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How do individuals navigate moral typecasting? What is the dual nature of empathy in the context of human pain and suffering? When is there a disconnect between the perceptions of what is right and what is moral?Kurt Gray is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he directs the Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. In the autumn of 2025, he will join the faculty of the Department of Psychology at Ohio State University. He's also an author, and his books are titled Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground and The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters.Greg and Kurt discuss Kurt's work at the Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. Their conversation covers key topics such as how moral disagreements are rooted in differing perceptions of harm, the impact of evolutionary psychology, and the role of empathy in bridging divides. Kurt also shares insights from his classroom experiences on fostering understanding among students.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How can pain and suffering change your view about empathy?43:00: There are two ways, right? That pain and suffering could change your views of empathy. And I should say there are some people who do experience a lot of pain and suffering and then do not feel sympathy...[43:16] Everyone suffers. Just like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, dust yourself off and get hard, get tough. But for the most part, if you suffered a lot in life, you can kind of recognize that it's tough sometimes to be a human being and that you have more sympathy for others, at least more so than people who never suffered in their lives, right? But I think the way that pain causes you to have less empathy is if you're in pain right now. Right? So if you are standing in, you know, a pile of razor blades, it's hard to be really empathic for someone—you know, someone's situation, right?—because you're so focused. Like, pain just overwhelms your entire consciousness. So never try to get empathy from someone who is actively in pain, but I think instead, reach out to people who, you know, have gone through a similar thing.Moral understanding begins with human contact40:46: The more you have sustained contact with people who are different than you, you show more moral understanding.When recognizing pain depends on perception27:13: When it comes to the ability to suffer, pain like that is ultimately a matter of perception. Like, you can, you know, agency—someone is intending—you can see that more on the surface, right? Like, I am going to think and I will do something—that is agency. But if you start crying, like, are you a method actor? Are you actually in tears? Are those crocodile tears? So, questions of pain are easy to accept when it is your family or your friends. Perhaps when someone is very different than you, or maybe you are locked in a conflict with someone and they are crying, right? It is much harder to take their pain as authentic.Understanding starts with stories not arguments30:53: Stories are a way of sharing one true thing, shall we say, right? This thing happened to me, and it's not a talking point I heard on the radio. It actually happened to me, and let me tell you about it so that you can better understand me. I think it's powerful because it's not the thing that you're going to use to persuade in policy, let's say—although, often, stories are persuasive in policy—but instead it's a way of saying, here's where I'm coming from. Can you understand where I'm coming from? And that's a great place for a conversation to start. Right now, I understand you're a person, I'm a person, and let's explore our perspectives rather than argue about complex policy issues.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Jonathan HaidtMoral Foundations TheoryDaryl DavisLuigi MangioneDavid GogginsDaniel KahnemanGuest Profile:KurtJGray.comDeepest Beliefs LabThe Center for the Science of Moral UnderstandingProfile on LinkedInSocial Profile on InstagramSocial Profile on XHis Work:Amazon Author PageOutraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common GroundThe Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It MattersAtlas of Moral PsychologyGoogle Scholar Page

You know what they say — Silicon Valley wasn't built in a day, nor was it built by just a small group of tech gurus. In fact, the origin story of the Valley is a complex story involving government, industry, and academia.Margaret O'Mara is a history professor at the University of Washington. Her latest book, The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America gives an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the making of the tech empire, and how it's grown into an economic engine. Margaret and Greg discuss the significant role the government played in the early days of Silicon Valley, key historical figures in the region's rise to prominence and factors that set it apart from other tech hubs like Boston, and how the ecosystem has evolved alongside politics, technology, and cultural shifts. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How storytelling built Silicon Valley's legacy31:59: I think there's the story of the products, and then there's the story of the place, the story of the guys in garages. The story of this entrepreneurial genius, and that's a great, great story. It's part of the story. It leaves out this bigger landscape of government and society and people who are non-technical people, the Regis McKenna's of the world, who are so instrumental in making all this happen. But it's—I mean, I know as a historian—storytelling is powerful. That's how you help people understand and relate. And so Silicon Valley has been such a good storyteller.Why everyone should understand tech history04:27: It's really important for all of us as users of this technology to have a way to understand it and understand its history. Even if we don't know, even if we aren't programmers ourselves.Meritocracy alone hasn't changed the face of power53:16: We're seeing the people at the very, very top of power and influence are more homogenous than ever, which is showing that this meritocracy, this idea, just doesn't—only goes so far. So understanding the history kind of helps, I think, is really important in kind of getting why. Okay, why has this not changed? Why is this so baked into the model? But it also doesn't mean that we should just throw up our hands and say, well, this is the way it is.Federal research grants built founders not just labs11:57: Research money for universities is not only seeding basic research in labs and then seeding spinoff companies and commercializing technologies from those labs, but it's also educating people. When you look, kind of dollar for dollar, about, you know—when you look at Stanford, for example, if you just look at the tech space—I think biotech is different. Medical sciences are different because you have more of that kind of pipeline from lab to startup in that space. But when you're looking at computer hardware and software, it's more about the people that went to Stanford that went on to found companies, right? Everyone from Hewlett and Packard to Brin and Page and everyone in between. That is, it's kind of a people factory, so that's part of it. And that federal money is paying for people for science and engineering programs. So that's a really important component.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Frederick TermanVannevar BushRegional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee SaxenianRobert NoyceBurt McMurtryTerry WinogradBill DraperPitch JohnsonRegis McKennaWilson Sonsini Goodrich & RosatiGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of WashingtonProfessional WebsiteGuest Work:The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America 

Are there ways to change your personality? What traits are easier to change than others? How does environment and life events tend to influence the Big Five traits of your personality?Olga Khazan is a staff writer at The Atlantic magazine and also the author of the books Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change and Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World.Greg and Olga discuss the concept of personality change, focusing on the Big Five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Olga shares her personal journey of attempting to modify her own traits, the challenges faced, and the various techniques used, such as meditation, improv, and volunteering. They also talk about the implications of personality change in different environments, the heritability of traits, and the broader significance of these changes for personal and professional growth.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The case for volitional personality change12:03; Everyone will change slightly, even if they do not do anything. So you can just, like, buckle up and enjoy the ride, I guess. The maturity principle — like people become less neurotic, more conscientious over time — so those are positive changes, and most of us will kind of enjoy those. But volitional personality change, which is what my book is really about, is trying to make a more pronounced change in a shorter period of time. And the kind of type of thing I am talking about is, like, starting therapy. Like most people, if they have a problem, they do not kind of sit back and say, "This problem will eventually go away, so I am not going to get therapy." You know, they are like, "I want to go see a therapist because I want this process to resolve faster — like, want to get over this problem sooner." And so, it is similar with volitional personality changes: you are noticing a problem in your life, and you are taking steps to change it faster than it would change naturally.Why extroverts are often happier22:40: Extroversion is important. Most studies show that extroverts are happier. That's just because they have more social connections... There's just something about being seen by other people, feeling like you're part of a community, feeling like you matter, that is really beneficial for health and can't be replicated by reading a book or watching a TV show.Neuroticism and safety vs. risk25:37: Neuroticism will keep you very safe because you will never do anything. But you have to ask yourself whether you want a life where you've never taken any risks. 'Cause that's also part of it.What improv can teach you about being open20:37: What improv is really good at is, if you are someone who is very controlling of situations or likes to be in control, it completely breaks you of that immediately because there is absolutely no way to control what's happening in improv. Everything is so made up and so confusing, and so you have to like to be in the moment and just pivot on the spot with whatever's happening. And for me, that really helped with extroversion, but also kind of just some of the parts of me that were kind of not willing to be extroverted.Show Links:Recommended Resources:NathanWHudson.comPersonalityAssessor.comBrent RobertsWilliam JamesBrian LittleDale CarnegieHow to Win Friends and Influence PeopleGuest Profile:OlgaKhazan.comProfile on LinkedInWikipedia ProfileSocial Profile on XSocial Profile on InstagramHer Work:Articles in The AtlanticAmazon Author PageMe, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality ChangeWeird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider WorldSubstack Newsletter

On this episode of the OneHaas Alumni Podcast, meet alum Shinghi Detlefsen, president of Wholesome Story and CEO of ExpandFi. Shinghi's entrepreneurial spirit at a young age propelled him into a successful sales career with experience at major tech companies like Google and Amazon. After beginning his higher education at Berkeley City College, he transferred to Haas and a world of opportunity opened for him. Shinghi chats with host Sean Li about finding his entrepreneurial drive as a kid, the organizational lessons he gleaned from working at Amazon and Google, how he launched Wholesome Story with his wife, and why he believes everyone has the power to be the change they want to see in the world. *OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How his entrepreneurial spirit began from a young age“ We moved to Virginia when I was like seven from California, and I remember we were doing a yard sale for like selling stuff before we left and I was in charge of the money and selling things and I still remember being a little kid like, I loved that. I loved selling things and making money. And it always was in my interest sphere. And like, even when we moved to Virginia…I was mowing lawns, making money. I think my parents also raised me with that type of mindset where there are no handouts. You don't just get money from your parents, you need to go earn it.”Lessons he learned from Amazon's corporate culture “Amazon is a written culture, so there are no PowerPoints…You don't have a presentation where some guy stands up in front of everyone and talks about it. Everything's in a doc, so I had to learn how to write and that has been the most valuable asset that I've learned from Amazon. I still use it today. I try to have my own team lean into writing versus presenting just because it's so much more tangible and it also forces you to think very clearly.”On leaving Amazon to take Wholesome Story to the next level“ It was absolutely liberating…At Amazon, like you could really just work your ass off or any corporation and you can get 10% more in salary. And in a business you could work a thousand percent more and you can make a million percent more. It's like that return on your time and your effort is so much higher in entrepreneurship if things work out.”His advice to budding entrepreneurs“ I would focus on – aim to be a millionaire, not a billionaire. And I think, again, going back to that barrier mindset where you have the Googles and the Facebooks and that's who you want to be growing up. That's like a one in a billion chance of you hitting that, right? And a lot of people will spend a ton of time, they'll do a startup, they'll raise a ton of money, they'll be diluted to the point where they would've been better off becoming a millionaire. And so like my point to everyone is that there are million dollar opportunities everywhere, and it's simple. It's like you can create a million dollar business and you just take a problem, a small problem, and you solve it.”Show Links:LinkedIn ProfileX ProfileMedium Article: “E-commerce Wars — and how the US is losing.”Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Could the key to a happier life be found with our most ancient ancestors and the way they depended on community over autonomy? In a modern world built to encourage independence, how do we find the right balance between connectedness and autonomy? William Von Hippel is a retired professor of psychology from the University of Queensland and the author of The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness. His research, also found in his first book The Social Leap and countless articles, focuses on the evolutionary science behind happiness.William and Greg chat about how evolutionary science can offer guidance on living a happier, more fulfilled life, the psychological and physiological impacts of social connections, the historical context of human relationships, and the role of modern technology and societal changes in our well-being.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why loneliness hurts more than we realize28:38: Loneliness is really hard on your health. We know that it kills you at rates higher than cigarettes once you get older, and you're more vulnerable. And so the feeling of loneliness doesn't guarantee you don't have people around, but it does mean that you don't feel part of it.You feel somewhat excluded. And of course, feeling excluded should hurt because our ancestors who couldn't see that they're about to be excluded are the ancestors who kept misbehaving and therefore got excluded. When you look at hunter-gatherer societies, they all follow the same pattern of exclusion, whereby before they actually give you the heave-ho, first they kind of tease you. And if you don't respond to this teasing, well, already, you're a little bit too thick-skinned, because that's meant to bring you back in line. If teasing doesn't work, then they start acting like you're not even there. They talk around you and not responding to you. Almost everybody, when they get to that point, starts to feel terrible. It feels like physical pain because our ancestors, our potential ancestors who weren't bothered by that, took the next step and woke up one morning either dead or all alone. So, the system makes perfect sense that it really hurts. Happiness is one of evolution's best tools04:06: Happiness is one of evolution's best tools. It motivates us to do things that are in our genes' best interest, not necessarily ours as human beings, who may or may not want to do those things, but it motivates us to do what's in our genes' best interest—typically by making us happy when we do those things.The tradeoff between autonomy and connection06:34: We enter relationships which are super important to us and our happiness; we're a gregarious species. When we enter those relationships, we have to sacrifice some degree of autonomy to do what our friends want some of the time, or at least at the time they want, et cetera. And when we decide to pursue our autonomy, usually in pursuit of skills and self-development, we have to sacrifice our relationships to some degree, because that means we're spending time honing our own skills and not socializing or helping others.Why wealth doesn't guarantee happiness19:47: The things that made us happy, as far as the social connections, were also the things that made us reproductively successful. And they, in some ways, they very much still are. So if I'm famous or rich, I'm high in status, and then I'm attractive to members of the opposite sex or whoever I prefer. And I'm attractive to people who I want to be in my coalition. I have the sort of social accolades that actually make me feel good. And I think that's actually the basis of the Eastland Paradox—this notion that as societies get wealthier, people don't get happier. But richer people are happier than poorer people.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Daniel KahnemanShigehiro OishiRobert Trivers ÖtziJohn T. CacioppoJanice Kiecolt-GlaserSheldon CohenGuest Profile:Professional Profile on LinkedInProfessional WebsiteHis Work:The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find HappinessThe Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Makes Us Happy

Retail executive Ramon Marquez can point to virtually every store in a shopping mall and explain how he helped that brand grow. With a passion for retail dating back to his childhood, he's built a career as a leader in merchandising, product management and retail operations for major retailers like JCPenney, Abercrombie & Fitch, Old Navy, and is now shaping the future of Kmart and Sears. As a newly minted MBA graduate, Ramon gained not only a degree from Rice, but also a meaningful board appointment with Panama-based company, Effluz. After working with Effluz on his Global Field Experience, Ramon remained close with the company, which was founded by Taylin Luzcando and specializes in premature baby clothing and accessories. Ramon and Taylin join co-host Brian Jackson '21 to chat about Ramon's career journey from his grandfather's general store in Mexico to the C-suite of some of the biggest global retailers, as well as why he decided to pursue an MBA at Rice and how he's made an impact at Effluz. Founder Taylin also shares the personal origins of Effluz and why entrepreneurs should jump at the chance to partner with Rice's Global Field Experience program. Episode Guide:01:41 Ramon's Early Career and Rise in Retail06:05 Leadership and Adaptability in Retail07:41 Pursuing an MBA at Rice Business10:52 Joining the Board of a Panamanian Startup13:34 Insights on Retail and Future Plans21:03 Personal Life and Community Involvement26:10 Meet Taylin Luzcando, founder of Effluz31:11 Taylin's Experience with Rice's Global Field Experience ProgramOwl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:How one class changed Ramon's path19:14: [Ramon Marquez] Towards the end of the MBA... and one of the very last classes I took was Life of Meaning. It's an entrepreneurship lab. And what that class does is that it takes a look at where you want to be and how you fill the gap. And we did a lot of frameworks that helped me map out what is next. So, there were a lot of great things that came out of it. One was that I really didn't have a plan in writing or a roadmap to where I want to land. In the class, part of the frameworks will get you back to, like, what are you passionate about? What is it that you wanted to do when you were a kid? What are the things that you don't want to be left undone? And it helped me realize that, you know, there's an entrepreneurial side of me that I have never explored.Why Ramon says passion for your job matter14:37: [Ramon Marquez] I encourage everyone, whatever you do, position yourself in a place where you love it, that you're so intrigued and so inquisitive and so passionate. And a lot of people come to me and say, you know, “How do you get your job?” And I say, “Well, you have to be interested and passionate about retail. If you're not, don't get my job, because then it's too much pressure. It's too hectic. It's too fast. It's too vulnerable. It's too difficult right now. Retail is really difficult.” But if you think about the fact that, you know, merchants have been around for thousands of years and commerce has existed from the beginning of time, retail's not going to go away. It's just the way that we will get to know what it's like. And for that, I don't have the answer, in case you were wondering.Show Links: TranscriptGuest Profiles:Ramon Marquez | LinkedInTaylin Luzcando | LinkedInEffluz

For the summer season, All Else Equal will be alternating between new episodes and reruns. On this week's episode, we're revisiting our conversation with historian Victor Davis Hanson.History shows that as societies rise to greatness, the scales eventually tip back and those societies fall. But what leads to that fall and are we heading toward one? In this episode, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen speak with historian Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who specializes in classics and military history.  The conversation explores the complexities and fragilities of successful societies like the Mycenaeans, Romans, and Byzantines, how specialization can lead to higher living standards but also increased vulnerability, and our existential worries about the future.  Find All Else Equal on the web: https://lauder.wharton.upenn.edu/in-the-news/all-else-equal/All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of the UPenn Wharton Lauder Institute through University FM.

