The long-held dominant narrative about evolution is that it works like a tree. But as science has advanced in the last century, the idea of a family tree might not tell the full story anymore. Evolutionary biologist David P. Mindell is a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and the author of The Network of Life: A New View of Evolution which explores the concept of horizontal evolution alongside traditional Darwinian vertical evolution.Greg and David discuss the importance of creating an updated narrative for evolutionary biology, the intricate nature of hybridization and horizontal gene transfer, the ethical implications of gene editing, and horizontal evolution’s potential application in medicine, agriculture, and public health. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Show Links:Recommended Resources:Charles DarwinRichard DawkinsÖtziSimon SchwendenerAndreas Franz Wilhelm SchimperFrederick GriffithGregor MendelGuest Profile:Professional WebsiteMuseum of Vertebrate Zoology WebsiteHis Work:The Network of Life: A New View of EvolutionEpisode Quotes:Why horizontal evolution matters for understanding life35:07: We really have to rethink what are the major mechanisms of evolution for all of life, not just what we see in animals or animals and plants. And this is why I think there's been some resistance to this idea that horizontal evolution really is highly consequential. It's just that we tend still to be human-centric, then animal-centric, and then maybe animal- and plant-centric. But if we really want to understand the evolution of all of life, then we can see that horizontal evolution is a big deal. There's both still vertical and horizontal, but we can't neglect the horizontal evolution from the basic, the most basic narrative, especially for the public, if we want them to understand how evolution operates.How important is an overarching narrative in making sense of new discoveries?07:37: Narrative is so important because, especially for the public, we understand stories. We're kind of wired to understand a story. And when you get the outlines of a story, you get a lot more information than just the basics of the story. You get new information, and you can plug it into the story as well. So having a narrative that is squared with our best science is valuable because it informs our understanding of evolutionary biology overall.The power of decentralized evolution in rapid change14:08: I talk in the book [The Network of Life] about inheritance when you're talking about how horizontal evolution can be decentralized. This is a powerful concept because they are supposed to have pros and cons of decentralization, but one of the advantages of it is its rapid change and rapid innovation. And this certainly can be advantageous for organisms, particularly when they're in a changeable environment, to suddenly get a new set of genes that have already been honed for millions of years in some other organism. If you can manage, if an organism can, if those can be expressed, and they are potentially useful, that's a way to get much faster adaptation than single base pair substitutions, which is what you usually see between parents and progeny.Can we use horizontal evolution to our benefit—wisely?41:50: Humans will be doing more and more forms of hybridizations or tinkering with life forms. If we can find some that carry particular functions that humans are interested in and talk briefly about bacteria that have the ability to remediate environmental toxins, this is something most everybody agrees could be a good thing, or bacteria that are capable of producing energy, and so we will eventually be using horizontal evolution to our benefit. You know, the question is, can we do it wisely enough?

When COVID-19 hit, many predictions were made about how the global pandemic would impact the macroeconomy. Some of those predictions were accurate, some of them turned out to be false alarms. But when business leaders need to make strategic decisions with macroeconomic forecasts in mind, how do they tell the truth from the doomsaying? Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak is the global chief economist at Boston Consulting Group. He also leads the BCG’s Center for Macroeconomics and regularly contributes to publications like the Harvard Business Review and Fortune.com. His book, Shocks, Crises, and False Alarms: How to Assess True Macroeconomic Risk delves into strategic ways business leaders can assess macroeconomic risk in the face of events like a global pandemic, war, or even presidential elections.Philipp and Greg discuss the necessity for today’s executives to understand the macroeconomy, a new approach to judging macroeconomic risk, and why conventional models of the past might not be the best predictor for the macroeconomy’s future. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Show Links:Recommended Resources:Ludwig von MisesFriedrich HayekJohn Maynard KeynesThe Phillips Curve Thucydides TrapGuest Profile:Professional Profile at Boston Consulting GroupLinkedIn ProfileHis Work:Shocks, Crises, and False Alarms: How to Assess True Macroeconomic RiskEpisode Quotes:Technology fuels productivity growth31:53: What's important to recognize is that technology is only the fuel of productivity growth. That's what we call in the book [Shocks, Crises, and False Alarms]; it's the fuel, but you also need the spark. You need firms to actually embrace the technology and put it to use. And the spark—that's the tight labor market. When the availability of labor is low or when the price point is too high, that's when you first nudge firms and later force firms to replace their labor needs with technology.How are leadership and macroeconomics connected?06:30: Most leadership is about coming to a conviction of what the future will be like and adjusting actions around that conviction. Macro is no different, and the more we treat macroeconomics as a science, the worse the outcome will be.How do we decide the optimal amount of history we ought to incorporate into our way of thinking about the world?25:40: History has great case studies. It shows often coherent drivers that illuminate important parts of the story. But history is always idiosyncratic, and so applying it, extrapolating, or copy-pasting from history is exceedingly difficult, all the way to the sort of inevitability of the great power war. It's simply not true that a rising rival power always leads to great power conflict. I mean, most obviously, Britain was displaced by the U.S., and it didn't come to a head, or like a war or conflict in that sense. So, if you look at the patterns of some of these predictions, it fails right there in the sense that there never is a sort of template-like use of history. All of it is rather idiosyncratic, and that makes it both beautiful and treacherous as an analytical tool.Navigating distractions with a strategic perspective49:19: It's so easy to be distracted and go down every rabbit hole the financial press will lay out for you. Every data point is spun into disaster. For every true crisis, many false alarms. And how do we learn to navigate that with more calm and, frankly, a better experience? Well, it's by learning about that more strategic picture of how the thing works.

