Episoder
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In what ways is England’s imperial past connected to its present? What of that past is reflected in the schools and schoolwork of students? Are there ways to acknowledge and repair things from the past in a way that moves society forward?
Sathnam Sanghera is a journalist for The Times of London and the author of several books. His latest two are titled Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain and Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe.
Greg and Sathnam discuss Sanghera's unexpected transition to writing about history, the complexities of British imperial history, and its nuanced impact on the modern world. The conversation digs into topics such as the perception of British imperialism in modern education, the contradictions within British history, and the ongoing struggles with racism in the UK.
Sathnam also highlights the enduring influences of British rule in former colonies and the evolving discussions around reparations and historical reckoning.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Nuance is a useful concept for history
07:29: I would say balance is not a very useful concept for history in general. Nuance is what you want to aim for. But the reason I think we've always struggled to talk about British Empire, except in this way of trying to balance the positives against the negatives, is because this is how empire was discussed at the time. In the 19th century, there are endless arguments about whether we should hold on to our empire, whether we were making money out of it overall, whether overall it was a good thing or a bad thing. And this continues to be the way we discuss empire. We continue trying to weigh the miles of railway we built in India against the millions of lives that were lost in the potato famine in Ireland. It's an absurd way of trying to understand history, because how do you balance railways against death? And how you might balance slavery against anti-slavery? And I guess my ultimate conclusion after five years of studying this is that you can't come down on any side.
On arguing for sophistication
45:15: As writers and historians, we always argue for sophistication. Politicians will always try to simplify things.
Are people more comfortable with nuance journalism than they are with history?
09:22: Social media is now just setting people up against each other all the time. And politics is becoming highly polarized. Everything is turning into a football match. Where you have your side, and the other side is evil, right? And history is just as it makes it. Trying to understand imperial history through that prism, it's like saying, I want to understand the history of the climate, but I'm only going to study the sunshine, or I'm only going to study the rain. It's not going to give you a very sophisticated sense of the climate, is it? You want to study the weather in between. And that is the same is true for history.
On the phenomenon of indentured servitude
33:52: One of the main reasons, you see, Indians, wherever you go in the world, is because the British, after they abolished slavery, realized they needed workers, and they didn't seem willing to incentivize the formerly enslaved to do the work. So they decided to send one million Indians around the world to places like Mauritius, Trinidad, Jamaica, and Guyana to do the work that the enslaved formerly did. And often they were treated as badly as the enslaved. Not quite as badly, but pretty badly. But this led to all sorts of phenomena... And so, all these phenomena exist around the world, and the way in which the British Empire changed the demographics of the planet. I don't think we think about that enough.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
H. G. WellsJallianwala Bagh massacreRishi SunakNarendra ModiMughal EmpireBritish EmpireSikhsRudyard KiplingWolverhampton Wanderers F.C.Enoch PowellThomas ThistlewoodWardian caseMalayan EmergencyBrexitJames StephenGuest Profile:
Sathnam.comWikipedia ProfileInstagram ProfileTwitter (X) ProfileHis Work:
Amazon Author PageEmpireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern BritainEmpireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the GlobeMarriage MaterialStolen HistoryIf You Don't Know Me by Now: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in WolverhamptonThe Times Articles -
How did the teachings of the great Greek and Roman moral philosophers shape America and its founders? How has the shift away from studying those teachings had an impact on the modern political landscape?
Jeffrey Rosen is the CEO of the National Constitution Center, a law professor at George Washington University, and the host of the podcast We the People. His recent book, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America delves into the ideas of personal self governance and the historical and contemporary implications of virtues like self-mastery, moral philosophy, and happiness.
Jeffrey and Greg discuss the transformation of happiness from virtue-based to pleasure-seeking, the role of deep reading and character education, and the timeless struggle between personal gratification and civic virtue.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Is there a connection between evolving definitions of personal happiness and political changes?
07:24: Sometime in the 60s, the definition changed from being good to feeling good. It had something to do with the change in the understanding of happiness in pop culture and during the revolutions of the 60s, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and the new emphasis on seeking pleasure rather than seeking self-mastery. Both the popular understanding of happiness and what was rewarded in the political system changed. And the founders saw a connection between the need for personal self-government and political self-government, understanding that unless citizens could moderate their unreasonable emotions like anger, jealousy, and fear, they wouldn't choose virtuous leaders, educate themselves about the basic principles of liberty so that they could defend it when it was under threat, compromise, and deliberate with those who had different points of view.
An emphasis on deep reading in today’s online world
50:24: Citizens have an opportunity and a duty to read the primary sources, both the majority opinions and the dissents, so they can make up their minds. The same goes for news. We can always go back to the primary sources and make up our own minds. It is much more important to inspire these habits of deep reading and engagement so that we can take advantage of this marvelous world where all the primary sources are online.
When culture stopped valuing virtues, politics reflected the change
09:01: Once the culture stopped valuing things like self-mastery, moderation, temperance, prudence, courage, and justice to use the four classical virtues, then it became more acceptable to express this in the political arena.
What inspired Jeffrey to launch his recent book?
05:13: So, during COVID, I followed Jefferson's schedule. I got up early. I read the moral philosophy for two hours. I watched the sunrise. I wrote these sonnets, sort of summing up the wisdom, which is a weird practice until I learned that a lot of people in the founding era also wrote sonnets of virtue. There's something about this material that kind of inspires poetry. And what I learned after a year of reading this remarkable literature—it changed my life. It changed my understanding of how to be a good person and a good citizen.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Cicero’s Tusculanae DisputationesXenophon’s SocratesMaking the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln by Daniel Walker HoweSeneca’s Letters from a StoicThe Columbian OratorGuest Profile:
Bio at National Constitution CenterFaculty Profile at George Washington UniversityWe the People podcastHis Work:
The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined AmericaThe Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America (Institutions of American Democracy)The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in AmericaThe Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious AgeWilliam Howard Taft: The American Presidents Series: The 27th President, 1909-1913Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet (Jewish Lives)Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and LawJeff Rosen | New Republic -
Manglende episoder?
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Does modern society have too many laws? Have we complicated legal codes to the point where we’re suffocating under them and grinding the government to a screeching halt?
Lawyer and author Philip K. Howard is the founder of the nonpartisan coalition, Common Good, which works toward legal and government reform. He’s the author of numerous books like, The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America and most recently, Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Society.
Philip and Greg discuss the balance between rigid rules and human discretion, the importance of human judgment in law, and how legal micromanagement and excessive regulation curtails individual agency and practical wisdom.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Freedom does not exist without the authority of law
02:42: Freedom does not exist except within a framework of the authority of law. And the authority of law requires human judgment by the people in charge of law, judges, officials, and others. What's a safe workplace, etc.? Whether a seesaw is a reasonable risk? Whatever it is, they have to make those judgments so that people have a sense of where they stand. And then you get freedom back, and people can act again. You no longer have gridlock. But right now we have law, not as a kind of outer fence of a corral of freedom. We have law interceding in daily choices. There's almost nothing you can say in the workplace that doesn't have legal implications. Well, is that a free society? I don't think so.
Has law become counterproductive?