What happens to the speed of trading as technology advances? How do we move from automated button pressing machines to ultra-fast algorithms? What surprising impact does the rain have on the trading windows of financial markets?Donald MacKenzie is a professor of sociology at the University of Edinburgh and also the author of several books. His most recent works are Trading at the Speed of Light: How Ultrafast Algorithms Are Transforming Financial Markets and An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets.Greg and Donald discuss the intersection of sociology and finance, exploring how financial models not only describe markets but also actively influence them. Donald explains the concept of performativity, where financial theories shape market behavior, and contrasts qualitative sociological methodologies with quantitative financial studies. Their conversation also touches on the history and impact of technologies and regulatory environments that have transformed financial trading, highlighting contributions from notable academics and instances of feedback loops between theory and practice.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Chicago pits vs. algorithms28:34: For, say, investment management firms that have to buy and sell large portfolios of assets, there's little doubt that the modern world of automated trading has benefits, but it also has downsides. I mean, the benefit is, quite simply, of course, that automated systems are a lot cheaper than human beings in colored jackets running around in Chicago's pits or on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. But, at the same time, of course, if you are trying to sell or buy a very large position, then you do leave electronic traces that trading algorithms can pick up on and make money out of.Why financial models shapes markets like engine not camera04:31: An engine does things, it's not a camera—at least in our ordinary thinking about cameras, where you take the photograph and the landscape remains the same. An engine does stuff, it changes its environment.The power of shared signals in trading success34:11: The secret of my success is I realized quite early on that there were things—signals, as they would be called in the field—inputs to algorithms that everybody knew about and that everybody knew that everybody knew about. So it wasn't like I had an unsuccessful attempt, way back to research statistical arbitrage and dare nobody would tell you what exactly they were trading off of. But I think they're trading because everybody knows that if you're trading shares, then a move in the relevant index future is a very, very important signal. Everybody knows that, and everybody knows that. Everybody knows that.Finance beyond numbers, the human side of quantitative work02:30: Finance as an academic field, and indeed of course finance as a practice, is typically highly quantitative. And to get into the technology, quantitative work can be great, but to really get into it you've got to talk to people. Ideally, you want to go see things, so the methodology is more qualitative than quantitative, and it probably would not be the best of ideas.Show Links:Recommended Resources:William F. SharpeThomas MortonFischer BlackCoase TheoremMark RubinsteinEric BudishJohn O'BrienPortfolio InsuranceMilton FriedmanCommodity Futures Trading CommissionU.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionLeo MelamedThe Library of MistakesGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at the University of EdinburghForbes.com ProfileWikipedia ProfileHis Work:Amazon Author PageTrading at the Speed of Light: How Ultrafast Algorithms Are Transforming Financial MarketsAn Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape MarketsDo Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of EconomicsMaterial Markets: How Economic Agents are ConstructedInventing Accuracy: An Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance

How are effective leadership practices evolving to keep up in a continually changing world? What can be learned from the leaders of companies like Stitchfix or Waste Management? How can AI in education be handled in a way that is open and enriching to all?Robert Siegel is a lecturer at Stanford University GSB and author of the books The Systems Leader: Mastering the Cross-Pressures That Make or Break Today's Companies and The Brains and Brawn Company: How Leading Organizations Blend the Best of Digital and Physical.Greg and Robert discuss the evolution of leadership, particularly in the context of managing crises and rapid technological advancements. Their discussion explores the different things that must be balanced in leadership roles, such as innovation vs. execution and strength vs. empathy. Robert also emphasizes the importance of systems thinking, adaptability, and statesmanship in modern leadership. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Is statesmanship in short supply?32:17: This notion of statesmanship or stateswomanship of stewardship is, it doesn't deny the ambition that we have as leaders. It doesn't deny who we want to be and what we hope to accomplish, but it's also about looking about everybody beyond us. And we have to lead men and women who agree with us and disagree with us, and we have to lead men and women. With whom we agree and disagree. Like we don't get to choose who we lead, Greg. Like we have to lead everybody. And if we've gotta get them from here to here, to me, that's what leadership is right now. And I don't think we're seeing this with a lot of the people who are put up there constantly in the mainstream media or on social media. But in the book I've got 15 to 20 leaders, all of whom are successful. And we can look at them and say, huh, well if they could do it, so can I.What leadership looks like now06:44:  Leadership today—in a world especially that's moving so quickly—that's where people have to be able to be more adaptable, internalize certain dualities that maybe existed separately inside of a company in the past that now need to exist inside of us internally. And so I think that things are different. The ability and willingness to adapt, I think, that's constant. But what you have to adapt to depends upon the times.Is it harder to be a leader today?08:09: Most leaders today are not trained to be thinking in kind of this level of speed, nor are they trained to understand what happens in different functions in an organization. In the old days, you could come up through engineering or through marketing or through manufacturing, and you would've teammates who would handle the other functions. Well, now we need to understand, like, what's the connection between what we do in one function versus the other function? How do we see internal and external? I think that's harder.Investing time in yourself is leading smarter32:01: A leader who says, I don't have time for this, they're probably spending time on the wrong issues, like where we spend time in the past isn't where we need to spend time in the future. And so making some time to invest in oneself, reading, finding trusted partners outside of the company. Who you can talk to and learn from. And, by the way, those people can be your peers. They can be people who are older, they can even be people who are younger.Show Links:Recommended Resources:PericlesFuture ShockDaniel A. LevinthalKatrina LakeJeff ImmeltAndrew GroveGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Stanford GSBProfile at Stanford UniversityRobertESiegel.comProfile on LinkedInWikipedia PageSocial Profile on InstagramHis Work:Amazon Author PageThe Systems Leader: Mastering the Cross-Pressures That Make or Break Today's CompaniesThe Brains and Brawn Company: How Leading Organizations Blend the Best of Digital and Physical

What are the effects of stress on memory? How does age change the nature of this vital piece of human cognition? What are the limitations of memory, and how can we embrace them?Ciara M. Greene is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology, UCD, where she also heads up the Attention and Memory Laboratory. She's also the co-author of the book Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember.Greg and Ciara discuss the nature of memory, challenging the common belief that the best memory is akin to a flawless recording device. Ciara argues that memory's imperfections are actually evolutionarily beneficial, aiding in survival and decision-making. They discuss how metaphors for memory have evolved alongside technology, the reconstructive nature of memory, and the importance of understanding its functions. Ciara also explains how schemas play a role in memory errors, but how they are also beneficial.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why forgetting your shopping list is a feature not a flaw44:38: We don't need to have this fear that means technology is ruining our mind. This is exactly the same way as is. Like you say, you're, I dunno, you're going to the supermarket and instead of remembering your shopping list, you write it down. Okay. You don't then also need to remember it. They're able to adapt. So like if you say, I have written down my shopping list, you've essentially told your brain you no longer need to remember this. You don't need to remember bread and eggs and mouthwash. Like, our brains are flexible. Like they're not just running on tracks. It's not necessary.It's not a good use of your resources because you've offloaded that task. That doesn't mean that your ability to go to the shop tomorrow and remember that you need to buy laundry detergent is going to be impaired because you wrote it down yesterday. It's just that we're, if you could think of it as being almost like extending your mind. Okay. It's almost like adding an external hard drive to your computer. You're just giving yourself a little bit more, like an, again, a broader sketch pad to play with. And that we, sometimes we use those tools. There's nothing wrong using those tools, but we should do them consciously.How does the basis of memory work?30:21: The reconstruction of memory is literally the basis of how memory works. It's inescapable. You can't just have a good memory and not have a reconstruction.Memory helps us belong03:46: It's important to think, not just about what memory is — it's not something static — but to think about what it's for, what its function is, and how it evolved in the way that it did.Because just like every other part of our minds, and our bodies, every function that we have evolved under evolutionary pressures — you know, that there are survival pressures and reproduction pressures — and those influence the way in which we evolved as human beings, as any kind of species. So when we think about our memory, I think it's important to keep that in mind, and that evolution wasn't prioritizing: it's super important that you remember absolutely every boring detail of every single experience you've ever had. And, you know, that you have this perfect fidelity and recollection of every detail of everything you observe — that's not necessary to support your survival, it's not necessary to support reproduction, and in some cases, it can be counterproductive.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Jorge Luis BorgesHyperthymesiaSource-Monitoring ErrorThird-Person EffectElizabeth LoftusRepressed MemorySatanic PanicMcMartin Preschool TrialGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University College DublinSocial Profile on XAttention and Memory LabHer Work:Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We RememberGoogle Scholar PageResearchGate Page

What is the role of active versus passive learning for math? How would data science become an avenue of math study for high school students and why isn't it already? Where does change in math education start? At the college level or before?Jo Boaler is a professor of mathematics education at Stanford University and also the author of a number of books, including Math-ish: Finding Creativity, Diversity, and Meaning in Mathematics, Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers, and Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential Through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching.Greg and Jo discuss creativity, diversity, and meaning in math education. Their conversation identifies certain flaws in current math teaching methods, the resistance to educational change, and the importance of metacognition, visual learning, and collaborative problem-solving. Jo shares insights from her journey as a math educator, including her experiences with educational reform and the implications of neuroscience on learning math. They also examine the role of active versus passive learning, the potential of data science in education, and the impact of AI on future teaching practices.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How conjectures ignite mathematical thinking17:00: When we ask kids to reason about maths and to come up with their own conjectures, we like to share that word with kids. This is a word that all mathematicians use—a conjecture for an idea they have that you need to test out. It's like a hypothesis in science, but kids have never heard of that word, which is, you know, means there's a reason for that. But anyway, we teach our kids to come up with conjectures and then to reason about them and prove it to each other. And they get these great discussions where they're reasoning and being skeptical with each other. And that's what sparks their interest. They actually feel like they're discovering new things. And it's, like, really engaging for the kids to get into these discussions about the meanings of why these things work in maths. So it's a great route in, not only to engage kids, but have them understand what they're doing. Yeah, it's not that common.Why every kid should learn data science31:02: Data science is really something all kids should be learning in school, before they leave school, and developing a data literacy and a comfort with data and being able to read and analyze data, to some extent, is an important life skill. And it probably is really important to say, if a democracy, as a lot of misinformation is shared now, and if kids aren't leaving able to make sense of and separate fact and fiction, they will be left vulnerable to those misinformation campaigns. So, it's important just to be an everyday citizen.Why estimation is really important34:48: The idea of Math-ish is, estimation is really important. There's a lot of research evidence that we should be getting kids to estimate, but I know that kids in schools hate to estimate, and they resist it, and they will work things out precisely and round them up to make them look like an estimate. But you ask them, what's your ish number? And something magical happens. Like, suddenly they're willing to share their thinking, but it doesn't happen enough.The problem with teaching everything every year14:28: In the US, we have this system of teaching everything every year. So, you start learning fractions in maybe grade three, but you also learn them again in grade four and grade five and grade six. And at the end of that, kids don't understand fractions and everything else. Everything is taught every year. Whereas if you look at very successful countries like Japan, they don't teach in that way. Fractions is taught in one year—one year group—deeply, well, conceptually. So this is why you see kids going around in these massive textbooks that they can hardly carry, because it has all this content. And, of course, when you try and teach everything every year, often kids don't learn any of it well.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Randomized Controlled TrialMetacognitionCompression as a unifying principle in human learningCarol DweckGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Stanford GSEProfile on WikipediaYouCubedSocial Profile on InstagramSocial Profile on XHer Work:Amazon Author PageMath-ish: Finding Creativity, Diversity, and Meaning in MathematicsLimitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without BarriersWhat's Math Got to Do with It?: How Teachers and Parents Can Transform Mathematics Learning and Inspire SuccessData Minds: How Today's Teachers Can Prepare Students for Tomorrow's WorldMathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential Through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching

What is ‘good stress' and what are the benefits of it? How does an upbringing in uncertainty prepare you in some ways better for the world than others? How are intolerance and uncertainty linked? What is the important purpose of daydreaming for creativity and business?Maggie Jackson is a journalist and the author of the books Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure, Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention, and What's Happening to Home: Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age.Greg and Maggie discuss the nuances of uncertainty, attention, and distraction, emphasizing the importance of daydreaming and mind wandering. Maggie explores her findings about the impact of these states on creativity, learning, and memory. Their discussion also covers how societal and cultural attitudes towards uncertainty affect decision-making and problem-solving, especially in professional settings like medicine and finance. Maggie also reveals the role of dissent in fostering creativity and collaboration, and the need to manage mental well-being in an increasingly fast-paced world.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How uncertainty primes us to learn and perform05:44: What's really important to understand, and comes from the new neuroscience of uncertainty, is that this discomfort we feel is actually good stress. So, when you're meeting up with something new or unexpected or ambiguous—in the forest, or in the workplace, or wherever—you actually have a stress response. Neurotransmitters, hormones, et cetera, you know, are cascading through your body. Your body and brain are kind of springing into action. And what's really amazing, and very new scientifically, is that your brain on uncertainty is undergoing remarkably positive changes. So, when you're unsure—this has been documented in emergency room physicians and others—your working memory improves, your attention heightens, your brain becomes more receptive to new data. So, this is a state—yes, that's uncomfortable—but that's good stress. You're actually being primed to learn and perform.Uncertainty is a signal to learn not to retreat06:42: Uncertainty is the brain telling itself, "There's something to be learned here." So, that puts a different spin on this idea that we should retreat from it.Tolerance of uncertainty is a skill you can build28:15: So, we all sit somewhere on the spectrum of this new personality trait. It was actually discovered about 50 years ago, but it's getting a lot of attention, called tolerance of uncertainty or intolerance of uncertainty. So, if you're tolerant of uncertainty—highly—you're more a flexible thinker. You like surprises, you see uncertainty as a challenge. Intolerant people, during the acute phase of the pandemic, for instance, they were far more likely to turn to denial, avoidance, and substance abuse to cope. So, it's really interesting because our intolerance of uncertainty is mutable. Not only can we boost our tolerance—we can practice, we can do daily exercises—there are clinical studies that are actually treating anxiety just by helping people bolster their tolerance and uncertainty. But it's also important to know that it's situational.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Yerkes–Dodson LawJeremy P. Jamieson | Google ScholarCarol Collier Kuhlthau | Rutgers UniversityHarry S. Truman“The Einstellung Effect, Explained”Amy EdmondsonDaniel KahnemanRobert StickgoldJames J. CollinsGuest Profile:Maggie-Jackson.comLinkedIn ProfileHer Work:Amazon Author PageUncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being UnsureDistracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost AttentionWhat's Happening to Home: Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age

