Podcasts about moral money

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Best podcasts about moral money

Latest podcast episodes about moral money

Sustainable Edge
Sustainable Edge: The climate race: Business, innovation & the road ahead – with Simon Mundy, Financial Times

Sustainable Edge

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2025 40:31


In this episode Simon Mundy brings a global perspective on the urgent realities of climate change and the business opportunities emerging in response, built from a long career covering the sector's development. This discussion is ideal for business leaders navigating a world where sustainability is no longer a compliance commitment, but a competitive imperative. Learn about: The real climate front line – What Simon witnessed in communities from India to Greenland and why climate change is already reshaping economies. The collapse of the ESG bubble – Why major corporations and financial institutions are retreating from net-zero alliances—and why that may be a good thing. Cutting through the green noise – How businesses can move beyond empty sustainability pledges and focus on real impact. The US-China sustainability race – Why the battle for leadership in green technology is shaping global markets. The business case for climate action – How companies are leveraging carbon accounting, risk management, and innovation to drive profitability and resilience. About Simon Mundy Simon Mundy is an award-winning journalist and the editor of Moral Money at the Financial Times. As the author of The race for tomorrow, he spent two years traveling the world to document how climate change is transforming industries, economies, and societies. His work offers a rare, on-the-ground perspective into the winners and losers of the sustainability transition.

Behind the Money with the Financial Times
Why executive pay is skyrocketing

Behind the Money with the Financial Times

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 31, 2024 22:24


Remuneration among CEOs in the US is rising quickly. It's been hard to miss recent examples of massive pay packages, like for Tesla's Elon Musk. But that growth is far outpacing that of wages for everyday workers in the US. The FT's corporate governance reporter Patrick Temple-West outlines some reasons this is happening and looks at whether change is afoot. Clips from Associated Press, CNBC, BBC News- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For further reading:US executive pay rises at fastest rate in 14 years Business school teaching case study: executive pay and shareholder democracy UK-US CEO pay gap widens as FTSE bosses' remuneration stagnates - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Plus, tell us what you think about Behind the Money! Complete this survey before August 29 for a chance to win a pair of Bose QuietComfort 35 Wireless headphones (terms and conditions can be found here). And, send us a question: Behind the Money is teaming up with the FT's Moral Money newsletter to answer your questions about what “responsible” business and finance really looks like in the 21st century. That means topics like sustainability, ESG, diversity and inclusion and clean energy investment. We might read out, or play the question from your voicemail with your name, on the show. To get in touch, record a voice message here: sayhi.chat/0humz, or send us an email with your question to michela.tindera@ft.com. On X, follow Patrick Temple-West (@temple_west) and Michela Tindera (@mtindera07), or follow Michela on LinkedIn for updates about the show and more. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Behind the Money with the Financial Times
What the City of London wants from Labour

Behind the Money with the Financial Times

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2024 25:15


The Labour Party has come back into power in the UK after 14 years. For the City of London, this brings hope for some stability amid the rise of competing financial sectors around the world. But will efforts to revitalize markets and the economy work out? The FT's chief UK business correspondent Michael O'Dwyer analyzes the expectations of City of London executives from the newly elected government. Clips from BBC, Today, NBC News, CNN- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For further reading:How will Rachel Reeves run the UK's finances?The City of London's wish list for the new Labour governmentThe club of City executives plotting a revival for the UK's capital markets - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Plus, tell us what you think about Behind the Money! Complete this survey before August 29 for a chance to win a pair of Bose QuietComfort 35 Wireless headphones (terms and conditions can be found here).And, send us a question: Behind the Money is teaming up with the FT's Moral Money newsletter to answer your questions about what “responsible” business and finance really looks like in the 21st century.That means topics like sustainability, ESG, diversity and inclusion and clean energy investment. We might read out, or play the question from your voicemail with your name, on the show. To get in touch, record a voice message here: sayhi.chat/0humz, or send us an email with your question to michela.tindera@ft.com. On X, follow Michael O'Dwyer (@_MODwyer) and Michela Tindera (@mtindera07), or follow Michela on LinkedIn for updates about the show and more. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Unhedged
Investing in green tech

Unhedged

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2024 17:39


Last week the FT's Moral Money writer Simon Mundy spoke with venture capitalist Vinod Khosla about 20 years of making big, long bets on renewable energy. Some have paid off, but most haven't. Khosla is fine with that, and continues to look for big wins in the very long run on solutions such as fusion. Today on the show, Simon and Katie Martin discuss the future of green tech. Also, we short cars and electric bicycles. Unhedged Listener SurveyTerms & ConditionsFor a free 30-day trial to the Unhedged newsletter go to: https://www.ft.com/unhedgedofferYou can email Robert Armstrong at robert.armstrong@ft.com and Katie Martin at katie.martin@ft.com. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Behind the Money with the Financial Times
F1's American test drive

Behind the Money with the Financial Times

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 10, 2024 24:39


The owner of motor racing giant Formula One is racing to capture the American sports audience. Thanks, in part, to efforts like the Netflix series Drive to Survive, it has caught the attention of many new fans. But FT sports business reporter Samuel Agini examines whether this league's push into the US will stick — and keep growing. Clips from Netflix, Formula 1, KVVU - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For further reading:Formula One's growing painsBeauty mogul Charlotte Tilbury wants to give F1 a makeoverThe Business of Formula One- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Plus, tell us what you think about Behind the Money! Complete this survey before August 29 2024 for a chance to win a pair of Bose QuietComfort 35 Wireless headphones (terms and conditions can be found here).And, send us a question! Behind the Money is teaming up with the FT's Moral Money newsletter to answer your questions about what “responsible” business and finance really looks like in the 21st century.That means topics like sustainability, ESG, diversity and inclusion and clean energy investment. We might read out, or play the question from your voicemail with your name, on the show. To get in touch, record a voice message here: sayhi.chat/0humzOn X, follow Samuel Agini (@SamuelAgini), Madison Darbyshire (@MADarbyshire) and Michela Tindera (@mtindera07), or follow Michela on LinkedIn for updates about the show and more. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Behind the Money with the Financial Times
Best Of: BlackRock goes all in on infrastructure

Behind the Money with the Financial Times

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 3, 2024 17:54


This week, we're revisiting an episode from earlier this year. BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink has been on the hunt for the money manager's next “transformational” deal. In January, Fink revealed that he had finally found it with the acquisition of a private capital firm, Global Infrastructure Partners. The FT's US financial editor Brooke Masters and US private capital correspondent Antoine Gara explain why BlackRock wanted GIP, and how this deal sets the agenda for Wall Street this year. Clips from CNBC Plus, send us a question! Behind the Money is teaming up with the FT's Moral Money newsletter to answer your questions about what “responsible” business and finance really looks like in the 21st century. That means topics like sustainability, ESG, diversity and inclusion and clean energy investment. These have become hot-button issues that have recently faced a huge backlash. Tell us, what are the questions you have? To get in touch, record a voice message here: sayhi.chat/0humz We might read out, or play the question from your voicemail with your name, on the show.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For further reading:Infrastructure: from investment backwater to a $1tn asset classHow the $12.5bn BlackRock-GIP deal is set to shake up investment managementHow Adebayo Ogunlesi's contrarian bet led to $12.5bn BlackRock tie-up - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - On X, follow Antoine Gara (@AntoineGara), Brooke Masters (@brookeamasters) and Michela Tindera (@mtindera07), or follow Michela on LinkedIn for updates about the show and more. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Private Equity Podcast
The last podcast you ever need to listen to on the benefit of ESG with Jennifer Wilson

The Private Equity Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2024 54:36


Welcome to The Private Equity Podcast! In this episode, we discuss ESG strategies with Jennifer Wilson, CEO of Re:Co. We delve into how ESG transcends compliance, becoming a catalyst for innovation, risk management, and increased profitability. Our conversation addresses the critical issue of greenwashing and regulatory scrutiny, underscoring the importance of aligning company values with genuine ESG initiatives.We explore the integral role of ESG in the Private Equity cycle, showcasing success stories where ESG integration has led to operational excellence and customer satisfaction. This episode is not just a talk but a practical guide for embedding sustainable practices into the fabric of business, ensuring not only adherence to ethical standards but also securing a competitive edge in the evolving market landscape. Join us for a blueprint for successful, sustainable investing. Breakdown: [00:03] ESG Integration: Jennifer Wilson of Re:Co outlines how ESG contributes to value creation through five key areas: solving global problems, generating profit, reducing risks, lowering capital costs, and boosting employee engagement.[00:31] ESG Success Factors: Jennifer highlights the significance of fully integrating ESG across portfolio companies without divulging specifics.[00:46] Background: Introduction to Jennifer Wilson, her journey before Re:Co, including her roles in finance, strategy, and sustainability.[01:52] Common ESG Mistakes: The major pitfall of viewing ESG merely as a compliance checklist and the importance of strategic integration.[03:38] Value Creation: Discussion on embedding ESG into the core of value creation processes.[08:25] ESG Evolution: Tracing the shift of ESG from an ancillary concern to a central strategy in private equity, particularly in Europe.[12:12] ESG Metrics Challenges: Addressing the complexity of standardizing ESG metrics and the shift towards more mature sustainability reporting.[17:04] Profit vs. Sustainability: Strategies for balancing profitability with ESG objectives.[18:31] Implementing ESG Strategies: Starting points for firms aiming to introduce or enhance ESG strategies.[22:14] ESG as a Differentiator: How ESG distinguishes firms in the competitive landscape.[30:51] Success Stories: Sharing impactful ESG initiatives and their benefits without specific details.[36:37] Data-Driven Processes: Mention of the partnership with Grata highlighting the role of data in private equity.[38:15] ESG's Future: Predictions on ESG's growing role and its potential for firms committed to sustainable strategies.[50:51] Learning Resources: Recommendations for deepening ESG knowledge, including the Financial Times' Moral Money newsletter and book compilations from The Future In Sound podcast.[53:34] Closing: Contact information for Jennifer and an invitation to engage further with the discussed topics.To connect with Jennifer Wilson, you can visit her LinkedIn Page.Thank you for tuning in!To get the newest Private Equity episodes, you can subscribe on iTunes or Spotify here.Lastly, if you have any feedback on the podcast or want to reach out to Alex with any questions, send an email to alex.rawlings@raw-selection.com.

Unhedged
Is ESG over?

Unhedged

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 29, 2024 21:17


ESG investing has been a dominant topic in finance for the past few years. But ESG seems to be taking a back seat. Today on the show, we talk about the future of mindful investing with Simon Mundy, who writes the Moral Money newsletter for the FT. Also, we go long legacy media and Sam Bankman-Fried's chances for a short sentence. For a free 30-day trial to the Unhedged newsletter go to: https://www.ft.com/unhedgedofferFollow Ethan Wu (@ethanywu) and Katie Martin (@katie_martin_fx) on X. You can email Ethan at ethan.wu@ft.com.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Organising The Future with Andrew Parry

Can morality and money ever go together? Can we do good and make a profit at the same time?Our Guest: Dr Judith Rodin is a distinguished research psychologist and the first woman to lead an Ivy League university. Judith was president of the Rockefeller Foundation, where she is credited with coining the phrase ‘impact investing'. Please subscribe to be first to know about new episodes. Our website www.johcm.com The information contained within this podcast including any expression of opinion is for information purposes only and is given on the understanding that it is not a recommendation. Views are as of date of recording and are subject to change. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Seyalmantram
MMT 3 Chartalist Theory of Money: Is Moral Moral Money Value Focused In EDUCATION with Practice.

Seyalmantram

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 22, 2022 20:07


MMT 3 Chartalist Theory of Money: Is Moral Moral Money Value Focused In EDUCATION with Practice.

