Human Life

What drives our political and moral beliefs? What makes us like some things and dislike others? What shapes how we behave, and misbehave, in a group? What makes you, you? For centuries, philosophers and scholars have described human behaviour in terms of sex, power and money. In The Status Game, best-selling author Will Storr radically turns this thinking on its head by arguing that it is our irrepressible craving for status that ultimately defines who we are.

Whether it's in a cockpit at takeoff or the planning of an offensive war, a romantic relationship or a dispute at the office, there are many opportunities to lie and self-deceive - but deceit and self-deception carry the costs of being alienated from reality and can lead to disaster. So why does deception play such a prominent role in our everyday lives? In short, why do we deceive?

There's no place like home. Or is there? After an 'incident' one wet Friday night where he is found walking naked through the streets of Cambridge, Professor Andrew Martin is not feeling quite himself. Food sickens him. Clothes confound him. Even his loving wife and teenage son are repulsive to him. He feels lost amongst an alien species and hates everyone on the planet. Everyone, that is, except Newton, and he's a dog. Who is he really? And what could make someone change their mind about the human race?

Following in the wake of hugely successful medical memoirs such as Do No Harm and Fragile Lives, Critical is an intelligent, compelling and profoundly insightful journey into the world of intensive care medicine and the lives of people who have forever been changed by it.

Going beyond the how and why of burnout, a former tenured professor combines academic methods and first-person experience to propose new ways for resisting our cultural obsession with work and transforming our vision of human flourishing.

The world is in crisis! What is the solution? Ultimately, we have to find the redeeming, and thus transforming, understanding of our psychologically troubled human condition. And it is precisely that dreamed-of insight, and its now desperately needed transformation of our lives, that Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith presents in this book.

Exploring key themes that run throughout C. S. Lewis's diverse literary corpus, this audiobook offers listeners a deeper understanding of how Lewis's fascinating insights on the Christian life can lead them to a deeper awareness of God's presence and work in their own lives.

For two thousand years, cadavers have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender reassignment surgery, cadavers have been there alongside surgeons, making history in their quiet way.

The VIs' revolt succeeded. The digital beings took over the game world and ejected millions of players while keeping a few thousand trapped inside as their prisoners. In the real world, Oren Berman is recovering from the mental trauma of being trapped, tortured, and abruptly ejected. But the company has come to him, hat in hand, asking him to reenter the game world. With the entire NPC population arrayed against the trapped players, Oren and his clan of monsters might be their only hope.

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.

This is what Karen Curry Parker tells all students new to Human Design, especially when they may be overwhelmed by all the rich and complex information outlined in an individual’s Human Design chart. While Parker’s bestselling book Understanding Human Design gives the listener all the information they need to absorb and integrate the beauty and nuance of the system in depth, The Human Design Workbook offers the space for beginners to enter into this fascinating system through the most accessible means available to them: their own chart.

The detailed personality readings Human Design provides empower people to make decisions, choose professions, and create relationships with ease and success because they are no longer struggling against innate strengths and weaknesses. They are instead tapping into their personal power and destiny. Understanding these readings allows people to align their actions with their inherent, truest self.

The Human Superorganism makes a sweeping, paradigm-shifting argument. It demolishes two fundamental beliefs that have blinkered all medical thinking until very recently: 1) humans are better off as pure organisms free of foreign microbes; and 2) the human genome is the key to future medical advances. The microorganisms that we have sought to eliminate have been there for centuries, supporting our ancestors.

The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose research overturns the long-standing belief that emotions are automatic, universal, and hardwired in different brain regions. Instead, Barrett shows, we construct each instance of emotion through a unique interplay of brain, body, and culture.

Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of eight, Dr Camilla Pang struggled to understand the world around her. Desperate for a solution, Camilla asked her mother if there was an instruction manual for humans that she could consult. But, without the blueprint to life she was hoping for, Camilla began to create her own. Now armed with a PhD in biochemistry, Camilla dismantles our obscure social customs and identifies what it really means to be human using her unique expertise and a language she knows best: science.

Tim Desmond - an esteemed Buddhist philosopher who has lectured on psychology at both Harvard and Yale and studied under Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh - has spent his life cultivating new ways to bridge the gap between the ancient tradition of mindfulness and modern life. With How to Stay Human in a F*cked Up World, Desmond gets right to the heart of our collective pain with a life-changing mindfulness practice for surviving the sometimes-miserable world we live in, featuring strategies and guidance you can start using to feel more connected, joyful, and present today.

Human Design is a revolutionary system for self-understanding comprising wisdom from Western astrology, the chakra system, I Ching, the Kabbalah tree of life, and facets of modern quantum mechanics, biochemistry, and astronomy. This incredibly powerful modality reveals with great specificity how each human being has different natural talents, a unique life purpose, and a specific mode of operating that aligns them to their true nature. It also provides you with practical strategies for navigating your unique life path with authenticity, ease, and success.

One hundred and sixty-five million years ago saw the birth of rhythm. Sixty-six million years ago was the first melody. Forty thousand years ago Homo sapiens created the first musical instrument. Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to this music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we understand who we are. Yet music is an overlooked part of our origin story.

For all men and women who thirst to love and be loved by a woman, these words and stories of guidance from Clarissa Pinkola Estes are aqua vitea, the water for life and soul. Dr. Estes teaches that in love relationships, each partner challenges, nourishes and transforms the other. To achieve this lifelong love requires an understanding of the mysterious internal cycles that fuel relationships.

In a blossoming garden located far outside all worlds, a group of aging Greek gods have gathered to discuss the nature of existence, the mystery of mind, and whether there is a transcendent God from whom all things come. Turning to Eros, Psyche asks, "Do you see this flower, my love?"