Michael Pollan

There's a tension there between what the economy considers productive thought and what emotionally is productive thought or creativity.

Do you have a pencil or pen in your hand?

Completely agree.

Kalina edited this book, The Oxford Companion to Spontaneous Thought, and there is a history of spontaneous thought that looked at how incredibly creative people, composers, novelists, how they spent their days.

And they only worked like four or five hours.

They spent a lot of time in unstructured wandering, walking.

And we all know there's a connection between creative thinking and walking.

It's much more likely to break through if you're stuck in your writing or whatever else you're doing, if you get up from the desk and take a walk instead of just like worrying that problem.

So, yeah, we could reorganize our lives in a way.

But the one thing we do know is how...

Our phones, our social media are bringing down that viewpoint, keeping us from looking up, keeping us from making associations because there's no time for associations.

You know, you're just scrolling and something else comes in and you're getting another little hit.

And so we've shrunken that space.

And it is a space of creativity.

And, you know, there's no reason we can't reclaim it, but we have a lot of trouble doing it because these algorithms are really sophisticated and they know how our minds work.

When are you most creative?

Walking, I would say.

That's where I walk a lot.

I walk in the Berkeley Hills.

And although even then, I have to say, half the time I fill my head, I have my AirPods on.