ESG Talk
The Chat: Shaping the Global Climate Transition for All ft. Simon Mundy

ESG Talk

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 7, 2022 13:06


Join our author chat with Simon Mundy, Moral Money editor at the Financial Times and author of Race for Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation and Profit on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis. He and host Mandi McReynolds discuss takeaways from his journey in 26 countries covering the biggest story of the century and how we move forward as a global society to address climate transition. Resources: 1) Race for Tomorrow - https://www.simonmundy.com/book 2) Financial Times Moral Money - https://www.ft.com/moral-money 3) Simon Mundy YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/SimonMundy 4) Website - https://www.simonmundy.com/

The Conscious Capitalists
Episode #56: Moral Money, Thinking Laterally and Predicting Economic Downturns

The Conscious Capitalists

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 16, 2022 47:06


Hear how Leading FT Journalist, Editor and leader Gillian Tett has used her expertise in Anthropology to study the human interactions, tribalism and rituals of the financial and business world to predict the 2008 Financial crisis. She also frames the ESG evolution and why it will change but is here to stay. Gillian shares insights from her new book Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life.  ** If you enjoy this podcast, would you consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes only a few seconds and greatly helps us get our podcast out to a wider audience. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. For transcripts and show notes, please go to: https://www.theconsciouscapitalists.com Thank you for your support! Timothy & Raj

Behind the Money with the Financial Times
How tea plantations are testing private equity

Behind the Money with the Financial Times

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 29, 2022 24:34


Late last year Unilever reached a $5 billion deal to sell part of its tea business, including brands like Lipton and PG Tips, to private equity giant CVC Capital. But the tea sector is a complicated one. With roots in colonialism, tea plantations around the world have faced many issues, including accusations of human rights abuses. In this week's episode, we're hearing from one worker whose life was forever changed by violence on her plantation, and exploring how this deal represents a new challenge for PE as investors are increasing their scrutiny into the private equity industry's ethics. Clips courtesy of Unilever, Al Jazeera, AP- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For further reading:How Unilever's tea business became a test of private equity's conscienceBidders for Unilever's tea business pulled out on plantation concernsCVC pushes back IPO plans amid market turmoil- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Sign up here to get the Moral Money premium newsletter sent straight to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Twitter, follow Judith Evans (@JudithREvans), Kaye Wiggins (@kayewiggins) and Michela Tindera (@mtindera07) Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Business Pants
It's pretty grim when a "Moral Money Summit" includes an presentation from a Head of Responsible Investing entitled, "Why investors need not worry about climate change"

Business Pants

Play Episode Listen Later May 25, 2022 40:13


Path to Zero
3.08 – The Human Toll of Climate Change with Financial Times Moral Money Editor Simon Mundy

Path to Zero

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2022 45:08


On the Brink with Andi Simon
311: Gillian Tett—Why Can A Little Anthropology Help You And Your Business Grow?

