Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey - Pushkin Industries

With Pushkin+ audiobooks, you'll get access to a new Pushkin+ audiobook every other month. That's 6 free audiobooks a year! From January 1 to February 28, listen to Heartbreak by Florence Williams. Pushkin+ subscribers also get access to ad-free listening, exclusive bonus episodes of podcasts like Cautionary Tales, full binges to our top true crime shows like Deep Cover and Valley of Shadows, and more. Sign up now on the Apple show page or at pushkin.com/plus.


When her twenty-five-year marriage unexpectedly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. What she doesn’t expect is that she’ll end up in the hospital, examining close-up the way our cells listen to loneliness. She travels to the frontiers of the science of “social pain” to learn why heartbreak hurts so much and why so much of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong.In Williams’ search for insight as well as personal strategies to game her way back to health, she tries it all–and listeners can hear it all–including exclusive (astonishing) bonus material from Williams’ most intimate moments: live and unscripted therapy sessions, gab fests with girlfriends, and the making and breaking of new romantic relationships. Join her in the laboratory as she tests her blood for genetic markers of grief, hear every sound of the wilderness as she searches for awe as an antidote to loneliness, and be a fly on the wall as she is guided through psilocybin and MDMA therapy.Narrated by the author and accompanied by in-the-moment diary recordings and interviews, Florence Williams’ Heartbreak audiobook is an immersive endeavor that taps into one of the most shared experiences in the animal kingdom: heartbreak.