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On this special episode of OneHaas, Dr. Jennifer Chatman, Dean of the Haas School of Business, shares her career journey and her hopes for the future of Haas. Dean Chatman is not just a double bear, with an undergraduate degree and PhD from Haas, but has called UC Berkeley's campus home for most of her life. In this interview, she chats with host Sean Li about growing up in an academic family, how her father, a Berkeley professor, inspired her to pursue a life of learning, how following her curiosity led to a pioneering career studying organizational culture, the enduring relevance of Haas' defining leadership principles, and why she thinks the future of Haas is very bright indeed.  *OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:On passing the baton from one Berkeley professor to another“ So I remember being out here just before I was about to start and my dad was just about to retire. We had lunch somewhere on campus and we were sitting on the steps of Harmon gym… and a student walks by and looks up and says, ‘Hi, Professor Chatman.' And my dad looks at this student and he looks again. He said, ‘I don't recognize that student.' I said, ‘Yeah, Dad, that's one of mine.' So that was the official passing of the baton.”On finding a passion early on for social psychology“ I've always been fascinated by social interaction. And I remember in high school…I always loved to type up surveys and then I would go give them to people. I'd give them to my parents, I'd give them to my sisters. I'd give it to my friends, like, what did you have for breakfast? And, you know, A, B, C, or D. Right? And, I just found that sort of calculating of what people were doing and what were the similarities across people and what were the ways in which they diverged. I found both of those things very, very interesting.”On the importance of trusting and leaning into your curiosity “ I think the advice is trust your curiosity and trust what gets you excited and passionate and figure out a way to lean into it, and develop a pathway that involves the things that kind of get you up in the morning. You know, career paths are very, very long and you wanna be doing something that's interesting to you. That gives you energy and it's actually something I really admire and love about our Haas students. There is not one Haas student that I've ever run into who is anything less than completely fascinating. Every single one of our students is interesting. They have a unique and distinctive story. They have really wide ranging interests. I find it just a profound distinction that we're privileged to have this community of super interesting, passionate students.”On her hopes for the future of Haas “ I just think that this is a really incredible moment for our school and we're so full of ideas and our students are so capable and eager and brilliant. They are defining the future and I think that our humanity as well as our skills in leveraging technology, but it's our humanity that's going to allow us to flourish into the future. And I'm just really excited about that.”Show Links:LinkedIn ProfileHaas ProfileProfessional WebsiteSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

What are the nuances of organizational design and risk-taking? What are the roles of both curiosity and trust in fostering an environment ripe for innovation? How can you create serendipity intentionally, and harness its power for your organization?David Cleevely is a British entrepreneur and international telecoms expert who has built and advised many companies, principally in Cambridge, UK. He is also the author of the new book Serendipity: It Doesn't Happen By Accident. Greg and David discuss the concept of engineered serendipity, which involves designing environments and life trajectories that optimize the occurrence of fortunate coincidences. David explains how places like Cambridge, Silicon Valley, and 18th-century Birmingham fostered innovative ecosystems. They explore how engineered structures can increase the likelihood of beneficial outcomes, the role of key individuals in creating networks, and the importance of interdisciplinary interactions. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How can we engineer serendipity?04:23: The thing that we need to do is look at how did those things actually happen? Why did they happen? And is it possible to get some general principles out of this, some insights, so that instead of just relying on chance to do it for us, we can change the odds. And really, serendipity does not act by accident. It is about changing the odds.Randomness in strategy29:09: You need an element of randomness in strategy. So you need to have things that are highly focused, and you need some things that are going to be cross-disciplinary and completely wacky. And you will need different proportions of those.Creating environments for good things to happen02:27: I think we need to do some research, and it's properly cross-disciplinary, 'cause it involves network science, it involves behavioral psychology stuff, all of these things that we need to understand how this stuff actually works. We've been taking this stuff for granted, and actually we need to not just go, oh, that's interesting, and then move on. No, actually we need to investigate this stuff and think, how can we actually create environments in which good things are more likely to happen?Show Links:Recommended Resources:Lunar Society of BirminghamFriedrich HayekStuart KauffmanSanta Fe InstitutePriestley RiotsNapoleonic WarsCambridge WirelessCambridge AngelsACAMSteve JobsDunbar's NumberNicholas ChristakisPride and PrejudiceJohn Maynard SmithGuest Profile:Chemify LimitedWikipedia ProfileLinkedIn ProfileCleevely & PartnersTrinity Hall ProfileCambridge Ahead ProfileGuest Work:ConductingSerendipity.comSerendipity: It Doesn't Happen By Accident Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If ideas and knowledge are the software, then books have always been the longest-running hardware.Author and former publishing executive Joel J. Miller's latest book, The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future, delves into the history and evolution of books as a physical technology for idea transmission.Joel and Greg discuss the book's origins from ancient times with Socrates and Plato, to the development of the codex, and the impact of modern digital reading. Joel also shares insights from his experiences in the publishing industry, the importance of physical books in shaping thought, the role of metadata in organizing knowledge, and predictions about the future of books in an increasingly digital world.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Books are hardware for knowledge09:09: I read someone say essentially this definition of a machine, that it is an assembly of parts that are, you know, designed to produce a particular end. And I do think that there is both institutional and cultural kind of degradation of that. And I thought that is what a book does. A book is a thing that is designed to help produce a particular outcome, which looks like a number of things, but one of them is to develop elaborate schemes of thought that would not be able to exist outside of that physical format. If you did not have the physical thing, the hardware, like you said, if you did not have that, the software would not matter because you do not actually have the ability to take all these elaborate thoughts that we have and hold them in our minds. Our working memory is too short, the ability to go back and revisit and revise is non-existent more or less. And so writing enabled us to develop ideas, and we access those through books.Books as vessels of ideas13:24: Ideas live in books. Whether they're arguments, like it's history, it's someone explicating a topic, or it is a novel where somebody is accessing, you know, a kind of a window on another self or things like that. The book is always there to do that for us.On metadata, organization, and libraries as knowledge systems25:16: Data is every bit as wild and unruly, and humans have been trying to figure out ways of getting it under control since the beginning, because we create more information than we can even use. We always have. And the ability to go use a library effectively requires some kind of scheme of organization in order to make it, to make things findable. And so we see that not only in the micro case of a single book, but we can see it blown out across an entire library where people have discovered ways of making ideas findable within them. And at every stage, as the technology has advanced, the job has gotten more complicated and also more interesting because the solutions emerge from that technology that enables us to get even better solutions to the problem.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Maxwell PerkinsHenry Regnery SeptuagintJustin MartyrI. A. RichardsIrenaeusGalenHernando Colon (Ferdinand Columbus)Paul OtletVannevar BushGuest Profile:Staff Profile at Full FocusProfessional WebsiteFocus on This podcastGuest Work:The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How did the US Dollar become the dominant currency internationally? What keeps other currencies, fiat or crypto, from displacing the dollar's role? Does the aggressive use of sanctions by the US Government put the dollar's role at risk?Paul Blustein is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as well as an author and journalist. He has written several books including his latest work King Dollar: The Past and Future of the World's Dominant Currency and previous works, Off Balance: The Travails of Institutions That Govern the Global Financial System, And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) Wall Street, the IMF, and the Bankrupting of Argentina, and Laid Low: Inside the Crisis That Overwhelmed Europe and the IMF.Greg and Paul discuss the reasons behind the US dollar's dominance in global finance, its historical roots stemming from the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the challenges posed by international crises and economic policies. Paul also discusses the role and limitations of the IMF, the geopolitical implications of using the dollar as a financial weapon, and the potential impact of emerging currencies and digital threats. The episode concludes with insights into the phenomena of dollarization and how various economic strategies, including those of China and Russia, intersect with the enduring power of the US dollar.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How the U.S. discovered the power of financial sanctions21:00: No longer was it just going to be the drug lords and, you know, in Colombia and places like that, it was now the government was gonna crack down on terrorists. And so the Treasury, OFAC, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, began doing some of that. And they realized that by cutting off banks abroad from access to the dollar system, that correspondent banking system we were just talking about, that, you know, things could really go boom. They could pose a death sentence on banks. And as they began to realize the power of that, they then applied it in the case of North Korea in 2005. And they were absolutely astonished to discover that this really worked. You could really have a big effect on North Korea's financial system by cutting off banks. It was—they went after a bank in Macau that had been—and then they were off to the races. They could use this similar kind of weaponry on Iran and other adversariesResponsible vs irresponsible use of dollar power25:29: You have this power with a dollar; if we use it responsibly, it can be a very good power. And if we use it irresponsibly, it's a bad power. And that's the way I like to look at it.How U.S.–China sanction scenarios are actually gamed out51:59: Some of the hawks in, you know, you don't hear so much from these guys anymore, but the hawks in Congress have tried to game some of these out. You know, I go into this in one of the chapters of the book about how they, you know, they had a red team and a blue team, and they thought, well, we can, you know, we just have done this—imposed drastic sanctions on Russia. So if there's an invasion of Taiwan, here's what we do. And they, I think, have discovered that if you have a really knowledgeable red team playing the Chinese Communist Party, they can come up with a lot, a lot of things that, it preserves Taiwanese democracy but doesn't have us at each other's throats.Show Links:Recommended Resources:United States DollarEuroRenminbiReserve CurrencyNetwork EffectBretton Woods SystemJohn Maynard KeynesHarry Dexter WhiteHerbert SteinFederal ReserveInternational Monetary Fund (IMF)SWIFTEuroclearFiat MoneyXi JinpingShadow FleetGuest Profile:PaulBlustein.comProfessional Profile for CSISLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Amazon Author PageKing Dollar: The Past and Future of the World's Dominant CurrencyOff Balance: The Travails of Institutions That Govern the Global Financial SystemAnd the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) Wall Street, the IMF, and the Bankrupting of ArgentinaThe Chastening: Inside The Crisis That Rocked The Global Financial System And Humbled The IMFMisadventures of the Most Favored Nations: Clashing Egos, Inflated Ambitions, and the Great Shambles of the World Trade SystemLaid Low: Inside the Crisis That Overwhelmed Europe and the IMFSchism: China, America, and the Fracturing of the Global Trading System Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As the youngest founder in her Rice MBA cohort, Allison Knight '10 knows a thing or two about blazing a trail. At just 24 years old, she co-founded Rebellion Photonics, which used cutting-edge technology to identify and quantify gas leaks on oil rigs, preventing catastrophic explosions. Knight went on to sell Rebellion Photonics to Honeywell in 2019, and is now codifying blue collar genius through Alaris AI. In this episode, Knight joins host Brian Jackson '21 to discuss how Rebellion Photonics used early AI technology to improve hyperspectral imaging and revolutionize gas leak detection. She also opens up about her experience as a young woman founder in a predominantly male industry, her role as an adjunct professor at Rice Business and why she believes blue collar work is the next frontier for AI exploration. Episode Guide:00:00 Introduction to Allison Knight01:09 Founding Rebellion Photonics02:25 Challenges and Innovations in Gas Leak Detection03:48 The Role of AI in Rebellion Photonics04:26 Reflections on Being a Young Founder12:44 Lessons From Startup Life16:25 Introducing Alaris AI: AI for Blue Collar Workers23:35 Teaching AI at Rice Business27:52 The Future of AI in the Workforce32:44 Final Thoughts and ReflectionsThe Owl Have You Know Podcast is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:On being a young entrepreneur12:17: I was 24. I was the youngest student in the Rice MBA program, and I had gotten a prestigious, semi-prestigious investment banking job that I had accepted. And then I did the thing you're not supposed to do under any circumstances, which is renege on a job. They do not like that. But I am a physicist more than I am an MBA. Science and tech still make me the happiest. So, I ended up, even at Rice, just hanging out with Rice techies, like other applied physicists. Yeah. And it was just too tempting. I knew I should do the investment banking job, but I just could not do it. I had to go for this crazy methane emissions monitoring company. And I loved it.Allison's first AI moment08:31: I think everyone will experience this, and I just happen to experience this 15, 16 years ago. It is your, like, AI moment—that first time where you run some code with AI. We had been trying to do real-time video detecting and imaging gas leaks in real time and kind of making do with it, and they were ugly. But then we brought in AI and started doing very, very, very, very basic machine learning, and it was just like magic, Brian. It was magic.On AI's next frontier17:20: Pretty much across the board, AI really sucks for blue-collar work. With white-collar work, we can just boop, boop, boop—take the generic ChatGPT, and it works beautifully. And that's because we, white-collar workers, have been typing for a long time. We've got all their documents in different folders, new ones, and so it's all been trained on that for the most part. So it's really trained on white-collar documentation and meant for it. Blue-collar documentation—basically, manuals and SOPs—has inherently always been stinky. But more importantly, none of the documentation has been done on what's in their head, what's in the foreman's head, the supervisor's head, or the individual's head. And so, when you don't have that data documented, structured, codified, the AI will be useless.Show Links: Alaris AITranscriptGuest Profile:Allison Knight | Rice BusinessLinkedIn Profile

