In this week’s episode, I am joined by David Robson! David is an award-winning science writer specializing in the extremes of the human brain, body and behavior. After graduating with a degree in mathematics from Cambridge University, David worked as a features editor at New Scientist for five years, before moving to BBC Future, where he was a senior journalist for five years. His writing has also appeared in the Guardian, the Atlantic, Aeon, Men’s Health and many more outlets. In 2022, he won Mental Health Story of the Year at the MJA Annual Awards and was a finalist for the Best British Science Journalist of the Year Award from the ABSW. David’s first book, The Intelligence Trap, was published in 2019, and received worldwide media attention. His second book The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life, was published in the UK on 6 January 2022 and in the USA and Canada on 15 February 2022. It is “a journey through the cutting-edge science of how our mindset shapes every facet of our lives, revealing how your brain holds the keys to unlocking a better you”. The Expectation Effect was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and won a British Psychological Society Book Award in the popular science category. In June 2024, David will release his brand new book The Laws of Connection: The scientific secrets of Building a Strong Social Network - a groundbreaking study revealing how social connections are far more important than we thought, showing us the steps we can take to build better relationships and improve our lives Key Points • How mindset acts as life's lenses • Shifting from scarcity to abundance • The intertwined science of success • Mindsets influencing longevity • Meaningful tech connections matter Best Quotes 01:53 - 02:10 • "And there's a huge amount of research now showing that our mindsets can create self-fulfilling prophecies now that can, it can change things like our physiology, our perception, our behavior, our capacity to deal with failure, our motivation." 02:31 - 02:35 • "by changing your mindset, you're kind of releasing the brakes on your potential." 03:20 - 03:28 • "And when I broke that down and started focusing from scarcity to to abundance, I started seeing the world in such a different way." 05:11 - 05:20 • "So you perform this, this activity called self-affirmation by kind of listing the 10 things that you think are most important about yourself or your life." 06:10 - 06:18 • "So that's just one example I think of how like a small psychological intervention that changes mindset can actually have a really big impact." To learn more about David: https://davidrobson.me/media/