MetaLearn Podcast

Kalid Azad is the founder of Better Explained, one of the world's most popular maths websites that makes hard concepts easy to understand. After studying Computer Science at Princeton, Kalid spent a few years at Microsoft as a program manager, founded a Y Combinator startup, and currently works as a developer. For many people, maths is the subject they used to hate most in school and they carry th...

Niklas Jansen is the co-founder of Blinkist, an app that distills the core insights from non-fiction books into 15-minute summaries that you can access from your smartphone or tablet in written or audio form. If you're someone who wonders about how to apply what you read in everyday life, then the app is worth checking out, because the short summaries or "blinks" cut away the excess and drive you...

The MetaLearn podcast has reached the big 5-0. The show is now in 127 countries with listeners on every continent and is growing rapidly – in fact in the first 3 months of 2017, the podcast had 40% more downloads than the whole of 2016! In today's special episode you'll have the chance to hear my reflections on learning and education after fifty episodes of the podcast. I'm interviewed by Joshua F...

They're two words that get thrown around a lot but what exactly is the difference between knowledge and wisdom? Knowledge is something closer to what the Ancient Greeks called Episteme – a specialised knowledge in a particular field or an ability in a skill that's descriptive or explanatory in nature. Wisdom is something that's harder to define but it's closer to what the Greeks called Phronesis –...

Ben Medder is a movement coach who has trained in martial arts, athletics and parkour. He's taken inspiration from the likes of Ido Portal, best known for his work with MMA fighter Connor McGregor, and the Fighting Monkey and Evolve Move Play Methods. Many people don't identify as being athletic but physical skills can be learned like anything else. While you're not going to become the next Usain...

In modern society, learning has become synonymous with taking in information passively and retaining it. Students view teachers as people who are supposed to deliver information into their heads so that they can recall it when required. But this is the one of the most damaging misconceptions we carry into our lives because the truth is that all learning is active. It isn't a process of having some...

Barbara Oakley is an educator and writer who's empowering people all over the world to learn more effectively. Barb is best known for her role as the lead instructor on Coursera's Learning How To Learn – the most popular online course in the world last year – and her bestselling book A Mind for Numbers. For all the hours we spend in school it's remarkable that we're never taught how to learn. This...

Is it really possible to learn from animals? For thousands of years, all kinds of authorities have been repeating the idea that we humans are exceptional and by far the most intelligent in the animal kingdom. So it's easy to see why we humans think we're much smarter than animals – but is that actually the case? The fact that animals don't understand us in some ways, and that we don't understand t...

In ancient cultures, mythology served a number of other important functions on an individual and personal level which may not be immediately obvious. On a personal level mythology created a sense of awe about the mystery of human existence. By creating this sense of wonder, mythology helped people to learn about their own lives in a way that few other fields could. On a social level, mythology edu...

Zahra Davidson is a multidisciplinary designer innovating in education by encouraging people to learn in communities. She is the founder of Enrol Yourself, an organization that gives people the structure and support to pursue learning marathons (long term learning projects) with other lifelong learners. When we leave school we often miss out on one of the most important components of learning anyt...

Children are full of life. They're constantly growing and learning. They embody curiosity and the creative spirit. And these are all qualities we could all use more of in every area of our lives. We become so used to learning things we don't really want to at school and university that we stop asking questions. We forget what it's actually like to learn something we love and to learn it in a way t...

Dr Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist and writer who is committed to exploring the mysteries of the brain and mind. He is best known for his book The Master and His Emissary in which he explores the differences between the brain's right and left hemispheres and their effects on history and culture over the centuries. Most scientists have long abandoned the attempt to understand why nature separate...

Most people over estimate how hard it is to learn a new skill because they confuse getting good at something with becoming a master in it. This short episode will give you a simple framework to take you from the novice, beginner stage to an intermediate level of proficiency as enjoyably and effectively as possible in the skill you want to learn. In this episode you'll learn how to: - Filter learni...

The idea that we all learn differently has been appropriated by various theorists who suggest that most of us can be placed into one of several predefined categories - or learning styles. While I'm reluctant to promote one specific category set when it comes to learning, I think the process of looking at them can be helpful in getting you to reflect on your own experience and understand what works...

In this short episode I review what I learned in 2016, sharing my successes and failures in everything from the process of starting a podcast, to holding discussion groups as a university lecturer and pursuing my own language learning projects. In ancient Roman myth, Janus was the god of transitions. The early part of January, named after Janus, was traditionally seen as a time for reflection on t...

Ellen Jovin is a polyglot, writer and the founder of Syntaxis, a communication skills training firm based in New York. In 2009, she started a project to learn as much as she could of the languages spoken in New York in a year. But once she started, she never stopped - her schedule has included 21 different languages involving a total of nine different alphabets and writing systems - and she's stil...

Shane Parrish is the founder of Farnam Street, an online intellectual hub that covers topics like human misjudgment, strategy, and philosophy to help readers make better decisions. We all make decisions every day which ultimately affect the results we get in our lives. But so few of us ever stop to think critically about the process we use for making those decisions, let alone try to improve it. S...

Michael Levi Harris is an actor, filmmaker and polyglot who runs the accent coaching business My Accent Guy. Michael trained at the Guildhall School in London as an actor and has since been involved in a number of theatre productions. He also wrote and starred in the short film 'The Hyperglot'. Actors are masters of using body language and non-verbal communication to develop characters and connect...

Paddy Milner is a musician and songwriter who's widely recognised as one of the leading blues piano players in the world. He's currently the piano player of choice for Sir Tom Jones, following several years with the late great Jack Bruce and his current group Londonola plays homegrown British music with a strong dose of New Orleans spirit. On top of being an exceptional musician, Paddy is also a g...

The human brain is a remarkable tool but so few of us actually know how to use it properly. Advances in neuroscience and cognitive psychology mean that we now know more about the brain than at any point in history, so there's a whole host of knowledge out there that can help us understand and use our brains better. This episode will introduce you to the weird and wonderful world of the brain, show...

Luca Lampariello is a polyglot and language teacher who runs his own language learning company LinguaCore and the highly popular blog The Polyglot Dream. Luca speaks 13 languages and is currently fluent in 10 of them but he's always adding more to his repertoire. One of the main reasons I love learning languages is because speaking them is an amazing way to connect to other people and cultures and...

Language learning seems far more complicated than it is. Ultimately it's a skill that can be broken down into three sub skills - grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation - which you'll need to develop to get to a good level of proficiency. But one of the things that's rarely discussed is the importance of community for language learning. This is something I've experienced on my language learning jour...

Mariana Marquez and Emma Zangs are two public speaking coaches and choreographers, who teach people to speak better and improve their body language through their company MetaSpeech. One of the things that gives the most bang for the buck in public speaking is good body language, but it's something people often ignore and fail to improve. As choreographers and movement directors Mariana and Emma br...

Julian Treasure is a communications expert, acclaimed TED Speaker and the founder of The Sound Agency, a consultancy that helps businesses improve their results by becoming more conscious about their sound. Studies have shown that we spend 60% of our communication time listening but the average person can only remember 10% of that 3 days later. And every one of us needs to learn how to listen bett...

Richard Nisbett is the Theodore Newcomb Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Michigan and has written 3 great books for a lay audience on mental models, the nature of intelligence and how thinking differs across cultures. Understanding the patterns behind our thought processes is a crucial part of developing self awareness and improving as learners, as we're often subject to cogniti...