This holiday week, All Else Equal is looking back at its episode on the growth of private equity with Ludovic Phalippou. Private markets have taken off in the last couple decades, with more investors opting to invest in private equity and debt instead of public markets. But what caused that shift? And are the private markets really a better bet right now, or is there more to the story?  Hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen sit down with private markets expert Ludovic Phalippou, a professor of financial economics at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and author of Private Equity Laid Bare. In the conversation, they explore what private markets can provide asset owners that public markets can not, the potential tradeoffs of investing in private equity, how performance in private and public markets is measured, and if the return on investment is really worth the high fees that come along with private equity firms.   Submit your questions to the show here: https://bit.ly/AllElseEqualFind All Else Equal on the web: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/business-podcasts/all-else-equal-making-better-decisionsAll Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of Stanford Graduate School of Business and is produced by University FM. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Unlike some other academic fields, the study of business has always had the challenging task of striking a balance between theory and practice. How can theoretical concepts aid business practitioners in real-world situations? And how can business academics expand their understanding of theory through that real-world application?  Jay Barney is a professor of strategic management at the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business. His work, including numerous books, journal articles, and textbooks, has shaped the field of strategy and entrepreneurship for decades. His most recent book is The Secret of Culture Change: How to Build Authentic Stories That Transform Your Organization.Jay and Greg discuss the evolving role of academia in the business world, the historical and current perceptions of business education, and the various theories that underpin strategic management. Barney delves into resource-based theory, the importance of organizational culture, and the intersection of strategy and practical business applications. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What really makes a strategy hard to imitate44:56: You're going to have a strategy that's likely to be a source of sustained advantage; you have to figure out how that leverages resources, or capabilities that are socially complex. Why? Because that's harder to imitate, stuff that's developed over long periods of time. That's path dependent. Why? Because that's hard to imitate, or stuff that's costly and ambiguous. Well, you don't know how to develop those capabilities because that makes it hard to imitate. And I can make some empirical predictions that socially complex resources and capabilities should last longer. As long as their value is retained, they should last longer than non–socially complex.Why entrepreneurship is so hard to theorize39:22: Entrepreneurship, one reason that it's under-theorized as a field is because the theory is really hard, because many of the assumptions and attributes that make it possible to theorize in non-entrepreneurial settings do not apply in entrepreneurial settings. And so then we're stuck with this Knightian uncertainty and difficulties associated with that.How strategy escapes the tautology problem46:25: I think that we can avoid the tautology problem by identifying the characteristics that resources and capabilities need to have in order to be sources of sustained advantage. And then, then empirical predictions come out of that. But they do not come out of the tautology, but by definition.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Jay Barney “The Lessons They Didn't Teach You in Business School” | unSILOed Modigliani-Miller TheoremHawthorne EffectNicholas BloomMichael PorterDavid TeeceWilliam H. MecklingMichael C. JensenJensen and Meckling article 76 JFEGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of UtahProfessional Profile on LinkedInWebsiteGuest Work:The Secret of Culture Change: How to Build Authentic Stories That Transform Your OrganizationWhat I Didn't Learn in Business School: How Strategy Works in the Real WorldOrganizational Economics: Toward a New Paradigm for Understanding and Studying OrganizationsGaining and Sustaining Competitive AdvantageStrategic Management and Competitive Advantage, Concepts: Concepts and CasesJay Barney | Google Scholar Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why might ‘bring your whole self to work' be terrible professional advice, and what should we be thinking about instead? Why does authenticity come into play more now than in previous generations? Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia. He is also the author of several books, including Don't Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead), Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It), and The Talent Delusion: Why Data, Not Intuition, Is the Key to Unlocking Human Potential, I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique.Greg and Tomas discuss the overemphasis of authenticity in professional and personal settings, the nuanced insights from sociologist Erving Goffman on impression management, and how emotional intelligence often aligns with strategic impression management. Their conversation gets into the impact of AI on human potential and workplace dynamics, as well as the complex interplay between organizational culture and individual behavior, particularly among leaders. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why do people believe authenticity naturally leads to wellbeing and success?03:08: In a world that is obviously not very authentic, pretending that we value authenticity or encouraging people to just be themselves might be quite fitting. I think it's not very authentic advice to tell people, "Oh, just be yourself. Oh, just bring your whole self to work. Oh, don't worry about what people think of you." But then, if somebody is silly or naive enough to follow that advice, the repercussions for them are not very positive.Self-awareness requires paying attention to others13:33: Professional success and personal development and self-awareness can only be achieved if you are receptive to what other people think of you. So, by the way, as I say in the book [DON'T BE YOURSELF], the notion that, I mean, you know, one of the mantras of authenticity or to authenticity advice, which is "ignore what people tell you," ironically,  the advice is trying to tell us how to behave, right? So you cannot ignore what people tell you. And the difference between somebody who has achieved basic emotional maturity and psychological maturity and somebody who still behaves like a child is that the psychologically mature person pays attention to what other people think of themselves, which doesn't mean being a sort of weak, feeble, conformist sheep. It means being a highly functioning member of society, of work, of community, not being trapped in your own narcissistic delusion.How do you achieve self-awareness?12:20: Self-awareness is actually achieved by internalizing the feedback from others from a very, very early age. We learn about ourselves from internalizing or incorporating the feedback we get from others. So your teachers, your aunt, your uncle, your parents, your older siblings, your friends will tell you, you are good at this, you are bad at that, you are funny. And then you understand that you are funny, right? It's obviously problematic if they're lying to you and then you realize, Ooh, outside my family, nobody laughs with my jokes, right? But there's no answer to who we really are. But the best way to understand who we are in the eyes of others is to not be self-centered and to actually be open to feedback. And that's something that people with high emotional intelligence do very well. Show Links:Recommended Resources:Erving GoffmanCore Self-EvaluationsEmotional LaborEmotional IntelligenceSelf-MonitoringElon MuskDavid Bowie360-degree feedbackCharles Horton CooleyDale CarnegieHenry FordJeffrey PfefferPope FrancisRobert HoganMachiavellianismMax PlanckAmos TverskyDaniel KahnemanJohn Maynard KeynesGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University College LondonWebsite | DrTomas.comLinkedIn ProfileWikipedia PageSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Amazon Author PageDon't Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead)Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It)The Talent Delusion: Why Data, Not Intuition, Is the Key to Unlocking Human PotentialI, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us UniqueConfidence: How Much You Really Need and How to Get ItPersonality and Individual Differences, 3rd EditionThe Future of Recruitment: Using the New Science of Talent Analytics to Get Your Hiring Right (The Future of Work)Personality and Intellectual CompetenceThe Psychology of Personnel SelectionPersonality and Individual DifferencesConfidence: Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, Insecurity, and Self-Doubt Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do evangelism and business go hand in hand? Well, for today's guest, evangelism is the purest form of sales. Guy Kawasaki is the Chief Evangelist at Canva and former Chief Evangelist for the Macintosh Division at Apple. He's a prolific author, speaker, and podcaster, with hit books like Think Remarkable: 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference, Wiser Guy: Life-Changing Revelations and Revisions from Tech's Chief Evangelist, and Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions.Guy and Greg discuss his evolving career path, why his work's focus has shifted over time from how to succeed in business to how to succeed in life, the practicalities of sales, evangelism, and the overlooked necessity of these skills in business education. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Is evangelism the purest form of sales?42:25: I believe that sales is a very necessary and important skill. I would say that maybe evangelism is the purest form of sales. The difference between evangelism and most sales is that in evangelism, you have the other person's best interests at heart, not just yours.Remarkable doesn't mean reach and famous24:45: Remarkable does not mean rich or famous, although you can be rich or famous and remarkable. But it's really about the impact you've made on the world. And I don't mean you have to sell 300 million iPhones or 300 million computers; it's really what have you done?Stop chasing passion, start pursuing interest14:15: So the bar is so high for a passion. So a lot of people are saying, oh my God, I'm 22 years old, I haven't found my passion yet, what's wrong with me? I'm an underachiever. And what I think you should do instead is have your eyes open, you should have your brain open, i.e., a growth mindset. And whatever interests you, you should pursue it until you can discover if you really like it; maybe then it'll turn into a passion. But to look for Passion, capital P, out the gate is doing yourself a disservice.The three general qualities of remarkable people27:29: I've noticed that remarkable people have three general qualities. First of all, they have the growth mindset of Carol Dweck. If you have a growth mindset, you better back that up with a grit mindset of Angela Duckworth, because if you have a growth mindset, you're going to try things like surfing and hockey that you're not good at for years. So you need to persevere and have grit. And then the final thing you need is a grace mindset. So it's growth, grit, grace.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Dr. Robert Cialdini | Remarkable People podcast Dr. Robert Cialdini | unSILOed podcastInfluence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition by Robert CialdiniIf You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda UelandCarol DweckAngela DuckworthGuest Profile:Professional WebsiteRemarkable People podcastGuest Work:Think Remarkable: 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a DifferenceWiser Guy: Life-Changing Revelations and Revisions from Tech's Chief EvangelistEnchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and ActionsThe Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting AnythingRules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and ServicesThe Macintosh Way Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In honor of Veterans Month, the OneHaas Alumni Podcast is pleased to welcome Cory Boatwright to the show. Cory is a Senior Advisor of Workforce Development, Strategies, and Programs for Hiring Our Heroes. Growing up in a working class home in Chico, California, Cory always knew he wanted to go to college, but coming from limited means made that a challenge. So he decided to start his career by first joining the military – a decision that sparked a lifetime passion for service and social impact work. Cory tells host Sean Li how his time in the Air Force prepared him for a successful career in business, what it felt like to fulfill his childhood dream of attending Haas, and how he's giving back to the veteran community through his work at Hiring Our Heroes. *OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:On how the Air Force prepared him for a career in business“ I always knew that I wanted to be like a business person, right? And I kind of just made up this person, this fictitious person of who I wanted to be. And I took characteristics of people from books, magazines, shows, and stuff like that, of who I wanted to be as a business person. And so one of the things that I thought was like, okay, well, a business person has to be able to be a public speaker and speak in front of people…And so I was like, well, how do I do that? I don't have the skills to do that. So I joined the Air Force as a military broadcaster. I was like, I'm just gonna throw myself into this.”On his switch from the investment banking world to military programming“ There's a role that came open at LinkedIn to build out their military recruiting programs. I had zero experience as a recruiter. I wasn't a recruiter, but I was like, I'd really like to work with the military community. And so I talked to a friend of mine who owned a nonprofit… And he's like, Cory, what do you do for free? And I was like, I help vets get jobs and get into school. And he's like, you should figure out how to get paid to do that.”On fulfilling his longtime dream of attending Haas“...Immediately I was with my people and I was like, no doubt I'm coming here.  Just a huge sense of belonging. I went there and basically I was able to, between like the core courses, which every one of them really resonated with me, I loved the curriculum of the program, but also when it came to electives, I was able to build out a learning path for myself that was more geared towards buying a business than it was doing a startup.”On the work he's doing at Hiring Our Heroes“ They come into our ecosystem and we're making sure that we're getting them to the places that they need to be. For instance, if somebody has a housing issue, they don't have housing or they're about to lose their housing, or they can't pay their utility bills, like that person's gonna be really difficult to help get a job because their basic needs aren't being met at that moment. And so we make sure that they're gonna get to the right people to be able to help them fix that issue and then come back into our orbit so that we can help them connect to meaningful employment. Not just jobs, but like jobs that matter, jobs that are gonna be sustainable, jobs that are gonna have good wages and benefits and stuff like that.”Show Links:LinkedIn profileHiring Our Heroes websiteCory's book recommendation: HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own CompanySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

What practical advice could leaders and managers implement right now in their organizations to increase productivity and decrease friction between disparate elements of their companies? How can managers reexamine legacy processes that have remained in place simply because they were, and reimagine them for the specific challenges of today's business environment?Donald C. Kieffer is  a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the founder of consulting firm ShiftGear Work Design, and the author of the new book There's Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real Work.Greg and Donald discuss the concept of dynamic work design. Donald shares stories of challenges in work design across various industries, including healthcare, banking, and software. He also explains how dynamic work design focuses on understanding and improving human work by making the invisible elements of work visible, reducing inefficiencies, and promoting incremental improvements. With a bit of attention to detail and careful setup, systems and processes can be honed to better serve their businesses. Donald points to mistaken beliefs that senior managers often hold about work processes and emphasizes the importance of regulating work to maintain flow, avoiding the political dynamics that arise from inefficiencies, and managing by observing and understanding the real work, allowing organizations to work smarter and harder. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Injecting discovery into work09:15: If you're firefighting to run the day-to-day business, you have no time to think about the future, to even think about the strategy or think about what's happening. So, we're much more about improvement, about incremental improvement. What we are about is discovery. So the idea is that every action that you take in business, be it at whatever level, at the strategic level or the frontline level, is based on the assumptions that activity will cause an improvement. And so we run it as an experiment and say, instead of measuring the plan, we measure: did the activity actually do what you thought? And if it did, great, let's do more. If it didn't, why not? And so we inject discovery into the whole idea of doing, of human work against the target at every level.If you can't draw the work you can't fix it16:14: I have a saying I use all the time that I love, which is, if you can't draw the work, you don't understand it, and you certainly can't fix it. And it comes from... [16:46] And I think we ask leaders all the time, can you draw it? Can you show it? They can't do it. They think they do it in their head. And this is the thing—why these tools, like A3 and different problem-solving tools, work—is that when you have to write down the problem statement, or when you have to draw the work, it moves it from that pattern-matching part of your brain, where you think you know it, to the rational part of your brain, where it shows you, I'm not really sure.Why we blame people instead of the work design the work36:53: If you see a problem, you tend to blame the person who's nearest the problem, even though it could have been caused way far away, because most of the time there could have been something they did, they could have done to keep it from happening. But you know, if there are like 500 opportunities per problem to happen, one or two of them are gonna get through, even though they're not that person's fault. So I think it's just something very human in us, which is why we call this work design. This is not about people; this is about the design of the work that's usually been ad hoc.On helping people do good work57:23: People want to do good work, meaningful work. Go find the stuff that's getting in their way, even if it's stuff you've put in the way, and get out of the way. Help them. Help them with the design of work. I know it's good for business. There are stories galore in the book about how points on the board, but I'll tell you why I do it when I should be sitting on the back porch collecting Social Security and drinking beer. It's because of the look on people's faces. We can actually go to work and be productive no matter what their level is and feel like they're part of something good and doing.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Takashi TanakaRoss PerotHarley-DavidsonClayton ChristensenDaniel KahnemanFrederick Winslow TaylorJugaadSteven J. Spear PodcastWilliam S. HarleyFive WhysNUMMISeagull ManagementGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at MIT Management | Sloan SchoolShift Gear Work DesignGuest Work:There's Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real WorkGet Work Back on Track With Visual Management | ArticleHow to Rescue an Overloaded Organization | Article Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How does something as simple as a five-star rating system reveal subtle biases?When she's not teaching MBA and undergraduate students at Rice Business, Professor Sora Jun studies the hidden forces that shape how we see and treat one another. Her work explores how our minds process inequality and how even small design choices, like switching from stars to thumbs-up icons, can make systems fairer. Host Brian Jackson '21 sits down with Sora to discuss her research on the hidden bias of gig worker ratings, what she loves most about teaching at Rice, the findings of her latest paper and how her background has shaped her work. Episode Guide:00:00 Introduction to Sora Jun, Ph.D.00:58 Journey From Finance To Organizational Behavior02:20 Impact of Diverse Upbringing on Research05:05 Teaching Experience and Philosophy08:52 Research on Bias and Inequality17:50 Framing Inequality: Advantage vs. Disadvantage24:34 Exploring Anti-Asian Discrimination29:17 Future Research Directions30:56 Teaching Across Different Programs32:20 Final Thoughts and TakeawaysThe Owl Have You Know Podcast is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:How embracing insecurity helped Dr. Sora on her research23:32: It actually took me a while to really feel like I had enough legitimacy in standing and studying this in some ways, because I felt like I did not really have the real, like, Asian American experience, given that I have been in so many different circles and I'm hearing so many different stories about what it means to be Asian for different people. But I think really embracing that insecurity almost was useful because I think it just made me dig in deeper and realize that might be part of that Asian experience—feeling like there are so many different kinds of Asian experiences. I'm sure this is similar for other groups as well, but I think I've just become more appreciative of just asking people, like, what's this been like for you? I started to do more qualitative-oriented work because of this, and I think that is helping me sort of reaffirm my own, I guess, standing and studying this topic.Why the way we talk about inequality matters14:52 [Brian Jackson]: Why does framing matter so much when talking about pay gaps or wealth disparities?16:08 [Sora Jun]: So, framing of inequality matters because even though what is being talked about is logically equivalent for an advantage or disadvantage frame, people understand it to be very different. And then they focus on different, I guess, objects.On balancing the fairness of the gains of a binary system with the loss of nuance13:36 [Sora Jun]: I think that's a really tricky part. I do think it is a challenge if we were to imagine changing all these numerical rating scales to dichotomy scales. We would lose a lot of the fine-grained information. So it probably depends a lot on the context. I think from our study, what we were finding was that the ratings using a five-point scale were already quite inflated, so there was not actually a ton of fine-grained information to be had from even the five-point scale information.Show Links: TranscriptGuest Profile:Sora Jun | Rice Business