In celebration of Pride Month, the OneHaas Alumni Podcast is honored to have Laurie Reemeyer, a sustainable mining consultant, share his journey. For much of Laurie's early career in the mining industry in Australia, he kept his identity as a gay man separate from his work. But after more than a decade of hiding this key part of himself, he decided it was time for a fresh start in the form of an MBA degree at Haas. Laurie chats with host Sean Li about his struggles with accepting and embracing his sexuality in a traditionally conservative environment, the pivotal role Haas has played in his life, how he's giving back through Q@Haas, and how he's working to make mining more sustainable through his consultancy firm Resourceful Paths. *OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How going from mining in Australia to Haas changed his life“ I think with Australia, by the time that I left, things were changing. I was safe in the cities…I was not feeling safe at all to come out at work. And really that's where Berkeley was a fundamental change in my life because when I came to Berkeley, I just came out the first day I was there. And that was such a liberating experience compared to that feeling of suppression and separation that I felt in the mining industry in Australia.”On the work he's doing with Resourceful Paths ”When we talk about helping you mine responsibly, what I'm really talking about is how do we do things in ways that minimize environmental impact that are more socially acceptable? How do we incorporate practices that reduce energy use, water use, that reduce footprint, those types of things.”On living authentically Being your full self to whatever extent you can and recognizing that in the LGBTQ+ community, that's really primarily the journey of coming out. And that's something that people have to do at their own pace. It's a unique journey for everyone. And we can't necessarily live authentically completely straight away because there may be issues around physical danger, around social pressures, cultural issues, et cetera, which you've gotta navigate through. But that's very important that people, you know, feel that they can be themselves, be their true selves to the largest extent they can.”On being a good ally“Are we showing up, firstly? Are we showing up authentically? Is it about supporting the community or is it about ourselves? So if we're showing up because we just want to feel good about ourselves, et cetera, well, sorry, that's not enough. It's not okay actually. I think allyship has to be something much deeper and I think you're gonna stand with those people and support them authentically when the time gets tough or not.”Show Links:LinkedIn ProfileResourceful PathsSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

How can the leadership power be wielded for both good and ill? How can leaders use their influence more ethically and effectively, and why is that important for the growth of the whole superorganism?Adam Galinsky is a professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School, and also the author of the books Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others and Friend & Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both.Greg and Adam discuss Adam's research and teaching experiences, emphasizing the complexities of human leadership compared to leadership in the rest of the animal kingdom. Adam highlights the importance of understanding power dynamics and how small actions from leaders can have amplified impacts on their teams. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:On the power perspective taking40:13: One of my biggest research findings was, you know, that power lowers perspective taking, right? Even though the powerful have greater impact and, in some ways, need for perspective, they have less of it. But I also have shown that there's a particularly powerful force of power with perspective taking. And so I actually call it—it's like driving a race car, right? Would be a good analogy. So power is the gas that lets you go fast. But if you don't have a steering wheel, you're gonna crash into things. So perspective taking is your steering wheel. And so, if you just have the steering wheel without the gas, you just sit there going nowhere, right? So it's the combination, I think, of the two that are really, really powerful.Leadership tools can build or break51:48: Every single part of the leadership toolbox can be used for good. Or it can be used for a really bad goal. It can be used to hurt people. And so part of what inspiring leadership is, using the toolbox towards inspiring goals, and to making other people's lives better.The five-second leadership habit26:47:  One of the things that I hope from my books and from my teaching is it just helps people take a little step back and think thoughtfully about, like, little things that they can do, to, when they walk into a meeting, just be a little conscious of, like, where's the best place for me to sit? Five seconds. That's all you got to think about it, right? But like, what am I trying to accomplish in this meeting? Who needs to speak? Okay, I'm going to sit here, right? And I know people sometimes feel like, oh, it's overwhelming enough time. Like most people I know, once they get into the practice of doing that, it's actually very invigorating. It gives them a sense of agency, it gives them a sense of control over the world because they understand it. It's like the pill in the Matrix, right? Like the things, all of a sudden make sense in a way they didn't before.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Dave BrailsfordDeborah H. GruenfeldSuperorganismClaude SteeleCameron AndersonDon A. MooreBruce KogutLinda RottenbergGroundhog Day (film)Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Columbia Business SchoolAdamGalinsky.comLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on XHis Work:Amazon Author PageInspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and OthersFriend & Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at BothGoogle Scholar PageTed Talks

Despite entering college as a pre-med major, Corey Layne Crouch '13 found her calling in the classroom after working as a teacher's aide for a kindergarten class. Switching majors, she set out on a path to transform the education system from within. Corey's entrepreneurial mindset in her work as a high school English teacher and school principal led her to Rice's Professional MBA program. Now, she's the chief program officer for AI for Education — an organization providing AI literacy training to educators and championing responsible use of AI in the education ecosystem. In this episode, Corey joins host Maya Pomroy '22 to chat about her pivots from pre-med to English to her current role as an educational tech executive — as well as her time at Rice Business, the importance of supporting AI literacy and the innovative ways she's influenced the education system. Episode Guide:00:00 Introduction to Corey Layne Crouch02:15 From Pre-Med to Kindergarten Teacher05:21 Teach for America and Moving to Houston08:23 Becoming a Principal and Pursuing an MBA17:04 Transition to EdTech and AI in Education25:07 Challenges and Misconceptions of AI in Schools30:26 Future of Education with AI38:22 Conclusion and Final ThoughtsOwl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:On building AI literacy through tool-agnostic workshops[30:26] Maya Pomroy: So, tell me some of the work that you do — because AI for Education is really tackling one of the, I mean, this is one of the biggest shifts in modern learning.[31:41] Corey Layne Crouch: So we provide workshops and thing that we do, as well as that we're tool agnostic. We do have opinions about tools and where, you know, what's safe and what's fit for purpose, and what we think isn't quite yet, and how to integrate it in that way. 'Cause the technology is going to continue to evolve, but we really believe a foundation of which is rooted in durable skills, right, of critical thinking, and evaluation and understanding the best tool for a job and how to be community oriented. That is the work that we do. And, of course, we teach people how to use the tools and drive towards outcomes with them while we're laying that foundation as well.How Houston's education scene inspired Corey's bold, equitable innovation07:16: Houston is such a great city, as you know, to be a young professional in and, and to start your career, let alone having the opportunity to be a part of the thriving, innovative education landscape there. I really think that it helped me think much bigger about what it meant to be an education and what was possible with innovation, and really moving the needle toward equity and supporting communities that historically, you know, weren't being serviced in the way that they deserved.Why entrepreneurship skills is essential for an AI-driven world32:46: I really believe that students need entrepreneurial skills, and not necessarily because every student is going to go off and start their own business per se, but at the root of it, entrepreneurial skills is about, you know, understanding what you're trying to drive to, or what's the job to be done, seeing what's the diagnosis, what are the challenges, or, you know, opportunities to do better, and then understanding the resources that you have, and moving forward with strategy, as if it's a puzzle piece and, you know, it's strategy, but it's also about just seeing that opportunity and having the confidence and the belief in your own critical thinking, your own resourcefulness, and your ability to collaborate and build relationship with others in order to solve a problem or drive something forward.Show Links: TranscriptGuest Profiles:Corey Layne Crouch | AI for EducationCorey on LinkedIn

For the summer season, All Else Equal will be alternating between new episodes and reruns. On this week's episode, we're revisiting our conversation with Mohamed El-Erian on the intricacies of national debt and the best ways to measure it. Mohamed, Jonathan, and Jules explore the broader macroeconomic and geopolitical factors at play. They discuss the importance of demographic shifts as well as recent technological advancements (AI) for economic growth and our fiscal future.El-Erian is the former chair of President Obama's Global Development Council and former CEO of PIMCO. He is a Senior Fellow at the Lauder Institute. You can read Jonathan and Jules' paper on national debt, “Why Care About Debt-to-GDP?” published May 27, 2025, here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5271557Find All Else Equal on the web: https://lauder.wharton.upenn.edu/in-the-news/all-else-equal/All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of the UPenn Wharton Lauder Institute through University FM.

There have been periods throughout history when cultural aficionados of the time proclaimed that painting was dead! Yet, the artform has risen over and over again. What is it about painting that makes it so timeless and gives it the ability to continuously evolve? Why, after centuries, can we still be awestruck by the right combination of brushstokes? Art critic Martin Gayford has interviewed many artists over his lifetime about their craft. His books explore painting through a multitude of eras and even gives a personal account of what it's like to sit for a painting in Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud. His latest book, How Painting Happens (and why it matters), compiles wisdom from numerous artists past and present. Martin and Greg discuss the challenges of writing about a non-linguistic medium like painting, the unique, often physical process of painting, and insights Martin has gleaned from his conversations with contemporary artists, including what makes a painting a great one.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The silent intensity of painting16:13: You don't have to talk or put things in words to think. There is such a thing as physical thinking, and painting is probably a very good example of that. That was one of the points that struck me when I was posing for Lucian Freud, which I—was a very long, drawn-out process. As you can imagine, it took about 18 months to produce two paintings. And Lucian was very slow, but it wasn't that he was painting all the time very slowly. Most of the time in a sitting, he'd spend thinking, looking. And then, after quite a while, and mixing up the paints and contemplating the situation—looking at me, looking at the painting—then he'd dart forward and put a stroke on, quite fast actually. But probably 95% of the time, he wasn't doing that. He was considering the situation.Why we still need painting in a world of screens42:43: It's arguable that, therefore, paintings, sculptures, unique works of art are what we need now. 'Cause they're the opposite of phones and screens and endless deluge of imagery and distraction, which the modern world offers us. A painting is—if it's good enough—it's something you can just look at for the rest of your life, and if it's really good enough, it'll carry on being rewarding.Painting as a language without words02:02: Painting or visual art isn't exactly a language. It's certainly not a verbal language, but it's a means of communication. And as such, it doesn't necessarily neatly translate into words.How artists reshape art history to suit themselves39:37: Although artists—practicing artists, rather—may have tremendous insights, and the insights of a kind which nobody else has access to, they're going to see art history and the art, the work of all other artists, from the point of view of their own art. And they'll be utterly out of sympathy, therefore, with quite large sections of the art of the past and of the present. To an extent, that's true with critics. They'll have certain idioms, certain styles, certain media they like more than others. But a critic can be a little bit less prejudiced. Oh, I'd like to think critics can be a bit more open-minded about what they're looking at. An artist will pretty well instinctively refashion the whole of art history so that it leads up to what they're doing today in their studio. But we don't all have to do that.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Lucian FreudPatrick HeronWillem de KooningClement GreenbergTracey EminJames TurrellDamien HirstPierre BonnardBridget RileyPeter Paul RubensRobert RauschenbergGary HumeGuest Profile:Professional WebsiteHis Work:How Painting Happens (and why it matters) Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian FreudModernists and Mavericks: Bacon, Freud, Hockney and the London PaintersShaping the World: Sculpture from Prehistory to NowVenice: City of Pictures A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer ScreenThe Pursuit of Art: Travels, Encounters and Revelations

What is the intrinsic link between philosophical inquiry and personal development? How can academic thought and theory be applied well to practical living in the real world?Kieran Setiya is a professor of philosophy at MIT and also the author of a number of books, including Knowing Right From Wrong, Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way, and Midlife: A Philosophical Guide.Greg and Kieran discuss how philosophy and self-help have diverged over time and the potential for their reintegration. Kieran explores the practical use of philosophical reflection in everyday life, the evolving view of philosophy from his early academic years to now, the impact of Aristotle's concept of the ideal life on contemporary thought, and the nature of midlife crises including his own. They also touch on topics like the value of choice, future bias, the role of suffering, and the integration of philosophy in early education. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why Aristotle's ideal life isn't always the answer06:58: What am I going to do here and now, in the conditions I'm in—which are always, to some degree, imperfect—right now, maybe particularly challenging for many of us? And it's just not obvious at all. In fact, I think it's not true that the best way to answer the question, "What should I do in my problematic circumstances?" is, well, look at what an ideal life would be and just sort of aim towards that. And that just—it's both impractical and often very bad advice. It's like if someone said, "Well, you don't have any yeast; try to make some bread." You could think, "Well, what's the thing that's going to be most like a regular loaf of bread?" Or you might think, "Yeah, that's not the right thing to aim for here." There's some more dramatic pivot in how I'm going to try to make a kind of bread-like thing. And I think that's a good—a better—analogy for the situation we're in when we try to think about what to do here and now, when ideals like Aristotle's are not really viable.On regret, choice, and the value of missed opportunities21:21: Regret is a function of something that's not at all regrettable. Mainly the diversity of value.Detached wanting and the good enough life38:10: Stoics have this idea that virtue is the key thing for eudaimonia, and nothing else really matters for eudaimonia. But there are all these—what they call—preferred indifferents. So all the other stuff you might want, it's reasonable to want it, but you should want it in a kind of detached, "that would be a bonus" kind of way. And I think, while I'm not a Stoic and I don't think they draw that line in the right way, I think they're right that there is some kind of line here that has to do with sort of moderation and greed. In effect, thinking at a certain point: "If your life is good enough, you look at all the other things you could have," and the right attitude to have to them is something like, "Well, it'd be great if I had that. Sure." But the idea of being angry that I don't, or feeling like "this is unacceptable that I don't" is just not a virtuous — for want of a better word—it's not a reasonable, justifiable response.Show Links:Recommended Resources:AristotleEudaimoniaTelicityArthur SchopenhauerUtilitarianismPlatoJohn Stuart MillReasons and PersonsIris MurdochGuest Profile:KSetiya.netFaculty Profile at MITProfile on WikipediaProfile on PhilPeople.orgHis Work:Amazon Author PageLife Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our WayMidlife: A Philosophical GuidePractical Knowledge: Selected EssaysKnowing Right From WrongInternal Reasons: Contemporary ReadingsReasons without RationalismSubstack Newsletter

How does strategy factor into the mindsets of presidents like Lincoln and Reagan on both a micro and macro level? What parts of grand strategy are at play when new countries enter NATO due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict?John Lewis Gaddis is a professor of history at Yale University and also the author of several books on history and strategy. His latest books include The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, On Grand Strategy, and The Cold War: A New History.Greg and John discuss the concept of historical consciousness and its relation to strategic thinking. John goes over the teaching of strategy from a historical perspective, comparing it to evolutionary sciences and emphasizing the importance of common sense in strategic decisions. They also explore the use of metaphors in understanding history and strategy, the role of theory, and the necessity of adaptability in leadership. The conversation touches on various historical and contemporary examples to illustrate these ideas, including the strategic mindsets of figures like Lincoln and the implications of NATO expansion and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Are we failing to preserve common sense in business schools?36:38: This whole thing about preserving common sense at all altitudes, it seems to me, is something that's often missing in business schools and also in businesses, as we've seen in various cases. So, if reading some history can create that kind of attitude, then I think it's worthwhile. And the reason I think it can work gets back to the sports metaphor because, okay, maybe your business guy is not interested in reading history, but they're probably watching the March Madness or the Super Bowl, and they're probably talking about coaches and why are certain coaches better than other coaches and so on. And when they're doing that, they're talking about what I'm talking about, which is just drawing these lessons from the past, looking at the objective, operating within the rules but understanding that the application of the rules is going to be different in every situation, every moment of the game.The optimal grand strategists know when to adapt and when to steer27:518: I think the optimal grand strategist would be someone who is agile and situationally aware, but also retains a sense of direction.Big ambitions fail without this one principle01:57: It seems to me that there's a kind of logic of strategy, which transcends time and place and culture. And when you set it out, when you give examples of what you mean by that, it sounds like a platitude. So if, for example, I were to tell you that aspirations can be infinite but capabilities must be finite, you would say, I knew that all along. You would say that's a platitude. You can get strategy on that? Well, yes, I think you can build a strategy on that because history is full of people who lost track of that insight, who let their aspirations exceed their capabilities to the point of complete overstretch and self-defeat. [02:50] History is littered with people who forgot that aphorism. And the aphorism is just plain common sense.Why naive questions matter more than you think30:56: You have to realize naive questions are always good to ask. Because one of the problems with theorists is that they don't like naive questions because they're inconvenient. And they're much more interested in the purity of the theory, the rigorousness of the theory, if it's a laboratory sense of replicability, of the theory. But for somebody to come along and just ask a naive question, sometimes they're not prepared for that.Show Links:Recommended Resources:George F. KennanNapoleonMark AntonyMurder BoardJohn NegroponteLeo TolstoyPainting As a PastimePresentismIsaiah BerlinAugustine of HippoJohn C. CalhounVladimir PutinGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Yale UniversityWikipedia ProfileHis Work:Amazon Author PageOn Grand StrategyThe Cold War: A New HistoryGeorge F. Kennan: An American LifeThe Landscape of History: How Historians Map the PastStrategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold WarThe United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, ProvocationsThe Age Of Terror: America And The World After September 11