05:53: Today, the law has become, in many areas, counterproductive. I mean, it doesn't make people feel more free; it makes them feel less free, right? And the point of the law is to provide a framework to enhance everyone's freedom, so we're not worried that the water we drink is polluted, that we feel comfortable, that we have free speech, and we can say what we think without getting into trouble. Well, that's not true anymore.
The role of law is to enhance freedom
32:06: We need to have a clearer sense of what the boundaries of our freedom are, and that requires the enforcement of norms that judges and others were not doing. So we have both too little and too much law. Ultimately, my goal—I think the role of law is to enhance freedom—everyone's freedom, freedom from abuse, freedom from dirty water, and to do what humans are good at doing.
Law doesn’t work without judgment
01:01:23: Law doesn't work without the judgment of the people—of the people in charge applying the norms of law. Law is not a speed limit sign that says 55 miles an hour. It's principles like the reasonable person standard or whatever. It's unreasonable search and seizure, free speech. All these things are principles that have to be interpreted by somebody. They're not self-executed.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Daniel KahnemanMike Rose Alexis de Tocqueville The American Law Institute podcast Joe Klein | Time MagazineIkiruVaclav HavelJeremy WaldronGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at Columbia UniversityProfessional WebsiteCommon GoodHis Work:
Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing SocietyThe Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating AmericaThe Collapse of the Common Good: How America's Lawsuit Culture Undermines Our Freedom The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions Try Common Sense: Replacing the Failed Ideologies of Right and LeftThe Lost Art of Drawing the Line: How Fairness Went Too Far Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America -
Out of all the ancient moral philosophies, which one feels most applicable to how we live our lives in the modern world? As today’s guest would say, we are all Epicureans now.
Catherine Wilson is an emerita professor of philosophy at the University of York. She’s written many books on the subject of ethics and philosophy, including How to Be an Epicurean: The Ancient Art of Living Well and Moral Animals: Ideals and Constraints in Moral Theory.
Catherine and Greg talk about Epicureanism’s relevance in the modern world, how it contrasts with other ancient philosophies like stoicism, and debate the role of prudence in the pursuit of pleasure.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Why should we all be thinking about getting up to speed or at least exposing ourselves to ancient moral philosophy?
02:42: Epicureanism has been underappreciated relative to the other ancient philosophies. As we all know, Stoicism has become incredibly popular. Epicureanism is, in many ways, the foil to Stoicism. And frankly, I wouldn't go to Aristotle or Plato, particularly for moral advice. Some good parts of it, but I think Epicureanism needed a fresh look. And so what I tried to do in the book was to draw out some ways, possibly more fetch than they needed to be, some lessons or some implications that we could use now, taken directly from Epicurus and Lucretius. So that was the idea, and I think Epicureanism is really a breath of fresh air in many ways.
What makes Epicureanism appealing?
31:11: One of the most appealing features of Epicureanism is that because nature is always making new combinations and presenting you with new experiences, you're constantly having to update your beliefs and rethink your assumptions.
Epicurean perspective on meaning
41:01: The epicurean perspective is cosmological. It says you are here for a very short amount of time in the history of the universe. You came from dust; you're going to end up in dust. What you should do in that short time is have a nice life. Do the things you enjoy doing. And learning, teaching, figuring things out, and taking part in family life—those are the things that usually give people the most satisfaction in life. As human beings, that's what we like to do. So, you don't have to go to excess.
What accounts for the renewed success of stoicism?
39:10: Stoicism says, well, you are you, and you are a fortress in yourself, and you have to not be so worried about what other people are doing that is making you miserable and believe that it's under your control whether you're miserable or not. And this seems to me completely on the wrong track when other people in other situations are making you miserable. You ought to try to change them. Speak up, or get out of there. "Don't Suffer in Silence" was, I think, the title of one of the chapters. And I think I referred there to Albert Hirschman. How do you respond to bad situations? Exit, voice, or loyalty?
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
EpicurusLucretiusRené DescartesJohn LockeExit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and StatesGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at University of YorkHer Work:
How to Be an Epicurean: The Ancient Art of Living WellMoral Animals: Ideals and Constraints in Moral TheoryEpicureanism at the Origins of Modernity -
Shame and the classification of people have always been with us, but new technology can amplify the harmful effects of both. What can be learned from a careful study of algorithms at play in pivotal places in society?
Cathy O’Neil is the founder of an algorithmic auditing company called Orca, a research fellow at Harvard University, and the author of two books, The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation and Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy.
Greg and Cathy discuss what algorithmic auditing is and how it comes into play when we talk about using algorithms to affect decision-making in different businesses. Cathy explains how algorithms amplify and scale issues in the human auditing system without necessarily some of the failsafes, particularly how algorithms have modified the behavior and thinking of children and teens.
Cathy also talks about the intersection of shame with these powerful algorithms in the seductive form of social media for teens and adults alike, and how they are geared toward and successfully generate outrage and arguments for their own profit and the ultimate detriment of the user. Explore more of her data-driven research positions in this conversation that can change the way you look at shame.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:What’s the goal of shame?
38:35: Conformity might seem like the most obvious goal of shame, and I guess in useful examples of shame, like when you shame your child for beating his little brother, that's a great example: “You can't do that to their little brother. Shame on you.” That's a great example of pro-social. There are other goals of shame, and it should be said because it'll make more sense as to why it's gotten out of hand. And one of them is setting an example, like setting an example, like look at this person; look at what they did. It's too late for them to not do it. They did it, right? But we're going to use them as an example for everyone to see what's going to happen to you if you do it. So it's more like a signpost than a conformity thing. It's, I guess, sort of like trying to get other people to conform in the future rather than to that person's behavior.
Shame is required for a functioning society
03:49: Shame is not new. Shame is as old as social interaction, and it's absolutely required for a functioning society. We have to know how to sacrifice our personal goals and selfish desires for the sake of the group, which I think is the fundamental rule around shame.
How does social media amplify shame?
40:44: The social media platforms have done something really extraordinary. They've built a new business model. It's no longer necessary to implicitly and explicitly shame someone and make them buy a product from you. That's the old business model. What they've done instead is built a world, which is the online world, a platform where they get you to shame each other. You are doing it, like you're co-opted, if you will. You profit from the existence of shaming. Fights on your platform because the longer those guys engage in those shaming, the cross-shaming, let's call them shame trains, the longer they get on those shame trains and ride as hard as possible, the longer people are on your platform. And ultimately, you're selling their attention. And so they're there. So they're paying attention to the ads around them, which is really, really the business model, as we all know.
Finding the balance between shame and persuasion
52:18: Don't overestimate the choice involved. If you're shaming someone, you have to really be explicit about: is this really a choice? And if it is, then instead of shaming somebody, try to persuade them. And the way you persuade somebody of something, which is typically more successful than shaming them, is you appeal to a universal norm, which is to say you appeal to a norm that you both know you agree on.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Randomized controlled trialBloomberg Article about OpenAICui bono?2007–2008 financial crisisMark ZuckerbergSam AltmanChatGPTAlice MunroMeToo movementGuest Profile:
CathyOneil.orgProfile on WikipediaHer Work:
Amazon Author PageThe Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of HumiliationWeapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens DemocracyDoing Data Science: Straight Talk from the FrontlineThe era of blind faith in big data must end -
In order to study the science of success, you have to also study the science of failure. How much is performance connected to success? How do you leverage networks in your domain successfully?
