The Power of Lifelong Learning – Tom Vanderbilt #296

The Power of Lifelong Learning

 

For More of SuperCreativity Podcast By James Taylor

For many of us, the last time we learned a new skill was during childhood. Today we live in an age that looks up to any kind of expertise but looks down on the beginner. Upon entering adulthood and middle age, we begin to shy away from trying and learning new things, instead preferring to stay with the tried and tested.

Tom Vanderbilt is a writer who covers the worlds of design, technology, science, and culture. A contributing editor of Wired (U.K.), Outside, and Artforum, you may have read his articles in The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, or The New York Times Magazine. In 2008 his book Traffic, which looked at why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us), became a New York Times bestseller. His latest work is called Beginners: The Joy And Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning and seeks to explore the curious power of lifelong learning.

In the book, he asks the question: why are children the only ones allowed to experience the inherent fun of facing daily challenges? In fact, it is just possible that we could all benefit from embracing new skills, even if we're initially hopeless? In the book Tom sets out to find the answer, setting himself the goal of acquiring several new skills under the expert tuition of professionals, including drawing, juggling, surfing and much more. Malcolm Gladwell said that 'Beginners belongs on the list of books that have changed the way I understand my own limitations.

Tom and I discuss the value of having a beginner’s mind, Takumi’s, traveling on a journey of not knowing, and why having intellectual humility opens us up to new experiences.

Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript
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The Power of Lifelong Learning

James Taylor
Hey, it's James Taylor here and you are listening to the creative life. Today I am joined by Tom Vanderbilt. Tom Vanderbilt is a writer who covers the worlds of design technology, science and culture, a contributing editor of wired UK outside and art forum, you may have read his articles in the Financial Times The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, or the New York Times Magazine in 2008, his book traffic which looked at why we drive the way we do, and what it says about us, became a New York Times bestseller. His latest work is called beginners and seeks to explore the curious power of lifelong learning. Welcome to the show, Tom.

Tom Vanderbilt
Thank you, James, great to be here.

James Taylor
So she was oh, what's happening in your world just now?

Tom Vanderbilt
Well, the book beginners recently came out. So I'm, you know, sort of telling trying to tell the world about this in you know, what is, of course, a very challenging time, globally, not just the pandemic, but here in the United States, we have all sorts of instability going on. So it's a challenging time, especially if I can be frank to, you know, be to be trying to market a book that is in some ways about a midlife guy trying to learn to juggle now, I'm being a bit, being a bit facetious there, but you know, this is, this is, you know, there's a lot of weighty topics in the world right now. And this book was beginner's was about my quest, which began a while ago to try to learn a number of new skills. And now, so, you know, I've been sort of wrestling with this question of is this, you know, appropriate at the moment and have sort of come around, you know, talking to various people that this idea, let's call it self care, which is, you know, sort of a, you know, I don't know how I feel about that term, but you know, is this a sort of a selfish thing to be doing at the moment to be thinking about one's own improvement development, when there's all these things going on, and you always sort of think, you know, to be a good person in the world, you're always wanting to be the best person yourself. So I think, I don't think there has to be a conflict there that, you know, the last year has been very challenging for all of us, and, you know, working in different ways, homeschooling, suddenly, you know, doing all these things we never did before. So we all need to be on the top of our game. And I think just giving ourselves this this little time and leeway to do things like learn new skills, whether they're juggling or singing, or surfing or drawing, or these other things I just in the book is, you know, sort of vital.

James Taylor
Now you open the book with a story about playing a chess match. And I wondered, as I was reading, I thought, wow, either His timing is exceptionally good. With the Queen's gambit having recently come out, or this was something you already kind of thinking along. So when did when did you know you were going to use that story, because it's a really nice opening story, it has to talk about the relationship with you and your daughter. And then it kind of brings it into the wider topic of what the books about.

