Sarah

Shaidrian Rios

Jimmy Beans

Julie Wynne - videos

Kapuster

angel smith

Nicky Tallon

Harini Sen

Vastralaya

Evan Shively (Perseus271)

Edgar Colt

Vitor Miguel

Now a New York Times Bestseller! With a new chapter added to the paperback. In high school, I wondered whether the Jamaican Americans who made our track team so successful might carry some special speed gene from their tiny island. In college, I ran against Kenyans, and wondered whether endurance genes might have traveled with them from East Africa. At the same time, I began to notice that a training group on my team could consist of five men who run next to one another, stride for stride, day after day, and nonetheless turn out five entirely different runners. How could this be?We all knew a star athlete in high school. The one who made it look so easy. He was the starting quarterback and shortstop; she was the all-state point guard and high-jumper. Naturals. Or were they?The debate is as old as physical competition. Are stars like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Serena Williams genetic freaks put on Earth to dominate their respective sports? Or are they simply normal people who overcame their biological limits through sheer force of will and obsessive training?The truth is far messier than a simple dichotomy between nature and nurture. In the decade since the sequencing of the human genome, researchers have slowly begun to uncover how the relationship between biological endowments and a competitor’s training environment affects athleticism. Sports scientists have gradually entered the era of modern genetic research.In this controversial and engaging exploration of athletic success, Sports Illustrated senior writer David Epstein tackles the great nature vs. nurture debate and traces how far science has come in solving this great riddle. He investigates the so-called 10,000-hour rule to uncover whether rigorous and consistent practice from a young age is the only route to athletic excellence.Along the way, Epstein dispels many of our perceptions about why top athletes excel. He shows why some skills that we assume are innate, like the bullet-fast reactions of a baseball or cricket batter, are not, and why other characteristics that we assume are entirely voluntary, like an athlete’s will to train, might in fact have important genetic components.This subject necessarily involves digging deep into sensitive topics like race and gender. Epstein explores controversial questions such as:Are black athletes genetically predetermined to dominate both sprinting and distance running, and are their abilities influenced by Africa’s geography?Are there genetic reasons to separate male and female athletes in competition?Should we test the genes of young children to determine if they are destined for stardom?Can genetic testing determine who is at risk of injury, brain damage, or even death on the field?Through on-the-ground reporting from below the equator and above the Arctic Circle, revealing conversations with leading scientists and Olympic champions, and interviews with athletes who have rare genetic mutations or physical traits, Epstein forces us to rethink the very nature of athleticism. 

The Secret Race is a definitive look at the world of professional cycling—and the doping issue surrounding this sport and its most iconic rider, Lance Armstrong—by former Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton and New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle.Over the course of two years, Coyle conducted more than two hundred hours of interviews with Hamilton and spoke candidly with numerous teammates, rivals, and friends. The result is an explosive book that takes us, for the first time, deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and surreal world of unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team directors, and athletes so relentlessly driven to succeed that they would do anything—and take any risk, physical, mental, or moral—to gain the edge they need to win.Tyler Hamilton was once one of the world’s best-liked and top-ranked cyclists—a fierce competitor renowned among his peers for his uncanny endurance and epic tolerance for pain. In the 2003 Tour de France, he finished fourth despite breaking his collarbone in the early stages—and grinding eleven of his teeth down to the nerves along the way. He started his career with the U.S. Postal Service team in the 1990s and quickly rose to become Lance Armstrong’s most trusted lieutenant, and a member of his inner circle. For the first three of Armstrong’s record seven Tour de France victories, Hamilton was by Armstrong’s side, clearing his way. But just weeks after Hamilton reached his own personal pinnacle—winning the gold medal at the 2004 Olympics—his career came to a sudden, ignominious end: He was found guilty of doping and exiled from the sport.From the exhilaration of his early, naïve days in the peloton, Hamilton chronicles his ascent to the uppermost reaches of this unforgiving sport. In the mid-1990s, the advent of a powerful new blood-boosting drug called EPO reshaped the world of cycling, and a relentless, win-at-any-cost ethos took root. Its psychological toll would drive many of the sport’s top performers to substance abuse, depression, even suicide. For the first time ever, Hamilton recounts his own battle with clinical depression, speaks frankly about the agonizing choices that go along with the decision to compete at a world-class level, and tells the story of his complicated relationship with Lance Armstrong.A journey into the heart of a never-before-seen world, The Secret Race is a riveting, courageous act of witness from a man who is as determined to reveal the hard truth about his sport as he once was to win the Tour de France.

Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong.Isolated by the most savage terrain in North America, the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons are custodians of a lost art. For centuries they have practiced techniques that allow them to run hundreds of miles without rest and chase down anything from a deer to an Olympic marathoner while enjoying every mile of it. Their superhuman talent is matched by uncanny health and serenity, leaving the Tarahumara immune to the diseases and strife that plague modern existence. With the help of Caballo Blanco, a mysterious loner who lives among the tribe, the author was able not only to uncover the secrets of the Tarahumara but also to find his own inner ultra-athlete, as he trained for the challenge of a lifetime: a fifty-mile race through the heart of Tarahumara country pitting the tribe against an odd band of Americans, including a star ultramarathoner, a beautiful young surfer, and a barefoot wonder.With a sharp wit and wild exuberance, McDougall takes us from the high-tech science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultrarunners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to the climactic race in the Copper Canyons. Born to Run is that rare book that will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that the secret to happiness is right at your feet, and that you, indeed all of us, were born to run.

From the National Magazine Award-winning Runner’s World columnist, frequent New Yorker online contributor, and Cambridge-trained physicist: a fascinating and definitive exploration of the extraordinary science of human endurance and the secrets of human performance, for fans of The Sports Gene, Born to Run, and Grit.From running a two-hour marathon to summiting Mount Everest, we’re fascinated by the extremes of human endurance, constantly testing both our physical and psychological limits.How high or far or fast can humans go? And what about individual potential: what defines a person’s limits?For years, physiology determined the answer: heart size, lung capacity, and muscle strength. But over the past decade, a wave of dramatic findings in the cutting-edge science of endurance has completely overturned our understanding of human limitation. Endure widely disseminates these findings for the first time: It’s the brain that dictates how far we can go—which means we can always push ourselves further.Hutchinson presents an overview of science’s search for understanding human fatigue, from crude experiments with electricity and frogs’ legs to sophisticated brain imaging technology. Going beyond the traditional mechanical view of human limits (like a car with a brick on its gas pedal, we go until the tank runs out of gas), he instead argues that a key element in endurance is how the brain responds to distress signals—whether heat, or cold, or muscles screaming with lactic acid—and reveals that we can train to improve brain response.An elite distance runner himself, Hutchinson takes us to the forefront of the new sports psychology—brain electrode jolts, computer-based training, subliminal messaging—and presents startling new discoveries enhancing the performance of athletes today and shows how anyone can utilize these tactics to bolster their own performance—and get the most out of their bodies.

Everything you believe about how to lose weight is wrong. Weight gain and obesity are driven by hormones—in everyone—and only by understanding the effects of insulin and insulin resistance can we achieve lasting weight loss.In this highly readable and provocative book, Dr. Jason Fung sets out an original, robust theory of obesity that provides startling insights into proper nutrition. In addition to his five basic steps, a set of lifelong habits that will improve your health and control your insulin levels, Dr. Fung explains how to use intermittent fasting to break the cycle of insulin resistance and reach a healthy weight—for good.

A DEFINITIVE COMPENDIUM OF FOOD WISDOMEating doesn't have to be so complicated. In this age of ever-more elaborate diets and conflicting health advice, Food Rules brings a welcome simplicity to our daily decisions about food. Written with the clarity, concision and wit that has become bestselling author Michael Pollan's trademark, this indispensable handbook lays out a set of straightforward, memorable rules for eating wisely, one per page, accompanied by a concise explanation. It's an easy-to-use guide that draws from a variety of traditions, suggesting how different cultures through the ages have arrived at the same enduring wisdom about food. Whether at the supermarket or an all-you-can-eat buffet, this is the perfect guide for anyone who ever wondered, "What should I eat?"

Michael Pollan's last book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, launched a national conversation about the American way of eating; now In Defense of Food shows us how to change it, one meal at a time. Pollan proposes a new answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.,,,

What should we have for dinner? For omnivore's like ourselves, this simple question has always posed a dilemma: When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods on offer might shorten your life. Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. The omnivore's dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What's at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children's health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.The Omnivore's Dilemma is a groundbreaking book in which one of America's most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but, according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, ath the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic&gt; Or perhaps something we hunt, gather or grow ourselves?To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us--industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves--from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even mortal implications for all of us. Ultimately, this is a book as much about visionary solutions as it is about problems, and Pollan contends that, when it comes to food, doing the right thing often turns out to be the tastiest thing an eater can do. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore's Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.--jacket

Fat is an obsession, a dirty word, a subject of national handwringing—and, according to biochemist Sylvia Tara, our least understood body part. The Secret Life of Fat brings together historical perspectives with cutting-edge research to reveal fat’s true identity: an endocrine organ that is critical to our health. Fat triggers puberty, enables our reproductive and immune systems, and even affects brain size. It’s so critical, in fact, that our own body endowed it with self-defense measures: fat can grow back despite what we eat using stem cells; it influences our appetites; and it uses bacteria, genetics, and even contagious viruses to expand itself.Although we spend $60 billion annually fighting fat, our efforts are often misinformed and misdirected. Tara shows how we can finally control our elusive adversary by knowing it better. Her insights will spark a revolution in our physical, and mental, health.

