Human Communication

As one of the nation's most respected communications strategists, John Davies takes on a unique role as a CEO by investing his experience daily through hands-on analysis, strategy, and messaging. He applies his lifelong study of human behavior and effective communications strategies to influence how to earn attention and gain influence in the complex information-saturated decision-making process today. As a political consultant, John Davies enjoyed a nearly 90% win ratio with more than 150 campaigns.

Helen Fisher - "Why Him? Why Her?: Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type."

Helen Fisher visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss her book "Why Him? Why Her?: Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type." This event took place on February 20, 2009, as part of the Authors@Google series.
In Why Him? Why Her?, Fisher unlocks the hidden code of desire and attachment. Each of us, it turns out, primarily express one of four broad personality types—Explorer, Builder, Director, or Negotiator—and each of these types is governed by different chemical systems in the brain. Driven by this biology, we are attracted to partners who both mirror and complement our own personality type. Based on entirely new research—including a detailed questionnaire completed by five million people in thirty-five countries—Why Him? Why Her? will change your understanding of why you love him or her and help you use nature's chemistry to find and keep your life partner.
Fisher is one of the world's leading experts on the nature of romantic love and attachment. She is the chief scientific adviser to Chemistry.com, a division of Match.com. She is the author of four previous books, two of which—The First Sex and Anatomy of Love—were New York Times Notable Books. Fisher is a research professor of anthropology at Rutgers University. She lives in New York City.

Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness

This six part series on philosophy is presented by popular British philosopher Alain de Botton, featuring six thinkers who have influenced history, and their ideas about the pursuit of the happy life.




Episode 1: Socrates on Self-Confidence - Why do so many people go along with the crowd and fail to stand up for what they truly believe? Partly because they are too easily swayed by other people's opinions and partly because they don't know when to have confidence in their own.

Episode 2: Epicurus on Happiness - British philosopher Alain De Botton discusses the personal implications of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270BCE) who was no epicurean glutton or wanton consumerist,but an advocate of "friends, freedom and thought" as the path to happiness.

Episode 3: Seneca on Anger Roman philosopher Lucious Annaeus Seneca (4BCE-65CE), the most famous and popular philosopher of his day, took the subject of anger seriously enough to dedicate a whole book to the subject. Seneca refused to see anger as an irrational outburst over which we have no control. Instead he saw it as a philosophical problem and amenable to treatment by philosophical argument. He thought anger arose from certain rationally held ideas about the world, and the problem with these ideas is that they are far too optimistic. Certain things are a predictable feature of life, and to get angry about them is to have unrealistic expectations.

Episode 4: Montaigne on Self-Esteem looks at the problem of self-esteem from the perspective of Michel de Montaigne (16th Century), the French philosopher who singled out three main reasons for feeling bad about oneself - sexual inadequecy, failure to live up to social norms, and intellectual inferiority - and then offered practical solutions for overcoming them.

Episode 5: Schopenhauer on Love - Alain De Botton surveys the 19th Century German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) who believed that love was the most important thing in life because of its powerful impulse towards 'the will-to-life'.

Episode 6: Nietzsche on Hardship - British philosopher Alain De Botton explores Friedrich Nietzsche's (1844-1900) dictum that any worthwhile achievements in life come from the experience of overcoming hardship. For him, any existence that is too comfortable is worthless, as are the twin refugees of drink or religion.

Raj Persaud: Psychology on How to be Happy

Gresham College
London, U.K.
Nov 17th, 2008
What is it about happiness that makes it so elusive for most of us and yet seemingly so simple for some? Is it a matter of how we approach our lives, or is it just luck in how we find the world?
Psychiatrist, Dr Raj Persaud, investigates the elements that contribute or conflict with the pursuit of happiness and considers how best to reach this ultimate goal. - Gresham College

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions." - Authors@Google: Dan Ariely

Professor Dan Ariely visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions." This event took place on July 1, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series. In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities. Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same types of mistakes, Ariely discovers. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable—making us predictably irrational. Dan Ariely is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT, where he holds a joint appointment between MIT's Media Laboratory and the Sloan School of Management. He is also a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and a visiting professor at Duke University. Ariely wrote this book while he was a fellow at the Institute for Advance Study at Princeton.



YouTube - Authors@Google: Dan Ariely

Philip Zimbardo: The Time Paradox

The Commonwealth Club of California
San Francisco, CA
Nov 12th, 2008

What if your attitudes toward time could explain why you are chronically late, why you're likely to fight for rainforest preservation, or why you might be predisposed to addictions?
Philip Zimbardo, renowned for his notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiments, will discuss how internal time perspectives determine every single one of our thoughts, feelings and actions.
He even makes the case that attitudes toward time can influence national destinies - The Commonwealth Club of California



FORA.tv - Philip Zimbardo: The Time Paradox

Dan Gilbert: Exploring the frontiers of happiness

About this talk
Dan Gilbert presents research and data from his exploration of happiness -- sharing some surprising tests and experiments that you can also try on yourself. Watch through to the end for a sparkling Q&A with some familiar TED faces.
About Dan Gilbert
Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong -- a premise he supports with intriguing research

Naomi Tickle: You Can Read a Face Like a Book

Summary
Naomi Tickle, author of You Can Read a Face Like a Book, explains that by studying a person's facial structure, you can achieve an immediate and accurate understanding of their personality.Naomi Tickle - Naomi Tickle is a personology expert and founder of the International Centre for Personology.