How is technology disrupting on-the-job learning? What do we lose from outsourcing the work of novices to technological tools, and what do we gain? How do some surgical students make surprising decisions about where to do their residencies?Matt Beane is an assistant professor of Technology Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also the author of The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines.Greg and Matt discuss the impact of technology on work and tacit knowledge transmission, exploring topics like the economics of knowledge transfer, the necessity of Matt’s 3 C’s - Challenge, Complexity, and Connection - for skill development, and the implications of AI and remote work on learning. Matt also discusses his extensive field research and offers his ideas on improving learning and mentorship.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Show Links:Recommended Resources:TechneMontessori educationThe Coddling of the American MindMachine learninghttps://www.oneusefulthing.org/Nicholas BloomThomas MertonEthan MollickGuest Profile:MattBeane.comFaculty Profile at UCSBLinkedInSocial Profile on XProfile on Thinkers50His Work:The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent MachinesWild World of Work SubstackDon't Let AI Dumb You DownEpisode Quotes:​​Is connection strictly required for human connection?40:28: Connection is the third of the three C's, strictly required for healthy skill development. And it is a warm bond of trust and respect between human beings, which we don't often think of as integral to developing skill, but that's integral in two ways. Practically, one is access. If you want to get better at something and I'm an expert, you have to earn my trust and respect to get a shot. I have to give you the job. I have to allow you in the room, whatever. But the other one is motivation, right? Yeah, humans like to produce effects in the world, and that's part of the motivation for skill, but part of it is status. Part of it is feeling like you fit in the social order. And so it is just intrinsically meaningful for us to earn the trust and respect of people who are better at something than us.The novice is critical inflow for the expert29:19: The novice is a critical inflow for the expert, a disturbing force. It's annoying, but it's also necessary to keep that expert sharp and ready to deal with today's challenges, not yesterday's.How does healthy skill development occur?23:38: Healthy skill development makes you robust to circumstances for machine learning and for human learning. The way that occurs is that as you progress towards skill in a particular area, you digest and consume collateral work. You make sense of your environment, the other jobs, tasks, skills, and data that are flowing through what you're doing.On rules and discretion25:39: Rules are useful, and this has to do with this complexity bit, like when and how. It's not just, do I engage with complexity? It's when and how. Before game time? During the game? Definitely not. But even in advance, there are numerous fine-grained different ways of, when is the right time to consume conceptual knowledge, including formalized rules and guidelines for how to do the work. The answer is, basically, don't read the manual before you start to try to use the VCR. You know, minimum exposure. Go try. That's a better time to rock back towards the conceptual.