On the Brink with Andi Simon

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 18, 2022 42:20


Hear how anthropology can send your business zooming to the top I love to read the Financial Times. It provides a very different perspective of the world from our US papers. As I was browsing recently, I came upon a story about Gillian Tett, FT's US Managing Editor, and her new book, Anthro-Vision. Curious as I am, my question was, What is a journalist doing writing a book about anthropology, and promoting AI (Anthropology Intelligence)? My joyful discovery was that Gillian is an anthropologist who became a journalist, a bit by chance and then by design. Her book is about the power of observation. Whether in Tajikistan as an aspiring anthropologist studying marriage rituals or reporting on a major conference before the financial crisis of 2008, she mastered the art of listening to the stories being told, the resistance to change that people demonstrate, and the wisdom an anthropologist can offer—if only others are willing to listen. As a fellow anthropologist, I am fascinated and I know you will be too. Enjoy. Watch and listen to our conversation here As anthropologists, our job is to see what is unseen Anthropologists love to observe, and by capturing the real lives of people, we offer insights that other data capture methods might complement or even might ignore. We know that people don't really know what they are doing and often tell you what they think you want to hear. It's their stories that offer opportunities to better ascertain the meaning of their daily lives and see the patterns that their cultures command.  In Gillian's book Anthro-Vision, there are wonderful stories about how cell phones have become the way in which kids growing up in the pandemic have built social lives, and why this is probably not going away. There is a great story about Bad Babysitters and how an anthropologist could open up their eyes to why they were messaging incorrectly to potential customers. She and I spoke at length about the social silence that gives us a view into what people are thinking. You will enjoy listening to her and love her book as I did. Our interview was at times deep and at others filled with humor, as we shared our journeys and who we are, not what we do. You can contact with Gillian onn LinkedIn.      Gillian's 5 big ways Anthropology Intelligence (AI) could help you:  Recognize that we are all creatures of our environments. Accept that there is no natural cultural frame. As humans, we create this diversity. Find ways to immerse ourselves in the minds and lives of others to gain empathy. Look at ourselves through the lens of an outsider to see ourselves more clearly. Listen to what is not said, that social silence.  To learn more about how we at SAMC apply corporate anthropology to businesses to help them get off the brink and soar, read the first chapter of my book, On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights. For a deeper dive into anthropology and how it can help your business thrive:         Blog: Will You Adapt Or Die? How Cultural Anthropology Can Transform Your Business Strategy Blog: What is Corporate Anthropology and Why Should I Try It? Podcast: Rita Denny—Maybe You Need Anthropology To See Yourself In New Ways Additional resources for you My award-winning second book: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business My award-winning first book: On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Simon Associates Management Consultants    Read the transcript of our podcast here Andi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon. Hi, I'm Andi Simon. I'm your host and your guide and my job is to get you off the brink. So I try to find people who are going to give you a fresh perspective, see things through a clear lens. Let's just step back and take a moment to be a little anthropological and begin to understand that you really don't know what's happening until you pause and think about it differently. And as you know, in my books, I help you see things through the eyes of my clients who all got stuck or stalled because their stories were so great that they couldn't see all the things that were going on around them. And that's why a little anthropology can help you change, grow and your companies get unstuck. As you know, I myself am a corporate anthropologist, which is why I'm so excited to bring to you today's guest. Today, Gillian Tett is with me. Let me tell you about why she's so special, and why you're going to enjoy watching her or listening to her. Listen carefully to the stories she has to tell. Gillian serves as the Chair of the Editorial Board and Editor at Large in the US of the Financial Times. Forgive me for reading this, but it's very important that you hear it. She writes weekly columns covering a range of economic, financial, political and social issues. She's also the co-founder of Financial Times Moral Money, a twice weekly newsletter that tracks the ESG revolution in business and finance, which has since grown to be a staple FT product. In 2020, Moral Money was the SABEW best newsletter. I'll tell you, it's a great newsletter. Previously, Gillian was a Financial Times US managing editor. And she's also served as assistant editor for the Financial Times markets coverage, and a lot of other things of great importance. I love to read theFinancial Times and I bet you do as well. She's the author of The Silo Effect, which looks at the global economy and financial system through the lens of cultural anthropology. She's also authored Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed Catastrophe, a 2009 New York Times bestseller and Financial Book of the Year at the inaugural Spirits Book Awards. I must tell you she has written really good books. I brought her here today because she has a new book out called Anthro-Vision. And as you might imagine, it touched me and my heart. And I read right through it. I couldn't stop because it was all about how, what she's calling AI, not artificial intelligence, but anthropological intelligence, more intelligence and a whole new perspective. And what I would like you to understand is how a little anthropology can, in fact, help you and your business see things through a fresh lens and why it's so important. Gillian, thank you for joining me today. Gillian Tett: Well, thank you for interviewing me. And it sounds like we not only have a lot in common, but a lot to learn from each other. I'm interested in your own career and your own story because it sounds fascinating. Andi Simon: Well, I have enjoyed reading about yours. But I'd like you to tell the listeners or the audience about who Gillian is because you've had a great journey that's taken you to many places. And as an anthropologist, I smiled. Just a little aside, I took my daughters when they were four and five to Greece to study Greek women. And I know you'd appreciate this, I learned a whole lot about the Greek woman through my children. I'm not sure what my children learned, but they still love me. And so that's all that matters. Tell us about yourself. Gillian Tett: Anyone who reads my biography would think that I'm thoroughly weird. That has been the reaction of many business leaders, political leaders, economists, grown-ups who pretend to run the world, when they hear about my background because most people who work in high finance or business assume that if you're going to be a journalist writing about them, you should have a PhD in economics or an MBA, or some kind of training in quantitative intellectual pursuits. And my background is actually in cultural anthropology. And I did a BA and then a PhD at Cambridge University in the UK. And what anthropology really is about is looking at human cultures and systems, and what makes people and societies tick, not just in terms of the obvious things that we recognize, but most importantly, the things that we tend to ignore around us all the time. Just like psychologists look at our hidden biases in our brains, anthropologists look at our hidden biases and patterns and assumptions in society. So in my case, I went into anthropology because I was fascinated by the rest of the world. I've always loved to explore and travel. And as a child, I dreamed of going to wacky weird places or places that seem weird to me. But like Indiana Jones, if you like the intellectual world, and cultural anthropology pretty much came out of that impetus in Victorian England, the idea that people would go off to other cultures to find the essence of what it meant to be human. And a lot of what anthropologists did in that way mid-century was indeed to go and travel. That's changed a lot in the 21st century. I'll come on to that in a moment. But I went off in my case to a place called Soviet Tajikistan in 1989. And I spent about a year and a half of my life up in the high mountains in Tajikistan living with a group of wonderful villages. I imagine most people listening are saying, I've got no idea where Tajikistan is on the map, or what it's like there. But basically, if you imagine the scenes you might have seen of Afghanistan on the news, and take out the black veils and put on very brightly colored clothes, then you roughly have the idea of what my village was like. It was in the high, high mountains of the Hindu Kush. And I was studying Tajik wedding rituals there. But I wasn't just studying wedding rituals, I was looking at these rituals and symbols and ceremonies, and all the economic exchanges associated with weddings as a key to try and understand how the Soviet Tajiks reconciled their identities of being Islamic and communist at the same time. Now, after I did my PhD, I then left Tajikistan. I actually became a journalist, originally a war reporter. And then I joined the FT and became an economics correspondent. And for the first few years, it felt as if all my training in cultural studies was completely irrelevant. But it's funny how life works. Because a few years after I started writing about finance, I suddenly realized that actually human beings are humans wherever they are. And in just the same way that I went studying Tajikistan wedding rituals in the Hindu Kush, and looked at how they use symbols and ceremonies to express ideas about their world. To give you an example, two investment bankers get together for gigantic ritualistic ceremonies called investment banking conferences, where they have all kinds of rituals like PowerPoints, and bar meetings, and golf tours. And those rituals and ceremonies and symbols also create social networks, and express all kinds of assumptions which could and should be studied through an anthropologist lens. So the latter part of my career has been all about trying to use this anthropological vision, and apply it to the world of business and finance and economics. And frankly, I think it's something that anybody could benefit from, particularly now, given that COVID has ripped up our normal lives and has thrown us all into culture shock. And we can all benefit by thinking about what makes us really tick. Andi Simon: When you think about that, you in your book play out some of the stories in there. You've provided us with a broad range of fascinating illustrations of the application of anthropology to different situations. Whether it was to a childcare center that wasn't doing well, or getting into pet care, or to the economic crisis of 2008 or what happened with Cambridge analytics, give us some illustrations, some case studies that are some of your favorites. The reason I ask is that, as you were describing, I could imagine being in the highlands of Russia. I took my kids to see what it was like to be a woman in Greece, and I studied the Greek immigrants and they returned to migration. But if you haven't done that, there's no way you know what it's like. And when you do it in modern society, in our businesses, people say, Well, what do you really do? I say, Well, I hang out a lot. And I listen a lot. And I'm looking for all the gaps that are on the sides of what people assume to be true. The only truth is, there's no truth, I tell people, and then they get really frustrated because it's all an illusion that we're living. So some illustrations, some great stories that you enjoy sharing about the ones that really make a difference. Gillian Tett: Well, one of the problems with anthropology and trying to communicate it in a corporate setting is that the corporate world likes to see things in shades of black and white, and things on PowerPoints. And anthropologists say, well life is grey and subtle and often contradictory. And in reality it is, that's really the only way to understand situations. But it's not always easy to boil down into a single chart. But for me, one of the most important moments in my own career was when I realized that actually the same tools I looked at Tajikistan weddings with in terms of analyzing and symbols could and should be applied to investment banking conferences. I went down to the Mediterranean in 2005 to an event called the European Securitization Board and looked at those rituals as if I was seeing them like an anthropologist. It showed me that the bankers that were engaged in that securitization business back in 2005 had all kinds of assumptions that they were barely aware of themselves which were distorting their vision of finance quite significantly and laying the seeds for the subsequent 2008 financial crisis. So when I looked at the bankers at play in their conference, I can see that they were a tribe set apart with a strong sense of their own identity. And like any social group that has a tight network, that was birthed and being reflected and reproduced in the banking conference. And they had a creation mythology. You know, every group has a creation mythology. Their creation mythology was that perfectly liquid markets, so called liquefaction of financial markets, was the ultimate perfect gold, the Holy Grail. And they were so addicted to this idea of a perfect free market. So they kind of failed to see all the contradictions in their creation mythology, like the fact that, although they were creating these innovations supposedly to make markets more innovative and more safe and more prone to perfect trading, most of these new products were so complex, they weren't being traded at all. And they weren't even able to value them with free market prices. Because it wasn't at the market prices, they had these models, the tools they were using to disburse risk were actually introducing new risks in the system because they were too complex for people to know where the risks were. And they said that these tools were done entirely to help people. But there were no faces in their PowerPoints. It was all Greek letters that indicated it wasn't just an accident that there were no faces. And their PowerPoints reflected a mentality that the end user had been kind of screened out of the way they saw finance. And you can say, well, that's kind of a pity. But actually, it had a really practical implication because what it meant was that the people creating new financial products were so caught up with the creation process, they couldn't actually see how the products were being used on the ground at the end of the financial chain. There's a wonderful scene in the movie, The Big Short, where a hedge fund trader goes and meets a pole dancer in Florida. Great scene. The financier, the hedge fund guy, goes, Holy crap, these people are doing this with subprime mortgages. And it was a real shock. And the thing that was shocking was not the fact that subprime mortgages were being used and abused on the ground, it was the fact that so few financiers could see what the end result was because they were so detached. So I came back from my conference, having spotted all this in terms of how the bankers were conducting their rituals, and it's one thing that led me to later warn that there was going to be a financial crisis. And I kept issuing those warnings over and over again. So that's one example where you can use anthropology tools to look at how a social group is blinkered and has blind spots that don't see, which can be dangerous. But in my book, I talk about ways that consumer industry groups can use anthropology to try and understand consumers, to try and understand what really drives fashions and trends to try. And also I've talked about how businesses can use anthropologists to see what's going wrong in their companies. General Motors did that very effectively several times. And you can also use anthropology to understand how other offices really work, or how they don't work. So almost any sphere of life where people are operating can benefit from some anthropology. Andi Simon: Often, I'll take a client with me out to their clients, to go spend a day in the life of their clients. So I'm going to teach you a little anthropology, I say. Let's go watch and see what's going on. You sell them solutions that you think are perfect. Let's watch how they're actually using them. Because to your point, if I went out and looked and came back, they would delete me. You didn't hear it, right? You didn't see it, right? So we go with them. And the two of us watch in the same factory exactly how it's being used. A sensor that's actually measuring the color of something or some technology that's being applied. Then we go out and we write down everything we saw. And the two of us were in two different places at the same time. We were each seeing completely different things. The conversation that follows is fascinating to me, because they're still trying to figure out what it was I was looking at and listening to. To your point, this is about listening and seeing and what they were listening to and why they were trying to fit it into their box. Like, you're a wonderful economist, we're trying to fit it into their illusion of reality, and what the reality actually was and I might claim as mine in a better reality, but I'm looking for the gaps for you and you're looking to fit it into your box, which may no longer be the right box anymore. And that's so important now, coming out of the pandemic The way we used to do things isn't any longer the way we're doing it. So people are hiring us to figure out, what do we do now? What's happening out there? Come watch with us. So as you were putting together your book, I have a hunch each of the stories touched you in some of the same ways.  Gillian Tett: I mean, the power of anthropology, in many ways I would argue, is essentially what you're doing is trying to engage in a three part journey. And the way I put it, that basically you are trying to simultaneously immerse yourself into the minds and lives of others so that you can understand them better. You're trying to not just immerse yourself in the mind of others, but really trying and seeing the world through their eyes in a kind of humble, open-minded way and to collide with the unexpected. You're trying to then use that knowledge to look back at yourself. Because, there's this wonderful Chinese proverb that a fish can't see water. None of us can see the assumptions that shaped us unless we periodically jump out of our fishbowl, go with other fish and talk to other fish and then look back at ourselves again with clarity of vision. And then you use that inside-outside perspective. The experience of being a stranger in your own land to not just look at the parts of the world that you talk about, the visible parts, but also the parts of the world that you don't talk about, or the assumptions that you ignore because they seem boring or geeky or dull or taboo or obvious. And that sort of three-part journey can be really powerful. An example: General Motors brought in an anthropologist to look at why some of its meetings were going so badly wrong, why some merging initiatives were going so badly wrong. There was an attempt in the latter part of the 20th century to create a sort of joint car between German and American engineers.They tried and tried for about two years to create a joint small car by bringing this team of engineers together. And at the time, they assumed the problem was because of linguistic differences. I know the tendency to think oh, those Germans don't understand the Americans and Americans didn't ask the Germans, because that was the obvious difference and distinction that was in everyone's faces. But some anthropologists observed the group and realized that actually it wasn't a straight story of German versus American clash. There was a bigger clash between different teams of Americans between Tennessee and Detroit. And because they all had very different cultures in their factories. And the really interesting thing was they kept calling meetings to try and resolve the problems without realizing that all three different groups had different ideas about what a meeting was and what the whole point of it was. The Germans thought it was basically to rubber stamp a decision that had already been taken and that it was very hierarchical  Their meeting didn't really count as work because work was what you did elsewhere. The Tennessee group thought that a meeting was there to kind of brainstorm and you had to have some kind of collaborative consensus-based system and they thought meetings were work. And the Detroit group had another idea all over again. So all of the people were coming into that meeting with different expectations, and because they weren't actually talking to each other in advance, and they weren't looking at the story behind the story, which is basically what were their different cultures, and what were their expectations of meetings, they kept wrongly describing it as a German-American thing, and it wasn't. So those patterns played out over and over again in offices. And it's really important to think about that now for two reasons. Firstly, most businesses right now are in the grips of radical tech transformation, as automation and digitization takes off. And that's creating a whole different bunch of cultural clashes, because the way that a group of techies in San Francisco are trained to think about meetings is not the same as say, a group of metal bashers in Detroit. But secondly, COVID and the pandemic and lockdown has challenged all of our ideas about how offices and work and meetings should happen. And we haven't been together in groups to kind of learn from each other and thrash it out. We've all been scattered and isolated. So within every company, the longer that COVID and lockdown has gone on for, the more you've created micro subcultures, who may be totally talking past each other all the time. And often exasperated senior managers who are middle aged, go, Oh, these millennials, they're so weird. But what about the age gap between different generations? Or maybe just the fact that different subcultures are growing up inside companies as we're scattered. And as we return hopefully to the office, different cultural patterns will develop all over again, and we need to think about it. Andi Simon: Well, you're not Malinowski, and you're not going off like Margaret Mead to a small island. To some degree, that's just what's happened during this pandemic, islands have been created. And as we're watching them...for example, I have a wonderful client that I'm going on my fifth year with them all in transformation. And they used to give remote work as a benefit to their partners and their employees, until the pandemic hit and everyone went remote. All 70 employees. Now they can't get them back into the office. And they said, Well, what was valued before as a benefit, it's now a penalty. And how do you take the same thing: remote work one minute is wonderful and in one minute it's awful. What are the values that are coming, and the partners are lonely. And the reason they want them back together is for human companionship. And what's so interesting for me is to watch the dynamics going on. Because they don't find a way to articulate what really matters here. It isn't about having them come back in the office, and that's not bad, and people decide with feelings. Their logic is, Well, I don't have to commute for an hour plus, I can get so much work done. Why do I have to be there to have lunch together, we're not going to do that. I mean, it's so interesting to watch the head and the hearts here at odds with each other on this island that I'm not quite sure was perfect before. And I'm not quite sure it's so bad right now, but nobody's quite sure what we should do to build coming out of it. And I have a hunch this is the proliferation of islands that all of us are watching happen across the country and across different industries. It's really interesting as an anthropologist to step back and just observe and laugh a little and cry a little bit too. Gillian Tett: I guess the point that you know very well that you've seen in your own kind of work, which is so important, is that we need to talk not just about what people are obviously talking about all the time, that's in your face, but also we need to always ask ourselves in any context, whether we're in an office or any other setting, What are we not talking about? What are we missing? What is the story behind the story? What's the context? And one of the ways I try to illustrate that point is through an issue that isn't to do with work. Practically, everyone who's middle aged with teenage kids is grappling with why are teenagers so addicted to their cell phones? And if you ask people that question, they go, it's because of cell phone technology. Or is it because of those wretched teenagers or it's because you know, evil tech companies are busy designing algorithms, which are addictive? Certainly that's true to some degree. But the reality is that you can't understand teenage cell phone usage without stepping back and looking at what people don't talk about, which is how teenagers move in the real physical world. And if you go back 100 years, teenagers had a lot of opportunities to physically roam, to meet their friends on the streets, even 50 years ago, they went to the shopping mall. They cycled to school. They would hang out with their friends on the fields, without parents watching every move. But in the 21st century, and even before lockdown, you had a whole generation of middle class American teenagers, particularly in suburbs, who essentially are overscheduled. They are driven everywhere by their parents constantly being monitored. And then you go into the pandemic, and suddenly this sense of physical constraint is even more extreme. So is it any surprise that you have a generation of people who think that the only place as a teenager that you can test boundaries, congregate spontaneously, explore the world without parents watching is online, in cyberspace? You can't talk about cyberspace experience without looking at the physical world. That's the social silence, to use a word that anthropologists sometimes use. And that model or metaphor applies over and over again to almost any aspect of modern life. Andi Simon: You said something very profound and well worth emphasizing. The times make the man or the man makes the times. Here we have a transformation of trust and of safety. When I was a kid growing up, we would go outside and play stickball on the street, and get on my bike and ride to the mall to go shopping with nobody. As my kids grew up, we began to realize how much more structured their lives were without thinking about the implications of it. I don't think we spend our time saying that's good or that's not good. We sort of flow with what society is doing and then you have all of the after effects of transformation. I've had several university clients who are frustrated because they couldn't get their Gen Ys, now the Gen Zs, to come in and play athletics. They spent their days on video games. And they were much happier playing a video game and not coming in to go play baseball or basketball or watch them. And socializing with more challenges. I actually had a grownup client, a professional, who spent his weekends playing games. His whole friendship network was there. And as an observer, I said, Oh, this is really a pure point, a transformation of our society without much intentionality here, if you know the world he was in, he never met any of the folks that he played with, which by itself was sort of an interesting and new and bizarre society in which we're in. You know, as you're thinking about what's coming next, I don't know when the pandemic is really going to end or if we're going to live in a COVID world for a while. Are you? As this is a futurist podcast, I would like to ask what are the signs you're seeing? What do you hear coming through? I have a hunch, you're picking up little signals already that you're curious about? Because I know I am. What do you see? Gillian Tett: Well, I think that people have been forced to re-examine how they're living. And what is fascinating was the late 20th century was a time when people had quite rigid boundaries between home and work in many professional contexts. Not always, but most western professionals thought that the office was a place you worked in, you might bring work back to home. But that was separate, you had a work time and a home time. You had your office colleagues, your friends, your family, they all sat in different buckets and we took that for granted. The reality is that actually that pattern of the 20th century is an absolute aberration throughout most of human history, and even throughout many parts of the world today. And what COVID has done has tossed most of us back into a state of being something like a peasant farmer, where your house is your locus of work, and your family is mixed up with your colleagues and everything else. And we may not like it, but it certainly challenged our boundaries. I don't think it'd be that easy for people to recreate those boundaries in such a rigid way going forward. A second change that's happened, which is not so bad, is because we've been locked down in our own groups, I think maybe we've become myopic. We've basically been locked down with people just like us, our pod, our friends. And people thought initially that when we went online, we would somehow break down our tribalism. Quite the reverse has happened because the key thing to understand about the internet is that it allows us to customize our identities and experiences in a way that's never been possible before. And I think it's changed our vision of how we as individuals relate to society. You know, most societies in human history have seen the individual as a derivative of society.  We're a cog that fits into a machine with identities that are pre-assigned. You know the enlightenment in Europe and this idea that we are the center of our society.  The "me generation." "I think, therefore I am." Society's derivative of me. 21st century with digital tools has given us the capability to basically customize our world as we want to know. We customize our coffee choices, our media sources, our friendship groups, and identities online. We customize our music tastes. Today's generation doesn't want to have a vinyl record, which has been pre-assembled with someone else. We want our own pick of a mix of music to listen to when we want, exactly what we want. And that's really a shift that's been exacerbated by the pandemic because we've been so reliant on cyberspace. And it's made us even more tribal, I think, in a very bad way. Another shift that's happened is that people's sense of the future, being a predictable, rigid path that goes in one direction has been shaken by the pandemic. Late 20th century was a time where most Westerners had lived a pretty stable life, pretty predictable life...no longer. And it was also a world where people thought okay, so I have business economics in one bucket, and sort of a do-gooding environment, social issues in another. And I think, again, that's breaking down. And you can see that in the corporate world where, essentially, companies are realizing that environmental, social and governance issues aren't just about activism, they're about risk management, about making sure that you don't suffer reputational risks, or the loss of assets that lose value if the regulatory climate change changes, and you don't alienate your customers and your employees. So people are no longer seeing business in just such a rigid tunnel vision way, it's more about lateral vision. And that's very, very important. And last but not least, I'd say that another shift has been in terms of cryptocurrencies and finance. In some ways, the move into cryptocurrencies, the move into meme stocks, is also part of this pick and mix culture. Patterns of trust are changing. As anthropologists, we used to say there was either vertical trust, or horizontal trust, where people trusted each other in peer-to-peer groups. This provides a social group glue to keep groups together. Or, you had vertical trust, which was trust in institutions and leaders on a large scale. It was presumed that when you had big groups, you couldn't have horizontal trust. Digital platforms have enabled something called distributed trust to explode. Suddenly, huge groups of people can do things on the basis of trusting each other via digital tools. That's how Airbnb operates. It's also how most cryptocurrencies operate. You trust the crowd through a digital platform, but not through an organizational hierarchy. And that's, again, changing people's attitude toward money and value and exchanges in a fascinating way. Andi Simon: If we write about this in about five years, we will have captured a major catalytic moment transforming society. If you listen to the multipliers of what we've just described, when I work with my own CEOs, mostly mid-market size clients, they are becoming far more stuck, stalled and immobilized than they've ever experienced in the past. They don't know what to do. And what's so fascinating to me is that they really don't know what to do. And they're not willing to go out of their corner office, out of their comfort zone to begin to see. And so they're really struggling with whether or not their businesses are going to survive. And there's no reason why they can't survive, they just have to change. And all of a sudden, that entrepreneurial spirit that got them there is stalled. And the certainty you spoke about, I'm not sure that was true, or an illusion that humans prefer certainty versus being fragile. But in fact, it's really raising up those people who can see opportunity in being agile, and I'm willing to change. The brain hates me when I go into a company to say, You're going to change and immediately all that cortisol is produced, and they go, Oh, please get out of here. But in fact, I do think there's going to be a training ground now for the agility that's needed for the next phase. Because as we come out of this, it's not going to be certain either, and nobody can really plan the way they might have thought. And I don't think that you should plan anything. I think you should try to be nimble, agile, adaptive, and talk to people. You speak about the silence, it's a great time to start listening. Just talk to people and you don't have to do it in person if you don't want to, but you can try. But I do think it's a time to listen to each other and not decide anything, just pull it in and just be anthropologists. Just listen to the conversations. Judith Glaser has a wonderful book on conversational intelligence, that you start by saying all of society are conversations. And I truly think that's a simple way of saying, Yep, just listen to each other. But the conversations are hanging out, and begin to think about what's really going on in those conversations. It's a little like that picture of that scene when they say, Who's doing the subprime mortgages. What are we missing? You have some great five big things in Anthro-Vision. Do you want to share them with our audience? I guess I'm pushing people to bring a little anthropology into your life. It's important and one of those five things. Gillian Tett: Absolutely. Well, having said you can't boil anthropology down to a PowerPoint, here's my PowerPoint. Lesson one: recognize that we're all creatures of our own environment. In a cultural sense, we're all fundamentally shaped by a set of assumptions that we inherit from our surroundings that we never usually think about. And they matter. Lesson two: recognize that just because we are shaped by sort of assumptions, that doesn't mean they're universal. It sounds very obvious, but the reality is that it's human nature to assume that the way that we live and operate and function is not just inevitable, but natural and proper, and that everyone else would kind of live like us. And guess what, there's a multitude of different ways to live and think, and if you think that yours is the only right way, you're going to suffer badly in business. Lesson three: coming out of this is to take time to immerse yourself periodically in the minds and lives of people who seem different from you. In my case, I went to Tajikistan, which for someone having grown up in England, it was very, very different indeed. But you don't have to go to the other side of the world of Hindu Kush. Just go talk to someone down the end of your road who lives in a different world. Go talk to someone in a different department, go take a different route to work, go swap a day with someone with a different profession. And if you can't do it physically, because of the pandemic, get online and basically explore another tribe online. And then mentality: I mean, just change the people you follow on Twitter, say for a week, and you'll see a completely different perspective on life. And then lesson five: for us, the experience of immersing yourself in the minds of others to become a stranger in your own land, and to look back at yourself with fresh eyes, and see what a stranger would consider to be weird or shocking, or impressive about how you live and your assumptions. And think about what you're not thinking about. What are the parts of your life that you're ignoring, the social silences, often thinking about the rituals that you're using in your everyday life, the symbols, the patterns that you use to organize your space, and your family groups, or your time. Those can often be very revealing, if you step back and look at them with an inside or outside his eyes. You know, why would you consider it to be odd to keep your hairbrush in the fridge? What does that mean? I mean, what are you missing? Well, what is one of your ideas about different body parts and about your mouth versus your hair, or you know all these inbuilt assumptions, which you take for granted, but are often very revealing. There's nothing wrong with the patterns we inherit from our surroundings, unless we remain prisoners of them and cannot imagine alternatives. And right now, as we come out of the pandemic, try to reimagine the world and recover and rebuild. It really is time to have an open mind, particularly after a pandemic that's kept us locked down mentally and physically, and in danger of being captured by tribalism. Andi Simon: What a beautiful ending, Gillian. Thank you so much. I've had such fun. It's fun to wander with you. Any last thoughts? How can they reach you? And how can they buy your book?  Gillian Tett: First, let me say what a great joy it has been to do this with you. And I greatly salute what you've done in your own career, which is fascinating. I write for the Financial Times, twice a week with columns. I also oversee a platform called Moral Money, which is the ESG sustainability platform at the FT, which is a newsletter that goes out three times a week. And my new book, Anthro-Vision, is out on sale. I should say last but not least, as another sign of culture, if you're listening to this in America, you can find my book Anthro-Vision, with a bright red jacket cover, and a picture of me on the back wearing a bright red top looking like Fox TV because that sells in America. If you pick up my book in the UK, or any part of the former Commonwealth as they say, you'll find my book is sold with a nice white understated cover with a picture of me on the back, wearing a blue shirt on a stoop clutching a cup of coffee. The British publishers thought that a picture of me looking like a Fox TV babe was too scary for the British market. And therein lies a story about why culture matters. Andi Simon: And you hope they're right. Well, I think that for the listeners, and our audience, whether you're watching this or listening to us, it's been truly a special time to share the essence of On the Brink with Andi Simon, our podcast, but my job is to help you get off the brink helping you to see, feel, and think through a fresh lens. There is so much going on today that's going to expand in a positive way the possibilities that are before you. It's the art of possibilities now. And rather than trying to go back...people say, I can't wait till the old comes back. It's not coming back because I don't even know what the old was and you don't either. But you also know that the new is giving you opportunities that are tremendous. Think about them in a positive way and you'll see them turning lemons into lemonade or limes into margaritas as somebody said to me recently. It's a great time. Gillian, thank you for joining me today. And for our listeners, don't forget, here's what I'd like you to do. I get emails from across the globe at info@Andisimon.com. You send me your ideas, you send me people whom you want me to interview. Send them to me, give me some ideas about topics that would be cool for you. I actually am doing a Leadership Academy and one of the gentlemen there, a physician, said, You know, my sons are listening to your podcast, and I laughed, and I said, How old? Eight and ten! I said, so that's my target audience. And I will keep talking to them, but they should listen because I think they and you will really benefit from understanding how a little anthropology can help you and your business soar. Bye bye now. Stay well. Bye bye.