Contrary to popular belief – making more money doesn't necessarily mean you'll be happier in life. The same can be said for societies as a whole, especially when it comes to countries with lopsided wealth distribution leading to high levels of inequality. So what are the connections between that inequality,people's general wellbeing, and politics? Keith Payne is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill. His books, Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide and The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die explore the science behind inequality and the far-reaching impact it has on modern society. Keith and Greg discuss how inequality affects subjective wellbeing and societal outcomes, the connection between inequality and political polarization, strategies to mitigate psychological harm of inequality, and how understanding these psychological mechanisms can improve cross-party dialogues and reduce divisiveness.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why facts don't win arguments51:42: Starting with the goal of understanding is  important, and then when we're actually engaging with the other person, we have this tendency , as soon as they say something is true, we say, well, that's not true, and here are my facts and figures. And so we need to stop trying to bludgeon the other person into agreeing with us by citing facts and better evidence. That may sound counterintuitive, especially in the academic world where I live, because, but that's the currency, right, for argumentation. That's not where most people are coming from. I mean, they care about the facts, but only as tools to defend their social identities. And so, I think a better question to ask is, well, not why do you believe that in terms of why are you wrong about the facts, but what is believing that doing for your psychological bottom line? How is that serving your sense of identity and your group loyalties?Status is more than your paycheck12:50: We need to find ways to judge our status not purely in terms of wealth or income, and to make those richer kind of social connections, as a source of status. Because those are things we have more control over than how rich the 1% is.What shapes our political beliefs06:39:  It is perceived inequality that makes a big difference. And you have to see the wealth around you. And usually, that's not comparing ourselves to the top one-tenth of 1%, because we don't see the billionaires. Even if you live in Manhattan and are surrounded by billionaires, you still don't see it much, right? People like that live in gated communities, surrounded by privacy-insuring mechanisms and stuff. What we see is maybe the top 20% who are driving expensive cars and showing off their vacation pictures on Facebook. So, for the psychological comparisons, you do have to have some visible inequality there. But there's other ways that extreme levels of inequality affect society through non-visible means. [07:34] When it comes to the day-to-day psychological experience of living in an unequal society, the blatant visibility or invisibility of wealth has a lot to do with it.How inequality reshapes our behavior37:07: We found that in high inequality countries, and in high inequality states within the United States, people are engaged in more risky financial behavior — whether that's buying lottery tickets, or not investing for retirement, going to check cashing places rather than traditional banking, et cetera. So that all happens more in high inequality places, and you can see the same sort of patterns with regard to non-financial risk taking around health, like drug use, cigarette smoking — things that are high risk but immediate reward in terms of hedonic or affective reactions — are better predicted by inequality than by poverty as well.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Easterlin paradoxPhilip ConverseDonald KinderNathan P. KalmoeEdmund BurkeJohn Stuart MillGravity Payments“The marketplace of rationalizations” by Daniel WilliamsGuest Profile:Professional WebsiteProfessional Profile on XHis Work:Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous DivideThe Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die

When did the idea of parenthood become less of a certainty and more of a choice? How have anxieties about the modern world impacted our desire to procreate and thus impacted the world's population? Is that impact even a big deal?Anastasia Berg is an assistant professor of philosophy at UC Irvine and co-author of the new book What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice in which she takes a philosophical approach to the question of whether or not to have children. Anastasia and Greg delve into the shifting motivations and anxieties influencing the choice to have children, how this question has popped up throughout history dating back to Aristotle's time, feminism's relationship with motherhood, and the potential reasons behind declining birth rates.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:When choosing parenthood feels like losing yourself18:53: The transformation is one that really threatens annihilation of self. It's more radical than this difficulty of doing a hedonic calculation. What you are saying about the reluctance of calculating, though, I think is really important to thematize, because we see it especially as people increasingly report a conflict between pursuing what a lot of people are able to actually articulate as, like, a family goal or desire to have children and what they can see romantic relationships to be for.Why fewer people won't save the planet42:39: The fantasy that depopulation is going to be a solution for climate change—it's just that: it's a fantasy. What we need is immediate global climate action, and nothing short of it will make a difference.What are parents really responsible for?37:07 What I think people are responsible for in being parents is not that overall wellbeing. What they're responsible for is preparing, to the best of their abilities, their children for meeting life challenges, pains, and suffering. So it's not to say that you can't fail as a parent. It's not to say that we can't say that. Some people, like, should you be a parent? I'm not sure. But it is to say that judgment is not going to be based on the likelihood of your child to just encounter suffering of any kind.Rethinking parenthood as an avenue for self-fulfillment30:17:  The question of whether or not motherhood is an avenue for self-fulfillment should give way to the question of whether or not parenthood is something of value in human life and how to reconcile it with other demands, moral, material, et cetera. And as we said, that's true at both the individual level. So, within a relationship, to try to overcome the thought that the liberal left thing to do is to put the burden of not just choice, but the burden of asking this question of deliberation, of assuming responsibility for the choice, squarely on the shoulders of women, and also socially, to try and find a way of both recognizing the unique burdens that parenthood places on women, especially in the early stages of parenthood, but also reminding us that this is a profound human question.Show Links:Recommended Resources:The “wisdom” of Silenus | The New Criterion After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso (publishing July 2025)Melanie Klein Elena FerranteDetransition, Baby by Torrey PetersGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of California IrvineProfessional WebsiteProfessional Profile on XHer Work:What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice

Is the emperor wearing clothes?  Hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen are joined by economist and political scientist Timur Kuran who wrote the book, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification. This 30-year-old book explains the social phenomenon where people express preferences they do not have.   As political and social tensions have risen in the U.S., the freedom to express views that go against the status quo has become more difficult.  Jonathan, Jules, and Timur discuss what preference falsification is and why people engage in it, historical and contemporary examples, the implications of this behavior in various domains, including politics, business, and academia, and insights into how societies can counteract it. The conversation also addresses the importance of fostering environments, particularly in universities, where open and honest discourse is encouraged.  Find All Else Equal on the web:  https://lauder.wharton.upenn.edu/allelse/All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of the UPenn Wharton Lauder Institute through University FM.

How is our fear of uncertainty holding us back? Could an acceptance and willingness to embrace the unknown unlock new potential and innovation?  Margaret Heffernan is a professor of Practice at the University of Bath, an entrepreneur, and a mentor to CEOs. Her books include Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future, and most recently Embracing Uncertainty: How writers, musicians and artists thrive in an unpredictable world.Margaret and Greg discuss the importance of embracing uncertainty in business and life, the value of creative thinking, and the pitfalls of over-reliance on predictability and data models.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why dissent is the secret engine of creativity and better ideas34:46: Our obsession with efficiency means that we may prioritize management over productivity, and critical to productivity is diversity, debate, dissent, because this is how bad ideas get turned into good ideas. I mean, as a CEO I could waltz into work one day with an idea, which I thought was fantastic. And the great gift I was given were  a lot of employees who would think, "Oh God, here she comes back with another terrible idea," and say, "Well, I don't know. What if we did it like this? So what if we did it like that?...[35:31] But at the end of a very long process, you end up with something which started with my bad idea and gradually got a lot better because of everybody else's input, and turns out to be marvelous at the end. But that dissent is absolutely fundamental to the creative process.What's the relationship between being a noticer and being creative?39:11:  It's impossible to be creative without being a noticer, for a start. And I think that the great value of being observant and thinking about what you see is it keeps you much more in touch with what's going on in the world.The danger of mental models and the power of an open mind45:55: The danger of mental models is that they will attract confirming evidence and marginalize, or disguise disconfirming data. And so, the antidotes to that are certainly about having enough time to be in different places with different people who think differently. Having a sufficiently open mind to be prepared to notice this confirmation. Having an open mind prepared to change one's mind. And having, I guess, a way of thinking that tends more towards skepticism.Why embracing uncertainty means loosening up, not tightening down57:32:  Engineers talk a lot about tight and loose. I think much that has gone wrong in organizational life is a function of being too tight. And it sounds very counterintuitive because it is counterintuitive, but uncertainty requires that we loosen up in order to be able to respond more flexibly. And I think you are exactly right that pertains as much to us as individuals, as it does to the largest corporations in the world.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Gerd GigerenzerRichard S. Fuld Jr.The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness “The role of art in difficult times” by Margaret Heffernan | Financial TimesCareless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-WilliamsMax H. BazermanPatrick KavanaghSeamus HeaneyGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of BathProfessional WebsiteHer Work:Embracing Uncertainty: How writers, musicians and artists thrive in an unpredictable worldWillful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our PerilUncharted: How to Navigate the Future A Bigger Prize: How We Can Do Better than the CompetitionBeyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small ChangesThe Naked Truth: A Working Woman's Manifesto on Business and What Really Matters

As a seasoned entrepreneur, investor and mentor, Ben Mayberry '76 has seen a lot of change in the Houston business sector over the last 50 years.Beginning his career in the technology sector, Ben went on to co-found companies like BSG and Winston Sage, and has been deeply involved in the Rice Business community through mentorship and recruiting. Ben has also served as the president of the Rice Alumni Association and has been a judge in the Rice Business Plan Competition for two decades. Ben joins Owl Have You Know co-host Brian Jackson ‘21 to discuss his incredible career journey, commitment to Rice, involvement in the Houston Angel Network, approach to mentoring entrepreneurs, and the many lessons he's learned over the course of his 50-year career. Episode Guide:00:00 Introduction to Ben Mayberry01:07 Early Career and Entrepreneurial Spirit02:42 Building and Managing Teams05:46 Mentorship and Advice07:36 Winston Sage Partners and Business Ethics09:43 Houston Angel Network14:33 Rice Business School Involvement22:32 Life Lessons and Final ThoughtsOwl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:Why Ben thinks Houston is the easiest place to do business26:29: There's not one pivot point in my career I can point to, other than deciding to work for myself at some point. Then the decision points along the way that I've made. And, fortunately, I never made a decision that was so devastating that it, you know, shut me down. The most fun job I think I had of all was when we decided to open our other offices at BSG, and I was in charge of opening our remote offices. I just learned a lot about how you do business around the country. I learned how to negotiate with New Yorkers, people in Atlanta, Dallas, et cetera. The most important thing I've found is Houston is the easiest place to do business. 28:08: In Houston, people are generally welcoming to people that come from somewhere else because it's been a melting pot for so long.Why meeting in person matters for entrepreneurs28:52: If you want to get together with other entrepreneurs and bounce ideas off of them, or even build teamwork within your group, I think two things. Number one, within a company, it's important to have functions where you get together occasionally. We used to have quarterly meetings where we'd bring everybody into a central location, and it's not inexpensive. And once a quarter, we're also bringing the leadership from various places and having a strategy session all together. And certainly, you can do it by Zoom, but there's nothing like getting together, going out, and having a few drinks that night or dinner or whatever. Now, for someone like you, who—you're in Houston and nobody else is—you need to make a list of people you're going to have lunch with every day. Don't have lunch in your office. Go out three or four times a week and have lunch with somebody that's different and new.Why listening matters for entrepreneurs seeking success07:23: Each entrepreneur is, especially if they're in a startup, unique. They have some traits in common. They're generally stubborn. They don't listen as well as they should, and so you have to figure out if they're willing to listen at all. If not, you move on. If they're willing to listen, then you're able to give them advice, and it's based on—do they like—and a CEO doesn't have it all. They may be technical, they may be good at sales, they may be good at marketing, but they're rarely good at all of those. So you've got to figure out where their weakness is and attack that, and help them understand that's really where they need help.Show Links: TranscriptGuest Profiles:Ben Mayberry | Rice Business

Why is there a need for a cultural and educational shift towards appreciating, building, and maintaining industrial systems? What would a rebirth of manufacturing look like in 2025? How would we go about setting up a new Industrial Enlightenment?David A. Mindell is a professor of aerospace engineering and the history of engineering and manufacturing at MIT. He is also the author of several books. The title of his latest book and the primary subject of this discussion is The New Lunar Society: An Enlightenment Guide to the Next Industrial Revolution.Greg and David discuss the 18th-century industrial enlightenment and its implications for modern industrial society. They also explore the evolving relationship between technology and labor, the persistent myths around automation, and the importance of valuing industrial contributions in today's digital economy. Mendell emphasizes the need for a cultural and educational shift towards appreciating building and maintaining industrial systems, advocating for what he describes as a new industrial enlightenment.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The overlooked power of process knowledge12:41: If you are working on a very advanced, cutting-edge product, like a phone, you want to know exactly where there's capacity that's left on the table to enable you to build the next form. Did you design it too conservatively here? Is there something there you could do more with? And that familiarity with process, whether it's manufacturing or maintenance or other aspects of it, is a really important source of knowledge in an industrial system that we've generally devalued in favor of the kind of product innovation. And inventing the shiny new thing. And I'm sitting on the middle of the campus here at MIT, where we spend a lot of time teaching students about what is essentially product innovation. And we have very few folks on this campus who know anything about the processes that make and maintain these systems, even though very often that knowledge is a source of really great innovation.Is disruption really the enemy in industrial systems11:16: Disruption is the enemy in an industrial system. Reliability, repeatability, efficiency, robustness—those are things that people care a lot about in these systems.The untapped potential of maintenance cycles31:59: Improving maintenance cycles is a huge source of process innovation that we have not paid enough attention to, and if you can make something that lasts longer, that's a real contribution. I'm a pilot, and people make airplanes last for 50, 60, 70 years because they're designed to be maintained and upgraded, and you replace the parts that wear out and keep them going. Why can't we do that with laptops and phones and even routers or other disposable parts of the electronic economy? And so, work is changing. Work should change. Work should always be responding to the technological changes and needs of the time.On the myth of replacement in technology and work45:55: The myth of replacement, as I talk about in the book, is really. It's not that technologies don't enable us to do things with fewer people. Again, that's really the definition of productivity and not a bad definition for technology in these settings. It's more that, for one, it's very rare that you see a technology replace a human job and do that job the same way. Much more common that they change the nature of the work. Either they move it to a different place, they change the kind of skills that are required. They maybe make the job higher level. Maybe they make the job lower level. And you want to ask those questions about who's doing the work, where are they? What's their background, what's their training? Why does it matter? Those things change a lot, but it's relatively rare.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Josiah WedgwoodIndustrial RevolutionLewis MumfordJames WattMatthew BoultonEric SchmidtLunar Society of BirminghamAdam SmithWilliam ThompsonLord KelvinDissenting AcademiesJoseph PriestleyWilliam SmallAir France Flight 447WaymoGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at MITProfessional Profile at AeroAstroLinkedIn ProfileWikipedia Profile.Unless ProfileSocial Profile on XHis Work:Amazon Author PageThe New Lunar Society: An Enlightenment Guide to the Next Industrial RevolutionOur Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of AutonomyThe Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent MachinesDigital Apollo: Human and Machine in SpaceflightIron Coffin: War, Technology, and Experience aboard the USSBetween Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before CyberneticsWar, Technology, and Experience aboard the USS MonitorResearch Gate Page