Albert-László Barabási is a professor of network science at Northeastern University and the author of books like, Linked: The New Science Of Networks Science Of Networks and The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success.
Albert and Greg chat about the evolution of network science, measuring performance vs. success, how to strategically network in your field, and the surprising findings about creativity and age.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Distinguishing success vs. performance
14:24: Performance is really about you, and your success is about us. And what do I mean by that? If we look very carefully, everything that is performance typically links to individual qualities. How fast can you run? How good of a research paper can you write? And how good of a speaker are you? And so on and so forth. However, every measure of success is really given by the community, whether that's feedback, acknowledgment, adoration, money, whether that’s likes, it's always a communal measure, right? You don't pay yourself; you don't like yourself—or you could do that, right, but not at the scale that really leads to success. It's really the community that provides that to you. Therefore, if you want to understand success, at the beginning, we do need to distinguish these two things, and you need to ask yourself: How do you measure performance? How do you measure success? And when and how is the relationship between them?
The social nature of success
32:42: This is the distinction between performance and success because success is a collective measure. We give success to you, so you need to come to us and make sure that we understand what you do. We can compare it to others who do different, similar things, and ultimately, we can acknowledge you and reward you for that. This is a collective phenomenon, and you have to work with the community; it's not a lonely journey any longer.
Is performance really measurable?
16:33: Performance is not a one-dimensional quantity. There's so many dimensions of performance when it comes to teaching, when it comes to having a podcast, when it comes to curing people, right? And hence, it becomes virtually unmeasurable. Yet, success is not unmeasurable, right? So, in most of us, the vast majority of humanity lives and works in professions where there is not an objective measure of performance, but there are very clear measures of success. And so really, all of the formula is really about how and when do these connect.
On understanding how success emerges
30:00: If you understand the forces that act on how success emerges, then you can actually start thinking about that in the domain where you are. What really matters, and where do you put your focus? I always think of these roles not as a way to manipulate the system—because you can't manipulate the system, right?—but rather as guidance on where to put your efforts.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Black-Scholes modelAlessandro VespignaniDashun Wang The Science of Science by Dashun Wang and Albert-László BarabásiGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at Northeastern UniversityProfessional WebsiteHis Work:
Linked: The New Science Of Networks Science Of NetworksBursts: The Hidden Patterns Behind Everything We Do, from Your E-mail to Bloody CrusadesThe Formula: The Universal Laws of Success -
In a world challenged by the politicization of data, contradicting evidence, and an onslaught of information, could the key to more effective and informed decision-making be as simple as, thinking like a scientist?
Professor of physics Saul Perlmutter, professor of philosophy John Campbell, and professor of psychology and law Robert MacCoun combine their interdisciplinary minds in the book, Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense. The book explores the essence of scientific thinking and how it can be applied to practical societal issues.
Saul, John, and Robert join Greg to chat about the genesis of “third millenium thinking,” the role of values in scientific judgment, and the importance of teaching probabilistic thinking and experimentation.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Why is it so hard to just walk the Humean line and to be very explicit about sorting out these differences?
09:03: [John Campbell] The message of the book is: keep the Humean line as far as we can, separate the facts and values. Scientists, we all know, have a lot to tell us about the facts, but we, the people, are the ones who tell you about the values. And then, I think, that has to be anyone's first brush, sort of partitioning off the boundaries of science, to keep that Humean line. But then it does get complicated when you think about things like mental illnesses and so on, where you're asking not just, Is this condition that a person had? Is this a real thing? But you're also asking, Is this a bad thing? Is it a bad thing for a person to be like that? So with autism, is that just neurodiversity that is not really within the sphere of medical treatment at all? There are boundaries there as to where science is authoritative and where the people have a voice. And this kind of issue clearly has to be a debate, it seems to me. It's not something for professionals only.
To what extent must we trust the processes within the expert community?
37:04: [Saul Perlmutter] I think that there's a difference between really understanding a field enough that you don't need the expert and having some understanding of how science works so you can recognize which experts you are more likely to trust.
They myth of lone genius
47:26: [Robert MacCoun] This mythology of the lone genius, I think, is very much the antithesis of third-millennium thinking, this notion that it's because I'm brilliant that you should listen to me. And that's really not where we think the authority of science comes from. It's not from the IQ of the scientist. It's from the procedures—the hoops you have to jump through to make your ideas work. And it's those procedures that give you credibility, not just brilliance.
If you hold to the Humean line, why would your value judgments about what's good or bad for society impact your causal arguments?
32:25: [Robert MacCoun] The role of standards of proof when you're dealing with probabilistic evidence, you need to weigh two kinds of errors: false positive errors of claiming a hypothesis is true when it's not, and false negative errors of saying the hypothesis is wrong when in fact it's true. That is not a scientific matter. That is a matter of values. We can't avoid it. In dealing with uncertainty, we have to impose some sort of standard of proof. And so, under the Humean model, you take values very seriously. I don't think we would argue that values are simply outside the domain of science.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
David HumeNeil deGrasse TysonSupreme Court overturns ChevronArticle: Supreme Court strikes down Chevron, curtailing power of federal agenciesGuest Profile:
Saul Perlmutter’s Profile at UC BerkeleyJohn Campbell’s Profile at UC BerkeleyRobert MacCoun’s Profile at Stanford UniversityTheir Work:
Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense -
Can you truly build exceptional relationships in a professional setting? What are the secrets to effective communication and the role of social psychology in fostering strong connections?
David Bradford is a Senior Lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, having taught the legendary “touchy feely course for decades, and the author or co-author of several books. His latest work is called Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues.
Greg and David discuss the practical benefits of Stanford's T groups, where participants develop crucial skills like clear communication and conflict resolution. David explains the importance of seeing feedback as the start of a conversation rather than a critique, emphasizing the need to understand the impact of our behaviors on others. Explore the contrast between how children and adults handle conflicts and learn why genuine curiosity is key to bridging communication gaps.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Are we building organizations to build friendships?
35:08: I think more and more leaders in an organization are realizing that building collaboration is important. Now there is a danger with building friendships, which I said before, because there are many organizations that need to cut back, are too big, are facing adverse times, and have to do cutting. So it has to be clear that we're building a relationship to get the job done. That's the purpose of an organization. We're not building an organization to have warm and fuzzy friendships; that's the means to an end, not an end in itself. And we have to realize that there are going to be times in which we're going to have a reduction in force. There are going to be times in which we get rid of people.
Organization are held by network of relationships
02:49: Organizations are held together not by the organizational chart, but by the network of relationships that people have in the organization.
On vulnerability in leadership
37:41: The research on vulnerability shows two things: leaders who are vulnerable about their core competence lose power…[38:12] So leadership, which questions your basic competence, does lose power and does lose influence, but vulnerability, which shows your humanness, is different.
Do you have an understanding of human psychology, social psychology, and cognitive psychology to have a good relationship?