ESG in VC
Ep 2 - Simon Mundy - Accountability in ESG

ESG in VC

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 1, 2022 17:50


Welcome to ESG in VC podcast. It is great to have Simon Mundy with us. Simon is currently a Moral Money editor at FT (Financial Times). He began his reporting career in Johannesburg, where he covered Southern Africa for the FT before a period writing on the London financial sector. He then spent seven years in Asia, heading the FT bureaux in Seoul and Mumbai and then two years travelling across six continents while writing a book called, Race for Tomorrow. Simon spared a moment between following the flow of money to chat to me about Moral Money history and how he joined the team. We also spoke about his book, Race for Tomorrow, and how storytelling makes it ever more real about all the current challenges we face as a society. And this is “why when we think about ESG, we do have to think about these issues in the broadest possible sense. Cause it ultimately comes down to the lives of individual people all over the world.” Guest: Simon Mundy Follow us: · Linkedin · Twitter · Instagram Please do not forget to rate and review and to get in touch with the host, Oksana Stowe, email me at oksana.stowe@esg-in.vc. You can also subscribe to the ESG in VC Insights Newsletter for insights and updates here.

The Climate Pod
Major Global Shifts On The Climate Crisis' Front Lines (w/ Financial Times' Simon Mundy)

The Climate Pod

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 19, 2022 89:35


This is one of the most wide-ranging, comprehensive episodes we've ever had. Simon Mundy, who serves as the Moral Money editor of the Financial Times, spent years traveling through 26 countries on six continents finding a diverse set of stories and people who represent many of the massive shifts underway around the globe. In his new book, Race For Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation, And Profit On The Front Lines Of The Climate Crisis, he details those travels and the vast disparities and outcomes people are experiencing as unjust global transformations occur. We talk about ancient Mammoth tusk hunting in Siberia, Cobalt mining in the Congo, breakthrough innovation in Iceland, climate displacement in the Philippines, and much, much more.  Read Race For Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation, And Profit On The Front Lines Of The Climate Crisis Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/ As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.   

The Short Fuse Podcast
Race for Tomorrow

The Short Fuse Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2022 58:21


Simon Mundy is a journalist with the Financial Times. He is  currently the  Moral Money Editor – covering the push for a cleaner and more sustainable world economy for the award-winning Moral Money platform.  His career began in  Johannesburg, covering Southern Africa for the FT. After a stint as a corporate reporter in London he spent seven years in Asia, heading the FT bureau in Seoul and  Mumbai.Simon spent nearly two years traveling through six continents and visiting 26 countries to write Race for Tomorrow,  to tell the stories of the diverse cast of characters locked in this historic struggle – from communities hit by extreme physical shifts, to business leaders grappling with the implications for the world economy.  Race for Tomorrow is now on sale in 40 countries.  Follow Simon on Twitter: @simonmundy.comOn Instagram:   @simonmundyphotosBooks mentioned in this episode:A Sand County Almanac by Aldo LeopoldSilent Spring by Rachel CarsonThe Lost Gospel of the Earth by Tom HaydenThe End of Nature by Bill McKibbenA Life on Our Planet, My Witness Statement and A Vision for the Future by David AttenboroughElizabeth Howard is the host and the producer of the Short Fuse Podcast. She has never had barriers between her life, work, art and writing. Experience, sense of place and exploration define the choices she makes, seeking collaboration, flexibility, spontaneity and responsiveness in the projects she designs and engages with.  As the host of the Short Fuse she engages individuals in lively and provocative conversations around the arts: dance, theater, literature, music and film.  Alex Waters is a technical producer  for the Short Fuse Podcast. He is a music producer and a student at the  Berklee College of Music. He has written and produced music and edited for podcasts including  The Faith and Chai Podcast and Con Confianza. He writes, produces and records music for independent artists, including The Living. Alex lives in Brooklyn.  You can reach him with inquiries at alexwatersmusic12@gmail.com.

Manchester Green New Deal podcast
Race for Tomorrow: Interview with Simon Mundy

Manchester Green New Deal podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 6, 2021 69:06


This week we welcome Financial Times journalist and editor of Moral Money, Simon Mundy. We discuss Simon's latest book, Race for Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation and Profit on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis, a series of stories of his journeys through 26 countries affected by climate change. Simon walks us through several examples, ranging from Siberia's 'Tusk Rush' to islands in the South Pacific, to illuminate how the climate crisis is shattering communities, shaking up global business, and propelling a groundbreaking wave of cutting-edge innovation.We also touch on the carbon politics of Australia, climate journalism, the life and work of Conrad Stephen, and the legitimacy of carbon offsetting. LinksRace for Tomorrow: https://www.simonmundy.com/bookClimeworks - carbon capture https://act.climeworks.com/fight-climate-change-video/?utm_source=googleBrand&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=GS-AO-World-en-Brand&gclid=Cj0KCQiA47GNBhDrARIsAKfZ2rCiri8iRcngYw3D557I-PTKCgaaLK8ZixDKwP-IzFN5okCCEfXuXLIaAkPyEALw_wcB Shout outsJuan Carlos Monterrey Gómez- Panama delegate for COP26@juanmonterreygStop Cambo campaign @StopCamboIf you like the show tell your comrades!Find us on:Twitter: @MCRGND_PODInsta: mcrgndpodFB: MCRGNDPODYou can support the show and get some of that sweet, sweet exclusive content head towww.patreon.com/mcrgndpodOr if you'd prefer to give a one off donation we also have a PayPalpaypal.me/mcrngndpod 

Aspen UK
Critical Conversations: Budgets vs biodiversity – how can we protect both?

Aspen UK

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 3, 2021 60:59


This conversation is in partnership with Credit SuisseBudgets vs biodiversity – how can we protect both as tensions rise in the crusade to defend our planet's natural habitats? Simon Mundy, Moral Money editor at The Financial Times is joined by Sandra Guzman Luna, manager of the Climate Finance Programme at the Climate Policy Initiative; Jojo Mehta, co-founder of Stop Ecocide International; Dr David Obura, founding director of CORDIO East Africa; Oliver Withers, biodiversity lead within the Sustainability Strategy, advisory and finance group at Credit Suisse; and Ana Yang, executive director for the Chatham House Sustainability Accelerator. They discuss how technology and innovation could help dying aspects of natural habitats; explore the issues with holding people to account for their environmental impact; and share the importance of criminal liability and how this “has the potential to change behaviour.”

