You're listening to Part-Time Genius, the production of kaleidoscope and IHeart Radio.

Guess what, Mango?

What's that, Will?

All right, I hate to start an episode this way, but I got to be honest with you.

I'm a little bit disappointed.

You actually never answered my letter.

The one you slid under my door that just said, hey, Mango, I'm looking forward to recording later.

I mean, you could have texted me that. Yeah, no, that's the one. I'm actually, I'm making an effort to

try to write by hand more. And, you know, while I was researching this episode, I actually

discovered that there are some real benefits to writing the old-fashioned way.

Oh, yeah, like what?

So if you write handwritten notes in a meeting or a lecture, we actually understand the material

better than if we type them.

And part of the reason for this is that it slows us down.

We have to process what's being said, and then we decide which words to write from that.

And that's different than when we type, because when we're at our computers, we can transcribe

things we hear without really thinking about what those words mean or whether they're important

or not. That's really interesting. You know, I feel like I'm such a bad note taker because

often I start writing, but then my pages just descend into doodles. It's like I have no concentration for any. I can remember from as far back as our college years when you would be doing exactly that. And I remember of those doodles that were quite impressive. But the handwriting actually takes

concentration and your brain has to actually visualize the shapes that you're putting on the page

and create them individually. So you're activating both the part of the brain responsible for

fine motor skills and the part that does visual information processing. But the way the brain

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