From Google to Neuroscience: How KURIOSITY Transformed Her Life | Anne - Laure Le Cunff - #003

So we'll start off right from the beginning. So considering you're the founder of Nest Labs, in a couple sentences, could you give us the mission statement of Nest Labs?

Yeah, Nest Labs is a platform to help knowledge workers make the most of their mind.

Okay, that was straightforward. I like that. And what do you believe is the deeper meaning or the purpose of the work at Nest Labs?

Yeah, you did ask me to keep it quite short, so I give you the very short version.

I like it.

But a little bit of a longer version would be that NASLab started from the idea and the principle that for knowledge workers, their brain is their most important tool. So I provide them with evidence-based strategies and tips, uh, and tools that they can apply in order to do their work in a way where they can achieve their goals without sacrificing their mental health.

Wow, that's very nice. And considering you are, you do have multiple realms, right? You're a content creator. I see your Instagram pages and they're very, very impactful. I love your work. You're a neuroscientist. You're an author. How do you view yourself? If you had to put a label on yourself, what's, what's at the top of the list?

Yeah, this is, this is a great question. I do think I'm a knowledge worker also. Uh, that's the thread that runs through all of the work that I'm doing is that I'm mostly working with my mind and this takes different forms and shapes and formats, such as writing my weekly newsletter or designing experiments in the lab, or trying to be creative in the way I communicate scientific ideas on social media. But really, for me, it's using this amazing tool I have to my disposal, my mind, to think and to create and to connect with other people.

Now, did one passion lead to another? What was kind of the sequence in which you found your passions? Was it, uh, creativity first and then it led you towards neuroscience? Neuroscience first led you down creativity, which led you to become an author? Like, how did that sequence— how did that happen?

I have a pet peeve when it comes to passion because I feel like we can spend a lot of time trying to figure out what we're passionate about. And sometimes we create this artificial bar that's very high in terms of what's a passion and what is not a passion. In my case, rather than following my passion, I've really been following my curiosity. And so by asking questions, by discovering topics that I felt deeply curious about. This is really what opened different doors to neuroscience, to writing, to entrepreneurship. And, uh, they're all interconnected in a way where I wouldn't say that any of them is a specific passion that has been the first one leading to the others. Rather, it's been more of an emergent process through which by writing in the newsletter, I would actually go and read some research papers. So I would learn about the science, and then learning about the science, I would discover something I felt like would be helpful to fellow knowledge workers, and that would be something I would put in the newsletter. So it's very interconnected.

That's, that's so beautiful. And were you around neuroscience a lot? How did you get into the space? Was that sort of something that you were always curious about and that's how you got passionate about it? Or were your parents neuroscientists, or were they in the science realms? How did you kind of come about? Was it something you were interested in, in science class and you're like, oh, that's something I could take on?

No, my parents were not neuroscientists. My mom was a house cleaner and now, and then a receptionist, and my dad was an engineer. And in terms of how I ended up working and doing research in neuroscience, it started again from curiosity. I've always been curious about the brain. Why we think the way we think and feel the way we feel. And at some point in my career, I found myself completely lost. I had a very linear, predictable journey up to that point where I got a good job at Google and then I worked on a startup. But then when that did not work out, I wasn't sure what the next step should be. So I went back again to this place of curiosity and I asked myself, what is something I'd like to explore? Even if career success was out of the equation. And again, for me, the brain was a really big source of curiosity. So I applied to go back to university in my late 20s to do a master's in neuroscience. And I loved it so much that after completing that, I applied to do a PhD and I just completed my PhD in neuroscience. Wow.

And I saw that you just defended a thesis, I believe. Um, is that correct? You just defended your, uh, doctoral thesis. Is that correct?

Exactly. That's the last step in completing a PhD. So you submit your thesis, then the examiners read it, and then you spend a few hours locked into your room with them and they ask you a bunch of questions about the research, making sure that you are the person who actually conducted the research, that you understand it, that you've thought about all of the potential blind spots.. And if they're happy with what they hear, then you're a doctor.

