 Hi, good evening. Welcome. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are. And thank you so much for joining us today. I'm delighted to have as my guest, Annie Murphy Paul. Just so you know that Annie is a very, very familiar name with anybody in the learning and development community. I'm of course a big fan of her newsletters and the amount of depth she goes into. And I really have learned so much from her newsletters alone. But I think it's always fair to have the person introduce himself or herself. So without further ado, Annie, how would you describe yourself? Oh, wow. Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me on the show. I'm so delighted to speak to you and your listeners. I would describe myself as someone who writes about psychology and cognitive science with a special emphasis on learning and cognition. And my most recent book, which just came out last week, is about the extended mind, which is an idea I found that was able to pull together a lot of the threads that I was following and exploring in the science of cognition and learning. So that I'm looking forward to discussing that with you today. And, you know, Annie, when you sort of started writing, did you first start with books? Did you first start with articles and describe to me your process of becoming a writer? Yes. Well, I started out as a magazine journalist, which I still am. But I didn't write my first book until I was in my early 30s. In my 20s, after I graduated from college, my first job was at my university's alumni magazine. I went to Yale University and I stayed on in New Haven and worked for the alumni magazine for which I wrote a lot of profiles of professors and researchers at Yale. And I was wonderful to discover that I really loved writing about people who were pursuing a question or trying to solve problems in this way, using research, using science. And I was especially interested in questions having to do with human nature or with psychology. And from there, I went on to Psychology Today magazine in New York, moved to New York. And after that, I did go freelance. I started writing for a wide variety of magazines. And then I wrote my first book, which is about, it's called The Cult of Personality. I have it here. It is a scientific critique and cultural history of personality tests. So that was my first book that came out in 2004. And you've been really harsh on all the personality tests. And talk to me a little bit about, why do you feel that way? I mean, do you think it's a bad idea to measure personality and do you think personality has any impact on our success or failure? What is your take on that? Well, I certainly think personality can be a useful construct. And there are some models of personality that have a fair amount of solid scientific evidence behind them, like the five factor model of personality. But the fact is that a lot of personality tests that are being used out there in the world and being used to make fairly consequential decisions about hiring and promoting and also being used to ostensibly help people understand themselves. They don't have scientific backing. They don't have the evidence that would suggest that these tests are accurate or worthwhile. And so I thought it was important to bring that back to the public's attention because personality tests are so popular because they're used without very much care or thoughtfulness, especially in a workplace setting. So, and I also wanted to raise some bigger questions about what does it mean to measure a person's personality? What does it mean to try to fix it in a way that says, this is who you are and this is who you'll always be? I have some real questions and doubts about whether that's possible. Great. And would you think that there is any personality test that would be really something that you wouldn't endorse? Well, yes. Belief in. Let me put it this way. Not endorse. I mean, I don't expect you to endorse it, but that you would stand by and say that, yeah, I mean, this one does have a certain amount of merit. So in the final chapter of the book, I write about a different approach to personality, which is a narrative approach, figuring out what the stories that you tell about yourself are. And to me, I'm just not a fan of tests in general. I think they're almost inevitably reductive and they oversimplify. So I, if there's any approach I adore, I endorse it would be looking at those stories that we tell about ourselves, bringing a critical eye to them, but also appreciating the role that narrative plays in our lives in the way we think about ourselves. That's that's as far as I can go in terms of endorsing an approach to personality. I mean, that sort of makes sense that, you know, the kind of stories and which of course means that you can't make a deduction. Certainly, you know, by asking five questions and saying, okay, if you like the color pink, your chances are that you're an extrovert. I totally agree. And there's just, I also think that what happens in many organizations where I've seen, you know, many of these tests, which you refer to, you know, whether it's MBTI or many of the others, which have absolutely no scientific validity. But people sort of buy it because they say, you know, the one who sells them the test says, so-and-so organizations, so-and-so organizations, here are a list of, you know, 70 organizations, which you are familiar with. They all use so-and-so tests and therefore, you know, you should be doing it. And that is exactly where, you know, people switch off their critical thinking and get on to start using it. And, you know, they make decisions. You're absolutely right. I've seen hiring decisions being made and you've talked about child custody decisions, et cetera, which are being made on that, which is really so not right and so terrific. By the way, I really enjoyed your last book, The Extended Mind. Of course, I wrote about it. So those people who've tuned in, we've got a bunch of them who've also asked questions. I'm going to bring up some of them on the screen. And like, for example, there is, you know, Anukriti is asking this question that aren't personality tests made after years of research and standardized course, which make them reliable, you know. So what is your take on that? As I said, there are models of personality and tests based on those models of personality that do have scientific research and backing and thinking again of the five-factor personality test, which five-factor personality model and the associated tests. You know, the