Latest / Walk the Pod: 10 minute walking / S65E2: Is confidence universal?

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S65E2: Is confidence universal? · Walk the Pod: 10 minute walking

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Walk the Pod, your daily walking
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: show where I take my podcast for a walk because
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: I don't have a dog. You're very welcome along. This
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: is episode 2, series 65 of the daily walking podcast
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: that tempts you away from your desk at lunchtime to
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  Speaker 1: walk in nature and look around to pay attention to
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: what's directly in front of you and to reconnect with
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  Speaker 1: your body for 10 minutes when your brain has been
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: busy during the morning on screens but suddenly our feet
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: are touching the floor we're moving around in the environment
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: and using our whole selves welcome to walk the pod
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I'm being punished today for talking yesterday about how it
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: so rarely rains on these walks. It is grey and
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: mizz and drizzling this lunchtime. But I'm excited to bring
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: you some thoughts from our new theme, which is confidence,
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  Speaker 1: in advance of your voice note arriving. I would love
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  Speaker 1: to know what confidence means to you. And I shared
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  Speaker 1: a few prompt questions earlier. Today, I would like to
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  Speaker 1: think about confidence and whether it is an absolute thing
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  Speaker 1: that we have in our lives or whether it varies
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  Speaker 1: depending on what subjects we're talking about or what we're doing.
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  Speaker 1: I think it must be the latter, mustn't it? I mean,
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  Speaker 1: some people are enormously confident. about everything. It's sort of
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  Speaker 1: a thing that young people sometimes do is they don't
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  Speaker 1: quite understand what they don't know and so they're very
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  Speaker 1: confident by everything. But probably we know that there are
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  Speaker 1: some things that we know nothing about so we can't
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  Speaker 1: be confident about all of them. That's an e-bike squeaking
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  Speaker 1: behind me. So if we have any sense, we might
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  Speaker 1: bring a general sense of our own competence as learners
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: to a new thing. But we also know we can't
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: be confident about it yet because it only just started.
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  Speaker 1: Your thoughts, please, on this or any other aspect of
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the topic. Go to walkthepod.com, press the button marked Leave
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: a Voice Note for Walk the Pod. And that will
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: take you to Speakpipe, where you'll be able to leave
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: up to 90 seconds of your beautiful voice on anything
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: that confidence makes you think of. It might not be
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: a real kind of put-together point. It might be just
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: that the conversation so far has reminded you of something
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  Speaker 1: you read or saw in a film or heard about
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  Speaker 1: or were talking to a friend about. It's... It's not
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  Speaker 1: necessary to come to me with a fully formed thought.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: You can just riff on the theme in any way
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  Speaker 1: that makes sense to you. Virginia Woolf wrote these amazing
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: stream of consciousness stories and Anne Carson, who just won
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize for Literature, said that reading Woolf, you
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: get a fragrance of what it's like to be alive.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: I'm happy with a fragrance of confidence. It doesn't have
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  Speaker 1: to be a whole thesis, just an idea or a
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  Speaker 1: thought or a mental image that came to mind will
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: help us on our way to explore this new theme.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: What can I see directly in front of me? Well,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I'm walking in White City this lunchtime.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: A sort of new... Well, I say new. It's been
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  Speaker 2: here for decades, obviously. It's been here for hundreds of years.
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  Speaker 2: But when I say new, what I mean is there's an.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Enormous amount of activity and building around here, and it
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: calls itself an innovation cluster. I remember working here at
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  Speaker 1: BBC Television Centre in the early 2000s. Was it the
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: early 2000s? Sort of the 2010s, I suppose. And.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: There was a big shopping centre being built and now
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Imperial College London have moved a huge chunk of their
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  Speaker 1: university here. So it is one of White City's campuses. Sorry,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Imperial's campuses. And it's got an enormous gym. It's all
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: going on. Why was I talking earlier about reconnecting with
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: our bodies? Well... Next week, I'm hosting a panel at
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Imperial Lates called What My Robot Taught Me About Being Human. Now,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: it's not about having a conversation with a robot and
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  Speaker 1: finding out what it thinks about being human. What it
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  Speaker 1: means is, what does it teach us about being human
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  Speaker 1: when we build robots? What do we suddenly learn about
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  Speaker 1: what it's like to be alive, to try to recreate something?
