Episodios
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It might sound counterintuitive but digital transformation is not about technology. So, what does it mean for companies to keep up in an ever-evolving digital age? Well, according to todayâs guest, itâs about having a âstrategic imagination.â
David Rogers, an instructor at Columbia Business School, is an OG thinker on digital transformation. His books, The Digital Transformation Playbook: Rethink Your Business for the Digital Age and The Digital Transformation Roadmap: Rebuild Your Organization for Continuous Change, laid the foundation for an entire strategic approach to taking companies into the digital age.
David and Greg delve deep into the misconceptions about digital transformation, emphasizing that it's not merely about technology but about strategic imagination and continuous organizational change. They discuss the evolution of digital transformation over the past decade, the importance of a well-defined strategic vision, and the roles of agile methodologies, hypothesis-driven experimentation, and cohesive leadership.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Digital transformation is about contexts
56:33: The question of digital transformation. It is not about bolting technology onto an existing company. It is aboutâreally, it is aboutâhow do we adapt an organization so that it can thrive in a digital context, right? The digital is actually about the context, not about what you are doing, even necessarily per se, inside the business. And to me, the most defining characteristic of the digital era is this accelerating change and accelerating and growing uncertainty that organizations have to cope with.
What makes an effective leader?
25:16: Effective leaders do not orient their job around making decisions primarily. What they are primarily trying to do is to define what truly matters, to then communicate that to others, achieve that kind of alignment and clarity that we are pulling in the same direction, and then to empower othersâto enable the rest of the organization to do it.
Digital transformation is not about technology
10:28: Digital is not about the technology inside your company. It is not about the behaviors of the market and the customers. But it is more the context we are in, which is one ofânot a change that happened in 1994 to 1996, or some other change. Oh, the shift to mobile. Oh, the shift to this. Letâs shift to the cloud. It is just one after another, and each wave of technology change is catalyzing the next. It is not just, âOh, why are they each coming?â Well, each one is building on the one right before it. And so we are dealing with this pace of change and level of uncertainty; therefore, in your context, for any organization, that is unprecedented and certainly not what big organizations were built for and organized for in the 20th century.
Strategy as thinking discipline
34:39: Strategy is something you need to embed in every level of organization as a thinking discipline, which is about defining: what are we trying to achieve? What do we believe is a wayâor the best wayâto achieve that at this point in time.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
James Hackett Daniel KahnemanPraveer Sinha, TataSteve BlankBob DorfGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at Columbia Business SchoolProfessional WebsiteProfessional Profile on LinkedInNewsletter on SubstackGuest Work:
The Digital Transformation Roadmap: Rebuild Your Organization for Continuous ChangeThe Digital Transformation Playbook: Rethink Your Business for the Digital AgeThe Network Is Your Customer: Five Strategies to Thrive in a Digital Age -
What drives humans to seek and discover the previously unknown? Does the wanderlust that so many of us share in common have a scientific explanation?
Science journalist Alex Hutchinson is the author of The Explorer's Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, as well as the book Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance. His work focuses on expanding our understanding of human performance, particularly in relation to fitness, sports, and outdoor activities.
Alex and Greg delve into what it means to have the âExplorerâs Gene,â the evolutionary benefits of seeking novelty, and the psychological aspects of exploring, including the balance between the impulse to explore and the necessity to exploit known resources.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Why is defining exploration so tricky?
33:56: What do you mean by exploring? Well, on one extreme, it can be like, well, if you are the first person to do this ever, then you are exploring. And that is a very narrow definition that not many of us will ever satisfy. The other definition is like, hey, I am changing the channel on TV and therefore I am exploring the airwaves. And that is also not very meaningful. Then, like, everything we do is exploring.
So, somewhere in the middle, there is a definition that I think is useful. And part of that definition, I think, is that it isâyou know, a meaningful form of exploration inevitably involves some struggle. It involves the risk of failure. It does not have to be physical struggle, but it involves some risks, some challenge.
Is technology making us passive explorers?
33:02: Technologies make us more passive in our explorations. There is something lost in the quality of our experience, in how much we enjoy it, and then also in how much we learn about the world from those experiences.
Why are we drawn to solving uncertainty?
24:37: The subjective sense that life is goodâlike the feeling that you are happy and good and satisfiedâis a manifestation of the fact that you are reducing uncertainty quickly. That this is like you are learning about the world, things are going well. And so, when we talk about exploring and curiosity, we are looking for opportunities to get this steepest slope that we can surf down, where we are reducing uncertainty quickly.
Why a changing world demands exploration
18:56: If the world was stationaryâin the bandit literature, they talk about stationary bandits and restless bandits. So, stationary bandits are like, if the slot machine pays off 62% of the time, it is always going to pay off 62% of the time. If the world was like that, then there might be a case for locking yourself in a closet, or at least some equivalent of, like, you do not need to explore quite so muchâlet us just figure out a comfortable way of living and let us do that. The problem is, the world never stays stationary. So, what worked yesterday may not work as well today, and almost certainly, eventually there will come a time where it is not working. We have to keep adapting. And so, in these lab areas, you can show that the more restless the worldâthe greater the changes in the reward functions around youâthe more valuable exploration is.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Daniel Ellsberg John Maynard Keynes Bernard Suits Mark Miller âYour Brain on GPSâ by Alex Hutchinson | The Globe and Mail Mindwandering: How Your Constant Mental Drift Can Improve Your Mood and Boost Your Creativity by Moshe BarGuest Profile:
Professional WebsiteProfessional Profile on LinkedInAuthor Page at Outside MagazineGuest Work:
The Explorer's Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the MapEndure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance -
Being easily distracted by the latest technologies has been a consistent feature of the human race since the time of Plato. But is the technology to blame? Or is the key to being more productive and present in life have to do with forming healthy habits around the technology?
Nir Eyal, writer, consultant, and former lecturer in marketing at Stanford, is the author of Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life and Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. In his work, Nir explores the psychology behind habit-forming technology.
Nir and Greg discuss the positive applications of habit-forming technologies, the timeless nature of distraction, the importance of forethought in combating impulsiveness, and practical strategies for becoming âIndistractable.â
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought
15:32: Studies have found that 90% of your distractions are not external triggers. They do not come from the outside world. Ninety percent of the time you check your phone, you check your phone not because of a ping, ding, or ring, but because of an internal trigger. Because 90% of distractions begin from within. They start because of these internal triggers. What are internal triggers? Internal triggers are uncomfortable emotional statesâboredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety. This is the source of 90% of our distractions. So what that means is, when you let those impulses take over, right? The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. When you allow yourself to check social media or watch something on the news or whatever it is that is not what you want to do, because of an immediate sensation, that tends to be, 90% of the time, the source of the problem. That is when it becomes something of, âOh my gosh, what was I doing? I wasted the whole day worrying about somebody else's problems online,â as opposed to what I really need to do. Whereas if you plan that time in advance, it is fine. There is nothing wrong with it.
How do you become indistractable?
