In The Animal and The Thinker, the world-leading, pioneering neuroscientist John Duncan explains that each of us is not just one person – we are two. On one side are our animal instincts, built on the sophisticated needs of human life through evolution, but struggling to navigate the complexity of modern life. On the other side is our rational brain which calculates and cogitates, but is often helpless in the face of bigger questions of meaning and purpose.

Dovetailing these two competing sides of ourselves, Duncan draws on a lifetime’s pioneering work to attack puzzles that have concerned thinkers, writers and philosophers through human history. Right and wrong. Freedom and responsibility. Women and men. Democracy and justice. Ambition and fulfilment. Understanding how these two sides of ourselves interact offers revealing and often surprising answers to some of the great questions of our lives.

Discover a new perspective on human behaviour, and learn how we can better understand ourselves, our struggles, and our search for meaning.

How do house flies help save millions of euros? How do the layout of casinos keep you gambling?

We are not nearly as rational as we’d like to think – every day we overestimate our ability to resist temptation.

Effective advertising experts use this to nudge us, making the most of our natural behaviour to get the results they want.

In order to process the millions of decisions we make each day, our brains take shortcuts. We are fooled by drugs that don’t contain active ingredients, traffic light buttons that aren’t connected, and the obsolete ‘save’ feature in MS Word – these are all examples of placebos that can be surprisingly reassuring. There are countless things that affect our behaviour: reward and punishment, beauty and attraction, and the human tendency to follow the crowd.

THE HOUSE FLY EFFECT reveals how to recognize some of the things that affect our behaviour everyday and how we can use this knowledge to our advantage.

It offers an accessible, fun and practical introduction to behavioural science and features insightful examples from the laboratory, advertising, and marketing – as well as from daily life.

Sometimes the smallest things can have a surprisingly large effect on your behaviour.

‘Tim & Eva have written a brilliant book. They explain to the reader the practical implications of behavioural science with light-hearted charm that will resonate with a broad range of readers’. Richard Shotton, author of the bestseller The Choice Factory

We are often told that the secret to success is hard work, determination, and hours of practice. But in a fast-changing world, what if the really crucial skill is knowing when to stick at something and when to change track and walk away?

Quit makes the under-appreciated case for quitting and also shows you how to get really good at it. Drawing on stories from elite athletes to Everest climbers, comedians to musicians, Annie Duke (who left a successful poker career) explains why learning to quit well is often crucial to success. She provides clear strategies for working out when to cut your losses from a business product that isn’t working, a relationship turned toxic, or a career that won’t take you where you want to go.

You’ll learn how to spot the blocks to good quitting behaviour — escalation commitment, desire for certainty and the status quo bias — and also how to use tools like quitting contracts, flexible goal-setting and premortems to help you quit cleanly and confidently.

Whether you’re facing a make-or-break business decision, a life-altering personal choice or simply wanting to take more control of your life, Quit provides a toolkit for change to help you make the best next move.

‘Awe-inspiring… You will learn more about human nature than in any other book I can think of’ Henry Marsh, bestselling author of And Finally.

We are capable of savage acts of violence but also spectacular feats of kindness: is one side of our nature destined to win out over the other?

Every act of human behaviour has multiple layers of causation, spiralling back seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, even centuries, right back to the dawn of time and the origins of our species.

In the epic sweep of history, how does our biology affect the arc of war and peace, justice and persecution? How have our brains evolved alongside our cultures?

This is the exhilarating story of human morality and the science underpinning the biggest question of all: what makes us human?

‘One of the best scientist-writers of our time’ Oliver Sacks