Tom Vanderbilt
Yeah, so it's a great question. And no, I've been into chess for a little while. I wish my timing, you know, I wish I was that smart that I could anticipate something like this. But the funny thing is, is you know, there is a novel that this successful Netflix show is based on called the Queen's gambit by Walter tevis. And a friend had recommended that book to me about seven or eight years ago. And I read it just before I started playing a little bit of chess, and then you know, sort of sort of was very much my mind. I started recommending it to people like my daughter's chess coach, and it's a great book, and it's a great series. But I for once I happen to be have my finger on the pulse of the Zeitgeist, but it's a bit a bit unintentional. But it is a great thing, though, that it will people watching this program, you know, the most successful show in Netflix history, there's been this absolute boom in people wanting to learn chess, chessboard sales, YouTube, channels are having all this traffic, online trust resources are booming. It's really sort of a golden age of wanting to learn something like chess, and I would say about the book is that it's sort of a golden age, in many ways for all sorts of things. But based on the largely on the availability of all these online resources, you know, there's something great about doing learning in person with real people. But during this this last year, of course, that's been largely impossible. And the sort of online forum has has sort of stepped in, and people have been able to take up all these things. And you know, so it's been a very interesting development. I'm glad to see chess, which you know, always has these periods where it's more interesting and more popular and not but an ancient game can have this new Renaissance is sort of an interesting thing. But you're I mean, this this time, just now we're going through time, we'll let people

James Taylor
kind of getting back into maybe learning things skills in a slightly different way. Whether that's sourdough bread making, it seems to be everyone suddenly got into sourdough bread making all of a sudden or or picking up that ukulele they've been sitting there gathering dust forever. So for the people that don't know the the premise of the book, beginners, take us through what the premise is, for the first time. And then you can talk about what why what was your inspiration for writing the book at this point?

Tom Vanderbilt
Sure. Well, my daughter, then about age four, we're playing a game of checkers, drafts, I think you'd call it and she wanted to learn. She saw this chessboard nearby. And she said, Can we play that? I was like, well, that would be that would be great. But I actually don't know how to play I never really learned or definitely never stuck. So I just sort of quickly realized to teach her this, I'm going to have to learn. So I rapidly tried to you know, I got got a chess app tried to start playing the computer was pretty horrible, realized the infinite complexity of this game that I was, I was in over my head right away. So I thought, Well, why don't I bring in an expert, I'll hire a chess coach to try to at least teach her the basics of the game. And we'll see where it goes from there if he really takes it. So as this this guy, Simon came over for the persona, I suddenly thought, you know, well, I, I'm sort of wanting to get better at this too. Why don't I sit in on this lesson. So you have this four year old and this 48 year old or so sitting down to this lesson learning the same exact skill as beginners separated by four decades? So I thought, right there, wow, this is kind of a funny social science experiment. If anyone wanted to take this on, you know, how are these two people going to go about learning these two things at the same time, and then the process of beginning to learn chess just just opened my mind to the thought that you know, what was actually the last skill like this that I learned by, I sort of had a panic one, one week when my daughter's school had a parent talent competition with a phrase that will probably strike fear into many parents hearts out there. But I thought, What is my actual talent that I could bring to this thing, and I thought, you know, writing elegant prose under deadline, kids aren't really going to respond to that. So it's just just a little moment, though, that that just brought home yet again, I had the idea that I'd sort of given up trying to tackle new things I was as I was sort of entering middle age, and you know, largely out of sort of a feeling of just wanting to be competent and things and not having thinking that I didn't have time. And so that's sort of where the book that prompted the book, and I thought, well, I'm going to try to take on a number of these things I've always wanted to take a stab at and just see where it leads me not expecting anything near mastery, or even excellence in any of these things, but just sort of opening these doors.

