Amy Edmondson

speaker

344 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 3 Aug

Amy Edmondson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Hidden Brain · Making the Most of Your Mistakes · 3 Aug 2026 podcast

And each of these experiments that fail is a disappointment.

And yet, they doggedly continued.

Then this young scientist named Steve Knudsen in her lab

went to the literature and found a rather obscure paper from the 1960s.

And it was talking about a reagent called glioxal.

And because of the properties of glioxal, Steve hypothesized that it might work in their goal to separate the strands of RNA.

And lo and behold, it worked.

Yes, they want to succeed.

But because they have chosen to try to succeed in new territory, Ken, whether that's scientific research or a blind date, they're willing to do the work.

Yes, and you could think of that as a part of wisdom and a part of building characters, that ability to withstand the setbacks that are just ordinary parts of our jobs, they're parts of our lives.

And it's essential to appreciate how necessary they are, especially if you are trying to pursue great things.

If you're trying to make a contribution, if you're trying to live a full life, you have to learn to reframe the setbacks as necessary as part of being human.

And not as bad, I don't like it, to, oh, that's disappointing, but it's okay.

Yeah, I mean, if Edison was sincere, and I'm going to believe that he was, he truly had learned everything.

how to think of each and every one of those failures as valuable information, as true discoveries in their own right.

So that kind of cheerful attitude can seem Pollyanna-ish, but I disagree.

I think it's actually scientifically valid.

I think especially once you're an adult and once you have maybe some success or some area of expertise, it is so tempting.

to want to avoid failures at all costs, to not want to get anything wrong.

So that would lead you to basically close yourself off from adventure, to not pick up a new sport or make new friends or pick up a hobby or shift careers in some way that might be meaningful but scary to you.

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