The Business Integrity School
Maria Knapp - Supply Chains and Compliance

The Business Integrity School

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 2, 2021 42:08


This compelling new episode of the BIS podcast features a discussion between Cindy Moehring and Control Risks Partner Maria Knapp. Tune in to listen as Cindy and Maria chat about Control Risks' assistance in ensuring ESG compliance, how companies assess their supply chains, and the importance of businesses recognizing the impact they have on their communities. Learn more about the Business Integrity Leadership Initiative by visiting our website at https://walton.uark.edu/business-integrity/ (https://walton.uark.edu/business-integrity/)   Links from the episode:  SASB Training Webinars: http://info.valuereportingfoundation.org/implementation_primer_webinars (http://info.valuereportingfoundation.org/implementation_primer_webinars)     Financial Times, Moral Money: https://www.ft.com/moral-money (https://www.ft.com/moral-money)   Re:Co ESG Podcast: https://re.co.com/futureinsound (https://re.co.com/futureinsound)   Control Risks's Legal and Compliance Insights: https://re.co.com/futureinsound (https://www.controlrisks.com/our-thinking/podcasts/legal-and-compliance-insights)

The Antony Gordon Show | Lessons for life I did not learn at Harvard

My special guest, David Meltzer, is a three-time international best-selling author, a top 100 Business Coach, the executive producer of Entrepreneur‘s #1 digital business show, "Elevator Pitch," and host of the top entrepreneur podcast, "The Playbook." Today we base a lot of our conversation on the myth that "money buys happiness." David talks about how he once believed that statement and how his perspective about money has shifted. It seems as though David's perspective shift in that area also had an effect on other aspects in his life. We continue the conversation as David shares his views on giving, purpose, and EQ (Emotional Intelligence).https://dmeltzer.com/https://www.entrepreneur.com/author/david-meltzer#:~:text=David%20Meltzer%2C%20co%2Dfounder%20of,Sports%20Humanitarian%20of%20the%20Year%E2%80%9D.https://twitter.com/davidmeltzer?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5EauthorSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Winning In Asia: A ZoZo Go Podcast
Simon Mundy, Author, Race for Tomorrow

Winning In Asia: A ZoZo Go Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 17, 2021 51:34


In his new book, Race of Tomorrow, Simon Mundy recounts real life stories of how the climate crisis is changing the basic fabric of people's lives and planet earth itself. Mundy, Editor of Moral Money at the Financial Times, documents the profound changes during a 2 year journey that took him to 24 countries. His visits range from a thawing perma-frost area the size of China in Siberia to sweltering hot cobalt mines in The Democratic Republic of Congo. Along the way, he discovers not one but two races: One set of people are battling for survival from changes in weather patterns and temperatures. At the same time a second group of people are chasing boundless wealth through development of breakthrough innovations. Where do electric vehicles fit into the equation?#WinningInAsia / #ZozoGo https://twitter.com/Dunne_ZoZoGohttps://www.instagram.com/zo.zo.go/?hl=enhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-dunne-a696901a/

FT News Briefing
Big investors get tougher with companies over climate change

FT News Briefing

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2021 10:35


Read a transcript of this episode on FT.comhttps://www.ft.com/content/5656f24c-a8db-4626-bd6f-c2ab0aa4aa8cGeneral Electric plans to break into three separate companies after years of trying to respond to flaws in its business model exposed by the financial crisis, China's President Xi Jinping is paving the way for his unprecedented bid for a third term in power. Plus, the FT's investment correspondent, Attracta Mooney, explains why a growing number of asset managers are getting tougher on companies in their portfolios to address climate change. 30-day free trial of the Moral Money newsletter: http://www.ft.com/cop26podcastGE to split into healthcare, energy and aviation companies - with Andrew Edgecliff-Johnsonhttps://www.ft.com/content/fb73e702-e885-4c20-8857-ddd29dc623afXi lays groundwork for third term by adopting Mao and Deng's power play - with Tom Mitchell https://www.ft.com/content/71b165a6-052d-4d7d-9006-e2e757f40d98Stay or sell? The $110tn investment industry gets tougher on climate - with Attracta Mooney https://www.ft.com/content/ee08d61d-4c98-4398-9971-93036d67e91eThe FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon and Marc Filippino. The show's editor is Jess Smith. Additional help by Peter Barber, Gavin Kallmann and Michael Bruning. The show's theme song is by Metaphor Music. The FT's global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

FT News Briefing
Elon Musk's Twitter followers say sell

FT News Briefing

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2021 9:59


Read a transcript of this episode on FT.comhttps://www.ft.com/content/64380f52-df32-4ad7-b2b6-fec42ee95ce1Federal Reserve governor Randal Quarles' decision to leave the US central bank next month creates yet another opening for the Biden administration to fill amid uncertainty about the institution's leadership, Tesla shares fell nearly 5 per cent on Monday after millions of Twitter users polled by chief executive Elon Musk concluded that he should sell 10 per cent of his stake in the electric carmaker. Plus, SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has promised an $8.8bn share buyback programme over the next 12 months. 30-day free trial of the Moral Money newsletter: http://www.ft.com/cop26podcastTesla shares slide after Musk's Twitter poll backs stake sale - with Richard Waters https://www.ft.com/content/2ac226d6-0eba-4f97-91c1-fb70076c20b0Fed governor Randal Quarles to leave post next month - with James Politi https://www.ft.com/content/6e312624-0399-4d76-85e9-80e61f1f8c91SoftBank unveils $8.8bn share buyback following investor pressure - with Kana Inagaki https://www.ft.com/content/ca7df7d4-7e7e-43b2-85d6-36432d0d9d66The FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon and Marc Filippino. The show's editor is Jess Smith. Additional help by Peter Barber, Gavin Kallmann and Michael Bruning. The show's theme song is by Metaphor Music. The FT's global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

joe biden elon musk tesla followers softbank masayoshi son jess smith richard waters moral money cheryl brumley metaphor music james politi fiona symon kana inagaki
FT News Briefing
Why footballers stumble in their finances

FT News Briefing

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 8, 2021 9:25


Read a transcript of this episode on FT.comhttps://www.ft.com/content/e9bcbc06-e603-4baf-b5d1-fd8603103bb5French authorities have opened an investigation into the French operations of UK metals magnate Sanjeev Gupta, and President Joe Biden is moving ahead with his next bill on his ambitious legislative agenda while struggling to revive his political fortunes. Plus, the FT's Money Clinic podcast host, Claer Barrett, talks about the financial minefields that young British footballers often fail to navigate. 30-day free trial of the Moral Money newsletter: http://www.ft.com/cop26podcastFrench prosecutors investigate Sanjeev Gupta's business empirehttps://www.ft.com/content/b9debac5-bf40-4392-ab9f-2bdb70dcae28Biden seeks course out of doldrums after US legislative victory - with Lauren Fedor https://www.ft.com/content/fa0282fd-e8dc-43f1-8222-39e1efdc262eThe financial secrets of footballers, part one - with Claer Barrett https://www.ft.com/content/962ee94e-1b6d-4631-a6ab-08ff3abea724The FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon and Marc Filippino. The show's editor is Jess Smith. Additional help by Peter Barber, Gavin Kallmann and Michael Bruning. The show's theme song is by Metaphor Music. The FT's global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

FT News Briefing
Bond investors and central banks

FT News Briefing

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 5, 2021 10:00


Read a transcript of this episode on FT.comhttps://www.ft.com/content/d6716d79-4cbd-4955-b07b-64740a4a6d5bThe White House has said Opec+ risks imperilling the global economic recovery by refusing to speed up oil production increases, and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son is facing pressure to announce a new stock buyback programme next week. Plus, the FT's markets editor, Katie Martin, explains how inflation has complicated the relationship between markets and central banks. 30-day free trial of the Moral Money newsletter: http://www.ft.com/cop26podcastWhite House says Opec risks imperilling economic recovery - with Derek Brower https://www.ft.com/content/4a2fc7b2-c963-4418-9997-d1bf203c3a35SoftBank under pressure from investors to prop up share price​​https://www.ft.com/content/d5fe83e9-f663-4cdb-90b6-6663683c6ba1Global bonds rally strongly after Bank of England leaves investors ‘wrongfooted' - with Katie Martin https://www.ft.com/content/a9c896fc-34a4-44a9-9499-085c3f5c40ecThe FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon and Marc Filippino. The show's editor is Jess Smith. Additional help by Peter Barber, Gavin Kallmann and Michael Bruning. The show's theme song is by Metaphor Music. The FT's global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

FT News Briefing
Argentina vs the IMF

FT News Briefing

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2021 9:06


Read a transcript of this episode on FT.comhttps://www.ft.com/content/22e5487a-3e75-46db-abf0-c8e5e5fd7ad4The Federal Reserve said it would begin scaling back its massive $120bn monthly bond-buying programme this month, the British government has approached Qatar with the intention of the Gulf state becoming a gas “supplier of last resort”, and Iran will resume stalled talks on November 29 with global powers aimed at reviving the country's ailing nuclear deal. Plus, the FT's Latin America editor, Michael Stott, explains why Argentina is having a hard time coming to an agreement with the IMF during debt negotiations. 30-day free trial of the Moral Money newsletter: http://www.ft.com/cop26podcastFed to start winding back $120bn-a-month stimulus programme - with Colby Smith https://www.ft.com/content/d10c157f-5530-48a0-9c5f-afed19057d8aIran talks over nuclear deal to restart on Novemberhttps://www.ft.com/content/aa012e45-e2b6-4a65-840d-591450260e0fArgentina hardens stance against IMF as debt renegotiations bog down - with Michael Stott https://www.ft.com/content/814e0898-30d5-4b4f-b468-dddfd447af7cThe FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon and Marc Filippino. The show's editor is Jess Smith. Additional help by Peter Barber, Gavin Kallmann and Michael Bruning. The show's theme song is by Metaphor Music. The FT's global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

FT News Briefing
Financing the fight against climate change

FT News Briefing

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2021 11:19


Read a transcript of this episode on FT.comhttps://www.ft.com/content/44757917-71f4-4699-8bde-49ebd15feebeBanks have watered down climate pledges and continued to finance the fossil fuel industry in the six years since the Paris accord was signed, and Gulf states are making net zero carbon emission pledges but say they need to keep oil flowing to fund their green energy transitions. Plus, the FT's US editor-at-large, Gillian Tett, explains how private institutions are stepping up to fund the fight against climate change. 30-day free trial of the Moral Money newsletter: http://www.ft.com/cop26podcast Banks face accusations of greenwashing as global warming fears mounthttps://www.ft.com/content/0ea3267c-d61f-4120-a976-0b81b60836c5Climate finance: where does all the money go?https://www.ft.com/content/d9e832b7-525b-470b-89db-6275853315ddGulf states push for net zero but warn ‘we can't just switch off the tap'https://www.ft.com/content/fbc33e10-fc4f-481e-8516-52a6bcf9dec3The FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon and Marc Filippino. The show's editor is Jess Smith. Additional help by Peter Barber, Gavin Kallmann and Michael Bruning. The show's theme song is by Metaphor Music. The FT's global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Behind the Money with the Financial Times
5 - Inside ESG: A sceptic vs a believer, our experts face off

Behind the Money with the Financial Times

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2021 20:59


The amount of money flowing into investment funds that claim to invest in sustainable businesses has surged in recent years. More companies than ever have embraced policies with environmental, social and corporate governance criteria as their central plank. But there's a debate over what ESG investing can achieve, particularly when it comes to cutting carbon emissions and addressing climate change.In the final episode of our five-part series on ESG investing, we hear from two leading FT voices on opposite sides of the argument. Cheering the rise of ESG is Gillian Tett, the FT's US editor-at-large and co-founder of Moral Money, the FT team that covers sustainable business and finance; and casting a sceptical eye is the FT's US financial commentator Robert Armstrong, who also writes Unhedged, the FT newsletter on Wall Street.The ESG investing industry is dangerousTeam ESG fights backA carbon price should be top of the wish list at the climate talksThe need to elevate developing countries at COP26Check out stories and up-to-the-minute news from the Moral Money team here. Get 30 days of the premium Moral Money newsletter free, together with complimentary access to FT.com for the same period, visit www.ft.com/insideesg See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

FT News Briefing
COP26: a climate gathering like no other

FT News Briefing

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 1, 2021 10:40


Read a transcript of this episode on FT.comhttps://www.ft.com/content/24a0e0ed-749d-4b6e-adbd-1f3c3a6cadb3The FT's clean energy and environment correspondent, Leslie Hook, has a curtain raiser on COP26, the most important climate summit since the 2015 Paris agreement. Plus, the FT's US financial commentator Rob Armstrong and US editor- at-large and Moral Money newsletter founder Gillian Tett go head-to-head in a debate over whether investing in environmental, social and governance causes can really change the world. COP26 summit is a pivotal moment for the planet - with Leslie Hook https://www.ft.com/content/6ad9c521-b5ae-4876-be89-97d978485d48The ESG investing industry is dangerous - with Robert Armstronghttps://www.ft.com/content/ec02fd5d-e8bd-45bd-b015-a5799ae820cfGillian Tett explains ESG's importance - with Gillian Tett https://www.ft.com/video/eba8dff7-ae9e-47db-b054-c8ed52ad8e79The FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon and Marc Filippino. The show's editor is Jess Smith. Additional help by Peter Barber, Gavin Kallmann and Michael Bruning. The show's theme song is by Metaphor Music. The FT's global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

climate esg gillian tett jess smith moral money rob armstrong cheryl brumley leslie hook metaphor music fiona symon
FT Everything Else
Why We Read: Books, Booker and COP26