How do schools prepare for the changing landscape of both education and business with the pace of advancements in technology and specifically in artificial intelligence (AI)? What lessons were learned from the rapid shift to digital that happened during the pandemic and how can that knowledge improve the way higher education works today?Shawn Miller is the Associate Provost for Digital Learning and Strategy at Rice University. Shawn serves as the key steward of Rice's digital strategy where he leverages best practices already in place across the University and also introduces new approaches and collaborations to be scaled.Shawn and host David Mansouri discuss the transformative impact of digital learning and AI on higher education. Shawn shares his career journey, from his time at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and Duke University, through to his current role at Rice. Their conversation explores Rice's vision for digital education, the integration of AI tools in learning, and the future of teaching and learning at Rice. Shawn also highlights the challenges and ethical concerns related to AI, including the aspects of AI in education that he is more interested in than using it to just continue the way things were taught before. Shawn also lays out his view of some essential skills students need to thrive in an AI-powered world.Let us know you're listening by filling out this form. We will be sending listeners Beyond the Hedges Swag every month.Episode Guide:01:01 Shawn Miller's introduction and background06:16 The Vision for Digital Learning at Rice14:23 Impact of COVID-19 on Digital Learning19:30 Integrating AI into Education at Rice23:47 Promising AI Applications in Teaching26:19 AI's Role in Learning and Analytics28:55 Challenges and Ethical Concerns of AI33:14 Skills for an AI-Powered World35:52 Future of Teaching and Learning at Rice38:51 Rapid Fire QuestionsBeyond The Hedges is a production of Rice University and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:Rethinking education in the age of AI27:39: What's really most frustrating to me about the first wave of AI education tools that we got thrown at us, right, as institutions—and I'm talking even about startups—they're mostly founded on the idea that whatever we are doing now in classes and in teaching is somehow the right way to do it, right? So, it's like, how can you speed up creating better multiple-choice tests, right? Or how could you grade all these papers that you've got to grade, right? Well, maybe the outcome for that class isn't that you should write a paper in the first place, right? But now is our chance to ask that. And I know this is frustrating for faculty…[28:61] But it's a good opportunity for us to, but then it's been frustrating to have all these edtech ventures come out where it's like, “But AI could make all the things better!” And it's like, yeah, but you're talking about making traditional education faster, cheaper, more productive. You're not talking about helping people learn better.What's a better question for AI in education11:16: Maybe the answer for AI is not what can you have the AI do that you used to do, as much as what can I do even more of or even better. And I think that's a good mindset for us to be in, in education.The pandemic digital experience15:34: I think you have two things that people tend to say about the pandemic digital learning experience. One is that it was horrible, and they'd never want to do it again. Then, for those who knew about online learning or had done it before the pandemic, they'll say, “Well, that's because no one did it right,” quote unquote. And I think we can honor both of those viewpoints. But I'd also say that we learned a few things, right? One thing is most faculty learned how to use the LMS and Zoom. And if you think back pre-COVID, how many people could launch a webinar or call a virtual meeting, right? And how many staff did it take to set up a global web conference? It was incredibly expensive. It took a lot of time. You had to schedule it, and now people just trigger these things, right? I think the second thing we learned is that hybrid work can definitely work. And I've gone on record a few times saying that the future of work maybe parallels the future of hybrid and online learning.Show Links:Rice Digital Learning and StrategyRice AlumniAssociation of Rice Alumni | FacebookRice Alumni (@ricealumni) | X (Twitter)Association of Rice Alumni (@ricealumni) | Instagram Host Profiles:David Mansouri | LinkedInDavid Mansouri '07 | Alumni | Rice UniversityDavid Mansouri (@davemansouri) | XDavid Mansouri | TNScoreGuest Profiles:Shawn Miller | Faculty ProfileShawn Miller | LinkedIn ProfileShawn Miller | Social Profile on X

Historically, the U.S. has had a habit of overestimating the capabilities of its enemies. Why? Is this an intentional security strategy? Or does the U.S. need to change the way it gathers enemy intelligence? Former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster gives hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen a crash course on military intelligence and national security advising. The conversation covers why the overestimation of enemies happens, including historical examples of misjudgments, the role of proxies in modern conflicts, strategic considerations involving major powers like China, and the threat of information warfare.   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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if you could find a strategy for gaming the systems all around to work more in your favor? If you did, then things like coveted restaurant reservations, scarce concert tickets, landing the dream job, or even admission to top colleges could become much more in reach. Judd Kessler is a professor of business economics and public policy at the Wharton School and the author of Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want. The book acts as a guide for not only participants in the everyday markets that shape our lives, but also the designers of those markets. Judd and Greg discuss the hidden markets that dictate restaurant reservations, concert tickets, college admissions, and even dating. They explore different market design strategies like allocation mechanisms, centralized clearinghouses, and signaling.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why some markets don't play by price rules03:51: So many of the markets that we play in do not resolve themselves with the price rising. Either the price stays low because the seller wants it that way, and there's going to be excess demand—more people that want the thing than there are units available at that price—or we have decided as a society that we're not going to use prices to do the allocations, that it would be fundamentally unfair, or it would be fundamentally inefficient because we don't think your willingness to pay truly captures how much you value it.How market participants get ahead by knowing the rules01:33: When you are a market participant, you can do better by understanding the market rules and thinking about how to play in them.The three E's of a good market13:59: A good market will achieve the three E's: efficiency, equity, and being easy for market participants. And so what you've just tapped into is efficiency. And that's what makes this subfield of economics interesting, that there is no mechanism that satisfies all three of those perfectly all the time.Show Links:Recommended Resources:LabubuBetter Online Tickets Sales ActAlvin E. RothNational Resident Matching ProgramAmerican Economic AssociationDonald Mackenzie | unSILOedGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Wharton School of BusinessProfessional WebsiteLinkedIn ProfileX Profile Guest Work:Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What strange thing happens when a neuron is left alone? Are there ways to moderate stress and anxiety, and even channel them into productive and helpful signals there to assist you in making good decisions? How can you develop initiative, and what has to change in today's education landscape to accomplish this? Angus Fletcher is a Professor of Story Science at Project Narrative of Ohio State University. He also teaches screenwriting and is a screenwriter, as well as the author of several books including Primal Intelligence: You Are Smarter Than You Know, Storythinking: The New Science of Narrative Intelligence, and Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature.Greg and Angus discuss the intersection of story science and philosophy, emphasizing the importance of mythos and narrative thinking as opposed to logos, the purely logical, data-driven approaches in areas like decision-making and leadership. Angus outlines how neurophysiology and the brain's natural restlessness contribute to human intelligence and explores the practical applications of narrative cognition in fields ranging from military operations to education and business. He highlights the role of literature in developing imagination, perspective, and emotional intelligence, arguing for its integration into educational systems and other training programs to cultivate better leaders, thinkers, and problem-solvers.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why fear and anger are the two most powerful emotions41:50: I worked a long time with operators on this, and we particularly worked on fear and anger because those are our two most powerful emotions. Those are our fight-or-flight responses. Fear is flight, and anger is fight. And you know what is going on there? Well, what is going on there is your brain has a bias to action. Your brain always wants to be doing something. The moment that your brain is sitting still, it feels extremely vulnerable, so it always wants to have a plan. And when your brain experiences a severe threat and it realizes this threat is so new, so different, that it does not have a plan that it has confidence in, it does not know what to do here—that is when your brain starts to feel scared. That is when you feel fear. So the question is, why is fear the emotion that your brain evolved? Why did it not evolve some other emotion, like curiosity or whatever? And the answer is just because fear makes you incredibly susceptible to outside influence. The more scared you are, the smarter other people's suggestions sound.Emotion is the smartest thing in your brain41:06: Emotion is the smartest thing in your brain. If you're not using your emotions, you're severely limiting your intelligence. And the reason that we know emotion is the smartest thing in the brain is it's the oldest form of intelligence in the brain, so it's been keeping you alive for hundreds of millions of years.Stories help us imagine alternatives13:11: When you tell someone a story effectively, it allows them to imagine themselves in that position. And then what they do in that position is they imagine, what could I do? And when that's done effectively, what it allows them to do is imagine alternatives—not just alternatives from what they themselves are doing in their own lives, but alternatives to what the individuals did in that situation.Why modern life produces so much anxiety46:21: Why is it that so many people are experiencing over-anxiety in our modern world? Well, the first thing is that too many people spend their time inside these artificially stable environments where they're just not used to anything being unstable. If you spend all your time in the suburbs, and bananas are always there, even in the middle of the winter when you go to the supermarket and the whatnot, you know, then you're not ever coping or having to engage with even a mild amount of instability or volatility. So the moment you encounter any of it, you immediately freak out and think that something must be wrong.Show Links:Recommended Resources:MythosLogosDaniel KahnemanDual Process TheoryI. A. RichardsWilliam ShakespeareCase StudySteve JobsMike TysonRonald CraneNew CriticismPostmodernismPost-StructuralismSchadenfreudeThe Chicago SchoolAeschylusSophoclesFight-or-Flight ResponseGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Ohio State UniversityProject Narrative Profile | Ohio State UniversityAngusFletcher.co | WebsiteAngus Fletcher | Wikipedia PageProfile on LinkedInSocial Profile on InstagramGuest Work:Amazon Author PagePrimal Intelligence: You Are Smarter Than You KnowNarrative Creativity: An Introduction to How and Why (Elements in Creativity and Imagination)Storythinking: The New Science of Narrative Intelligence (No Limits)Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of LiteratureCreative Thinking: A Field Guide to Building Your Strategic CoreComic Democracies: From Ancient Athens to the American RepublicScreenwriting 101: Mastering the Art of StoryEvolving Hamlet: Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy and the Ethics of Natural SelectionAngus Fletcher | IMDB Page Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How has rational choice theory come to dominate both our understanding of the world and our view of good judgment, and why is that a problem? What are the benefits of remembering to zoom in and out to get a better picture of problems and solutions? Why do we prefer reducing things to numbers even if that abstracts useful levels of data?Barry Schwartz is a professor Emeritus at Swarthmore College and the prolific author of many books. His latest titles include Choose Wisely: Rationality, Ethics, and the Art of Decision-Making and Wisdom: How to Discover Your Path in Work and Life.Greg and Barry discuss the limitations of rational choice theory, the importance of practical wisdom, and the role of judgment in making decisions. They also touch on the broader implications of rational choice theory across various fields, the history of economic and social science paradigms, and the necessity of incorporating ethical considerations into people's decision-making. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The way we think about the world changes the world10:47: The argument in the book [Choose Wisely] was, the way we think about the world changes the world. And it is true that the way we think about the world changes the world, but it changes the world materially. It does not just change the world because of the ideas we have running around in our heads; it changes the material world. Yeah. The factory did not exist, and then it did. And as a result, what it meant to work changed. That was not in our heads. That was, you know, a structure that was out in the world that made demands on the people who walked in the door every day. So it was not idealism. The argument was that ideas change not just how people think, but what kinds of things people are able to do. And I think the same thing is true with rational choice theory, though it is a bit more abstract. You know, you cannot do a rational choice analysis without being able to quantify.Why we can't game the way to design incentives14:16: People somehow think that there is a bulletproof way to design incentives, so that they will not distort why they gave us the incentives they are designed to encourage. And, the bad news is there is no such thing, and there is no system that cannot be gamed.How economics changes the way we think07:22: There is a general, more general problem in social science, which is that, unlike planets, people are affected by claims that are made about what they are like. And so, the more we read social science, and the more economics, the king of the social sciences, dominates the news, the more inclined we are to think like and act like economists. So, does this tell us that the economists have discovered something? No. I mean, maybe. But it is just as likely that what economists have done is create something. They have created a way of approaching decisions and value assessment and so on that is consistent with their framework and changed people as a result.What we miss when we measure everything42:15: Rational choice theory is not neutral about what stays in the frame and what goes outside it. Things that go outside the frame are the ones that are most difficult to quantify using the same scale that you are using for everything else. And so, in the case of the price of a pound of beef, you could add the amount of money that our taxes contribute to subsidies. You could factor in the costs of the fertilizers that enable the corn to grow enough so that the cows can get fattened up. How do you quantify exactly the cost to human health? You can do it. How many more dollars do we pay per year because of antibiotic-resistant bacteria? But does that capture the cost in health? No. It only captures the dollar cost in health.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Rational Choice ModelDaniel KahnemanReinforcement LearningB. F. SkinnerReflexivity (Social Theory)Karl PopperGeorge SorosGoodhart's lawThe Omnivore's DilemmaAnnie DukePhronesisTelosSwarthmore CollegeAdnan KhashoggiGuest Profile:Wikipedia PageFaculty Profile at Swarthmore CollegeProfile at The Decision LabSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Amazon Author PageChoose Wisely: Rationality, Ethics, and the Art of Decision-MakingWhy We Work (TED Books)Wisdom: How to Discover Your Path in Work and LifeBrilliant: The Art and Science of Making Better DecisionsThe Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Revised EditionPractical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right ThingAre We Happy Yet? Happiness in an Age of Abundance (Cato Unbound)The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is LessThe Costs of LivingThe Battle for Human Nature: Science, Morality and Modern LifeRelated unSILOed episodes:Barry Schwartz - Why We Work: Breaking Down the Psychological and Economic Factors of a Great WorkplaceDonald MacKenzie - Trading at Light Speed: The Impact of Ultra-Fast Algorithms on Financial Markets Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For organizations that are tempted to throw out the classic organizational management handbook in favor of a structure with no managers – think again. Nicolai J. Foss is a professor of strategy at Copenhagen Business School and the co-author of Why Managers Matter: The Perils of the Bossless Company. The book pushes back on the notion that the key to breakthrough success for organizations is through flat, leaderless structures akin to today's trendy startups, and makes the case for why companies need hierarchies to function. Nicolai and Greg discuss the feasibility and realities of operating without traditional hierarchies, why these models often rely heavily on exceptional founders and are not suited for all business types, and the essential roles managers play in coordination, cooperation, and maintaining effective workflows, especially during times of crisis. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:We still need managers41:33 [Managers] They're doing a lot of good stuff. They are coordinating, and they are cooperating at the most abstract level. I mean, activities need to be coordinated in the sense of, we have to figure out what those activities should be, how they should change in response to outside disturbances. Activities have to be linked. Activities have to be rethought. And once we have figured all that out, which is, of course, an ongoing struggle, then people have to be motivated to cooperate inside those, and actually carry out those activities in the best possible way and in a dynamic reality. This is a never-ending quest.No human system run itself11:44: No human system works itself or runs itself. It has to be supported, maintained. There has to be support, scaffolding, or whatever you want to call it. Same goes for firms—and perhaps all different ones.Organization is about coordinated cooperation02:40: At the end of the day, organization is about coordinated cooperation, and the right question to ask is, what exactly is the role of managers in bringing about coordinated cooperation?Boselessness is not for every company20:43: [Bosslessness] It works for some companies, typically those that have a more modular kind of underlying technology, where there is no high need for mutual adaptation between units or activities or processes. But it works much less well for a traditional industrial company.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Organizational theoryPrincipal–agent problemFirst, Let's Fire All the Managers by Gary HamelJensen HuangElon Musk by Walter IsaacsonCan you run a company as a perfect free market? Inside Disco Corp Morningstar, Inc.Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them by Gary Hamel and Michele ZaniniValve CorporationThe Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (film)Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Copenhagen Business SchoolProfessional Profile on LinkedInGuest Work:Why Managers Matter: The Perils of the Bossless Company Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

One year ago, the Virani family made a historic gift to Rice Business, establishing the Virani Undergraduate School of Business. To mark the occasion, Owl Have You Know welcomes Farid Virani — entrepreneur, philanthropist and proud Rice University parent.In 1999, Farid founded Prime Communications with a single storefront in Houston's Baybrook Mall. Today, Prime Communications is the largest AT&T authorized retailer in North America, with more than 2,500 locations across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Along the way, Farid has relied on three guiding principles — "stay humble, hungry and scrappy" — which continue to shape his approach to business and life.He joins host Maya Pomroy '22 to share his entrepreneurial journey, the Virani family's commitment to education and community, and the vision behind the Virani Undergraduate School of Business — a school designed to empower the next generation of ethical, curious, and compassionate business leaders.Episode Guide:00:15 Meet Farid Virani: Entrepreneur and Philanthropist04:26 Building a Business Empire05:58 Philanthropy and Community Investment07:39 The Virani Undergraduate School of Business11:24 Leadership and Business Education17:32 The Faris Foundation: A Legacy of Giving20:25 Advice for Aspiring EntrepreneursThe Owl Have You Know Podcast is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:How being agile can separate you from other business leaders14:13: So, everything is moving very fast. For the next generation of entrepreneurs, the business leaders not only have to build businesses and solve problems in society, but they have to be agile. They have to be fast. They have to embrace technology. That's a lot of stuff that is coming their way. They have to find their own North Star as to what they're going to do, and how you do it, I think, will depend on individuals—on their passion, on what they find exciting, what excites them. But more than that, to me, it will require a mixture of basic business fundamentals—doing the right things, building things, having great teams around—but embracing technology, not running away from it. Embracing change, not running away from it. I think that will separate successful entrepreneurs and businesses.What Farid hopes for the Virani School15:48: So, my hope is that the Virani School at Rice becomes a top 10 school in the country. Top 5. You said it. That is what we strive—I think Peter and the leadership will strive to do that. But more than that, for me, is that it becomes an institution—the Virani School—that develops the future leaders for the country. Now, whether they are in business, in entrepreneurship, whether it is in the political arena, or whether it is in any industry, so long as it develops leaders that give back to the community and give back to society, and give back to the country, then we will all benefit.Stay humble, hungry and scrappy21:02: Be curious, because you just do not know what life has in store for you. I mean, I think for me, being curious and asking questions about things has served me well, and obviously, be grateful that you are part of an amazing institution like Rice—even more special, the Virani School. But then, you know, stay humble, stay scrappy, and stay hungry, and that pretty much has served me well. And it is simple, you can remember it, and it is nothing fancy.Show Links: TranscriptThe Virani Undergraduate School of Business announcementGuest Profile:Farid Virani | Rice Business

