Curious Minds at Work

Is the onslaught of online information eroding our brain's ability to think deeply and creatively?

In 2008, Nicholas Carr, asked the provocative question, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Two years later, he delved more deeply into this topic in his Pulitzer Prize-nominated book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. 

Writing at the dawn of the smartphone era, Carr was concerned about the shift many of us were making from deep reading to online scanning. It made him question the Internet's impact on our long-term memory and reasoning skills.

Carr muses, "we find ourselves...gathering information...but never slowing down to...mull over it...and when we lose...the ability to concentrate and be attentive...we short-circuit memory consolidation and end up with a...shallow mind."

In the decade since the book's release, brain researchers have validated a number of Carr's insights. At the same time, many of today's challenges speak directly to his concerns. He argues, "if you look at problems...with...'fake news'...or...the...rush to...dismiss information that doesn't fit into your existing worldview, I think this is...about...[not]...building this rich interconnected set of knowledge...[in] our...minds."

Nick Carr has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and Wired. He is also author of the books, The Glass Cage, and Utopia is Creepy.

Curious Minds Team

Learn more about Host and Creator, Gayle Allen, and Producer and Editor, Rob Mancabelli, here.

Episode Links

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

Reader, Come Home by Maryanne Wolf

Memory consolidation

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Flynn effect

Joseph Weizenbaum

Salience network

Cynthia Ozick

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What happens in our minds when we dehumanize others, and how can we resist it?

These are the kinds of questions David Livingstone Smith, author of the book, On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It, has found himself asking throughout his career. 

Most of us are familiar with events of mass violence in recent history, such as the Holocaust, slavery in America, and the Rwandan genocide. David wants to know what motivates us to commit these atrocities.

By studying dehumanization, he's learned what a powerful tool it is. He explains, "If people can convince others that those whom they wish to harm are not really human beings at all, but are, in fact, dangerous animals, then this makes it acceptable to harm them."

David helps us unpack dehumanization's building blocks, including the dangerous myths of race science and biological hierarchies. And he shares how each of us can resist the urge to dehumanize. To begin, he urges us to recognize that no one is immune: "If politicians scare us or flatter us into thinking of others as, essentially, less than human, we're all capable of doing terrible things. 

David Livingstone Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. He has written or edited eight books, including Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others, which won the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf award for nonfiction.

Curious Minds Team

Learn more about Host and Creator, Gayle Allen, and Producer and Editor, Rob Mancabelli, here.

Episode Links

Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi

Kwame Anthony Appiah

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

Roger Money-Kyrle

The Wall by John Lanchester

Cornel West

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What can a simple street address reveal about a person’s identity, race, wealth and power?

For many of us, an address is something we don't spend a lot of time thinking about. It may be a string of numbers and letters we type into a GPS. A place we call home. Or just a placeholder where we get our mail.

Yet, for others, it can mean much more. A way out of poverty. A signal of economic status. Or an indicator of race and social history.

Street addresses can change lives. Deirdre Mask, author of the book, The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power, explains, "Billions of people in the world don't have reliable addresses, and having an address is one of the cheapest ways of lifting people out of poverty."

At the same time, Deirdre argues, street addresses don't always change lives for the better. While they can stop epidemics and help the poor get bank accounts, they can also entrench racism and empower authoritarian governments.

In this interview, one of the examples we discuss is the negative stereotype associated with streets name for Martin Luther King, Jr. Deirdre asks, "Is it really that MLK streets all deserve this bad reputation or is it that, because we associate MLK streets with Blackness, that we seem them as bad, whether they're nice or not?" 

Deirdre is a writer, lawyer, and academic. Her work has appeared in publications like, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Economist.

Curious Minds Team

Learn more about Host and Creator, Gayle Allen, and Producer and Editor, Rob Mancabelli, here.

Episode Links

Addressing the Unaddressed

Physician John Snow

Zip codes and Robert Moon

Empress Maria Theresa

Lost in Translation film

Learning from the Japanese City by Barrie Shelton

The Years that Matter Most by Paul Tough

Susan Hiller

Hollywood, Florida

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Nathan Bedford Forrest

Shelby Foote

Frederick Douglass by David Blight

Derek Alderman

Sarah Golabek-Goldman and Homelessness

what3words.com

Maoz Azaryahu

The Black Lives Matter Movement is Being Written into the Streetscape by Deirdre Mask

Performative Utterances

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How can we recognize the blind spots that cause us to build less inclusive teams?

