It's Friday, May 20th, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds. I'm Injavis Gantis.

And I'm Kishore Hari. Each week, we bring you a new, in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.

We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.

You can find us online at motherjones.com slash inquiring minds or inquiring show dot tumber.com

and you can subscribe to the show on iTunes or any other podcasting app. You can also support us on

Patreon.com slash inquiring minds. So have you ever really worked hard at something and just felt like you hit a plateau and never really made any more progress?

Are we talking about our podcast right now?

Oh, I hope not.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

I totally associate that, where it's just it doesn't seem to be getting any easier.

What is that for you? So it's a couple times. just, it doesn't seem to be getting any easier. What is that for you?

So it's a couple times, like, definitely in sports where I've put in more effort and the results

have been the same. I used to play hockey when I was younger. And it seemed like when I spent more

time on the ice, I kind of plateaued and it didn't make a difference. And when you read Malcolm

Gladwell's book, I'm assuming you did, outliers, did the 10,000 hours rule influence you? Did you think,

well, I'm just never going to get the 10,000 hours, so I should just hang up my hat? Or did you

think, wow, if I just keep practicing, I'll eventually get there? I am a Gladwell skeptic in a lot of ways. So I never subscribed to that hour,

that our number as gospel, as other places reported it, but it always did seem like an

aspirational number. So as people who listen to this podcast regularly know, I'm a singer,

and it wasn't something I was ever really good at to begin with. I was not a musical

prodigy by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I believe there is a video of me at summer camp

...