I love your newsletter and found this fascinating. However, I do have a correction. I absolutely guarantee you that TV writers do not look at social media for fan theories. It’s a bit insulting to those of us who write for TV to say that fans, who only watch what we produce, do a better job of it than we do. One day in a writer’s room would disabuse anyone of thinking this. By the way, I am also a huge fan of Dark and am looking forward to their new show. :-)
Apologies, Kay - that probably speaks of my utter lack of experience of writers' rooms. (Well, it does, no "probably" about it.) I'll add a correction as such. My bad, entirely. And yes, the new show from the makers of" Dark" looks terrific!
Ahh! A friend (thank you Jolene) reminded me of this, which is the thing I read, forgot about and mangled into my disrespectful way of putting things here:
So, in *some specific cases* (in this case, with 'Severence'), it seems there is some cross-pollination going on between writers rooms and fan theorists. But I still take my poorly phrased sweeping statements back. :)
I take mine back too! I should have said that I’ve never been in a room where we paid any attention to fan theories, and I would just never do it. That way lies madness. We’ve seen how quickly fans turn on writers! There’s always gonna be someone who figures it out, but the key is to tell a story that is about much more than the twists. That obsession, I think, is where a lot of shows have stumbled.
Yeah, I can imagine that being incredibly stressful. I mean, Dan Erickson in that article is very clear about how all the anxiety is affecting him. Opening that door WIDER? Ye gawds. Madness indeed - and...the opposite of how many writers learn to write? ("Write with the door closed" and all that.) I guess it's a way of doing things that some people are willing to experiment with, but - gnnnn.
The last time I was in London (ahem, 32 years ago), my friend who I was visiting insisted I buy an A-Zed, supposedly the most comprehensive collection of maps of the city that existed. “Not even native-Londoners will leave home without it”, she said. I wonder if Londoners still do this, or if it’s gone the way of Google Maps. And it amazes me that the cabbies also don’t simply use Google Maps.
Though I’m glad they don’t if only because it would make them (and makes us) significantly dumber. Studies have shown that the use of GPS technologies has dulled the brain functions that feed both memory and spatial awareness. I’m also weirdly convinced that the passivity it encourages primes us for fascism, or at least feeds our attraction to it. https://ashasanaker.substack.com/p/how-do-we-get-where-were-going
Thanks, Asha. Yes, they still use the A-Z! I know this because I read it's still the standard map used for studying The Knowledge, to the point that the types of roads are known by their colours on the A-Z - "take the orange on the left" and so on.
And I kinda feel the same way about the passivity of devices that tell us where to go. Feels like something to really dig into, to learn what the hard facts seem to be
Very interesting. I think I inadvertently/sort of apply the looking at five things by going for morning walks and taking pictures. I often explore the same neighborhoods over and over, and after I've taken pics of the obvious things -- the Acropolis, Bigfoot, the alien spaceship -- I start looking more closely to see the less obvious things that i have missed. And doing that certainly fixes those neighborhoods much more firmly in my mind than anything else.
This is a great way of seeing new layers to the same places!
Rob Walker, author of "The Art Of Noticing" (and a Substack on the topic: https://robwalker.substack.com/), suggests (amongst 130 other suggestions in the book) going on treasure hunts for specific items - in his case, he looks for security cameras. A "mental search image", in the words of Alexandra Horowitz, whose fantastic book "On Looking" is about going for walks round the same neighbourhood and trying to see them with fresh eyes...
The idea is, if we have an idea of what we're looking for, it makes us search harder for it, instead of just passively soaking up everything our eyes are showing us until our attention is overwhelmed by non-relevant things. Makes perfect sense to me!
I love this idea of collected curiosity as a way to memory. Also the act of attention, which is, in a way, an act of prayer, a way to turn towards the world rather than away or indifferent to it. Marvellous stuff!
Yes! Attention as an act of reverence is such a powerful thing to explore. To give attention is to receive and bestow something meaningful, so the act itself is something to cherish and appreciate better...