five factors are, if I can remember them, openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. And those appear to be pretty well-supported dimensions of human personality. But, you know, one of the most commonly used personality tests, at least in the United States, but although I know it's used all over the world, is the Myers-Briggs type indicator, which is absolutely an unscientific instrument that was, you know, constructed by someone who was not a psychologist in the middle of the last century. And it's used as if it's some kind of scientific instrument. And people, you know, people who are given it don't know any more than that. They don't know, they only know that it's being given by their employer or, you know, by someone that they'd like to work for. And I think it's terribly unfair to use these instruments that are not supported by science and to make consequential decisions that affect people's lives based on those tests. So that's where my concern comes in. Absolutely. And, you know, the question Bhaskar Natharajan wants to know that, you know, that does midlife crisis have any impact on personality? Do you think that makes a difference? Interesting. That's an interesting question. You know, it's been a while since I, it's been a while since I wrote that book about personality. I'm not aware of any research on midlife crisis in particular. But I will say one of the things that I object to about personality tests in general is the assumption that personality is fixed and doesn't change. And I think both our own life experience and also scientific evidence would suggest that actually we're fluid dynamic creatures, we respond to changes in our lives as a midlife crisis would suggest, but also the moment to moment availability of resources in our environment, which is what the extended mind is about. And, you know, we're very, we're creatures who are very sensitive to context and a personality test suggests that you're always the same in every context. And that's just a model of human nature that I find to be very wrongheaded. Perfect. Let's move to, you know, the book that I really want to talk about today, the extended mind. Yes. You know, if you were to sort of summarize the key concept in the book that you're talking about, what would that be? And I'll tell you what was my big takeaway. And so do you want to go first? Sure, I'll go first. We'll see if our responses match. So what I wanted to say with this book is that we think of our culture thinks of thinking as happening in here that intelligence is located inside the brain. And I used an idea from philosophy. It's not an idea that I originally came up with, but an idea that emerged from philosophy called the extended mind, the theory of the extended mind to argue that instead, intelligent thought involves, it's a dynamic process of assemblage. It's drawing from many resources outside the brain to construct our thought processes the way, say a bird might make a nest out of whatever is available in its environment. And I talk about four outside the brain resources. I focus on four of those. One is the body, the sensations and movements and gestures of the body. There is our physical spaces in which we learn and work. A third is our relationships with other people, our social interactions. And fourth is our tools and our devices. And all these outside the brain elements get drawn into the thought process in a way that our sort of brain bound model of thinking doesn't usually acknowledge or recognize. And for me, the key idea was that there are multiple ways in which you can extend the kind of capabilities that you have. So it is in some sense, I just thought it was very powerful to say that you can get in touch with the signals that your body is giving you, which is one way of the gestures can be a great way. And for me, that was the big takeaway in that segment. When we speak with gestures, it just makes it much easier. And I've often been told that I speak as much with my hands as I do. That's good. That's good. That's a good habit. I think I have, you know, this is what somebody said that you must be Italian, because Italian is a lot of gestures. But the other piece for me was, which was really fantastic was when, you know, you talk about the environment that going out with nature, you know, the kind of moods that you can create actually does have an impact on the way that you learn. Did you get a chance to read Russell Jones book, The Sense, you know, which is where he talks about something similar. Oh, interesting. Now I will have to, I will have to look for that. He talks about the multi-sensorial, human beings are multi-sensorial, and we very often look to ourselves to what we can see. And therefore that is very limiting. So I kind of thought that there was a interesting thing. And I just finished your book and then started reading that. Oh, interesting. Tell me the name of it again. Sense by Russell Jones. Yeah. So that was fairly interesting. And then for me, the biggest one, which I want to spend time with you today, is that, you know, you can really talk with experts, you can talk to your peers, you can learn from groups, all of that. And then of course, you mentioned tools. Let's start with some of the tools that you think we can leverage to learn. Yes. Well, in some ways, thinking about our devices is the easiest way into the idea of the extended mind because our tools like our smartphones are, they were designed in a way to be extensions of our mind. And we use them that way. We download, we offload our memory onto our devices. You know, we don't remember phone numbers anymore because our phone remembers them for us. They are, many of us have our phones with us, you know, within arms reach at all times, and they really do effectively act as an extension of our mind to the extent that if we lose our cell phone or it's stolen or we can't find it. We really feel like we can't, we can't think as well as we normally do. So that's a pretty easy way to understand what is meant by the extended mind. And I think some of the other outside the brain resources are maybe a little harder to grasp, you know, the idea that the body factors into thinking that's not something we're used to contemplating because traditionally there's been such a separation between body and mind. The idea is that, you know, all the thinking happens up here and if anything, you know, the cues and sensations of our body have to be pushed aside while we're doing our serious real thinking, you know, and I argue that