It's a new calling, and one she couldn't have anticipated at Juilliard, where she dreamed of being a concert violinist. At the age of 30, she was named a senior advisor at the Obama White House, working to create better policy using insights from behavioral science. She tore a tendon in her hand, putting her musical career to an untimely end.Īs an adult, Maya has reached a new pinnacle in an entirely different field. The famed Itzhak Perlman had taken her on as his private student at The Juilliard School at the age of 14, and she was accepted to his prestigious summer program on Shelter Island.īut not long after, she injured her finger while playing a difficult section of Paganini's Caprice no. As a young girl, Maya was well on her way to a promising career as a classical violinist. In this episode, Shankar talks with Derek and two experts to try to understand his musical transformation. He can't read music or even play "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," but the music he improvises is beautiful. We were skeptical, so we brought Derek into a studio and asked him to play. He discovered he was really good a playing piano.ĭerek is one of just a few dozen known "sudden savants" or "accidental geniuses"-people who survive severe head injuries and come out the other side with special gifts for music or math or art. When he woke up in the hospital, he was different. See /privacy for more information.In 2006, Derek Amato suffered a major concussion from diving into a shallow swimming pool. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. IT’S FREE () and takes about 7-minutes to complete. My new book Sparked - Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. You can find Maya at: Website | A Slight Change of Plans podcast If you LOVED this episode: You’ll also love the conversations we had with Brené Brown about how we show up in our work and life. She has been profiled by the New Yorker and has been featured in the New York Times, Scientific American, Forbes, and on NPR's All Things Considered, Freakonomics, and Hidden Brain. Maya previously served as a Senior Advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded and served as Chair of the White House's Behavioral Science Team - a team of scientists charged with improving public policy using research insights about human behavior. Maya is currently the Senior Director of Behavioral Economics at Google and is the Creator, Host, and Executive Producer of “A Slight Change of Plans”, a podcast with Pushkin Industries. How that moment affected her, and how she’d eventually discover a new, equally fulfilling devotion years later - human behavior and cognitive science - is a big part of today’s conversation, along with a deep dive into how we change our minds. Until, an injury took it all away in the blink of an eye. That’s what happened to Maya Shankar, who fell in love with the violin as a small child, studied it with love and devotion, was being mentored by the legendary Itzhak Perlman, and was sure it would be her profession for life. Imagine being so drawn to a pursuit as a kid, it consumes most of your waking hours, rapidly becomes your identity, and is the thing you believe you’ll devote your life to, and then, in the blink of an eye, it’s taken away.
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