08:56: In general, the more that we know, the more we can start to see them as an individual, as a unique person, which is, I think, what all of us want and which all of us are. There is no rule that applies equally to all people. So I think that the broader our knowledge, the more we can find out. What approach allows me to understand you as an individual, you as a person, and we can move beyond me treating you like an object, which you don't want and I don't think I want.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Neo-FreudianismGallup, Inc.Jeffrey PfefferPetrarchGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at Stanford GSBProfessional Profile on LinkedInHis Work:
Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and ColleaguesInfluencing UpInfluence Without AuthorityPower Up: Transforming Organizations Through Shared Leadership -
More than four years after the pandemic began, a source for COVID-19 still eludes scientists and public health officials. The mystery has given rise to a slew of hypotheses ranging from natural zoonotic transmission to lab leaks. But to get to the bottom and find the real source of the virus, you have to start with the evidence.
Alina Chan is a scientific advisor at the Broad Institute and the co-author of the book, Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19. She and her co-author Matt Ridley follow one evidence thread to the next in order to get closer to the truth.
Alina joins Greg to chat about the two dominant hypotheses on COVID-19’s source, the challenges and methodology of identifying a virus’ origin, and why it’s crucial we find out where COVID-19 came from.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:The debate over studying high-risk pathogens
43:50: There are definitely people who think that all of this research should be banned, but I think that there should be a certain amount allowed to continue. Again, this sort of research, where there's actually any pandemic risk, constitute an extremely small fraction of virology. So, I would say, like, less than even a percent, maybe even less than that. So, most virology doesn't even concern animal viruses. And those that do often do not pose a risk to cause outbreaks in people. But there are these types of research projects that are now becoming more and more trendy around the world, following in the footsteps of U.S. leaders to take these pathogens that could cause outbreaks in people and study them in the labs. And it's unclear where the risk is because some of these labs are doing it at such low biosafety levels. Or is it because there are so many of these high-biosafety labs now, and the work is increasing, yet in these labs there's still room for human error.
Public vs. scientists
51:56: Your political affiliation doesn't determine anymore whether you think this virus was natural or came through a lab. I would say that the difference between the public and scientists is that scientists, especially experts, tend to lean on priors very heavily, as well as peer-reviewed literature.
Is the focus on avoiding retroactive blame or preventing future research constraints?
43:03: I think it's both. So, since then, and over the past few years, you've seen so many letters by virologists. Dozens of them have signed letters saying we are totally fine in the U.S. We do not need any more oversight or regulation. We are good at self-auditing and self-inspecting. We don't need any external oversight over our work. So, there's a clear fear amongst virologists that if this pandemic was started by a lab accident in Wuhan, they would become constrained as well, and that people would also perceive them to no longer just be the good guys but to be a source of risk and danger.
Why bats carry so many viruses
24:45: I think bats, aside from humans, are probably the most interesting mammalian species out there for virologists. It's because these bats have been found to carry so many different types of pathogens, many of which can jump into people. So, like Ebola, coronaviruses, both MERS and SARS were found to have come from reservoirs, for example, but they're quite similar to humans in the context that they live in large groups. So, you go into one of these caves, easily millions of bats in there, but actually, they're quite different. So, they can fly, and so their body has to adapt to handle that really high heat that happens when you're flapping your wings at such a high speed. And that is related to traits in bats that help them to coexist with so many of these viruses. So, these viruses, while they cause very severe diseases in people, in bats, they just live mostly in the gut and don't cause any severe disease. So, bats have this invulnerability in a sense to all these very dangerous pathogens.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Dr. Peter Daszak - EcoHealth Alliance Wuhan institute of VirologyRalph S. Baric“The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” | Nature MedicineGood Judgment case studyGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at Broad InstituteHer Work:
Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 -
What if the key to managing stress and finding meaning lies in the simple rituals we perform daily? How can engaging in rituals can be a potent tool for combating anxiety and fostering a sense of community?
Michael Norton is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and an author. His latest book is titled The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions.
Greg and Michael discuss Michael’s groundbreaking research on the distinctions between rituals, habits, and compulsions, and delves into how these practices—whether ancient or self-created—provide essential structure and purpose in our lives.
Michael and Greg dive deeper into the impact of rituals within organizations and relationships. Learn how companies can use simple, coordinated actions to bolster unity and core values, and why rites of passage are crucial for marking life's transitions. Michael also highlights the strong correlation between shared rituals and relationship success, emphasizing the importance of mutual participation.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Do successful companies leverage rituals to foster a sense of belonging and a common purpose?
24:45: Very often, the rituals that companies have are really intended to reflect a specific value that the company cares about. I was just talking to someone who told me at their company, what they do is every Friday: It's a smallish company, so they have an all-hands every Friday, and each group says something that another group did that they're grateful for. Somebody on another team helped me out with this thing I was working on, and they do it every Friday. Now, they could do anything—they could say, "Think of another group that made you laugh this week. Tell us about that." But they don't laugh; they do gratitude. And they're trying to show in that moment one of the things that we care about in this place is helping and gratitude. You can have a silly mission statement that says, "Gratitude and all these platitudes," or you can use these kinds of regular rituals to show repeatedly: This is the value that we really care about. And families, when they have rituals at dinnertime as well, they're very often communicating a value that they really think is very important.
Rituals can bind us and separate us
23:52: It's not that you do rituals and it's all warm and fuzzy; it's that they can bind us together and they can separate us from other people. So there's tension—it's like a risk-reward kind of relationship with ritual.
Exploring how emotions drive action
17:18: I think the way that humans are built, unfortunately for us, is that we can't change our emotions when we feel like it. So, in other words, it would be amazing if I felt sad, if I could snap and be happy, just automatically, just instantly; we could easily be built like that.
Do we customize rituals according to our needs?
08:17: In fact, even in our own lives, we're changing them—rituals—all the time. And the reason I say that is because if they stop working for you, you could say, "Rituals obviously don't work. I'm never doing them again." Or you can say, "I must have the wrong ritual. It seems what people are likely to do is say, 'I must have the wrong ritual.' Let me mix it up a little bit and see if that will help." And it really, to me, speaks to how deeply ingrained they are in us because we are, in a sense, ignoring evidence from the world that not all of them work, and we continue to do them, modify them, and shape them as though if we keep doing that, we'll get to the optimal one.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Clifford GeertzBronisław MalinowskiDisenchantmentSerena WilliamsRafael NadalThe Pianist and the LobsterHedonic treadmillStanford marshmallow experimentGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at Harvard Business SchoolMichaelNorton.comLinkedIn ProfileWikipedia ProfileHis Work:
The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions365 Ways To Change the World: How to Make a Difference-- One Day at a TimeHappy Money: The Science of Happier SpendingTed Talk - How to buy happiness -
Humans are creatures of habit. It’s even wired that way in our brains. But what impact does habituation have on personal happiness?
Tali Sharot is a professor of neuroscience at University College London and researches habituation, adaptation, and other cognitive biases. Her latest book, Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There co-authored with Cass Sunstein explores how habituation leads people to stop noticing both good and bad things they’re accustomed to and the benefits of breaking free from those habits.
Tali and Greg discuss why people are more likely to feel less excited about good things over time, how taking breaks from those habits can restore the good feelings, and optimism bias discrepancies in stressful environments.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:What is optimism bias?
