Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Why Can't We Sleep by Darian Leader.
One in four adults sleeps badly. Sleeping pill prescriptions have increased dramatically over the last three decades and our bookshelves and browser histories are littered with experts promising to 'fix' our insomnia.
But is this so-called sleep crisis anything new? Our relationship to sleep has always been irregular and changeable, variously shaped by social conventions, commercial imperatives and personal psychologies. Look beneath the headlines and it seems that there is no such thing as a perfect night's sleep.
Here Darian Leader reveals the history and pathology of sleeplessness - from the industrial revolution to Freudian dream analysis to the fears around blue light on our phones. Along the way, he dispels the pervasive myths and anxieties around this most universal human experience.
Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Hands, written and read by Darian Leader.
A fresh, thought-provoking and wide-ranging study of how mankind uses its hands
Why do zombies walk with their arms outstretched? How can newborn babies grip an adult finger tightly enough to dangle unsupported from it? And why is everyone constantly texting, tapping and scrolling?
For anyone curious about how human beings work, the answers are hidden in plain sight: in our hands. From early tools to machinery -- from fists to knives to guns -- from papyrus to QWERTY to a swipeable screen -- the history of civilization is a history of what humans do with their hands. We have always kept our hands occupied, and if mankind's story is marked out by profound changes in how we use our hands, it is also marked by underlying patterns that never change. And as much as the things we do with our hands reflect our psychological state, they can also change that state profoundly...
Drawing examples from popular culture, art history, psychoanalysis, modern technology and clinical research, Darian Leader presents a unique and fascinating odyssey through the history of what human beings do with their hands - and why.