But also, it's a human resource, a commodity, and a thing of individual power. A thing we've been slyly taught to devalue almost into nothingness, while it makes real money for other people who have perhaps less scruples than they should...
Looking at you, social media, with all your "free" platforms.
I don't think they say that, but - they should! You get *caught* otherwise, and that's just a huge amount of bother that nobody needs when they're trying to carve out a career using intellectual copyright theft as a growth strategy.
Mine too! And as Mark reminded me in another comment, the conclusions of this study into what it does to the brains of the cab drivers is astonishing: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2011.9602
This is such a great post. As an historical fiction writer, epistemic curiosity is probably life-blood.
But I'm also in the process of learning a new choreography at my ballet class. I'm 71 and find the only way to learn the steps is indeed by rote. What I find really interesting, is that last year's dance was also learned by rote, performed, and then (in my head at least) dissolved! I would ask why?
As a septuagenarian, do those routines have to dissolve to make way for new ones? When all is said and done, the steps and positions are the same - just reconfigured and re-timed. But I haven't the time to think about the why's, I just have to do it! Thanks Mike, for stirring my grey cells.
Thanks so much, Prue. Yeah - rote learning does work! It's easy, which is a big advantage because when it's easy, you stick with doing it until it's all done. And that means it's good for passing short-term tests, as long as they're not too big & complex - but I gather it's generally pretty bad for making long-term memories. It sounds like your experience was like that: after you performed it, your mind let go of all that information. Job done.
But maybe it didn't need to? Our memories are *vast* - I'm not sure what the limits of the capacity of them are, but from the work of Oliver Sacks etc, it seems very few of us get anywhere near those limits and we always carry more of the past than we think. One example that I reckon everyone has experienced: the way a specific flavour can trigger a memory, sometimes in fascinatingly "real"-feeling detail...
And also the way the body remembers things too, with huge implications for dancers, musicians, artists and so on. (You may enjoy reading the book I mention here: https://everythingisamazing.substack.com/p/mind-in-the-gap Lots of fascinating findings of how we "think outside our brains"....)
That ironing board story is hilarious! Now you’ve got me thinking of some of the dumbest things I ever did that I have never lived down.
I think walking in nature with a camera has helped me tremendously with this type of learning. When you really look at things a whole mess of other stuff opens up. Like the field of goldenrod which looks like nothing much is there but you get close and look closer and there are all manner of small bees and bugs moving about within it. And really my job too where not only do I have to solve problems, but almost always with less time and resources than the obvious solutions would require.
I am so grateful to get this reminder of the kind of curiosity you wrote about early on! I took a long hike yesterday by myself and it was so enriching and uplifting and a reminder, also, of how much each of us needs that kind of sustenance, what relationship we can have with the world when it receives our attention and curiosity.
I feel like I've still only scratched the surface of the theory side of things. SO MUCH STILL TO READ. Whew. But I have Ian Leslie to thank for doing a lot of my reading for me: http://ian-leslie.com/curious/
What a gift a walk can be. And also how many different things it can be. I went for a headphones-in, march-briskly walk a few weeks ago and covered eight miles. I heard nothing but the audiobook I was finishing and I gave my legs a proper workout I felt for a week, and I loved it.
And a few days ago I went for a five-mile walk in which my headphones stayed at home, my phone stayed in my rucksack and I just took great deep draughts of the world and was rapt the whole time, all the sights and sounds and smells and everything. I don't think I thought a single coherent thought in two hours (but somehow had loads of ideas when I later sat down to write), and I loved that too.
A walk is never just "a walk".
As I think someone said in a very good book on the subject that I read...?
By....Antonia something-or-other...?
.........?
No, it's gone. (I'll forget my own head, one of these days.)
My goal since last spring has been to focus on more walks without the headphones. It has always been a significant amount of my podcast-listening time but I have indeed noticed a lot of differences in my attention and focus when I get long walks without the headphones.
