Short Stuff: Amber Alerts

In The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, child psychiatrist Bruce Perry describes a series of child abuse and neglect cases to illustrate how trauma impacts the developing brain and explain how he and his colleagues established a more effective therapy model for traumatized children.

In our guide, we’ll explain the psychiatric principles that Perry discovered during his years of working with traumatized children, including the stress response, the effects of trauma in infancy versus trauma at a later age, dissociation in response to trauma, and the role that relationships play in the treatment of traumatized children. We’ll also look at specific case studies that contributed to Perry’s Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics. Our commentary explores research supporting and expanding on Perry’s ideas, as well as scientific and social context on how trauma can manifest and the nuances of treatment.

We need to talk about racism. But, for white people and people of color alike, talking about it can feel like navigating through a minefield. In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo offers a handbook on how to have intelligent, productive, empathetic conversations about race.

Our guide discusses and extends Oluo’s ideas for how to tackle these conversations, comparing and contrasting her ideas on race with those of her contemporaries. We also examine the research underlying Oluo’s arguments. You’ll learn about the school-to-prison pipeline, why touching someone’s hair can be a racist act, and what you can do to fight racial injustice through both conversations and practical actions.

Florida's new social media law prohibits children under 14 from having social media accounts and requires 14- and 15-year-olds to have parental consent for accounts. It aims to protect kids from online harms like cyberbullying and addiction, but critics argue that the law violates First Amendment and privacy rights, and its age verification requirements will be hard to enforce.

Most of the people exposed to Pasco County’s intelligence-led policing program, which monitors people deemed likely to commit crimes, feel it’s harassment, and policing experts call the program “morally repugnant.” \

How do you spark a trend that spreads like wildfire, or turn a product into the latest must-have item? You create a social epidemic. The Tipping Point explains how social epidemics — spreading ideas, messages, behaviors, and products — function like viruses, growing gradually until they reach a critical mass (the tipping point) and explode.

Three factors can be adjusted to tip an idea to a social epidemic: the messenger, the message itself, or the context of the message. Learn how Paul Revere’s midnight ride, Sesame Street, Airwalk skate shoes, and crime reduction in New York City began as ideas and tipped to become movements.

Our lives are full of big decisions, yet our minds are wired to make bad ones. Authors Dan and Chip Heath claim that we make poor decisions due to our biases and illogical ways of thinking. In Decisive, they draw on psychology research to argue that it’s possible to overcome the cognitive flaws that impair decision-making. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the Heath brothers’ four-step process for improving our choices. You’ll learn how to:

• Overcome biases that distort your decision-making
• Develop options that you hadn’t considered before
• Gather credible information to inform your choices
• Put your emotions into perspective during tough decisions
• Prepare for a decision’s best-case and worst-case scenarios

As we explore this process, we’ll compare the authors’ ideas on decision-making to those of other experts on choice, such as Barry Schwartz, Annie Duke, and Daniel Kahneman. We’ll also contextualize the book’s ideas using research on how culture and society influence decision-making. Furthermore, we’ll supplement the Heath brothers’ strategies with actionable steps.

Our lives are full of big decisions, yet our minds are wired to make bad ones. Authors Dan and Chip Heath claim that we make poor decisions due to our biases and illogical ways of thinking. In Decisive, they draw on psychology research to argue that it’s possible to overcome the cognitive flaws that impair decision-making. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the Heath brothers’ four-step process for improving our choices. You’ll learn how to:

• Overcome biases that distort your decision-making
• Develop options that you hadn’t considered before
• Gather credible information to inform your choices
• Put your emotions into perspective during tough decisions
• Prepare for a decision’s best-case and worst-case scenarios

As we explore this process, we’ll compare the authors’ ideas on decision-making to those of other experts on choice, such as Barry Schwartz, Annie Duke, and Daniel Kahneman. We’ll also contextualize the book’s ideas using research on how culture and society influence decision-making. Furthermore, we’ll supplement the Heath brothers’ strategies with actionable steps.

Most of the people exposed to Pasco County’s intelligence-led policing program, which monitors people deemed likely to commit crimes, feel it’s harassment, and policing experts call the program “morally repugnant.” \

When you hear the word “bias,” you may think of a conscious form of prejudice—but the most potent biases are actually subconscious. These implicit biases are normal neurological responses to the culture you grow up in. In the United States, everyone encounters and encodes antiblack bias to some degree, even in black communities. This racial bias doesn’t just influence how you make decisions—it determines what you notice in your environment and what becomes invisible. And in high-stakes situations like police encounters, the consequences of racial bias can be devastating.

In this guide, we’ll discuss how your brain creates bias; how that bias impacts every area of your life, from where you live to how you post online; and, most importantly, how to combat implicit bias to create a fairer world for everyone. We’ll also compare Dr. Eberhardt’s research on racial bias to other popular books on racism such as How to Be an Antiracist and White Fragility.