What does it mean to learn something? While many living things have the capacity for learning, humans have taken this ability to unmatched levels. Our ability to learn and apply knowledge sets us apart from most other species, and now we're passing that ability on to AI. Leslie Valiant is a professor of computer science and applied mathematics at Harvard University. His latest book, The Importance of Being Educable: A New Theory of Human Uniqueness, explores our ability to take in new information and raises questions about the broader implications of educability and artificial intelligence. Leslie and Greg discuss the uniqueness of human educability, how that ability differs from artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the future challenges of integrating machine intelligence in human society.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What do people miss when they think about intelligence?02:05: Well, I think the difficulty is that we don't really know what the word "intelligence" is, and we've been using it for more than a century, and we're using it without having any note of what it means. I don't think it's been very useful, for example, in the study of artificial intelligence. So I think the context of IQ tests, I think, arose in the early 1900s in connection with potential definitions of intelligence in terms of people finding correlations between abilities of children to do various subjects at school. And they hypothesized that the children who are good at many subjects had something, and they hypothesized that what they had, this "something," was this intelligence. But that's not a definition of what intelligence is. So they didn't provide specification of how you recognize someone who's intelligent. It's a purely statistical notion.What is the best way to understand humans?03:00: To understand what one is doing, one has to have a definition of what one's trying to achieve. And in some sense, the successes of AI have been along those lines. So, machine learning was something which was defined in terms of what you wanted to achieve. So you had examples of things and you wanted to achieve a prediction of newer examples with high confidence, and people managed to implement this, and this became the kind of backburner of AI. So I think, in understanding humans, I think this is the way forward. We should understand what kind of things we're good at, what we do, what our functions are. And saying someone is intelligent is almost like name-calling.How can we promote educability without also promoting vulnerability?39:06: We already have these incredible capabilities for absorbing information, processing it, applying it, running with it. And this capability somehow exceeds our ability to evaluate information. So someone gives us some story about what happened on the other side of the world yesterday. We can't rush over to check it out. We either believe it or we don't believe it. So we find it very hard to evaluate, to evaluate everything we hear.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Alan Turing Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Harvard UniversityProfessional WebsiteHis Work:The Importance of Being Educable: A New Theory of Human UniquenessCircuits of the MindProbably Approximately Correct: Nature's Algorithms for Learning and Prospering in a Complex World

What does it take to go from a criminal prosecutor to a pioneer of the “originalism” movement and one of the top constitutional law scholars in America?Randy Barnett is a professor of law at Georgetown University and the director of Georgetown Center for the Constitution. He has written numerous books including, Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit, and most recently a memoir called A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist. Randy and Greg discuss his journey from private to public law, how he discovered and furthered the originalism movement, and his influential roles in landmark cases such as the 2004 medical marijuana challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court and the 2012 Affordable Care Act challenge. They also delve into the nuances of constitutional law and the structural challenges within legal academia.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What motivates justices beyond doctrine19:35: What really motivates these justices, apart from the doctrine, which I think doesn't really motivate them, that means the law is not motivating. And what really motivates them is what I call constitutional principle. They carry within their minds some fundamental constitutional principles. And those principles kind of dictate what they think the right answer is. And at that point, they will start marshaling doctrine on behalf of that. But it isn't merely the policy outcome of the case. That's the difference. For the legal realists, the pure legal realists. It's just, "What outcome do I like?" But for most justices, it's, "What constitutional principles do I hold dear that I want to see vindicated, or do I believe will be undermined if the other side should prevail?" That's a big difference.What is originalism?12:37: Originalism is the view that the meaning of the constitution should remain the same until it is properly changed by amendment.Can contract law theory help you understand constitutional theory better?09:46: Being able to do contract law theory and to be able to do it at all enabled me to do constitutional theory way better than people who have known nothing but constitutional law. And if I can put this more in a vernacular, constitutional law is largely bullshit.The empty concept of activism in legal discourse29:03: The term activism is a completely empty concept. It is more, like what you said earlier, a label to be peeled off and stuck on a decision that you don't like. And it's a sort of process objection, which allows you to avoid having to talk about the merits of the constitutional argument. You say, "Oh, this judge is overstepping their authority. They're engaged in activism," without, and without having to say, "Well, what's wrong with what they said about the constitution?" Or whatever. And so, because it's empty, anybody can hurl it.Show Links:Recommended Resources:“A Consent Theory of Contract” by Randy Barnett Originalism “The Misconceived Quest for Original Understanding” by Ben ZimmerGovernment by Judiciary by Raoul BergerBarry Goldwater Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.Federalist Society Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Georgetown LawProfessional WebsiteHis Work:A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American OriginalistThe Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of LawThe Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and SpiritRestoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of LibertyOur Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People 

The OneHaas Alumni Podcast is pleased to welcome Keith and Kenneth Tsang, who are not only identical twins, but also had identical triple majors at UC Berkeley – political science, psychology, and business.After being born in the Bay Area, Keith and Kenneth moved to Hong Kong where they spent the first formative years of their childhood. Growing up in a family that prioritized education and exploration, the twins developed a strong sense of curiosity for the world around them. It's this curiosity that sparked their desire to pursue not one, but three majors for their undergraduate degrees at UC Berkeley. Keith and Kenneth chat with host Sean Li about how they applied those three majors to careers in entrepreneurship, lessons they learned from growing up in Hong Kong and then reacclimating in the U.S., and how their career journeys have taken shape thanks to a healthy dose of staying curious and making friends. *OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Kenneth on why their decision to add business as a second major“ I think we were just blown away from the beginning, like, wow, all this business stuff is completely different from your history class and your chemistry classes in high school. It felt practical and relevant. And I think we were hooked pretty early on. And I think, to be honest, I think Keith and I are a bit competitive, and then I think with Haas, some people might know, the undergraduate is competitive and we figured we can do this too. So let's get in on this game and succeed here.”Keith on how the brothers identify entrepreneurial opportunities“ I've worked in all kinds of businesses and industries, obviously venture capital, then you have Nest with thermostats. I've also worked at LinkedIn and Meta, big companies, but also small companies doing housekeeping double-sided marketplace and robot delivery pizza. So it's a little bit of everything. But part of that is just being open to what's interesting, like do you see value here? Like are you able to have an impact? So that's like the first checkbox you're looking at: can you actually do something that is influencing change? And the second part of it is just being able to be open with your network… like you're talking to people and you're learning about these things and when something catches your interest, you just learn a little bit more and see whether you have a role to play in that. So I think that's, at a high level, that's what it really is, being open to these opportunities.”Kenneth on being a student always“ …Just to plug the Haas values, just being student always, I think the learning never stops. And I think that curiosity sort of kept us going. And in hindsight, I think a lot of these things are hard to plan. They're kind of serendipitous, but I think if you're open to learning and then having that curiosity is what sort of led us down these paths that we've taken.”Keith on how their parents nurtured their curiosity early on“ They definitely provided us with different opportunities to explore our interests – playing different sports, soccer, baseball, being in the Boy Scouts, which I think was actually one of the best experiences. It was kind of where we were able to just experience all kinds of things like archery, horseback riding, stuff like that, and just try different things. And I think that really is important for setting that foundation to be curious always, is that you are able, you're comfortable being in new situations and after the first time you realize that's enjoyable, you do it a second time, it's still enjoyable and you just keep it up. But I think if you were in a situation or environment where that is limited, you're always being constantly told no, I can very much see how that could be hampered.”Show Links:Kenneth's LinkedIn ProfileKeith's LinkedIn ProfileSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Why is historical awareness so important in order to form a strong personal identity? What are the risks of a culture overly centered on safety and fragility?Frank Furedi is an emeritus professor at the University of Kent and director of the think tank MCC Brussels. Frank is also the author of several books. His latest work is titled The War Against the Past: Why The West Must Fight For Its History, and he has also written How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First Century, First World War: Still No End in Sight, Power of Reading: From Socrates to Twitter.Greg and Frank discuss the disparagement of the past in contemporary culture, the influence of identity politics on historical interpretation, and the educational system's decreasing demands on students. They also discuss the decline of practical wisdom and the impacts of education on cultural values. Frank critiques the modern tendency to detach from historical legacies, highlighting the dangers of presentism and the moral devaluation of the past. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Understanding history beyond simplistic narratives07:26: People say Martin Luther, who isn't the hero of mine, but nevertheless played an important role in the Reformation, was the antecedent of Adolf Hitler, that already in his authoritarian behavior, there were the seeds of what would happen in the 1930s and 1940s. And that kind of simplistic history means that you do not even actually understand what is unique and special about the Holocaust. What is the tragedy that we fell upon us? If you see that merely as more of the same, because then you forget about the Enlightenment, you forget about the incredible achievements of German culture. Someone like Heine, Beethoven, and some of the artistic sort of endeavors that existed there. And impoverish our own sensibility through doing something like that. And I think a mature individual learns to be critical of the horrible things that have occurred in the past whilst at the same time learned to valorize and affirm what were very positive contributions to human civilization.The Renaissance as a positive way of viewing the past05:01: The Renaissance is really about rebirth, and there's a very strong sense in which what they wanna do is they wanna reappropriate the best that existed beforehand. And, in the course of reappropriating it, what they want to do is to make it come alive within their own lifetime. And I think that's a really positive way of dealing with the past.The transformative power of books35:41: Books are important because it kind of demands an element of interaction between you and the author. And what happens is that, sort of as you're going through the pages and reading them, it has the potential to stimulate your sensibilities in a way that provides you with both an aesthetic element but also an intellectual element. I think what is really great about a book is that it is both something that stirs the emotion and, at the same time, makes you aware of the fact that there are problems with these ideas, these existentially difficult kinds of questions. Which basically means that you can, on a good day, come out a slightly different person than when you began that journey when you kind of started on the first page.How inclusion and market forces are reshaping education44:54: What the woke, idea of inclusion does is it fundamentally changes the culture of academic learning, because now what becomes important is the student rather than the subject. So you have what's called student-led learning, which I think is a travesty of any kind of intellectual engagement because in a real academic setting, you have a partnership between the academic and the students that have come in there. So I think it's both a cultural dilution of academic standards alongside the market-driven impulse. And it's the convergence of the two, which is why you have a situation where you have administrators, professional administrators, experts kind of becoming the best allies of the inclusion diversity merchants. It's almost like they got this unholy alliance of controlling the university through their coalition.Show Links:Recommended Resources:PhronesisRenaissanceDark AgesFrench RevolutionPol PotMartin LutherCiceroAncient EgyptCleopatraDavid LowenthalThomas HobbesVirginia WoolfGuest Profile:FrankFuredi.orgProfessional Profile at MCC BrusselsFaculty Profile at the University of KentWikipedia ProfileLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on XNewsletter on SubStackHis Work:Amazon Author PageThe War Against the Past: Why The West Must Fight For Its HistoryHow Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First CenturyFirst World War: Still No End in SightPower of Reading: From Socrates to TwitterWhat's Happened To The University?Therapy CultureFreedom Is No Illusion: Letters on LibertyOn Tolerance: A Defence of Moral Independence100 Years of Identity Crisis: Culture War Over SocialisationPolitics of FearGoogle Scholar PageThe Guardian Articles

What are the broader implications of specialized bankruptcy courts on the U.S. legal system? How are bankruptcies being used and misused by debtors and creditors today?Melissa B. Jacoby is a professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She's also the author of the book Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal.Greg and Melissa discuss the complexities of the U.S. bankruptcy code, highlighting its impact on both individuals and corporations. Their conversation digs into the unintended and often unfair consequences of bankruptcy laws, especially concerning personal bankruptcy versus corporate restructuring. Melissa and Greg also touch on the racial disparities in bankruptcy cases, the influence of the consumer credit industry, and the role of non-bankrupt players like the Sacklers in liability discharge.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The cost of going bankrupt in America09:35: You have to pay not to pay in America to go bankrupt. It is the kind of social insurance that requires an outlay of funds, and the bankruptcy system can't print money. It doesn't do job retraining. So the one thing it does is cancel debt, but you have to pay for that.How bankruptcy reflects broader inequality16:14: It's important to see how bankruptcy is in conversation with a lot of other laws and policies that create inequities outside of bankruptcy. And then, when they're brought into bankruptcy, bankruptcy piles on. The role of civil litigation in bankruptcy24:27: There are areas of law that depend not as much on upfront regulation but on ex-post exploration of alleged wrongs, that the civil litigation process is not merely to reward a remedy like some people think, although again, sometimes that is what people want. It is to switch the power dynamics in the control that an injured person gets to ask someone else questions, gets to shape the process. And that doesn't mean they're going to prevail. It is possible that instead of getting 3 cents on the dollar, there will be zero. But that's not really the point here. The point here, you're losing a lot of other objectives that the law outside of bankruptcy is supposed to fill. And it becomes very easy once one spends a lot of time in the bankruptcy system. Everything is about money.Bankruptcy can cancel debts but we've made it too hard to use08:34: The thing that bankruptcy can do the best, or is the most equipped to do relative to other laws, is to cancel debts. So, what is going on with the consumer credit industry in its many, many years of lobbying to make the bankruptcy system more complicated and more expensive for average families to use? It doesn't seem to have been that the bankruptcy system operates more smoothly and efficiently, because, if anything, the 2005 amendments had the opposite effect.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Elizabeth WarrenChapter 9Chapter 11Chapter 13Corporate PersonhoodSackler FamilyRegulatory Takings in the United StatesDouglas Baird PodcastUnited States Bankruptcy CourtGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at UNC School of LawMBJacoby.orgLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on XHer Work:Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More UnequalGoogle Scholar Page

What are the consequences of feminist ideals on modern women? How have they affected the work-life balance, the denigration of motherhood, and the quest for female autonomy?Carrie Gress is a fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center and at Catholic University. She is also the author of several books. Her latest is titled, The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us.Greg and Carrie discuss her latest book, where she argues that feminism has been detrimental to women's happiness and societal roles. Carrie explores the historical roots of feminism dating back to the French Revolution, and cites key figures such as Mary Wollstonecraft and the people around her. Carrie critiques the feminist movement's focus on autonomy, notes its influence from communism and socialism, and laments its impact on modern societal issues, including motherhood, family dynamics, and mental health. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What feminism forgot about motherhood16:41: I think the problems really get bigger. The more you start seeing how it's not just about women going to work, but it's really an ideology that we've been fed over and over again, and told that this is really the route to happiness. Meanwhile, something like motherhood is denigrated, even though, you know, there's so much personal growth that happens from motherhood. There's so much growth in terms of just maturing. And I think that's one of the great things about motherhood — it just pulls you out of yourself. And that's what people are resistant to — you don't wanna see how impatient you are. You don't wanna see your limits. And that's what motherhood pushes you to, so that you have to surpass them and become better than what you were before. And there's nobody to take over for you at five o'clock. It just keeps going. And I think that the ways in which our virtues are really extended and can grow — but, you know, few people understand and think through that prism when it comes to motherhood.Home solidifies who you are20:26: Home isn't meant to just be a hotel where you check in at night, but it's meant to be a place where you really solidify who you are. You learn your gifts; you learn your connection to family. And in that rootedness, then you can go out into the world and be something.What really is feminism?03:51: Feminism is a way to protect ourselves against things, instead of really opening ourselves up to something more beautiful, which comes about within the family, within having children, within the home — which is not to say that women shouldn't work. I'm obviously a working mom, but I think it has to be balanced with understanding who we are. And instead of rejecting something, it's really going back to embracing ourselves — the life of womanhood as a mother and wife, and caring for others.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Betty FriedanCongress of American WomenSimone de BeauvoirMary WollstonecraftElizabeth Cady StantonPercy Bysshe ShelleyWilliam GodwinJean-Jacques RousseauMargaret SangerGloria SteinemGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at the Ethics & Public Policy CenterCarrieGress.comProfile on LinkedInSocial Profile on InstagramHer Work:Substack NewsletterAmazon Author PageThe End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed UsTheology of Home III: At the SeaTheology of Home II: The Spiritual Art of HomemakingTheology of Home: Finding the Eternal in the EverydayThe Marian Option: God's Solution to a Civilization in CrisisThe Homemaker's LitanyUltimate Makeover: The Transforming Power of MotherhoodThe Catholic Thing ArticlesNational Catholic Register Articles

