What is hot on 15 January 2011

The Biography Podcast
Bill Clinton
Chris Gondek interviews Michael Takiff about his new biography, A Complicated Man: The Life of Bill Clinton as Told By Those Who Know Him.
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New Books In History
Nell Irvin Painter, “The History of White People”
We in the West tend to classify people by the color of their skin, or what we casually call “race.” But, as Nell Irvin Painter shows in her fascinating new book The History of White People (Norton, 2010), it wasn’t always so.
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Big Ideas
Jordan Peterson on The Necessity of Virtue
University of Toronto professor and clinical psychologist, Jordan Peterson, delivers the 2010 Hancock Lecture entitled The Necessity of Virtue. He discusses virtue from a contemporary perspective that both encompasses and extends beyond moral and religious contexts. Through compelling stories and research, Dr. Peterson illustrates the necessity of virtue both for the individual and for society at large.
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Wise Counsel
Liana Lowenstein, MSW on Play Therapy
Liana Lowenstein, MSW on Play Therapy. Mental Help Net (www.mentalhelp.net) presents the Wise Counsel Podcast (wisecounsel.mentalhelp.net), hosted by David Van Nuys, Ph.D. Adult-oriented psychotherapy is talk-focused, making it inappropriate for children who are for developmental reasons less able or inclined to be able to talk about emotional difficulties. Play therapy involves a therapists systematic use of structured games and play activities to bond with, assess and treat children's psychosocial issues. Play activities allow children to approach their issues indirectly and (often) in a physical, primarily non-verbal manner. Play activities are orchestrated by the therapist according to one or more clinical play therapy models (e.g., this is not simply play but instead real therapy). Lowenstein describes several named therapeutic play activities variously designed to elicit discussion of feelings, elicit a ranked list of worries, or to enable children to act out their issues using the sand-tray or dollhouses. The entire family is frequently included in therapy so as to assess family dynamics that may be interfering with healing (such as when children feel the need to protect their parents), and to help parents become more aware of children's issues so that they can act on the information to alter their behavior.
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