actually, we need to be understanding to and acutely sensitive to those cues from our bodies and those can inform our thinking. You've of course, sorry, did I interrupt you? Go. I actually also mentioned, which I really like the idea that, you know, you should be able to copy the experts and that's a fairly controversial counterintuitive point. But I related to it instantly because I think I taught myself how to draw by copying some of the great masters. I was nine and as a cartoonist or Mario or a bunch of other people who I really admire, learn to first copy their style. And then finally, once you've got the draft and you've got the proportions right, then you can become creative, but you have to learn the grammar first. Exactly. Exactly. I'm so glad to hear you say that because, you know, that used to be the structure on which education was based, that the way you learned how to do something was you emulated the masters, the people who were the best in their field. And by copying them, by imitating and emulating them, you got inside the process of what it was like to create in the way that they did. And only then, once you've mastered that for yourself, could you begin to express yourself and in your own way and add your own personality, your own flair. And that model, which as I say, you know, sort of dominated education for many centuries has really fallen out of favor. There's a notion that copying or imitating would quash students, their originality, their creativity. There's also a lot of concern about plagiarism and the ethical issues involved in copying. I think we have a kind of shame associated with copying and imitation in our culture that says that it's lazy, it's a cop out. And I just think there's so many, humans are meant, we evolved to learn by imitating our elders or experts. And to remove that approach from our, you know, our suite of learning approaches is just a mistake. I think that we need to bring it back. I totally agree because when organizations do that on a grand scale, they just call it benchmarking. Maybe we just need to call it a different name. Yeah, so we just need to call it by a different name, but I also think that, you know, that's an interesting question. Where does your learning process stop and where does plagiarism begin? In my mind, I mean, I would say that, you know, when you've picked up the grammar of the entire process, then you, you know, if you don't switch on your own style and you don't bring in your own thought process into it, then you start to, you know, replicate what somebody else does. And it's a bit like, you know, a number of people when they start singing, they do covers, you know, they imitate a very successful song, you know, to the last note. And they just went to that, you know, when they become really good at it, they start to bring in their own nuances. They change the instrumentation, they create different versions and but then what also happens is when you sing the same song, which sounds different because you know, it's not the familiar one. The audience rejects it. So, you know, people either have to go entirely original or they can't do that. What is your take, you know, how would you view this process? That's very interesting. It makes me think of one of my favorite books, which is by the Heath Brothers, Chip and Dan Heath. It's a book called Made to Stick. And they talk about how originality that works, as you say, that connects with listeners or readers. It can't be so far out there that readers and listeners can't integrate it into their under their previous understandings, you know, originality and creativity happens within a structure. It happens within certain kind of established patterns of narratives or storytelling that humans have established. And so, to me, that's what's interesting as a book writer and a magazine writer is that, yes, there's room for originality and creativity and fresh thinking, but it has to operate within the limits that are really limits set by our brains to go back to our brains. I mean, we humans crave stories, we understand and attend to and remember stories better than other forms of information presentation. And so we have to work with, we have to work with, you know, the kind of the kinds of creatures that we are. And so originality and creativity is necessarily bounded in that way. Thanks. And, you know, when, when I look at, you know, just the way that you've explained the ability to learn from a variety of sources to me, you know, what are some of the things that you think organizations could do better, because, you know, what you today know about the way we learn, what are some of the changes you would make in the way organizations are now grappling with this whole thing of re-skilling on a very large scale. So how do you think, you know, we could be leveraging some of these ideas? Yeah. Well, you know, I've been thinking about this in the context of returning to work following as the pandemic recedes here in the US, people are talking about going back into the office and reimagining the spaces, for example, in which people are going to be working. And I see some amazing potential for rethinking our work spaces in ways that wouldn't be possible in under normal circumstances. But, you know, this has been such a huge disruption. We have this opportunity to rethink the spaces in which we work. But I also see some kind of troubling trends, for example, because many people are going to continue to work remotely, at least part of the time there's a lot of talk about taking an approach in workspaces called hoteling or hot desking where you come in and you have, you don't have an assigned desk, let alone an enclosed office, you just kind of take whatever space is available. And I think, you know, this is something I write about in the book, everything we know from research on how spaces affect the way we think suggests that having your own space that you feel ownership over, that you have control over, that you feel empowered in, because it's your home turf, that helps people to think more productively and more effectively. And also, having cues around you, you know, whether it's stuff you, you know, signs you put up on your cubicle walls or objects you have on your desk, those things, those cues of identity help remind you of who you are in that role, what you're doing there, they kind of, they're kind of reinforcing your sense of yourself in that, in that role. And when we have people just sitting at whatever generic bare desk, you know, is available that