As the 2025 municipal elections approach, the New York City mayoral race has garnered national buzz, with one issue particularly capturing attention: rent control. On this episode, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen explore and unpack the best possible reasons for rent control, and why oftentimes – those reasons still come up short. They contextualize their discussion with historical examples from Chicago and San Francisco, analyze the arguments for rent control, and explain how despite rent control's aim to bring more balance to the tenant-landlord dynamic, its negative repercussions on housing supply might outweigh the benefits. 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How have politics changed from the  Bill Clinton era to that of  Donald Trump? How have identity politics diverted attention from economic issues, and how have the educated elites derailed activism?Fredrik deBoer is the author of both fiction and nonfiction works, including The Mind Reels, The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice, and How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement.Greg and Fredrik discuss the American political left and why the left-right dichotomy fails to tell the complete story.  Fredrik provides a critical examination of the internal divisions within the political left, identity politics, and the impact of social media on political engagement. He argues that the left's preoccupation with symbolic issues often undermines its ability to build broad-based coalitions, and suggests a return to class-first politics as a more effective strategy. They also touch on the role of nonprofits, the evolution of meritocracy in education, and the challenges of achieving genuine economic and social justice.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How social media turned politics into identity performance45:28: What makes all of this particularly more pernicious in the 21st century is, it's not just now your immediate peer group of people you see face-to-face. You've got to answer to a couple thousand people on social media who know your name and who know where you work, and who will yell at you if you have the, quote-unquote, wrong position. Right? And this is a thing that has happened all over the world of the left, which is, cultural issues began to be foregrounded above economic issues to an extreme extent. There was a development of a very narrow sort of list of approved opinions that you could hold on cultural and social issues. They came to be seen as sort of outside of the realm of politics, and without anyone actually intending for it to happen, what the sort of default young Democrat in politics was shifted over time in an extreme identitarian direction.When politics becomes a team sport, everyone loses nuance29:18: I think we are just training generations of young people who do not understand politics as anything other than a sort of blood sport, organized around a very simplistic binary.The heart of politics is empathy, not ideology07:23: I have a very long list of disagreements with Bill Clinton, but he was a political genius, and everyone knows, his signature phrase is, I feel your pain. And to me, that's the heart of politics. It's saying, I understand that you need something, and I'm here for you. In that sense, the identity politics on the left in the last 15 years has been about telling large groups of people that they do not have real problems, right? So, if you go show up to a university campus and you start to talk about some of the problems that afflict, for example, the white working class, you'll be told quite directly, oh, to center the white working class, right, is to privilege racism and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? It's saying directly to these people, your problems are not real problems. And so, like, that's the perfect example of where you are sacrificing potential allies for a benefit that I just do not even understand.Show Links:Recommended Resources:SocialismMarxismProgressivismSingle-Payer HealthcareBill ClintonDonald TrumpAdolph L. Reed Jr.Paul IngrassiaOccupy Wall StreetIron Law of OligarchyRobert ReichBarack ObamaGuest Profile:FredrikdeBoer.comWikipedia ProfileFredrik deBoer SubstackGuest Work:Amazon Author PageThe Mind ReelsThe Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social InjusticeHow Elites Ate the Social Justice MovementRelated UnSILOed episodes:Michael Spence - A Deep Dive into Signaling and Market Dynamics Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On this episode of the OneHaas Alumni Podcast, meet Bryce Gilleland, a general partner at the Cal Innovation Fund, who is helping tomorrow's most-innovative founders change the world. Bryce, a Californian through-and-through, grew up in Irvine before moving to San Francisco to begin his career at Pacific Gas and Electric. After many successful years in the energy sector, he hit a ceiling and saw the MBA program at Haas as a pathway forward. But what began as a practical step in his career turned into so much more. Bryce joins host Sean Li to discuss his journey from PG&E to venture capital and how coaching others and a personal growth mindset is at the core of everything Bryce does. *OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:On what led him to Haas and his drive to get an MBA“The beautiful part of the whole thing was like after going to Haas, it really opened up my eyes. You know, I saw a bunch of other students with a bunch of other jobs. I saw a bunch of people starting their own businesses and it really expands your mind going there and just talking to your fellow students and hearing some really inspirational professors and, you know, the chancellor now, Chancellor Lyons, he was the dean of Haas right when I joined, and he was super inspirational. So even at the welcome dinner, he was like, I want my students to learn all this stuff, but I really want them to learn: ‘They do that, we do that.' And that line stuck with me so much where it's like, oh, okay, yeah, I don't have to just simply revere or wonder why other people did it. I could actually go leap in and try to do it myself.”On his decision to take a semester off and travel the world“ There was like a need to go do it and find more of myself, like shed the layers. So it was really, really cool that – you know, I'm forever thankful for Berkeley for many things. But one of them was that they were like, yeah, we have a method for this. We'll make it work. And they gave me that chance to do that.”How he ended up with the Cal Innovation Fund“ When this presented itself, I just dove in and was like, okay, I gotta have some ability to coach and impact leaders because that's what I feel like is kind of in my soul, almost, or my spirit is aligned towards that. And then I wanna be able to make an impact in the world. And, you know, the Cal fund aligns with that. Totally.”What opportunities the Cal Innovation Fund looks for“We try to invest in startups that are gonna make a greener, healthier, more sustainable world. So it's kind of a value-based fund. And then the fund donates 50% of the GP profits (so the company profits, not the investors') back to the school. And so it just feels very aligned in that we're trying to support the Berkeley ecosystem, really all the UCs, but most founders are outta Berkeley, and trying to make the world a better place in the process. And then trying to give back to that system and create the flywheel of innovation for that.”Show Links:LinkedIn ProfileSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

How will AI change the size, shape, and structure of companies? Where will we see new leverage points in the AI economy? How does AI mobe beyond task automation and into coordination of tasks? How does a manager keep from becoming just a cog in a system of automations?Sangeet Paul Choudary is a senior fellow at UC Berkeley, a consultant, and the author and co-author of several books. His latest work is titled, Reshuffle: Who Wins When AI Restacks the Knowledge Economy.Greg and Sangeet discuss Sangeet's latest book, as well as the work he co-authored, Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You. Sangeet emphasizes how AI's transformative impacts extend beyond automating tasks to fundamentally altering industry structures, competitive advantages, and corporate strategies. The conversation also covers even broader implications of continued AI adoption like modularity in business, the shifting roles in professional services, and the creation of new economic control points. They provide a comprehensive look at how businesses can realign their strategies around AI as an engine driving innovation and competitive advantage for the future.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:AI as a tool vs. AI as an engine22:28: The idea of using AI as a tool versus AI as an engine is that a tool is typically something that you bolt onto your existing workflows—pick a tool from the toolbox, and it helps you speed up a task, perform it faster, better, cheaper. But if you're really using an engine, you're constantly thinking about how to redesign your entire workflow and your entire organization, your business model, around the capabilities of the engine.Bridging the gap in AI through storytelling and narrative54:19: Storytelling and narrative, in general, are such important skills today because we are in an age where we are information-rich but attention-poor. And the way to harness that attention is to have compelling storytelling and narratives that bridge that gap.How is the basis of competition shifting?29:09: The impact of AI does not play out only at the level of tasks—tasks that are inside workflows. So workflows get transformed. Workflows are organized through organizational mechanisms, so new organizational systems will have to come into place. And organizations, essentially, compete in an ecosystem. They help firms compete in an ecosystem. And so the starting point would be to ask ourselves—with AI coming in and with other forces at play—how is the basis of competition shifting? What was the basis on which firms previously competed? What was our basis of differentiation and competition? And does that change? Do some of those assumptions no longer hold true? And on that basis, if we can lay out some clear hypotheses and heuristics on what's changing in terms of the basis of competition, what does that mean in terms of the capabilities we need to have in place?...All of those need to come into question and need to be evaluated.Show Links:Recommended Resources:WalmartSheinPlatform EconomyLarge Language ModelTikTokSocial GraphThe Open Graph protocolErik BrynjolfssonGeneral ElectricPerplexity AIOpenAIBest BuyAmazon AlexaGuest Profile:Profile on Platform Thinking LabsProfile on LinkedInProfile on WikipediaSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Amazon Author PageReshuffle: Who Wins When AI Restacks the Knowledge EconomyThe Fast Future Blur: Discover Transformative Interconnections Shaping the FuturePlatform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for YouPlatform Scale: How an emerging business model helps startups build large empires with minimum investmentMediumSubstackRelated unSILOed Episodes:Geoff Parker | Will Every Business Become a Platform Business?Marc Levinson | How the Container Changed the World Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How does code, like language, shape the way we see the world? How can we rediscover enchantment in our technology?? How can we determine the half-life of knowledge as we continue to learn and discover new things?Samuel Arbesman is a scientist in residence at Lux Capital, a fellow at Case Western School of Management, and the author of three books, The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World—and Shapes Our Future, Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension, and The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date.Greg and Samuel discuss Samuel's newest book, The Magic of Code, and how programming languages have evolved and continue to evolve over time. Samuel explores society's enchantment and disenchantment with technology, the evolution of programming languages, the intersection of computer science and humanities, and the ongoing shift towards more democratized software creation. They also go over Samuel's  earlier works, highlighting the temporary nature of facts and the continual necessity for adaptive learning in a rapidly evolving world.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Reenchanting technology through humanities 03:24: I think the larger perspective of the book [The Magic of Code] is to also recognize that, in addition to this wonder and delight, also recognizing that when we think about computing competition, it doesn't need to just be this branch of engineering or this thing of computer science. It really is this almost humanistic liberal art that, when you think about it properly, should connect to language and philosophy and biology and art and how we think and the nature of reality and all these different kinds of things. And for me, those are the windows and the lenses that allow us to actually kind of re-enchant, not even just computing, but in turn many aspects of our own lives, and hopefully can repair at least a little bit of that kind of broken relationship.On the magic of code06:31:  We actually have this weird information stuff that can actually work in the real world. That's amazing. And we should pause at least and say, wow, that really is incredible.Why democratizing software is powerful26:56: This idea of being able to democratize software creation is incredibly powerful. And actually, in going back to the analogy with magic, I mean, yes, in many of the tales of magic, it did require a great deal of effort. You had to apprentice, or you had to, I don't know, go to Hogwarts for seven years or whatever it is. But there also were stories of magic for everyone; there were spells that could be used by people if they, like in the Middle Ages, had lost their cattle and needed to recover it. And I think we need that same kind of thing in the software realm as well, which is, we need spells and code that can be used by everyone. And now, with this ability, it's unbelievable to see.Ideas are always in draft form53:41: A professor of mine, when I was in graduate school, told me this story. This was already after I had left grad school. He was telling me this story that he was teaching some course, came in on Tuesday, and gave a lecture on some topic. Then, the next day, he read a paper that invalidated the lecture he had given the day before. So he went in on Thursday and said, “Remember what I taught you on Tuesday? It's wrong. And if that bothers you, you need to get out of science.” And I think that kind of idea—that science, or what we know, is constantly in draft form—is a very powerful idea.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Max WeberDuneiPhone (1st generation)ChatGPTH. P. LovecraftFantasiaGuido van RossumLarry WallSapir–Whorf HypothesisList of Programming LanguagesBrainfuckFortranPerlVibe CodingRobin SloanVIC-20Pierre-Simon LaplaceVannevar BushDon R. SwansonLuis Walter AlvarezMarc BenioffThe Unaccountability MachineIsaac AsimovGuest Profile:Arbesman.netProfessional Profile for  LuxCapitaLinkedIn AccountSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Amazon Author PageThe Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World—and Shapes Our FutureOvercomplicated: Technology at the Limits of ComprehensionThe Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration DateWired ArticlesSubstack - Cabinet of Wonders Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is it time to overhaul the way we study and teach ancient history? Are we limiting our ability to understand fully how the past informs the present in ways like inequality if we keep these disciplines siloed?Walter Scheidel is a professor of humanities, classics, and history at Stanford University. He's the author of more than a dozen books, including What Is Ancient History? and The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century.Walter and Greg discuss methodological divides between departments studying ancient history, the relevance of the Classics today, and the case for a new discipline on “foundational history.” They also explore the origins of inequality and how war, plagues, and technological advancements are the primary drivers for equality shifts. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How ancient innovations still shape the modern world13:37: People face similar challenges, and they should be studied accordingly. And we should try to understand how people, at the time of many thousands of years ago, put all kinds of innovations in place and bundled them together in very specific ways that really create our world—in terms of material culture, in terms of social arrangements, institutions, cognitive frameworks, if you will. Writing and literature and world religions and other belief systems, and so on, are still very much with us. They really shape everything that we do today. So the world we inhabit today is like a supercharged version of what people set up in this formative period. But they did it all over the place.Why ancient studies need a paradigm shift10:08: Unless there is some major paradigm shift or some major other shock to the system, there's really no sufficient force to reconfigure the way we approach the study of the ancient world.Redefining ancient history beyond Greece and Rome03:03: If you're a historian, you may want to ask, well, why isn't ancient history, like Roman history, part of our history patterns more generally? And to go beyond that, what do we mean mostly by Greece and Rome when we say ancient history? I think we mean two things when we evoke ancient history. One is Greeks and Romans, maybe Egyptians and Nas if you're lucky, but not, you know, Maya or early China and that sort of thing. Or, more commonly, you refer to something you think is irrelevant and obsolete. You say that's ancient history whenever you want to dismiss something—it's like, that's ancient history. So my book is about both of these meanings and why neither one of them really does any justice to the subject matter and to what our understanding should be of this particular part of history. I want to redefine it as a truly transformative, foundational phase—not so much a period, but a phase of human development that unfolded on a planetary scale and needs to be studied accordingly.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Gini coefficientBranko MilanovićKuznets curveGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Stanford UniversityProfessional WebsiteProfessional Profile on XGuest Work:What Is Ancient History?The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)Part of: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World (55 books)The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy (Cambridge Companions to the Ancient World)Part of: Cambridge Companions to the Ancient Athens (17 books) The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World by Walter Scheidel, Ian Morris, et al.The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium (Oxford Studies in Early Empires) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Solicited or not, advice on where to invest your money seems to be around every corner these days. But determining whether the advice is credible and worth listening to can be challenging. On this episode, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen put sources of investment advice to the test and provide listeners with some guidance on how to judge the credibility of someone's stock picks. They also discuss private investing and the potential risk of getting in on the ground floor as an angel investor. 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For Marian Villegas '23, art can be found in everything — even petroleum engineering. Raised in Tabasco, Mexico, Marian grew up inspired by her father's work in oil and gas and her own lifelong love of painting. That dual passion led her to a career in petroleum engineering — and eventually to Rice Business, where her MBA helped her grow in both her role as a senior asset manager at EDP Renewables North America and as the founder of her art studio, Mablueart.In this episode, Marian joins co-host Maya Pomroy '22 to share how she's built a career that bridges energy and art, the lessons she's carried from Tabasco to Houston, and why creativity continues to guide everything she does.Episode Guide:01:38 Growing up in Tabasco04:37 Pursuing a Career in Petroleum Engineering09:51 Transition to the United States and Career Growth14:05 Discovering and Nurturing a Passion for Art18:57 Exploring Graduate School and MBA Programs23:43 Starting Mablueart26:15 Incorporating Unique Elements Into Art33:12 Future Goals and Teaching at RiceThe Owl Have You Know Podcast is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:Seeing petroleum engineering as an art[6:13]: So I wanted to have a good understanding of that [petroleum engineering] from a guy who was leading an entire organization. So I went there. He was extremely nice. He saw me, he's a very sharp guy. And then the minute he saw me, he was like, “Okay, Marian, I guess those are all your questions. I'm going to just talk about petroleum engineering. You don't need to tell me questions. I will just tell you my story.” And after an hour and a half — not 15 minutes — an hour and a half, of this amazing story, I fell in love with that, the idea of being a petroleum engineer. He'd talk about, “This is art.” You know, the words, the way he was explaining that to me, like a story… for me that was a: Yes, I want something that I can feel that passionate about. For me, it's also art in a way.From oil and gas roots to pursuing art[3:59]: I grew up in this beautiful town. It's a very small town, Tabasco (Villahermosa), but it is all about oil and gas. Everybody, every single thing, is about oil and gas. So I always loved art in a way — always reading art, always painting. I have been painting my whole life in different aspects, but I never thought about that as another source of income, in a way, as a business.When art as therapy becomes a business[17:06]: Until today, it [creating art] used to be my therapy, in a way. I would work the entire week, and during the weekends I would paint full-time. And for me, that was my escape. Today it's also business. I have deliverables, I have people waiting. And my biggest fear was that, at some point, I would just stop enjoying this part of the art world because I needed to deliver. So that's why I guess it took me so long to decide to make it big, as I did not want to see this as another job. I wanted to keep painting and seeing this as my therapy, and art is always, for me, the answer. But, I did'nt want that to take away that creativity from me.Show Links: Mablueart.comThe Art of Networking with Marian Villegas – Nov. 1, 2025 at Rice UniversityTranscriptGuest Profile:Marian Villegas | LinkedIn