Brain, Mind and Consciousness - Michael Shermer - Session 1

The 2005 Skeptics Society Annual Conference was held in Pasadena, California and was themed: "Brain, Mind, and Consciousness".




Brain, Mind and Consciousness - Session 1

George Lakoff on The Political Mind

The Commonwealth Club of California
San Francisco, CA
Jun 20th, 2008

UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff discusses concepts from his new book, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain







FORA.tv - George Lakoff on The Political Mind

The Naked Brain -

Politics and Prose
Washington, D.C.
Nov 4th, 2006
The Naked Brain
Each time neuropsychiatrist Restak visits with a new book, we learn more about the exciting findings being made in neurology. In his new book, Restak writes about social neuroscience, the interaction between our brains' hard wiring and our social relationships -







The Naked Brain - FORA.tv

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight TED | Talks | (video)

About this Talk
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor studied her own stroke as it happened -- and has become a powerful voice for brain recovery.
Why you should listen to her:
One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor's brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness ...
Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the "Singin' Scientist."
"How many brain scientists have been able to study the brain from the inside out? I've gotten as much out of this experience of losing my left mind as I have in my entire academic career."
Jill Bolte Taylor




TED | Talks | Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight (video)

Helen Fisher, The science of love, and the future of women

Anthropologist Helen Fisher studies love: its evolution, its biochemical foundations and its vital importance to human society. She outlines the three stages of love (lust, infatuation and long-term attachment), shedding light on eternal questions like why we love, and why we cheat. She also discusses the natural talents of women, and their new significance in the modern world. She ends with a warning about the widespread use of antidepressants -- and a truly hilarious story of romantic pursuit.

Global Sexual Preferences Poll Results

Playlist: John Nash, Nobel laureate in Economics

Matthieu Ricard: Habits of happiness TED | Talks |(video)

About this Talk
What is happiness, and how can we all get some? Buddhist monk, photographer and author Matthieu Ricard has devoted his life to these questions, and his answer is influenced by his faith as well as by his scientific turn of mind: We can train our minds in habits of happiness. Interwoven with his talk are stunning photographs of the Himalayas and of his spiritual community.
Sometimes called the "happiest man in the world," Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk, author and photographer.

Why you should listen to him:
After training in biochemistry at the Institute Pasteur, Matthieu Ricard left science behind to move to the Himalayas and become a Buddhist monk -- and to pursue happiness, both at a basic human level and as a subject of inquiry. Achieving happiness, he has come to believe, requires the same kind of effort and mind training that any other serious pursuit involves.
His deep and scientifically tinged reflections on happiness and Buddhism have turned into several books, including The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet. At the same time, he also makes sensitive and jaw-droppingly gorgeous photographs of his beloved Tibet and the spiritual hermitage where he lives and works on humanitarian projects.
His latest book on happiness is Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill; his latest book of photographs is Tibet: An Inner Journey.
"Matthieu Ricard, French translator and right-hand man for the Dalai Lama, has been the subject of intensive clinical tests at the University of Wisconsin, as a result of which he is frequently described as the happiest man in the world."
Robert Chalmers, The Independent



TED | Talks | Matthieu Ricard: Habits of happiness (video)

Playlist: Lobotomy

Sherwin Nuland: A history of electroshock therapy TED | Talks | (video)

About this Talk
Sherwin Nuland, the surgeon and author, talks about the development of electroshock therapy as a cure for severe, life-threatening depression. Midway through, his story turns personal. It's a moving and deeply felt talk about relief, redemption, second chances.
A practicing surgeon for three decades, Sherwin Nuland witnessed life and death in every variety. Then he turned to writing, exploring what there is to people beyond just anatomy.
Why you should listen to him:
Sherwin Nuland was a practicing surgeon for 30 years and treated more than 10,000 patients. Now he is an author and speaker on topics no smaller than life and death, our minds, our morality, aging and the human spirit.
His 1995 book How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter demythologizes the process of dying. Through stories of real patients and his own family, he examines the seven most common causes of death: old age, cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, accidents, heart disease and stroke, and their effects. The book, one of 10 he has written, won the National Book Award and spent 34 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. His latest book is The Art of Aging: A Doctor's Prescription for Well-Being.
"He’s delved deeply into his sense of wonder at the human body’s capacity to sustain life and to support our pursuits of order and meaning." National Public Radio





TED | Talks | Sherwin Nuland: A history of electroshock therapy (video)

Astonishing Function of the Human Brain and Miracles of the Mind

Astonishing Human Brain: " "

Durex 2005 Global Sex Survey

durex sex survey 2005