The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter Audiobook (Free)

From birth to death, human beings are hardwired to connect to other humans. Face-to-face contact matters: restricted bonds of friendship and love heal us, help children learn, lengthen our lives, and make us happy. Looser in-person bonds matter as well, combining with our close relationships to create a personal ‘village’ all around us, one which exerts unique results.

Marrying the findings of the new line of business of social neuroscience as well as gripping human stories, Susan Pinker explores the influence of face-to-face contact from cradle to grave, from city to Sardinian mountain village, from classroom to workplace, from want to marriage to divorce. Most of us have left the literal village behind and do not want to give up our new technologies to return now there. But, as Pinker writes so compellingly, we are in need of close cultural bonds and continuous face time with our friends and family members to be able to thrive-even to survive. Creating our own ‘village effect’ can make us happier. It can also save our lives.