James Taylor
So this this skillsfuture, I mean, that's interesting, you're saying there, that it wasn't so much you weren't going off to becoming a master of chess, for example. And some of the other skills that you chose, singing, surfing, drawing mate making something as well. So you kind of went around with a, with an open mind, you want kind of going there for expertise, or mastery, or that kind of 10,000 hours, you were kind of just going in there for the joy of learning or to see what it taught you about yourself, or just because you just wanted to skill acquisition? Yeah,

Tom Vanderbilt
it's a great point. And I mean, number one, I'm a bit of a, let's say, have a short attention span in life. I, you know, this is why I didn't pursue a PhD, I was worried that I would be bored by the topic I had chosen. So I thought, well, what if I decide to master something like to try to master something like chess and decide I actually don't, you know, six months in, I don't really like chess, I better do a different book. So I thought, well, I'll create sort of a mini curriculum of different things that were all sort of equally in my mind that things I would like to take up. And that had sort of a, you know, liberal arts kind of distribution there was there was sort of a mental thing, there was a physical thing, it was an artistic thing. And, yeah, you're right to just, I mean, there's nothing wrong with expertise. I, you know, I like to think I have expertise in the field of writing that that probably is about it. And I don't think that I have time in my life to acquire that many more areas of expertise. But I don't think that that has to be an impediment to anyone taking on any of these sorts of disciplines. And that, I mean, there's a lot, let's say, we don't have 10,000 hours, there's a lot you can achieve in 100 hours in even 10 hours, that will bring you a certain level of satisfaction, let's say happiness, will can begin to possibly open your world in new ways. And you know that some of these things might seem a bit trivial. But you know, I always think of this great study that David Epstein in his great book range, talked about that Nobel Prize winning scientists, they, there's a study done that found that the winners of the Nobel were 22 times more likely to be engaged in amateur pursuits, particularly in the performing arts. I doubt that any of them were that spectacular in any of those pursuits, or that there was a direct link between let's say, learning how to you know, sing opera or something and discovering decoding DNA or something like this, I doubt there's that direct link. But who knows, perhaps by being, you know, sort of more open to experience by being more by taking some time off doing these other things brought a certain flexibility. You know, what's what's kind of called beginner's mind looking at be going through that process of being a beginner, sort of stepping away from your expertise in your field, and just doing something different, perhaps that brought some oomph back to their scientific practice.

James Taylor
Essentially, as you're talking about this, I'm suddenly thinking, you mentioned that phrase beginner's mind to kind of the Zen idea of just coming to something fresh, like, like a beginner word. And then I guess, that's almost like one extreme in terms of thinking, or having a sense of what you're doing. And at the other end, also, in Japanese culture, is the idea of the kumys, the people have spent 40,000 hours not 10,000 or 40,000 hours becoming really expert, these are the most skilled crafts people in their particular thing. But essentially, when even when you go to that extent, you know, to go to those people are very, very skilled at what they're doing. They often will talk about themselves as having this kind of beginner's mind. So that this must be like this idea of beginner's mind must have been something that you were kind of thinking about, as you were kind of writing the book.

Zen and the Art of Lifelong Learning

Tom Vanderbilt
Exactly. And I don't I don't claim to be any sort of expert in Zen Buddhism, or a practitioner or anything like that. But I found that the concept very appealing and there was a presentation I was looking at, by a monk in San Francisco area as part of the same school that had come up with this, this this concept, and he was, you know, talking about it as this, this journey, and that sort of a journey of not knowing and not not even knowing what you don't know, which I find, you know, to be one of the things I was going through as I would learn these skills, I sort of had, you know, everyone probably has an idea at the outset as they enter a new discipline. Okay, this is what surfing must be like, or this is what singing must be like. But often I found the number one, the pedagogy, the learning of these things was sort of a different process than I imagined it, sometimes it was much more, much more fundamental, much more, let's say, for singing, I thought, well, right away, we'll just be my teacher will be playing a piano and I'll be singing, I'll just start singing and we'll just have a good time. But, you know, we really got into pretty intensive physical motor skills type exercises that were all about breaking down both my own body and vocal apparatus, but, but sort of sounds themselves and just kind of getting back to this kind of, you know, almost, it often felt like childlike babbling I was doing and you know, in some ways, I had to unlearn decades of sort of, you know, that experience or you know, not not really knowing how to sing correctly or even speak correctly as I was told by some vocal coaches but, um, so yeah, I find that uh, as I went through these, you know, I was learning not only about the thing itself, but it was often changing what I knew about that and and that just the process of learning something like singing, I think changes your world in so many other ways. Suddenly, you're hearing music differently saw song you've heard 10,000 times, suddenly you're hung up on the the phrasing and a certain part of the song and like, wow, how did he How did he actually do that? Where before it sort of just washed over me so and so I just think Yeah, there were there were so many benefits, beyond my really even getting that much better in any of these tasks that this whole process is brought to my life though, I just like to stress to people.