When we commit to achieving greater diversity in the workplace, we're taking an important step. But we need to see this step as just the beginning in an ongoing journey. 

Stefanie Johnson, author of the book, Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams, created the word "inclusify" to call this out. She argues, "People don't experience inclusion just because they were included...it takes thoughtful action and intention on the part of the leader...to create an inclusive environment...that's the idea behind inclusify."

To start, we need to recognize the blind spots that get in our way. In her work with managers and boards, Stefanie's found six that come up time and again: the meritocracy manager, the culture crusader, the team player, the white knight, the shepherd, and the optimist.

She explains how leaders use concepts like "meritocracy" or "culture" to exclude employees who hold different ideas. And she shares how statements like, "we don't want to lower the bar" make things harder for underrepresented groups: "...women actually are required to have greater experience to earn a board position than men...there are higher standards a lot of times for underrepresented groups. That's why they're underrepresented."

By pinpointing blind spots and coupling that knowledge with a commitment to helping diverse employees feel like they belong and can bring their unique selves to work, leaders take more of the steps needed to create diverse, equitable, and inclusive organizations.

Stefanie Johnson is an Associate Professor of Management at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado, Boulder. Her work has been featured in the Economist, Newsweek, Time, and on CNN.

Curious Minds Team

Learn more about Host and Creator, Gayle Allen, and Producer and Editor, Rob Mancabelli, here. 

Episode Links

@DrStefJohnson

drstefjohnson.com

Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice that Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

Unconscious bias

Achieving Meritocracy in the Workplace by Emilio J. Castilla

3 Reasons You Should Stop Hiring for "Culture Fit" by Delisa Alexander

Ways to Support the Podcast

If you’re a fan of the show, there are three simple things you can do to support our work:

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How can we get our staunchest opponents to come around to our way of thinking?

When we're trying to convince other people, we often start by sharing our ideas. If they resist our efforts, we usually just push harder. Sometimes it works, but, most of the time, our efforts fail.

That's what got Jonah Berger, author of the bestselling book, The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind, wondering, what do the most successful change agents do? 

He discovered that they think and act more strategically. Rather than pushing harder and ratcheting things up, they act more like catalysts. He explains, "What they do is they lower the barrier to change. They figure out an alternate way to make the same change occur with less energy, not more."

Jonah's talked to successful hostage negotiators, substance abuse counselors, and salespeople to learn what they do. From his research, he's discovered five barriers that inhibit change, along with ways to get around them.

For example, we often ask for more change than the average person can handle. To counter that, he says, "We have to figure out ways essentially to ask for less. Rather than asking people to make a big change right away, ask for smaller changes."

Jonah is Marketing Professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He's published more than 50 papers, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review. He's appeared on Curious Minds twice before to discuss his pervious books, Contagious and Invisible Influence.

Curious Minds

Learn more about Host and Creator, Gayle Allen, and Producer and Editor, Rob Mancabelli, here.

Episode Links

The Strategy behind Florida's "Truth" Campaign

Thai Health Promotion Foundation - Smoking Kid (1:30 min video)

Changing Eating Habits on the Home Front: Lost Lessons from World War II Research by Brian Wansink

Gregory M. Vecchi, Ph.D.

Invisible Influence by Jonah Berger

Dave Fleischer and deep canvassing

Study Finds Deep Conversations Can Reduce Transgender Prejudice

gong.io

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What would happen if, instead of reacting to problems, we solved them at the source?

That's a question that Dan Heath, author of the book, Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, wants us to ask. He believes it's the linchpin of real change.

Dan explains, "So often in life, we get trapped in these cycles of reaction...and all of that action starves us of the energy that we need to get upstream and deal with these problems at the root level."

He shares enlightening stories of people who've made it a goal to prevent problems, rather than merely react to them. At the same time, he helps us understand how to think and act like they do.

To start, he says, we need to confront what he calls our "problem blindness." It's our tendency to accept the unacceptable, just because we've gotten used to it.