Pshaw. Lots of important people loved that book. *I* loved that book, and I'm SUPER important...
I've been finding value in making a decision about them beforehand, as in: "this is a walk without headphones" instead of slipping into the audiobook-listening habit. Having a sense of agency about the whole thing makes it easy for me to change gears, somehow, to reprogram myself from the start. Otherwise I'll just bug myself with second-guess thinking, "uh, I really should be putting natural sounds in my ears" or "dammit, I really should finish that book"....
Oh, yeah, the intentionality makes a lot of sense. I'm the same, if I think about it. It's just so automatic, and then if I remember to stop myself, it's like I'm waiting for the walk to be over so I can listen.
Oh my gosh yes, walking without headphones is a completely different experience! I almost never walk with headphones any more. There’s just so much I miss with them on!
This essay is fantastic. I've been fascinated by the idea of The Knowledge since I first encountered it and I love how you used it as a springboard to cover both memory and problem solving. Thank you, Mike.
Cheers, Mark! Yeah, it's an incredible thing - I'd love to chat to someone who has been through the whole thing and passed the final test. In fact, that would be a great follow-up interview for this piece. Hmmm. *makes a note*
I love your newsletter and found this fascinating. However, I do have a correction. I absolutely guarantee you that TV writers do not look at social media for fan theories. It’s a bit insulting to those of us who write for TV to say that fans, who only watch what we produce, do a better job of it than we do. One day in a writer’s room would disabuse anyone of thinking this. By the way, I am also a huge fan of Dark and am looking forward to their new show. :-)
Apologies, Kay - that probably speaks of my utter lack of experience of writers' rooms. (Well, it does, no "probably" about it.) I'll add a correction as such. My bad, entirely. And yes, the new show from the makers of" Dark" looks terrific!
Aww I appreciate that!! Looking forward to the next issue!
Ahh! A friend (thank you Jolene) reminded me of this, which is the thing I read, forgot about and mangled into my disrespectful way of putting things here:
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/08/fan-theories-severance-yellowjackets-westworld/671079/
So, in *some specific cases* (in this case, with 'Severence'), it seems there is some cross-pollination going on between writers rooms and fan theorists. But I still take my poorly phrased sweeping statements back. :)
I take mine back too! I should have said that I’ve never been in a room where we paid any attention to fan theories, and I would just never do it. That way lies madness. We’ve seen how quickly fans turn on writers! There’s always gonna be someone who figures it out, but the key is to tell a story that is about much more than the twists. That obsession, I think, is where a lot of shows have stumbled.
Yeah, I can imagine that being incredibly stressful. I mean, Dan Erickson in that article is very clear about how all the anxiety is affecting him. Opening that door WIDER? Ye gawds. Madness indeed - and...the opposite of how many writers learn to write? ("Write with the door closed" and all that.) I guess it's a way of doing things that some people are willing to experiment with, but - gnnnn.
The last time I was in London (ahem, 32 years ago), my friend who I was visiting insisted I buy an A-Zed, supposedly the most comprehensive collection of maps of the city that existed. “Not even native-Londoners will leave home without it”, she said. I wonder if Londoners still do this, or if it’s gone the way of Google Maps. And it amazes me that the cabbies also don’t simply use Google Maps.
Though I’m glad they don’t if only because it would make them (and makes us) significantly dumber. Studies have shown that the use of GPS technologies has dulled the brain functions that feed both memory and spatial awareness. I’m also weirdly convinced that the passivity it encourages primes us for fascism, or at least feeds our attraction to it. https://ashasanaker.substack.com/p/how-do-we-get-where-were-going
Thanks, Asha. Yes, they still use the A-Z! I know this because I read it's still the standard map used for studying The Knowledge, to the point that the types of roads are known by their colours on the A-Z - "take the orange on the left" and so on.