James Taylor
So you talk to them about how you start to hear things you're hearing things in a different way you're seeing like like an art if you're getting a an artist, I guess you know, when they see things differently from maybe other civilians on the in the world. I'm interested as you were going to going through this journey did you go from almost like going from the verb to the noun, were started to change your your identity. So instead of saying, Okay, today, I'm playing chess, where you actually started to bring into your identity, and say to yourself, I'm a chess player. I'm a surfer, I'm a singer did did you What did you notice? Because just now we're going through very much things about identity politics. So I'm wondering, in this process of learning or learning, did it affect your identity at all, do your identity change?

Tom Vanderbilt
That's a very

Tom Vanderbilt
astute observation. And I would say I would say it has and, you know, it does take a certain amount of gumption of, you know, to declare oneself to be one of these things, but it also it's a process along that, that, that that what the Stewart and your Dreyfus two researchers that were doing research for the US Air Force, all people they come up with this great sort of five stage five stage model of skill acquisition. And you know, as you as you go through this, you know, in the beginning I mean, one thing that's liberating. so liberating about being a beginner is that the expectations are so low, you don't have to worry about something like imposter syndrome because no one expects you to actually know what you're doing or to be any good. So it's it's wonderfully liberating. But as you begin to know certain things, you know, that then with, with that knowledge comes a certain responsibility. And then we try to make certain qualifications. And we say, Well, I'm a beginner singer, maybe, or I'm a novice singer, and then maybe you might sort of bump up to, to amateur and, but you are, you know, in some, some essence owning that, those things that you've learned, and I think that's a moment, you know, sort of a very important moment, and I'm not, I guess I've sort of claimed it with some things, and I still might use evasive language if someone asked me like, and I should say that I haven't learned past tense any of these things that I am. It's an ongoing process, I am learning something like surfing is someone described to me as a lifelong path. And I only started late in life. So.

James Taylor
So yeah, in the book, you actually talked about it, this is more of a instead about how to book this is a more of a way to book and you can touch on how technology has changed things. Obviously, we have YouTube and we can watch videos of skill acquisition, it's very easy to get access to any book pretty much in the world. Now. What do you think technology is made it easier or in some ways, maybe hard or different? For us to become beginners? And to just enjoy the process of learning for learnings sake?

The Role of Technology on Lifelong Learning

Tom Vanderbilt
Another good question, it makes me think of, I found the book to the process of my sometimes travel writer, so I talked about I compare being a beginner to visiting a new country for the first time, a place that you've never been a place that is, you know, sort of far from your home, and how in the beginning of that travel process, you feel as if your senses are on fire, you know, everything is jumping out at you, you're sort of, you know, the language like the currency, the the architecture, the food, everything is novel. And I think we're have this heightened kind of existence for a few days. And then after you're there suddenly, you know, it's sort of like Groundhog Day that the film or something you're here like, oh, there's that the prayer, the call to prayer for the minaret again, you know, I've heard it now. 20 times. And so we begin to, you know, to lose a little bit of that sense of novelty, and I'm sorry, in this in this long, rambling answer, I forgotten your original question. Could

James Taylor
you see it sometimes with, you'll notice, I speak to musicians now. And they say, when you go to the music colleges, the students coming to the music colleges, there's so much more technically professions, there may be previous generations, because they've been able to watch all these videos and study thing, you know, everything in very fine detail. But I've heard from some of these teachers that there's a, there's a little bit of a joyless, a lack of a lack of their own voice in it as well, because the technology in the videos has made them focus so much on the technique to acquire, and less about the actual, the joy of learning.