20:41: Optimism bias is our tendency to expect to encounter positive events more on average than we do and underestimate our likelihood of experiencing negative events in our lives. So, underestimating our likelihood of going to prison, getting a divorce, being in an accident, and so on. It is not necessarily how we will react to those events. So, it's not that I think if I get divorced, then I won't feel bad. It's mostly, at least in my studies, about what is the likelihood of the event.
Can bad news be good news?
41:07: Bad news doesn't necessarily mean that it results in a negative feeling for you. It can result in a positive feeling, and that's why it seems like people are attracted to bad news when, in fact, it's not really bad news. So, all this is like celebrity breakups; to some extent, it can make people feel good because, well, everyone has problems. So now I'm feeling better about my own life.
Three main motives for searching information
40:12: It's instrumental utility, cognitive rewards, and affective rewards. So, that's our tendency to want good news over bad news. Now, all three will drive your decisions on whether to seek information or not. So, you will for sure seek a lot of negative information if the cognitive reward is high and instrumental utility is high. But all three things matter together. And there are ways for us to tease them apart and show that all of them matter. So, that's why, despite the fact that you feel like you go after bad news, you still have the tendency to want good news.
The difference between optimism about our own lives and pessimism about the external world
33:39: What we see is that people are optimistic about their own future, the future of their family, and the future of their kids, but they're not optimistic about the world at large. In fact, they are somewhat pessimistic about global issues and about the abilities of the leaders. And let me give you a few examples. Let's take AI. So, people say AI will take more jobs than it will create, and 75 percent of people say that. It's three out of four, but only one out of four, 25%, say their job is at risk. Out of every four people, three say that they're very optimistic about the future of their family; again, 75%, but only 30% say that the next generation will be doing better than the current one.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Daniel GilbertLaurie SantosAaron HellerDaniel DennettMilgram experimentGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at University College LondonHer Work:
Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always ThereThe Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain -
Despite the Hippocratic Oath of “do no harm” that all physicians take, a dark side exists in the medical field.
Carl Elliott is a professor of philosophy who teaches bioethics at the University of Minnesota. His latest book, The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No, shares the stories of some of the most egregious cases of medical abuse in history and the whistleblowers who tried to stop it.
Carl and Greg chat about his own experience blowing the whistle after a psychiatric study went awry, the factors present in the medical field that lead to unethical and abusive studies, and the cost of deciding to take a stand.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
On protecting vulnerable populations in research
19:16: One of the things that you see running through, I would say, at least 90% of the scandals that we look at in the class that I teach on research scandals, is that you're dealing with research subjects who are vulnerable in some way. They're often poor, they're uneducated, they're institutionalized, they're mentally ill, they're children, they're mentally disabled, they're unable to look out for their own interests in the way that an ordinary competent adult is. And those populations are easily exploitable. We should have protections for those people—serious protections. We have, in our honor code, the Common Rule; there are federal guidelines that say this: you need to take special care with vulnerable populations.
Is an honor system enough for medical research?
14:18: In other businesses out there, factories, restaurants, mines, fisheries, and so on, you have a regulatory system, like a full-blown regulatory system with inspections, safety rules, and so on. There's nothing like that in medical research. The oversight system is an honor system. Medical researchers are just trusted to behave honorably and honestly. And I think there are real questions about whether an honor system is up to the task of overseeing and doing the regulatory, quasi-regulatory job of managing what is now a multinational global multi-billion dollar industry.
Do we sometimes confuse the organization's purpose and the people in the organization? What and how does this idea of organizational loyalty play out?
32:22: It's really institutional loyalty, at least in academic medicine, and not loyalty to some higher mission—in the case of academic medicine, to the sort of humanitarian effort of doing medical research. Because I do think that there is this sense of physicians who have chosen to work in academic health centers rather than do like the vast majority and work out in the community somewhere, there's a reason for that. And the reason is science and medical advances and the many people that you could reach by developing new and better treatments, right? I mean, it's that tension between those humanitarian goals of the enterprise as a whole and the interests of individual patients that needs to be balanced.
The toxic mix of research funding and authoritarian hierarchy
13:46: There's a very rigid status hierarchy; it's extremely authoritarian and competitive. The coin of the realm is not patient care; it is research, particularly now research funding. In fact, research funding is more important than the actual research. And so, you can see, when you put all these things together, you have a very toxic mix.
Show Links:
Nuremberg CodeTuskegee StudyWillowbrook State School Cartwright InquiryPaolo MacchiariniListening to Prozac: The Landmark Book About Antidepressants and the Remaking of the Self by Peter KramerAlexis de Tocqueville
Recommended Resources:Guest Profile:
Faculty Profile at University of MinnesotaProfessional WebsiteHis Work:
The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying NoWhite Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of MedicineBetter Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream -
What if you could understand why rational people sometimes believe the most irrational things?
Dan Ariely is a Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University, the Center for Advanced Hindsight, and is also the author of several books including his most recent work, Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things. His work is also the subject of a new TV show called The Irrational.
Greg and Dan discuss many aspects of misbelief and irrationality. Dan describes his own journey of finding himself at the center of different conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic where he unexpectedly found himself accused of being part of a sinister plot. This shocking experience spurred him to delve deep into the phenomenon of misbelief, and he shares his invaluable field research and insights on this perplexing topic.
Dan also explains the concept of "Shibboleth" as a social marker in political discourse, examining how language and terminology often signify group membership rather than convey actual beliefs. Dan and Greg discuss the critical role of maintaining transparency and trustworthiness in scientific communication and reflect on the evolving role of academia in addressing societal issues.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
Are we in a period of low resilience?
19:25: We are at a period of high stress and low resilience. Why do we have low resilience? Because we spend less time with friends. We spend more time with our nuclear family. We have less good friends for all kinds of reasons, but, you know, for example, one of them is that we're not allowed to have friends at work anymore. And what I mean by that is that there are topics that you can't talk about at work. It’s frowned upon to talk about sexual issues. It's frowned upon to talk about politics. We spend lots of time with those people. It used to be the place where you got new friends. Now it's not anymore, right? There's not that much going out with friends after work to drink. And you don't know much about the people that we work with.
Redefining misbelief
06:14: Misbelief is not just about believing in something that isn't so; it's also about adopting it to such a degree that it colors everything we look at. And that's the dangerous thing, right? Because the moment you have some belief…[06:37] it becomes a central tenet in the way you interpret the world; it becomes much broader than that because you start being suspicious and so on.
Why does replication matter in social science?
52:20: I think there are lots of reasons why things don't replicate. I think that intention is a very small subset. And my hope is that we will grow as a science. We need to be more careful, and so on. But we also need to understand that lack of replication sometimes is just asking another question of what was different between those two things rather than saying, "Oh, it must mean that the first one was not correct. And the second one is correct."
The high cost of incorrect beliefs
23:43: We live in a world in which some wrong beliefs can have very large consequences. So I don't know if people believe in more incorrect things; probably we believe in less incorrect things, but I think that the cost of believing in incorrect things can be much higher.
