Thanks to Hilton for sponsoring this episode.

Hey everyone, it's Adam Cran. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast on the

Science of What Makes Us Tink. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm

taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and

new ways of thinking. My guest today is cognitive neuroscientist Shantel

Pratt. Her research is one numerous awards and has been funded by the NIH and

the Navy. She specializes in making sense of how our brains differ, how we think,

and how we learn languages. Her debut book is The Neuroscience of You, which is

the smartest and funniest book I've read on the brain. It gave me a bunch of

light bulb moments about my brain, so I thought it was time to talk to her about it.

I mean honestly we could do this podcast just with like me reading your book

and laughing out loud. Oh my gosh, that would be awesome. I would pay for

that. I definitely got some strange looks. What are you reading and why are you

laughing at a neuroscience book? How did this happen? I like to violate

expectations. I mean I guess I don't like to but I do very frequently so that's

the way I inhabit. So, modest we'll go with it. So how does one become a

neuroscientist, a psychologist and a linguist? Well, I started out with a

very specific question and that is how to understand how brains make people the

unique individuals they are and that question lives at the intersection between

psychology and neuroscience. On average, people who live in neuroscience

departments tend to try and understand simpler brains. Zebrafish, fruit flies,

roundworms, and that just wasn't going to do it for me. I mean those are

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