day, I think we lose all those mental extensions that can really help people think better. I fully agree with that because, you know, at one point of time when I was in my previous life as an employee, you know, we did a little study as to look at whether people who put up a lot of these decorations on their little cubicle wall, pictures of their kids, or, you know, appreciation notes or certificates and all of that. That gives them a sense of ownership and they are thinking long term, you know, they are really thinking about because when you go to a hotel, you don't sort of start to put pictures of your certificates on the walls and all that stuff because, you know, you know, it's there for a couple of days at best. So when you did that, you kind of also found that these people are a lot more engaged when you looked at regression data, etc. And when people start to take away all those things, they're already mentally signing off. So you're absolutely right that, you know, space does make a difference and this whole business of walking whenever, you know, join in whenever kind of a thing is it may be effective, but I'm not sure whether it builds a kind of a human connect with your colleagues. You don't, you know, so I was just reading yesterday in Bloomberg, they're talking about the younger people feel if they don't go back to the office space, they lose out on opportunities to pick up the unspoken rules, you know, get Oh, so interesting. I'll have to look at that. I think that they're right. I think that there's all kinds of cues and signals that you miss on on video on zoom, and that can only be communicated in person so I'm, you know, I think at least some in person is really key for creating a sense of community for getting teams to work together and be on the same page and for individuals to feel connected to their organization. I think we've all switched to remote this year because we had to but it's by no means the ideal way of working. And from the point of view of learning, I mean, who better than you to answer this whole question is online learning just as effective as learning in person for an adult, and then I'm going to come to kids also. Yeah. And I'll say what I mean. The answer is no. I mean, there are some situations of saying something different. I totally agree online is, you know, it's something we are going to make do, but it's not as effective, no way because a you can connect with the, you know, the audience and the facilitator. There's no connection. You're conveying information. Yes, it's efficient. But it's just different, you know, because your behavior is different, your digital sign language is different. So, no, I totally agree. Right. But kids, do they learn better if it's online? No, no, it's especially it's it's heartbreaking actually that that so many of our kids have only had access to remote learning this year. The younger the child, the less optimal online learning is I think, you know, there are times, especially for adults who have very targeted learning needs, you know, they really know what they need to learn. They have a lot of background knowledge. They just need to fit, you know, one piece into that they're missing that in which online learning can be effective. But even then, I mean, the rates of online persistence and online learning for college students and adults is really, it's really, it's really pathetic, you know, because a lot of what keeps us going to school and, you know, engaged in the process of education is other people seeing people we know having a connection, a personal connection to the instructor and so much of that is lost when we're online. But as I say, for young children in particular, it's just it's a disaster. Yeah, and which brings me to this whole question, which is, for me, the biggest takeaway in your book was how we learn from others, you know, and the three categories that you mentioned, which I thought was for me, something I would recommend that everybody should, you know, just get your book just for that section alone. It's worth it. So great work. Thank you very much for that. Let's start with this whole thing that is learning essentially, you know, should one segregate learning into two bits, one which is the information part of it, which people could potentially pick up by reading a book or, you know, the flipped classroom model. But then there is a huge amount which happens for me that is 20% of the learning 80% of the learning is, you know, when you get to share your ideas, you're talking to others, you're looking at the way others have learned Is there a smarter way to have done this entire thing altogether? Then in which case, learning is more social than individual. I mean, it's a, is that a valid conclusion I've drawn? Oh, I think so. I certainly think so. I mean, you mentioned the three ways of learning with people that I the way that's the way I organize the book and I talk about learning with peers learning with experts and learning with groups and You know, all all three of those are such rich ways of learning and learning in this in a way that is really situated in the world and not this kind of abstract learning that you get from books. It's you can, as you say, you can, you can get some things from books but in terms of actually applying your knowledge of having that kind of tacit knowledge of knowing when and how to apply that knowledge that kind of extra dimension of learning is best learned socially with other people. So you, you know, talk about some one of the things which I thought every organization could learn from was what you talked about cognitive apprenticeship. That was a fantastic way of, you know, organizing, let's say an onboarding process and which is so hard to do on online, you know, because Yeah, yeah, information you can probably send the manual as a PDF and, you know, get them to read it but it's not the same as learning the unspoken rules of the organization so Right, right. Right. Yeah, if you want to talk me to just mentioned what a cognitive apprenticeship is. So, you know, this is an example of how our methods of learning and training really have to catch up with with the reality of what our, our work is these days and the traditional apprenticeship which of course served people humans well for for centuries involved an expert like a tailor or a shipbuilder or a carpenter demonstrating literally showing for an apprentice what what to do. The apprentice could watch the apprentice could try it out for him or herself the apprentice could be guided