December 2009

This Emotional Life: PBS January 4,2010

Here’s a snippet from the excellent upcoming THIS EMOTIONAL LIFE Elizabeth Gilbert author of Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia talks about intimacy and relationships, and why people are like porcupines.

Don’t miss THIS EMOTIONAL LIFEPremiering on PBS January 4, 2010 . This 3-part series represents what television does best. It opens a window into real lives, exploring ways to improve our social relationships, cope with emotional issues, and become more positive, resilient individuals. Viewers are taken on an in-depth tour of the science of human emotions in an effort to truly understand what makes us tick. Every day, it seems, some new study reveals a previously hidden epidemic of depression, anxiety or other psychological problem. At the root of the confusion lie three key questions: what is biological, what is cultural and what can we do when things go wrong? After centuries of assuming that we humans, with our mysterious minds and messy emotions, were just not fit subjects for study, science has developed some startling insights into human nature. Using the latest cutting edge research from neuroscience, startling observations from social science and experts in psychology, THIS EMOTIONAL LIFE explores the biological need for social relationships, how to manage negative feelings and the search for greater happiness, unveiling a new understanding of what it means to be human.

Source: PBS Visit website

Hosted by Daniel Gilbert, Harvard psychologist and best-selling author of Stumbling on Happiness
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senior-coupleMarital status plays a significant role in how individuals cope economically with disability and health shocks, according to a working paper by University of British Columbia economists Giovanni Gallipoli and Laura Turner. In their study, titled Household Responses to Individual Shocks: Disability and Labour Supply, the researchers examined data from the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) ¬ and found that in marriages, “main-earners” (typically husbands) tend to transfer income and compensate “second-earners” (typically wives). The second-earners, in turn, provide conditional time and care in periods of need (such as illness and disability of main-earner). [continue reading…]

A Queen’s Christmas Message

The Alternative Christmas Message from legendary drag queen Bette Bourne and playwright Mark Ravenhill. A message that tugs the heartstrings.
Source: The Guardian