Inventology Author Pagan Kennedy on How to Accidentally Find Genius

Welcome to a brand new era! Hot on the heels of the sleep episodes, this week’s podcast is the first of two episodes on the theme of Eureka. Where do great ideas come from? It turns out it’s not that clear. So today on the podcast, Ben speaks with Pagan Kennedy, author of the new book Inventology; How we dream up things that change the world. You probably already know Pagan from her time writing the Who Made That column in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. She’s an expert on invention, and we grilled her in particular about one central tension in her book: the paradox of serendipitous inventing (like accidentally inventing penicillin) and new technologies that can focus research to look for inventions in certain areas (like bioinformatics). Hop on over to iTunes to subscribe to the podcast or give us a review: http://blnk.st/28JBVIY You can read a transcript of this podcast, and more good stuff, over at the Blinkist Magazine: http://bit.ly/29PaJHT That excellent intro and outro music you heard is by Nico Guiang. You can find more of it on Soundcloud [@niceaux] and Facebook [www.facebook.com/niceaux].