The Science Of Successful Learning Habits - Peter C Brown - #024

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, friends. This week, I'm very happy to say that we are going to learn how to learn. Peter C Brown is the co-author of Make It Stick. That book is about as seminal as you can get in the world of learning to learn. No matter what your area of pursuit in life, it's pretty likely that being able to expedite your capacity to intake information and then recall it at will is probably going to be pretty useful. And that doesn't matter if it's learning a new subject or learning a new physical skill, if it's knitting or archery or law. All of them require you to be able to remember and recall what it is that you're trying to learn. And Peter manages to lay out a really good framework for doing that today. In other news, the modern Wisdom YouTube channel has now crossed a thousand subscribers and has nearly hit two million watch minutes, which is pretty crazy in the first two months of it being up. So if you haven't already, please head to YouTube, search modern Wisdom Podcast and give it a subscribe. It would be a massive help. Also, if you haven't already, whatever platform you're on, whether it's TuneIn, FM, I'm not even sure if that's a podcast listening platform. We are everywhere, Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, wherever you're listening. Please try and give us a five star rating. I don't really know if it helps, but it strokes the ego a little bit. So do it if you can. But now we're going to learn how to learn Peter Brown, bring it on.
Mr. Peter Brown, welcome to modern Wisdom.

**Peter C Brown** (2:04)
Thank you, Chris. It's great to be here.

**Chris Williamson** (2:06)
How are you today?

**Peter C Brown** (2:08)
I'm doing just dandy. It's middle of summer here in Minnesota. It's a nice time to be here.

**Chris Williamson** (2:16)
Lovely. I've recently returned from the States, and the weather was fantastic, but apparently I've missed the one warm week that we get in the UK as well, while I was away. So I should have doubled down and just stayed home.

**Peter C Brown** (2:29)
I guess.

**Chris Williamson** (2:30)
I understand. So I want to get straight into it. Can you define to me what learning means?

**Peter C Brown** (2:41)
Yes. For me, I define learning as picking up knowledge or skill that resides in your memory and is available to you when you need it later, to solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity.

**Chris Williamson** (3:01)
Okay. That sounds like a very curated definition. Was that something that you came upon easily or is that something that you had to develop through a lot of thinking, a lot of conceptual deconstruction?

**Peter C Brown** (3:16)
No. I just made it up. But I made it up when I started working on writing the book, Make It Stick, because I felt that I owed the reader a definition of what we're talking about with learning. And I figured, well, I'll just try that and see if it holds up. And it held up fine.

**Chris Williamson** (3:31)
Was there a satisfactory definition in advance of that?

**Peter C Brown** (3:36)
No. I'm sorry, but I might have a problem with my headphones because that kind of comes on and off.

**Chris Williamson** (3:42)
Okay. I'm not too sure what's going on there. That might be on my side.

**Peter C Brown** (3:47)
Okay. So ask the question again.

**Chris Williamson** (3:50)
Was there an existing definition of learning that you were happy with, or was that one that you just created? Did that need to be there as far as you were concerned?

**Peter C Brown** (4:02)
I felt we owed the reader a definition. If we're writing a book about learning, we owed the reader a definition of what learning is. And so I thought about it a little bit and I wrote that. And I thought, we'll start with that and see if it holds up as we go through the book.
And it held up fine. Some people in science, the sciences refer to learning as three things. One being encoding, which is when you first encounter material, and it's encoded as traces in the hippocampus, consolidation. This is the process by which it moves, migrates over hours or days into other parts of the brain where long-term memories are stored. And retrieval, being able to recall it again later. So the scientists think of it as that's learning for them. For me, you learn it and you remember it, and you can recall it when you need it.

**Chris Williamson** (5:01)
I understand. So can you give us a little bit of background to the book, Make It Stick, and why you were compelled to write that?