Adam Gopnik Interviewed by Sophie Ratcliffe

Writer and journalist Adam Gopnik explains how he became fascinated with how the people he was writing about learned their outlandish skills and how he set out to learn some new skills he thought were beyond him.

Gopnik has been writing about art, France, food and many other topics over decades as a writer. He describes how he apprenticed himself to an artist, a dancer, a boxer, and a driving instructor, among others, to learn new skills. Gopnik says that mastering a skill is about methodically breaking down and building up piece by piece and that true mastery in any field requires mastering other people’s minds.

Gopnik is a staff writer and essayist on The New Yorker and winner of three National Magazine Awards, the George Polk Award and the Canadian National Magazine Award Gold Medal. He is a regular on television and radio including BBC Radio 4’s A Point of View. Gopnik has written a number of bestselling books, including a family memoir Paris to the Moon, reflections on life in New York and parenthood, Through The Children’s Gate: A Home in New York, and A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism. Here he talks to writer and literary critic Sophie Ratcliffe, author of The Lost Properties of Love.