FT Everything Else

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 30, 2021 31:42


This weekend, we're talking about books. The prestigious Booker Prize is about to announce its 2021 winner, and we hear what it's like to be a judge—and read a book a day!—with two colleagues, Horatia Harrod and Jan Dalley. We explore how the literary world has changed, from boozy lunches to viral Twitter campaigns, with columnist Simon Kuper and agent Jonny Geller. And ahead of the UN climate summit, join us on a journey with Moral Money editor Simon Mundy, who just traveled to 26 countries to document the climate crisis for his new book.Links from the episode:—Simon Mundy on his two year journey to the frontlines of the climate battle (paywall): https://www.ft.com/content/e3bfb91d-2273-4da9-a7a7-eecf396f8d33 —Simon's book is called Race for Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation and Profit on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis—Archive: Jan Dalley's lunch with “naughty old thing” Booker Prize administrator Martyn Goff: https://www.ft.com/content/3e17b618-b4a0-11da-bd61-0000779e2340 —The Booker Prize 2021 shortlist and longlist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Booker_Prize —Simon Kuper on how book promotion has changed: https://www.ft.com/content/7dbc7e21-904c-492e-9313-5ce665a5ec45 —To follow our COP26 coverage, here's Climate Capital. The entire FT will be free to read on Wednesday: https://www.ft.com/climate-capitalWant to say hi? Email us at ftweekendpodcast@ft.com. We're on Twitter @ftweekendpod, and Lilah is on Instagram and Twitter @lilahrap. For an exclusive 50% online subscription (and a discounted FT Weekend print subscription!), follow this link: http://ft.com/weekendpodcast To watch the NextGen festival sessions, go here: www.nextgen.live.ft.com and use the promo code FTNextGenx2021Sound design and mixing is by Breen Turner, with original music by Metaphor Music. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Global GoalsCast
Getting the Global Goals Back on Track

Global GoalsCast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 29, 2021 33:02


In this episode, taped live at the end of the United Nation's General Assembly meeting, three experts face the challenge of making up ground lost to the pandemic. Measures of wealth, health, education and equity have all been set back. “The world has a lot of work to do,” said co-host Edie Lush. “The pandemic has really set back the cause of human progress in terms of all the metrics around health, and inclusion and gender violence etc. etc. around the world,” reports Gillian Tett, co-founder of Moral Money at the Financial Times. “The reality is that grappling with these challenges and trying to uphold the SDGs now is harder than it was say two years ago in terms of where we are starting.” Co-host Claudia Romo Edelman shares data from the Gates Foundation Goal Keepers report that shows the start of recovery on everything from vaccination rates to total numbers of people caught in extreme poverty. Ivan Weissman, journalist and entrepreneur in South America, said that the pandemic crisis was accelerating the empowerment of women and thus economic recovery from the downturn. He cited, for example, the decision by Argentina to credit the domestic work women do at home when setting their pensions. Anthony Kefalas, Vice chair of the Democracy and Culture Foundation, offered a simple summary of the current challenge: “At the bottom of everything it is the question of inequality.” Rising inequality, compounded by the pandemic, is undermining support for democratic government. “The main problem is to reduce inequality. The corollary to this is that if you don't reduce inequality then you will not be able to operate in a system that you could call liberal capitalism. You can easily go into a system you where you have authoritarian capitalism.” Kefalas, author of the new Athens Charter for Business, said that the end goal of all corporate responsibility efforts must be to reduce inequality.

Behind the Money with the Financial Times
4 - Inside ESG: Sustainable finance and the threat to divest

Behind the Money with the Financial Times

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 20, 2021 24:03


If you want your investments to match your principles should a threat to divest be part of your long-term strategy? In the fourth episode of our special five-part series on sustainable or ESG investing, produced in partnership with the FT's Moral Money team, the story of the California State Teachers' Retirement System, or Calstrs, and why its decision to divest from the US private prisons industry prompted tears and passionate discussion on the board.Joe Rennison, deputy US markets editor, assesses the long-term impact that divestment can have on companies, while Moral Money's Patrick Temple-West, Attracta Mooney, the FT's investment correspondent, and Lindsay Frost, a senior reporter at Agenda, an FT publication about the corporate board space, explain why divestment presents a conundrum for investors and whether passive investment funds are really compatible with ESG investing. JPMorgan funds invested in CoreCivic debt after vow to stop financing private prisonsBond funds wrestle with human rights dilemmaDivestment Concerns Creep In for More IndustriesCheck out stories and up-to-the-minute news from the Moral Money team here. Get 30 days of the premium Moral Money newsletter free, together with complimentary access to FT.com for the same period, visit www.ft.com/insideesgReview clips: Calstrs, NBC, Global News, PBS, AP, CBC News, The Guardian, CSPAN See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Behind the Money with the Financial Times
4 - Inside ESG: Sustainable finance and the threat to divest

Behind the Money with the Financial Times

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 20, 2021 24:01


If you want your investments to match your principles should a threat to divest be part of your long-term strategy? In the fourth episode of our special five-part series on sustainable or ESG investing, produced in partnership with the FT's Moral Money team, the story of the California State Teachers' Retirement System, or Calstrs, and why its decision to divest from the US private prisons industry prompted tears and passionate discussion on the board.Joe Rennison, deputy US markets editor, assesses the long-term impact that divestment can have on companies, while Moral Money's Patrick Temple-West, Attracta Mooney, the FT's investment correspondent, and Lindsay Frost, a senior reporter at Agenda, an FT publication about the corporate board space, explain why divestment presents a conundrum for investors and whether passive investment funds are really compatible with ESG investing. JPMorgan funds invested in CoreCivic debt after vow to stop financing private prisonsBond funds wrestle with human rights dilemmaDivestment Concerns Creep In for More IndustriesCheck out stories and up-to-the-minute news from the Moral Money team here. Get 30 days of the premium Moral Money newsletter free, together with complimentary access to FT.com for the same period, visit www.ft.com/insideesgReview clips: Calstrs, NBC, Global News, PBS, AP, CBC News, The Guardian, CSPAN See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

FT News Briefing
Introducing Behind the Money, Inside ESG: The tiny fund that took on a US giant and won

FT News Briefing

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 9, 2021 20:55


The story of how a tiny, unknown hedge fund took on a giant of corporate America over climate change - and won. Charlie Penner of Engine No 1 talks about the very public proxy campaign he launched against Exxon Mobil, forcing the oil major to prepare for a future free of fossil fuels. In the third episode of our special five-part series on sustainable or ESG investing, produced in partnership with the FT's Moral Money team, Derek Brower, US energy editor, and Attracta Mooney, the FT's investment correspondent, reflect on whether the battle between Engine No 1 and Exxon marks the beginning of a new kind of activist investor.Engine No 1, the giant-killing hedge fund, has big plansDWS probes spark fears of greenwashing claims across investment industryCheck out stories and up-to-the-minute news from the Moral Money team here. Get 30 days of the premium Moral Money newsletter free, together with complimentary access to FT.com for the same period, visit www.ft.com/insideesgReview clips: The Sun, Channel 4 News, Euronews, PBS Newshour, GMA, CNN, CNBC, ExxonMobil See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Behind the Money with the Financial Times
3 - Inside ESG: The tiny fund that took on a US giant and won

Behind the Money with the Financial Times

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2021 19:27


The story of how a tiny, unknown hedge fund took on a giant of corporate America over climate change - and won. Charlie Penner of Engine No 1 talks about the very public proxy campaign he launched against Exxon Mobil, forcing the oil major to prepare for a future free of fossil fuels. In the third episode of our special five-part series on sustainable or ESG investing, produced in partnership with the FT's Moral Money team, Derek Brower, US energy editor, and Attracta Mooney, the FT's investment correspondent, reflect on whether the battle between Engine No 1 and Exxon marks the beginning of a new kind of activist investor.Engine No 1, the giant-killing hedge fund, has big plansDWS probes spark fears of greenwashing claims across investment industryCheck out stories and up-to-the-minute news from the Moral Money team here. Get 30 days of the premium Moral Money newsletter free, together with complimentary access to FT.com for the same period, visit www.ft.com/insideesgReview clips: The Sun, Channel 4 News, Euronews, PBS Newshour, GMA, CNN, CNBC, ExxonMobil See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Behind the Money with the Financial Times
1 - Inside ESG: Is the $1.7tn wave of sustainable investing hope or hype?

Behind the Money with the Financial Times

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 23, 2021 23:03


When Tariq Fancy joined BlackRock as its first chief investment officer for sustainable investing in 2018, he was convinced that with companies around the world, including the world's biggest asset manager, embracing environmental, social and governance (ESG) causes, the stage was set to reform capitalism. As a former Wall Street banker, he'd been hired by Blackrock after setting up his own digital learning non-profit group in Canada. But just two years after joining Blackrock, he left his job. So what went wrong?In the first episode of our special five-part series produced in partnership with the FT's Moral Money team, Gillian Tett, the FT's US editor-at-large, and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, the FT's US business editor, explore the idea that the trillions of dollars that have flowed into ESG investments represent a once-in-a generation shift in the business consensus. Can it be true that ESG investing can address some of the world's most-pressing problems, including climate change and inequality? Check out stories and up-to-the-minute news from the Moral Money team here. Get 30 days of the premium Moral Money newsletter free, together with complimentary access to FT.com for the same period, visit www.ft.com/insideesgReview clips: AP, KPIX CBS, CNBC, CNN, The Telegraph, PayPal See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Behind the Money with the Financial Times
2 - Inside ESG: Can businesses really marry profit and purpose?

Behind the Money with the Financial Times

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 23, 2021 22:00


Milton Friedman, the renowned American economist and spiritual mentor of many entrepreneurs, argued that the social responsibility of business was to increase profits. This has been the gospel since the early 1970s, but companies and investors are beginning to rethink the purpose of business. Has the sun really set on the Miltonian era?In the second episode of our special five-part series produced in partnership with the Moral Money team, Leila Abboud, the FT's Paris correspondent, and Gillian Tett, the FT's US editor-at-large, tell the story of Emmanuel Faber, the former CEO of Danone who embraced environmental, social and governance (ESG) causes - and then was ousted eight years later. Turns out there was more to the story than first meets the eye.The fall from favour of Danone's purpose-driven chiefCheck out stories and up-to-the-minute news from the Moral Money team here. Get 30 days of the premium Moral Money newsletter free, together with complimentary access to FT.com for the same period, visit www.ft.com/insideesgReview clips: CNBC, Danone, British Pathé, IMAGINE, France 24 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Behind the Money with the Financial Times

Behind the Money presents a special 5-part series produced in partnership with the FT's Moral Money team that goes inside the colossal sums flowing into sustainable investing.Trillions have flooded into funds that have made environmental, social and governance issues, or ESG, central to their investment strategies. As the world begins slowly to recover from the multiple shocks of the pandemic, we take listeners to the center of a loaded debate: Will a shift to more sustainable investments actually help create a more resilient and equitable future - or is ESG just a powerful marketing ploy?Check out stories and up-to-the-minute news from the Moral Money team on the whole world of socially responsible business, sustainable finance, and ESG trends here.Get 30 days of the premium Moral Money newsletter free, together with complimentary access to FT.com for the same period, visit www.ft.com/insideesg See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Driving Change
Books Driving Change: Gillian Tett and Anthro-Vision

