Blinkist Podcast - Interviews | Personal Development | Productivity | Business | Psychology

Hey y'all, here's the first episode of our new podcast, Simplify. As we mentioned, we're phasing out this RSS feed so if you want to hear more great stuff subscribe to the new podcast! iTunes: http://apple.co/2sUeLYA PocketCasts: http://pca.st/qnKH Overcast: http://bit.ly/2uVNFlk RSS: http://bit.ly/2uVeF4j We talk to NYT bestselling author Gretchen Rubin about how to apply the ancient idea of “know thyself” to your fast-paced 21st-century life. Gretchen is the author of Better Than Before, The Happiness Project, and Happier at Home. Her books have sold more than 2 million copies worldwide in over thirty languages. **For more info, including links to everything we discussed in the episode and a voucher to use Blinkist for free, go to http://blnk.st/2t6dRMB** That excellent intro and outro music you heard is by Nico Guiang. You can find more of it on Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/niceaux) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/niceaux)

We have some good news and some bad news. Bad news first: we're moving off Soundcloud. Good/amazing news: our new podcast, Simplify, is launching next week! You can find it and listen to it on iTunes (or wherever else you get your podcasts). >>Check out the teaser and subscribe here: https://itunes.apple.com/de/podcast/simplify/id1255922966?l=en >>Our new landing page is here: https://www.blinkist.com/simplify We want to thank all you Soundclouders for supporting us through these many iterations of the Blinkist Podcast. We're excited to keep learning and growing with you! /// For a free trial of Blinkist, go to blinkist.com/friends and use the promo code: soundcloud /// That excellent music you heard is by Nico Guiang. You can find more of it on SoundCloud [@niceaux] and Facebook [www.facebook(.)com/niceaux].

After collapsing from burnout and sleep deprivation in 2007, Arianna Huffington threw herself into the latest research on sleep, discovering that the sleepless nights she’d depending on to build her career had had profound negative consequences on her health. What she learned was transformative: these days, Huffington is so dedicated to getting a full night of sleep, she won’t even bring her smartphone into the bedroom, for fear of accidentally stimulating a bout of insomnia. We spoke with Huffington about getting onboard the sleep train last year, after she published The Sleep Revolution, an account of her personal experiences with sleep deprivation and a passionate call for others to learn from her mistakes. We think it was a pretty great interview. And since the podcast crew is currently working on some super-special, super-secret new stuff that’s totally inspired by Arianna’s super-simple, super-good advice, we wanted to share the episode with you again today. We hope you enjoy. But more than that, we hope you get some sleep. //// Hop on over to iTunes to subscribe to the podcast or give us a review: blnk.st/28JBVIY //// That excellent music you heard is by Nico Guiang. You can find more of it on SoundCloud [@niceaux] and Facebook [www.facebook(.)com/niceaux].

Sandra Aamodt is a neuroscientist and former lifestyle dieter who wants to shout what she’s learned from the rooftops: according to the leading research in neuroscience, your brain has decided how much it wants you to weigh and will keep pushing you back to that weight *forever*. If you were already skeptical of popular weight loss methods, the ideas in Sandra’s book, Why Diets Make Us Fat, will be empowering. For the latest episode of Blinkist Podcast, I spoke to Sandra about the science of weight loss, the health advantages of mindful eating, what it’s like to sail to New Zealand, and why depriving yourself of office doughnuts never works. You can find her book on Blinkist: http://blnk.st/2qbi13o ---------------------- Highlights: On the myth of self-control: "It's just not true that somebody can simply decide to take control of their physiology and change it through sheer force of will." On decision fatigue: "Most people make 200 to 300 food-related decisions per day." On weight loss longevity: “Your brain will continue to try to push you back to the weight that it prefers forever.” On food and common sense: "The best way to approach food is by relaxing and enjoying it and paying attention to what your body wants from moment to moment, and trusting that people have been maintaining stable weights for hundreds and thousands of years before anybody ever invented that little scale that you use to weigh chicken breasts." -------------------------- 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]. Hop on over to iTunes to subscribe to the podcast or give us a review: blnk.st/28JBVIY

For this episode, we talked to Daniel Schacter, professor of psychology at Harvard and the author of The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. Our conversation focused on the three “sins of omission” outlined in his book on memory. The big bad memory sins, in order of badness, are: absent-mindedness, transience, blocking. Tune in for Schacter’s insights on how to remember what you have to remember and forget what you need to forget. ____ Highlights: "We tend to think of memory as being all about the past...But remembering the past has a lot in common with imagining the future." "The most dangerous [of the seven sins] is absentmindedness: absentmindedness is the breakdown at the interface of attention and memory." "The take-home message for everyday life: when you know there's something you want to remember...elaborate on that information. Try to relate it to other things you know." ____ 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]. Hop on over to iTunes to subscribe to the podcast or give us a review: blnk.st/28JBVIY

