Audiobooks narrated by Donna Postel

In Pollution Is Colonialism Max Liboiron presents a framework for understanding scientific research methods as practices that can align with or against colonialism. They point out that even when researchers are working toward benevolent goals, environmental science and activism are often premised on a colonial worldview and access to land. Focusing on plastic pollution, the book models an anticolonial scientific practice aligned with Indigenous, particularly Metis, concepts of land, ethics, and relations. Liboiron draws on their work in the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR)-an anticolonial science laboratory in Newfoundland, Canada-to illuminate how pollution is not a symptom of capitalism but a violent enactment of colonial land relations that claim access to Indigenous land. Liboiron's creative, lively, and passionate text refuses theories of pollution that make Indigenous land available for settler and colonial goals. In this way, their methodology demonstrates that anticolonial science is not only possible but is currently being practiced in ways that enact more ethical modes of being in the world.

Max Liboiron (Author), Donna Postel (Narrator)

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Memory Speaks: On Losing and Reclaiming Language and Self

As a child, Julie Sedivy left Czechoslovakia for Canada, and English soon took over her life. By early adulthood she spoke Czech rarely and badly, and when her father died unexpectedly, she lost not only a beloved parent but also her firmest point of connection to her native language. As Sedivy realized, more is at stake here than the loss of language: there is also the loss of identity. Language is an important part of adaptation to a new culture, and immigrants everywhere face pressure to assimilate. Recognizing this tension, Sedivy set out to understand the science of language loss and the potential for renewal. In Memory Speaks, she takes on the psychological and social world of multilingualism, exploring the human brain's capacity to learn-and forget-languages at various stages of life. Countering the widespread view that linguistic pluralism splinters loyalties and communities, Sedivy argues that the struggle to remain connected to an ancestral language and culture is a site of common ground. Memory Speaks combines a rich body of psychological research with a moving story at once personal and universally resonant. As citizens debate the merits of bilingual education, as the world's less dominant languages are driven to extinction, and as many people confront the pain of language loss, this is badly needed wisdom.

Julie Sedivy (Author), Donna Postel (Narrator)

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The Combat Zone: Murder, Race, and Boston's Struggle for Justice

At the end of the 1976 football season, more than forty Harvard athletes went to Boston's Combat Zone to celebrate. In the city's adult entertainment district, drugs and prostitution ran rampant, violent crime was commonplace, and corrupt police turned the other way. At the end of the night, Italian American star athlete Andy Puopolo, raised in the city's North End, was murdered in a stabbing. Three African American men were accused of the crime. His murder made national news and led to the eventual demise of the city's red-light district. Starting with this brutal murder, The Combat Zone tells the story of the Puopolo family's struggle with both a devastating loss and a criminal justice system that produced two trials with opposing verdicts, all within the context of a racially divided Boston. Brogan traces the contentious relationship between Boston's segregated neighborhoods during the busing crisis; shines a light on a court system that allowed lawyers to strike potential jurors based purely on their racial or ethnic identity; and lays bare the deep-seated corruption within the police department and throughout the Combat Zone. What emerges is a fascinating snapshot of the city at a transitional moment in its recent past.

Jan Brogan (Author), Donna Postel (Narrator)

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Reclaiming Pleasure: A Sex Positive Guide for Moving Past Sexual Trauma and Living a Passionate Life

If you have experienced sexual abuse, assault, harassment, or rape, you may feel disconnected from your sexual self-even if you've overcome the initial trauma. You are a survivor; but surviving is just the beginning. Written by a psychologist and grounded in cutting-edge research, Reclaiming Pleasure picks up where other sexual trauma recovery books leave off. It offers practical tools to help you cultivate a sense of safety, security, and trust in order to reclaim the vitality, pleasure, and great sex you deserve. The book will also serve as your compass on a journey toward the rediscovery of desire, letting you explore what you want from others and for yourself. This groundbreaking book will help you: - Understand the lasting mental, physical, sexual, and relational impacts of sexual trauma - Move beyond feelings of shame - Reclaim pleasure and reignite passion in your life Surviving is merely the first step in the process of recovery. With this sex-positive and empowering guide, you are invited to take your recovery to the next level. You'll feel emboldened by the desire for better sex, healthier relationships, and a more connected, pleasurable life.