Show Links:
The IrrationalBronisław MalinowskiShibbolethFriedrich SchillerCui bono?Richard ThalerCass SunsteinDiederik Stapel
Recommended Resources:Guest Profile:
DanAriely.comThe Center for Advanced HindsightProfile on LinkedInWikipedia ProfileHis Work:
Amazon Author WorksMisbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational ThingsDollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend SmarterThe Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone--Especially OurselvesThe Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying LogicPredictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our DecisionsTED TalksDan’s Youtube Page -
Travis Rieder, a professor of bioethics at Johns Hopkins University, is fascinated by the world’s ethical dilemmas.
His work sits at the intersection of medicine and philosophy, but also draws from his own life experiences like in his book, In Pain: A Bioethicist's Personal Struggle with Opioids. His latest book, Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices, delves into moral decision-making in the context of climate change and other pressing ethical challenges.
Travis chats with host Greg LeBlanc about his harrowing experience with opioid withdrawal following a motorcycle accident, historic societal shifts in opioid perception, and how much one’s individual decision-making truly impacts structural problems like climate change or the healthcare system.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
How did we get to the place where we have conflicting attitudes about opioids?
09:53: How did we get to the place where we have conflicting attitudes about opioids? Because some people seem to think that they are, worth giving out like candy, and some people seem to think that they're like the devil's magic or whatever. And that story is old. That story is 200 years old plus, and it involves basically North America's attitudes just swinging back and forth from one extreme to the other. Every once in a while, we're like, "Oh, we really need to take pain seriously. Let's take opiates all the time." And then it predictably leads to a drug overdose crisis, an addiction crisis. And so the politicians freak out, and they slam on all the brakes, and they introduce new legislation. And then the country gets scared, and medicine gets scared. And we talk about how terrible these drugs are. And then we withhold them for 50 years. And then everyone's like, "Hey, maybe we should take care of cancer patients who are dying." And we start using the drugs again, and so on. And so we've done that move since the 1800s.
Risky handoffs in medication management
16:03: When it comes to pain medicine, when it comes to addiction management, when it comes to managing all sorts of difficult-to-manage medications, those handoffs are some of the riskiest places because they require care, and our system is not set up for that care to be there.
Basic moral structure is everywhere
41:00: The main contribution that I wanted my book to make was to make clear that same basic moral structure, that we are contributing in very small ways to all sorts of goods and bads, good moral projects and bad moral projects, all the time. That basic puzzle is everywhere.
If someone argues that individual behavior doesn't matter, why would anyone bother trying?
33:44: Our actions have been decoupled from the consequences that make us worry. And so climate change is bad because it harms people. And so my classic moral brain says, okay, harm, that means don't do it. So, everything that I do that contributes to climate change, I'm like, okay, I shouldn't do that because climate change harms. But the thing is that the principle was don't cause harm, and your individual action doesn't cause harm. Your individual action does this other thing, which is it infinitesimally contributes to this massive, complex system that is so big and so complex, we can't really comprehend it. A trillion metric tons of greenhouse gasses accumulating in an atmosphere and cycling through a carbon cycle that is just unimaginably complex. And so there is no hurricane that is even a little bit worse because of what I did. That's just not how any of this works.
Show Links:
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe Michael E. MannDavid Wallace-WellsMary Annaïse HeglarSiddharth KaraArthur Schopenhauer
Recommended Resources:Guest Profile:
Faculty Profile at Johns Hopkins UniversityProfessional WebsiteProfessional Profile on XHis Work:
Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough ChoicesIn Pain: A Bioethicist's Personal Struggle with Opioids -
Ever wondered how to truly bridge the gap between technical expertise and practical business implementation? How did the terminology shift from "data mining" to "predictive analytics" and revolutionize the business world?
Eric Siegel, Ph.D., is a leading consultant and former Columbia University professor who helps companies deploy machine learning. He is the founder of the long-running Machine Learning Week conference series and the author of several books. His latest work is titled, The AI Playbook: Mastering the Rare Art of Machine Learning Deployment.
Eric and Greg discuss what motivated Eric to leave academia to see real-world applications of his machine learning models. Eric explains the pressing challenges organizations face when deploying machine learning projects, and provides an insightful look at the cultural and incentive-driven barriers that often lead to failed projects and unmet expectations. By focusing on collaboration from the outset, Eric reveals how businesses can align machine learning initiatives with their core needs to foster successful integration and operational change.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
Ramping up on a semi technical understanding of data
03:46: Prediction is the most actionable thing you get from data, and the way you get it is with machine learning. Learn some data to predict. That's basically what it is. So, will the world wake up to this? Are they going to forever see it as arcane? What does that mean? So, be careful what you wish for, because flash forward to now, and everyone's all over this stuff in a way that's overzealous. We fetishize the core technology as the most awesome thing. We're more excited about the rocket science than the actual launch of the rocket. That is, getting it deployed, getting into action, making a difference in terms of actual business operations. And we're stuck there. Most new machine learning projects fail to reach deployment. So, still, there's a skill gap. Still, there's a kind of data literacy that's greatly needed across the non-data science community. But it's not foreboding once you actually dip your toe in. As a business stakeholder, you got to get your hands dirty, or your feet will get cold, and you won't get to the point. But that dirty hand stuff, it's only semi-technical. It's totally accessible.
Demos don't equal human intelligence
36:21: Generative AI is the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. But that's the problem. A great demo doesn't necessarily mean valuable, right? I think it's probably about five percent as valuable as the world seems to think, right? So, I mean, I spent six years in the Natural Language Processing Research Group at Columbia, where I was subsequently a professor during graduate school. I never thought I'd see what I can see today, but we need to recognize there's a big difference between something that's seemingly human-like and human.
On recognizing change
34:53: Do change management because the basic idea is so often overlooked. Again, we're fetishizing the core technology. More excited about the Rock Advanced Launch, but the launch is changed, right? You need to manage that change. The project needs to be reframed. It's not just a technology project. It's not a machine-learning project. It's an operations improvement project that uses machine learning as a core component but ultimately involves improvement, that is to say, change.
How do you drive a successful machine learning project?
56:38: We need to get everybody on the same page. We need to get those to speak in business terms, and for the business people to be interested in some of those concrete details. Business people might say, "Hey, look, I don't need to get involved in details. I don't need to pop the hood of my car to drive it, right? I don't need to know how the engine works." And that's true. Like, I personally have no idea, right? I know the general principles of internal combustion, but I don't know where the spark plugs are. But I'm totally an expert at driving. I know momentum, friction, the rules of the road, how the car operates, and the mutual expectations of drivers. The analogy holds: to drive a machine learning project successfully through to deployment, you need, analogously, those kinds of semi-technical understanding of what it means to run the project so that it will succeed.
Show Links:
Recommended Resources:MoneyballArtificial general intelligenceRexer AnalyticsChange ManagementGuest Profile:
LinkedIn ProfileMachine Learning WeekGooder.aiHis Work:
www.bizML.comMachineLearning.coursesAmazon Author PageThe AI Playbook: Mastering the Rare Art of Machine Learning DeploymentHBR Guide to AI Basics for ManagersPredictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or DieStrategic Analytics: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business ReviewData Science and Business Intelligence: Advice from important Data Scientists around the WorldForbes Articles -
The study of economic growth is a modern phenomenon. In fact, economists didn’t get serious about measuring it until the mid-20th century. So what brought growth into focus and are the ways we measure it today adequate for a technologically-advanced world?
Daniel Susskind is an economics professor at King's College London and a senior research associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University. His books like The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts and Growth: A History and a Reckoning explore the impact of technology on work and the economy.
Daniel and Greg discuss the history and circumstances that led to the creation of the GDP and its modern limitations, the moral and environmental challenges associated with a relentless pursuit of growth, and the need for societies to rethink the meaning and value of work in an increasingly automated world.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
The modern economic thought about the origins of growth
10:22: Growth doesn't come from the material world. It doesn't come from the world of tangible objects, but it comes from the intangible world of ideas. And ideas have all these interesting properties: they're nonrival, they're nonexcludable. But the key point is that whereas the world of finite material resources is finite, there's only so much material stuff out there. The world of ideas is unimaginably vast, for all intents and purposes, as good as infinite. And so if growth comes not from using more and more finite resources, but from discovering new ideas about how we can make ever more productive use of those finite resources, then the kind of constraints, the bottlenecks to growth, aren't to be found in the material world of those finite resources but it's to be found in our inability to discover enough new ideas about the world.
What do we do about growth?
11:23: If we want more growth, we need to become societies that discover new and more interesting ideas about how we can use the resources that we have.
Two big problems when it comes to GDP measure
14:40: One is technical failings, which is that it's meant to be a measure of the activity that takes place in the market, and it's not a particularly good measure. Many of the things that we use today are free. Think about the search engines we use, the sort of email browsers, and so on, the sort of first generation of generative AI systems, whatever it might be; we don't pay a price for them in the market. And so they're not captured by traditional GDP statistics. The other thing, of course, that GDP is very bad at capturing is quality improvements. And if you think about particular technologies that we use, something like an iPhone today might have the same price as an iPhone X many years ago. All the different dimensions on which the quality of that technology has improved just aren't captured.
On the relationship between work and meaning
56:38: Although people say there's a strong relationship between work and meaning, actually, there's a lot of heterogeneity. Actually, a lot of people do not get meaning from their work. If they could get an income without working, they would. And you can see this in the simple polls that are done. Lots of people do not get meaning and purpose from their work. They don't think they're making a meaningful contribution to the world. I think it's often the people who write about this stuff are sometimes confusing the meaning that they get from their work as a kind of generalizable insight. I just don't think it's true.
Show Links:
Recommended Resources:Big Push ModelHarrod Domar ModelJohn Maynard Keynes Simon KuznetsJoel Mokyr | unSILOed LinkRobert J. Gordon | unSILOed Link Sam AltmanDemis HassabisGarry KasparovNicholas SternGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at King's College LondonFaculty Profile at Oxford UniversityProfessional WebsiteHis Work:
The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human ExpertsA World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond Growth: A History and a Reckoning -
Humans have lived with a changing climate since we’ve been on this planet. But what archaeology and anthropology is able to reveal now, is how well civilizations have adapted to changing climates over the course of human history.
Brian Fagan is an emeritus professor of anthropology at UC Santa Barbara and the author of more than 50 books including, Climate Chaos: Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors and Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations. His work focuses on the history of human culture and our relationship with the climate, using ancient artifacts to piece together the story.
Brian and Greg discuss how humans have historically adapted to climate change, the role climate has played in the rise and fall of civilizations, and the importance of understanding our past to prepare for future climate challenges.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
Why has climate and other big global physical things been underappreciated as historical causes?
07:12: You've got a situation now where climate change is among us. We live with it every day. And every time there's a major storm, up come the media with the old climate change thing, which is all very well, but the fact of the matter is that we've lived with climate ever since we've been on this planet. The real immediacy of it has been in the last 10,000 years, particularly with the development of agriculture and herding, because then you're really getting into a situation where you've got the whole scene of climate changing rapidly.
Looking at climate as a player in history
09:12: We're looking at climate as a player in history, not necessarily a cause. But a major player, which it was.
On the dynamics of herding and the breathing of deserts
20:42: The dynamics of herding are very simple. In the final analysis, an awful lot of history, I think, is probably very simple. You get rainfall in the desert. Large, shallow lakes develop, water holes form, and a whole bit of vegetation comes up. What happens? Animals and, ultimately, humans and cattle move in. Then it dries up, and they move out. It's like lungs in and out. There's no question that there's movement of deserts, the lungs, or the breathing of the deserts.
Show Links:
Recommended Resources:Mortimer Wheeler Hubert LambGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at UC Santa BarbaraHis Work:
Climate Chaos: Lessons on Survival from Our AncestorsThe Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850The Long Summer: How Climate Changed CivilizationFloods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of CivilizationsThe Intimate Bond: How Animals Shaped Human HistoryFishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization -
What if the institution of marriage holds the key to societal well-being? How does marital status correlate with happiness, prosperity, and positive outcomes for children? Why do some elites downplay marriage's importance in public, even as they themselves often lead marriage-centric lives?
Brad Wilcox is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, director of the National Marriage Project and an author. His latest book is titled Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization.
Greg and Brad discuss contemporary views on marriage and how shifting societal norms around education, career focus, and individualism have impacted the timing and meaning of marital commitments. Brad Elaborates on what he calls the "soulmate myth" and how this quest for perfect partnership can delay or complicate marriage decisions. They draw intriguing comparisons between Western and arranged marriages, exploring how cultural expectations and extended family involvement contribute to marital success. Brad also dives into the evolving gender roles within marriage and their implications for marital stability and happiness.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
What needs to be done to strengthen marriages in general?
39:15: We have to help our elites understand that marriage benefits not just them, but people in general. And so, insofar as they're school superintendents, professors, journalists, C-suite executives, they could be taking steps in Hollywood, at Netflix, heading up a school district's approach to relationship education, a New York Times journalist to just do a better job. And I'm not even asking for like a rose-colored take on marriage, but just like a truthful take, so that our ordinary kids out there who are watching a Netflix show or, exposed often indirectly to some kind of major media coverage just come to appreciate more how much marriage matters for them and for any kids that they have down the road. That would be, I think, part of the answer. But we've also got to recognize and realize that there's a financial piece to all this, and that's why addressing things like the marriage penalty and also giving people a more generous child tax credit would be helpful as well.
Can the people around you help you choose a better partner?
13:48: As we begin to get more serious or think about getting more serious about someone, I think we should pay attention to how our friends and family members react to a potential boyfriend or girlfriend to make a better decision about our future.
Is there a way in which your ability to manage conflict within the marriage helps you to manage conflict elsewhere?
16:00: Selection effect is part of the story, yes, but having the counsel of a spouse, having the perspective of a spouse as you navigate both work and social challenges of one sort or another, has been invaluable for me, and I think for a lot of people, and we do see when it comes to men, for instance, that guys who are married earn markedly more and make more strategic choices professionally than their peers who aren't married, even controlling things like race, education, profession, and age. So, I do think that being married often endows us with extra benefits, including the counsel and support of our spouse as we navigate life.
Should your spouse be your best friend?
