The Learner Lab

Learning is the most important skill. Great learners are agile, resilient, and adaptable. Great learners can acquire new skills when new demands arise. In times of change, learners will thrive.

The best news: learning is a skill – one that anyone can get better at.

This book will provide the tools and science to help you do just that.

Learner Lab Website
Trevor Ragan
Learner the Audiobook
Chapters & Release Schedule:
Episode 1 – Oct 19
Chapter 1 – Rudy
Chapter 2 – Why Learning
Chapter 3 – Tigers
Chapter 4 – Why We Zoo Tiger

Episode 2 – Oct 26
Chapter 5 - Mindsets & Learning
Chapter 6 - Mindsets & Action
Chapter 7 - Misconceptions
Chapter 8 - How to Build a Growth Mindset

Episode 3 – Nov 1
Chapter 9 - Fear, Emotions & Learning
Chapter 10 - How to Overcome Fear
Chapter 11 - Flaws of Fearless
Chapter 12 - Putting Emotions in the Backseat

Episode 4 – Nov 22
Chapter 13 - Finding Opportunities within Challenges
Chapter 14 - Turning Resilience on it's Head
Chapter 15 - Learning like a Scientist
Chapter 16 - Into the Wild

Episode 5 – Coming Soon
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19

Hardiness is a strong predictor of our ability to deal with challenges and change. Decades of research shows it plays an important role in both learning and resilience. Yet, it doesn’t get enough attention – it’s time to change that.
Quick Links:
Watch on YouTubeHardiness by Paul BartoneThe Learner Lab
One of the world’s leading experts in hardiness, Paul Bartone joins to talk about his research. We focus on why hardiness is an important topic for learning, and different strategies to build it.

Paul Bartone is a Visiting Research Fellow at the National Defense University, and Adjunct Faculty in Psychiatry, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Research interests focus on understanding individual differences in stress responding, and clarifying the role of personality hardiness and related factors in facilitating healthy adaptations to stressful conditions, as well as organizational and personal strategies for increasing hardiness.

This is a great episode for both individual learning & leadership.

The way we think about stress can change the way it affects us. Understanding the way our mindsets impact stress is essential for better learning and leadership.
Kelly McGonigal explains how it all works.
Quick Links:
Watch on YouTubeKelly McGonigal
The Upside of Stress
The Learner Lab Podcast
Studies:
Jeremy Jamieson GRE Study
Alia Crum 2013
Alia Crum 2023Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University who specializes in understanding the mind-body connection. As a pioneer in the field of "science-help," her mission is to translate insights from psychology and neuroscience into practical strategies that support personal well-being and strengthen communities.
She is the best-selling author of The Willpower Instinct and The Upside of Stress. You might also know her from her TED talk, "How to Make Stress Your Friend," which is one of the most viewed TED talks of all time, with over 20 million views.
Through the Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism, she helped create Stanford Compassion Cultivation Training, a program now taught around the world that helps individuals strengthen their empathy, compassion, and self-compassion.
In January 2020, Oprah Magazine honored her ability to “transform scientific data into wisdom” by naming McGonigal the first ever O! Visionary, people whose groundbreaking way of seeing the world mean a better future for us all.

We can all change. But we usually don't. The good news: we can fix this
Katy Milkman is one of the world's leading experts on change and human behavior. She shares specific tools to overcome:
– Laziness
– Forgetfulness
– Procrastination
– Getting Started
– Impulsivity
– Conformity
– Confidence
Quick Links:
Katy Milkman
Watch on YouTube
Episode Page
The Learner Lab

Katy Milkman is the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and holds a secondary appointment at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. Her research explores ways that insights from economics and psychology can be harnessed to change consequential behaviors for good, such as savings, exercise, student achievement, vaccination and discrimination. To that end, she co-founded and co-directs the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2021 Katy was named one of the world’s top 50 management thinkers and the world’s top strategy thinker by Thinkers50. The New York Times also named her bestselling book How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be one of the eight best books for healthy living in 2021.

A little bit of reflection can lead to a lot of benefits for learning and performance.
Giada Di Stefano joins to discuss the her work on the surprising benefits of reflection.

Her work shows how valuable it can be to the learning process and that in some situations it’s more beneficial than additional practice.
We work through her paper that outlines:
– the best strategies for reflection
– when reflection is most effective
– how we can use these strategies as individuals and leaders
This is a great episode for both learners and leaders.
Quick Links:
All Podcasts
All Articles
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Episode Page
Giada Di Stefano
Learning by Thinking: Giada’s huge paperGiada Di Stefano is an Associate Professor of Strategy at Bocconi University.

Her general research interests lie in the broad area of strategy and innovation. More specifically, she studies the factors that foster or inhibit the creation and transfer of knowledge, within and across organizations. From a methodological standpoint, her research is prevalently mixed-method, with a focus on experiments and field work more broadly. To this end, she has partnered with a number of organizations to conduct experiments “in the wild.” Her work is often conducted in the context of creative industries, broadly defined – from gourmet cuisine to science, from computer programming to academia.

Her papers have been published in top academic journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal. Her research has also been featured on the Financial Times.