Well, congratulations. That's so exciting. Um, could you tell us a little bit about, uh, that thesis and your work with, uh, with that?

Absolutely. It's, uh, actually very different from what I write about at NAS Labs. My research in the lab is focused on ADHD and online learning. So that was my thesis and trying to understand how the brains of people with ADHD react differently in an online learning environment using electroencephalography and eye tracking.

Wow. That kind of brings me into a topic I wanted to go into because I think we got a little bit of your background and your personal journey. I wanted to get into the knowledge because I know you have insights. I know you are are very, very— you just became a doctor and that's super exciting, and there's so much that you could provide to the community. What are some, I guess, from a neuroscientist perspective and science-backed strategies to improve focus in this day and age, right, where we have so many different distractions, whether it's Instagram, social media, or even like you said, learning online? There's— by the ping of the sound of a ping, or just clicking on an application, we could easily be distracted. Are there certain hacks? Are there certain science-backed strategies to improve focus?

I don't think people are going to like it, but really the best hack is to just put your phone in another room. These things are really designed to grab your attention, and so you can try a lot of different things, but ultimately you're going to rely on your willpower to not get distracted by your phone. The best thing to do if you actually want to focus, if you need to do some kind of deep work, is really to take your phone, go and put it in another room, do your work. And then when you're ready to just relax and scroll, that's completely fine. To go and read stuff on Instagram, that's okay. It's really about being intentional about when and how you do it. Then go and grab your phone and go and relax on the sofa and scroll. That's fine. But don't keep it next to you. While you're working.

Completely eliminate it.

Yes.

I like that. Um, and that's like abysmal for a lot of people. They can't get— it's like they're, they're like tattooed with their phone right by their side. Right. So I, I completely agree when I'm, whenever I'm working, I always either have it on do not disturb. So I don't get any notifications or just have it completely away because I am victim of, um, sometimes when I see that my phone like has a notification, I instantly have to check it, right? And I'm like, oh, what, what happened? What happened? But it, it, what you're saying is definitely, uh, I could agree with and resonate with because it, we're all victims.

And that's the thing too, is that even if you put it on do not disturb and you have your notifications off, you're still going to feel that pull to go and check just in case, just to refresh your feed or maybe open WhatsApp and just check if maybe someone has messaged you or not. So even in no, do not disturb mode, your phone is going to be a distraction if it's in your field of vision.

So leaning into that a little bit, because obviously neurotransmitters are very hot topic nowadays with like dopamine, serotonin, and the contribution of like feeling a sense of like, like almost happiness and fulfillment. How could lifestyle choices, I guess, or some types of, types of hacks on our everyday daily basis affect these chemicals but in a positive way? Because we feel these types of neurotransmitters, or we get a sense of happiness by scrolling through TikTok or looking on Instagram or something like that. How could we, I guess, have a positive feedback loop to be able to positively impact these neurotransmitters, if that makes sense?

It's really all about redesigning your reward systems in an intentional way. Because if you don't do that, most people, we all have reward systems, but we let other people, other companies who have a different agenda and who have designed an algorithm that is very often designed with a different incentive, the incentive of keeping us glued to the app for as long as possible. This is the reward system that we use in a very unintentional way. So what you want to do is ask yourself, what kind of reward system do I want to design for myself? And it's almost as if you wanted to pretend that instead of being the CEO of one of those social media companies that are trying to really grab your attention, you're your own CEO, the CEO of your own brain, and you want to design different incentives. What would that look like? So maybe for you, you'd rather design a reward system that makes you read more books, or that makes you go for more walks, or that makes you write more, or that makes you take more notes while you watch YouTube videos. What does that look like to design a reward system that makes you want to keep on doing this? What is rewarding to you? And this is where I find that using social media in a more positive and creative and generative way can be really helpful. So you can commit, for example, to saying that every day for 30 days, I'm going to post something I learned on social media. Or if you want to run more, you can say every day for 30 days, I'm going to post a photo or screenshot of my Strava app for a run that I did. If you want to eat healthier, you can also do that with recipes. And you can almost transform the way that you use social media that is actually to your advantage rather than scrolling passively through the feed, proactively using it as a platform for you to improve and to develop the interests that you have.

