Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Squiggly Careers podcast. This week I'm not joined by Sarah, but I'm not too disappointed because I'm instead joined by Matthew Syed. Hello Matthew.

Hello, thanks for having me on. Before we get started on today's topic, which is all going to be around cognitive diversity and Matthew's book actually taking a lot of insights

from Matthew's book Rebel Ideas.

I just wanted to focus in a little bit on Matthew's career,

which is the perfect example of a squiggly career.

So we've got jobs that include broadcasting,

journalism, author, ping pong champion. I mean, it's brilliant. I thought maybe rather

than charting the whole of your squiggly career, because I think it might take a while with all of

the different things in there, maybe we could focus in for everybody on a squiggly career high and

a squiggly career low, if you wouldn't mind, Matthew. Oh, that's an interesting question. I think the low is a very easy one to depict because I had a very serious low in my

ping pong days.

And the big event in table tennis, like in other sports, is the Olympic Games.

And I was sort of near my peak as a player in 2000, the Olympic Games in Sydney.

And of course, it's a four-year build-up training with that big climax in mind.

The preparation was very good.

We went out to the Gold Coast.

I had sparring partners whose styles mirrored the style of the person I was due to play in my opening

match. It was a German called Peter Franz. He was ranked below me in the world. I was expected to

win. But the pressure of the Olympics got to me. It was going out live on BBC 1 as a huge audience.

And I did something which I hadn't done before in my career

particularly but did do on that occasion which is I choked I became paralyzed by fear my

hand started trembling and I had a meltdown and lost very very quickly so I was out of the

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