The Village Effect

How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter

By: Susan Pinker

Narrated by: Donna Postel

From birth to death, human beings are hardwired 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. 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. 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.

©2014 Susan Pinker (P)2014 Tantor

Excellent content, sleepy narration

Very happy with the content however I caught myself at least a dozen times wondering if it was being narrated by a machine.

great book

The information in this book is fantastic. She uses so much science to prove what we already know instinctually.
I am very anti Tech with kids. And I appreciated all of her studies to back up the negative impact that it is having on our social relationships and our self-esteem. Yet It is not going away and she does a great job finding the middle ground of. proper use of Technology.

It's like Siri is reading the book.

Funny that this is a book that talks about real interaction. I could swear that the reading is automatic by Siri or a computer interpreting the words. The information is great, had a hard time listening to the female voice that sounds like a computer.

this is a book you need to put to your face

it is a great message for our time and one we need listen to before our lives became even more online it is not anti internet book more than a jump start to being more socal face 2 face in the modern world

Amazing!

Well worth your time. This is a delightful listen, despite the boring narration. Tons of valuable information inside. I recommend this book to everyone.