Books Applied Podcast

Learn about ecstasis and why it is unique, unusual and also something you can create (in many ways!) in your life.

Madeline and I discuss her book about being at home as our world changes. Madeline interviewed people in four communities that are navigating their changing world. The book is a compelling narrative of long-form journalism.  The book also includes some noteworthy tangents - my favorite being a dive into the tragedy of the commons (Madeline's take-down of the concept and author was top-notch!). Learn more about Madeline's journalism work at her website: https://madelineostrander.com/

This is a book about finding flow in all aspects of your life (sports and work and beyond). It's not about tennis -- well it's a little bit about tennis but mainly as an example for how to achieve flow. (Going after flow with intense serious focus and scripting your actions doesn't work, by the way.)

When you can communicate numbers well, you can shock and amaze people. This book (and conversation) tells you how.

Who know taking on a new leadership role could elicit so many laughs? Special guest Sabrina Walker Hernandez also brings up some great points about when you should revisit the ideas in this book - such as during a big transition.

In Daring Greatly, Brene Brown writes about what it means to have courage in the modern world. My special guest Janine Bolon and I discuss this book and, in the most practical sense, how to be a courageous person. 

Your brain doesn't have different parts that fight with itself. It sculpts the world you perceive. Its job is to regulate your body efficiently. Learn more fascinating truths (and bust some myths) about your brain in this nerdtastic conversation with Audrey Holst covering the book 7 1/2 Lessons about the Brain by the neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett.

We depart wildly from the usual nerdy book fare for this nerdy discussion about how those early English women writers created such enduring heroines. I talk with Robin Henry about these women writers and the lessons that we can learn from their struggle to write, and the epic nature of their heroines.  Reading List for listeners who want to know more! Scholarly Works: Carriger, Gail. The Heroine's Journey: For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Culture. GAIL CARRIGER LLC, 2020. Donovan, Josephine. “Women and the Rise of the Novel: A Feminist-Marxist Theory.” Signs, vol. 16, no. 3, 1991, pp. 441–62. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174584. Accessed 7 Jul. 2022. Frost, Cy, et al. “Autocracy and the Matrix of Power: Issues of Propriety and Economics in the Work of Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, and Harriet Martineau.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 10, no. 2, 1991, pp. 253–71. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/464017. Accessed 7 Jul. 2022. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The madwoman in the attic : the woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination. Yale University Press, 1984. Poovey, Samuel Rudin University Professor of the Humanities and Director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge Mary, and Mary Poovey. The proper lady and the woman writer : ideology as style in the works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. University of Chicago Press, 1984. Siskin, Clifford, and Henry W and Albert Berg.The work of writing : literature and social change in Britain, 1700-1830. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Authors to look at if you want to know more about early women’s writing and read some: Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Shelley Anne Radcliffe Maria Edgeworth Eliza Haywood Charlotte Lennox Mary Robinson Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire Be sure and check you the Chawton House Library, since it has a special mission to collect and promote scholarship on early women writers.  https://chawtonhouse.org/the-library/using-the-library/ You can see more writing about books, reading, and writing craft at http://readerly.net.  If you would like to join the Read Like a Writer Book Club, email robin at readerlybooks@gmail.com

My friend Fabienne Raphael and I discuss the memoir Will by Will Smith. We read the book before the 2022 Academy Awards, and although we don't talk about the Oscars specifically, we do talk specifics about WIll Smith's life and the lessons it has for us. You can learn more about Fabienne's work at http://fabienneraphael.com/

How do you know if you have an introvert on your hands? What are the strengths of introverts and why do we stampede over them at times?