50:42: The first step to becoming indistractable is mastering internal triggers, or they will master you. So you can have the best tools, the best life hacks, the bestâall that stuff. But if fundamentally you do not know how to deal with that sensation, you do not know how to process boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxietyâif you do not know what to do with that sensationâyou are always going to find a way to escape.
Humans adapt and adopt with every new technology
07:29: The solution is not to abandon the technology. The solution is to make it better, to do what we as Homo sapiens have always done. We have always done two things in the face of dramatic technological innovation. What we have done is to adapt and to adopt, right? We adapt our behaviors. We adapt to new social norms. We adapt to the downsides of these behaviors by changing our manners, and then we adopt new technologies to fix the last generation of technologies.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
AkrasiaPaul VirilioPeter GrayAmy Edmondson | unSILOedRobert D. PutnamGuest Profile:
Official Website Professional Profile on LinkedInGuest Work:
Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your LifeHooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products -
There is a shift happening in the complex world of proof. Simulation and probabilistic approaches are increasingly accepted as âgood enoughâ in areas traditionally dominated by exact proofs. Persuasion depends on the degree of certainty needed.
Adam Kucharski is a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and also the author of three books, Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty, The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread--And Why They Stop, and The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling.
Greg and Adam discuss the versatile concept of 'proof', examining how it applies differently across mathematics, law, medicine, and practical decision-making. Adam discusses the challenges of proving concepts under uncertainty, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the role of intuition versus formal modeling in various fields. They also explore the crossover of epidemiological principles into finance, marketing, cybersecurity, and online content dynamics, illustrating the universal relevance of contagion theories.
The episode highlights how simulation and probabilistic approaches are increasingly accepted in areas traditionally dominated by exact proofs.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:The gap between science and policy
09:25: One of the challenges we had in COVID is this dimension of a problem where all directions had a lot of enormous downsides, and countries were having to make that under pressure. And even one of the things that I think I did not really appreciate at the time was, even later in the year, when a lot of these questions about the severity, a lot of these questions about transmission, had really been resolved because we had much better data. We still had a lot of this tension demanding, "Oh, we cannot be sure about something," or "You know, we need much, much higher evidence." And I think that is the gap between where kind of science lies and where policy lies.
Itâs not the content, itâs the contagion
37:59: I think a lot of people think about the content, but obviously it is not just, "It is something goes viral." It is not just about the content. It is not about what you have written; it is about the network through which it is spreading. It is about the susceptibility of that network. It is about the medium you use. Do you have it that lingers somewhere? Is it just something you stick on the feed and it kind of vanishes? So, there is a direct analogy there with the different elements and how they trade off in ultimately what you see in terms of spread.
What human networks canât teach us about machines
46:35: One thing that is really interesting about computer systems is the variation in contacts you see in the network is enormous. You basically get some hubs that are just connected to a huge number of computers, and some are connected to very few at all. So that makes the transmission much burster.
It is not likeâso humans have some variation in their contactsâbut most people have about 10 contacts a day, in terms of conversations or people they exchange words with. Some more, some less, but you do not have people generally have like 10,000 contacts in a day, whereas in computers you can have that. So it makes the potential for some things to actually persist at quite low levels for quite a long time because it will kind of hit this application and then simmer along, and then hit another one and simmer along.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
EuclidGeorge E. P. BoxWilliam Sealy GossetP-valueRonald RossJonah PerettiDuncan J. WattsAmazon Web ServicesMonty HallGuest Profile:
AdamKucharski.ioFaculty Profile at London School of Hygiene & Tropical MedicineSocial Profile on BlueSkyGuest Work:
Amazon Author PageProof: The Art and Science of CertaintyThe Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread--And Why They StopThe Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of GamblingSubstack NewsletterGoogle Scholar PageTED Talks -
How do individuals navigate moral typecasting? What is the dual nature of empathy in the context of human pain and suffering? When is there a disconnect between the perceptions of what is right and what is moral?
Kurt Gray is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he directs the Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. In the autumn of 2025, he will join the faculty of the Department of Psychology at Ohio State University. Heâs also an author, and his books are titled Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground and The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters.
Greg and Kurt discuss Kurtâs work at the Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. Their conversation covers key topics such as how moral disagreements are rooted in differing perceptions of harm, the impact of evolutionary psychology, and the role of empathy in bridging divides. Kurt also shares insights from his classroom experiences on fostering understanding among students.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:How can pain and suffering change your view about empathy?
43:00: There are two ways, right? That pain and suffering could change your views of empathy. And I should say there are some people who do experience a lot of pain and suffering and then do not feel sympathy...[43:16] Everyone suffers. Just like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, dust yourself off and get hard, get tough. But for the most part, if you suffered a lot in life, you can kind of recognize that it's tough sometimes to be a human being and that you have more sympathy for others, at least more so than people who never suffered in their lives, right? But I think the way that pain causes you to have less empathy is if you're in pain right now. Right? So if you are standing in, you know, a pile of razor blades, it's hard to be really empathic for someoneâyou know, someone's situation, right?âbecause you're so focused. Like, pain just overwhelms your entire consciousness. So never try to get empathy from someone who is actively in pain, but I think instead, reach out to people who, you know, have gone through a similar thing.
Moral understanding begins with human contact
40:46: The more you have sustained contact with people who are different than you, you show more moral understanding.
When recognizing pain depends on perception
27:13: When it comes to the ability to suffer, pain like that is ultimately a matter of perception. Like, you can, you know, agencyâsomeone is intendingâyou can see that more on the surface, right? Like, I am going to think and I will do somethingâthat is agency. But if you start crying, like, are you a method actor? Are you actually in tears? Are those crocodile tears? So, questions of pain are easy to accept when it is your family or your friends. Perhaps when someone is very different than you, or maybe you are locked in a conflict with someone and they are crying, right? It is much harder to take their pain as authentic.
Understanding starts with stories not arguments
30:53: Stories are a way of sharing one true thing, shall we say, right? This thing happened to me, and it's not a talking point I heard on the radio. It actually happened to me, and let me tell you about it so that you can better understand me. I think it's powerful because it's not the thing that you're going to use to persuade in policy, let's sayâalthough, often, stories are persuasive in policyâbut instead it's a way of saying, here's where I'm coming from. Can you understand where I'm coming from? And that's a great place for a conversation to start. Right now, I understand you're a person, I'm a person, and let's explore our perspectives rather than argue about complex policy issues.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Jonathan HaidtMoral Foundations TheoryDaryl DavisLuigi MangioneDavid GogginsDaniel KahnemanGuest Profile:
KurtJGray.comDeepest Beliefs LabThe Center for the Science of Moral UnderstandingProfile on LinkedInSocial Profile on InstagramSocial Profile on XHis Work:
Amazon Author PageOutraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common GroundThe Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It MattersAtlas of Moral PsychologyGoogle Scholar Page -
You know what they say â Silicon Valley wasnât built in a day, nor was it built by just a small group of tech gurus. In fact, the origin story of the Valley is a complex story involving government, industry, and academia.
Margaret OâMara is a history professor at the University of Washington. Her latest book, The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America gives an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the making of the tech empire, and how itâs grown into an economic engine.