With a Ph.D. in computational and applied mathematics from Rice, Summer Husband '02 has been at the forefront of AI and data innovation for years. From transforming how the U.S. Navy uses machine learning to now leading data products and applied intelligence at Worley, her career bridges complex tech and real-world impact.Following her workshop, Unleashing Your Inner Cyborg, at this year's Women in Leadership Conference, Summer joined Owl Have You Know co-host Brian Jackson '21 to discuss the evolution of AI, the power of pairing machine learning with human judgment, and the ethical guardrails she believes are essential in today's data-driven world.Episode Guide:00:12 Meet Summer Husband: AI and Data Expert01:00 Women in Leadership Conference Insights01:52 Ethics and Rapid Advancements in AI04:01 Upskilling and AI Deployment in Business04:53 AI as a Sales Response Generator06:47 Summer's Career Journey and AI Evolution13:05 AI's Impact on Human Roles and Ethics16:20 Future of AI and Human Intuition22:59 Empowering Women in Tech and Leadership26:06 Conclusion and Final ThoughtsOwl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:The power of being surrounded by empowered women22:32: It's really powerful for women to be around other very capable and talented women. I didn't realize what an impact that had. I've loved all the organizations that I've worked for. My first job, there was only one other woman on the technical side. I didn't think that impacted me. But my next organization had a lot of women in executive leadership, and I suddenly started to feel like taking a more senior role was a possibility. 23:04: I never would've connected those dots, but I really appreciate Rice opening up the opportunity for women to hear from other women. 23:26: It's just a little different when it's mostly women in the room, and you feel safe to ask some questions that you just don't feel safe to ask in some other spaces. That's just kind of the way that goes. So, I appreciate the opportunity.On navigating AI ethics without a roadmapThe technology is just changing really quickly, which makes this a very exciting space to be in, but it makes it really challenging around ethics. One of the other, I think, challenges in this space is, because it's fairly new, it's changing rapidly, so the technology is changing rapidly. The legal landscape is changing really rapidly, also. So, some of the partners that we tend to go to for playbooks in these spaces don't have a fully baked playbook in this space. A lot of organizations are needing to define and figure out their approach to ethics and AI together. So, at Worley, we're approaching that with a pretty comprehensive approach that includes our AI experts, of course, our legal experts. We want to ensure that we've got our operations involved in that. They're the ones that are, boots on the ground and are going to be using these tools. We've had to cast a pretty wide net, but we've had to do a lot of discovering and shaping for ourselves.The challenge of deploying AI thoughtfully03:05: There definitely are some roadblocks in keeping pace. And the risk and the ethical concerns is one of those. But I would say, also, having the right skill set in your workforce and upskilling your workforce — that's a challenge. There's a real opportunity for people who know their business very well and do the work to learn how to deploy AI in their field, in their area. It's that combination of skills. I think there are a lot of very smart people doing very smart things to build really amazing technology. What I think a lot of businesses have challenges with and where we face a bit of a roadblock is, how do you deploy those tools well in a breadth of different businesses?Show Links: TranscriptGuest Profiles:Summer Husband | Rice University

If universities believe they should be free from government interference and that students and faculty have the right to freely express whatever viewpoints they hold, then the universities should be held to the same standard, right? Hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen are joined by Richard Saller, an American classist and former interim president of Stanford University, to discuss whether or not the government has the right to intervene in university affairs and the hypocrisy that sometimes surrounds these issues. The conversation covers the recent statement signed by 562 university presidents advocating for academic freedom, examples of academic censorship, and the impact of federal funding on universities. They also raise questions about what true academic freedom means as universities have grown increasingly homogenous, and propose solutions to how universities can live up to their mission of being a place where all viewpoints can be expressed.  Find All Else Equal on the web:  https://lauder.wharton.upenn.edu/allelse/All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of the UPenn Wharton Lauder Institute through University FM.

What have we lost when the expert aesthetic judgement of professors and literary critics is replaced by the marketplace and bestseller lists? How can someone be both a critic and a creator, and do those identities improve or detract from each other?Michael W. Clune is a professor at Case Western Reserve University and the author of several books, including the subject of this discussion, A Defense of Judgment, and the upcoming novel Pan.Greg and Michael discuss Michael's perspective on the necessity of judgment in the study of literature and the arts, contrasting it with the modern academic trend that moves away from making definitive evaluations. Michael draws parallels between literary criticism and economics, highlighting a shift towards egalitarianism and market-driven valuations at the expense of aesthetic judgment. Their conversation delves into the historical evolution of these ideas, the importance of close reading, and the role of literary education in transforming personal taste and understanding. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Michael finds it counterintuitive and strange that there is no public standard for distinguishing great art from mediocre art.05:18 To say that there's no public standard for judging some work's better than the other and to say that everyone should make their own judgements and professors and critics and museum curators shouldn't try to tell people what's good and what's not, that presents as like, oh, everyone gets to choose.There's no public standard. But in fact, what you actually see happening is that it's the replacement of one standard, the judgment of those educated in the arts by another standard, which is the marketplace. And so, bestseller lists basically replace the canon that's constantly changing and there's all of complex judgments, but that's basically the displacement. So in fact, it's not really an egalitarian move in the way that many of its proponents take it to be. It's actually a disavowal of the expertise of aesthetic educators and throwing everything to the kinds of orderings produced by the marketplace.Everyone can make artistic judgments.03:01 There's no coherent way to do literary study or to teach art history without making judgments all the time. That's just the nature of it.The practice of teaching literature requires tacit skills. 20:01 When it comes down to the brass tacks of pedagogy of teaching, and this is a famous thing about literary study, let's say Moby Dick, you could imagine a version of the class where I just talk about Moby Dick and no one reads it, and I describe how great it is and how wonderful it is, and how it's surprising and strange and so forth. You could do that in chemistry. You could do something like that in economics or in physics, but in literature, the student has to encounter it for him or herself, right? It's like nothing is happening unless they're encountering for themselves, unless they have the experience in which something magical is disclosed to them. And so, the actual practice of teaching literature involves what the chemist and philosopher of science Michael Polanyi, described as tacit skills, which is really simply a kind of knowing how, without being able to say exactly what you're doing.Aesthetic education is a vital human need and universities are failing to provide it44:01 The desire for aesthetic education, the desire to have one's taste, be guided to know what books one should look at, how one should read those books, how one should spend one's precious time. That desire is totally out there and is very strong and is not being met by literature departments in the way that I think they should. I think it's a tragedy and a big mistake that literature in our departments are no longer fulfilling that vital human need. Show Links:Recommended Resources:Democracy in AmericaLéon WalrasCarl MengerWilliam Stanley JevonsMichael PolanyiIn Praise of Commercial CultureCultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon FormationDavid HumeImmanuel KantJohn KeatsGwendolyn BrooksMoby-DickH. G. WellsJane AustenMarcel ProustHelen VendlerGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Case Western Reserve UniversityProfile on WikipediaMichaelWClune.comHis Work:Amazon Author PagePan: A NovelWhite Out: The Secret Life of HeroinA Defense of JudgmentGamelife: A MemoirAmerican Literature and the Free Market, 1945–2000Writing Against TimeHarpers Magazine Articles

According to today's guest, “ You can't study anything involving any creature, let alone human beings, let alone human beings in a business setting, whilst pretending that the biological forces that shape our behavior are somehow non-existent.” Dr. Gad Saad is a professor of marketing at Concordia University and the author of the books, The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature and Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. His work applies evolutionary psychology to the fields of marketing and consumerism. Gad and Greg discuss resistance toward evolutionary psychology in academia, practical applications of the field in marketing and business, and finally, the implications of parasitic ideas on society and the balance between empathy and scientific truth.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The animus against evolutionary psychology[06:10] Maybe I could mention just a few reasons why people have such animus towards evolutionary psychology. So, number one, there's something called the human reticence effect, which exactly purports that evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology should be applicable to every species, but human beings transcend those forces, right? Or it might explain why we have opposable thumbs, but surely don't use evolution to explain everything that's above the neck. Okay? In some cases, people could be a bit more flexible in saying, well, it explains very primal urges why I want to eat a juicy burger, but it surely can't explain higher-order reasoning. What do you mean? Where do you think our cognition comes from? And so, even though I'm completely used to, at this point, facing all the animus, it still surprises me because, to me, it should be banal and trivially obvious that, of course, evolutionary psychology explains our human behavior.According to Dr. Saad, a good marketer is wedded to a solid understanding of human nature. [15:16] A marketer who decides based on their understanding of the human mind, they will create product lines. If it's not weathered to evolutionary psychology, it'll fail. On why people hate evolutionary theory[20:52] There's a deeper reason why people hate evolutionary theory. I think it's because in many cases it attacks people's most foundational ideological commitment. Parasitic ideas that emanate from academiaI will be focusing on specific set of parasitic ideas that emanate from academia. And as it so happens, since academia is astonishingly leftist, those parasitic ideas happen to be originating, their genesis from the left. That doesn't mean that people on the right can't be parasitized. Show Links:Recommended Resources:Richard LewontinStephen Jay GouldHomicide: Foundations of Human Behavior by Martin Daly and Margo WilsonMultitrait-multimethod matrixThat's Interesting! by Murray S. DavisRobert TriversPopperian falsificationAsch conformity experimentsThe Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan SperberHugo Mercier on unSILOedGuest Profile:Professional WebsiteProfile on LinkedInProfile on XThe Saad Truth podcastHis Work:The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common SenseThe Saad Truth about Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life

Why would religion be necessary for a liberal democracy to function fully as intended? What benefits does Christianity provide to society in tandem with democracy that would collapse if either of those pillars failed? Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and also the author of several books and articles across various publications. His latest book is titled Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy.Greg and Jonathan discuss the declining influence of Christianity in America, the historical symbiosis between religion and liberal democracy, and how that relationship has shifted over time. They explore the rise of alternative spiritual movements and the consequences of shifting toward a more secular society. Jonathan explains his concepts of thin Christianity, sharp Christianity, and thick Christianity, and the benefits of thick Christianity as exemplified by the Latter Day Saints. They also examine the political polarization within Christianity and the effects it is having on the makeup of the church.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The core message of Jonathan's book[15:10] You've probably seen this in academia. They look at religion as the sum total of sociology plus demography and political leanings. Those things matter, but theology matters more. The Bible matters, and that remains within Christianity, a fundamental groundwork that it's hard to shop your way out of. I mean, you can. Of course, there's some pretty wackadoodle Christianity out there, but most mainstream Christianity is rooted in certain teachings, and those do provide some important ethical principles. The core message of my book is that the three most important central principles to Christianity, according to Christians, are also three core principles of liberal democracy. And you don't have to believe in Jesus to see that they're true and to see that they're important.Is America ungovernable without Christianity?[04:47] Religion is fading as part of American life. And that's great because religion is divisive, and it's dogmatic, and we'll just all get along better without it. I have never been so wrong. It turns out the founders told us this, but I forgot it, that Christianity, religion generally, but in the US that means Christianity- that especially means white Christianity, is a load-bearing wall in our democracy. And America is becoming ungovernable in significant part because Christianity is failing.The crisis of authority[36:22] Barna, which is a Christian research group, did a big survey of pastors a couple years ago. They asked if pastors had seriously considered quitting in the last year. 42% said yes. And the number three reason after, I can't remember number one and two though, were obvious, like low pay and high stress.Number three was politics.Why Christianity and liberalism need to support each other.[39:29] Liberalism needs that sense of rootedness and groundedness, that attention to higher transcendent things and core values and scriptures that are 3000 years old or 2000 years old, depending. It needs those things precisely because it is always changing and always churning.Show Links:Recommended Resources:ChristianityFriedrich NietzscheStrange Rites: New Religions for a Godless WorldJohn Stuart MillAlexandre LefebvreImmanuel KantChristian NationalismAmerican Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberal OrderLouis P. SheldonFamily Research CouncilBarna GroupEvangelicalismDavid FrenchEquality UtahRussell D. MooreTim KellerGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Brookings InstitutionJonathanRauch.comProfile on WikipediaLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on XHis Work:Amazon Author PageCross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with DemocracyThe Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of TruthThe Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free ThoughtDenial: My 25 Years Without a SoulGay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for AmericaThe Outnation: A Search for the Soul of JapanIndex of Articles

The AI transformation of our world has already begun, and Silicon Valley has positioned itself to be home base. But how did the AI takeover happen so rapidly there? Who were the founders and investors who opened the floodgates? Investigative journalist Gary Rivlin has more than two decades of experience writing about the tech industry. In his new book, AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence, he gives readers an up-close look at the players behind AI's dramatic rise to dominance in the tech world. Gary and Greg discuss some of the key moments in AI's recent history, the role of venture capital in tech, how Silicon Valley's unique ecosystem lends itself to AI innovation, and what the future could hold for artificial intelligence. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why startups find themselves working for big companies like Google and Microsoft[04:19] I started this book thinking I'm just going to follow the startups, right? What company's going to be the next Google, the next Facebook? And by this time I was finished, I realized that the next Google was probably going to be Google. The next Facebook was going to be…Meta, this stuff is so expensive. So, the start of 2023, you needed tens of millions of dollars, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars to train, fine tune, and run these models. By the end of 2024, you needed billions, if not tens of billions. And how does a startup raise that kind of money? There are a couple that have, I mean, openAI just raised another $40 billion. Anthropic, I think, has raised about $20 billion, but they still have to raise more money because they're not profitable yet. And they're looking at several years without profit. I worry that these really innovative startups doing incredible things are going to have to be gobbled up just to survive.Can an army of AI help you build a billion-dollar company?[13:18] Something to understand I think that people don't get about AI is, it's not like it's going to do it for you. It's your copilot. It's your assistant. It's a really powerful tool that you could use just like a computer or a calculator or a camera is a tool. It doesn't give you much unless you give it a lot. So the way I find it to be effective is I'm almost stream of consciousness. Here's what I wanna do, here's what I'm thinking about. Here's my idea, here's how I want to frame it. And that's when I get a good answer,you know. Write a book about AI would be awful. But if I start giving it, quotations and describe characters and all that, it'll be something much richer. So getting back to the example, you still need a marketing person or two, you still need salespeople. I don't think people are gonna be persuaded by some bot saying, Hey, will you buy our product? Here sign up, a million dollar contract for three years. There still needs to be humans in the loop.AI has been part of people's lives for a long time. [18:04] AI has been part of our world. It was different in 2022, the end of 2022 when Open AI released chatGPT. It was a product that you can talk with and like you could feel the AI. And so suddenly it was much more real. It wasn't behind the glass. It was something that you could converse with.Dual edge of AI[26:35] A powerful tool for good is also a powerful tool for bad. And, you know, many people have lots of concerns. I'm not a doomer, but the use of AI weaponry using AI for surveillance, these things reflect the biases we have. So using AI to predict, [or] determine someone's sentence, whether or not we interview them for a job, that scares me.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World by Cade MetzReid HoffmanMustafa SulyemanMichael MoritzThe Social Network (2010) Christopher ManningMarc AndreessenGuest Profile:Professional WebsiteProfessional Profile on LinkedInHis Work:AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial IntelligenceBroke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.—How the Working Poor Became Big BusinessSaving Main Street: Small Business in the Time of COVID-19Becoming a Venture Capitalist