And I kinda feel the same way about the passivity of devices that tell us where to go. Feels like something to really dig into, to learn what the hard facts seem to be
.. Hmm...
Very interesting. I think I inadvertently/sort of apply the looking at five things by going for morning walks and taking pictures. I often explore the same neighborhoods over and over, and after I've taken pics of the obvious things -- the Acropolis, Bigfoot, the alien spaceship -- I start looking more closely to see the less obvious things that i have missed. And doing that certainly fixes those neighborhoods much more firmly in my mind than anything else.
This is a great way of seeing new layers to the same places!
Rob Walker, author of "The Art Of Noticing" (and a Substack on the topic: https://robwalker.substack.com/), suggests (amongst 130 other suggestions in the book) going on treasure hunts for specific items - in his case, he looks for security cameras. A "mental search image", in the words of Alexandra Horowitz, whose fantastic book "On Looking" is about going for walks round the same neighbourhood and trying to see them with fresh eyes...
The idea is, if we have an idea of what we're looking for, it makes us search harder for it, instead of just passively soaking up everything our eyes are showing us until our attention is overwhelmed by non-relevant things. Makes perfect sense to me!
I love this idea of collected curiosity as a way to memory. Also the act of attention, which is, in a way, an act of prayer, a way to turn towards the world rather than away or indifferent to it. Marvellous stuff!
Yes! Attention as an act of reverence is such a powerful thing to explore. To give attention is to receive and bestow something meaningful, so the act itself is something to cherish and appreciate better...
But also, it's a human resource, a commodity, and a thing of individual power. A thing we've been slyly taught to devalue almost into nothingness, while it makes real money for other people who have perhaps less scruples than they should...
Looking at you, social media, with all your "free" platforms.
Wow, those paragraphs are the beginnings of another very powerful essay!
I think I paraphrased all that from Jenny Odell. 😁 (What, you thought I was being *original*? I don't do that kind of thing. FAR too much effort.)
As they say, steal well!
And hide your tracks!
I don't think they say that, but - they should! You get *caught* otherwise, and that's just a huge amount of bother that nobody needs when they're trying to carve out a career using intellectual copyright theft as a growth strategy.
Hypothetically, I mean. Yes.
*sweats a bit*
It's a lot of work, Mike, but I believe in you 😂
Thank you for the lovely mention, Mike! My fascination with The Knowledge only deepens...
Mine too! And as Mark reminded me in another comment, the conclusions of this study into what it does to the brains of the cab drivers is astonishing: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2011.9602
(And thank YOU for the *far* lovelier mention.)
This is such a great post. As an historical fiction writer, epistemic curiosity is probably life-blood.
But I'm also in the process of learning a new choreography at my ballet class. I'm 71 and find the only way to learn the steps is indeed by rote. What I find really interesting, is that last year's dance was also learned by rote, performed, and then (in my head at least) dissolved! I would ask why?
As a septuagenarian, do those routines have to dissolve to make way for new ones? When all is said and done, the steps and positions are the same - just reconfigured and re-timed. But I haven't the time to think about the why's, I just have to do it! Thanks Mike, for stirring my grey cells.
Thanks so much, Prue. Yeah - rote learning does work! It's easy, which is a big advantage because when it's easy, you stick with doing it until it's all done. And that means it's good for passing short-term tests, as long as they're not too big & complex - but I gather it's generally pretty bad for making long-term memories. It sounds like your experience was like that: after you performed it, your mind let go of all that information. Job done.
But maybe it didn't need to? Our memories are *vast* - I'm not sure what the limits of the capacity of them are, but from the work of Oliver Sacks etc, it seems very few of us get anywhere near those limits and we always carry more of the past than we think. One example that I reckon everyone has experienced: the way a specific flavour can trigger a memory, sometimes in fascinatingly "real"-feeling detail...
And also the way the body remembers things too, with huge implications for dancers, musicians, artists and so on. (You may enjoy reading the book I mention here: https://everythingisamazing.substack.com/p/mind-in-the-gap Lots of fascinating findings of how we "think outside our brains"....)