Margaret and Greg discuss the significant role the government played in the early days of Silicon Valley, key historical figures in the regionâs rise to prominence and factors that set it apart from other tech hubs like Boston, and how the ecosystem has evolved alongside politics, technology, and cultural shifts.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:How storytelling built Silicon Valleyâs legacy
31:59: I think there's the story of the products, and then there's the story of the place, the story of the guys in garages. The story of this entrepreneurial genius, and that's a great, great story. It's part of the story. It leaves out this bigger landscape of government and society and people who are non-technical people, the Regis McKennaâs of the world, who are so instrumental in making all this happen. But it'sâI mean, I know as a historianâstorytelling is powerful. That's how you help people understand and relate. And so Silicon Valley has been such a good storyteller.
Why everyone should understand tech history
04:27: It's really important for all of us as users of this technology to have a way to understand it and understand its history. Even if we don't know, even if we aren't programmers ourselves.
Meritocracy alone hasnât changed the face of power
53:16: We're seeing the people at the very, very top of power and influence are more homogenous than ever, which is showing that this meritocracy, this idea, just doesn'tâonly goes so far. So understanding the history kind of helps, I think, is really important in kind of getting why. Okay, why has this not changed? Why is this so baked into the model? But it also doesn't mean that we should just throw up our hands and say, well, this is the way it is.
Federal research grants built founders not just labs
11:57: Research money for universities is not only seeding basic research in labs and then seeding spinoff companies and commercializing technologies from those labs, but it's also educating people. When you look, kind of dollar for dollar, about, you knowâwhen you look at Stanford, for example, if you just look at the tech spaceâI think biotech is different. Medical sciences are different because you have more of that kind of pipeline from lab to startup in that space. But when you're looking at computer hardware and software, it's more about the people that went to Stanford that went on to found companies, right? Everyone from Hewlett and Packard to Brin and Page and everyone in between. That is, it's kind of a people factory, so that's part of it. And that federal money is paying for people for science and engineering programs. So that's a really important component.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Frederick TermanVannevar BushRegional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee SaxenianRobert NoyceBurt McMurtryTerry WinogradBill DraperPitch JohnsonRegis McKennaWilson Sonsini Goodrich & RosatiGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at University of WashingtonProfessional WebsiteGuest Work:
The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America -
Are there ways to change your personality? What traits are easier to change than others? How does environment and life events tend to influence the Big Five traits of your personality?
Olga Khazan is a staff writer at The Atlantic magazine and also the author of the books Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change and Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World.
Greg and Olga discuss the concept of personality change, focusing on the Big Five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Olga shares her personal journey of attempting to modify her own traits, the challenges faced, and the various techniques used, such as meditation, improv, and volunteering. They also talk about the implications of personality change in different environments, the heritability of traits, and the broader significance of these changes for personal and professional growth.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:The case for volitional personality change
12:03; Everyone will change slightly, even if they do not do anything. So you can just, like, buckle up and enjoy the ride, I guess. The maturity principle â like people become less neurotic, more conscientious over time â so those are positive changes, and most of us will kind of enjoy those. But volitional personality change, which is what my book is really about, is trying to make a more pronounced change in a shorter period of time. And the kind of type of thing I am talking about is, like, starting therapy. Like most people, if they have a problem, they do not kind of sit back and say, "This problem will eventually go away, so I am not going to get therapy." You know, they are like, "I want to go see a therapist because I want this process to resolve faster â like, want to get over this problem sooner." And so, it is similar with volitional personality changes: you are noticing a problem in your life, and you are taking steps to change it faster than it would change naturally.
Why extroverts are often happier
22:40: Extroversion is important. Most studies show that extroverts are happier. That's just because they have more social connections... There's just something about being seen by other people, feeling like you're part of a community, feeling like you matter, that is really beneficial for health and can't be replicated by reading a book or watching a TV show.
Neuroticism and safety vs. risk
25:37: Neuroticism will keep you very safe because you will never do anything. But you have to ask yourself whether you want a life where you've never taken any risks. 'Cause that's also part of it.
What improv can teach you about being open
20:37: What improv is really good at is, if you are someone who is very controlling of situations or likes to be in control, it completely breaks you of that immediately because there is absolutely no way to control what's happening in improv. Everything is so made up and so confusing, and so you have to like to be in the moment and just pivot on the spot with whatever's happening. And for me, that really helped with extroversion, but also kind of just some of the parts of me that were kind of not willing to be extroverted.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
NathanWHudson.comPersonalityAssessor.comBrent RobertsWilliam JamesBrian LittleDale CarnegieHow to Win Friends and Influence PeopleGuest Profile:
OlgaKhazan.comProfile on LinkedInWikipedia ProfileSocial Profile on XSocial Profile on InstagramHer Work:
Articles in The AtlanticAmazon Author PageMe, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality ChangeWeird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider WorldSubstack Newsletter -
Could the key to a happier life be found with our most ancient ancestors and the way they depended on community over autonomy? In a modern world built to encourage independence, how do we find the right balance between connectedness and autonomy?
William Von Hippel is a retired professor of psychology from the University of Queensland and the author of The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness. His research, also found in his first book The Social Leap and countless articles, focuses on the evolutionary science behind happiness.
William and Greg chat about how evolutionary science can offer guidance on living a happier, more fulfilled life, the psychological and physiological impacts of social connections, the historical context of human relationships, and the role of modern technology and societal changes in our well-being.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Why loneliness hurts more than we realize
28:38: Loneliness is really hard on your health. We know that it kills you at rates higher than cigarettes once you get older, and you're more vulnerable. And so the feeling of loneliness doesn't guarantee you don't have people around, but it does mean that you don't feel part of it.
You feel somewhat excluded. And of course, feeling excluded should hurt because our ancestors who couldn't see that they're about to be excluded are the ancestors who kept misbehaving and therefore got excluded. When you look at hunter-gatherer societies, they all follow the same pattern of exclusion, whereby before they actually give you the heave-ho, first they kind of tease you. And if you don't respond to this teasing, well, already, you're a little bit too thick-skinned, because that's meant to bring you back in line. If teasing doesn't work, then they start acting like you're not even there. They talk around you and not responding to you. Almost everybody, when they get to that point, starts to feel terrible. It feels like physical pain because our ancestors, our potential ancestors who weren't bothered by that, took the next step and woke up one morning either dead or all alone. So, the system makes perfect sense that it really hurts.
Happiness is one of evolution's best tools
04:06: Happiness is one of evolution's best tools. It motivates us to do things that are in our genes' best interest, not necessarily ours as human beings, who may or may not want to do those things, but it motivates us to do what's in our genes' best interestâtypically by making us happy when we do those things.
The tradeoff between autonomy and connection
06:34: We enter relationships which are super important to us and our happiness; we're a gregarious species. When we enter those relationships, we have to sacrifice some degree of autonomy to do what our friends want some of the time, or at least at the time they want, et cetera. And when we decide to pursue our autonomy, usually in pursuit of skills and self-development, we have to sacrifice our relationships to some degree, because that means we're spending time honing our own skills and not socializing or helping others.
