#46: Nicholas Christakis on Mastering Skills

Cognitive Revolution

To say Nicholas Christakis has mastered a few skills throughout his career would almost certainly be underselling it. Nicholas is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale. He has an MD from Harvard, a PhD in sociology from Penn, and a masters in public health from Harvard. Throughout the pandemic, he's been working tirelessly to bring reliable information to the public sphere. He's made numerous appearance as an expert on up-to-the-minute pandemic info on Sam Harris' podcast, and also managed to churn out an entirely new book contextualizing the current pandemic in our species' social history. This conversation puts all that in the bigger picture of his overarching career -- which spans everything from abstract analyses of social networks to hands-on care as a Hospice physician. We get into many different topics, mainly about how he brings together all these different perspectives to develop a holistic understanding of human social behavior as it plays out in the unfolding of historical events. You check out his new book, Apollo's Arrow.