That's very interesting. And I like a couple things that you said because I think you leaned into um, how social media could be used in a positive light. And the media nowadays, I feel like, paints this picture that social media could just be used for bad, right? It's very bad for our kids' mind, it's very bad for our kids' health. And although that is true, there's good and bad with everything, right? Just as, as much as it could be bad, it could be used as a good thing. And there's a lot of people that are getting exposure and getting a lot of positivity from social media. And I think you touched upon that a little, and I couldn't agree with it more. Now, do you think, and this may be an answer that, or a question you just don't have an answer to, do you think that some of these companies literally have neuroscientists in the back of finding out ways of how to hack like the younger generation's brains and how to get into like their, hack their dopamine or serotonin levels? Like, do you think that there's actually a lot more scientific-based techniques to try and grab their attention and retain them on these platforms?

Oh, 100%. This is actually the class that I teach at King's College London, which is called Neuroscience in the Digital World. And I have 3 sections in my course, which is the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I explain to those future neuroscientists, those undergraduates, that at some point they will go into the world and into the workforce. Course, and there will be companies that will offer them a lot of money to go and work for them and figure out ways to design products that are highly addictive for their customers. And they can decide whether they want to join the dark side of the force or not, but those jobs are absolutely available. So yes, companies are using neuroscience in order to design products that are more addictive and ultimately more harmful to society. So really, scientific knowledge in general is neutral. The way you use it is going to determine whether this is a positive or a net negative for society.

I like that, that part I'm really fascinated with, right? Social media is kind of empty pipes. We fill it, right? And whatever our algorithm— the algorithm caters whatever we're looking at and whatever our attention grasps to. And I think we have a very— as a society, we have a very type of mindset to point a finger at something of why we're looking at it on our timeline when these social media platforms literally mimic and just want to grasp our attention and just want to formulate and populate different pieces of content that they know we're going to watch. So sometimes we have to point a thumb at ourselves and say, wow, why is this, you know, making me want to watch? Why is this making me feel a certain type of way? Why am I keep gravitating towards emotional videos or trying to point a finger at somebody else. So that is something that I love we spoke about. Considering we do have a community of, you know, entrepreneurs and go-getters and CEOs, I want to talk about sleep a little because I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions around sleep and there's this whole entire misconception like, oh, I'll sleep when I die, right? And I believe we just recently actually talked about a podcast. I'm not sure who the neuroscientist was, but she spoke a little bit about how if you don't have enough sleep, it could actually lead to Alzheimer's and actually literally shrink your brain. Could you kind of talk about how critical sleep is to, you know, your memory and your own cognitive performance from kind of a neuroscientist's perspective? Perspective?

Yeah, I love this because I have a lot of people who reach out to me and who ask me for different hacks and tips to be more productive and more creative. And every time I ask them, okay, first, are you getting enough sleep or not? Because that's where you should be starting. There is no amount of little, like, you know, there are no tweaks or hacks that you'll be able to apply to the way you work that are going to move the needles in any kind of significant way if you're sleep deprived. And there is a lot of research, which is not my area of specialty, but there is a lot of research showing that sleep is incredibly important for memory consolidation, for creativity, for work performance, even for communication. We tend to misunderstand each other more and to have more conflict when we're sleep deprived, which you can imagine for teams who are working in complex environments on complicated projects, and then when parameters keep on changing, if on top of that, half of the team hasn't slept enough and you keep on misunderstanding what other people are saying, you just imagine that this is a recipe for catastrophe. So really, anytime you're struggling when it comes to your productivity, your creativity, or your communication, The very first question you should ask yourself is, how did I sleep last night? And if the answer is not enough or not very well, maybe take a little nap or just make sure that you go to bed early that night and see how you feel the day after before you start completely overhauling and changing your productivity system.