Holly Richmond Phd, Holly Richmond, Phd (Author), Donna Postel (Narrator)

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The Altruistic Urge: Why We’re Driven to Help Others

Ordinary people can perform acts of astonishing selflessness, sometimes even putting their lives on the line. A pregnant woman saw a dorsal fin and blood in the water-and dove right in to pull her wounded husband to safety. Remarkably, some even leap into action to save complete strangers: one New York man jumped onto the subway tracks to rescue a boy who had fallen into the path of an oncoming train. Such behavior is not uniquely human. Researchers have found that mother rodents are highly motivated to bring newborn pups-not just their own-back to safety. What do these stories have in common, and what do they reveal about the instinct to protect others? In The Altruistic Urge, Stephanie D. Preston explores how and why we developed a surprisingly powerful drive to help the vulnerable. She argues that the neural and psychological mechanisms that evolved to safeguard offspring also motivate people to save strangers in need of immediate aid. Merging extensive interdisciplinary research that spans psychology, neuroscience, neurobiology, and evolutionary biology, Preston develops a groundbreaking model of altruistic responses. Her theory accounts for extraordinary feats of bravery, all-too-common apathy, and everything in between-and it can also be deployed to craft more effective appeals to assist those in need.

Stephanie D. Preston (Author), Donna Postel (Narrator)

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Revolutionizing Trauma Treatment: Stabilization, Safety, & Nervous System Balance

Challenges the notion that clients with PTSD must revisit, review, and process their memories to recover from trauma. Being able to monitor and modulate a trauma client's dysregulated nervous system is one of the practitioner's best lines of defense against traumatic hyperarousal going amok-risking consequences such as dissociation and decompensation. This audio edition of Babette Rothschild's The Body Remembers, Volume 2, clarifies and simplifies autonomic nervous system (ANS) understanding and observation. Multiple therapeutic transcripts illuminate key points in trauma treatment, including stabilizing clients who dissociate, identifying and implementing hidden somatic resources, and utilizing good memories and somatic markers. With an authoritative yet personal voice, Rothschild's book is essential listening for anyone working with those who have experienced trauma.

Babette Rothschild (Author), Donna Postel (Narrator)

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Depression For Dummies: 2nd Edition

The good news on beating the blues Do you want the good, the bad, or the best news first? OK, the bad news is that an estimated 264+ million people worldwide suffer from a depressive illness. The good news is that we know how to defeat these illnesses better than ever before using a growing range of highly effective psychotherapies, medications, and other therapeutic methods that are improving all the time. And the best news: because of these advances, the majority of people no longer need to suffer the debilitating-and sometimes dangerous-effects of long-term depressive illness. The new edition of Depression For Dummies shows how you can make this happen for you by providing the latest and best information on how to banish the noonday demon and bring the sunshine back into your world. In this friendly, cheerful, no-nonsense guide, leading clinical psychologists Laura L. Smith and Charles H. Elliot give you the straight talk on what you face and proven, practical advice on how to punch back and win. Showing you how to know your enemy, they demystify common types of depression, explain its physical effects, and help identify the kind you have. Armed in this way, you can take firmer steps toward the lifestyle changes-as well as therapy or medication-that will put you back in control.

Charles H. Elliott Phd, Charles H. Elliott, Ph.D., Charles H. Elliott, Phd, Laura L. Smith Phd, Laura L. Smith, Ph.D., Laura L. Smith, Phd (Author), Donna Postel (Narrator)

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The Truth of It All

Public defender Julia Geary moves through life in simmering resentment-at her husband, a soldier killed in Iraq, leaving her a single mother; at her low-paying job; and at her overbearing mother-in-law, whose home she shares. She longs for a breakout case, and it arrives when members of the high-school soccer team report seeing a teammate-Iraqi refugee Sami Mohammed-assaulting a girl in the locker room. In a town where animosity against refugees has already reached a fever pitch, Julia throws all her energy into Sami's defense. She finds an ally in high-school principal Dom Parrish, who believes Sami is innocent, and the case suddenly turns red hot. Then she begins receiving vicious threats against her family, and a senseless act of violence leaves Sami in a coma. And finally, a crop of new evidence emerges that points to the town's most prominent citizens and pits Julia against powerful forces set on burying the truth once and for all. If Sami survives and Julia can prove him innocent, it will be the case of a lifetime. But now it's her life that's on the line.