Instead, he encourages us to "Get real suspicious and curious about recurring problems. If there's something that you've just come to take for granted...customers are always going to call about itineraries...or we're always going to have a high dropout rate...Get suspicious about that!"

Dan Heath is a Senior Fellow at Duke University's CASE Center, which supports entrepreneurs fighting for social good. He's also co-author with his brother, Chip Heath, of the bestselling books, Made to Stick, Switch, Decisive, and The Power of Moments.

Curious Minds Team

Learn more about Host and Creator, Gayle Allen, and Producer and Editor, Rob Mancabelli, here.

Episode Links

Irving Zola

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Marcus Elliott

The Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Freshman On-Track Toolkit

When do workarounds help or hurt patient outcomes? by Anita L. Tucker

How Iceland Got Teens to Say No to Drugs by Emma Young

Paul B. Batalden

The University of Chicago Crime Lab

Becoming a Man - Youth Guidance

Sally Herndon

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What are the skills that can help us learn new things more quickly and efficiently?

Our ability to learn sets us apart from other species. Yet few of us understand how to maximize this ability.

Stanislas Dehaene, Director of the NeuroSpin Brain Imaging Center in Saclay, France, and Professor of Experimental Cognitive Psychology at the College de France, can help. In his latest book, How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine...for Now, he explains how the human brain is designed for learning. Next, he shares exactly what we need to optimize our learning.

Sleep is one example. We know it's important, but we may not know just how critical it is for learning. Stanislas explains, "So we re-learn, we replay during sleep, the things we've begun to learn during the day. In this way, we are able to multiple the learning examples."

At the same time, we may not be aware of what Stanislas calls "the secret ingredients of successful learning." These are the four pillars that, when present, speed up the learning process, namely, attention, active engagement, error feedback, and consolidation.

Finally, Stanislas explains the connections between artificial intelligence and the human brain. Though he's convinced that future AIs will surpass the capabilities of the human brain, he readily shares just how amazing our brains are: "I don't think that the brain is intrinsically better than machines. I think the brain is an extraordinary machine."

Stanislas has written extensively on the topic of human learning. His previous books include, Reading in the Brain, Consciousness and the Brain, and The Number Sense.

The Team

Learn more about host and creator, Gayle Allen, and producer and editor, Rob Mancabelli, here.

Episode Links

Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf

Explicit Memory Creation During Sleep Demonstrates a Causal Role of Place Cells in Navigation by G. de Lavilleon, M. M. Lacroix, L. Rondi-Reig, and K. Benchenane

Coordinated Memory Replay in the Visual Cortex and Hippocampus During Sleep by Daoyun Ji and Matthew A. Wilson

Error-correction Learning for Artificial Neural Networks Using the Bayesian Paradigm by Smaranda Belciug and Florin Gorunescu

Infants Grasp Gravity with Innate Sense of Physics by Joseph Castro 

Community-induced Memory Biases in Preverbal Infants by Jennifer M. D. Yoon, Mark H. Johnson and Gergely Csibra

Illiterate to Literate: Behavioural and Cerebral Changes Induced by Reading Acquisition by S. Dehaene, L. Cohen, J. Morais, and R. Kolinsky 

Seymour Papert

Alexander Grothendieck

National Education Scientific Council

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What if leaders spent less time building themselves up and more time building up others?

When leaders face challenges, they're often encouraged to take a long, hard look in the mirror. Frances Frei, co-author with Anne Morriss of the book, Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You, agrees that leaders need to take responsibility. But she thinks they should replace the mirror with a window.

To do that, leaders must shift away from looking at themselves and, instead, empower their teams. She explains what this looks like: "If I walk into a room, and I'm thinking about me, and everybody else is thinking about me, then I'm not doing a good job. I want to walk into the room and be thinking about everyone else. I want to be thinking about how to unleash greatness in everyone else."

As part of unleashing team members' greatness, Frances believes leaders must also grow their team members. And when team members aren't growing, leaders need to understand why. That's where self-assessment tools can be helpful. For example, she shares a tool that can help leaders understand why they may be losing their team's trust.

She also shares a tool that helps leaders determine whether a team member's underperformance is a result of their own behavior or organizational bias. When it comes to organizational bias, she points out that when "there are demographic patterns associated with who's thriving, it's super clear whose fault it is...no question the firm is doing something. Not on purpose. They're probably hitting something with their tail, but we have to fix it."