What is the benefit of adventure, the role of adversity, and the importance of narrative in shaping one's experience of happiness? What are the larger areas of fulfillment that round out one's well-being and shape one's life experience? Shigehiro (Shige) Oishi is a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and the author of the books Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life and The Psychological Wealth of Nations: Do Happy People Make a Happy Society?Greg and Shige discuss the evolving field of subjective well-being, distinguishing between happiness, meaning, and Shige's newly proposed third dimension – psychological richness. He discusses how these dimensions can sometimes conflict but also complement each other. They also delve into how culture, personality, and life choices like exploration versus stability affect psychological richness, and offer practical insights on how both individuals and organizations can cultivate a richer life.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:On why there's a need for a third dimension to a good life[12:01] Some people really don't like structure. Some people really don't like routines. Some people really like to explore the world and find something interesting, something new. So when you, for instance, look at the big five personality traits and which traits are correlated with the happy life and meaningful life, and actually one big part of the big five traits, openness, the experience, it's not really correlated with happiness or meaning either. So, given that right, a lot of personality psychologists think that there are five global traits because they are useful. They're functional. Maybe there's an evolutionary reason.Sensation seekers struggle with reflection and growth[24:38] If you are [a] boredom-prone person, then obviously I think you have to do something new. But when you do something new, I think one thing you can change here is the reflection. I think what sensation seekers do not tend to do is that just after having this adventure, [is] sit down, reflect upon, and savor their experiences. If you do that, I think the boredom, at least the frequency of the boredom will be reduced.What is the optimal amount of psychological richness?[27:51]  I think you could definitely pursue psychological richness too much, right? I mean, some people may think, "Oh, I have to do something new every moment, every day."But as I said, unless you can just reflect upon [it] and add it up in your psychological memorabilia or portfolio, it is not really adding up. So essentially, unless you can just reflect upon and remember these experiences, it doesn't work that well. I think too much richness is the situation where, given a short period of time, you experience too much that you cannot really process and remember.On the human tendency toward familiarity—and its hidden costs[16:21] Looking at all kinds of cognitive bias literature, I think there's a huge familiarity bias. I mean, Bob Zagonc found this mere exposure effect in the 1960s, and essentially we like familiar things, right? And also, loss aversion is a huge example.The endowment effect is the same thing. Once you own it, you think it's more valuable than the new thing, right? So I think all these things are biased towards the familiar and sure gain. And if you're trying to maximize happiness, that's great. That's the strategy you should take actually. BuEt that has a downside, such as we said, you don't learn anything new. Maybe your curiosity is not fully met and you're not adventurous enough to discover something.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Jeremy BenthamSubjective Well-beingHappiness is everything, or is it?EudaimoniaJiro Dreams of SushiJohn Stuart MillBlaise PascalMarcel ProustBob ZajoncNick EpleyEd DienerCarol RyffGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at the University of ChicagoProfile on LinkedInSocial Profile on XHis Work:Amazon Author PageLife in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better LifeThe Psychological Wealth of Nations: Do Happy People Make a Happy Society?Google Scholar Page

On this episode of the OneHaas Alumni Podcast, meet leadership coach Jeremy Guttenplan, a double bear with an MBA and a bachelor's degree in engineering from Haas. After years working in the data science and risk management fields, and holding top leadership positions at Wells Fargo and Capital One, Jeremy realized he wanted to spend more time coaching and developing his team than playing corporate politics. Jeremy chats with host Sean Li about how he made the pivot to coaching, explains the nuances between coaching, counseling, mentoring, and advising, and gives Sean a taste of his coaching style with an emphasis on the impact and return on investment personal development work can provide. *OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:On his journey from data science to strategy, and discovering coaching as a career path“ I would get into these jobs that'd be very specific, very narrow focused.  And I had a way about me that I would create a T shape out of every role I'd end up in. So, you know, where they wanted me to do a certain thing and go really deep on something, I'd learn everything around it, connect all the dots together, you know, and make it really broad. Also, I generally master the one thing they wanted me to do pretty quickly, and then I'd get bored and wanna figure everything else out. And I was doing that in every job I was in.”On how the birth of his son propelled him to pursue coaching“I wanted to be a father, but I was also afraid I wasn't gonna be a great one. And there was a day that it hit me that, you know, I'm having a son and I'm gonna be his male role model.  And it was like a bucket of ice water got dumped on my head. It just woke me up. It woke me up out of this, whatever life I had been living up to that point, it wasn't what I'd want my son to look up to. I didn't see myself as a role model. A lot needed to change and a lot of that was about accepting myself.”On the definition of coaching“ Coaching is not about right or wrong, good or bad. There's nothing bad or wrong about that.  Coaching is about noticing it, asking yourself, is this getting me what I want? Like what I really want, what I say that I want right now? I might wanna be right about something, but what do I really want? And so that's what I ask my clients: Is that getting you what you say that you want? You know, thinking that other thing's gonna be better than this thing. And you know, the answer is always no. And it's an interruption tool to see that, ‘Hey, wait a minute, I have everything I need right now in this moment. I am already a whole complete, perfect human. And I can still aspire to be an even greater version of myself.'”On the ROI of coaching“ A coach can accelerate your journey to your freedom, your happiness, your fulfillment, whatever that is.  You know, whether it's in your relationships, whether it's in your job, whether it's with your finances, your relationship with money. The sooner you take care of these things, the more of your life you're gonna live, right? You might even live longer, because you'll be putting less stress on yourself.”Show Links:LinkedIn ProfileInstagram Profile Leading Your Life CoachingSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

What does it mean to belong to a tribe? How does cultural psychology offer insight into politics, organizational behavior, and leadership? How does tribalism distinguish humans from other animals?Michael Morris is the Chavkin-Chang Professor of Leadership at Columbia Business School and also serves as Professor in the Psychology Department of Columbia University. Michael is also the author of the new book Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together.Greg and Michael discuss the concept of tribalism, its historical and modern connotations, and how our evolved group psychology can both contribute to and resolve contemporary social conflicts. Michael emphasizes the importance of understanding cultural instincts like the peer instinct, hero instinct, and ancestor instinct, and how leaders can harness these to steer cultural evolution in organizations and societies. The conversation also explores real-world examples of cultural change, the pitfalls of top-down and bottom-up change strategies, and the critical role of managing cultural identities in fostering cooperation and successful adaptation.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What makes us human is our tribal nature14:22: We are the tribal animal. If we want to understand what distinguishes us, our brains are not that much bigger than chimpanzees'. Our brains are not bigger than Neanderthals'; they're smaller than Neanderthal brains. But what distinguishes us is that we have these adaptations for sharing culture that enable tribal living, and this wonderful force of tribal inheritance, of wisdom accumulating like a snowball across the generations. And it can be the generations of a nation, but it can also be the generations of a corporation or the generations of a motorcycle club. Generations don't have to be referring to the human lifespan. And so, that's our killer app. That's what makes us who we are. That's what made us the top of the food chain and the dominant species of the planet and solar system. So, we should not renounce our tribal nature. We shouldn't pretend that what makes us human is rationality, or ethics, or poetry, or something like that.Why tradition is actually a change maker's secret weapon19:02: Tradition can seem like an obstacle to change. And the traditionalism in our mind can seem like an obstacle to cultural change, but it's a change-maker's secret weapon.How we learn from our community through peer, hero, and ancestor instincts16:39 There are social learning heuristics, and I kind of label them in a way to try to make them more concrete and more accessible. I label them the peer instinct, the hero instinct, and the ancestor instinct. But I'm aggregating decades of research from evolutionary anthropologists and from a cultural psychologist about the fact that we tend to learn the culture that nurtures us, in part by paying attention to what's widespread. And that's peer instinct learning, by paying attention to what carries prestige. That's hero instinct learning. And by paying attention to what seems like it's always been the distinctive mark of our community, traditions, and that's ancestor instinct learning. And so we're sort of wired to form maps of our community in those three ways.Show Links:Recommended Resources:TribalismE. O. WilsonCesar ChavezPhilip E. TetlockMulticulturalismPolyculturalismSyncretismGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Columbia Business SchoolMichaelMorris.comWikipedia ProfileSocial Profile on XHis Work:Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us TogetherGoogle Scholar Page

What's worse than failing in your career? For Michelle Lewis '05, it's not trying at all.That fearless mindset propelled her from a fine arts degree to a global career as a C-suite leader, board director, and private equity principal. Over the years, Michelle has helped drive $10 billion in acquisitions across 30 countries and guided companies through complex strategic transitions in the energy and industrial sectors.At the Women in Leadership Conference, she sat down with Owl Have You Know co-host Brian Jackson '21 to talk about her journey — from the arts to executive leadership, why soft skills matter more than you think, and how failing fast and smart can shape a resilient career.Michelle also shares one of her favorite tips as a self-proclaimed uber-organizer, and what it's like balancing board service, entrepreneurship and motherhood.Episode Guide:00:10 Meet Michelle Lewis00:55 Insights from the Women in Leadership Conference01:42 The Role of Luck and Hard Work in Career Success05:15 Mentorship and Leadership06:42 Pathway to Board Membership11:23 From Fine Arts to Private Equity22:06 The Importance of Soft Skills26:07 Tips for Balancing Career and Family28:25 Final Thoughts and TakeawaysOwl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:Failing is learning not losing17:25: I've never been afraid to just try something new. I mean, because what can happen, right? You can fail. And what happens when you fail? You learn. You learn more than when you're successful. You know, I sell all the veggies, and great, I got, you know, some points in my pocket, but if I don't sell them, I have to try a new way the next day. Right? Yeah. So, I mean, there are a lot of my mentors who I attribute that to, like there's another woman. Same thing in executive recruiting. All you do is just, like, pick up the phone and ask someone—it's an opportunity. Maybe they're interested, maybe they're not. Like, worst case, they say, "No thanks," right? But a lot of people are afraid to pick up the phone. I mean, you can meet some fascinating people. So, I've just always thought, like, there's no downside to trying. The downside is if I don't try. Not if I fail.What led Michelle to where she is today02:05: I think I've been in a fortunate position to, wherever I am, to be working really hard and trying to do a good job and be a good person, and, and then, through that, have found that other people have come to me and said, "I see something in you that maybe you don't even see in yourself, and we think you can do X," which might be completely different to what I was doing at the time. And, and that's typically been the case throughout my entire career. So, the majority of my career, I was just going along to get along, and then someone else came along and said, "We're going to move you over here"—either a different industry, a different city, a different function. All really through someone else's vision.How mentorship shaped Michelle's approach to leadership06:00: One of the things I think that I learned, and that I do as well, is just conversations where I'm asking a lot of questions, not necessarily telling them what the answers are, and it's the same thing in a board and advisory role, right? I'm not there to tell the CEO what to do. I mean, if I'm telling the CEO what to do, we don't need that CEO. I'm there to ask questions. So, it's the same thing that my mentors did for me: asking questions that may highlight there are different ways, different paths, different answers for me to consider. That's the same thing that I'm doing when I'm in an advisory role or a board role.Show Links: TranscriptGuest Profiles:Michelle Lewis on LinkedIn

What exactly is a trade deficit? And why are so many policymakers fixated on it? Lately, the trade deficit in the U.S. is taking the bulk of the blame for the economic situation we're in and it's one of the reasons the Trump administration is pushing for sweeping tariffs. But tariffs are likely not the answer, and a trade deficit might be better referred to as a capital surplus.  As a continuation of the tariffs discussion in the last episode, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen are joined by John Cochrane, an economist at Stanford University and the Hoover Institution.   The conversation covers how trade deficits actually work, their implications on global and domestic economies, and how current trade policies may impact economic growth, inflation, and international relations.  Find All Else Equal on the web:  https://lauder.wharton.upenn.edu/allelse/All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of the UPenn Wharton Lauder Institute through University FM.

The term “woke” might be modern, but woke movements have been going on throughout history. And while an “awokening” is meant to further equality among systemically marginalized groups, they often can exacerbate existing social inequalities. Musa al-Gharbi is a sociology and assistant professor of communication and journalism at Stony Brook University. His book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, examines how professionals in the so-called symbolic capitalism space like media, nonprofits, and education have gained elite status through woke culture, and in turn, benefit from some of the inequalities they are morally aligned against. Musa and Greg discuss the origins of woke movements throughout history including what factors in society can lead to “awokenings,” how symbolic capitalists have become the new elite, the role of cultural capital in today's world, and why the elimination of DEI programs and pushback against woke culture can sometimes accelerate a new “awokening.”  *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Can we be committed to seeking social justice and elite status at the same time?12:52: It's our desire to be an elite that often ends up winning out and kind of transforming how we pursue these social justice goals, so that we mostly try to pursue them in ways that don't cost anything for us, risk anything for us, require us to change anything about our lifestyles and our aspirations, and the aspirations of our children, and all of that stuff. And so that mostly pushes us into pursuing these social justice goals in largely symbolic ways, on the one hand. And on the other hand, it often leads us to expropriate blame to other people, who often benefit far less from the system than we do, and exert a lot less influence over institutions and so on than we do.Has diversity become a status symbol instead of a value?46:01: Diversity is great as long as its fellow affluent, highly educated people. But God forbid, if they want to build affordable housing in your neighborhood, that's a hard no.On competition over status18:41: One of the things that's interesting about competitions over status and cultural capital and things like this is that status—one—it's actually more of a zero-sum competition.So, for wealth, it's possible for everyone in a society to have a decent amount of wealth or a high amount of wealth. But for status, that's not the case. A situation where everyone had a high amount of status—the same status—would be a situation where nobody had any status. Status is more zero-sum. You actually can't give more attention, more time, more deference, and whatever to one person without actually taking some from someone else, because our attention is finite, et cetera, et cetera. And so status is actually more of a zero-sum competition.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Pierre BourdieuWhy Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern by Bruno Latour Andrew AbbottSocial Gospel movement..Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American PoliticsGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Stony Brook UniversityProfessional WebsiteProfessional Profile on LinkedInHis Work:We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite

What does a workplace look like where everyone can thrive and flourish? Once we know the makeup of that space, how can companies work to achieve it? When is it smart to rely on numbers and when will strict adherence to data lead you astray in the quest for equality?Iris Bohnet is a professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard and the author of the books Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results and What Works: Gender Equality by Design.Greg and Iris discuss the concepts of workplace fairness, representation, and the indicators of a fair work environment. They delve into implicit and explicit biases, systematic interventions like structured hiring and promotions, and the effectiveness of diversity training. Iris emphasizes the importance of focusing on systemic changes rather than trying to 'fix' individuals. They also touch upon the necessity of role models, the impact of organizational culture, and the balance between fairness and business objectives. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:We should stop trying to fix people and fix our systems09:17: We should stop trying to fix people and fix our systems. And this goes way beyond bias in terms of gender, race, or anything other in terms of demographic characteristics or social identities, but just general in behavioral science. We have by now identified more than 200 different types of biases. It's incredibly hard to unlearn them, and so that's why many behavioral scientists, again, beyond the question of fairness, now focus on changing the environment. So basically making it easier for all of us to get things right.Meritocracy and the need for fairness15:01: There is no meritocracy. Without fairness, we have to have that equal playing field to allow the best people to end at the top. And so, I think meritocracy is a valuable goal to have. I don't think we have ever lived in a meritocratic world.Representation as an indicator of fairness02:14:  Representation is not a dependent variable per se, independent of anything else. But, as you said, it is a bit of an indicator of whether what we're doing truly creates a level playing field where everyone can thrive.On the value of larger diverse talent pool16:07:  We now benefit from a larger talent pool. And that's the argument behind it—the larger talent pool has two implications. One is we literally have a larger talent pool, so we can draw from more people, and it goes back to the quote that you offered earlier: we're more likely to find the right person for the right job at the right time. And secondly, and that often is overlooked, we can also allocate that work better, that, in fact, Sandra Day O'Connor finds exactly the job for which she excels. And that fraction of GDP protector growth is about 14%. So I think that's the macro business case that I always have to remember—that, in fact, more talent is just good. And giving the talent the chance that they deserve and that our organizations deserve is both the right thing and the smart thing to do.Show Links:Recommended Resources:IntersectionalityClaudia GoldinProportional RepresentationHarvard Kennedy SchoolGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at the Harvard Kennedy SchoolProfile on WikipediaProfile on LinkedInHer Work:Personal WebpageAmazon Author PageMake Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real ResultsWhat Works: Gender Equality by Design