That's nice. And again, it's something that's so undersaw because I think again, it is more of the CEO business owner, entrepreneur-type vibe where they're just so ready to go, go, go, go, go. When you're up 16 hours of the day, what are you doing, right? Are you staying productive? You need those 8, 8 hours. You need to make sure you're getting them in. Considering there's a huge industry of AI developing into the forefront with social media, we see it in so many different industries. Um, maybe you haven't seen it personally or professionally firsthand, but How do you see, I guess, artificial intelligence influencing the future of neuroscience, whether it's research capabilities or even just understanding our own brains?

Well, I mean, really, AI is going to influence the future of everything. There is really no industry or area of research in academia that is not going to be affected. In terms of neuroscience specifically, It's already being used in order to analyze neuroimaging data in order to understand that data quicker and to notice things that the human eye would not be able to notice. So that's very, very helpful. We're also using it to create new neuromarkers, computational neuromarkers that allow us to study people either in health or disease. In ways that are completely new and again, would have probably taken years to develop with a team of human beings using their very slow human brains. We can do that a lot quicker with AI. And even in the sense of, and that, I think that's something that is happening across science, not just neuroscience, but in terms of leveraging the existing research data that we have already, not even analyzing new data that we're collecting today. There is so much data that we have collected over the past decades that hasn't been analyzed, that is sitting in folders and hard drives. And now we can deploy AI on these to make new discoveries as well, which is incredibly exciting, whether that's actually raw data or also, I know I have a PhD student at university starting to use AI to do meta-analyses of systematic reviews that have already been done in the past. And All sorts of things that normally take minimum 6 to 9 months to conduct can be done in a few weeks now.

Wow. So that— with that being said, would it be an okay observation or a good observation to say that we could be seeing a lot of studies being done tenfold at the rate that we're used to? I mean, because if we're able to dig into archives and use artificial advantage to our, or artificial intelligence to our advantage, now we're probably gonna get so many more research studies done using artificial intelligence. Is that something that probably makes more sense?

Yes, and that's something I'm very excited about. It's already the case in a way where, Sometimes there are so many different research questions you could be exploring that choosing the one to focus on can be a challenge in and of itself. But I think this challenge is going to be, yeah, to become more and more difficult moving forward because we'll, we'll have the ability to pursue a lot more of different areas of research and to explore a lot more research questions.

So I want to go back a little bit because I remember in the beginning you talked about how you worked at Google. Um, did that role, whatever role you played at Google, did that play into sort of what you do now? Because now we're talking about artificial intelligence, we're talking about technology, we're talking about some roles of technology within neuroscience, we're talking about, uh, you know, you create, you, you're an author. Did that play a role at all? Um, if so, how?

It definitely played a role. Probably in an indirect way, but it did. I think first, I always had a love and deep curiosity for technology and Google was really a great place to explore this. I worked both in London and in Mountain View and I worked on lots of different products. My last role there was on the digital health team working on Android Wear and Google Fit, and that also helped me work with a lot of different stakeholders working at, in different kinds of roles and even with outside companies. And that brings me to the other aspect I think that has been helpful from my time at Google that I've brought with me in my current work, is that I've always enjoyed bridging the gap and translating information in between different groups of people. So currently a lot of my work is taking academic research and translating it in language that can be used by anyone. Even if they're not a scientist, to achieve their goals in a way that's more productive, but also that is protective of their mental health. And at the time when I was working at Google, I would have to collaborate with engineers on one hand and the marketing team on another one. And then I was working with external startups as well in the health and wellness and fitness space. I was sometimes working with government officials also. Brainstorming together what could be some health measures that would be the most interesting to track in our tools so we could help people become healthier. And all of these people were using completely different language sometimes to talk about the exact same thing. And being the one sitting in the middle, I had to become proficient at translating that language in a multimodal way across different conversations, making sure that everybody would understand each other so we could progress together. And this is definitely a skill I have developed there and that I'm still using on an everyday basis today.