Tom Vanderbilt
Right. And that's why I'd gone into this whole elaborate travel story, which is that I feel, you know, in some ways, because places aren't quite as foreign, let's say, as they used to be with, with global interconnectedness. And the internet and sort of as satiation of social media, we saw a lot of people in going someplace, I feel as if they've already absorbed so much information, so much, so many Instagram posts, they've read so much about that place, by the time they get there, they're, they're almost sort of like ticking off a box and sort of like, why I have to make sure I do this and do that without, you know, it's almost as if they've pre digested some of this foreign place rather than really looking around for themselves. And, yeah, interesting question about whether that's changed. pedagogy mean that they, I mean, chess, you do hear this, that, you know, kids are sort of playing like, engines and that they've, you know, it's become sort of more, I don't know what the word would be instrumentalized but, but I don't know chess is a place where joy is a tough, but there is joy in playing chess, but in the midst of a competitive chess match, you know, it's pretty much your your matching wits and all your training against each other. So, you know, maybe that's the right. You need to turn yourself into an engine to to kind of, you know, have that mastery. I'm not sure but, but yeah, it's, so maybe this is one thing in my own process is that I went to a lot of these lessons and all these things in the beginning without having read it up that much beforehand. And that's perhaps why they were such some of that some of it was such a surprise to me. It's like, Oh, that's how you learn to sing or that's, that's what drawing is about. So I really, I guess I really did try to keep this this beginner's mind, even when it came to being a beginner, if that makes sense. Yeah,

James Taylor
I mean, so you kind of went down this, this rabbit hole learning these things, becoming kind of immersed in them into the skills, working with teachers and mentors of them as well. I'm wondering, has this had an effect on you as a writer, because you've been like I said in the book that this was something that sat up apart from you as, as a writer, almost, you're kind of looking for something that wasn't Nestle going to help your your writing or any of those things it was more focused on, on just learning these things. And that that curiosity, I guess, did any stuff then start to bleed into your, your craft as a writer? Was there anything you were able to take from some surfing or drawing or making that ring? That then brought it back into you the craft that you have as a writer? Yeah,

Tom Vanderbilt
that's, you know, I'm not sure to be honest. When it comes to craft, I mean, I know, there are certain ways that I have benefited, personally in ways that might not be immediately obvious. I mean, something like drawing, I found to be an amazingly therapeutic restorative enterprise that that filled this gap in my life for sort of deep, reflective experiences that I was having trouble finding the time and space to create that, and I, my book was just reviewed by Cal Newport, which I thought was interesting, who's the author of digital minimalism, and this, you know, when I was drawing these three or four hour sessions that you have to do, and my phone was put away, I was, I was away from that whole thing. So I just lost track of that time. So I was in the, you know, the sort of the deep flow state we've all heard about, but seems ever so elusive. So you know, you perhaps there there have been these ancillary benefits, in some ways, you're bringing kind of that that sense of, of deep focus back into my ability to sit and work on a piece of writing. But um, yeah, I think you know, and another way it might help in what I do is that, again, just sort of, even as a person whose job it is to sort of meet new people and talk to them and interview them and things like that, that going out and having to put myself out there in situations that were very unusual that I was I was meeting people I might not meet otherwise, that that just again, I'm always talking about this openness to experience, which is a psychological trait that is one of the big five that they talk about that is sort of linked to longevity, and just having that, that willingness to, to experience novelty, even when it can be uncomfortable, that, you know, that has just broadened my horizons even further, which which I think, you know, as a non fiction writer is just ultimately, you know, very useful in just providing your new new ways to think about things and beyond simply books and reading.

