Ep. 12: We Help You Discover Self Help

De: The Audible Editors

Our Audible Editors (including two guest editors!) dive deep into the popular self-development genre (a.k.a. “self help”), and make a solid case to our resident Self-Dev skeptic, editor Emily, that the genre itself is more far-reaching than you may think.

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up Marie Kondo

Like She Owns the Place Cara Alwill Leyba

Kick-ass with Mel Robbins Mel Robbins

Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Mark Manson

Think Yourself Thin JJ Smith

The Easy Stop to Quit Smoking Allen Carr

Codependent No More Melody Beattie

How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living Dale Carnegie

Failure is an Option H. John Benjamin

Lose Well Chris Gethard

I Might Regret This Abbi Jacobson

The Myth of the Nice Girl Fran Hauser and Jodi Lipper

You Are a Mogul Tiffany Pham

The Gifts of Imperfection Brene Brown

The Complete Works of Florence Scovel Shinn Florence Scovel Shinn

You Are Special Fred Rogers

Goodmorning, Goodnight Lin-Manuel Miranda

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running Haruki Murakami

Running is My Therapy Scott Douglas

80/20 Running Matt Fitzgerald

The Incomplete Book of Running Peter Sagal

Workouts for Busy People Aaptiv

Everyday Meditation Aaptiv

Getting Unstuck Pema Chodron

Where Should We Begin? Arc of Love Esther Perel

Creative Quest Questlove

A Course in High Magick Damien Echols

Life After Death Damien Echols

Belong Radha Agrawal

Jane Doe Victoria Helen Stone

How To Get Back Up Neil Pasricha

The Martha Rules Martha Stewart

Small Fry Lisa Brennan-Jobs

©2018 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2018 Audible Originals, LLC

Difficult to listen to. Vocal Fry. Uptick.

I have read and listened to a lot of Self Help titles over three decades so I wasn't expecting to learn much from this conversation and the conversation met this expectation. There were some mild insights scattered through the 40 minutes of audio. But for at least half of the titles that they mentioned they didn't say anything significant about it. I would have preferred that they mention fewer titles and talk more about them. A great deal of the time in this audio is spent mentioning titles and and the editors telling how they felt about those books rather than objectively evaluating them. I think that if the editors were to revisit this category they would be better served adding a psychologist to the conversation and dropping the total participant count down to four at most. The audio is too crowded with too many indistinguishable voices.

Unfortunately the editors don't have the elocution habits of a narrator. I had difficulty picking out the individual voices but I think at least three of them had at least one bad vocal habit. The ones I picked out were vocal fry and uptick and both habits are grating to listen to. I probably won't listen to any more of these editor conversations.

Life Changing!!

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Self Help, Personal Development

In the past year or two this genre has become a favorite of mine, so I was extremely happy to listen to this episode of Audicted. I enjoyed listening to all your different takes on personal development books, and that you each touched on what has given you a reservation about reading in this topic area. As with every episode I heard you all mention titles I have already heard of and some I hadn't yet heard of but will go look up. It is nice you mentioned comedy as well as prescriptive self help titles. Great episode in my opinion! Thank you for sharing.

A Tough Subject

Story: 3-Stars
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The regular episode hosts do not demonstrate a particular expertise or enthusiasm for the self-help genre, so the producers take the opportunity (the absence of two of the show's regulars) to bring in self-help experts for the discussion.

The breadth of the genre make this a challenge to cover succinctly, though they do illustrate that, despite what we think our feelings for the topic are, we all look to self-help sources at many points in our lives. More than any other genre, how we approach the material psychologically (do we WANT help?) determines the import and effectiveness of this kind of title.

There is a decent bit of discussion on how other genres can cross over into the self-help realm that felt somewhat random and meandering.

Performance: 3-Stars
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Like other episodes where the show doesn't fall into neatly categorized parts, the show does not feel tightly constructed. Making up for it to some degree are some intimate anecdotes shared by the hosts. They clearly continue to look for ways to connect on a deeper, personal level with their audience. That takes courage and vulnerability to do so to a large audience of strangers.

Episode 12

There are a lot of cool self help books out there. At this point in my life I don't need any self help books. I do however know some people who do so it was nice to listen to this episode so I got some book titles to suggest to my friends. I am interested in The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up book I love the tv show that Marie Kondo has I had no idea that she wrote a book. I'm excited to listen to it. I'm also probably going to give The Martha Rules by Martha Stewart. I'm a fan of Martha Stewart and I'm interested into the book.