Are the algorithms that exist in our daily lives getting so smart that they know us better than our parents or our spouses? How do we balance the convenience and efficiency of this technology with privacy and consumer protections? Sandra Matz is a professor at Columbia Business School and the director of the Center for Advanced Technology and Human Performance. Her book, Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior examines the link between algorithms and psychology. Sandra and Greg chat about the bright and dark sides of psychological targeting, its applications in marketing, politics, and mental health, as well as the ethical considerations and future implications of using algorithms for personalized interactions.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Even the smartest algorithms slip up24:01: When we talk about these algorithms, and I'm guilty of that myself, it always seems like, well, yeah, if they can predict your personality with high accuracy, that makes sense, but it still makes mistakes, right? So, accuracy is always captured at the average level. So, on average, we kind of get it right most of the time. But that still means that, at the individual level, we make a lot of mistakes. And those mistakes can be costly for the individual, right? 'Cause now you are seeing stuff that is completely irrelevant. Also costly for companies, 'cause now you are optimizing for something that's not actually true. So, I think if you can really think about application—I think the more you can turn this into a two-way street and conversation, the same way that this works in an offline world, right? If you kind of suddenly start talking to me about topics that I care nothing about, you're going to get that feedback, 'cause either I'm not going to see you again, or I just tell you we just talk about something else. And companies oftentimes don't get that because they don't allow users to interact with some of the predictions that they make. And I think it's a mistake, not just from an ethical point of view, but even from a kind of service, convenience, product point of view.Are algorithms making us boring?11:09: There's something nice about having these algorithms understand what we want, but I also do think that there's the risk of us just becoming really boring.The trouble with signing away our data49:29: The way that we typically sign away data is, we consent, but not because we understand it. And I think some of it is just that technology moves so fast that just keeping up with technology is almost impossible. So I think about this 24/7, and I have a hard time, and you also have to have this understanding of — not just in the here and now — like, a fully rational person would say, "Here's all the benefits, and here's all the downsides." And now I kind of make this rational decision that kind of maximizes utility. But we don't understand the downsides.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Big Five personality traitsCambridge AnalyticaGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Columbia Business SchoolProfessional WebsiteProfessional Profile on LinkedInCenter for Advanced Technology and Human PerformanceHer Work:Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior

If critical thinking is the equivalent to daily exercise and eating a good diet, then today's guest has the vaccine for misinformation viruses. Sander van der Linden is a professor of Social Psychology in Society at Cambridge University. His books, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity and The Psychology of Misinformation delve into his research on how people process misinformation and strategies we should be arming ourselves with to combat it. Sander and Greg discuss the historical context and modern-day challenges of misinformation, the concept of “pre-bunking” as a method to immunize people against false beliefs by exposing them to a weakened dose of misinformation beforehand, and the importance of building resilience against manipulative tactics from an early age through education and awareness. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How misinformation spreads like a virus24:25: A virus wants to replicate, right? It wants to replicate itself. So, misinformation isn't a problem—you know, if it can't spread. But it has to find a susceptible host. So, for me, the viral analogy is that misinformation wouldn't spread unless it can find a susceptible host. There's something about human psychology that makes it susceptible to being infected with misinformation, and then our desire to want to share it with others. And so, that's kind of where it aligns for me.Misinformation is about more than just obvious falsehoods02:26: Misinformation is about more than just obvious falsehoods—it's also about misleading information. So, in a way, it's designed either unintentionally or intentionally to dupe people because it uses some kind of manipulation technique, whether that's presenting opinion as facts or presenting things out of context.What is the antidote for misinformation?12:20: Ideology correlates with cognitive rigidity, right? The more ideological people are, the more rigid and the more closed off they are. So, in some ways, the antidote to misinformation and conspiracy theories is being open-minded about things—not attaching yourself to a motivated sort of hypothesis—and that does strongly predict lower susceptibility to misinformation.Why misinformation goes viral while facts don't27:15: So, research shows that misinformation explodes moral outrage. Specifically, for example, misinformation tends to be shocking, novel, emotionally manipulative, highly moralized, and polarized; it uses conspiracy, cognition, and paranoia, right? Whereas factual, neutral news uses none of those things. It tends to be boring, neutral, with no loaded words, right? And so, that tends to not go viral. Most people don't engage with fact checks—that's why fact checks don't go viral. So, in the cascades, when you model these things, there are clear differences in the virality of misinformation and the virality of neutral, objective information. And so, the infectiousness of these two things is very different.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Neil deGrasse TysonPizzagate conspiracy theory Asch conformity experiments Robert CialdiniWilliam J. McGuire“Wayfair: The false conspiracy about a furniture firm and child trafficking” | BBC NewsSouth ParkCognitive reflection testActively open-minded thinkingGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Cambridge UniversityProfessional WebsiteProfessional Profile on LinkedInHis Work:Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build ImmunityThe Psychology of Misinformation

What are ‘untimely questions' and why do they become common blind spots in philosophy? Why is philosophy a team sport?? How does Moore's paradox highlight the differences between truth and belief?Agnes Callard is a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and the author of the books Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life, Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming, The Case Against Travel, and On Anger.Greg and Agnes discuss the essence of living a philosophical life through the Socratic method. Agnes emphasizes inquiry, human interaction, and rigorous thinking as processes that require effort and dialogue. Their discussion touches on the distinctions between problem-solving and questioning, the complexities of human preferences, and the societal tendency to convert deep philosophical questions into more manageable problems. Callard also reflects on philosophical engagement within various contexts, including education, relationships, and ethical frameworks. The episode highlights the value of philosophical inquiry not just as an academic pursuit but as a fundamental part of living a meaningful life.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Philosophy concerns itself with problems not questions05:41: I think philosophy concerns itself not with problems, but with questions. Where the thing that you actually want is the answer to the question, and you're not trying to answer the question so that you can get on with something else that you were doing anyway. That's what you were doing—you were on a quest. And both problem-solving and question-answering are, kinesis, in Aristotle's sense? They're emotions; they're processes. So they're similar in that way, but t hey're different in that, with a question, there's a sense in which the process leads to a sort of self-culmination, where the answer to the question kind of is the culmination of the process of questioning. And it's—we can almost say—you really fully understand the question when you have the answer, so that there's a kind of internal relationship between the question and the answer. Whereas, with problem-solving, anything that gets the problem out of the way is fine. You don't need a deep understanding of the problem. Like, if you were trying to move the boulder and someone else is like, "Look, you could just go around it," then that'll be fine.Philosophical training means simulating an opponent29:27: What philosophical training is, is training in simulating an interlocutor who objects to you—right? That's what you do in philosophy.What gets you to the top won't always keep you there33:38: I think answering requires less training than asking; it requires less kind of experience in philosophical activity. And so Socrates had to relegate himself to the Socrates role because he was dealing with a bunch of people who didn't know how to do philosophy yet.Why the Socratic approach matters in philosophy39:54: Your philosophical, ethical system is going to constrain how you live your life. That's kind of the whole point of an ethical system. But I do think that the Socratic approach is one that can be inflected as a way of doing—a lot of what you were doing in your life. The Socratic approach says, do all that same stuff inquisitively. Now, there may be some things you can't do inquisitively—don't do those things. Or it may be that there are some things that you can't do inquisitively, but you simply have to do them to survive or something—like, as long as they're not unjust, that's fine. But the thought is like, well, let's take romance or something. Let's take politics. Let's take death, right? So those are the three areas I talk about. Can you be a philosopher and be doing those things? And Socrates, I think, goes out of his way to try to say, yes, that is, it's not just that those things can be done philosophically, but they're done best philosophically.Show Links:Recommended Resources:SocratesSocratic MethodAristotleTuring TestLarge Language ModelMoore's ParadoxParmenidesUtilitarianismKantianismJohn Stuart MillJeremy BenthamGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at The University of ChicagoProfile on WikipediaSocial Profile on XHer Work:Amazon Author PageOpen Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical LifeAspiration: The Agency of BecomingThe Case Against TravelOn Anger

For women's history month, the OneHaas Alumni Podcast is pleased to welcome Olivia Chen, a Haas undergrad alumna and the co-founder of Twrl Milk Tea.Like so many of the best entrepreneurial ventures, Twrl was born out of a necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic. With boba milk tea shops closed, Olivia and her co-founder Pauline Ang were finding ways to still enjoy the treat at home while also making a version of milk tea that prioritizes quality and pays tribute to their Taiwanese and Chinese heritage. Olivia joins host Sean Li to chat about being raised by immigrant parents from Taiwan, her career journey from Haas to Twrl, and Olivia dishes on all the ways her on-the-go milk teas are taking the boba industry by storm.*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:On her family's deep Berkeley roots“I actually am,  I would say, like a Berkeley baby, because we were in the Berkeley family housing units, there are baby photos of me playing on the playground. And so Berkeley has always been a really big part of my identity because my family, my dad are Berkeley alums. And so, my parents were really, really proud when I actually was accepted into Berkeley. And so being kind of from the Bay Area, you know, when relatives came, the first place we'd take them would be Berkeley to go see the campus. And so when I got in, it was kind of a no-brainer that I would be attending.”Lessons on entrepreneurship from her parents' career paths “ How the evolution of entrepreneurship goes is, you know, you climb one mountain, but you're at the bottom of another hill. And so you just keep climbing these mountains and then you just hope you can peak at an amazing peak. And so that is literally entrepreneurship. That is also the journey of an immigrant, right? Like, you go through these ebbs and flows of mastering language or mastering cultural norms.  And so those types of skills that I've seen my parents persevere with, they have been very, very motivating.”On what makes Twrl stand out“ What makes our canned drinks unique is we're the first to bring nitro infusion to the tea category. We're the first to bring pea protein. And so there's very little innovation in the last 30, 40, 50 years of the tea category. So we are literally the first tea brand out of all these big players out there to bring nitrogen infusion, to use pea protein. So it has actually changed a lot of things that are happening in the tea category itself.”On how Twrl got its name “ Twrl is a really special name for us because we, you know, think about our heritage and our origin. And an emperor was walking through a garden holding a hot cup of water and a leaf twirled into his cup and that's where the first brewed tea was born. That's the origin story. And we'd love to kind of say that, you know, our brand is steeped in history, but we're twirling for the future. And so we're really excited to share a little bit more about ourselves. And we're really, really proud of our heritage as Taiwanese and Chinese Americans.”Show Links:LinkedIn ProfileTwrl Milk TeaPodcast Rec: How I Built This with Guy Raz Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Behind every great invention is an engineer who figured out how to make it work. But how do you take an extremely technical, cutting-edge innovation and make it easy to understand and use for the public? That's where designers come in.Barry Katz is a professor emeritus of industrial design at California College of the Arts and a consulting professor at Stanford University. He is the author of the book, Make It New: A History of Silicon Valley Design, co-author of Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, and has spent decades studying the history of design thinking and its purpose at organizations. Barry and Greg discuss the historical trajectory of design in tech, how engineers and designers began collaborating in the 1980s, and the role of design in transforming technologies into user-friendly products. The conversation also covers the interdisciplinary nature of design, the impact of design thinking on various industries, and Barry's latest book detailing the application of design principles in healthcare. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:You don't have to be a designer to think like one31:47: You don't have to be a designer to think like one. And in fact, you probably don't want to become a designer. But over the course of this rather remarkable few decades, designers have learned a lot of tricks, and they're basically tricks. And many of those tricks can be learned by entrepreneurs, lawyers, physicians, which is what we dealt with in our most recent book. And it's not turning them into designers; it's giving them tools to solve their problems in medicine, law, engineering, or wherever, in something like the way that designers solve their problems.Why design thrives like an ecosystem19:17: So what is the connector between the internal combustion engine and the car, between the printed circuit board and the lamp? It's design. So, in the course of that, designers have had to learn a whole lot of new skills, new tricks. That's where design thinking has played, I think, an important role, which may be drawing to a close. They've learned to integrate the behavioral sciences. They've learned how to talk to technical people. There's no doubt that it is an ongoing challenge.Designers shape experiences, not just products25:40: We don't want products to fail people. Now, a refrigerator is one thing, but then, when you are starting not just to approach a large appliance in your kitchen but to put it in your pocket, your kid's backpack, or a contact lens—which is to deliver insulin to a diabetic, which Google X is working on—then your tolerance for a bad experience vanishes. And it is a bit of a hackneyed thing to say, but the role of designers has been to create an experience.Design isn't about knowing everything, it's about knowing who to ask27:15: What happens when you have an exposure to the way anthropologists approach a problem, or economists, or linguists, or whoever it might be, is not that you become one or you acquire that level of professionalism, but you know who to ask. And you've heard an entirely new inventory of questions that may not have occurred to you in the past but are now on your agenda.  And you either acquire a sufficient level of professional skill to answer those questions, or you now know who to ask. Show Links:Recommended Resources:Moore's Law The Microma Silicon Valley (TV series) Alphonse Chapanis Larry Page Franz von HolzhausenDeepSeekNatasha Jen: Design Thinking is Bullsh*tGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at California College of the ArtsFaculty Profile at Stanford UniversityProfessional Profile on LinkedInHis Work:Make It New: A History of Silicon Valley DesignChange by Design, Revised and Updated: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

What can shake organizations out of the cycle of doing things the way they have always been done because that's the way they have always been done? Will a shift within an organization be more likely to stick with a top-down approach or a bottom-up approach? How can organizations allow freedom for their employees, but still be in control of the direction of that freedom?Freek Vermeulen is a professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at London Business School and the author of Business Exposed: The Naked Truth about What Really Goes on in the World of Business and Breaking Bad Habits: Why Best Practices Are Killing Your Business.Greg and Freek discuss the essence of strategy in organizations, highlighting the complexities and dysfunctions within organizations, the evolutionary parallels in human behavior and cultural practices, and the critical importance of understanding organizational strategy at all levels. Freek emphasizes the necessity of both top-down strategic direction and bottom-up innovation, the pitfalls of over-reliance on visible metrics, and the value of periodic organizational changes. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:A strategy no one follows is no strategy at all40:14: Strategy can not only be top-down, it has also to be bottom-up, that people display initiative themselves in line with strategy. And this is how it relates to it being a collective cognitive construct, and people knowing about the firm's strategy. A strategy is only a strategy if people do something different as a result of it in their daily job. If the C-suite changes the strategy, but everybody in the cubicles keeps doing the same thing, I'm sorry, you don't have a strategy. Now you have a McKinsey PowerPoint deck, but you don't have a strategy. It's only a strategy if people do something different as a result of it. And one aspect of this is that can only happen if they know about it and if they understand it. And that places a big onus on how you communicate it, how you put that in people's minds or so. Strategy is  collective cognitive construct39:26: Strategy is in the mind, and it is a mindset and understanding of what we're trying to work towards and trying to do as an organization. And it's collective because it has to be shared. It's a tool to cooperate, that we have a joint understanding of what we're actually trying to do and what we're not trying to do.What gets you to the top won't always keep you there14:50: What we certainly know, and also that's what we see in research in cultural anthropology, by the way, as well, where there is research on what sort of individuals are most likely to become the head of a tribe, where we observe highly similar things, is to say your chances of making it to the next level, what sort of variables determine your probability of making it to the next level, and hence eventually reaching the top, are not necessarily the same traits that make you a good CEO and a good steward in the long term for an organization. There can be mismatches between these things. In a tribe, for instance, if you are a very combative individual and prone to a good fight or something like that, that may make you more likely to go through the tournament and become the head of a tribe. But it may also make you more likely to take your tribe on the warpath, which may not be so good for survival. So the same characteristics that make people more likely to become CEO are not necessarily the same characteristics that make them better as CEOs for organizations.Are business schools equipping mba students with the right tools for leadership success?53:23: This understanding about how behavioral mechanisms, including norms and so on, work is something that we need to do better in business schools. The experiment... is indeed to see if people who have more managerial experience and more economics training get it more wrong because we have some other studies that suggest that understanding more about financial incentives and economic rational behavior makes you less aware of these other aspects of human behavior, which of course exist in organizations and in reality.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Kuru (disease)Creutzfeldt–Jakob diseaseFrans van HoutenLeo TolstoyChange for Change's Sake | HBRSEI Investments CompanyWilliam H. StarbuckConstantinos C. MarkidesAsch Conformity ExperimentsGuest Profile:LinkedIn ProfileFaculty Profile at London Business SchoolSocial Profile on XHis Work:Amazon Author PageBusiness Exposed: The Naked Truth about What Really Goes on in the World of BusinessBreaking Bad Habits: Why Best Practices Are Killing Your BusinessGoogle Scholar Page