"The world is in the grips of mass formation-a dangerous, collective type of hypnosis-as we bear witness to loneliness, free-floating anxiety, and fear giving way to censorship, loss of privacy, and surrendered freedoms. It is all spurred by a singular, focused crisis narrative that forbids dissident views and relies on destructive groupthink. Desmet's work on mass formation theory was brought to the world's attention on The Joe Rogan Experience and...

We live in enormously polarized times. From politics to race, religion, gender, and class, division runs rampant. In 2020, 40 percent of each political party said that supporters of the opposing party were “downright evil.” In 2019, hate crimes reached a ten-year high in the United States. One in five Americans suffers from chronic loneliness, with teenagers and young adults at increasing risk. Social ties at work, at school, and in our communities...

"A Stanford psychologist offers a bold new understanding of empathy, and shows how we can expand our circle of care, even in these divisive times Empathy is in short supply. Isolation and tribalism are rampant. We struggle to understand people who aren't just like us, but find it easy to hate them. Studies show that we are less caring than we were even thirty years ago. In 2006, Barack Obama said that the United States is suffering from an "empathy...

A leading psychologist reveals how our most misunderstood emotion-- pride-- has shaped our minds and our culture, and shows how we can harness its power.

As David Brooks observes, "There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society : the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen -- to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood." And yet we humans don't do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us...

Social scientist Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, has sparked a global conversation about the experiences that bring meaning to our lives -- experiences of courage, vulnerability, love, belonging, shame, and empathy. Now Brown redefines what it means to truly belong in an age of increased polarization. Brown argues that we're experiencing a spiritual crisis of disconnection, and introduces four practices of true belonging that challenge everything we believe...

There are so many things, both big and small, that make a place feel like home. Home is where you might have a special nickname or a special toy. It’s where you might have a snack or a nap or a bath—or all three! Whether home is a city apartment or a country cottage, it’s a place you want to return to again and again. Celebrate all kinds of homes—and all kinds of families—in this cozy, lushly illustrated ode to the universal feeling of being...

Over the course of two weeks, everything in Beartown will change. Maya Andersson and Benji Ovich, two young people who left in search of a life far from the forest town, come home and joyfully reunite with their closest childhood friends. There is a new sense of optimism and purpose in the town, embodied in the impressive new ice rink that has been built down by the lake. Two years have passed since the events that no one wants to think about. Everyone...

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and number-one best-selling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, and What the Dog Saw, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers - and why they often go wrong. How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach...