Revisited: The Beautiful Brilliance of Boredom with Creative Polymath Elle Cordova

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Team Simon is revisiting some of the episodes you helped make our favorites of the year until A Bit of Optimism returns on January 27, 2026, with brand-new episodes. We’re rewinding back to August, when talented polymath Elle Cordova joined the show and unpacked how we’re all wired to chase the next spark. We scroll, swipe, refresh, and repeat—but some of our brightest ideas sneak in when we stop chasing, let boredom settle in, and give our minds room to wander. Elle knows the power of that pause. When the pandemic hit pause on her life as a touring musician, she stumbled into new creative territory—making offbeat comedy videos about delightfully nerdy topics like particle physics, grammar,…