Annie Murphy Paul is an acclaimed science writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and Scientific American, among many other publications. She’s the author of a number of books, including her latest, The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, which just came out last month. The extended mind is a really interesting notion that we don’t just think with our brains. We also “think with” the sensations and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of the other people we know. Adam Grant selected it as one of 12 books every leader should read this summer, and in their review in the Wall Street Journal called it “Fascinating, sure-footed and wide-ranging.”
I wanted to speak to Annie since it seems obvious to me that if we want to have better outcomes as a society and make better predictions about where things are going, surely we have to learn to think better, no? So that’s some of what we talk about today: how we can become better thinkers by being aware of our bodies and how our surroundings can impact our thoughts, how we’re very unlike computers and probably need to stop trying to emulate them, and even how we can learn to better collaborate with other minds to achieve better outcomes.
As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play.