Why wealth doesnât guarantee happiness
19:47: The things that made us happy, as far as the social connections, were also the things that made us reproductively successful. And they, in some ways, they very much still are. So if I'm famous or rich, I'm high in status, and then I'm attractive to members of the opposite sex or whoever I prefer. And I'm attractive to people who I want to be in my coalition. I have the sort of social accolades that actually make me feel good. And I think that's actually the basis of the Eastland Paradoxâthis notion that as societies get wealthier, people don't get happier. But richer people are happier than poorer people.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Daniel KahnemanShigehiro OishiRobert Trivers ĂtziJohn T. CacioppoJanice Kiecolt-GlaserSheldon CohenGuest Profile:
Professional Profile on LinkedInProfessional WebsiteHis Work:
The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find HappinessThe Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Makes Us Happy -
What happens to the speed of trading as technology advances? How do we move from automated button pressing machines to ultra-fast algorithms? What surprising impact does the rain have on the trading windows of financial markets?
Donald MacKenzie is a professor of sociology at the University of Edinburgh and also the author of several books. His most recent works are Trading at the Speed of Light: How Ultrafast Algorithms Are Transforming Financial Markets and An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets.
Greg and Donald discuss the intersection of sociology and finance, exploring how financial models not only describe markets but also actively influence them. Donald explains the concept of performativity, where financial theories shape market behavior, and contrasts qualitative sociological methodologies with quantitative financial studies. Their conversation also touches on the history and impact of technologies and regulatory environments that have transformed financial trading, highlighting contributions from notable academics and instances of feedback loops between theory and practice.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Chicago pits vs. algorithms
28:34: For, say, investment management firms that have to buy and sell large portfolios of assets, thereâs little doubt that the modern world of automated trading has benefits, but it also has downsides. I mean, the benefit is, quite simply, of course, that automated systems are a lot cheaper than human beings in colored jackets running around in Chicagoâs pits or on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. But, at the same time, of course, if you are trying to sell or buy a very large position, then you do leave electronic traces that trading algorithms can pick up on and make money out of.
Why financial models shapes markets like engine not camera
04:31: An engine does things, it's not a cameraâat least in our ordinary thinking about cameras, where you take the photograph and the landscape remains the same. An engine does stuff, it changes its environment.
The power of shared signals in trading success
34:11: The secret of my success is I realized quite early on that there were thingsâsignals, as they would be called in the fieldâinputs to algorithms that everybody knew about and that everybody knew that everybody knew about. So it wasn't like I had an unsuccessful attempt, way back to research statistical arbitrage and dare nobody would tell you what exactly they were trading off of. But I think they're trading because everybody knows that if you're trading shares, then a move in the relevant index future is a very, very important signal. Everybody knows that, and everybody knows that. Everybody knows that.
Finance beyond numbers, the human side of quantitative work
02:30: Finance as an academic field, and indeed of course finance as a practice, is typically highly quantitative. And to get into the technology, quantitative work can be great, but to really get into it youâve got to talk to people. Ideally, you want to go see things, so the methodology is more qualitative than quantitative, and it probably would not be the best of ideas.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
William F. SharpeThomas MortonFischer BlackCoase TheoremMark RubinsteinEric BudishJohn O'BrienPortfolio InsuranceMilton FriedmanCommodity Futures Trading CommissionU.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionLeo MelamedThe Library of MistakesGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at the University of EdinburghForbes.com ProfileWikipedia ProfileHis Work:
Amazon Author PageTrading at the Speed of Light: How Ultrafast Algorithms Are Transforming Financial MarketsAn Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape MarketsDo Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of EconomicsMaterial Markets: How Economic Agents are ConstructedInventing Accuracy: An Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance -
How are effective leadership practices evolving to keep up in a continually changing world? What can be learned from the leaders of companies like Stitchfix or Waste Management? How can AI in education be handled in a way that is open and enriching to all?
Robert Siegel is a lecturer at Stanford University GSB and author of the books The Systems Leader: Mastering the Cross-Pressures That Make or Break Today's Companies and The Brains and Brawn Company: How Leading Organizations Blend the Best of Digital and Physical.
Greg and Robert discuss the evolution of leadership, particularly in the context of managing crises and rapid technological advancements. Their discussion explores the different things that must be balanced in leadership roles, such as innovation vs. execution and strength vs. empathy. Robert also emphasizes the importance of systems thinking, adaptability, and statesmanship in modern leadership.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Is statesmanship in short supply?
32:17: This notion of statesmanship or stateswomanship of stewardship is, it doesn't deny the ambition that we have as leaders. It doesn't deny who we want to be and what we hope to accomplish, but it's also about looking about everybody beyond us. And we have to lead men and women who agree with us and disagree with us, and we have to lead men and women. With whom we agree and disagree. Like we don't get to choose who we lead, Greg. Like we have to lead everybody. And if we've gotta get them from here to here, to me, that's what leadership is right now. And I don't think we're seeing this with a lot of the people who are put up there constantly in the mainstream media or on social media. But in the book I've got 15 to 20 leaders, all of whom are successful. And we can look at them and say, huh, well if they could do it, so can I.
What leadership looks like now
06:44: Leadership todayâin a world especially that's moving so quicklyâthat's where people have to be able to be more adaptable, internalize certain dualities that maybe existed separately inside of a company in the past that now need to exist inside of us internally. And so I think that things are different. The ability and willingness to adapt, I think, that's constant. But what you have to adapt to depends upon the times.
Is it harder to be a leader today?
08:09: Most leaders today are not trained to be thinking in kind of this level of speed, nor are they trained to understand what happens in different functions in an organization. In the old days, you could come up through engineering or through marketing or through manufacturing, and you would've teammates who would handle the other functions. Well, now we need to understand, like, what's the connection between what we do in one function versus the other function? How do we see internal and external? I think that's harder.
Investing time in yourself is leading smarter
32:01: A leader who says, I don't have time for this, they're probably spending time on the wrong issues, like where we spend time in the past isn't where we need to spend time in the future. And so making some time to invest in oneself, reading, finding trusted partners outside of the company. Who you can talk to and learn from. And, by the way, those people can be your peers. They can be people who are older, they can even be people who are younger.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
PericlesFuture ShockDaniel A. LevinthalKatrina LakeJeff ImmeltAndrew GroveGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at Stanford GSBProfile at Stanford UniversityRobertESiegel.comProfile on LinkedInWikipedia PageSocial Profile on InstagramHis Work:
Amazon Author PageThe Systems Leader: Mastering the Cross-Pressures That Make or Break Today's CompaniesThe Brains and Brawn Company: How Leading Organizations Blend the Best of Digital and Physical -
What are the effects of stress on memory? How does age change the nature of this vital piece of human cognition? What are the limitations of memory, and how can we embrace them?
Ciara M. Greene is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology, UCD, where she also heads up the Attention and Memory Laboratory. Sheâs also the co-author of the book Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember.