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  Speaker 1: with all the things that we think of when we
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: think about being alive. For example, when we try to
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  Speaker 1: build a fingernail on a robotic hand, we start to
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  Speaker 1: really understand what that fingernail is for in ways that
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  Speaker 1: it's quite difficult to do simply by dissecting existing tissues
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  Speaker 1: from real humans. We start to put things together and
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  Speaker 1: try to recreate nerve endings and similar things in a
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  Speaker 1: way that really starts to make us understand our own
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  Speaker 1: bodies differently in a way that anatomy maybe can't tell us,
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  Speaker 1: if that makes sense. So I'm talking to a professor
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  Speaker 1: from Imperial's Morph Lab and a couple of PhD students
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  Speaker 1: who are building robots with the feet that are very
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  Speaker 1: similar to mountain goats to try to understand how mountain
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  Speaker 1: goats' feet adapt to slopes. It should be absolutely fascinating.
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  Speaker 1: But what this professor was telling me in the briefing
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  Speaker 1: call that we had today was that actually we think
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  Speaker 1: of intelligence as being in our heads, but it's actually
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  Speaker 1: in our bodies much more than we possibly realize. If
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  Speaker 1: you think about walking up a flight of stairs, carrying
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  Speaker 1: a coffee and having a conversation with your family member,
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  Speaker 1: who's in another room whilst climbing the stairs, the amount
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  Speaker 1: of things that have to be happening in your brain
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  Speaker 1: and your body to coordinate that action so that you
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  Speaker 1: manage to make it up the stairs with the coffee
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  Speaker 1: intact is extraordinary. And the intelligence cannot simply be in
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  Speaker 1: the brain for that. Or if you think about riding
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  Speaker 1: a bicycle, the intelligence cannot all be in the brain.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Some of it is in the body itself. And so
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  Speaker 1: the more we reconnect with our bodies by our daily
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  Speaker 1: walking practice, for example, the more we're giving that body
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  Speaker 1: a say in what happens to us and how we
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: adapt to our environment in a way that actually culture
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: sort of strips off us quite a lot. The whole
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: knowledge worker thing has meant that we sort of wander
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  Speaker 1: around thinking, well, I'm just a brain in a jar, really,
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  Speaker 1: aren't I? Absolutely no reason whatsoever to have a body
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  Speaker 1: at all, really. But it's not true. poddies anyway if
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  Speaker 1: you're in in striking distance of south kensington in london
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  Speaker 1: uh register for the imperial late on robots which is
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  Speaker 1: happening next thursday 29th of october should be really really
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: fun none of which is what i can see directly
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  Speaker 1: in front of me anymore sort of drifted off topic
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  Speaker 1: um but i'm still working through white city so it's
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: all glass and steel today Lots of grass has been
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: laid and things and trees and stuff, but it's not
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: a park. So it's not quite the bucolic loveliness that
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: I like to walk in normally, but it is nevertheless
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: bustling and lots of people having their lunch and chatting
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: and agreeing with one another that, yes, it has suddenly
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  Speaker 1: got cold and, oh, it is horrible rain, etc., Thank
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  Speaker 1: you for walking with me, dear friends. It's been an
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: absolute delight to record episode two with you. I look
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: forward to bringing you episode three tomorrow. Do go to walkthepod.com
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: and leave me a voice note to let me know
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: what confidence makes you think of. And we'll discuss a
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: few other bits and bobs tomorrow and we'll carry on exploring.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: And I suspect we will gain momentum as the series progresses.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Take care of your beautiful mind and I shall speak
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: to you soon.