We Own the City is set in Baltimore 2015. Riots are erupting across the city as citizens demand justice for Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man who has died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Drugs and violent crime are surging, and the city is reaching its highest murder count in more than two decades: 342 homicides in a single year, in a city of just 600,000 people. Facing pressure from the mayor's office-as well as a federal investigation of the department over Gray's death-Baltimore police commanders turn to a rank-and-file hero, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, and his elite plainclothes unit, the Gun Trace Task Force, to help get guns and drugs off the street. However, behind these new efforts, a criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scale was unfolding within the police department. Entrusted with fixing the city's drug and gun crisis, Jenkins chose to exploit it instead.

The series follows the life of anti-social, pain killer addict, witty and arrogant medical doctor Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) with only half a muscle in his right leg. He and his team of medical doctors try to cure complex and rare diseases from very ill ordinary people in the United States of America.

"In every generation there is a chosen one... she alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer." Buffy Summers knows this tale by heart, and no matter how hard she tries to be just a "normal girl", she can not escape from her destiny... Thankfully, she is not alone in her quest to save the world, as she has the help of her friends, the hilarious (and surprisingly quite effective) evil-fighting team called "The Scooby Gang". Together, Buffy & co. will slay their demons, survive one apocalypse after another, attend high school and college... and above all, understand that growing up can truly be Hell sometimes... literally.

1997 American supernatural drama TV series

Former insurance claims investigator Nathan Ford heads a team of former top-criminals. They handle 'unorthodox' cases of people unlikely to get their due through regular channels and legal procedures. That often involves stinging or otherwise scamming criminals. Nate's team is altered at times, and his professional as well as personal past repeatedly seems to catch up.

A former lawyer attends a community college when it is discovered he faked his Bachelor's degree. In an attempt to get with a student in his Spanish class, he forms a Spanish study group. To his surprise, more people attend the study group and the group of misfits form an unlikely community.

American comedy television series created by Dan Harmon

Patrick Jane is a crime consultant with the California Bureau of Investigation. He has a particular gift for astute observation and reading people, honed through years of being a faux psychic. His gift makes him brilliant at solving murders, which is why the CBI have him around. However, his motive for taking on the role is purely one of revenge: find and kill the man who killed his wife and daughter - Red John.

American crime television series (2008-2015)

The gang, 5 raging alcoholic, narcissists run a failing dive bar in south philly. The gang make up some scheme for sex, money, fame or for any other terrible reason you could think of. It always goes south however, as the gang (sometimes literally) have their plans blow up in their face.

Since geeky Chuck accidentally became the mental host of the Intersect, an unprecedentedly powerful computer mind containing all information available to the US government, he's a primordial national security asset and risk. So CIA and NSA each appoint a top agent to guard Chuck, and often get involved with him in spy adventures. Meanwhile his identity must be kept secret from Chuck's sister, her perfect partner Devon, both surgeons, and Chuck's goofy colleagues in Buy More, the Burbank electronics store where he works as a cover.

Two FBI agents, fighting the departmental stigma of backroom boys - those who try to complicate the status quo of simple Means, Motive, Opportunity (MMO) of crime-solving with academics - work to develop an innovative investigative field incorporating psychology, anthropology and sociology as a method to reveal the motive. They acknowledge classic crime-solving - MMO - as no longer sufficient because criminality is becoming more complicated as Motive graduates from need and greed to inexplicable and irrational reasons. They theorize applying deeper psychological evaluation will posit new questions. Simply, asking Why will lead to the Who. This series focuses on the development by two men, two agents, of a new criminal field and does so through story lines of visiting the sociopathic mind.

A medical based drama centered around Meredith Grey, an aspiring surgeon and daughter of one of the best surgeons, Dr. Ellis Grey. Throughout the series, Meredith goes through professional and personal challenges along with fellow surgeons at Seattle Grace Hospital.

The Golden Girls is based on the lives and interactions of four older women who have all been divorced/widowed, and are now roommates. Dorothy's main goal during the series is to find a companion she can relate to while her mother Sophia adds her comical outlook and frequent "Picture This" stories. Rose's St. Olaf-ness makes her a little corny but lovable. One thing that changes nearly every episode is whom Blanche is courting.