almost you know physically and verbally by the expert and this is a very effective way of learning but in our current Knowledge Focus Society so much of what of the work we do is internal is inside the head and so we need to find ways to make that internal knowledge accessible to the novice and that's what a cognitive apprenticeship is about it's about adapting that traditional form of learning the apprenticeship to a world in which we're not making things where we're thinking things and that's what that's the kind of knowledge that we need to give the novice access to You know in the Indian classical music tradition you have the Guru Shasyaparampara as it is called whether master the Guru would sort of take on the student and not only would they train them in the nuances you know of the particular Raga which they are learning the particular notes but more than that they'll talk to them about the tradition of the you know family in terms of the way it is sound differently how it sort of changes form and as you sing at Thumriya Dhadra various forms of music and that to me is a perfect example of cognitive apprenticeship where you're sort of not just explaining the concept but also you're watching the master do it then you try your own thing and then the master corrects it and then kind of says that okay when you did this all this was great 90% of this was fantastic this last bit you could add this so it's an iterative process which is so powerful What is the best way to learn from peers you know because there's also an element of competition as somebody mentioned it here in the comments Oh interesting yes Gova doing that Yes well it's unfortunate that there would be competition rather than a desire to help each other but I know that the incentives that we all face are often stacked in favor of competition and in fact I talk about one way around that a method of instruction called the jigsaw classroom where you can the teacher constructs an assignment such that each student you put you form your students into groups and then each student is responsible for a piece of the whole you know if the assignment for a group of students is to together create a report on a particular subject you make sure that each student becomes a kind of expert on a piece of what will eventually become the whole and then students they have to depend on each other for them to get a good grade for them to do well they have to communicate and depend on and draw on the knowledge of their of their peers and so I think if we had more collaborative learning of that type in our classroom maybe the that competitiveness which is really which really emphasizes and reinforces the individualism of our our education system in an unfortunate way would would dissipate a bit but in terms of learning with peers you know there are ways that humans learn rather naturally and rather easily that we don't incorporate enough into our education systems and our workplace training systems and I'm talking about things like telling stories again we were saying before how how well how well and how easily humans process information that's presented as a story but also things like teaching other people I think we've many of us have had the experience of of understanding a given body of material better when we've taught it to somebody else and actually the teacher often learns more than the students so when you have sort of peer tutoring systems you can even have the weaker students being the peer being the tutors to younger students for example and that helps the tutors learn and then certainly there's you know this there's maybe too much of this already going on in our society but we can learn so much from arguing with one another from debating with one another but it has to be in a it has to take place in a rather structured way in the sense that the aim is to get at the truth not to win not for your side to triumph you know but for everyone to advance their best ideas their best arguments and but at the same time remain open to the points that others are making and it turns out that we're we're very good at picking apart others arguments but we're not so good at picking apart our own arguments that that's what psychologists call confirmation bias when it's our own argument we tend to seek out confirmation of what we already believe so we actually kind of need another person to take a critical look at our argument and say this is where the flaws are this is where the holes are and then you in turn need to be open to hearing that feedback and to giving it to others and that's how debate can really help us all think that and you know if you were to sort of look at learning from experts you know what what would be your method of recommending you know that we leverage experts to learn and where can we test to then yeah well you know it's interesting because our again our our academic systems are our workplace training systems are all based on experts teaching novices but there's an inherent problem with that which is that experts by virtue of being experts they think differently from novices the information that they have learned so well has become organized differently in their minds and so when they try to articulate it and explain it to a novice they leave out all kinds of important steps they they they are actually in some ways not fully able to share all that they know because their knowledge is so well practiced that it's become automatized and the novice for his or her part is it's all confusing to them they don't know where to look they don't know what to attend to they don't know what can be ignored and these are all things that they need to learn in order to become an expert so a couple strategies there one is that a what's called a a near peer instructor can be very helpful someone who's not so far ahead of the novice that their expertise is almost not accessible to the novice someone who was until recently in the novice's shoes but is maybe just a few steps ahead of them that kind of near peer instructor can be really helpful and really beneficial and then you know if you are the expert who is trying to instruct a novice it can be really useful to to through an exercise of empathy it actually is a kind of empathy remember what it was like to be a novice what didn't make sense to you at the time what what seems like second nature to you now what what did you struggle with when you were a novice and then you can take those chunks of expertise because that's what experts do they chunk you know they're in the all