Social Science

Over billions of years of evolution, animals have become increasingly sophisticated and increasingly sentient. In the process, they evolved emotions, which helped improve their odds of survival in complex situations.

These emotions were, at first, purely internal. But at some point, social animals began expressing their emotions, in increasingly dramatic ways. These emotional expressions could accurately reflect internal emotions (smiling to express happiness)—or they could be quite different (smiling to cover up that you’re actually furious, but can’t tell your boss that).

Why did once-stone-faced animals evolve to be so emotionally expressive—to be us?

The answer, as evolutionary neurobiologist Mark Changizi and mathematician Tim Barber reveal, is that emotional expressions are our first and most important language—one that allows us, as social animals, to engage in highly sophisticated communications and negotiations.

Expressly Human introduces an original theory that explains, from first principles, how the broad range of emotional expressions evolved, and provides a Rosetta Stone for human communication. It will revolutionize the way you see every social interaction, from deciding who gets the last slice of pizza to multimillion-dollar business negotiations, and change your definition of what makes us human.

Getting high is something most of us do, and in many cases do safely–yet drugs remain a singular public enemy. In a ranging blend of memoir, pop culture, policy critique, and social analysis, LA-based criminal defense attorney Allison Margolin explores why–and what we can do about it.

Informed by Margolin’s experiences as a drug user, advocate, and the daughter of California’s most renowned (and infamous) cannabis attorney, Just Dope offers a look at where our current drug policy fails. It exposes the true history of drug prohibition in the United States, sharing why it started, how it evolved, and where it stands now. And it looks unflinchingly at the false dichotomy between “good” drugs and “bad” drugs and Margolin’s experience with programs like D.A.R.E that misguidedly ask you to “Just Say No.”

Is it possible to do something more meaningful than mothering?

As a young Catholic girl who grew up in the American Midwest on white bread and Jesus, Erin S. Lane was given two options for a life well-lived: Mother or Mother Superior. She could marry a man and mother her own children, or she could marry God, so to speak, and mother the world’s children. Both were good outcomes for someone else’s life. Neither would fit the shape of hers.

Interweaving Lane’s story with those of other women—including singles and couples, stepparents and foster parents, the infertile and the ambivalent—Someone Other Than a Mother challenges the social scripts that put moms on an impossible pedestal and shame childless women and nontraditional families for not measuring up. You may have heard these lines before:
– “Motherhood is the toughest job.” This script diminishes the work of non-moms and pressures moms to make parenting their full-time gig.
– “It’ll be different with your own.” This script underestimates the love of nonbiological kin and pushes unfair expectations onto nuclear families.
– “Family is the greatest legacy.” This script turns children into the ultimate sign of a woman’s worth and discounts the quieter ways we leave our mark.

With candor and verve, Someone Other Than a Mother tears up the shaming social scripts that are bad for moms and non-moms alike and rewrites the story of a life well-lived, one in which purpose is bigger than body parts, identity is fuller than offspring, and legacy is so much more than DNA.