James Taylor
Now, other things that I thought was quite refreshing about the book, you're coming, you're not coming from the perspective of the San Francisco hacking kind of mindset, like, how can we hack these skills? It may be if you're maybe some writer in your 20s, maybe that'd be coming. You're coming at this a little bit. You've had more experience in life, you're coming in later in life. And we often see people want to change learn new skills when they have big birthdays, like birthdays end with a zero on the end. Did you notice apart from the kind of age thing, did you notice a difference between men and women in terms of their what you said there about their openness to learning new skills?

Tom Vanderbilt
Yes, I mean, first of all, I found that just demographically, a lot of the courses I was taking seemed to be populated largely by women, there were definitely some men but at a surf camp, there were the men were outnumbered by the women in the the choir that I participate in. There's a handful of men and it's a constant challenge for the director to just come up with men and which is a strange historical fact, I'll just reference that, you know, choirs used to be dominated by men. And that was about 5050 going back in the beginning of the 20th century, and there's been this kind of slow decline away from men's participation in choral singing. So, you know, once our instructor told me a thing I thought was interesting was that, you know, men kind of came into something like surfing with this idea of having all these very, very strict and fast goals that they wanted to get to right away and just wanted to crush the skill and he said, that was not a very constructive attitude when it came to something like surfing which, which, let's just say is a very difficult thing to learn because number one, that the feedback loops are very can be very slow. an infrequent and yet someone compared to trying to learn to play the guitar. But you can only strum once every hour, because, you know, often, it's not a good day to surf. And even when it is a good day to surf, you might only get a wave, you know, once a half, once every half hour or something, a lot of time is just spent just, you know, sort of sitting there so that

James Taylor
by you know, I do want to as you're, as you're saying that, you know that that bit, which is it's kind of not uncomfortable, and you have to learn any new skill, but maybe is it just it's repetition and routine. And I thought what does that does that I see a lot of times with musicians, I've worked with a lot of great Grammy Award winning great musicians, I often see. And I see the same thing a lot with entrepreneurs, a lot of ADH, ADHD, but it can also reflect itself in in, when they get into something they kind of go all in, they become very focused for this period of time in what they're doing as well. So you were saying like that, that difference between men and women going with it, like a more structured way of like thinking about this kind of skill acquisition, whereas maybe women are kind of coming out from us like, I know, we all make generalizations here as well.

A Willingness To Learn

Tom Vanderbilt
Yeah. And I think there's one other important, that's a great point, there's one other important component, which is this notion of humility, I would say, and what's been described as intellectual humility, which is something that in the research, women are often, you know, said to be, have a greater, you know, sort of tendency to express this. And what we mean by this is, you know, basically a willingness to, to admit the things you don't know, willingness to learn. I mean, that was one of the key tasks, about one of the key facets of learning is you have to accept, admit that you are open to learning things. And, I mean, this is something that I sort of, I think, you know, defined my career as a writer, I mean, on the one hand, you do need this, this iron clad ego, I mean, you're going to face so much rejection in your life, I still faced so much rejection, you know, Article pitches, completed drafts of manuscripts, things that, you know, you get back with a lot of red ink through or just rejected outright, and you're, and you're sort of thinking, wow, I still haven't figured this out after so many decades, but, so you just need that sort of willingness to believe in yourself and push forward at any moment. On the other hand, though, I think, you know, intellectual humility is a, it's just sort of a mainstay of my existence there. My, my entire life and careers, it's just this journey, as I mentioned before, of not knowing and not knowing what I don't know. So that leads me to try to find the answers, which then it turns out leads me to all these interesting people working on interesting things who maybe do have some of those answers. But, you know, I find that you know, if I didn't have enough of, either i think i think the work or I would suffer,

James Taylor
it says that you're in the perfect profession. It's like, where you'll you'll kind of given up I was gonna say free, we're not quite free rein but someone who has a real passion for learning a real curiosity about the why and, and what is happy to kind of go down all those little rabbit Warrens that's a, that's a good thing to do if you if you want to be a journalist. Now, as we start to finish up here, I would love to know you've kind of you kind of learn these different skills. Are there any online resources or tools or apps you have found particularly useful? in the mirror, obviously, we talk about what these kind of chest tools and other things like that as well. But other things that maybe you've taken that you still kind of use pretty much every day that you just kind of find beneficial for, for learning, more generally, other kind of platforms that you're going all the time of their apps, you're going all the time? What's got your what's what you're spending time on at the moment?