that they know into these chunks that make it make their thinking very efficient and very effective but they can break down those chunks into steps and then even micro steps for the novice so that the novice has the the novice has the experience of taking one tiny step and then another and then another and building their confidence as they go and then they don't get confused or bewildered because all of these steps are mashed into one and they're like wait what did you just do you know so the not the expert has to remember that in a way the novice is in a very the novice is in a very different place from where they are and meet them at that place where the novice is. Yeah, which is which is one of the reasons that you know very successful sports people when they become coaches they're not very successful as a coach right right. They're just so good at it that you know, very hard for somebody to even become half as good so yes it can be more than anything. Yes, I like that term near appear because you're somebody who was even in the same classroom at least that's how I learned so many things that somebody who was up here but much smarter than me who would then be able to explain something and simplify it and say okay just look at these two things and sort of do that yet really works well. When you think about, you know, learning in groups, you know, the group tasks in what kind of settings are they useful. What would be your advice. Yeah, you know, I think there's so much to be gained from thinking together in groups but again we have a kind of suspicion of that in our culture there's there's people worry about group think and of course that can happen people. Get so hung up on consensus that they all go together off a cliff, you know, but our, our knowledge is so abundant these days our expertise is so specialized the problems that we're facing are just so dauntingly enormous that we actually we can't tackle these problems and these issues. Alone we need to engage the group mind, you know, which is as again we might have a sort of reaction against that but the group mind doesn't have to be anything scary and it's certainly not anything supernatural or kind of, you know, the early ideas about the group back in the late 19th century early 20th century thought it was this this sort of mass crowd delusion or mania that took over and doesn't have to be anything like that what I'm talking about is learning the skills of thinking together which are quite different from the skills that we employ when we think alone. Like for example I talk about the phenomenon of transactive memory which is actually it's it's quite a bit like what I was saying about the jigsaw classroom that in any group or team there's going to be people who have areas of specialization and no one person can know everything that the team as a whole knows what's important is that you know what your teammates know so that when you need that information you know who to go to and so a group that has a robust transactive memory system is one in which everybody has a really good sense of what their teammates know and they share that information and their sense of where to direct tasks where to direct their questions is is very clear and unambiguous rather than having a kind of unclear sense of well who knows who's an expert at this who knows this you know a robust transactive memory system is one in which everybody has very clearly defined roles and they're able to embody those roles in a very in a very clear cut way so that's that's an example of how we can learn to think together in ways that we're right now we're not really trained or educated to do. Brilliant. Any I'm going to sort of take the last bit I'm going to spend time really learning from you about how you learn you know what is your method of digging deep learning about things because I really like the way you you know your writing is full of insights but it's simplified so which is what I really like about the way you write and I find it really something that I aspire to do also one day that what is your way of researching the subject when you start thinking about a book what is the genesis do you start you articles that get you started do you write about it do you know where I start is really the research and I if I didn't stop myself or if my editor didn't stop me I could spend the rest of my life just just reading journal articles and books and you know those can very easily lead you on to other journal articles and other books because you start looking through the bibliography and you think oh that looks interesting too and that it can lead you down that approach can it's not particularly efficient and it can lead you down a lot of rabbit holes because if you're interested in a lot of things as I am then there's a lot of different directions you can get pulled a lot of paths you can get pulled down but I do think it's important at the beginning of a project to have a very wide funnel in a sense like you're pulling in as much information as possible of course you want it all to be in some way related or in some way congruent with with you know you're not going on a wild goose chase but you're you're feeling around getting a sense for the field looking for connections among different findings that you're reading about and only then can you start to impose your own analysis and your own interpretation do you sort of take notes do you you know what's your way of organizing I when I'm reading a book I take a lot of notes in in the book a lot of underlining but when I read journal articles that's entirely online and I have a database system that's actually intended I think originally for graduate students who are writing their dissertations but I like to you know the worst the nightmare for me is remembering some fascinating finding and knowing that I want to bring it into some writing and doing but not being able to remember where I saw that piece of information you know and when you're dealing with literally thousands of journal articles that's a real danger so I'm pretty compulsive about you know not only recording every journal article that I read but actually pulling out the parts that I find interesting and putting them in the database record so that it's all searchable so that when I think oh what was that finding about XYZ I can just type in a keyword and find it that that's that's the system that I've evolved over over years of writing and you know do you what's the ratio when you start writing a book do you kind of do chapter by chapter do