In honor of #MindfulMarch, we wanted to bring you two short, special editions of the Blinkist Podcast. Last week, we reviewed the best non-fiction books on mindfulness; today we ask whether mindfulness is the future of work and self care. There’s no doubt that mindfulness appeals to a lot of people. Like local woman, internet superhero, and podcast co-host, Caitlin. She and Ben sat down to work through their conflicted feelings about mindfulness, talk about the perks of loud breathing, and discuss a bunch of other relevant stuff, like - What’s the link between mindfulness and modern stress levels? - Does practicing mindfulness help heal traumas like PTSD? - Why are big-time corporations like Google investing in mindfulness? - Does being mindful really make you more creative and more productive? Will it give you good hair? - What is snake brain? Whether you’re a mindfulness skeptic or a true believer, their 20 minute conversation might persuade you to consider the opposing view. ____ Related podcasts: The Blinkist Primer: What Top Non-Fiction Says About Mindfulness And Meditation http://blnk.st/2ocx6kq Is That Even A Thing? Part 2: The Low-Down on What's Trending in Self-Help http://blnk.st/2ocOTI7 Rebranding Blinkist: How We Got App Store Features in 9 Countries http://blnk.st/2ocItZF Getting Things Done, Then What? The Truth Behind Productivity With David Allen http://blnk.st/2ocG0hP Blinkist Podcast Episode 1: Is That Even a Thing? http://blnk.st/2ocDA2P David Burkus Debunks Everything You Thought You Knew About Creativity http://blnk.st/2ocG9ln ____ 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]. Hop on over to iTunes to subscribe to the podcast or give us a review: http://blnk.st/28JBVIY

In honor of #MindfulMarch, we have two short special editions of the podcast to share. The first one is a Blinkist Primer on mindfulness. Caitlin and I went through our new Mindfulness and Happiness category (http://buff.ly/2nech5d) and the “Be More Mindful in 2017” curated reading list (http://buff.ly/2neqmzo) to pluck out the most essential info from top non-fiction books on mindfulness: 1. What do people talk about when they talk about mindfulness? 2. Why are all these people suddenly talking about it? 3. How can I get the benefits others get from it? 4. How do other people practice it? 5. What do the skeptics say? 6. Can I hear what Ben would sound like if he was my personal spiritual podcast guru? (Just kidding. Sort of.) The idea is that after this 20 minutes – or 10 if you listen at 2x speed, you podcast fanatics out there I see you! – you’ll know what everyone’s talking about in the whole mindfulness craze, and you’ll know how to apply it to your own life and understand why everyone keeps talking about it. Simple as that. ______ - Books we mentioned: Get Some Headspace http://buff.ly/2nH4E9U Waking Up http://buff.ly/2nH6F6a The Upside of your Dark Side http://buff.ly/2mUpMFs Wherever You Go, There You Are http://buff.ly/2nHkAZP The Mindful Athlete http://buff.ly/2nHiKIC - 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]. - Hop on over to iTunes to subscribe to the podcast or give us a review: http://blnk.st/28JBVIY

Hey guys, it's Ben. Before you listen to this week's interview with Adam Alter, author of IRRESISTIBLE: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (Penguin Press; March 7, 2017), please take our exciting survey -------> goo.gl/dYUjeo (It's just eight questions and takes literally two minutes to fill out. Email me at podcast(at)blinkist(dot)com if you can do it faster. Big thanks to those of you that already have.) This episode is an interview with psychology and marketing professor, researcher, writer, speaker, and overall very smart person Adam Alter, author of IRRESISTIBLE: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (Penguin Press; March 7, 2017). Alter published the bestselling and amazing and terrifying Drunk Tank Pink in 2013 and is currently on tour talking about his brand new book, Irresistible. The reviews are just starting to come out, and those of us lucky enough to get advance copies are all itchy to talk about it. //// Use code irresistible at Blinkist.com/Friends to get 14 free days of Blinkist. /// Check out the full transcript on the Blinkist Magazine: http://blnk.st/2mpnWiX Then read Irresistible on Blinkist: http://buff.ly/2mkGnoI //// Hop on over to iTunes to subscribe to the podcast or give us a review: blnk.st/28JBVIY //// That excellent music you heard is by Nico Guiang. You can find more of it on SoundCloud [@niceaux] and Facebook [www.facebook(.)com/niceaux].

Hey guys, it's Ben. Before you listen to this week's interview with Rachel Hills, author of The Sex Myth, please take our **~~exciting~~** survey: -------> https://goo.gl/dYUjeo (It's just eight questions and takes literally two minutes to fill out. Email me at podcast(at)blinkist.com if you can do it faster.) Today we have an interview with Rachel Hills, author of The Sex Myth. We talk about sex, Disney movies and how to not let sex make you anxious — which, in her view, is a major societal problem. Hills is a writer and activist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, Buzzfeed, Jezebel, and more. You can check out her work at TheSexMyth(.)com. //// Use code sexmyth at Blinkist.com/Friends to get 14 free days of Blinkist. //// Hop on over to iTunes to subscribe to the podcast or give us a review: http://blnk.st/28JBVIY //// That excellent music you heard is by Nico Guiang. You can find more of it on SoundCloud [@niceaux] and Facebook [www.facebook(.)com/niceaux].

Hey guys, it’s Ben. I just wanted to post this quick programming note: I’m away for a little bit because, well, I’m having a baby! Eek! But before I head out for family time, Caitlin and I put together some highlights from all the podcasts we made in 2016. In 2016 we grew into a podcast with tens of thousands of listens. So this episode is a bit of a look back at how we did that, via a 2016 Blinkist podcast Sampler episode. I think it shows how we’ve not only grown and learned a lot about how to make nice podcasts, but also how important it is to talk to authors and thinkers, to hear them open up about how they came up with the ideas that change our lives. It’s definitely changed how I approach challenges, or my semi-creative work. As usual, hop on over to iTunes to subscribe to the podcast or give us a review: http://blnk.st/28JBVIY 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].