Greg and Ciara discuss the nature of memory, challenging the common belief that the best memory is akin to a flawless recording device. Ciara argues that memory's imperfections are actually evolutionarily beneficial, aiding in survival and decision-making. They discuss how metaphors for memory have evolved alongside technology, the reconstructive nature of memory, and the importance of understanding its functions. Ciara also explains how schemas play a role in memory errors, but how they are also beneficial.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Why forgetting your shopping list is a feature not a flaw
44:38: We don't need to have this fear that means technology is ruining our mind. This is exactly the same way as is. Like you say, you're, I dunno, you're going to the supermarket and instead of remembering your shopping list, you write it down. Okay. You don't then also need to remember it. They're able to adapt. So like if you say, I have written down my shopping list, you've essentially told your brain you no longer need to remember this. You don't need to remember bread and eggs and mouthwash. Like, our brains are flexible. Like they're not just running on tracks. It's not necessary.
It's not a good use of your resources because you've offloaded that task. That doesn't mean that your ability to go to the shop tomorrow and remember that you need to buy laundry detergent is going to be impaired because you wrote it down yesterday. It's just that we're, if you could think of it as being almost like extending your mind. Okay. It's almost like adding an external hard drive to your computer. You're just giving yourself a little bit more, like an, again, a broader sketch pad to play with. And that we, sometimes we use those tools. There's nothing wrong using those tools, but we should do them consciously.
How does the basis of memory work?
30:21: The reconstruction of memory is literally the basis of how memory works. It's inescapable.âYou can't just have a good memory and not have a reconstruction.
Memory helps us belong
03:46: It's important to think, not just about what memory is â it's not something static â but to think about what it's for, what its function is, and how it evolved in the way that it did.
Because just like every other part of our minds, and our bodies, every function that we have evolved under evolutionary pressures â you know, that there are survival pressures and reproduction pressures â and those influence the way in which we evolved as human beings, as any kind of species. So when we think about our memory, I think it's important to keep that in mind, and that evolution wasn't prioritizing: it's super important that you remember absolutely every boring detail of every single experience you've ever had. And, you know, that you have this perfect fidelity and recollection of every detail of everything you observe â that's not necessary to support your survival, it's not necessary to support reproduction, and in some cases, it can be counterproductive.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Jorge Luis BorgesHyperthymesiaSource-Monitoring ErrorThird-Person EffectElizabeth LoftusRepressed MemorySatanic PanicMcMartin Preschool TrialGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at University College DublinSocial Profile on XAttention and Memory LabHer Work:
Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We RememberGoogle Scholar PageResearchGate Page -
What is the role of active versus passive learning for math? How would data science become an avenue of math study for high school students and why isnât it already? Where does change in math education start? At the college level or before?
Jo Boaler is a professor of mathematics education at Stanford University and also the author of a number of books, including Math-ish: Finding Creativity, Diversity, and Meaning in Mathematics, Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers, and Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential Through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching.
Greg and Jo discuss creativity, diversity, and meaning in math education. Their conversation identifies certain flaws in current math teaching methods, the resistance to educational change, and the importance of metacognition, visual learning, and collaborative problem-solving. Jo shares insights from her journey as a math educator, including her experiences with educational reform and the implications of neuroscience on learning math. They also examine the role of active versus passive learning, the potential of data science in education, and the impact of AI on future teaching practices.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:How conjectures ignite mathematical thinking
17:00: When we ask kids to reason about maths and to come up with their own conjectures, we like to share that word with kids. This is a word that all mathematicians useâa conjecture for an idea they have that you need to test out. It's like a hypothesis in science, but kids have never heard of that word, which is, you know, means there's a reason for that. But anyway, we teach our kids to come up with conjectures and then to reason about them and prove it to each other. And they get these great discussions where they're reasoning and being skeptical with each other. And that's what sparks their interest. They actually feel like they're discovering new things. And it's, like, really engaging for the kids to get into these discussions about the meanings of why these things work in maths. So it's a great route in, not only to engage kids, but have them understand what they're doing. Yeah, it's not that common.
Why every kid should learn data science
31:02: Data science is really something all kids should be learning in school, before they leave school, and developing a data literacy and a comfort with data and being able to read and analyze data, to some extent, is an important life skill. And it probably is really important to say, if a democracy, as a lot of misinformation is shared now, and if kids aren't leaving able to make sense of and separate fact and fiction, they will be left vulnerable to those misinformation campaigns. So, it's important just to be an everyday citizen.
Why estimation is really important
34:48: The idea of Math-ish is, estimation is really important. There's a lot of research evidence that we should be getting kids to estimate, but I know that kids in schools hate to estimate, and they resist it, and they will work things out precisely and round them up to make them look like an estimate. But you ask them, what's your ish number? And something magical happens. Like, suddenly they're willing to share their thinking, but it doesn't happen enough.
The problem with teaching everything every year
14:28: In the US, we have this system of teaching everything every year. So, you start learning fractions in maybe grade three, but you also learn them again in grade four and grade five and grade six. And at the end of that, kids don't understand fractions and everything else. Everything is taught every year. Whereas if you look at very successful countries like Japan, they don't teach in that way. Fractions is taught in one yearâone year groupâdeeply, well, conceptually. So this is why you see kids going around in these massive textbooks that they can hardly carry, because it has all this content. And, of course, when you try and teach everything every year, often kids don't learn any of it well.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Randomized Controlled TrialMetacognitionCompression as a unifying principle in human learningCarol DweckGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at Stanford GSEProfile on WikipediaYouCubedSocial Profile on InstagramSocial Profile on XHer Work:
Amazon Author PageMath-ish: Finding Creativity, Diversity, and Meaning in MathematicsLimitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without BarriersWhat's Math Got to Do with It?: How Teachers and Parents Can Transform Mathematics Learning and Inspire SuccessData Minds: How Todayâs Teachers Can Prepare Students for Tomorrowâs WorldMathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential Through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching -
What is âgood stressâ and what are the benefits of it? How does an upbringing in uncertainty prepare you in some ways better for the world than others? How are intolerance and uncertainty linked? What is the important purpose of daydreaming for creativity and business?
Maggie Jackson is a journalist and the author of the books Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure, Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention, and What's Happening to Home: Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age.
Greg and Maggie discuss the nuances of uncertainty, attention, and distraction, emphasizing the importance of daydreaming and mind wandering. Maggie explores her findings about the impact of these states on creativity, learning, and memory. Their discussion also covers how societal and cultural attitudes towards uncertainty affect decision-making and problem-solving, especially in professional settings like medicine and finance. Maggie also reveals the role of dissent in fostering creativity and collaboration, and the need to manage mental well-being in an increasingly fast-paced world.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:How uncertainty primes us to learn and perform
05:44: What's really important to understand, and comes from the new neuroscience of uncertainty, is that this discomfort we feel is actually good stress. So, when you're meeting up with something new or unexpected or ambiguousâin the forest, or in the workplace, or whereverâyou actually have a stress response. Neurotransmitters, hormones, et cetera, you know, are cascading through your body. Your body and brain are kind of springing into action. And what's really amazing, and very new scientifically, is that your brain on uncertainty is undergoing remarkably positive changes. So, when you're unsureâthis has been documented in emergency room physicians and othersâyour working memory improves, your attention heightens, your brain becomes more receptive to new data. So, this is a stateâyes, that's uncomfortableâbut that's good stress. You're actually being primed to learn and perform.
