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About The Book

This “smart and fun read, and a valuable way to revitalize your life” (Walter Isaacson) deftly explains how disrupting our well-worn routines, both good and bad, can rejuvenate and reset our brains for the better.

Have you ever noticed that what is exciting on Monday tends to become boring on Friday? Even passionate relationships, stimulating jobs, and breathtaking works of art lose their sparkle after a while. As easy as it is to stop noticing what is most wonderful in our lives, it’s also possible to stop noticing what is terrible. People get used to dirty air. They become unconcerned by their own misconduct, blind to inequality, and are more liable to believe misinformation than ever before.

Now, neuroscience professor Tali Sharot and Harvard law professor (and presidential advisor) Cass R. Sunstein investigate why we stop noticing both the great and not-so-great things around us and how to “dishabituate” at the office, in the bedroom, at the store, on social media, and in the voting booth.

This groundbreaking and “sensational guide to a more psychological rich life” (Angela Duckworth, New York Times bestselling author), based on decades of research, illuminates how we can reignite the sparks of joy, innovate, and recognize where improvements urgently need to be made. The key to this disruption—to seeing, feeling, and noticing again—is change. By temporarily changing your environment, changing the rules, changing the people you interact with—or even just stepping back and imagining change—you regain sensitivity, allowing you to identify more clearly the bad and more deeply appreciate the good.

About The Authors

Photograph by Michael Lionstar
Tali Sharot

Tali Sharot is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London and MIT. She is the founder and director of the Affective Brain Lab. She has written for outlets including The New York Times, Time, The Washington Post; has been a repeated guest on CNN, NBC, MSNBC; a presenter on the BBC; and served as an advisor for global companies and government projects. Her work has won her prestigious fellowships and prizes from the Wellcome Trust, American Psychological Society, British Psychological Society, and others. Her popular TED talks have accumulated more than fifteen million views. Before becoming a neuroscientist, Sharot worked in the financial industry. She is the author of award-winning books: The Optimism Bias and The Influential Mind. She lives in Boston and London with her husband and children.

Photograph © Ross Lincoln Harvard University
Cass R. Sunstein

Cass R. Sunstein is the nation’s most-cited legal scholar who, for the past fifteen years, has been at the forefront of behavioral economics. From 2009 to 2012, he served as the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Since that time, he has served in the US government in multiple capacities and worked with the United Nations and the World Health Organization, where he chaired the Technical Advisory Group on Behavioral Insights and Sciences for Health during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School. His book Nudge, coauthored with Richard Thaler, was a national bestseller. In 2018, he was the recipient of the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, sometimes described as equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities. He lives in Boston and Washington, DC, with his wife, children, and labrador retrievers.

About The Readers

Imani Jade Powers

Byron Wagner

Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio (February 27, 2024)
  • Runtime: 6 hours and 30 minutes
  • ISBN13: 9781797172477

Raves and Reviews

"Two gifted narrators turn in performances that make the authors’ ideas about paying attention come alive. Their vocal gifts are different and complement each other: Imani Jade Powers performs with a hushed intensity and a philosophical depth that give her interpretations real power. Byron Wagner’s strengths are more stylistic; his amazing array of pitch patterns is fun to hear and makes the author’s ideas glow without trivializing them. Both narrators perform with seemingly effortless diction from start to finish. The audiobook’s mission is to help us understand and gain power over the way we process familiar versus novel experiences. The sections on how we “normalize” what is ordinarily shocking or untrue are especially illuminating in this age of disinformation and cultural decline."

– Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award, AudioFile Magazine

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