Book Summaries by Wise Words

Hello wise people and welcome to our series 'Short Intros.'    In this series, we focus on summarising books from the 'Very Short Introduction (VSI)' series published by Oxford University Press.     -----------------  Welcome back, wise people. Today we are going to be summarising a Very Short Introduction to Rhetoric by Richard Toye. Rhetoric can be defined as the art of persu...

Welcome back wise people to another episode of our Wise Word Book Summaries. This week we are summarising the book  'Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most' by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton & Sheila Heen. As the title suggests, this communication book offers a great guide on how to navigate tough conversations.  It must be noted that before learning how to communicat...

Hello wise people and welcome to our series 'Short Intros.' In this series, we focus on summarising books from the 'Very Short Introduction (VSI)' series published by Oxford University Press.  ----------------- We hope you had a good break, full of lots of festive cheer. I know we did. As you will have noticed we took a bit of time off, but now we are back and we have a bunch o...

Hey wise listeners and welcome back to another episode of our wise words book summaries. This episode is on Selfie by Will Storr which tries to explore ‘the self’ from the perspective of the west in terms of individualism and in particular perfectionism.  To do this, Will Storr approaches the self from a biological, social and cultural perspective.  Tracing back the roots of individualism to Ancie...

This episode on Social Warming by Charles Arthur takes a look at social media platforms and their negative effects on society caused by their business model as well as their increasing size; such as the breakdown of trust, the increase in fake news, and political polarisation. He uses real-world examples of how social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and WhatsApp have all played...

Hello good people and welcome to another episode of our Wise Words Short Intros. Today we build on top of our previous episode on philosophy by summarising  'A very Short Introduction to Philosophy of Science.' this is a fantastic book that really makes you question, what is science? I highly recommend it as it gives you another tool to your toolbox for understanding the world and gettin...

Welcome back to the 2nd part of Beyond Order, 12 More Rule for Life.  In this episode, we will be covering the other 6 rules, these being: Rule 7: Work as Hard as You Possibly Can on At Least One Thing and See What Happens Rule 8: Try to Make One Room in Your Home as Beautiful As Possible Rule 9: If Old Memories Still Upset You, Write Them Down Carefully and Completely Rule 10: Plan and Work Dilig...

If you’ve been tuning in to our previous episodes you would’ve realised Jes and I are big fans of JBP (that is Jordan B. Peterson), so we thought it was about time we should summarise his new book '12 More Rules for Life - Beyond Order.' This book is in line with the previous book episodes on  Shattered Assumptions and Evil as it conveys the same underlying concept of overcoming adversit...

Hello good people and welcome to our new series 'Short Intros.' We are going to be moving on from our Roam Recap series to focus on summarising books from the 'Very Short Introduction (VSI)' series published by Oxford University Press.  The VSI is a book series that introduces different subjects in a concise manner and is aimed at a general audience but written by experts. If y...

This episode leads on from shattered assumptions in the sense that it looks at our assumptions about evil, what it is, how it manifests, and whether it actually exists. Roy Baumeister does an excellent job of defining what evil is and then taking us on a journey of how relatively normal people can become what we consider evil.  The process that he describes in his book looks at the 4 key causes of...

If you’ve been tuning in for the last couple of episodes, you would’ve noticed that we’ve been touching a lot on the topic of trauma. This book is a perfect accompaniment to the others as it explains how we construct a framework of the world and what happens when it is broken or in this case, shattered due to a traumatic event. Although this book refers to people who have experienced traumatic eve...

The Myth of Mentall Illness book summary can be found here - https://wisewords.blog/book-summaries/myth-of-mental-illness-book-summary/ Today we are reviewing 'The Myth of Mental Illness by Dr Thomas Szasz which gives a critique of the psychiatric field and tries to explain why there is no such thing as mental illness. Now as you can tell by the title of this episode, this is quite a controve...