When it comes to the concept of The West, its scope and principles have been criticized both contemporarily and historically. How did the West emerge as a coherent concept, and what has it meant over time?Georgios Varouxakis is a Professor in the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary University of London, where he is also the Co-director of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought. He is also the author of several books, and his newest book is titled The West: The History of an Idea.Greg and Georgios discuss Giorgios's new book, 'The West: The History of an Idea,' and explore the origins, evolution, and various interpretations of the concept of 'the West.' Their conversation covers some popular misconceptions about the West, reasons behind its historical development, and the roles nations like Greece, Russia, and Ukraine have played in shaping the West's identity. Giorgios emphasizes how the West has been a flexible and evolving idea, open to new members and continuously redefined through history. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The two myths of the West's origins03:06: The popular conceptions are that the West must have always existed. People take for granted that at least since the ancient Greeks, there is a West that has resisted the invasion of Asia through the Persian Empire and that in the Battle of Marathon, the West defined itself and defeated. A projection of things that people later imagined. In this sense, ancient Greeks saw themselves as Greeks. They did not see themselves as West or Europe or anything else. The other end of the spectrum is that the West must have begun with a Cold War, that surely the West is a creation of the post–First World War situation where the United States leads a group of peoples versus the Soviet Union, and that is the West. These are the two popular extremes. Popular conceptions that I consider, the two ends of the spectrum.The West as an open-ended idea17:14: The West had inherent from its inception an open-endedness that was not based on just ethnic descent or just religion.Richard Wright: The gadfly of the West37:14: [Richard Wright] says, "I'm Western, but I now realize I'm more Western than the West. I'm more advanced than the West. I believe in the Western principles and values, and constitutional and political and other philosophical ideas. I was taught, I believe in freedom of speech, separation of, and the of. These are not necessarily practiced much of the time by Western governments and elites. So he becomes literally like Socrates was the gadfly of Athenian democracy. Richard Wright becomes the gadfly of the West, saying, 'I'm criticizing you because you're not doing the Western thing. You're not Western enough.' Literally, he says, 'The West is not Western enough.'"Why the West should be improved, not abolished47:48: My argument is peoples and their leaderships make decisions, and they may change allegiances. They may adopt institutions, alliances, and cultural references that their ancestors did not have a century or two ago, come from a country that. An experiment in that these experiments may change. You know, things may change, but I do not think anytime soon Greece will join some Eastern or whatever alliance. So to the extent that what anyone can predict, the attractiveness of the West is exactly this combination of, and an entity. As we keep saying, it should be criticized and improved. So it is not abolishing the West that I would recommend, it is improving the West and making the West live up to more of its aspirations and principles.Show Links:Recommended Resources:John Stuart MillAuguste ComteOttoman EmpirePeter the GreatCatherine the GreatGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelAhmed RızaOliver GoldsmithJean-Jacques RousseauGermaine de StaëlThomas MannFrancis LieberDonald TrumpSteve BannonOswald SpenglerWestern CivilizationWalter LippmannW. E. B. Du BoisRichard WrightFrancis FukuyamaGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Queen Mary University of LondonLinkedIn ProfileGuest Work:Amazon Author PageThe West: The History of an IdeaLiberty Abroad: J. S. Mill on International RelationsMill on NationalityVictorian Political Thought on France and the FrenchPhilPapers.org Profile Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For Hispanic Heritage Month, the OneHaas Alumni Podcast is honored to share the story of Richard Velazquez, a mission-driven executive who is using his decades of experience in a variety of industries to help other Latinx MBA students and alumni succeed. Every time Richard felt like he hit a ceiling at a job, he pivoted and found new ways to keep moving up. Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, Richard learned the value of education and hard work from an early age. It was this drive that got him accepted into one of the most competitive engineering colleges in the U.S. and launched his career into the automotive industry. Richard's relentless pursuit for personal growth led him to hold senior leadership positions at Microsoft, Pepsico, and Amazon. But through all those jobs, a constant for him has been his desire to give back and uplift other Hispanic business professionals in their careers.  Richard chats with host Sean Li about his career journey from designing cars at Honda and Porsche, to being one of the key masterminds behind Xbox Kinect, his pivotal role at Pepsico, and his new position as CEO of the Latinx MBA Association.  *OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:On his journey to Haas and getting his MBA“When I had the opportunity to move to Germany to work for Porsche, I put my MBA plans on hold and I was like, you know, I'd rather go to Germany and live in Europe for a few years before I take that route. So it was great. I really loved living in Europe. That's where my love for traveling started. I've been to 105 countries since then, but it all started living in Germany…So after two years at Porsche in Germany, I applied through the Consortium for Graduate Study Management, they give full fellowships. At the time it was for underrepresented minorities who were looking to get their MBA and was open to anyone who has a commitment to diversity. And I applied, I got into Haas.”On Xbox Kinect's success and Richard and his team's involvement “People just really got into it... So the thing with Kinect was since it was doing skeletal tracking, if you just flick your wrist, the character on the screen would just flick their wrist. There was no like faking it. So Dance Central was phenomenal. It showed you which arm was wrong. It highlighted in red when you were doing something wrong and it was game changing at the time. So it set a Guinness World Record, it was the fastest selling consumer electronics device, it was like 10 million 10 million units in less than like two and a half months or something like that. So it was a big deal.”On his decision to leave Microsoft for the beverage industry and a top role at Pepsico“ It was similar to like the car design and like, it's gonna be slightly different [but] it's all gonna do the same thing. So it wasn't advantageous for me to do it 'cause I wasn't linear or growing in any way, shape or form.  I'm still an individual contributor. I'm not leading any teams. I want to get promoted, I want to advance.”On why he wanted to pursue a full time role in helping other Hispanic business professionals grow “ After 30 years, I was like, well, I'm getting more personal fulfillment from these scholarships that I'm getting for students who are like me who didn't have those opportunities to get into school, for helping people get their first jobs, for helping them invest in their careers, than I am by making an extra billion dollars or a hundred million dollars for Amazon or these other companies that don't really need it…It's not giving me the personal satisfaction that I'm getting from this work I'm doing with people.”Show Links:LinkedIn ProfileLatinx MBA Association WebsiteSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

Why is historical context so important when looking at topics from the past? What role does a broader appreciation of the humanities play in understanding contemporary issues?Darrin M. McMahon is a professor of history at Dartmouth College and the author of several books. Recent titles include Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea and the Divine Fury: A History of Genius book.Greg and Darrin discuss Darrin's intellectual journey and his approach to longue durée intellectual history. Darrin provides insights into his books on happiness, genius, and equality, exploring themes like the evolution of concepts over time, the intersection of words and ideas, and the roles of intellectual historians. Their conversation examines the connections between religious traditions and modern concepts, the interplay of born versus made attributes, and the historical perspectives on the concepts of happiness and genius. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Are genius, happiness, and equality born or made?41:06: Are geniuses born, or are they made? You know, can you play the guitar for 10,000 hours, à la Malcolm Gladwell, and become a Beatle? Or, you know, is there just something in you? And that turns out to be a kind of central conflict all the way back to the ancients. Same, as you say, with happiness, right? Is happiness just in our genes? We know some people are wired to just be cheery in the morning. Right? I'm not one of those people. Or does it happen to you? Right? Or can you make it? Right? Can you control your life in such a way so that you can bring about happiness? And the same with equality, right? Are we born equals? Are we made equals in political circumstance? Are we intended to be equal? This too gets tied up with debates around it, around the concept from very early on. And they never really entirely go away. So again, it's a nice way of kind of pointing out continuities, but then also marking points of departure and change.Why equality creates inequality29:37: Equality always serves, or always brings into being, new forms of inequality. That very assertion of equals then creates the space then for thinking or measuring others against that standard, and relegating to place.Intellectual history teaches us how to love49:28: Intellectual history teaches you to get inside the minds of others who see the world in radically different ways from how you do. And that is what love is all about: trying to get inside the mind of a person who sees the world differently from you, and to empathize even when you do not agree, to understand even when you do not condone. That is crucial. It is a crucial human endeavor, and I think intellectual history teaches that very well.The arc of equality isn't as straight as we think30:29: Equality leads to us, and then it's going to spread, and, you know, spill down to more and more people. It will expand and get wider. I grew up in California. I was born in 1965 with that kind of vague idea, and no one said it was going to be easy. Martin Luther King certainly knew it was not going to be easy, and yet, as you say, the arc of history bends towards justice, bends towards equality. We're gradually extending equality to wider and wider circles of people. And that's just how it will go. And I think we were deceived by our own rhetoric. And it was really a rude awakening in 2016 to wake up and realize, oh gosh, you know, it does not quite work that way. And as rude an awakening as that's been, I think it also provides an opportunity then to go back and examine a concept like equality that we thought we knew in some ways, but that really turns out to be much more complicated and fraught than I think we fully appreciated.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Longue DuréeRobert DarntonArthur Oncken LovejoyAnglo-SaxonsPlatoSubjective Well-beingJeremy BenthamThe Happiness HypothesisAge of EnlightenmentSocratesDaemonDoctor FaustusMichelangeloMichel FoucaultMemento MoriFascesTeresa BejanMartin Luther King Jr.Tall Poppy SyndromeChristopher BoehmBranko MilanovićKarl MarxJean-Jacques RousseauArthur SchopenhauerFriedrich NietzscheThomas CarlyleAugustine of HippoPresentismGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Dartmouth UniversityDarrinMcMahon.comWikipedia ProfileGuest Work:Amazon Author PageEquality: The History of an Elusive IdeaHistory and Human FlourishingDivine Fury: A History of GeniusHappiness: A HistoryEnemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

With growing concerns over whether or not AI will take away jobs and eventually become superior to human intelligence, maybe it's time to take a closer look at the human brain and discover how AI will always have its limitations. Hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen sit down with Jeff Hawkins, a neuroscientist and computer scientist, whose book A Thousand Brains challenges the way we think about intelligence and how the brain works. Jonathan, Jules, and Jeff discuss the fundamentals of how the human brain operates and how it differs from the way current AI models work. They also dive into the cutting-edge innovations happening in the world of AI and whether future versions of the technology could one day emulate the human brain more closely.  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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Al Danto, senior lecturer in entrepreneurship, has been a trusted mentor and beloved member of the Rice Business community for more than two decades. A serial entrepreneur, he launched his first company at the age of 23, growing it through multiple acquisitions before selling to a private equity-backed group. After earning his MBA at Rice Business, he returned to teach New Enterprise, Enterprise Acquisition and their corresponding E-labs – guiding students as they build and acquire businesses of their own. He is also a driving force behind the Veterans Business Battle. Beyond his professional success, Al has had a personal journey few could imagine. In May 2022, Al experienced two life-threatening medical crises and was placed on advanced life support. Sixty-five days later, he walked out of the hospital determined to return to the classroom, and by October, he was back. In this episode of Owl Have You Know, Al shares his extraordinary career journey, his story of recovery and why he urges everyone to “grab life” and make a difference. Episode Guide:00:22 Meet Al Danto: The Entrepreneurial Legend01:01 Al Danto's Early Ventures and Successes07:56 Scaling the Business and Strategic Exits12:32 The Rice MBA Experience16:55 Launching Universal Worker20:31 Rice Alliance and the Rice Business Plan Competition25:52 Teaching and Mentoring at Rice29:22 Identifying the Secret Sauce of Successful Entrepreneurs33:42 Personal Health Challenges and Overcoming Adversity43:38 The Role of Mentorship and Support in Success49:00 The Veterans Business Battle: Supporting Veteran Entrepreneurs51:24 Vision for the Future of Rice UniversityOwl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:On the tough realities of entrepreneurship and success[26:44] Maya Pomroy: For people to sign up to really take these risks, what do you think that it is that you bring? That people are so excited about.[26:53] Al Danto: First thing I try to do is talk you out of it. It's not easy. I mean, it's tough. You have — it's really hard. I mean, you see a lot about the glamour, and you see all this stuff. You know, 80% of business startups — fail. I think at Rice, what we do is we have a fertile ground, right? To plant these seeds in. You have support. You have nurturing, and you have everything, but it's a tough road. To me, a lot of it is you make the decisions. I personally think, for most cases, if you start a business, the success or failure comes to you. You know, 86% of plane crashes are pilot or human error. Which we talk about in class. And I think entrepreneurship is pretty similar.On making ideas real and sustaining Rice's entrepreneurial legacy[28:50] The reality is you have to get out there and you have to do it, and you have to make these things real. And I think, you know, we've done that. It's kind of in our DNA. And so now, five years, six years in a row now, the No. 1 Graduate Entrepreneurship Program — it's not because of me, it's because of what was started long ago, and it's because of support. And now our alumni come back in, and they say what they've done — the good and the bad — that we bring back in.Believing in something bigger and rowing together at Rice[50:30] I think it's important to have something that you believe in. I think if you can't believe in, and anytime you see a military veteran, they put their life to go give us freedom. And a couple years ago, one of the veterans told me the best way that you can show our support is not to thank us, but to go out there and take advantage of the freedoms that we have. I think entrepreneurship is one of them as well. So it's really been great, and every year these guys have not wanted to let the next person down, and they've stepped up and stepped into it. And I think that's just not letting the next person down. And I think everyone that goes through Rice is going to experience that. It's tough, but you're in the rowboat mentality. We're in this together, and we have to get through it, and y'all will. And that's part of it.Show Links: TranscriptGuest Profiles:Al Danto | Rice Business

