could build genuine attraction and deep connections without resorting to manipulation? For years, seduction has been veiled in dark psychology, deceit, and unethical influence.

In a world full of chaos, comparison, and constant noise, this book is your calm in the storm. Through powerful reflections, relatable stories, and modern-day tools, you'll learn how to respond—not react—and take control of what truly matters.

This is an audiobook about everything you were never taught at school. It's about how to understand your emotions, find and sustain love, succeed in your career, fail well and overcome shame and guilt. It's also about letting go of the myth of a perfect life in order to achieve genuine emotional maturity. Written in a hugely accessible, warm and humane style, The School of Life is the ultimate guide to the emotionally fulfilled lives we all long for - and deserve.

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 this eye-opening work, Graziano accessibly explores how this sense of an inner being led to empathy and formed us into social beings. The theory may point the way to engineers for building consciousness artificially. Graziano discusses what a future with artificial consciousness might be like, including both advantages and risks, and what AI might mean for our evolutionary future.

Social psychologist and Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business Brian Lowery argues for the radical idea that the “self” as we know it, does not exist. The self—that “voice in your head”—is a social construct, created in our relationships and social interactions. We are unique because our individual pattern of relationships is unique. We change because our relationships change. Your self isn’t just you, it’s all around you.