Uncertainty is a signal to learn not to retreat
06:42: Uncertainty is the brain telling itself, "There's something to be learned here." So, that puts a different spin on this idea that we should retreat from it.
Tolerance of uncertainty is a skill you can build
28:15: So, we all sit somewhere on the spectrum of this new personality trait. It was actually discovered about 50 years ago, but it's getting a lot of attention, called tolerance of uncertainty or intolerance of uncertainty. So, if you're tolerant of uncertaintyâhighlyâyou're more a flexible thinker. You like surprises, you see uncertainty as a challenge. Intolerant people, during the acute phase of the pandemic, for instance, they were far more likely to turn to denial, avoidance, and substance abuse to cope. So, it's really interesting because our intolerance of uncertainty is mutable. Not only can we boost our toleranceâwe can practice, we can do daily exercisesâthere are clinical studies that are actually treating anxiety just by helping people bolster their tolerance and uncertainty. But it's also important to know that it's situational.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
YerkesâDodson LawJeremy P. Jamieson | Google ScholarCarol Collier Kuhlthau | Rutgers UniversityHarry S. TrumanâThe Einstellung Effect, ExplainedâAmy EdmondsonDaniel KahnemanRobert StickgoldJames J. CollinsGuest Profile:
Maggie-Jackson.comLinkedIn ProfileHer Work:
Amazon Author PageUncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being UnsureDistracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost AttentionWhat's Happening to Home: Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age -
How can the leadership power be wielded for both good and ill? How can leaders use their influence more ethically and effectively, and why is that important for the growth of the whole superorganism?
Adam Galinsky is a professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School, and also the author of the books Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others and Friend & Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both.
Greg and Adam discuss Adamâs research and teaching experiences, emphasizing the complexities of human leadership compared to leadership in the rest of the animal kingdom. Adam highlights the importance of understanding power dynamics and how small actions from leaders can have amplified impacts on their teams.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:On the power perspective taking
40:13: One of my biggest research findings was, you know, that power lowers perspective taking, right? Even though the powerful have greater impact and, in some ways, need for perspective, they have less of it. But I also have shown that there's a particularly powerful force of power with perspective taking. And so I actually call itâit's like driving a race car, right? Would be a good analogy. So power is the gas that lets you go fast. But if you don't have a steering wheel, you're gonna crash into things. So perspective taking is your steering wheel. And so, if you just have the steering wheel without the gas, you just sit there going nowhere, right? So it's the combination, I think, of the two that are really, really powerful.
Leadership tools can build or break
51:48: Every single part of the leadership toolbox can be used for good. Or it can be used for a really bad goal. It can be used to hurt people. And so part of what inspiring leadership is, using the toolbox towards inspiring goals, and to making other people's lives better.
The five-second leadership habit
26:47: One of the things that I hope from my books and from my teaching is it just helps people take a little step back and think thoughtfully about, like, little things that they can do, to, when they walk into a meeting, just be a little conscious of, like, where's the best place for me to sit? Five seconds. That's all you got to think about it, right? But like, what am I trying to accomplish in this meeting? Who needs to speak? Okay, I'm going to sit here, right? And I know people sometimes feel like, oh, it's overwhelming enough time. Like most people I know, once they get into the practice of doing that, it's actually very invigorating. It gives them a sense of agency, it gives them a sense of control over the world because they understand it. It's like the pill in the Matrix, right? Like the things, all of a sudden make sense in a way they didn't before.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Dave BrailsfordDeborah H. GruenfeldSuperorganismClaude SteeleCameron AndersonDon A. MooreBruce KogutLinda RottenbergGroundhog Day (film)Guest Profile:
Faculty Profile at Columbia Business SchoolAdamGalinsky.comLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on XHis Work:
Amazon Author PageInspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and OthersFriend & Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at BothGoogle Scholar PageTed Talks -
There have been periods throughout history when cultural aficionados of the time proclaimed that painting was dead! Yet, the artform has risen over and over again. What is it about painting that makes it so timeless and gives it the ability to continuously evolve? Why, after centuries, can we still be awestruck by the right combination of brushstokes?
Art critic Martin Gayford has interviewed many artists over his lifetime about their craft. His books explore painting through a multitude of eras and even gives a personal account of what itâs like to sit for a painting in Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud. His latest book, How Painting Happens (and why it matters), compiles wisdom from numerous artists past and present.
Martin and Greg discuss the challenges of writing about a non-linguistic medium like painting, the unique, often physical process of painting, and insights Martin has gleaned from his conversations with contemporary artists, including what makes a painting a great one.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:The silent intensity of painting
16:13: You don't have to talk or put things in words to think. There is such a thing as physical thinking, and painting is probably a very good example of that. That was one of the points that struck me when I was posing for Lucian Freud, which Iâwas a very long, drawn-out process. As you can imagine, it took about 18 months to produce two paintings. And Lucian was very slow, but it wasn't that he was painting all the time very slowly. Most of the time in a sitting, he'd spend thinking, looking. And then, after quite a while, and mixing up the paints and contemplating the situationâlooking at me, looking at the paintingâthen he'd dart forward and put a stroke on, quite fast actually. But probably 95% of the time, he wasn't doing that. He was considering the situation.
Why we still need painting in a world of screens
42:43: It's arguable that, therefore, paintings, sculptures, unique works of art are what we need now. 'Cause they're the opposite of phones and screens and endless deluge of imagery and distraction, which the modern world offers us. A painting isâif it's good enoughâit's something you can just look at for the rest of your life, and if it's really good enough, it'll carry on being rewarding.
Painting as a language without words
02:02: Painting or visual art isn't exactly a language. It's certainly not a verbal language, but it's a means of communication. And as such, it doesn't necessarily neatly translate into words.
How artists reshape art history to suit themselves
39:37: Although artistsâpracticing artists, ratherâmay have tremendous insights, and the insights of a kind which nobody else has access to, they're going to see art history and the art, the work of all other artists, from the point of view of their own art. And they'll be utterly out of sympathy, therefore, with quite large sections of the art of the past and of the present. To an extent, that's true with critics. They'll have certain idioms, certain styles, certain media they like more than others. But a critic can be a little bit less prejudiced. Oh, I'd like to think critics can be a bit more open-minded about what they're looking at. An artist will pretty well instinctively refashion the whole of art history so that it leads up to what they're doing today in their studio. But we don't all have to do that.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Lucian FreudPatrick HeronWillem de KooningClement GreenbergTracey EminJames TurrellDamien HirstPierre BonnardBridget RileyPeter Paul RubensRobert RauschenbergGary HumeGuest Profile:
Professional WebsiteHis Work:
How Painting Happens (and why it matters) Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian FreudModernists and Mavericks: Bacon, Freud, Hockney and the London PaintersShaping the World: Sculpture from Prehistory to NowVenice: City of Pictures A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer ScreenThe Pursuit of Art: Travels, Encounters and Revelations -
What is the intrinsic link between philosophical inquiry and personal development? How can academic thought and theory be applied well to practical living in the real world?