There is a misconception that liberalism lacks a vision of ‘the good life,' but liberalism is more ingrained in society than often recognized. It affects media, education, and personal beliefs of those in society both directly and indirectly.Alexandre Lefebvre is a professor of politics and philosophy at the University of Sydney in Australia, and the author and editor of several books.  His latest work is Liberalism as a Way of Life.Greg and Alex discuss the historical and philosophical critiques of liberalism, discussing whether liberalism needs a theory of ‘the good life' to remain relevant and compelling. Alexandre argues that liberalism has permeated various aspects of modern life, contradicting the common view that it is merely a procedural framework. They also explore John Rawls's philosophy, particularly his concepts of the original position and reflective equilibrium, and examine how these ideas can serve as spiritual exercises for cultivating a liberal ethos. Alexandre highlights the need for liberals to live up to their principles and examines the future challenges and opportunities for liberalism in a pluralistic society.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What are the goods of the liberal way of life?36:14: What are the goods of the liberal way of life? I do think that they are real goods and, at the heart of it, I would say. I mean, I think any conception of the good life kind of parks two or three virtues, kind of limit at four, I know, at the heart of what it means to live well. And then they have kind of derivative qualities and virtues flowing out from that. So, I take liberals at their word that the two major commitments they have are, let's say, to liberty and liberality, or to freedom and fairness as a kind of interpretation of what it means to be generous. And out of that comes a whole personality structure. That's what I believe. A whole psychology emanates from that. And it behooves us as liberals to cultivate that, not just because it makes us not jerks and not hypocrites, but because living according to those values and those virtues is intrinsically rewarding and joyful. [37:09] So, that's the first thing I want to say: that the liberal personality isn't just a political thing. I want to say that it disseminates into all aspects of our life, from how we deal with our wife or our husband, our romantic partners, how we raise our kids, to the kind of jokes we laugh at, the kind of stuff that makes us upset, et cetera, et cetera.Why liberalism needs more than rules09:14: If liberalism can't compel ethical assent and robust commitment, then what are we talking about? We're done for, we can't campaign forever on just a set of rules, however noble they are. There has to be a there, there.Why do people reject liberalism?34:27: I think that a lot of people saying no to liberalism, it's not because they can't live up to its demands, but because they look at the ideals and say, no, not for me, that this is not the kind of life I want. And that the vision of the good life and the good quality is in a different direction. And I think that those are principled rejections of liberalism that make, for me, a lot of sense. And that if we want to understand the attraction of illiberalism, postliberal, all that stuff, we can't just think that these people are either cowards or afraid, or that their leaders are just motivated by the goods of tyranny—kind of sex, power, money, all that stuff. That is part of the picture, no doubt, but they're motivated by genuine ideals that liberalism crowds out.Liberalism as a way of life27:16: Philosophy is a way of life. And what I try to do in my book [Liberalism as a Way of Life] is suggest that liberalism could be seen, sort of, in the same vein.Show Links:Recommended Resources: LiberalismJohn RawlsAdrian VermeuleKarl MarxSøren KierkegaardEpicureanismLiberal DemocracyA Theory of JusticeAlexis de TocquevilleLast ManJudith N. ShklarMisanthropyPierre HadotIris MurdochDave ChappelleHannah GadsbyPatrick DeneenFrench RevolutionCult of ReasonGuest Profile:AlexLefebvre.comFaculty Profile at the University of SydneyLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Amazon Author PageLiberalism as a Way of LifeHuman Rights and the Care of the SelfHuman Rights as a Way of Life: On Bergson's Political PhilosophyThe Image of Law: Deleuze, Bergson, SpinozaFreedom: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1904–1905Interpreting Bergson: Critical EssaysThe Subject of Human RightsHenri BergsonBergson, Politics, and ReligionWant more like this? Give these episodes a listen:Helena RosenblattSamuel Moyn Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Business leaders need to be versatile, critical thinkers capable of questioning the status quo while integrating actionable frameworks to drive innovation. How does this align with the principles today's business school graduates are learning and will they be capable of integrating actionable frameworks to drive innovation in the future?Scott D. Anthony is a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and the author of several books. His latest work is titled Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World.Greg and Scott discuss Scott's latest book, Epic Disruptions, as well as his previous works, including Dual Transformations and Eat, Sleep, Innovate. Their conversation examines the intricacies of disruption theory, its need for an update, and the complexity of business models in today's ecosystem-focused world. Scott shares insights from his extensive research and consulting experience, touching on historical examples like the iPhone, Tesla, and Julia Child, and emphasizing the importance of adapting mental models to navigate uncertainty. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Innovation is predictably unpredictable39:59: Scott: Randomness is absolutely a feature of every innovation story that you'll study. And the conclusion I drew from the research is that innovation has become more predictable, but it's not perfectly predictable. So I called it predictably unpredictable in that—Greg: Now, is it more predictable because we have better tools and better frameworks?Scott: I think so. I think A, we have better tools and better frameworks, and B, we really have learned the discipline of scientific method applied to strategy through lean startup, emergent strategy, and so on. So that does not mean that we can predict exactly. It does not mean that we know what is going to happen beforehand, but it means that we can confront the uncertainty in a more practiced, more methodical sort of way, so we can manage it in a different sort of way. I think that is a huge change in the innovation world. So, a combination of two things: better understanding, better research, which gives us better tools and frameworks, and then an active way to go and chip away at the things that we still will not know. But still, there is lots of unpredictability in it.Disruption changes the game08:52: The important thing about disruption is it changes the game, and by changing the game, it drives explosive growth.Why business schools must teach wisdom, not just tools44:28: There is a fundamental question of how do we make sure that it is connected to the modern world and what it needs to do? And second, technical tools are pretty easy to learn, and tools like ChatGPT, et cetera, can take it really well. We need to make sure that our students are critical thinkers that are really able to be what we are aspiring our students to be—wise, decisive leaders that better the world through business. We need to teach wisdom. We need to teach curiosity. We need to make sure that people go out with the right mindset, and that is really hard. That is not an easy thing to do in traditional classroom settings with case-based methods. I think there is still a huge role for that, and a role for simulations, experiential things—things that really push people to uncomfortable places where they learn and give them the humility, the wisdom to be able to confront an incredibly challenging world.On Florence Nightingale as a disruptor36:17: She [Florence Nightingale] goes and opens up nursing hospitals, enabling a broader population to be nurses. And like nightingales, they fly through the world. So she comes up with a really clear vision that is communicated clearly. She gives people step-by-step instructions, and she creates a cadre of people that can go and follow those instructions. And by doing so, she drives massive system change. This is disruption in healthcare—enabling a lesser-trained, lesser-skilled group of people to provide high-quality care, moving from treating bad things to preventing them from ever happening. So I love the story, because you think of her as a nurse. You think of her as somebody who helped people in a dire situation. Yes, she did all of that, but she also used data, used words, used teaching and training to change the world. Show Links:Recommended Resources:Clayton ChristensenDisruptive InnovationAlixPartnersSteve JobsAndrew GroveENIACiPhoneRita Gunther McGrathhttps://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/1156427Julia ChildFlorence NightingaleFrancis BaconScientific MethodBethlehem SteelDBS BankWilliam FarrCase MethodGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Tuck School of BusinessInnosight ProfileLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Amazon Author PageEpic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern WorldThe Innovator's Solution, with a New Foreword: Creating and Sustaining Successful GrowthEat, Sleep, Innovate: How to Make Creativity an Everyday Habit Inside Your OrganizationThe Little Black Book of Innovation: How It Works, How to Do ItDual Transformation: How to Reposition Today's Business While Creating the FutureThe First Mile: A Launch Manual for Getting Great Ideas into the MarketBuilding a Growth FactoryThe Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain TimesThe Innovator's Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to WorkSeeing What's Next: Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. 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While a higher education may help your career in terms of income, how much of what you're taught in a classroom actually prepares you for the work you do on the job?Hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen chat with economist Bryan Caplan about his book, “The Case Against Education.” In the book, Bryan lays out why education these days is less about what you're learning, and more about signaling to future employers that you'll be a good hire.Jonathan, Jules, and Bryan discuss the pitfalls of a modern liberal arts education, historical shifts that got us here, and what could be a more effective way of teaching. 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How did political and social pressures affect public health decisions during the pandemic, and how did media reporting amplify those effects? What is the cost when experts detach from evidence-based medicine for policymaking and defer decisions to those without the proper expertise?David Zweig is a journalist, novelist, and musician. He is also the author of An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions.Greg and David discuss David's journey from working on a different book during the pandemic to documenting the school closure policies and their implications. They cover various topics, including public health, expertise, the state of science, partisanship, tribalism in academia and the public sector, and how those factors influenced the policy and decisions during COVID. David talks about the decision-making processes behind prolonged school closures despite falling hospitalization rates, the role of media coverage, the politicization of public health recommendations, and the long-term impact on children's education and mental health. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The failure of the expert class30:39: One of the reasons that I felt motivated to spend years writing this book [An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions], and just painstakingly trying to create a document. So I am hoping that, if I am not too big for my britches here, I hope in a decade, or a couple of decades or more from now, people will look back at the book and use this as a tool to understand: How does something like this happen, where science and evidence are ignored? And not only is it ignored, but it is ignored by the people who ostensibly are the experts who should know better. I do not spend a lot of time criticizing Trump, or, you know, Alex Jones, or conspiracy theorist people, because that's boring. I already do not expect them to know what is going on, but I do expect people with advanced degrees. I do expect physicians, I do expect these public health experts. And my book, in many ways, is a study of how those people—it is the failure of the expert class.Intuition over data15:28: Real-world, like empirical evidence, was ignored almost entirely. And when it was acknowledged, even in a minimal way, it was dismissed with a bunch of really contrived reasons that were based again on the expert's intuition. None of this was based on any evidence or data.When models reflect privilege01:07:54: It's quite important to note that the people who made the models also tended to be the people who did the best in the pandemic. That's what this guy Eric Berg's philosopher, who I interviewed, pointed out to me many times. Like, boy, that's pretty ironic that the people who chose how to create these models, they were the ones who were in comfortable homes. They were the ones who had their kid. They probably had one or another parent at home with the kid to help them with their studying. Maybe they could pay for a tutor. Maybe they went to their vacation home somewhere. If the people designing the pandemic response were in a studio apartment in the Bronx with four children, with one absent parent, and with one of the kids sick and with a learning disability, I'm pretty darn sure that their recommendations would have been quite different if those were the circumstances they were living in.Show Links:Recommended Resources:COVID-19Andrew CuomoAnthony FauciDonald TrumpCenters for Disease Control and PreventionThe New York TimesMegan RanneyWired (magazine)Graham AllisonEvidence-Based MedicineMIS-CVladimir Kogan ProfileEmily OsterDeborah BirxGuest Profile:DavidZweig.comProfile on WikipediaSocial Profile on XSocial Profile on FacebookGuest Work:Amazon Author PageAn Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad DecisionsInvisibles: The Power of Anonymous Work in an Age of Relentless Self-PromotionSwimming Inside the SunArticles for The AtlanticSubstack Newsletter Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How does literature enrich our understanding of ourselves and of others, in ways that STEM fields and other forms of knowledge cannot? What is contained within the language of reading that you don't encounter with other art forms like painting or film?Arnold Weinstein is a Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Brown University and the author of several books. His latest two publications are The Lives of Literature: Reading, Teaching, Knowing and Morning, Noon, and Night: Finding the Meaning of Life's Stages Through Books.Greg and Arnold discuss how literature offers unique and invaluable insights into the human experience, bridging historical and cultural divides. Their conversation examines the connections between literature and self-discovery, the challenges of teaching literature in a contemporary academic setting, and the enduring relevance of classic works from authors like William Faulkner, William Shakespeare, and Mark Twain. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Life doesn't come in disciplines01:02:54: Literature helps you see history. That philosophy, et cetera, needs a good dosage of literature, which is why we created that course and let the disciplines—not the people, the disciplines themselves—do battle with each other. And there's no obvious answer here. There's no winner or loser. But the students were confused. They wanted to get what's the right take on this. Well, has anybody ever offered the right take on reality? Universities come packaged in disciplines. Life doesn't. It doesn't. All of our major problems cannot be solved with any single discipline, including economics and, you know, and coding.Literature makes us more human09:25: It's a good workout to read literature. It makes us more generous, as being able to award the notion of humanity to other people. Because I do not think you can kill them. You cannot stamp them out if you do not think back.Why great books leave you uneasy30:13: We are supposed to exit literature course, not exactly being more confused, but more embattled in a sense to see that other ways of being, as well as other ways, other values that people might have, is a kind of absolutely basic "meat-and-potatoes" element of human life. You cannot just live in your own silo, in your own scheme, even though you are locked in it. That's the point. We cannot exit ourselves.History isn't a fairy tale40:51: If we read the books, it only tells us what we want to know, which is what we are headed towards in this society today with the current political scene. Any text that is critical of American history is considered broke and therefore removed. And I'm worried that we are going to get a generation of people who think that American history is a fairy tale, which it is not, and no amount of rhetoric can change that. That we can police and prohibit these certain kinds of texts can take over the Kennedy Center, but we cannot, in fact, change what all of that is about, which is that we are still paying the bill for the history of racism and slavery in this country. It is not solved. We can just try to put it under the rug, but it is not solved by any means. So it is in that sense that the discomfort is required. If it simply massages us, say, "oh, this is terrific," then I think we are reading the wrong book.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Harold BloomFranz KafkaThe MetamorphosisSøren KierkegaardWilliam FaulknerMark TwainAdventures of Huckleberry FinnJamesBenito CerenoBlaise PascalWilliam ShakespeareKing LearHamletOthelloIagoToni MorrisonNaked LunchGuest Profile:Profile at Brown UniversityWikipedia PageProfile at Roundtable.orgGuest Work:Amazon Author PageThe Lives of Literature: Reading, Teaching, KnowingMorning, Noon, and Night: Finding the Meaning of Life's Stages Through BooksNorthern Arts: The Breakthrough of Scandinavian Literature and Art, from Ibsen to BergmanA Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About LifeRecovering Your Story: Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, MorrisonNobody's Home: Speech, Self, and Place in American Fiction from Hawthorne to DeLilloThe Great Courses - Classic Novels: Meeting the Challenge of Great Literature

After many successful years as a mechanical engineer for Baker Hughes, Sujeev Chittipolu '21 thought it was time to invest in his leadership potential. That led him to Rice Business.   As part of Rice's Professional MBA program, Sujeev formed invaluable connections through programs like CoachRICE and even joined the board of one of his classmate's nonprofits — Amel Association Houston. Through Amel, Sujeev is taking what he learned at Rice Business and building leadership coaching programs for underserved youth in Houston, particularly in refugee communities. In this episode, Sujeev chats with co-host Maya Pomroy '22 about his 16 years at Baker Hughes, how growing up in an entrepreneurial family shaped him, his work with Amel to give back to the community, and how the Rice MBA helped him put the final pieces together in his career. Episode Guide:01:30 Early Career and Education02:14 Journey at Baker Hughes05:37 Pursuing an MBA at Rice09:51 Giving Back Through AMEL15:19 Balancing Career and Personal Life16:00 Advice for Aspiring MBA Students16:43 Impact of Rice MBA on Career22:23 Staying Connected with Rice24:53 Future Aspirations and Final ThoughtsOwl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:How coaching transforms a student's confidence and future12:36: I would say one student named Musafa. He was initially not a student. He was active doing his things, but he was not very verbal in the class, right? [13:41] So as he worked with a coach, what we've seen was he could explore his inhibitions, he could set his goals, understand what were some of the drivers that were inhibiting his potential. And we've seen a clear change. He was about to quit high school. Yes, and working with the coach, it changed. He was over the process of a year, right? Two semesters, he became more verbal. He was confident in himself. He could understand what he wanted in life. He could realize, okay, I have a goal in career, and then okay, I can work towards it. So I think that one story kind of inspired more of us to come back and give. And it's just like we've seen many of those, Maya, over the last three-plus years working with HISD.Shaping mindset and leadership through the Rice MBA16:19: [Maya]: So thinking back on before Rice and after Rice, what were some of the ways that your mindset has really changed because of the MBA that you worked for?16:32: [Sujeev Chittipolu]: So many ways. I think the way I look at problems and the way I look at challenges is very different now. I'm kind of more holistic in approach. I challenge myself much more based on the lessons I've learned during Rice, and even the leadership piece, right? Leadership not just at work, but I think leadership goes all the way — starts from home, through the community, at work. So you set an example for yourself. You set an example for your family members, so you're learning always, trying to grow. So I think Rice has influenced me personally, professionally, and I think I keep continuing to reap rewards as I grow personally as well as professionally.On the hard work of growth and the rewards of giving back15:38: There is no easy way or there's no shotguns in growth or in career. You have to differentiate yourself. You have to work hard to one, grow yourself and be able to give back. I think both of these. If you are passionate, if you want to grow, it's not easy, but the journey might be tough, but the efforts are always rewarding, right? Giving back, you can see one story that is shared. It changes your perspective on life. It gives you things that show how grateful you are to be able to give back. So, take the leap forward. I think you always find time. There are weekends that you can stretch. There are days you know you need like one or two hours a day that you can stretch and always be able to give back. So yeah, I think take the leap forward, and it will be worthwhile.Show Links: TranscriptGuest Profiles:Sujeev Chittipolu | LinkedInBoard Profile | AMEL Association Houston