In our roam recap podcast, Jes and I review some of our weekly notes and discuss topics that we weren't able to talk about in our book review episodes. -- Today we kept it short and sweet only touching on a few topics: Emotional Conjugations - how by using specific adjectives, one can distort an interpretation of an event/ action.  Arguing with specificity - how it is better to argue on a spe...

The incredibly well-received book ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ by Bessel Van Der Kolk dives into the world of trauma and methods of rehabilitation.  Van der Kolk argues that conventional methods of treatment such as prescription drugs only deal with the symptoms whereas the methods he emphasises tend to do a lot more to help the underlying problem.  Being a pioneer of the field and having had over 3...

In our roam recap podcast, Jes and I review some of our weekly notes and discuss topics that we weren't able to talk about in our book review episodes. -- Today we touched on some really interesting topics such as: The direction of thoughts - how by keeping track of your thoughts by noting them down and referencing them you are able to see which direction they were going in, allowing you to p...

Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) is a fantastic book by Carol Tavris and Eliot Aronson. It explores the world of excuses, self-justification, false memories and much more. The book summary write up can be found on - https://wisewords.blog/book-summaries/mistakes-were-made/ A lot of the time, we tend to act in ways that are incongruent with how we see ourselves, however, in order to make ourselve...

In our roam recap podcast, Jes and I review some of our weekly notes and discuss topics that we weren't able to talk about in our book review episodes. In this weeks episode, we touch on a wide variety of topics, such as productivity and how to find time to complete projects, gratitude in regard to reframing a negative situation in a positive light, and sex difference in relation to over and...

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath is such a great book, one that is well written as well as so simply laid out. This is thanks to their acronym which they like to attribute to making things memorable - SUCCES. Simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and stories. Each one of these is crucial in the ability to express ideas in a way that is easy to understand and therefore more memorable...

In our roam recap podcast, Jes and I review some of our weekly notes and discuss topics that we weren't able to talk about in our book review episodes. In this weeks episode, we explored topics such as the OODA loop, schemas and reframing failure, as well as talking about paired metrics like leading and lagging measures. We also spoke a lot about how the world is becoming more convenient and...

12 Rules for Life is a fantastic book written by no other than Jordan B Peterson. As the name suggests, it is made up of 12 rules that he believes to be beneficial to your life.  The full write up of the book summary is here - https://wisewords.blog/book-summaries/12-rules-for-life-book-summary/ The book itself has a lot of religious examples from the Bible as well as evidence from clinical psycho...

12 Rules for Life is a fantastic book written by no other than Jordan B Peterson. As the name suggests, it is made up of 12 rules that he believes to be beneficial to your life.  - https://wisewords.blog/book-summaries/12-rules-for-life-book-summary/ The book itself has a lot of religious examples from the Bible as well as evidence from clinical psychology and philosophy to illustrate his points....

In our roam recap podcast, Jes and I review some of our weekly notes, notes that we weren't able to talk about in our book review episodes. This weeks episode, we explore one of Jordan B Petersons papers 'Three forms of meaning and the management of complexity.' This is an incredible paper and sheds light on how we envisage the world and how objects present themselves to us. In addi...

The Origins of Virtue written Book Summary can be found on  https://wisewords.blog/book-summaries/origins-of-virtue-book-summary/ In 1976 Richard Dawkins shone a light on our inherently selfish behaviour with his 'Selfish Gene Theory.' This has been an ultimate force in understanding mankind from an evolutionary perspective. This finding is rather odd when you consider that we are social...

In our roam recap podcast, Jes and I review some of our weekly notes, notes that we weren't able to talk about in our book review episodes. This weeks episode, we look at the origins of anxiety and how it manifests in society. We also dive into the benefits of understanding abstract concepts and applying them to other areas of life. In addition to this, we touch on stories, particularly the h...

This is Book Summary of Peak by Anders Ericcson. The full write up can be found here - https://wisewords.blog/book-summaries/peak-book-summary/ Would you like the ability to get better at anything?  To have the superpower to improve at anything you put your mind to? Well, 'Peak' by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool does exactly that. This fantastic book goes into detail about why some peop...