Kieran Setiya is a professor of philosophy at MIT and also the author of a number of books, including Knowing Right From Wrong, Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way, and Midlife: A Philosophical Guide.
Greg and Kieran discuss how philosophy and self-help have diverged over time and the potential for their reintegration. Kieran explores the practical use of philosophical reflection in everyday life, the evolving view of philosophy from his early academic years to now, the impact of Aristotle's concept of the ideal life on contemporary thought, and the nature of midlife crises including his own. They also touch on topics like the value of choice, future bias, the role of suffering, and the integration of philosophy in early education.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Why Aristotleâs ideal life isnât always the answer
06:58: What am I going to do here and now, in the conditions I'm inâwhich are always, to some degree, imperfectâright now, maybe particularly challenging for many of us? And it's just not obvious at all. In fact, I think it's not true that the best way to answer the question, "What should I do in my problematic circumstances?" is, well, look at what an ideal life would be and just sort of aim towards that. And that justâit's both impractical and often very bad advice. It's like if someone said, "Well, you don't have any yeast; try to make some bread." You could think, "Well, what's the thing that's going to be most like a regular loaf of bread?" Or you might think, "Yeah, that's not the right thing to aim for here." There's some more dramatic pivot in how I'm going to try to make a kind of bread-like thing. And I think that's a goodâa betterâanalogy for the situation we're in when we try to think about what to do here and now, when ideals like Aristotle's are not really viable.
On regret, choice, and the value of missed opportunities
21:21: Regret is a function of something that's not at all regrettable. Mainly the diversity of value.
Detached wanting and the good enough life
38:10: Stoics have this idea that virtue is the key thing for eudaimonia, and nothing else really matters for eudaimonia. But there are all theseâwhat they callâpreferred indifferents. So all the other stuff you might want, it's reasonable to want it, but you should want it in a kind of detached, "that would be a bonus" kind of way. And I think, while I'm not a Stoic and I don't think they draw that line in the right way, I think they're right that there is some kind of line here that has to do with sort of moderation and greed. In effect, thinking at a certain point: "If your life is good enough, you look at all the other things you could have," and the right attitude to have to them is something like, "Well, itâd be great if I had that. Sure." But the idea of being angry that I don't, or feeling like "this is unacceptable that I don't" is just not a virtuous â for want of a better wordâit's not a reasonable, justifiable response.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
AristotleEudaimoniaTelicityArthur SchopenhauerUtilitarianismPlatoJohn Stuart MillReasons and PersonsIris MurdochGuest Profile:
KSetiya.netFaculty Profile at MITProfile on WikipediaProfile on PhilPeople.orgHis Work:
Amazon Author PageLife Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our WayMidlife: A Philosophical GuidePractical Knowledge: Selected EssaysKnowing Right From WrongInternal Reasons: Contemporary ReadingsReasons without RationalismSubstack Newsletter -
How does strategy factor into the mindsets of presidents like Lincoln and Reagan on both a micro and macro level? What parts of grand strategy are at play when new countries enter NATO due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict?
John Lewis Gaddis is a professor of history at Yale University and also the author of several books on history and strategy. His latest books include The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, On Grand Strategy, and The Cold War: A New History.
Greg and John discuss the concept of historical consciousness and its relation to strategic thinking. John goes over the teaching of strategy from a historical perspective, comparing it to evolutionary sciences and emphasizing the importance of common sense in strategic decisions. They also explore the use of metaphors in understanding history and strategy, the role of theory, and the necessity of adaptability in leadership. The conversation touches on various historical and contemporary examples to illustrate these ideas, including the strategic mindsets of figures like Lincoln and the implications of NATO expansion and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Are we failing to preserve common sense in business schools?
36:38: This whole thing about preserving common sense at all altitudes, it seems to me, is something that's often missing in business schools and also in businesses, as we've seen in various cases. So, if reading some history can create that kind of attitude, then I think it's worthwhile. And the reason I think it can work gets back to the sports metaphor because, okay, maybe your business guy is not interested in reading history, but they're probably watching the March Madness or the Super Bowl, and they're probably talking about coaches and why are certain coaches better than other coaches and so on. And when they're doing that, they're talking about what I'm talking about, which is just drawing these lessons from the past, looking at the objective, operating within the rules but understanding that the application of the rules is going to be different in every situation, every moment of the game.
The optimal grand strategists know when to adapt and when to steer
27:518: I think the optimal grand strategist would be someone who is agile and situationally aware, but also retains a sense of direction.
Big ambitions fail without this one principle
01:57: It seems to me that there's a kind of logic of strategy, which transcends time and place and culture. And when you set it out, when you give examples of what you mean by that, it sounds like a platitude. So if, for example, I were to tell you that aspirations can be infinite but capabilities must be finite, you would say, I knew that all along. You would say that's a platitude. You can get strategy on that? Well, yes, I think you can build a strategy on that because history is full of people who lost track of that insight, who let their aspirations exceed their capabilities to the point of complete overstretch and self-defeat. [02:50] History is littered with people who forgot that aphorism. And the aphorism is just plain common sense.
Why naive questions matter more than you think
30:56: You have to realize naive questions are always good to ask. Because one of the problems with theorists is that they don't like naive questions because they're inconvenient. And they're much more interested in the purity of the theory, the rigorousness of the theory, if it's a laboratory sense of replicability, of the theory. But for somebody to come along and just ask a naive question, sometimes they're not prepared for that.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
George F. KennanNapoleonMark AntonyMurder BoardJohn NegroponteLeo TolstoyPainting As a PastimePresentismIsaiah BerlinAugustine of HippoJohn C. CalhounVladimir PutinGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at Yale UniversityWikipedia ProfileHis Work:
Amazon Author PageOn Grand StrategyThe Cold War: A New HistoryGeorge F. Kennan: An American LifeThe Landscape of History: How Historians Map the PastStrategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold WarThe United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, ProvocationsThe Age Of Terror: America And The World After September 11 -
Contrary to popular belief â making more money doesnât necessarily mean youâll be happier in life. The same can be said for societies as a whole, especially when it comes to countries with lopsided wealth distribution leading to high levels of inequality. So what are the connections between that inequality,peopleâs general wellbeing, and politics?
Keith Payne is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill. His books, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide and The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die explore the science behind inequality and the far-reaching impact it has on modern society.
Keith and Greg discuss how inequality affects subjective wellbeing and societal outcomes, the connection between inequality and political polarization, strategies to mitigate psychological harm of inequality, and how understanding these psychological mechanisms can improve cross-party dialogues and reduce divisiveness.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Why facts donât win arguments
51:42: Starting with the goal of understanding isâ important, and then when we're actually engaging with the other person, we have this tendencyâ, as soon as they say something is true, we say, well, that's not true, and here are my facts and figures. And so we need to stop trying to bludgeon the other person into agreeing with us by citing facts and better evidence. That may sound counterintuitive, especially in the academic world where I live, because, but that's the currency, right, for argumentation. That's not where most people are coming from. I mean, they care about the facts, but only as tools to defend their social identities. And so, I think a better question to ask is, well, not why do you believe that in terms of why are you wrong about the facts, but what is believing that doing for your psychological bottom line? How is that serving your sense of identity and your group loyalties?