Driving Change

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 27, 2021 33:04


I'm going to start, as I do with all the authors that we have on this podcast, by asking you, Gillian, the audience we're aiming at here is people who are interested in how we can do a better job at improving the state of the world and who are interested in public service in some way. And the question to you is, in a sentence, why should people, our audience, read your book?Gillian Tett (GT): In a sentence, most of the problems in policy making and corporate life, and as general citizens, stem from the fact that we have tunnel vision. We can't see the consequences of what we're doing or the context. And I believe that cultural anthropology is one discipline that can really help you overcome tunnel vision, and get lateral vision, a wider view of how our actions impact the world.MB: Now, you've written a fantastically wide-ranging book. I mean, it starts with you as a young student in Tajikistan, studying marriage rituals under a communist state in a Central Asian country. But you go across everything from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and trying to make sense of Trump, the financial crisis back in 2008, the emergence of ESG [Environmental, Social, and Governance] and impact investing, more recently, and sort of interesting issues in car manufacturing and consumption habits and all sorts of things. But can you start us off with what drew you to anthropology in the first place, and how you found yourself in Tajikistan and why that actually led you into journalism, which is where you have spent your career?GT: Well, I got into anthropology, like many things in life, by accident. I wanted to have adventure and travel the world, and I was curious about the wider world, which is something that I hope we teach all of our kids to be. And so, I studied anthropology as an undergraduate, then went to do a Ph.D. in it, and ended up in a place called Soviet Tajikistan, just north of Afghanistan, where I was studying marriage rituals as a way to look at the clash between Islam and communism. And just at the end of my research, the Soviet Union broke up. There was a very brutal war where I'd been living. So, I went to journalism partly because I was frustrated that no one was paying attention, and I wanted to draw attention to it for human rights reasons. But I then quickly realized, actually, the business of telling people about other people can be, in some ways, quite similar to anthropology, but also a way to try and drive some change in the wider world as well.MB: So, it's a very natural follow up to your previous book, The Silo Effect, where you talk about the problem that people lock themselves into siloed thinking and here you talk a lot about lateral vision, this ability to sort of see things from multiple perspectives, but also to see yourself as others might see you. You know, if there's a single message about anyone going into public policy work or policymaking, what is it that anthropology teaches them?GT: I think this single message can be presented in two ways. One, is to think about culture. And that kind of sounds obvious because we all know we're affected by our culture. But defining culture is a bit like chasing soap in the bath. It's kind of everywhere, but nowhere. And we know it affects us, but we don't actually have many ways to think about how to reflect on that. And what I offer in the book is really an argument that we all need to take a three-step process. Periodically, immerse ourselves in the lives of others or people who seem different from us. And that being different can be at the end of the street, in a different department, or the other side of the world. And to do that to get empathy not just for others and realize that not everyone thinks like us, but also then to fit the lens and look back at ourselves and see what we're missing. And see above all else, the kind of social silences, the parts of our world that we tend to ignore, because they seem boring or dull or irrelevant or just too obvious to talk about. So, in many ways, the second way, I think I'd frame it is to say that anthropology gives you lateral vision in a world of tunnel vision. It enables you to see the context, the cultural context, beyond our models, or balance sheets, or simple policy programs. And when you wrap those different points together, what anthropology really gives you is an awareness that if you are engaged in public policy, you need to look at the world in a connected way, with empathy, both for others and a sense of empathy for understanding all the shortcomings in your own approach.MB: You have a very interesting chapter on contagion where you start with the Ebola crisis in Africa. And actually, with a character, Chris Whitty, who went on to be quite a central figure in the British response to this current pandemic that we're going through. You also cite Paul Farmer [co-founder of Partners in Health] in this in this context. At various points, you note that a lot of the international aid failures around Ebola were due to not thinking through and understanding the culture of people on the ground. But then you flip it, I think very nicely, and talk about how we didn't necessarily do a good job of understanding our own culture when we were pushing many of the public health messages that needed to be communicated as we responded to the crisis. In fact, Chris Whitty himself didn't necessarily do a brilliant job in the U.K. I mean, I'm wondering, as you reflect now, on how we've responded to the pandemic, what should we if we brought an “Anthro-Vision” approach to it, should we have done differently?GT: Well, I think, that we could have done two things differently. The first is to actually be curious about people who seem different from us and try and learn lessons from how they've handled pandemics in the past. This is a fundamental point in my book, that actually it pays to embrace strange, not run away or deride it. And to ask questions and be curious about how other people live. If we'd had that mentality at the beginning of COVID-19, it could and should have prompted policymakers to pay more attention to Wuhan. Look at the experience of SARS. Look at what happened with Ebola in West Africa. Not just assume it was a bunch of strange, weird people in a faraway place that had nothing to do with us. Because the reality is that the pandemic has shown us the world is interconnected and prone to contagion at all times and contagions come from people who we don't necessarily understand. And if nothing else, we need to try and understand that to, you know, protect ourselves. I happen to think there's a moral reason why we ought to try and understand each other. But if you want to just play to fear and greed, that's it. But separately, if we had actually paid more attention to lessons from other countries at the beginning of COVID, we might have learned some really good lessons and tips. Like the efficacy of masks, that was well-known by anthropologists from the SARS epidemic in Asia. And what they'd learned was actually the way a mask helps in an epidemic is not just through the physical barrier of germs, but also through the simple act of putting on a mask each day as a psychological prompt to remind you to change behavior, or the fact that masks can be a signaling device culturally to show adherence to a wider group of norms, and a desire to uphold civic responsibility. And that really matters and it could and should have been imported into the West a lot earlier. But the flip side is, of course, that thinking about how other countries handled an epidemic enables you to then look back at yourself, too, and say, “well are we making the right decisions or not?” So again, a tiny example is that in the U.K., there was a tremendous focus on top-down messaging and orders and coercion in terms of trying to change behavior during the COVID-19 lockdown. The messaging was very often conflicting and changeable. And the U.K. didn't use its existing excellent network of health centers, which were bottom-up local areas, which they should have done. If they'd looked at the experience or something like Ebola or even Asia with SARS and others, they would have seen what a mistake that was. And they would have actually asked themselves, you know, “why are we in the U.K. not using our wonderful local network of healthcare providers to try and battle the pandemic, you know, get messages about lockdown across in the way that people feel empowered, and want to relate to?” You know, “what can we do better?”MB: And I mean, this theme of top down versus bottom up is another theme that comes throughout the book. And particularly in a chapter that you start in Davos with the gathering of the World Economic Forum (WEF), where we've both been there many times. And it's hard to imagine a more top-down orientation than the global elite gathered in Davos. What do you feel if Klaus Schwab [founder of the World Economic Forum] was to say, “Gillian, tell me how I should change WEF so that we can get Anthro-Vision at WEF?” What would you say to him?GT: I would say two or three things. Firstly, look at the Davos tribe with an anthropological lens and see all the elitism, see the networking, and see above all else, how it often encourages people to ignore other people's points of view. You know, you need to probably get people who are not part of the Davos elite into the room much more effectively and get their views actually embedded into the conversation. Recognize that not everything can be solved through top-down analysis in the form of big datasets, economic models, corporate balance sheets, political polls. Those can be very useful, but you need to supplement top-down models and intellectual tools with some bottom-up analysis that looks at qualitative, not just quantitative metrics. I'm not saying that, you know, anthropology has all the answers, but I'm saying it's a really useful way to conduct checks and balances to provide other perspectives into a conversation. Or to use another metaphor, you know, most of the tools we use today to look at the world, our bird's eye views, those taken from 30,000 feet. Anthropology basically cherishes a worm's eye view, a bottom-up view. And that can be incredibly important.MB: You touch on that issue a lot. One of the questions I would have is why is it that we're so dismissive? I mean, it seems by now, we should be recognizing that we operate in silos. I mean, you wrote a book about this many years ago, it seems to be a well-observed effect. And yet, you actually quote this one point, a famous author pointed out that getting people to understand when their job depends on not understanding it is actually very hard. Is that what's going on, that our policymakers, our leaders are locked into this? They have too many incentives to ignore the general view, so they certainly don't go down to the worm's eye view?GT: I think the reality is that someone in the book asks "why, dude, don't more companies hire anthropologists” or look at themselves, not other people? One reason is that what anthropologists say often make people uncomfortable. Because if you're part of the elite, if you are in a position of power, you tend to be there not just by controlling economic capital by making money, or political capital, net worth of power. You shape cultural capital in the sense that you have a belief system, which often reaffirms the social order and makes it seem natural, that elites are in charge. And that's very comforting. But the reality is that, you know, every society has creation myths and cultural frameworks, which might prop up the position of the elite, but are often full of contradictions and leave people prone to tunnel vision. And that's why we need to challenge them. To give you a couple of tangible examples, before 2008, financiers working in the field of financial innovation derivatives had this wonderful creation myth about how innovation was going to make the financial system safer, because they were going to create perfectly liquid markets, where risk was dispersed. And that was riddled with contradictions when you dug into it. But the people who were peddling it couldn't see it, because they were such a tribe set apart, such a tunnel, they had so little challenge. So, the value of anthropology to come in and say, "well, this is what you're not looking at". It offers checks and balances above all else.MB: You have this very interesting discussion of Trump and how the media and many people in the global elite missed what it was that gave him a connection to so many voters and particularly you focus on this word "bigly" that he used and how the elite was sneering at this interesting linguistic "cofefe", I guess you might call it. But what is it that we should now be thinking about the Trump tribe who, again, I think, in the elite, there was this feeling that January 6th and the storming of the Capitol would, you know, would somehow bring the Republican base to its senses, whereas the opposite seems to be the case? Are we failing again, to understand what's really going on with the Trump tribe?GT: What I write about in the book about the elite and Trump is really a sort of mea culpa on my part because when I heard the word bigly in one of the debates I laughed, too, instinctively. Laughter is always very revealing, because it reveals the social group boundaries, you know, you have to be in a group to get a joke. If you're not in a group, you don't get the joke. And laughter tends to reveal unresolved contradictions in our own cultural patterns, or ones we don't talk about. And what laughing about the word bigly really revealed was that the ingroup of journalists tended to assume and take for granted that to be in a position of power and have credibility, you had to have command of language. And in some ways, you know, having command of language and being educated, you know, has hitherto been one of the few accepted forms of snobbery in America. And the reality is that lots of people find that very irritating, and they resent it. But the fact that I was part of the in group that laughed, meant that I kind of was failing to see what a lot of Trump supporters and voters were actually seeing in Trump and applauding, which was that he spoke in a way that used not just so much words, more a kind of performance, ritualistic style of communication, that connected very deeply with a lot of his base. I write in the book that a lot of it was borrowed from the world of wrestling, in fact, in terms of how it tapped into emotions, and had stage mock fights and things like that, which was, again, a set of performative cultural messaging and signaling that was very familiar to Trump voters, but not elite journalists for the most part. So, I missed a lot of Trump's appeal because I didn't really get it on an emotional level, because of my own tribalism. I tried to counter that by listening to people in 2016. And that did in fact that help me see the likely victory of Donald Trump.MB: You were certainly one of those people who was, I mean, actually you're harsh on yourself in the book, because you say you missed the Brexit vote, but on both Brexit and Trump's victory, I heard you saying that you were quite concerned that would be the result before they happened. Do you feel now that there's this danger that we still haven't learned that lesson about Trump and his appeal to his tribe?GT: I think there's a danger even today, that we fail to see that what we're dealing with in America today is not just a political split, but an epistemological split. And that sound like a very big grandiose word or at leastMB: A bigly word, I guess.GT: A bigly word definitely. An epistemological split means, basically, a split in the system of knowledge, in how we communicate and actually reason. And anyone who has been trained for years in education, as I have been, tends to have a rational, logical one direct mindset in terms of evaluating knowledge, and to take things fairly literally and to try and pass them. And, you know, that's a very valid mindset. But it's not the only mindset out there. There's another type of mindset out there, which is much more about impressionistic, emotional, holistic reading of situations. And, you know, looking at performative signaling, and that's the mindset that Trump uses as much of the time. In the book, I talk about the difference between weird and non-weird cultures meaning “Western, educated, individualistic, rich, and democratic.” That's the use of man called Joseph Henrich, who is brilliant, who looked at these different modes of reasoning. And I think even today that when we talk about political splits, we need to recognize that there's a part of America that's responding to events like the January 6th events at Capitol Hill, not through one-dimensional, logical reasoning, passing, etc., that we value as journalists, but instead through much more emotional, impressionistic, performative, signaling patterns. I see the same truth in other areas as well, by the way. I mean, you can't hope to make sense of say, some of the mean cultures erupting in the financial markets, unless you recognize that there's performative signaling going on that can be very potent, but which can't be passed through any economic economist's model of rational expectations, or any kind of portfolio allocation approach to mind.MB: Now you talk at various points about the media as a tribe, and maybe a tribe that it's got its own narrative a little out of whack or doesn't look at itself through a lateral lens. I mean, what do you feel is the biggest danger that the media has at the moment, in terms of how it might go, you know, way off track in understanding how the world is going at the moment?MB: Well, I do look at the media, because I think we have to be honest as journalists, and if we're going to analyze other people, we have to analyze ourselves. And the real issue is, I do think we should realize how we're tribal how we're creatures of our own environment. And how, in many ways the sheer polarization in America and the attacks in the media have intensified the sense of tribalism. And that affects us in two ways. Firstly, in terms of how we define stories, and what stories we look at, and how we communicate them. And, you know, I think that in many ways, it's natural that we're tribal, everyone's tribal, it's part of human nature. But it has been exacerbated also by the competitive pressures afoot in journalism today, where essentially, there's a very crowded marketplace for information. So, there's a presumption that you have to shout loudly to get attention. There's a presumption that you have to try and get a really sticky audience, which tends to force people to take quite extremist views. Journalists are under tremendous time pressure. So, they tend to gravitate towards the areas of social noise, the things that are easy to see, and ignore the really important areas of social silence. And also journalists tend to have silos within their own news operations, which reflect a ton of silos in the outside world. You know, we have banking teams, and political teams and legal teams. Stories often fall between the cracks, and sometimes get caught, sometimes not. So, in an ideal world, you know, journalists would be given a lot more money, and the ability to go forth and roam and collide with the unexpected and look at social sciences. They'd be encouraged to try and communicate with audiences in ways that didn't just reaffirm existing prejudices. I mean, you can connect with where the audience's head is up front, as if you're playing dominoes. And match one half a domino to someone else's domino, but then you can take them somewhere else, with a second piece of a domino if you like. And in an ideal world, you'd have journalists who were able to, essentially, you know, get out of their own mental tunnels and explore different points of view. But that's hard to do with the media under such pressure. And when essentially, there's constant demand to create quick hits and returns in the form of stories that meet the normal pattern.MB: So, you're optimistic that journalism will change or are you quite fearful about it?GT: I hope journalism tries and changes. And one of the things that does make me more optimistic is a checks and balances are emerging. Partly because the sheer plurality of voices coming through, partly because we're seeing new models of journalism coming through, like investigative units funded by donations by ProPublica, in podcasts, and in other forms that are actually creating ways to have checks and balances. But I'm concerned about the degree to which it has become politicized and polarized. And above all else, I'm concerned that not enough journalists are flipping the lens and looking back at their own tribe and trying to work out how that is creating a sense of tunnel vision.MB: Now, one of the big trends that's been going on for the past few years has been to see business and finance as a way of making the world better in some ways, you know, through ESG and impact investing and so forth. And that's attracted a number of people who probably would have gone into traditional public service in government in the past, to think they can drive change, positive change through business and investing. And you founded Moral Money at the Financial Times. But in the book, you're quite candid, that initially, you used to roll your eyes at the letters ESG. And so, what caused you to change? And how substantial do you think this phenomenon is? Is it really going to deliver the goods or is it still more in the greenwashing/stakeholder washing category than real change?GT: Well, I initially used to call ESG, "eyeroll, sneer, and groan," because I thought it was basically about corporate BS. And that's the way the most journalists think. And so, I just missed it. I used to delete all the emails about ESG. And then I finally thought you know what, that's my view about what ESG is, as a journalist, who is paid to be cynical. I should at least try and listen to what the people's view is of the people who are trying to do ESG. And when I try to look at the world through their eyes, I realized that there was a bigger Zeitgeist shift going on, which was really to do with the fact that ESG had started out as a, you know, campaign to change the world in a really positive active way, which was very laudable, driven by, you know, nuns and Danish pension funds and people like that. But by 2016/2017, which is when I began to look at it, it was also being driven for the most part by a desire amongst companies and executives and finances to save themselves, and essentially engage in risk management, because people were increasingly realizing that if they ignored things like environmental risk or gender issues and sexual harassment, slavery in the supply chain, they could end up suffering reputational damage, regulatory controls, loss of employees, clients, customers, investors, etc. And you can be cynical and say, "Well, listen, that's just, you know, very hypocritical in the part of ESG it is just a way for companies to engage in self-defense at a time when radical transparency and changing societal norms, and it's all just for show.” Or you can say, “actually, it's pretty amazing that ESG has gone so mainstream, that companies feel they even need to talk about it or make the effort to do it.” And that, you know, revolutions succeed, not when a tiny, committed minority of activists are screaming, but when the silent majority thinks they need to go along with a change, because it's dangerous to resist it. And I think that's where we are with ESG right now. Does that mean there is a lot of greenwashing, woke washing, reputation washing? Yes, there is some. Does it mean that the rituals of ESG, to be anthropological, don't match up with the reality? Yes, quite often. But you know, anthropologists believe that rituals are interesting, because they show an idealized version of what people think the world should be like. And the very fact that people have a different idealized version today from what it was 30 years ago, I think is very interesting. And overall, what is striking is that, you know, as say, fossil fuel emissions become less acceptable, you're actually seeing that feed through to changes in the cost of capital for energy companies, and dashboards embracing renewables, and a change in actual corporate behavior, to a degree. I can't stress strongly enough you need government action too. You know, companies alone, ESG alone, are not going to fix problems. But if people are all rowing roughly in the same direction, and cultural norms are changing, it makes it easier to both force government action, and potentially to do business and financial action as well that's going to be in the right direction.MB: Now, I want to bring up an issue that you touch on at various points tangentially in the book, but not head on. So, I'm going to push you a bit. I'm very concerned at the moment about the quality of government. We could do with better people going into government and we could do with much more joined up government. It just seems to me the narrative around government is pretty horrible, and that most people that aren't in government are quite put off by it. There's not much attraction to it, except for people that have big egos or ambitions to be famous politicians or whatever. It's not an attractive narrative. Have you thought much about that with your “Anthro-Vision” lens on like, why it's got into that bad narrative and also what how we might encourage more people to see it positively?GT: I think you made a great point there, Matthew about the issue of government, because I was very struck, talking to Paul Volcker, the wonderful former Fed Chairman, who had gone into public service in the post-war years, when public service was revered, and spent many years working in public service and was very dismayed to see how attitudes towards public service changed as the 20th century wore on. So upset that when he finally left government, and, you know, had time on his hands, he created a center at the Harvard Kennedy School to try and champion the idea of good governance, and then found it almost impossible to get funding because it was so unpopular and unfashionable. And I think that's terribly dangerous. And I think we need good government. We need respect for good government and better organization. Michael Lewis's book, The Fifth Risk, showed that so clearly. What I think's interesting is that history shows that, you know, we go in pendulum swings in terms of Zeitgeists, and anthropology shows that in fact nothing is ever fixed in stone. Culture is like a river. It is constantly flowing and changing, and new streams are coming in. And I suspect we may, just may, be at a point when the pendulum is beginning to swing a tiny bit away from the idea that government is the source of all problems towards slightly more respect for government. I think the pandemic could end up being a bit of a turning point in attitudes, not just in the sense of public and private are working together, and also private and private, over things like the vaccine, which is laying down train tracks for the future. But also, I suspect that the idea of having a government mission looks a little less unfashionable than in the past.MB: If someone is thinking about going into government or a career in public service, is there a tip that you would have as to how they can use Anthro-Vision to sort of be a different sort of government leader, different sort of bureaucrat, civil servant?GT: In a nutshell, I'd say that a key tip from Anthro-Vision is to embrace a concept that at the heart of the American political system, which has checks and balances. What anthropology does is give you intellectual checks and balances. You embrace whatever field you are passionate about, be that medicine or economics or law, or whatever part of government you're working in. You do that job well, but you never forget to look around corners and think about context and think about the cultural patterns that you're working in and how it might make be giving you tunnel vision and make you blind to what you can't see. And you respect the fact that there are going to be cultural dynamics inside the office and outside the office. And I think that getting that wider vision of what you're doing is perhaps the most important thing of anyone who's working in public service today.MB: Well, that's a great note to end on. And as I say, this is a really interesting book. It's full of great stories and tremendous practical advice about how to learn some of the tips from anthropology, even if you aren't an anthropologist yourself. And I think you certainly succeed in making the case that we do all need to get some “Anthro-Vision”, so we can see the world differently. So, thank you. Gillian Tett and the book is highly recommended. GT: Thank you. Great to be on your show.  This transcript has been lightly edited for context and clarity. 

