Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning

Presented on: Tuesday, September 14th at 11:00 AM CDT


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Why do so many of us stop learning new skills as adults? Are we afraid to be bad at something? Have we forgotten the sheer pleasure of beginning from the ground up? Or is it simply a fact that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? In this webinar, bestselling author Tom Vanderbilt will share with us the five skills he chose to master and how, along the way, he interviewed dozens of experts to explore the fascinating psychology and science behind the benefits of becoming an adult learner. Vanderbilt will explain how anyone can get better at beginning again--and, more importantly, why they should take those first steps.

About the author: Tom Vanderbilt is the bestselling author of You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), and Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America. He has also written for many publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, Popular Science, Financial Times, Smithsonian, and London Review of Books, among many others. He is a contributing editor of Wired UK, Outside, and Artforum. Tom has appeared on a wide range of television and radio programs, from the Today Show to the BBC’s World Service to NPR’s Fresh Air. He has been a visiting scholar at NYU’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management, a research fellow at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, a fellow at the Design Trust for Public Space, and a Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant winner among other honors.


The views expressed by presenters are their own and their appearance in a program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by University of Northern Iowa Alumni Association.