And it's interesting you say that because a lot of people say that people who use second, third grader terminology to describe a very complex topic, they don't understand the topic. And I would say that's the complete opposite. If you are able to break down a super complex topic to somebody who has no idea anything about neuroscience, artificial intelligence, whatever realm it may be, that means you understand it completely and you're able to put it in layman's terms and, and dumb it down for somebody who has no understanding of it. So I could only imagine the, the tough task that is. Now, you did mention—

Oh, sorry, can I? Yeah, yeah, go, go, go, go, go, go. I just, I just wanna take it one step further because for me, the work of translating that academic research into language that anyone who's not a scientist can actually understand and apply is also a way for me to understand that research better because sometimes I will find myself trying to explain something in simple language, and I will realize that I actually don't understand that piece of science as well as I thought I did. But I wouldn't have realized that if I didn't actually sit down to try and explain it to someone who doesn't have any context or background. So in a very selfish way as well, this is a tool for learning for me as well.

And going into that, just jumping headfirst into that, it's one of the best ways to retain information, right? They say one of the best ways to retain information is trying to teach somebody it. The first is like, uh, is seeing it. Next is writing it down. Next is listening to it. Trying to teach somebody it, you have to completely understand what you're doing to be able to teach it to somebody. Nonetheless, nobody— like somebody that's not even in the field So that's definitely something that I could 100% agree with. And it takes your knowledge to a whole nother level and appreciation. Now, I know you did mention that after Google it didn't end up working out and you ended up going back to university. Is that correct? Yes.

Now, I worked on a couple of startups and then I went back to university.

Now, was that more of an inspiration to go to university or a divergence to go to university? If that makes sense? Was it more like, okay, Google didn't end up working out, the startups didn't work out, now I'm going to go to the university? Or is it Google, startups, okay, that's leading me to go to university?

No, it was the first one. Uh, I left Google, the startups didn't work out, and I was completely lost. I had no idea what I wanted to do next, which was a new feeling for me because I felt like up until this point I had pretty good clarity when it came to what I wanted to do. And so that's why I went back to university, really. I needed to do something that felt interesting, that would make me want to wake up in the morning and to go and, and really feel excited again when I didn't really have a clear purpose. And it was also the first time in my life that I allowed myself to not seek a purpose, to not try and have a plan, to not know where I was going. I just decided, okay, I'm going to do something that looks really enjoyable for now, and let's see what emerges from that.

Now, were the other startups, were they in the neuroscience realm, or were they something completely different?

No, they were more in the digital health space in general. The first one was in a startup trying to help people with diabetes using AI at the time, and the tech was not there.

When was this? Was this a couple years? When was this?

That was 2017.

Oh, wow. So you've really been on the forefront of AI way back then. Wow. Okay.

Yeah. I, I worked with a tech co-founder at the time. We tried to build the product and in between, you know, between the vision and the actual execution, we never managed to get to what we wanted to build in order to be truly helpful to patients. And the second one was also a healthcare startup using also AI and machine learning at the time. So those were more digital health related and inspired by some of the work that I had done at Google, not neuroscience.

Okay. Now going into Going from Google to startups back to a university, you have to have some type of humility, right? And in multiple podcasts, we talk about taking one step back in order to take two steps forward, whether it's financial success, whether it's emotional success, whether it's feeling fulfilled at the end of the day. Was there some outside criticism for you going back to university? Maybe you're not as financially successful as you were with Google, or taking a very ambitious leap for the startups. Was there outside criticism, whether it's from your parents, from your friends, from certain family members, that you got from taking that leap back to university and saying, you know what, I want to try to find my passion again? Because let's, let's face it, you're at a certain age where society-wise you should have it all figured out and you should know what you're doing. But you know, that's just not how life works, you know. So was there some type of outside criticism?

Yeah, it's, uh, it wasn't criticism, but my mom in particular was very, very worried. She thought I would end up in the homeless shelter. I think the fact that I had a job and all of a sudden I didn't have a job anymore and I was a student again and, uh, it, this entire idea of quitting your job and going back and, and study made no sense to her, which I completely understand with her background and all she had to suffer in order to just find even basic stability in life, basic financial stability. I completely understand why it would be very difficult for her to pick picture, uh, kind of a decision map where you end up— the conclusion ends up being, I will not work at Google and I will go back to school. So I get it, I completely get it. And it wasn't criticism, but I could see it in her eyes, really. She was very worried.