you have the entire book thought through in your head do you what was that like that's something that evolves I know that there are writers who started the beginning right chapter one two three four I can't do that I because the whole has to fit together and yet at the beginning as you know you don't know it's beginning so you don't know all of what you have to say or all of how it's going to play out so the way I think of it is I'm a really big believer in outlining I make outline after outline and the outlines become progressively more detailed so that I almost never it's almost like I never actually sit down and write I don't I it just the the outline eventually become so detailed that it is the the work itself and so it's almost like a city being built brick by brick and but across the whole book it's not like as I say I don't start at the chapter one and then move on to chapter two it's almost like the whole thing rises you know in tandem I don't it's maybe not the best system but it's the one that works for me so I'm sticking with it you know what are some of the magazines books you always read what some of the people you follow and you know if one were to sort of look at that what would that list be a couple of things that you think you know you found to be of help yes well there were certainly the work there was the work of of I really admire I'm not myself in academic obviously I'm a journalist but I really admire academics who are able to write for a popular audience and I I find that I draw a lot on their work you know principally for this book Andy Clark is a this the philosopher who along with David Chalmers came up with the idea of the extended mind and his books are you know this philosophy can be a bit dense but he's a wonderful writer and I've really enjoyed reading his books many of them multiple times in particular a book called Super Sizing the Mind so I would really recommend that book and then other psychologists and and philosophers whose work I read you know if you're interested in how movement affects the way we think sorry that's a bit windy here and that was the door slamming there's a psychologist named Barbara Tversky who who read a book called Mind in Motion that I think is is really fascinating there's another book it's maybe a bit more specialized that I love the title it's called Cognition in the Wild by Edwin Hutchins that's about how we think with other people you know there's there's many many references in the book it's got pages and notes that hopefully you know as I say those are gold mines for me in terms of finding new things to read so I hope it'll serve that purpose for my readers as well do you like reading magazines you know which you recommend that you know which sort of in general you read not necessarily for just this book alone but you know yes and what are your favorite yes well I'm afraid they're pretty conventional I mean I love the New York Times I love the Atlantic I love the New Yorker those are probably the three that I read most often but then I also read a bunch of magazines that are more specialized like that are you know slightly more specialized like Scientific American or Psyche is a wonderful online magazine that's about psychology that I often I often find good things in I love Slate I love Salon so you know and what it's wonderful all these things are online so you don't even have to go down to the magazine stand anymore you can just as I'll just on your computer. Fantastic. Are you a podcast buff? I have become more I have been listening to podcasts more and audiobooks more during the pandemic that became a habit of mine although many of the podcasts that I listen to are news or politics oriented I haven't really been listening to ones that are you know you sometimes need to break from from what you're thinking about in terms of your work so I have been listening to podcasts are not where I get my information from for my work. They're more kind of something that I used to connect with what's going on in the world and you know when you listen to podcasts, do you also have to buy websites what Teney's podcasts are not where I get my information for my work they're more kind of something that I used to connect with what's going on in the world. And you know when you listen to podcasts, do you also again take notes? I always draw them out. I always find that it makes it fun and I can remember the thing visually which is much easier for me to remember that and you know. That's wonderful. I think I wish all of us did that more you know I write in the book about the importance of or the value of drawing as a way of exposing to yourself what you understand and what you don't yet understand and when I recommend that to people I find people say oh but I can't draw you know they assume that because somebody in an art class once told them they don't have talent or something that this isn't a mode that's available to them but it doesn't the you know the beauty or the perfection of what you're drawing is not the point the point is to offload these mental contents put it onto the paper and then you can work with it in a way that you couldn't when it stayed in your inside your head. Which is why I kind of think that sketch notes are so powerful because now I enjoy drawing generally also so I use that as an excuse to keep both things going simultaneously but you could as well do exactly the same thing with stick figures and little you know visuals and all that right it just means that you've engaged so much more with that concept during that entire time you've written it out you spelt it and you know that whole process I just find that I find it so much easier to recall something that I've drawn because I can say what was that that I don't tell me about that and you know it just becomes so much easier. Right right and I remember finding this this research finding very interesting that we actually humans in general have fairly poor auditory memory we don't have such great memory for what we hear but we have really good memory for what we did this something that psychologists call the inactive and effect when we act it out when we take action in the world that's something that imprints itself in our memory so you know lots of words as my mother said can go in one ear and out the other but um but when we do something that tends to um put a real hook in that memory that allows us to reel it in later. When you are growing up did you always know that you are going to be a science writer? I always knew I was going to be