14:41: One of the key challenges for contemporary couples is to not rely on their spouse for all of their social support and all of their emotional connections and to recognize that oftentimes, a good girlfriend, a mother, a brother, a guy friend, or a friend is going to be a better place to turn than your spouse. Not putting all of your emotional eggs in the marital basket paradoxically tends to make your marriage more resilient rather than less important.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Robinson CrusoeCapstones vs. CornerstonesIndividualismLimbic CapitalismBowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American CommunityAndrew TateHannah Pearl DavisMelissa KearneyRobert NisbetÉmile DurkheimGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at the University of VirginiaHis Work:
The Awfulness of Elite Hypocrisy on MarriageGet Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save CivilizationSoul Mates: Religion, Sex, Love, and Marriage among African Americans and LatinosSoft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (Morality and Society Series) -
Despite periods in history when evolutionary biology has been misused, there’s no denying that the study of biological human nature is intrinsic to the study of social and cultural human nature.
David Barash is an emeritus professor of psychology and evolutionary biology at the University of Washington, and a prolific author. His books like, Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are and Threats: Intimidation and Its Discontents explore many different corners of human nature and why it should be incorporated into the field of social sciences.
David and Greg discuss why there’s a resistance in the social sciences to study human nature, why it’s important to understand differences between the sexes, and why relying too much on deterrence could be a dangerous game.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
How social darwinism warped evolution
03:33: The unfortunate truth is that evolutionary biology in the past has been misused, especially shortly after Darwin—the whole time of social Darwinism. At which time, particularly right-wing zealots and supporters of imperialism and colonialism, were intrigued by the notion that somehow it was a misunderstanding of evolutionary biology, but they loved the idea that because of evolution, certain people notably, the "white races," were superior, that they were produced that way by natural forces, and hence it is appropriate for them to go ahead and conquer the world—conquer as many people as they can. Moreover, not just with regard to colonialism, but also with regard to the way things are at home. The wealthy are wealthy because they were biologically made superior, and we shouldn't argue with that. So there was that, and that's very much a misunderstanding of evolution and how it works.
Natural doesn't always mean good
12:44: The fact that something is natural doesn't mean that it's good, or that we have to succumb to it, or go along with it necessarily... [13;07] all sorts of feelings that one may have that may be "natural." That doesn't mean we have to go along with it. And by the same token, the differences that we observe in various human societies or between various individuals within society, the fact that it exists even, doesn't necessarily mean that's natural. It's a consequence of any number of things. And even if it was natural, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's good.
Why do male-female differences become problematic?
23:02: I think the reason male-female differences have been controversial has to do with something similar to why biophobia, in general, has existed, which is to say that recognition has been used in the past as a way of buttressing socially inappropriate distinctions. The notion that, well, men are more aggressive than women, men are more pushy than women, hence men are likely to become leaders, business leaders, political leaders, and that's all well and good; that's normal; it's natural; there we're back again to the naturalistic fallacy. And so, to some extent, that's, I think, a big part of the reason why male-female differences have become not quite toxic as an issue but really problematic.
Understanding infanticide
19:57: When we talk about such things as infanticide, I think we have a real obligation to make it clear: a.) that certainly, in the human case, it's extremely rare, and b.) the fact that it does happen in some cases, it's not uncommon among nonhuman animals. We need to make it very clear that that's not, in any way, a blueprint for how human beings ought to behave. There are lots of things in the natural world that are "natural." That's why we call it the natural world, but those aren't worth emulating. In fact, that is so important that we don't.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Max Planck Stephen Jay GouldDavid HumeDavid AttenboroughRichard DawkinsGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at University of WashingtonProfessional WebsiteHis Work:
OOPS!: The Worst Blunders of All TimeThrough a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really AreThreats: Intimidation and Its DiscontentsMyth of monogamyOut of Eden: The Surprising Consequences of PolygamyHomo Mysterious: Evolutionary Puzzles of Human NatureThe Survival GameNatural Selections: Selfish Altruists, Honest Liars, and Other Realities of Evolution Madame Bovary's Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at LiteratureHow Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories: Evolutionary Enigmas -
What happens when the relentless pursuit of optimization backfires? What ethical dilemmas and hidden complexities exist inside of this obsession? How does our fixation with efficiency and quantification come at the cost of essential human values and spontaneity?
Coco Krumme is an applied mathematician and the author of the book Optimal Illusions: The False Promise of Optimization, where she lays out how optimization has stealthily transformed from a technical tool into an all-encompassing philosophy driving various fields, from economics to personal decision-making.
Greg and Coco discuss the fundamental pillars of optimization: quantification, abstraction, and automation, and question their impact. Coco sheds light on whether optimization is avoidable, and they evaluate the ethical trade-offs, especially in crucial sectors like healthcare where lives hang in the balance. They also reflect on the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic with regards to optimization. Enjoy this engrossing conversation that ends up questioning the very fabric of modern living.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
Looking at optimization as a game
13:57: There are ways to enjoy optimization. It's a game, and you can see progress, and I think that's something humans enjoy. We like seeing ourselves or seeing the world get better. I do think it's pathological at the kind of Silicon Valley elite level. You know, I think there are varying degrees to which these different people that you mentioned and, beyond, right, actually, to what extent that belief in optimization is, very deeply rooted versus an intellectual exercise of posturing to justify whatever investments they're making or whatever success they've had. It's a very curious thing. And I do feel like in the last however many years, I'd be curious what you think as well, but maybe five years or so, we've, as a general population have become more skeptical of those kinds of techno-utopian proclamations.
Does optimization cause unhappiness?
10:38: I think part of our modern unhappiness is that all we have is optimization, and we are able to question it. We are able to say, "Well, maybe it should be working better," and then where do we reach if we don't have that alternative of a cultural or religious mooring that's been passed on for generations?
Breaking optimization into a components
15:46: I break optimization into a few sorts of necessary requirements or components, and one of them is quantification, or, specifically, atomization of the world into seeing things in terms of self-same units that can be tallied up. The other two sorts of necessary requirements that I see are abstractions. In order to optimize, we need to be able to think in terms of models with these atomized units as building blocks. What structures are we building? The third is automation, which is popular, or it's a term on the tip of many tongues these days, but to optimize, we need to be able to scale those abstractions up in a kind of hands-off way, so I do think quantification and optimization are certainly related. You can quantify without optimizing, though, right? You could simply count things up without seeking to improve or make things better.
On navigating modern modernity
28:53: I do think that's the struggle that, as modern Westerners, we face for the next number of years. We are aware that some of these ways of thinking and these systems are failing, both in the material world and in our intellectual and spiritual world. We don't feel happy. We feel we're going too fast. We feel we've lost track of some of the important things, and I think the question that we face is: how do we continue to live in the modern world with its many conveniences and its many fruits of optimization, and at the same time expand our ways of seeing that world and of being in that world, and expand our belief systems and our way of knowing, to hopefully a place where we feel more at ease in it.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Herb SimonSatisficingJohn Stuart MillJames MillUtilitarianismSam AltmanTautologyMarie KondoGuest Profile:
Cocofolio.com Personal WebsiteLinkedIn ProfileHer Work:
Optimal Illusions: The False Promise of Optimization - Vis mere