Status is more than your paycheck
12:50: We need to find ways to judge our status not purely in terms of wealth or income, and to make those richer kind of social connections, as a source of status. Because those are things we have more control over than how rich the 1% is.
What shapes our political beliefs
06:39: âIt is perceived inequality that makes a big difference. And you have to see the wealth around you. And usually, that's not comparing ourselves to the top one-tenth of 1%, because we don't see the billionaires. Even if you live in Manhattan and are surrounded by billionaires, you still don't see it much, right? People like that live in gated communities, surrounded by privacy-insuring mechanisms and stuff. What we see is maybe the top 20% who are driving expensive cars and showing off their vacation pictures on Facebook. So, for the psychological comparisons, you do have to have some visible inequality there. But there's other ways that extreme levels of inequality affect society through non-visible means. [07:34] When it comes to the day-to-day psychological experience of living in an unequal society, the blatant visibility or invisibility of wealth has a lot to do with it.
How inequality reshapes our behavior
37:07: We found that in high inequality countries, and in high inequality states within the United States, people are engaged in more risky financial behavior â whether that's buying lottery tickets, or not investing for retirement, going to check cashing places rather than traditional banking, et cetera. So that all happens more in high inequality places, and you can see the same sort of patterns with regard to non-financial risk taking around health, like drug use, cigarette smoking â things that are high risk but immediate reward in terms of hedonic or affective reactions â are better predicted by inequality than by poverty as well.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Easterlin paradoxPhilip ConverseDonald KinderNathan P. KalmoeEdmund BurkeJohn Stuart MillGravity PaymentsâThe marketplace of rationalizationsâ by Daniel WilliamsGuest Profile:
Professional WebsiteProfessional Profile on XHis Work:
Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous DivideThe Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die -
When did the idea of parenthood become less of a certainty and more of a choice? How have anxieties about the modern world impacted our desire to procreate and thus impacted the worldâs population? Is that impact even a big deal?
Anastasia Berg is an assistant professor of philosophy at UC Irvine and co-author of the new book What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice in which she takes a philosophical approach to the question of whether or not to have children.
Anastasia and Greg delve into the shifting motivations and anxieties influencing the choice to have children, how this question has popped up throughout history dating back to Aristotleâs time, feminism's relationship with motherhood, and the potential reasons behind declining birth rates.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:When choosing parenthood feels like losing yourself
18:53: The transformation is one that really threatens annihilation of self. It's more radical than this difficulty of doing a hedonic calculation. What you are saying about the reluctance of calculating, though, I think is really important to thematize, because we see it especially as people increasingly report a conflict between pursuing what a lot of people are able to actually articulate as, like, a family goal or desire to have children and what they can see romantic relationships to be for.
Why fewer people won't save the planet
42:39: The fantasy that depopulation is going to be a solution for climate changeâit's just that: it's a fantasy. What we need is immediate global climate action, and nothing short of it will make a difference.
What are parents really responsible for?
37:07 What I think people are responsible for in being parents is not that overall wellbeing. What they're responsible for is preparing, to the best of their abilities, their children for meeting life challenges, pains, and suffering. So it's not to say that you can't fail as a parent. It's not to say that we can't say that. Some people, like, should you be a parent? I'm not sure. But it is to say that judgment is not going to be based on the likelihood of your child to just encounter suffering of any kind.
Rethinking parenthood as an avenue for self-fulfillment
30:17: âThe question of whether or not motherhood is an avenue for self-fulfillment should give way to the question of whether or not parenthood is something of value in human life and how to reconcile it with other demands, moral, material, et cetera. And as we said, that's true at both the individual level. So, within a relationship, to try to overcome the thought that the liberal left thing to do is to put the burden of not just choice, but the burden of asking this question of deliberation, of assuming responsibility for the choice, squarely on the shoulders of women, and also socially, to try and find a way of both recognizing the unique burdens that parenthood places on women, especially in the early stages of parenthood, but also reminding us that this is a profound human question.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
The âwisdomâ of Silenus | The New Criterion After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso (publishing July 2025)Melanie Klein Elena FerranteDetransition, Baby by Torrey PetersGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at University of California IrvineProfessional WebsiteProfessional Profile on XHer Work:
What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice -
How is our fear of uncertainty holding us back? Could an acceptance and willingness to embrace the unknown unlock new potential and innovation?
Margaret Heffernan is a professor of Practice at the University of Bath, an entrepreneur, and a mentor to CEOs. Her books include Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future, and most recently Embracing Uncertainty: How writers, musicians and artists thrive in an unpredictable world.
Margaret and Greg discuss the importance of embracing uncertainty in business and life, the value of creative thinking, and the pitfalls of over-reliance on predictability and data models.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:Why dissent is the secret engine of creativity and better ideas
34:46: Our obsession with efficiency means that we may prioritize management over productivity, and critical to productivity is diversity, debate, dissent, because this is how bad ideas get turned into good ideas. I mean, as a CEO I could waltz into work one day with an idea, which I thought was fantastic. And the great gift I was given were a lot of employees who would think, "Oh God, here she comes back with another terrible idea," and say, "Well, I don't know. What if we did it like this? So what if we did it like that?...[35:31] But at the end of a very long process, you end up with something which started with my bad idea and gradually got a lot better because of everybody else's input, and turns out to be marvelous at the end. But that dissent is absolutely fundamental to the creative process.
What's the relationship between being a noticer and being creative?
39:11: âIt's impossible to be creative without being a noticer, for a start. And I think that the great value of being observant and thinking about what you see is it keeps you much more in touch with what's going on in the world.
The danger of mental models and the power of an open mind
45:55: The danger of mental models is that they will attract confirming evidence and marginalize, or disguise disconfirming data. And so, the antidotes to that are certainly about having enough time to be in different places with different people who think differently. Having a sufficiently open mind to be prepared to notice this confirmation. Having an open mind prepared to change one's mind. And having, I guess, a way of thinking that tends more towards skepticism.
Why embracing uncertainty means loosening up, not tightening down
57:32: âEngineers talk a lot about tight and loose. I think much that has gone wrong in organizational life is a function of being too tight. And it sounds very counterintuitive because it is counterintuitive, but uncertainty requires that we loosen up in order to be able to respond more flexibly. And I think you are exactly right that pertains as much to us as individuals, as it does to the largest corporations in the world.
Show Links:Recommended Resources:
Gerd GigerenzerRichard S. Fuld Jr.The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness âThe role of art in difficult timesâ by Margaret Heffernan | Financial TimesCareless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-WilliamsMax H. BazermanPatrick KavanaghSeamus HeaneyGuest Profile:
Faculty Profile at University of BathProfessional WebsiteHer Work:
Embracing Uncertainty: How writers, musicians and artists thrive in an unpredictable worldWillful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our PerilUncharted: How to Navigate the Future A Bigger Prize: How We Can Do Better than the CompetitionBeyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small ChangesThe Naked Truth: A Working Woman's Manifesto on Business and What Really Matters - Mostrar más