Straight Talk with Hank Paulson
Episode 46: Gillian Tett

Straight Talk with Hank Paulson

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 29, 2021 32:44


Hank Paulson welcomes Gillian Tett (Moral Money Co-Founder and Chair of the Editorial Board and Editor-at-Large, US of the Financial Times) to the podcast to talk about what drew her to anthropology, her transition to journalism and economics, covering climate change and green finance, pandemic beards, and her new book. Gillian Tett: www.ft.com/gillian-tett Anthro-Vision www.simonandschuster.com/books/Anthro-Vision/Gillian-Tett/9781982140960 Financial Times: www.ft.com/ Moral Money: www.ft.com/moral-money

The FS Club Podcast
Why AI Needs Another "AI" - Anthropology Intelligence

The FS Club Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2021 46:24


Find out more on our website: https://bit.ly/3eDxOQq Covid-19 has tossed us into a digital world, in many spheres - including finance. But we forget the human factor at our peril. As we return to offices we need to recognize the vital insights that anthropology can offer to finance and businesses as they try to navigate the future Speaker: Gillian Tett serves as the chair of the editorial board and editor-at-large, US of the Financial Times. She writes weekly columns, covering a range of economic, financial, political and social issues. She is also the co-founder of FT Moral Money, a twice weekly newsletter that tracks the ESG revolution in business and finance which has since grown to be a staple FT product. In 2020, Moral Money won the SABEW best newsletter. Previously, Tett was the FT's US managing editor from 2013 to 2019. She has also served as assistant editor for the FT's markets coverage, capital markets editor, deputy editor of the Lex column, Tokyo bureau chief, Tokyo correspondent, London-based economics reporter and a reporter in Russia and Brussels. Tett is the author of The Silo Effect, which looks at the global economy and financial system through the lens of cultural anthropology. She also authored Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe, a 2009 New York Times bestseller and Financial Book of the Year at the inaugural Spear's Book Awards. Additionally, she wrote the 2003 book Saving the Sun: A Wall Street Gamble to Rescue Japan from its Trillion Dollar Meltdown. Her latest book, Anthro-Vision, A New Way to See Life and Business came out in June 2021. Tett has received honorary degrees from the University of Exeter, the University of Miami, St Andrew's, London University (Goldsmiths), Carnegie Mellon, Baruch and an honorary doctorate from Lancaster University in the UK. In 2014, Tett won the Royal Anthropological Institute Marsh Award and was named Columnist of the Year at the British Press Awards. Her 2012 article “Madoff spins his story” won the SABEW Award for best feature article. Other awards include a President's Medal by the British Academy (2011), being recognized as Journalist of the Year (2009) and Business Journalist of the Year (2008) by the British Press Awards, and as Senior Financial Journalist of the Year (2007) by the Wincott Awards. In 2017, Tett won the commentator of the year from Editorial Intelligence. Before joining the Financial Times in 1993, Tett was awarded a PhD in social anthropology from Cambridge University based on field work in the former Soviet Union. While pursuing the PhD, she freelanced for the FT and the BBC. She is a graduate of Cambridge University.

Future in Sound
Gillian Tett: Anthro-Vision in Business

Future in Sound

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 22, 2021 43:15


Gillian Tett is the Co-Founder of Moral Money and Chair of the Editorial Board and Editor-at-Large of the Financial Times (US). In this episode, she discusses how tools from anthropology can help leaders see future trends more clearly, avoid unnecessary shocks, and much more.Click here for episode web page.Related links: Gillian Tett, Anthro-Vision Karen Ho, Liquidated, An Ethnography of Wall Street Pierre BourdieuJoseph Henrich, The Weirdest People in the WorldFor more insights straight to your inbox subscribe to the Future in Sight newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram Brought to you by Re:Co, a market intelligence company helping clients achieve resilient competitive advantage in the long term.Produced by Chris AttawayArtwork by Harriet RichardsonMusic by Cody Martin

Leadership In Extraordinary Times
3 Anthro-Vision, how anthropology can explain business and life

Leadership In Extraordinary Times

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2021 59:05


In episode 3, Peter Tufano talks to British author and Financial Times journalist Gillian Tett about the power of anthropology to explain how we buy, sell, work, live and lead. Featuring: Gillian Tett (@gilliantett), Chair Financial Times Editorial Board (US), co-founder Moral Money newsletter, author of Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life. Peter Tufano, Peter Moores Dean and Professor of Finance at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/ Producer/editor – Eve Streeter for Stablhttps://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/

Traders Network Show
Episode 6: ESG Investing Panel Discussion | 2019 Greenwich Economic Forum

Traders Network Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 25, 2021 42:24


The ESG Investing panel discussion was delivered by: -Billy Nauman, Reporter and Producer, Moral Money, Financial Times -Jonathan Bailey, Managing Director and Head of ESG, Neuberger Berman -Afsaneh Mashayekhi Beschloss, Founder and CEO, RockCreek -Megan Starr, Principal and Head of Impact, The Carlyle Group -Martin Whittaker, CEO, JUST Capital To inquire about being a guest on this show or others: Matt Bird CommPro Worldwide C: +1 (646) 401-4499 E: matt@commpro.com W: www.commpro.com

Audio Football Club
The enemy of your Emery is your friend

Audio Football Club

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2019 49:05


On the podcast today, Liverpool win after a shaky start against Spurs and extend their unbeaten run once again.Elsewhere, Leicester dish out an almost cruel thrashing of Southampton, Manchester United win despite missing two penalties and we check up on the London Premier League clubsElsewhere, great Granada, awesome Atalanta and tales of missed matchesSubscribe to Audio Football Club to make sure you never miss an episode and email us at afcpodcast@telegraph.co.ukListen to Moral Money: https://playpodca.st/moral-moneySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Kicker
The Financial Times follows the money on the climate crisis

The Kicker

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 26, 2019 15:14


Among readers, the demand for climate crisis coverage is high. Until recently, however, financial reporters have stayed largely silent on the subject. On this week's episode, Kyle Pope, the editor and publisher of CJR, speaks with Gillian Tett, editor-at-large for the Financial Times, on how her doctoral work in cultural anthropology and her years as a war reporter have lead her to start a newsletter on the climate crisis, “Moral Money.”

The Happier Hour
#021 Moral Money With Adam Smith and Jennifer Morton

The Happier Hour

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 13, 2018 27:23


Does morality have a role to play in economics? In this episode you'll learn what philosophy professor Dr. Jennifer Morton has to say about the ethical costs of upward mobility, and how Adam Smith changed the way we think about economic distribution and decision making today. #thehappierhour Twitter/IG: MissMMcCarthy Facebook: @thehappierhour