After you've mixed nuts, there's nothing else to do.

I'm Angela Duckworth.

I'm Stephen Dubner.

And you're listening to no stupid questions.

Last episode, Stephen and Angela talked about cognitive fatigue

and the kind support that make your brain tired.

Today, what can be done about it?

When my attention is the opposite of the flow state,

it's divided, it's not unified, and I hate it.

Angela, last time on the show, I asked you a question.

The answer to which was so interesting.

You and I went down a series of rabbit holes.

We answered about 10% of the question

for all the best possible reasons.

And so here we are, part two.

For the first time in our lives.

The question last time concerned a new paper by four economists.

The paper is called Cognitive Endurance as Human Capital.

The four authors are Christina Brown,

Spreak Power, Gita Kingdon, and Heather Skowfield.

And we discussed the paper a little bit,

the experiments that went into it.

...