Tom Vanderbilt
Yeah, I mean, when it comes to chess, there's a site called chess table that I still use quite a bit which is just a basically an online corpus of courses and you know, sort of books that have been digitized and put into playable, you know, sort of games and things like that, which is a very useful way and, and, and it uses all these techniques that we've come to know have been most successful for learning, like spaced repetition. So something like that is very valuable, more valuable than simply playing a lot of games of Blitz chess, which is a great sort of dopamine hit, but you really do need to put in that time and study that there's I mean, there's so many other things. There's a lot of obviously great online learning resources, some of the interestingly, some of the institutions I was affiliated with and doing classes with, such as the New York Academy of Art, you know, a place you had to go to Tribeca, in Manhattan to you know, be in this room. And sketch this model of you know, since a bit pandemic began shifted to online drawing courses, so that that sort of, you know, democratized the field and in this interesting way, and I was a bit skeptical of how this would, would all work. But I found that not only was it was very satisfying, there were, in fact, certain advantages to doing this drawing online that the teacher, for example, could take your drawing and do sort of a digital overlay, and use a digital pen, and sort of actually go in and show you how you might fix this without actually messing up the paper on your drawing. So there are certain so there's a lot of resources out there like that. And sort of more on that, in the fun side, something I always come back to, again, since my choral singing has been largely interrupted during the pandemic, there's a very popular online karaoke app, which I know sounds sort of ridiculous, but it's called smule, SMU l e. And this is just people around the world doing do what doing karaoke duets, not not not really live, you just sort of one at a time. And you know, so I have some music in all genres, all languages with people around the world. And it sounds strange, but singing to a stranger is at once both sort of easy, easier than singing to someone in front of you. But it's still a very emotionally resonant thing. And I've met and formed a number of friendships, the smule company has told me they have at least 100 marriages that they know of people who met while singing on the site. So you know, these are the things that sort of that that's just that that for me is sort of a Digital Sandbox, a way to play around with some of these things. I'm trying to learn in a kind of judgment free zone where it doesn't really matter if I mess up so I which I think is an important tool to be able to have a kind of rehearsal

James Taylor
just we'll put we'll put all these links people go to James taylor.me and just look for Tom vandals name we'll put all these links that Tom was mentioning just now, what about a book you know, we've got you mentioned at the start of the show there that always been very difficult for authors publishers just now but we've seen a huge surge in in people reading book buying and people reading over the past 12 months is there been one book perhaps in particular that you've been most inspired? You've most recommended to other people?

Tom Vanderbilt
Oh, geez.

Tom Vanderbilt
There's, well there's a book called The inner game of tennis, which I mentioned briefly in my book that was new to me because I don't really play tennis or not very well or not very much, but it's just a sort of book that is really not about tennis. It is about tennis but it both is and is not about tennis and I found had quite a number of lessons not only about how to sort of pick up motor skills, pick up skills but about sort of life itself. So don't let the title scare you. It's w Timothy Galway, the inner game of tennis, it's you can not know anything about tennis and still profit from it. Right.

James Taylor
We'll put that link there as well. Thank you so much, Tom, for coming on the show today. Your new book, Beginners is out. Now. We're gonna have a link here for everyone as well. It's been great just kind of hearing about the book. It's been great. You're also hearing the the passion in your voice for your curiosity for learning where's the best place for people to go? obvious, we'll put a link here so people can get the book but if they want to maybe read more of your other writing sees I know you, you do other. You have some other projects on the go just now where's the best place to go and learn about that?

Tom Vanderbilt
would be my website, which is TomVanderbilt.com.

James Taylor
Fantastic. Tom, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing with us all about your creative life.

Tom Vanderbilt
It's been a great pleasure. Thank you, James.