John Green Wants You to Pay Attention to Your Attention

ReThinking

TED

Society & Culture, Organizational Psychology, Worklife Podcasts, Adam Grant, Rethinking Podcast, Ted Podcast Adam Grant, Ted Talks, Adam Grant Podcasts

4.7 • 626 Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Do you pay attention to your attention? John Green is the beloved author of The Fault In Our Stars, and when he started tracking his attention, he realized he was obsessed with evaluating human progress. He decided to start rating everything—from the capacity for human wonder to Canadian geese—on a five-point scale. In this deeply thoughtful conversation with Adam, John shares what he learned from his series of Yelp-style reviews, the gift of a great book, and the unexpected life lessons found in the last lap of Mario Kart. Read the full text transcript at go.ted.com/T4G8

ReThinking is produced by Cosmic Standard. Our Senior Producer is Jessica Glazer, our Engineer is Aja Simpson, our Technical Director is Jacob Winik, and our Executive Producer is Eliza Smith.

For the full text transcript, visit ted.com/podcasts/rethinking-with-adam-grant-transcripts

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, work lifers, it's Adam Grant.
0:02.8	Welcome back to Taken for Granted, my podcast with the TED Audio Collective.
0:07.0	I'm an organizational psychologist.
0:09.0	My job is to think again about how we work, lead, and live.
0:13.5	Today, I'm talking to one of my favorite authors.
0:16.3	I'm John Green, and I am here in my basement in Indianapolis, Indiana.
0:22.4	John is best known for his heart-stopping novel, The Fault in Our Stars.
0:26.9	He's also a longtime YouTuber and podcast host.
0:30.3	Last month, he released his first nonfiction book, The Anthropocene Reviewed, Essays on
0:35.9	a Human-centered Planet.
0:37.8	It's based on his podcast by the same name. The Anthropocene Reviewed, Essays on a Human-Centered Planet. It's based on his podcast by the same name.
0:40.8	The Anthropocene is the geological period of time that's also known as now, when humans are dominating the Earth.
0:48.2	John's book is a brilliant analysis of some of the most monumentally important
0:52.0	and some of the most charmingly trivial
0:54.3	touchstones of our time.
0:56.5	He covers topics ranging from
0:58.1	the plague and the human capacity for wonder
1:00.7	to office air conditioning and Googling strangers
1:03.7	to Monopoly and Penguins of Madagascar.
1:07.2	He reviews them all on a five-star scale,
1:09.8	so I couldn't wait to get him to review a few things with me.
1:15.4	Is the correct pronunciation the Anthropocene reviewed?
	...

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