Leonard Mlodinow on Training Our Brains to Be More Elastic

AMA Edgewise

At the two ends of the neurological spectrum are logical thinking and elastic thinking. Generally the purvue of artists and great thinkers, elastic thinking is called upon more and more in our everyday lives. Luckily, we are not born one way or another. Leonard Mlodinow, author of the book Elastic, joins us to talk about ways we can train our thinking to be less logical and make up our own rules.

Leonard Mlodinow was born in Chicago, Illinois, received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley, and is the author of five best-sellers. His book The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives was a New York Times Bestseller, Editor’s Choice, and Notable Book of the Year, and was short-listed for the Royal Society book award. His book Subliminal won the PEN/Wilson award for literary science writing. His other books include two co-authored with physicist Stephen Hawking — A Briefer History of Time, and The Grand Design. In addition to his books and research articles, he has taught at Caltech, written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Forbes magazine, among other publications, and for television series such as McGyver and Star Trek: the Next Generation.