It's very tough for people who have a structured blueprint to get a point A, point B, point C, and then you find the career, right? Um, so at the end of the day, parents just want the best for you. So I could completely understand because I've been going through the same thing with my parents. You know, it's like entrepreneurship and running a podcast and doing trading. I also trade as well. So it's not, oh, well, you got a, you got a college degree for you to not do anything with it and do this. And it's especially nowadays with the digital age and just being able to change your, chase your passion. I think at the end of the day, it's having empathy and understanding that the parents just want the best for you. But even if it's in 2, 3, 5 years, they'll understand why you did it. Um, so I'm, I'm super happy that now you're chasing a, a passion that you're actually, uh, is fulfilling to you, right? That, that idea of linear success is very relevant to, uh, your book. I know that you're author of a, of a book called Tiny Experiments. Could you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, this is actually very resonant with the first chapter, everything you just described, where I talk about how we cling onto linear goals. Because they're very reassuring and also because there is some form of pressure from society, from the people around us to, exactly as you said, to have it all figured out. And Tiny Experiments is really a book where I advocate for living a more experimental life, allowing yourself to try new things, to make mistakes, and to learn from them, allowing yourself to have a nonlinear career path, to not have to follow those linear goals with clear milestones. And in the book, I provide tools and systems and a little framework inspired by the scientific methods, which I call just tiny experiments, hence the title, that help readers design ways to ask interesting questions, then test their hypothesis, and then collect data about themselves, about their lives, about their work, their relationships, so they can make decisions as they go instead of trying to plan and map out everything in advance.

I want to go into the creative process behind actually writing the book, because this was your first book, correct, that you've ever written. So this is something, I guess, that's a milestone not only for you, uh, professionally but personally. Did you learn anything about yourself going through the whole entire process about actually writing the book and being an author?

Well, the first one is that I'm more courageous than what I thought I was, because it was very daunting to me to write a book in English. You can probably hear from my accent, but English is not my first language.

And what is your first language, if you don't mind me asking? French. Okay, okay, awesome. Were you— I should have asked in the beginning, were you born in France and then you ended up immigrating here?

Yeah, my, uh, my father is French, my mom is Algerian, and I moved to the UK when I was 23, I think.

Oh goodness, okay. So you, you spent your whole entire childhood in France and then moved, ended up moving to the UK.

Yes. So I learned English quite late in my 20s. And, uh, so when I was offered by Penguin to write a book in English, I, yeah, my first reaction was, what? Um, so that's the first thing I learned about myself is that I always knew that it's, it's not that I particularly lacked courage, but this was very scary and I ended up doing it in the same way I do everything else, where I broke it down into smaller components that were less scary. And I approached them as smaller tasks so I could complete the book rather than looking at this entire project, which, you know, it takes maybe 2 to 3 years to complete a project like that with a traditional publisher. So I'm just very proud that I had the courage to write it in the first place. Even though it was very scary when I was asked to write a book in English. And, um, the second thing that I learned about myself is that I actually really enjoy these kinds of longer projects because up until that point, working on the book, I had been writing a newsletter and, uh, those are like micro projects every week. You start working on the newsletter, you do your research, you write it, you send it, and then you can kind of forget about it. And there's also less pressure because I try for every single newsletter to be as good as possible. But if one of them is not as good as the previous one, most people who read my newsletter every week, they're not going to unsubscribe because one edition was not absolutely perfect or top-notch. Whereas with the book, there's this added pressure to really have something you're extra, extra proud of. Because if there's anything I don't like about it, I'm not going to be able to run around and tell people, can you give it back to me? I just want to change that thing on page 100, right? It's just going to be what it is. That's the final version of it. And it takes a lot longer. And I wasn't sure before getting started whether I would like it or not. Turns out I actually do. I loved getting really deep, taking my time, reading a lot of research papers around the same topic and really noodling on some ideas and playing with them until I felt like I, I could just talk about them in my sleep. That's a very interesting feeling that I don't really get to have when I write newsletters. So that's the second thing I learned about myself. I, I also really like going deep in the research in this way.

