“Why are we so annoyed when someone get our names wrong? Because our sense of self is involved, and our names touch on every aspect of our lives.”
“Drawing on social and literary history, psychology and anthropology, anecdotes, and live stories, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Justin Kaplan and celebrated novelist Anne Bernays…” tell a rich story of names and naming.
A revelatory investigation of friendship, with profound implications for our understanding of what humans and animals alike need to thrive across a lifetime. The phenomenon of friendship is universal and elemental. Friends, after all, are the family we choose. But what makes these bonds not just pleasant but essential, and how do they affect our bodies and our minds?
Lydia Denworth takes us in search of friendship’s biological, psychological, and evolutionary foundations. She finds friendship to be as old as early life on the African savannas―when tribes of people grew large enough for individuals to seek fulfillment of their social needs outside their immediate families. She explores the relationship of primates and the sources of human attachment.
(Video Interview) The Open Mind – Cuny TV 2020: The Science and Necessity of Friendship – Lydia Denworth: Science journalist Lydia Denworth discusses groundbreaking research on the evolution, biology, and power of friendship.
From birth to death, human beings are hard-wired to connect to other human beings. Face-to-face contact matters: tight bonds of friendship and love heal us, help children learn, extend our lives and make us happy. Looser in-person bonds matter, too, combining with our close relationships to form a personal “village” around us, one that exerts unique effects. And not just any social networks will do: we need the real, face-to-face, in-the-flesh encounters that tie human families, groups of friends and communities together.
Marrying the findings of the new field of social neuroscience together with gripping human stories, Susan Pinker explores the impact of face-to-face contact from cradle to grave, from city to Sardinian mountain village, from classroom to workplace, from love to marriage to divorce. Her results are enlightening and enlivening, and they challenge our assumptions. Most of us have left the literal village behind, and don’t want to give up our new technologies to go back there. But, as Pinker writes so compellingly, we need close social bonds and uninterrupted face-time with our friends and families in order to thrive–even to survive. Creating our own “village effect” can make us happier. It can also save our lives.
-From Book Cover
(Ted Talk link) Susan Pinker: The Secret to Living Longer May Be Your Social Life. By acclaimed developmental psychologist, Susan Pinker. TED Conferences, 2017.
Most of us assume our success relies on a network of friends and close contacts. But innovative thinking requires a steady stream of fresh ideas and new possibilities, which strangers are more likely to introduce. Our survival instincts naturally cause us to look upon strangers with suspicion and distrust, but in The Necessity of Strangers, Alan Gregerman offers the provocative idea that engaging with strangers is an opportunity, not a threat, and that engaging with the right strangers is essential to unlocking our real potential. The Necessity of Strangers reveals how strangers challenge us to think differently about ourselves and the problems we face.
– Shows how strangers can help us innovate better, get the most out of each other, and achieve genuine collaboration
– Presents principles for developing a “stranger-centric” mindset to develop new markets and stronger customer relationships, leverage the full potential of partnerships, and become more effective leaders
– Includes practical guidance and a toolkit for being more open, creating new ideas that matter, finding the right strangers in all walks of life, and tapping the real brilliance in yourself
To stay competitive, you and your business need access to more new ideas, insights, and perspectives than ever before. The Necessity of Strangers offers an essential guide to discovering the most exciting opportunities you haven’t met yet.
-From Book Cover
(Ted Talk link) Scott Ginsberg: What’s in a Name Tag? Scott tells the story of how he built an iconic brand, a profitable business, and a fourteen year career out of wearing a nametag everyday.
(Book link) Tristan Donovan, Atlantic Books, 2017.
Board Gamers take notice – gaming is a face-to-face encounter. A most interesting book on the history of gaming.
“It is that ability to bring people together face-to-face that is helping board games endure in an age of Playstations, Facebook, and iPhones.” (Page 5)