a writer I was a I was a bookworm you know I mean I read all the time I I maybe I thought I would be a novelist or something I knew I would be a writer I didn't I did not know that I would be a science writer that was something I found my my way to later after college. And you know also when you think about the way of we learn does it change or should it change when you're in school when you're in college and when you're learning during your career should that change? Well there are certain fundamental um you know mechanisms of learning that I think are constant across across our lifetimes but certainly you know I think what changes is that we become more and more experts of a kind as we grow older as we accumulate all this background knowledge it becomes less about learning something for the first time and more about integrating a new piece of information into all the stuff that we already know that we already know connecting it with all the pieces of information we already have. So that in that sense what learning means as a an adult or a college student that's different from what it means for a child to learn. And you know when you've thought about I'm sorry the part just went off so I'm doing this very interesting kind of a format. Yeah yeah this has never happened but this is there's always a first time in everything. Maybe I should just get used to this format. I also think that when you think about you know as a as a learner you know we always also hear that it's important to unlearn. Is there a way in which you can unlearn? Hmm you know I find that idea very interesting. I at one point I had an idea that I would write a book about on learning because that seems to me as important as as learning. I think we're coming to scientists are coming to understand more about how that works and I'm thinking in particular about this strand of research that shows that we all have these almost instinctive very primitive understandings about how the world works that are misguided that are not in tune with what we know from say physics you know but but they're just an intuitive kind of understanding of of how the world works and what we're coming to understand and this is particularly applicable to science learning is that we actually never fully unlearned those intuitive assumptions about how the world works we actually just we suppress them more or less well and even professional scientists when they're under stress or under time pressure those intuitive understandings of the world come out again because they they are suppressed and of course they don't that's not the basis on which they they operate in their daily lives as scientists but they're still there and so I think it's important to take those intuitive understandings which are not scientifically accurate but to take them as a baseline and to say how do we build on top of that a more scientifically accurate way of of of understanding these these subjects and you know if there is some kind of advice you know you're the things that you've learned which have helped you to stay current and relevant you know but what are some of the things that you think would describe your life philosophy towards staying curious what would that be oh I mean I think it's so important not to assume that you have the answers you know that um that you I think as soon as you think you know everything then you shut down uh then you're not open to learning something new I mean I love being surprised I love being I love finding out that something I assumed was correct is not you know I mean that can be disorienting for sure but I think surprise means that you just a sense of surprise means that you just learned something new that you know something now that you didn't know a minute ago and so I look for that I love to um feel amazed or surprised or um to have a revelation I seek that out and I think it can be a real source of pleasure you know there's a pleasure of knowing something and being and mastering something for sure that's real but there's also a kind of pleasure from being knocked off stride and thinking oh wow I didn't realize that and that's a kind of we can learn to enjoy that and cultivate that too wow and and I also think that you know people who if they have not read Annie's book the extended mind I absolutely absolutely recommend that and she does a phenomenal newsletter how much time you spend on that newsletter I just totally love it I mean yeah back into it thank you you know so much time that I had to put it on hiatus for a little while I have just recently relaunched it but in order to finish the book I had to I had to stop but it's wonderful it's you know it's great to see that newsletters are becoming a real thing um for for writers who previously worked for were on staff at publications because it's a really amazing way to connect directly with readers and to write about exactly what you think is interesting rather than have to worry about you know what what someone will click on on a on a magazine website that kind of thing it's it's um it is uh it is time-consuming but it's a labor of love for me I really enjoy it thank you so much for all the effort that you put in because it sort of really makes a difference to so many of us and I can cannot thank you enough uh for being here today and uh really and see the light comes back on this is the back of doing a live show from India you know that you always have something exciting which is happening but thank you very much and uh you know there are lots of comments and questions which people have and uh you know so uh if any would if people had to uh connect with you what is a great email to yeah there's two ways one is to just reach out to me on twitter i'm very active on twitter and i'm always responding to questions on twitter and my twitter handle is you know at annie murphy paul and then i have a website www dot annie murphy dot annie murphy paul dot com and on there there's a form where you can submit comments and i get comments from readers all the time and i respond to them there as well and i also notice that you know all your twitter threads are so fabulous i mean you kind of you know respond not just with one but fantastic uh annie it's such a pleasure to talk to you and thank you so very much this has been so much fun thank you thank you for your fantastic responses and i totally recommend people read that book uh the extended mind and also the cult of personality which is another book i really like so thank you so much good bye thanks so much thanks bye bye