You're able to express yourself a little bit more cuz a weekly newsletter, it only scratches a surface, but a book, it gets to know not only what you're researching, but who you are as a person. You could get so many different nuances and tonality in diving deep. That's why I like reading books is you get a better idea of who the author is and how they themselves, and I could only imagine how the book actually is. Now, for people who are thinking about getting the book, what's the target audience? For somebody who's, you know, outside listening, like, who should actually be reading this book? I know books, you know, sometimes they're written for everybody, sometimes they're written for a specific person. What's the target audience for your book?

Yeah, I would say that the target audience is people who are highly curious and highly ambitious and that probably have had some form of success already in life, but who have this feeling that maybe there could be more and maybe there could be something a little bit different that they could be doing and who would like to explore some tools that they could use to ask these questions and consider different paths.

That's awesome. Now, you said that you like this, you love doing it. Could we, you know, expect some more books from you in the future? I know you have a lot of things, you have a lot of things going on in your life, but maybe this is the first of a few.

I hope so. My friends make fun of me in a nice cheeky way because I keep saying, oh yeah, my first book is coming out soon. So yes, I hope it's the first book out of many, and I want to keep on writing them. I want to keep on writing my newsletter online, but I also want to have that space to go deeper and exactly as you said, also to express myself a little bit more.

Now, for people who want to get it, where's the best place? Is it Amazon? Is it your personal website? Is it your social media? Where, where could they actually go and check it out?

Yeah, I have a dedicated page. It's at tinyexperiments.org, not .com, because I couldn't get that domain. And if you go to tinyexperiments.org, it has all of the links to Amazon, smaller booksellers, and all of the different options in the US and outside of the US as well.

Perfect. And we'll make sure to have it as an overlay in the video, and we'll also link it in the bio as well to make sure people get access to it. Um, so just before we wrap up, um, I wanted to, uh, sort of end off with a very, um, you know, uh, something deeper into you. Uh, so what could we expect over the next couple years? What's something that you're diving deep into? Is it just maintaining the, the professions that you have right now, continuously creating content, uh, teaching and also, you know, experimenting with, uh, with Nest Labs? Or is it, uh, maybe something a little bit different and trying to go left and trying to find a new passion of your, of your own?

Yeah, you know what? I actually don't know, and I love that I don't know. It's, uh, really nice after years of working on my PhD and on working on the book and where I had those objectives and really big projects to complete to be in more of a liminal, in-between kind of phase right now where I don't really know what's going to happen next. And I want to resist the urge to try and make a plan straight away. I want to sit in that uncertainty. I want to read more books. I want to listen to more podcasts. I want to be in that kind of emergent phase where I just let ideas bubble up and see what happens. So yeah, I'll probably be able in a few months to answer that question better, but for now I'm really enjoying the state of unknowing.

I love that. I love that because people get so anxious off of the unknowing and what's to happen from unknowing, but I think a lot of miraculous things happen in the unknowing and just going with how you feel and, and going with what feels intuitively correct. And that's something that I think a lot of people do need to hear because they need to have the next 2 weeks planned or next 2 years of their life planned when they don't even know what they want to do with their life. And just because, you know, you don't know what you want to do in this exact moment doesn't mean you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that's something that even though with your success you could see outside looking in and you're fulfilled and you're doing great things. It's good for people to hear that, you know, even though I have all these things right now, I still don't know what I want to do in a couple months. And that's super, super impactful because that's, you know, that's just the fact of life. And I appreciate you, you speaking about that. And again, I thank you so much for your time. I know your time is very valuable. And even though we had some technical difficulties, I feel like this is a very good podcast that people will still be able to get some impact and insights from, and I really appreciate your time. Really quickly, just to tell everybody your Instagram handle, just so that we could put it as overlay, and we'll make sure to link it in the bio.

Yes, you can follow me on Instagram, @neuranne.

Thank you so much, Anne-Laure. I really appreciate your time, and we'll definitely be speaking soon.

Thank you.