Gwen Florio (Author), Donna Postel (Narrator)

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How to Feel: The Science and Meaning of Touch

We are out of touch. Many people fear that we are trapped inside our screens, becoming less in tune with our bodies and losing our connection to the physical world. But the sense of touch has been undervalued since long before the days of digital isolation. Because of deeply rooted beliefs that favor the cerebral over the corporeal, touch is maligned as dirty or sentimental, in contrast with supposedly more elevated modes of perceiving the world. How to Feel explores the scientific, physical, emotional, and cultural aspects of touch, reconnecting us to what is arguably our most important sense. Sushma Subramanian introduces listeners to the scientists whose groundbreaking research is underscoring the role of touch in our lives. Through vivid individual stories-a man who lost his sense of touch in his late teens, a woman who experiences touch-emotion synesthesia, her own efforts to become less touch averse-Subramanian explains the science of the somatosensory system and our philosophical beliefs about it. The book highlights the growing field of haptics, which is trying to incorporate tactile interactions into devices such as phones that touch us back and prosthetic limbs that can feel. How to Feel offers a new appreciation for a vital but misunderstood sense and how we can use it to live more fully.

Sushma Subramanian (Author), Donna Postel (Narrator)

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The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment

For both clinicians and their clients there is tremendous value in understanding the psychophysiology of trauma and knowing what to do about its manifestations. This book illuminates that physiology, shining a bright light on the impact of trauma on the body and the phenomenon of somatic memory. It is now thought that people who have been traumatized hold an implicit memory of traumatic events in their brains and bodies. That memory is often expressed in the symptomatology of posttraumatic stress disorder-nightmares, flashbacks, startle responses, and dissociative behaviors. In essence, the body of the traumatized individual refuses to be ignored. While reducing the chasm between scientific theory and clinical practice and bridging the gap between talk therapy and body therapy, Rothschild presents principles and non-touch techniques for giving the body its due. With an eye to its relevance for clinicians, she consolidates current knowledge about the psychobiology of the stress response both in normally challenging situations and during extreme and prolonged trauma.

Babette Rothschild (Author), Donna Postel (Narrator)

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Flying Lead Change: 56 Million Years of Wisdom for Leading and Living

Leadership teacher Kelly Wendorf offers a new approach to leading and living inspired by two profound sources of ancient wisdom: original peoples and Equus (the horse), grounded in evidence-based principles of neuroscience. In her groundbreaking EQUUS training program, Wendorf teaches a way of leadership modeled on a 56 million-year-old system of the horse herd-a path that has allowed humans and horses alike to survive the kinds of global and societal threats we now face, such as climate change and mass extinction. Here she takes you step by step through this powerful approach, including: listening-the starting point for all leadership; care-explore the ancient, indigenous understanding of care that is reciprocal, empathic, and beneficial to all; presence-meeting the here and now with vulnerability, openness, and a stable foundation; safety-how a masterful leader creates a sense of group resilience and strength by 'leading from behind' for the welfare of all; connection-ways to move away from coercion and force to promote genuine communication and belonging; peace-creating group harmony right now; freedom-returning to our wild nature that is inherently free, unbridled, and unbroken; and joy-moving beyond temporary happiness to a state of wholehearted engagement of life, whatever the circumstances.

Kelly Wendorf (Author), Donna Postel (Narrator)

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Gone Too Far

This second entry in USA Today bestselling author Debra Webb’s Devlin & Falco series proves that sometimes the past is best left forgotten. As veteran detectives of the Birmingham Police Department, Kerri Devlin and Luke Falco have seen it all. So when the city’s new hotshot deputy district attorney turns up dead as part of a double homicide, the partners immediately get to work. But this is no ordinary case. Devlin and Falco quickly link the murdered DDA to one of their own: former BPD detective Sadie Cross. But Sadie’s fractured memory is yet another puzzle to decipher, as she only recalls bits and pieces of her violent past…a past that may hold clues to the motive behind the murders. As the group slowly begins to unearth the truth, they soon discover that the more secrets are revealed, the more fatal the consequences.

Debra Webb (Author), Donna Postel (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Donna Postel