Thanks Mike. And will follow up the text!
That ironing board story is hilarious! Now you’ve got me thinking of some of the dumbest things I ever did that I have never lived down.
I think walking in nature with a camera has helped me tremendously with this type of learning. When you really look at things a whole mess of other stuff opens up. Like the field of goldenrod which looks like nothing much is there but you get close and look closer and there are all manner of small bees and bugs moving about within it. And really my job too where not only do I have to solve problems, but almost always with less time and resources than the obvious solutions would require.
I am so grateful to get this reminder of the kind of curiosity you wrote about early on! I took a long hike yesterday by myself and it was so enriching and uplifting and a reminder, also, of how much each of us needs that kind of sustenance, what relationship we can have with the world when it receives our attention and curiosity.
I feel like I've still only scratched the surface of the theory side of things. SO MUCH STILL TO READ. Whew. But I have Ian Leslie to thank for doing a lot of my reading for me: http://ian-leslie.com/curious/
What a gift a walk can be. And also how many different things it can be. I went for a headphones-in, march-briskly walk a few weeks ago and covered eight miles. I heard nothing but the audiobook I was finishing and I gave my legs a proper workout I felt for a week, and I loved it.
And a few days ago I went for a five-mile walk in which my headphones stayed at home, my phone stayed in my rucksack and I just took great deep draughts of the world and was rapt the whole time, all the sights and sounds and smells and everything. I don't think I thought a single coherent thought in two hours (but somehow had loads of ideas when I later sat down to write), and I loved that too.
A walk is never just "a walk".
As I think someone said in a very good book on the subject that I read...?
By....Antonia something-or-other...?
.........?
No, it's gone. (I'll forget my own head, one of these days.)
Anyway, great read, that.
Meh. That book was forgettable 😂
My goal since last spring has been to focus on more walks without the headphones. It has always been a significant amount of my podcast-listening time but I have indeed noticed a lot of differences in my attention and focus when I get long walks without the headphones.
Pshaw. Lots of important people loved that book. *I* loved that book, and I'm SUPER important...
I've been finding value in making a decision about them beforehand, as in: "this is a walk without headphones" instead of slipping into the audiobook-listening habit. Having a sense of agency about the whole thing makes it easy for me to change gears, somehow, to reprogram myself from the start. Otherwise I'll just bug myself with second-guess thinking, "uh, I really should be putting natural sounds in my ears" or "dammit, I really should finish that book"....
Oh, yeah, the intentionality makes a lot of sense. I'm the same, if I think about it. It's just so automatic, and then if I remember to stop myself, it's like I'm waiting for the walk to be over so I can listen.
Oh my gosh yes, walking without headphones is a completely different experience! I almost never walk with headphones any more. There’s just so much I miss with them on!
Once I started leaving them out, putting them back in felt less appealing!
This essay is fantastic. I've been fascinated by the idea of The Knowledge since I first encountered it and I love how you used it as a springboard to cover both memory and problem solving. Thank you, Mike.
Cheers, Mark! Yeah, it's an incredible thing - I'd love to chat to someone who has been through the whole thing and passed the final test. In fact, that would be a great follow-up interview for this piece. Hmmm. *makes a note*
I believe scientists have found an increase in hippocampus size in cabbies who've learned the Knowledge but I don't recall where I read this.
You're not wrong! https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2011.9602 I'd read it too - and forgotten it. Cheers for reminding me!
Great read, Mike! Also: looking forward to any new book that has the word “Enchantment” in the title.
Thank you! And I honestly can't wait to read Katherine's book. If *that*s just the title....whew.
Stealing the Washington monument example (will use in a presentation I'm working on)! Thanks for a great read Mike!
Thank you, Oleg. :) Appreciate your kind words.
You also solved a dilemma for me on how to use an expiring audible credit - on Katherine May’s new book!