The Village Effect

How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter

By: Susan Pinker

Narrated by: Donna Postel

Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

From birth to death, human beings are hardwired to connect to other human beings. Face-to-face contact matters: tight bonds of friendship and love heal us, help children learn, extend our lives, and make us happy. Looser in-person bonds matter too, combining with our close relationships to form a personal "village" around us, one that exerts unique effects. Marrying the findings of the new field of social neuroscience together with gripping human stories, Susan Pinker explores the impact of face-to-face contact from cradle to grave, from city to Sardinian mountain village, from classroom to workplace, from love to marriage to divorce. Most of us have left the literal village behind and don't want to give up our new technologies to go back there. But, as Pinker writes so compellingly, we need close social bonds and uninterrupted face time with our friends and families in order to thrive-even to survive. Creating our own "village effect" can make us happier. It can also save our lives.

©2014 Susan Pinker (P)2014 Tantor

Excellent content, sleepy narration

Very happy with the content however I caught myself at least a dozen times wondering if it was being narrated by a machine.

great book

The information in this book is fantastic. She uses so much science to prove what we already know instinctually.
I am very anti Tech with kids. And I appreciated all of her studies to back up the negative impact that it is having on our social relationships and our self-esteem. Yet It is not going away and she does a great job finding the middle ground of. proper use of Technology.

It's like Siri is reading the book.

Funny that this is a book that talks about real interaction. I could swear that the reading is automatic by Siri or a computer interpreting the words. The information is great, had a hard time listening to the female voice that sounds like a computer.

this is a book you need to put to your face

it is a great message for our time and one we need listen to before our lives became even more online it is not anti internet book more than a jump start to being more socal face 2 face in the modern world

Amazing!

Well worth your time. This is a delightful listen, despite the boring narration. Tons of valuable information inside. I recommend this book to everyone.

Loved the book yet wanted more…

Thanks for a book that helps us rethink the importance of relationships particularly face to face ones in a time when COVID has forced us into the very opposite. Yet I feel this book has only scratched the surface. I wanted to know how the African concept of Ubuntu - I am because you are and you are because I am - is what keeps a Village Effect. About how ancient and current indigenous cultures keep and are keeping their connections and what we can learn from them. The modern Western society is, I find as an African, quite unique in not valuing community as much, valuing often privacy and individuality over it with this mindset unfortunately spreading across the globe as people become more “modern”, and move away from their ancestral homes to the big towns. How much has urbanization and modern architecture disturbed the organic building of community? Even belonging to religious organizations or any organizations seems to me to be becoming out dated or frowned upon by many people. More people than ever have given up on organized religion but little else has replaced it to maintain and build that sense of community.

Excellent book worth the listen

I found the content of this book to be fascinating! Very well written and worth the read! This being said, the narrator’s voice is very robotic sounding. While I appreciate how she annunciates well, it was so unappealing initially that I considered not finishing this novel. However, I did get used to her voice and am very pleased that I finished it after all.

PLEASE fix the chapters! Ch 2 is put in as Ch 3

the book so far is great and I can already tell that Donna Postel is doing Pinker's book justice. I would have given 5 stars but the Chapters are off. I think it's because the Introduction is put in as chapter 1 and it throws everything off!! I have another book like that and it's pretty irritating.

Time drain

The narrator’s voice sounded robotic which made listening annoying. Contents were a bit blah, thought it would be better.