Josh Shenk

Smart People Podcast

Smart People Industries

Society & Culture, Business, Education

4.6 • 736 Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2014

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Josh Shenk - Want to be great? Then don't go at it alone. Throughout history teams of exactly 2 people have made the biggest impact - think Lennon and McCartney, Wozniak and Jobs, Orville and Wilbur Wright...the list goes on and on. But why? This week we crush the myth of the "lone genius" and learn how the best creations of all time came from people who worked in pairs. Josh Shenk, author of Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs, tells us not only why 2 is the magic number, but also how you can find your creative pair and start making history. Josh is a curator, essayist, and author. His magazine pieces include cover stories in Harper’s, Time, and The Atlantic, where his essay "What Makes Us Happy?" was the most read article in the history of that magazine’s website. His work has also appeared in Slate, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first book, Lincoln’s Melancholy, was named one of the best books of 2005 byThe New York Times, The Washington Post,and The Atlanta-Journal Constitution.. He is a curator, storyteller and advisor to The Moth; vice-chair emeritus of the board of directors, he currently serves on the general council. He is also a past director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College, where he curated programs and festivals and directed a small literary press. Shenk consults to the Erikson Institute for Education and Research at the Austen Riggs Center, where he directs the Erikson Prize for Mental Health Media and Arts in Mind, a conversation series on the creative arts and psychology, co-hosted by the New School in New York City. "Creativity is not about being comfortable. It's about moving from where you are to something bigger. It's all about the encounter of disparate things." - Josh Shenk Quotes from Josh: What we learn in this episode: What characteristics make two people compatible? Why is tension good for partners creative abilities? How does conversation play a key role in creativity? Why is a pair better than a trio? Resources: Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs www.shenk.net Twitter @joshuawolfshenk -- This episode is brought to you by: 99Designs: Go to 99designs.com/SMART to get a $99 Power Pack of services for FREE today! ting: mobile that makes sense. For $25 off your first device or a $25 credit, use smartpeople.ting.com and save money on your cell phone bill today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:42.1	The podcast where we talk to smart people, but not necessarily done by smart people. That is an awesome
0:48.5	question. This one goes down probably on one of my top five. Hey, I like nutrition. I like to eat food. This is the
0:55.5	coolest thing ever. We're going to do this forever. I wish I paid more attention in that class.
1:00.6	You know, I'm going to be honest. I don't understand that. As a man, I don't get it.
1:06.3	Welcome to smart people podcast.com. Welcome to Smart People Podcast.
1:11.3	Conversations that satisfy your curious mind.
1:14.0	Chris and John here, as usual, have an awesome one for you today.
1:18.3	And it was so much fun recording because today we are talking about the power of two people.
1:23.8	Creative pairs, as they call them these days.
1:27.2	Creative pairs, as in John john and i putting this podcast together
1:30.1	bouncing ideas off each other using motivation tension all of those things to create this podcast
1:37.5	it was a lot of fun learning about what goes into that and why sometimes two is the magic number think about lennon and mccartney
1:46.7	wosniac and jobs orville and wilbur wright there's reasons why two people tend to do better than
1:53.7	one or three or more this week we interview josh shank josh is aist, and author. His magazine pieces include cover stories
	...

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