John Green wants you to pay attention to your attention (bonus)

Worklife with Adam Grant

TED

Management, Worklife Podcast, Worklife With Adam Grant, Work Life Balance, Ted Talks, Podcast About Work Life, Ted Adam Grant, Adam Grant Podcasts, Ted Podcasts, Adam Grant, Organizational Psychologist, Business

4.8 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2024

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Do you pay attention to your attention? John Green is the beloved author of The Fault In Our Stars, and when he started tracking his attention, he realized he was obsessed with evaluating human progress. He decided to start rating everything — from the capacity for human wonder to Canadian geese — on a five-point scale. In this deeply thoughtful conversation with Adam, John shares what he learned from his series of Yelp-style reviews, the gift of a great book, and the unexpected life lessons found in the last lap of Mario Kart. Read the full text transcript at go.ted.com/T4G8

This episode previously aired June 22, 2021.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective. of Invisibilia. Well I'm back with a new show called Proxy. It's about the niche emotional
0:15.2	questions that no one in your life can relate to. That's where proxy comes in. I'll
0:20.3	connect you to researchers and strangers with shared experience,
0:23.6	and you'll get to ask all your questions.
0:26.3	We're kicking things off with a three-part series on the emotional and mental health
0:29.9	toll of layoffs.
0:31.2	Subscribe to proxy, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:35.0	Hey listeners, today we're sharing a past episode of rethinking from the archives.
0:41.8	Enjoy. Today I'm talking to one of my favorite authors.
0:46.0	I'm John Green and I am here in my basement in Indianapolis, Indiana.
0:51.0	John is best known for his heart-stopping novel, The Fault in Our Stars.
0:57.0	He's also a long-time YouTubeer and podcast host.
1:00.0	Last month, he released his first non-fiction book,
1:03.0	The Anthropocene reviewed, essays on a human-centered planet.
1:07.0	It's based on his podcast by the same name.
1:10.0	The Anthropocene is the geological period of time that's also known as now
1:15.2	when humans are dominating the earth. John's book is a brilliant analysis of some of
1:20.6	the most monumentally important and some of the most charmingly
1:23.9	trivial touchstones of our time. He covers topics ranging from the plague and the
1:29.4	human capacity for wonder to office air conditioning and Googling strangers, to Monopoly and Penguins of
1:36.1	Madagascar.
1:37.4	He reviews them all on a five-star scale, so I couldn't wait to get him to review a few things with me.
	...

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