The lives of the disparate group of employees and patrons at a Boston watering hole called "Cheers" over eleven years is presented. Over much of this period, Sam Malone (Ted Danson), a womanizing ex-Boston Red Sox pitcher and an alcoholic, owns the bar, its purchase and this life, which was his salvation from his alcoholism, which was largely the cause of the end of his baseball career. He ends up having a love-hate relationship with intellectual Diane Chambers (Shelley Long), who he hired as a waitress and whose cultured mentality is foreign to anyone else in the bar. He also has an evolving relationship with Rebecca Howe (Kirstie Alley), who managed the bar for the Lily Corporation, which bought it from Sam, but whose outward business savvy belied the fact that she was a mess of a woman who was struggling to find her place in life. The regular patrons are largely a bunch of self-identified losers, who bond because of their shared place in life, and because "Cheers" is their home away from home, and in many ways more a home than their actual home as witnessed by the fact that there "everybody knows your name".

"Roseanne" is the story of a working-class family struggling with life's essential problems - marriage, children, money, and parents-in-law. A now-classic sitcom, the story circles around the Connor family, a family of five that includes the parents, Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) and Dan (John Goodman), and the children, Becky (Alicia Goranson), Darlene (Sara Gilbert), and D.J. (Michael Fishman). Roseanne is helped in her challenge to keep the family moving along by her single sister, Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), and various friends.

Elliot is a brilliant introverted young programmer who works as a cyber-security engineer by day and vigilante hacker by night. He also happens to be suffering from a strange condition similar to schizophrenia which he futilely tries to keep under control by regularly taking both legal and illegal drugs and visiting his therapist. When a strange feisty young woman named Darlene and a secretive middle-aged man calling himself Mr. Robot, who claims to be the mysterious leader of an underground hacking group known as F-Society, offer Elliot a chance to take his vigilantism to the next level and help them take down E-Corp, the corrupt multi-national financial company that Elliot works for and likes to call Evil Corp, Elliot finds himself at the crossroads. Mr. Robot, who has personal reasons for wanting to take down E-Corp, also reveals that he already has one ally, an even more mysterious, secretive and highly dangerous shadowy hacking group known only as Dark Army. Meanwhile, Elliot's childhood and only friend, Angela, who blames E-Corp for the death of their parents, tries to take down E-Corp legally by joining their ranks and trying to dig up evidence of their corruption from the inside. A wild card in this scheme becomes Tyrell Wellick, an unhinged psychopathic E-Corp yuppie, originally from Scandinavia, who has a very unusual relationship with his dominant and ambitious wife Joanna. After many twists and turns, Mr. Robot's plan is finally put in motion - with catastrophic (un)intended results. But that's just the end of the beginning of the real story.

American drama–thriller television series

The series takes viewers to the epicenter of America's struggle with opioid addiction, from the boardrooms of Purdue Pharma, to a distressed Virginia mining community, to the hallways of the DEA.

Sabrina Spellman (Melissa Joan Hart), a perfectly normal sixteen-year-old, is informed by her aunts, Hilda (Caroline Rhea) and Zelda (Beth Broderick), that she (and they, and her whole family on her father's side) are witches. She lives with them in Massachusetts while preparing to receive her witch's license. Along the way, she gets into many scrapes while figuring out how certain spells work. She also has to keep the secret from her boyfriend, Harvey (Nate Richert), friends Jenny (Michelle Beaudoin), and later Valerie (Lindsay Sloane), stuck-up nemesis Libby (Jenna Leigh Green), and the ever-suspicious Principal Willard Kraft (Martin Mull).

An animated series on adult-swim about the infinite adventures of Rick, a genius alcoholic and careless scientist, with his grandson Morty, a 14 year-old anxious boy who is not so smart. Together, they explore the infinite universes; causing mayhem and running into trouble.

Andy Millman (Ricky Gervais) is an actor with ambition and a script. Reduced to working as an extra with a useless agent, Andy's attempts to boost his career invariably end in failure and embarrassment.

A highly articulate, erudite and intelligent businessman and mastermind, "Red" Reddington, has allegedly been on the "10 Most Wanted List" of various U.S. law enforcement agencies for over 20 years. The legend is that Red is as elusive as he is clever, controlling a labyrinth of creative enterprises, coupled with uncanny ability to gather and finesse information at the drop of a hat. On the first day at FBI for a new female profiler fresh out of Quantico, Red offers to bandy wits with the FBI. Red promises to deliver various criminals and plots previously unknown to any branch of law enforcement... and all Red requests in return is to choose his muse.

shows

books

Active tastebuds