Frances Frei is a Professor at Harvard Business School, and she recently served as Uber's first Senior Vice President of Leadership and Strategy. She regularly works with companies on organizational transformation, including embracing diversity and inclusion as levers for improved performance. Her TED Talk on Building Trust has been viewed four million times.

Curious Minds Team

Head here to learn more about Host and Creator, Gayle Allen, and Producer and Editor, Rob Mancabelli. 

Episode Links

Valerius Maximus

Emma Dench

The Connector Manager by Sari Wilde and Jaime Roca

Lesbians in Tech

1844 Conway Ekpo Black Male Lawyers

Grace Hopper AnitaB.org

Stacy Brown-Philpot

Harvard Business School Gender Initiative

The Field Method at Harvard Business School

Youngme Moon

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What if the biggest barrier to our success wasn't a lack of confidence but overconfidence?

We tend to associate a high degree of confidence with success. In fact, most of us believe it's a requirement for achieving our goals. Yet extensive research led Don Moore, author of the book, Perfectly Confident: How to Calibrate Your Decisions Wisely, to conclude that "the evidence for that relationship...is shockingly weak."

Instead, Don argues, it's about striking a balance between under confidence and overconfidence, and he shares a helpful technique called probabilistic thinking to help us do just that. To illustrate this point, he explains how he and his fiance used this approach to plan their wedding.

After realizing that their guest list far exceeded the 125 chairs available in the reception venue, they knew they needed a strategy. Rather than remove names from the list, they estimated the likelihood of each guest attending. That helped them decide how many invitations to send.

Don explains, "We went through that long list, summing up the probabilities across individuals. It got us to 127, so we sent out the invitations right away. The actual number who said 'yes' was 126, so we found one more chair and were happily married."

Don Moore is a Professor of Management of Organizations at the University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business. He is also co-author of the book, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, and he's written for publications like, The New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review.

The Curious Minds Team

You can learn more about Curious Minds' Host and Creator, Gayle Allen, and Producer and Editor, Rob Mancabelli, here. 

Episode Links

Max Bazerman

5 Tips for Calibrating Your Confidence by Laura Counts

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

The Intelligence Trap by David Robson

Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke

Too Optimistic about Optimism

Why Decisions Fail by Paul Nutt

Simple Ways to Support Curious Minds

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What if the way we engage in politics today works against the changes we seek?

One-third of Americans say they spend at least two hours a day on politics. But according to Eitan Hersh, author of the book, Politics is for Power: How to Move beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change, most of that time is spent consuming news, posting to social media, and signing online petitions.

Eitan labels these kinds of isolated, predominantly online behaviors "political hobbyism," and he contrasts them with the kinds of activities that can drive real change. He explains that politics "...is about getting power for the things you care about, working with others, having goals, having strategies, and that's just not what's going on for most people who are cognitively engaged in politics."

Eitan's book is a primer for anyone who wants to effect political change. In it, he shares inspiring stories of ordinary people working to change the world through everyday political participation. 

He also shares steps he's taken to overcome his own political hobbyism and the empathy he has for others like him. He says, "They start thinking of all the excuses in their head for why they shouldn't do things differently: 'I don't have time.' 'I'm not very ideological.' Or whatever their excuses are. Hey, I know those excuses -- those are mine! Here's how I kind of got past them."

Eitan Hersh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and at the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. He researches and teaches on the topics of civic participation, U.S. elections, and voting rights.

The Host

You can learn more about Curious Minds' Host and Creator, Gayle Allen, and Producer and Editor, Rob Mancabelli, here.

Episode Links

@eitanhersh

Political Hobbyism: A Theory of Mass Behavior by Eitan D. Hersh

We All Really Need to Do Hard Things - the story of Lisa Mann - by Eitan Hersh

Changing the Conversation Together (CTC) a deep canvassing organization

7 Questions with Dave Fleischer on Deep Canvassing

Lilliana Mason

You're More Powerful Than You Think by Eric Liu

Angela Aldous story as discussed in Power, Friendship, and Some Democratic Rules by Russell Arben Fox

Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam

Linked fate

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