What does the female body itself contribute to the story of human survival and development, and how does it differ from other animals and specifically, other mammals? These contributions include but are not limited unique attributes for gestation, childbirth, and lactation.Cat Bohannon is a researcher, scholar, and the author of the book Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.Greg and Cat discuss the significant role of the female body in human evolution. Cat shares the origins of her interdisciplinary approach to writing the book. Their conversation explores the evolutionary importance of maternal and infant health, the implications of sex differences in biology, the historical intersections of gynecology and sexism, and the deeply ingrained cultural norms around reproduction. Their discussion also touches on the origins of patriarchy and the impact of modern medical advancements on child-rearing and fertility trends.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The deep story of mammals is reproductive investment06:13: “Eve,” [the book] in so many ways, was just—it's like a giant thought experiment, right? Like, okay, what if we do take this seriously? What if we say, what if sex differences do matter? What does the current science say about where they might and what that might implicate? And how does that change the story of ocean? You know, because like the big story, like you say, of mammalian evolution is reproduction. It's reproduction. I mean, it's cool that some little bit of a quasi-reptilian jaw broke off and now we have inner ear bones, but that's not a really interesting story in evolution. You know what I mean? 06:53: You know, that's not the deep story of mammals. The deep story of mammals is reproductive investment.Why are female bodies always regulated across cultures?59:52: We seem to, in every human culture, create rules that regulate access to female bodies. One way or another, we may have a subset of rules that are more liberal—that is distinct to our culture. We may have a set of rules that are more what we would call conservative or more controlling. That is distinct to our culture. It just depends on which culture you are in. What we all do have is these damn rules.Lactation is a two-way communication system55:40: We have to think of lactation then as this kind of two-way communication platform between the maternal body and the offspring's body, right? So whether that kid's getting stressed and there's more cortisol in its saliva, or whether the mothers experiencing a stressful environment, then they are effectively biochemically communicating that to one another through that bi-directional transfer point of the damn nipple, which is one incredibly cool. There's nothing like that in the animal world. Two. Oh, okay. So then we have to think of lactation as a thing that's more than simple caretaking. It's actually a major foundational thing that happens in mammals that have nipples.Why women store special fats in their hips and butt45:28: One of the things that is really interesting is that on the maternal body, different fat depots seem to have slightly different chops... [45:48] So this gluteal femoral fat, that is your upper thighs, your hips, and your butt — those fat deposits seem to specially store different kinds of stuff. There are these long-chain fatty acids, LCFAs — long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids. Our bodies are not good at making them from different parts. [46:26] For females, we mostly seem to store them in our butts. We start storing them in childhood, and then we keep going, and it turns out they do seem to be really important for building baby brains and baby retinas, which, by most accounts, are just an extension of your brain anyway.Show Links:Recommended Resources:PlacentaMalariaPlasmodiumEpidural, see Tina Cassidy's unsILOed Podcast episodeBruce EffectSolomonAlloparenting, see Sara Hrdy's unsILOed Podcast episodeKatie HindeUpsuck HypothesisGuest Profile:LinkedIn ProfileAlumni Profile | ButlerSocial Profile on InstagramWikipedia Entry for EveGuest Work:Amazon Author PageEve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

How does status infiltrate all of our decisions, and how is status allocated in a networked society?Toby E. Stuart is a professor at the Haas School at UC Berkeley and also the author of the new book called Anointed: The Extraordinary Effects of Social Status in a Winner-Take-Most World.Greg and Toby discuss the influence of social status on various aspects of life, including consumer behavior, resource allocation, and decision-making. They explore the concept of the Matthew Effect (how status leads to more status), the interplay between status and merit, and the implications of prestige in different fields such as academia, venture finance, and entertainment. The episode also examines the role of status in creating inequality and the potential benefits and challenges of implementing measures to reduce the impact of status in decision-making processes.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The big shift why we trust the painter over the painting12:17: What do you do when you have to make a choice about something, but you have no real ability to evaluate its quality? Right? And, you know, that is true of so many things. Like, it is true of a hotel room you have never seen before, or a restaurant you have never been to before, or, like, you know, which of these things are going to be good? And in the book, I make the argument that what you do—I call it the Big Shift—is, if you walk into a museum, say, and you see a piece of art on the wall, I mean, you know it is in the museum, but you do not know whether it is high quality or not. But then you see the artist's name, and what you do know is, it is a Picasso, and I have heard of Picasso, and he is a very famous artist. And, in theory, he makes excellent art. And because of that, this is a very good picture. This is an amazing piece of art. But what you just did there is you took the identity of the artist and you assigned it to the art itself.Status exists only in relationships08:41: Status is a resource that is created in a social system. So individuals and groups give status to members, but it does not exist absent the social relationship. And right there, you can see the link to social networks, because flows of deferences are forms of relationships.Born on third base privilege and status56:16: So there is still today the prosperity gospel, and people who are successful often believed that it was a form of pre-ordination, like they were destined to get whatever they have, you know. But the other part of it is, you know, is best summed up by, you know, this quote I have always loved. I think, you know, the providence is occasionally debated, but it is often attributed to Barry Switzer. You know this one, and it goes: he refers to someone and he says, like, “You know, that guy was born on third base, and he has always thought he hit a triple.” Right? And that is what we call privilege these days—where you have all of these advantages. You were born with the advantages, you did not earn them, but you think you did, and therefore you attribute your status to your own merit. Versus what actually happened is you were born on third base; you did not ever hit the triple.Status on steroids in the digital age42:19: What happens when we have these digital platforms? When we have digital platforms, like anybody can get onto Spotify or Pandora or Apple Music or whatever, and they can find any piece of music literally created. Just like, you know, 99.9% of all recorded music exists on these platforms. And so you can find anybody's music. And so anywhere in the world, you can listen to the oboist—that one oboist who is the greatest in the world. So the globalization of the audience changes the nature of what happens in the marketplace, so to speak, and in a radical way. And then, if you have a cumulative advantage process which pushes people up to the top, that unfolds on steroids if you are looking at a global digital marketplace versus the way the world used to work.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Matthew EffectNetwork TheoryRobert B. ParkerWine RatingJohn Strutt, 3rd Baron RayleighRichard Wrangham - UnSILOed Episode 5Alexis de TocquevilleCaste SystemJohn D. RockefellerReformed ChristianityGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Berkeley HaasTobyStuart.comLinkedIn ProfileBerkeley ExecEd ProfileSocial Profile on InstagramSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Anointed: The Extraordinary Effects of Social Status in a Winner-Take-Most WorldGoogle Scholar PageResearchGate Page

Many business leaders craft successful companies but only a few elevate that to the level of a masterpiece. What is it about some companies and leaders that allows them to achieve this status? How does the vision of ‘the good life' differ across corporations, large and small?Charles Spinosa is a management consultant and the author of several books. His latest book is called Leadership as Masterpiece Creation: What Business Leaders Can Learn from the Humanities about Moral Risk-Taking.Greg and Charles discuss Charles's vision of business leaders as artists and creators who shape organizations into masterpieces, rooted deeply in humanities and philosophy. The conversation covers various business leaders, including Jeff Bezos, and how their leadership styles create distinctive moral orders within their companies. Charles connects principles from Shakespeare, Nietzsche, and Machiavelli to modern business practices and explains how leaders can cultivate courage and virtue within their organizations. They also explore the differences between founders and inheritors of businesses, the role of leaders in shaping corporate culture, and the implications for leadership education.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The three questions behind masterpiece leadership18:05: My three questions are: What always goes wrong here? That tends to be an easy question for 80% of them to answer. What would you love to do instead? That is the hard question. That is the one you think is easy, but what would you love to do instead? That is hard because these men and women are geniuses at managing around what always goes wrong. They have been rewarded for managing around it, and they are good at it. And then, once we can get to “What would you love?”—what risks do you need to take to do what you would love? And that is where we begin to work out the kinds of risks, the hard risks they are going to take. Because when they make these changes, if they do not succeed, they are going to be seen as not just foolish, but actually evil. They have gone out and harmed people in careers and so forth. So we have to figure out those, and then we have to put them in a kind of strategic order. But that is, in short, my masterpiece-building strategy. Leadership as a moral masterpiece03:10: Masterpieces are not just attractive and compelling aesthetically. Masterpieces give us a distinct new way to live that we consider a good life. They are moral masterpieces, and they are morally distinctive.Cultivating courage in organizations42:34: It is not that hard to build a company that cultivates courage. When you realize that part of courage is realizing that you figure what you think is right, and then you compose a way for people to hear it.Why leadership calls for admiration22:15: I can admire Google, and I can admire Amazon. A lot of people cannot. I have had people walk out on me when I say that about Amazon. But choose another company—choose The Body Shop, choose Zuckerberg's company, Meta—quite different from Amazon. Again, if we can admire different companies, we do not have to embrace everything we admire, and that gives us a sense of different good lives that we can admire. And I want that to be the virtue that we develop, which is a step above tolerance. I mean, really, with tolerance, which is the modern virtue for dealing with difference, we tolerate things that are different that we cannot eliminate. They are too powerful. We do not consider them quite as good. We tolerate them, but it is never a happy tolerance.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Friedrich NietzscheJeff BezosWilliam ShakespeareOthelloIagoHamletJack WelchMartin HeideggerLorenzo ZambranoJames C. CollinsAmy EdmondsonIliadStanley MilgramNiccolò MachiavelliGuest Profile:Profile on Vision.comLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on InstagramGuest Work:Amazon Author PageLeadership as Masterpiece Creation: What Business Leaders Can Learn from the Humanities about Moral Risk-TakingKellogg on Advertising and Media: The Kellogg School of ManagementA Companion to HeideggerKellogg on Integrated MarketingPhilosophical RomanticismThe Practice Turn in Contemporary TheoryHeidegger, Coping, and Cognitive Science: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Vol. 2Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the Cultivation of SolidarityResearchGate Page

This month, the OneHaas Alumni Podcast is excited to share the story of Joshua Ahazie, founder and CEO of ATIDE and marketing lead at Warner Music Africa. Joshua grew up in Lagos, Nigeria in a household brimming with music and entrepreneurial spirit. After following one of his brothers to California and attending Berkeley City College, he set his sights on the Haas School of Business. Through his Haas education, Joshua found a way to combine his love for music with his desire to make the world a better place. Joshua joins host Sean Li to chat about the inception of the ATIDE Project and the community impact it's had in Lagos. They also discuss the growth and global success of Afrobeats, his work with Warner Music Africa, and his vision for Nigeria's music industry.*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:On what drew him to Berekley Haas“It was this campus and school that had values or principles that were very clear in their culture and they sort of embodied that into the learning process as well. So I was drawn to the principles because that was pretty new for me, and I just ended up spending the next couple of months learning more and more. I was stopping people that were wearing Berkeley Haas merch like, ‘how do I get into this castle atop the hill?'”On the origins of ATIDE“ So it started off as a philanthropic project, right? Our focus was sort of giving back with commerce. The name by the way, it's Yoruba and it means, ‘We are here.' In the early days, we had launched this curated online store in partnership with a couple Nigerian entrepreneurs who were passionate about social causes. And during my time at Haas, I was very inspired by brands like Tom's. Like, you know, the idea that commerce could fund impact in a very sustainable way because as opposed to donations, you are actually building a customer, building an audience and that can scale. So our goal was simply to sort of help these local businesses reach the global audience while also funding meaningful social change.”On the important role music plays in his work“ That's the language I speak, man. Like, I play instruments, I collect records, I love seeing artists perform. It's such a vulnerable and expressive form of art. And even though we've worked across different industries –  hospitality, nonprofit, e-commerce, gaming, whatever it may be – my most exciting projects, personally, are our music campaigns and our artists like rollouts.” On the booming music scene in West Africa“ A couple of things that could have helped with the growth that we're seeing now is just the confidence that we have in our identity. I think in the early 2000s, we were sort of focused on fusion. How do we put in R&B with our sound and how do we put in this record with that one? But now, being African is cool and our artists are leaning into their identity of what it means to be African and make music as an African. I think that confidence in our Africanness has been something that has allowed us to sort of stand out in a very saturated music market globally.”Show Links:LinkedIn ProfileATIDE ProjectThe Cavemen.JOEBOY Joyce OlongSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/onehaas/donations

It's not hard to find critics of capitalism in the current moment but this has always been true: as long as we have had capitalism we have had critics of capitalism. What are the recurring themes of these critiques and how have they helped to shape the economics profession and capitalism itself?John Cassidy is an author at the New Yorker magazine and also the author of several books. His most recent two are Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI and How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities.Greg and John discuss the multifaceted and varied criticisms of capitalism throughout history. Over the course of the conversation, Greg recounts how John's books have investigated economic crises, the behavioral finance revolution, and the diverse critiques of capitalism from both the left and right. John brings up several examples of historical economic figures, from Adam Smith to Marx, and examines how crises have shaped economic thought and policy. Greg and John also make a point to highlight lesser-known critics and movements, underscoring their unsung importance of economic history.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:When both the left and the right turn against capitalism04:05: In 2016, when Trump was running for the Republican nomination and Bernie Sanders was running for the Democratic nomination, I thought, if you go back into history, it's a long time since we've had sort of major candidates running for office as critics of capitalism from the right and the left. Bernie, of course, has always been a critic of capitalism. He's independent socialist—I'd call him a social democrat, but we can get into what those terms mean if you want. But what's really new was Trump, running from the right with a critique. I mean, people have sort of forgotten now, but when he started out, he was criticizing the banks. He was criticizing big businesses for offshoring. He was running with a critique of capitalism from the right. So that got me thinking about maybe there's a book in how we got here. How can America, sort of world capital of capitalism and always very supportive of the system, come to this state of affairs where the two major candidates are running against it basically?A historical approach to capitalism12:21: Capitalism means anything involving large-scale production on the basis of privately owned assets. Private means of production. And if you adopt that broad definition, then mercantile capitalism, slavery, the plantation economies is a form of capitalism.Why economists often miss the real economy09:51: I realized in sort of maybe the late nineties, early 2000s, that if you want to speak to an economist about what was going on in the economy and what's happening in Washington, there really wasn't much point in calling up Harvard or MIT or Chicago or whatever, because the economics department would say, "Well, we don't really have anybody who covers that. You need to go to the business school, or you need to go to the business economists." So I think maybe there's been a backlash against that since the Great Financial Crisis. I know there's been a lot of efforts inside various universities, especially in Europe, to make the syllabuses more relevant, more sort of real-world based. But I still think at the higher levels of the subject, it's still extremely abstract.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Adam SmithDot-com BubbleGreat RecessionNeoliberalismKeynesian EconomicsMilton FriedmanKarl MarxRosa LuxemburgIndustrial RevolutionCapitalismLudditeWilliam ThompsonRobert OwenThomas CarlyleGlobalizationDependency TheoryAnna WheelerFlora TristanJoan RobinsonRobert SolowPaul SamuelsonJ. C. KumarappaKarl PolanyiGuest Profile:Profile on The New YorkerWikipedia ProfileSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Amazon Author PageCapitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AIHow Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic CalamitiesDot.Con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold

At a time when startups are primarily funded by private market investors, who you know has become a critical factor in gaining access to that venture capital. But how does the reliance on alumni and professional networks create barriers for startups from historically disadvantaged groups?Emmanuel Yimfor '20 is a finance professor at Columbia Business School and holds a Ph.D. from Rice University. His research focuses on entrepreneurial finance, diversity and private capital markets, with insights into gender and racial disparities in venture capital funding, board representation and how resources could be more equitably allocated.Emmanuel joins co-host Maya Pomroy '22 to discuss his career journey from working at a Cameroonian telecommunications company to teaching at some of the top U.S. business schools, as well as his research on the influence of alumni networks in venture capital funding, how AI tools can address biases in lending, and finally how he's teaming up with his son to bring AI tools to young innovators and entrepreneurs in Cameroon. Episode Guide:01:00 Exploring Entrepreneurial Finance03:36 The Role of Networks in VC Funding08:10 Emmanuel's Journey From Cameroon to the U.S.12:34 The Rice University Experience15:43 Research on Alumni Networks and Funding21:49 Algorithmic Bias in Lending33:17 Empowering Future Innovators in Cameroon38:42 Final Thoughts and Future OutlookOwl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:Rethinking who gets funded in venture capital31:07: What does good networks mean exactly? If you look at venture capital partners, for example, right? They have worked at McKinsey before they became venture capital partners. So they have worked at certain companies, they have done certain jobs that then led them to become VCs. And so to the extent that we have a lack of representation in this pipeline of jobs that is leading to VC, then the founders that do not come from these same backgrounds do not have as equal access to the partners. And so what that suggests is something very basic, which is like, just rethink the set of deals that you are considering. That might expand the pool of deals that you consider, because, you know, there might be a smart person out there that is maybe not the same race as you, but that has an idea that you really, really want to fund. And that is something that I think, like, everybody would agree with. You know, we want to allocate capital to its most productive uses.From hard data to meaningful change29:13: So I have a belief in America, at least based on my life journey, which is: if you work hard for long enough, somebody is going to recognize you and you will be rewarded for it. And so I really believe that America takes in data, thinks about that data for a while to think about whether the research is credible enough, and then, using that data, they are a good Bayesian, so they get a new posterior. They act in a new way that is consistent with what the new before and the new data. And so I think about my role as a researcher as just like, you know, providing that data. Here is the data, and here is what is consistent with what we are doing right now. Now, you know, what you do with that information now is like, you know, update what you are doing in a way that is most consistent with efficient capital allocation—is my hope.Why Emmanuel finds empirical work so exciting 21:34: Empirical work is so exciting to me because then you are like, "I am a little bit of a police detective." So you take a little bit of this thing that feels hard to measure, and then you can create hypotheses to link it to the eventual outcomes, to the extent that that thing that is hard to measure is something that is leading to efficient capital allocation. Then, on average, you know, this feeling that you get about founders that are from the same alma mater should lead to good things as opposed to leading to bad things. And so, you know, that is exactly the right spirit of how to think about the work.Show Links: TranscriptGuest Profiles:Emmanuel Yimfor | Columbia Business SchoolEmmanuel Yimfor | LinkedInEmmanuel's Website 

It's the final episode of the summer season and with some key mayoral races coming up this fall, we're revisiting our conversation on inflation with Veronica Rappoport, a former official at the Central Bank of Argentina who had a front row seat to the country's inflation crisis.   Over the last couple U.S. election cycles, one policy idea to get inflation under control that is routinely floated is price caps. But history has shown time and time again that price caps do anything but reduce inflation. So why do policymakers still want to try it?In this episode, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen speak with guest Veronica Rappoport, associate professor at London School of Economics and former 2nd Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Argentina. Veronica served as the deputy governor during a key period of high inflation for Argentina. She chats with Jonathan and Jules about the circumstances that can lead to inflation rates as high as the ones Argentina has seen in the last 50 years, how band-aids like price caps can in fact make inflation significantly worse in the long run, and what lessons countries like the U.S. can take from Argentina's case.   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 can lawmakers and public servants design policies which benefit from continuous learning?? How will government offices that learn and adopt agile practices be able to achieve better outcomes for the public?Jennifer Pahlka is a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, founder of Code For America, and the founder of the US Digital Services under the Obama administration. She is also the author of Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better.Greg and Jennifer discuss why the government struggles with adopting modern digital practices such as agile and waterfall methods. She explains the disconnect between policy-making and implementation, emphasizing the need for a more integrated and feedback-driven approach. They explore other topics such as the over-reliance on contractors, burdensome procurement rules, and the essential role of user research in creating effective digital services. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How feedback loops can make government more agile06:07: Turns out that when you implement this policy in the way that you are telling me, we get a really perverse outcome. If there is no feedback loop to send that information back up to the decision makers, you get a lot of wasted money, you get a lot of perverse outcomes, you get a lot of angry people. But, you know, when the architects can say, or the builders can say, actually no, you can go into a discussion about that, then you have not just an agile development process, but you have a more agile government process.​​The system, not the people, is broken30:37: It is not that public servants are lazy or stupid. It is that the system that they are working in is just ill-fit, it is just ill-suited to the job we need it to do.Why government keeps building concrete boats30:58: So you are referring to the story I have in the book of this guy at the Veterans Administration (VA), which, by the way, has gotten so much better. He is kind of a leader now. But I am questioning him about this project that we are working on at the USDS, sort of what was pro-USDS before. It was one of the first engagements that were sort of testing out the thesis of the USDS. And I kept asking. This guy was a senior leader in technology in the VA. Like, why is it built this way? Why did you make this decision? And over and over, he says, that is not my call. You have to ask the procurement people, or the program people, or the compliance people. He just did not have answers. And I asked him why he was so deferring on all these. And he said, if they ask us to build a concrete boat, we will build a concrete boat. And I said, why? And he said, well, because that way when it does not work, it is not our fault. And that speaks to the incentives. Your incentive is to make sure that when it does not work, it is someone else's fault.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Department of Government EfficiencyCode for AmericaAgile software developmentWaterfall modelYadira SanchezGrace HopperBrooks ActPaperwork Reduction ActOffice of Information and Regulatory AffairsCharles WorthingtonEzra KleinGuest Profile:Niskanen Center ProfileWikipedia ProfileJenniferPahlka.comLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on XSocial Profile on InstagramGuest Work:Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do BetterSubstackMedium

What does it mean to ‘know' something, and what does it mean specifically when stated by a scientist? What is the role of debate in driving scientific progress, and how does progress get built on the bones of science that we later find to be incorrect?James C. Zimring is a professor of pathology and immunology at the School of Medicine at the University of Virginia and also an author. His latest books are What Science Is and How It Really Works and Partial Truths: How Fractions Distort Our Thinking.Greg and James discuss the complex nature of scientific thinking and the philosophical underpinnings of scientific practices. James emphasizes the discrepancies between the idealized version of science and its messy reality. They explore the critical distinction between phenomena and theoretical claims, the social constructs within scientific methodology, and the importance of understanding what it means when scientists claim to 'know' something.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What science is and isn't03:18: My goal here was really to try and provide non-scientists with, as you pointed out, a more realistic assessment of what science is and what it means when a scientist says they know something. Because the hyperbole around scientific claims, although exciting, right, has also destroyed a lot of scientific credibility. The best way to lose credibility is to make a claim that you cannot possibly live up to. And at the same time, science is epistemically distinct. When a scientist says they know something, it means something different than other knowledge claims in other areas of thought. I am not a scientific imperialist. It does not mean something better, but it really means something different. And the failure, I think, to make that distinction is very damaging to how we navigate the world.Science is not about being right14:14: Science is not about being right. Science is about getting closer and closer to rightness. But scientists, we try to kill theories. That is what we do.Science is messy and sloppy1:00:45: Science is messy and sloppy, and this is what it means when a scientist says they know something, and it is very different from when anyone else says they know something. But it is quite different from what, historically, we say it means.Why is common sense thinking toxic to scientific progress?23:48: Common sense thinking is toxic to scientific progress because things that are common sense are often wrong. I mean, they are really helpful if you are wandering around the savanna trying to survive as a nomadic human. But when you are in the laboratory studying science, those things that work so well on the savanna are categorically incorrect. Unlearning millions of years of evolution of cognitive psychology is part of what it is to be a scientist, as you point, learning that we do not observe causality, learning that there are these confounders, learning that common sense things that are obvious may not be, is a large part of the scientific enterprise. And that is where it differs from what you are talking about—normal everyday thinking, especially statistics and other things.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Thomas KuhnRichard FeynmanKarl PopperA. J. AyerWillard Van Orman QuineNational Institutes of HealthBerengar of ToursTransubstantiationCharles Sanders PeirceConfoundingPaul FeyerabendMichel FoucaultPeter MeijerGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at the University of Virginia School of MedicineLinkedIn ProfileGuest Work:Amazon Author PageWhat Science Is and How It Really WorksPartial Truths: How Fractions Distort Our ThinkingTransfusion Medicine and HemostasisGoogle Scholar PageResearchGate Page

For much of America's history, the promise of greater economic opportunities in new places was an intrinsic idea to the country's identity. But in recent decades, it's become increasingly difficult to pack up and chase that American dream. Why? Yoni Appelbaum is a deputy executive editor at The Atlantic and the author of the book, Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity which explores the significant decline in geographic and economic mobility in the United States over the past 50 years.Yoni and Greg analyze the historical context of mobility trends in America, the role of zoning laws, the influence of homeownership policies, and the changes brought about by millions of moves within American society. They also discuss possible reforms and a generational shift towards embracing growth and community development.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How America got stuck in a mobility decline16:00: For almost all of American history, when a place was thriving economically, we threw up new housing to accommodate all the new arrivals who would flock toward that opportunity. And then, 50 years ago, we pretty much made it impossible to do that. And so, as a result, when people are in a place today with declining opportunity, they really are kind of stuck—the places that they could move just can't accommodate them.The hidden costs of not building30:09: If you do not build housing that is affordable, if you do not build new luxury housing that rich people move into, thereby letting the older housing stock become available to people on, on more limited incomes, if you are not building, then you are shutting out those people. And so, it is not just the crisis of homelessness, which is a real crisis, it is also that lack of mobility.Why newcomers make communities thrive06:45: Loneliness is good, aloneness is bad, but loneliness is like hunger. It is a spur to action… [07:09] It is that loneliness of the new arrivals in town that has traditionally spurred people to form social relationships. You are much likelier to join something if you are new in town. And then, there is the other part of it too, which is that a community that is full of new arrivals will have a much more vibrant civic life.Geography as a tool for reinvention08:26: Everything that mattered about you was defined at your birth. You inherited your spot in the social hierarchy, your religion, often your father's occupation, your prospects, your identity — all of that — and largely your geographic location, right? You lived on the land your family had lived on for generations and where you expected your grandkids and your great-grandkids to live. You were defined at birth. What America did by allowing people to choose their own communities, by giving a legal right — and this was a bit of a legal revolution — the chance for people to move where they wanted to, we gave people the chance to decide who they wanted to be through their physical geography, through those serial relocations. Because Americans did not just move once, maybe not 40 times, but by moving repeatedly through their lives, Americans were able to continually reinvent themselves and to fashion their own identities. All of these things became matters of choice.Show Links:Recommended Resources:The Opportunity AtlasOkie Jacob RiisGuest Profile:Author Bio at The AtlanticProfessional Profile on XGuest Work:Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity

The evolving economic landscape makes institutional reforms in areas like finance, planning, and public infrastructure, a necessity. AI is capable of causing an economic shakeup similar to the transition from horses to steam, with far-reaching ramifications throughout the world's economies.Jonathan Haskel is a professor of economics at Imperial College Business School, in London, and also the author of a few books, including Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy and Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy.Greg and Jonathan discuss how traditional institutions, intellectual frameworks, and measurement disciplines are struggling to adapt to an economy increasingly dominated by intangible assets such as software, data, and branding. Jonathan explains the complexities of valuing and measuring intangibles, the role of venture capital, intellectual property laws, and the impact of AI and general-purpose technologies. The episode also covers the necessity for institutional reforms in areas like finance, planning, and public infrastructure to better support the evolving economic landscape.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The two boosts of productivity31:30: When you have a general-purpose technology, which is also an invention, method of invention, you get two boosts to productivity. The first boost to productivity is in the invention sector itself—what I would call the intangible sector itself, as in the R&D and the software and all that—you get a boost to productivity there. And then the second boost to productivity is when all of those new inventions—now think of steam—start spreading out to the economy as a whole, to be used in the transport sector, in companies, in firms, and all that kind of thing.The intangible things the new economy makes03:23: What does the new economy make? It's people writing software. It's people writing movie scripts. It's people trying to think of new ways to market their product or publicize their brand or rearrange their organization. Those are all very intangible things.What makes the intangible economy unequal?18:39: We first got into this. We were thinking that spillovers would be the predominant economic force, and therefore a more intangible economy would be, in some broad sense, a more equalized economy…[19:04] But that, of course, goes against people's intuition. We think the economy, in some sense, has become more unequal. And we changed our mind during the writing of the book, actually, and ended up thinking that the forces of synergies are a force, of course, for making it more unequal.The human edge in a world of intangibles55:01: Once you start thinking about the task of coordinating the synergies and getting all these people together—guess what—that needs people, people. And scientists might be really good at that, but artists and poets and historians and students of ancient Greek—they might be really good at that as well. So, I am optimistic, actually, that the future could admit people with all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of skills into this new world.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Diane CoyleBaruch Lev BooksIntangible AssetSoftware DevelopmentPaul RomerIntellectual PropertyDataThomas PhilliponDouglass NorthAbundance by Ezra KleinGeneral-purpose technologyEric BrynjolfssonRobert GordonGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Imperial College Business SchoolWikipedia ProfilePrinceton University Press ProfileBank of England ProfileSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Amazon Author PageCapitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible EconomyRestarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible EconomyMeasuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First CenturyNBER PageGoogle Scholar Page

What can be gained from looking back now at the pandemic response during COVID? What would a “postmortem” tell us about how policies were designed and how scientific discussions played out? Stephen Macedo is a professor of politics at Princeton University, as well as at the University Center for Human Values, and the author of several books including Greg and Stephen discuss the decision-making flaws during the COVID-19 pandemic, the lack of robust debate, the role of public health experts, and the increasing influence of partisanship. Stephen explores the potential long-term implications for democracy and science, the concept of noble lies, and the necessity of balancing expert advice with broader public interests. Their conversation also touches on the importance of liberal virtues and the need for both improved decision-making structures and individual adherence to professional ethics.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:When public health crowds out public values09:52: The public health mindset is that you only pay attention to reducing disease, and so public health experts had too much power. Wider decision-making should have been made by people looking at the whole range of public values, not just disease reduction or attempts to reduce disease. So, the many things that came together—but we regard the book as a window onto the state of our democracy, and in a way, our—you know—the dangers of our epistemic tribalism, to put it that way. The degraded state of deliberation in our country.How epistemic bubbles are making us dumber50:57: We are making ourselves stupider by being ensconced in these epistemic bubbles. We are undermining our own capacity for critical thought by not being more open to disagreement.Science can't decide for a democracy alone55:58: We need both more checking of a wide array of elites being involved in thinking, challenging, questioning decisions, but also some way of making sure—possibly through legislative oversight, House of Representatives being involved. The public voices need to be heard as well because they bear the cost of these—need to be heard as well because they bear the cost of these measures. And as we said before, science is not going to make these decisions for us. There are value judgments involved, and it is the people's value judgments that matter to some degree of risk tolerance…[56:35] We need more checking and balancing in these kinds of decisions that affect the public as a whole, and more open debate, discussion, more tolerance of disagreement—including, or maybe even especially, coming from the partisan other, as it were.Science needs scrutiny, not censorship14:17: We need empirical inquiry to test the assumptions behind these particular policies and assumptions—not censorship in advance of evidence that might be unwelcome with respect to, you know, certain kinds of policy claims. So, I think there's a wider politicization of science. I do think we need more viewpoint diversity in the academy, and people say, "Wasn't this the code word for having more conservatives?" And I'll say, yes. I think we're a bit too far out of balance. We should not reflect the American public—I mean, that's not the aim—but I think we do not take seriously enough, reasonable concerns coming from the other side of the political spectrum. So, it's a long-winded answer to your question, but I think the COVID experience is emblematic and indicative of a wider problem and deeper problem.Show Links:Recommended Resources:David HalberstamGraham AllisonNeil FergusonDavid ZweigFrancis CollinsAnthony FauciSandro GaleaStephen HaberJohn IoannidisScott AtlasDeborah BirxAlasdair MacIntyreCharles TaylorThe Federalist PapersJohn LockeAdam SmithConsequentialismBen BernankeThe Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics (Politics and Society in Modern America) by Jefferson CowieInsecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign by Frances E. LeeGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Princeton UniversityWikipedia PagePrinceton Politics PageSocial Profile on XPhilPeople.org ProfileGuest Work:Amazon Author PageIn Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed UsDeliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and DisagreementDiversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural DemocracyAmerican Constitutional InterpretationThe New Right v. the Constitution | CATO Institute