The Teenage Brain by Frances E. Jensen, MD

The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults provides a realistic summary of the problems teenagers face when transitioning from children to adults. Teens do not have many connections to the frontal cortex and have difficulty inhibiting ill advised behavior. After reviewing the cognitive minefield these adolescence have to navigate it is amazing that any of them make it to adulthood.  Dr. Jensen tells the stories of many young people who's lives were cut short via bad decisions, poor genetics, or substance abuse 

Based on the latest clinical research, teenagers and pharmo active chemicals do not go together well. Cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol, prescription drugs, illegal drugs all have much more long lasting negative affects on the adolescent brain. The chemicals can temporarily and with repeated use permanently impair the ability of the hippocampus to convert short term memories to long term memories. This explains why individuals who consume alcohol may black out or have difficulty remembering what they did while inebriated.

Dr. Jensen recommends being very involved with your children. The keys to success are repetition of advice, highlighting news articles about tragic events, and promptly seeking medical or psychiatric help early. She offers up the behavioral changes that signal something is wrong. These behaviors are similar to those exhibited by a normal teenager but the amplitude or volume is turned up when there is a problem.

Dr. Jensen: The Teenage Brain - 7 minutes

Health Bridge the Teenage Brain - 32 minutes

Adolescent Brain - 3 min. 

Grunt by Mary Roach

Mary Roach's, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, covers the science of keeping people alive in a war. She digs into questions about hearing protection on the battlefield. Firing guns and artillery produce loud noises but soldiers also need to communicate.

Mary investigates how the military designs clothing and keeps flies away from food. Capriciously picking the wrong camouflage pattern puts lives at risk. Flies help transmit foodborne illness but the maggots can also be used to clean dead tissue from wounds.

Occasionally military research looks at human animal interactions as they attempt to develop a shark repellent. Hint: Giving a shark a forceful shot in the nose often is a successful strategy. Researchers also discovered that polar bears and black bears like feminine hygiene products.  Who knew?

Mary does not shy away from squeamish topics.  She embraces them with enthusiasm. She takes the reader on an extended discussion regarding surgery options for individuals who were wounded in their private parts as a result of IED attacks.

This is an excellent book for health and safety people as well as those in public health, engineering and medicine.  Mary has written several books including Packing for Mars, Gulp, and Stiff. This book is a welcome addition to the collection.

Book summary of Grunt by Mary Roach 3 minutes

National Book festival discussion of Grunt by Mary Roach 11 minutes

Unexpected Economics by Timothy Taylor

The great courses class on Unexpected Economics by Timothy Taylor covers a wide range of topics at what many people think would be at the edge of the field of economics. However, many of these topics have garnered Noble Prizes for the researchers and that puts them closer to the middle rather than at the fringe.

On the subject of substance abuse and addiction, Professor Taylor makes a strong argument against the disease based paradigm. With a disease you can not just decide to quit, but the vast majority of people who have an addiction eventually quit. This often occurs when they get older and begin to establish themselves. The addiction now has much more cost to their professional and personal life. Many Vietnam Vets took drugs while overseas but dropped the habit once they returned to the U. S. and a different environment. Use of addictive substances is also sensitive to the cost of the product.

The section on Terrorism as an Occupational Choice highlighted that terrorist often are skilled or educated.  They volunteer for their work and are chosen on a merit based system over others with fewer skill sets. A democracy may work to prevent terrorism by providing another way for expressing political dissent. However, failure to get the desired outcome may spur on terrorism.  Democracies typically are not as heavy handed with terrorist as autocracies and the response may have less strength and effectiveness.

An economics looks at the decision to vote - Approx. 4.5 minutes

Economics of racial discrimination  - 32 minutes

Shattered by Jonathan Allen and Ami Parnes

This very thorough autopsy of the Clinton campaign, Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign, could have used some serious editing. An abridged version that avoids repetition and presents the information in a linear fashion would drive the point home without sacrificing important details.

The decision of the Clinton campaign to emphasize outreach to minorities as a strategy to neutralize the appeal of Bernie Sanders to the white working class voter worked well in the primaries but not as well in the general election. Her campaigned worked hard at bringing out the base but didn't expend as much effort on trying to change the minds of independent voters.

Mook, Hillary's campaign manger, relied on analytics and this created conflicts with the more seasoned political staff who complained about having staff in the battleground states but no literature to distribute. The decision makers believed the analytic data more than the reports from seasoned democrats in each state.  They also didn't do old fashioned polling.

Self inflicted wounds with respect the months long delay in Secretary Clinton's admission that the use of a private server was not a good idea.

It was interesting that there was much more concern over "The Narrative" rather than an accurate description of the situation by the candidate. The candidate could be honest but if it didn't change the narrative it was deemed a failure.

Shattered authors interviewed CNBC - 9 minutes