How important is creative thinking and the fusion of business and art in today's ever-evolving business landscape? What are the challenges of navigating uncharted futures with the role of AI?Amy Whitaker teaches Arts Administration at New York University and is also the author of three books, including Art Thinking: How to Carve Out Creative Space in a World of Schedules, Budgets, and Bosses and Economics of Visual Art: Market Practice and Market Resistance.Greg and Amy discuss the value of integrating artistic mindsets into business environments. Their conversation delves into blockchain, NFTs, and the democratization of art, alongside anecdotes about the resilience and resourcefulness required for creative endeavors. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Show Links:Recommended Resources:Saras SarasvathySylvain BureauLeonardo da VinciNina KatchadourianJulia CameronJenny OdellKatalin KarikóRoger BannisterDonald WinnicottDavid Foster WallaceJohn MaedaSol LeWittChristo and Jeanne-ClaudeGuest Profile:AmyWhitaker.netFaculty Profile for NYU SteinhardtCreative Leadership Guild InstituteSocial Profile on InstagramSocial Profile on XLinkedInHer Work:Amazon Author PageArt Thinking: How to Carve Out Creative Space in a World of Schedules, Budgets, and BossesEconomics of Visual Art: Market Practice and Market ResistanceMuseum Legs: Fatigue and Hope in the Face of ArtEpisode Quotes:Can you be an artist in today's world without having to think about monetization and becoming part of the market?11:21: I think that as a person, you have to think about being a citizen, and you have to think about being an economic actor. And I think that's true for artists. And I think it's that much more challenging for artists because artists are in a particular position of being both producers and investors, where they have to cover their day-to-day expenses, but they also have to take risks and show us things that are possible, where we are not able to perceive value until many years later, and that value is contestable. We wouldn't all agree on what it is.Art and sustainable value creation 10:24: We have to assume that everyone is an artist and that everyone has the potential to be an artist and think that that sort of dignity position has a lot of legs for us in terms of what our society can do. And what it means to have real sustainable value creation in our economy. I think it also is the most hopeful thing that I can come up with, with regard to the body politic as well.The intersection of business and personal expression45:25: I think that there's a way that people can understand business through their own ethos, as a person, and, in parallel, can relate to art and creativity without feeling like they have to be, you know, wearing a beret, the letter sort of like bringing your whole self to work and showing up in your particular way. And the envelope is doing that structurally.

Much of the field of economics derives its theories from a subset of Adam Smith’s philosophy found in the Wealth of Nations. But are economists overlooking other parts of Adam Smith’s teachings that could explain more about human behavior and economics?  Nobel-prize winning economist Vernon L. Smith is an emeritus professor of economics and law at Chapman University. His books like Rationality in Economics: Constructivist and Ecological Forms and Humanomics: Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations for the Twenty-First Century explore how human behavior shapes economics.Vernon and Greg discuss the role Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments plays in understanding behavioral economics, Vernon’s early supply and demand experiments, and how his work shaped the field of experimental economics. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Show Links:Recommended Resources:Adam Smith StoicismAlfred MarshallEdward ChamberlinMilton FriedmanKevin A McCabeCharles HoltBetsy HoffmanGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Chapman UniversityNobel Prize Winner BioHis Work:Economics of Markets: Neoclassical Theory, Experiments, and Theory of Classical Price DiscoveryRationality in Economics: Constructivist and Ecological FormsHumanomics: Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations for the Twenty-First Century A Life of Experimental Economics, Volume I: Forty Years of DiscoveryA Life of Experimental Economics, Volume II: The Next Fifty YearsEpisode Quotes:Do humans learn economics through experience, not theory?39:09: People don't get the economics right by thinking about it. They get it right by actually participating in markets and getting a feel for what's going on. And I argue that humans are very good, once they do that. Sure, they can be fooled. And they do a lot of crazy things in a new market before they've acquired experience, but they adapt very well. And so, that equilibrium concepts are relevant. But the behavior is very much experience-oriented. And so, they get there through experiential learning. You see more than just abstract analysis and thinking about it.Perspective is at the foundation of the theorem of moral sentiments12:29: [The relationship] Perspective is at the foundation of the Theory of Moral Sentiments. That's what he's [Adam Smith] talking about—sentiments. An important part of it is fellow feeling.Gratitude influences sacrifice and motivates cooperation48:16: Gratitude creates indebtedness. And so people may have self-interested motivations, but they also have this motivation to get along with others. And so this proposition predicts, in the trust game, that people are sacrificing; they're taking less reward in order to do what they believe is right, to treat this person.Why is Vernon championing Adam Smith’s principles in the modern way of thinking about economics?56:45: So that's why I'm a champion of trying to get that pattern of thinking and Adam Smith's principles into the modern way of thinking in economics. Economics and psychology, and in economics, because the Theorem of Sentiments was a contribution to social psychology that just never took hold. It was another hundred years, you see, before psychology started to do anything. And it was the beginning of the 20th century before psychology became very prominent. And then it was individual psychology, not social psychology. I think Adam Smith would find that strange.

Just like all people, scientists have their own morals and political ideologies. But how do those values influence their work? What are the potential ramifications of science mixing with politics? John Staddon is an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and the author of numerous books. His works like Science in an Age of Unreason and Scientific Method: How Science Works, Fails to Work, and Pretends to Work examine the history of the scientific field and the challenges it faces today from becoming overly entangled with politics. John and Greg discuss the importance of distinguishing facts from values in scientific inquiry, how scientific consensus is often mistaken for truth, and the need for scientists to maintain objectivity despite societal pressures. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Is modern society abandoning the distinction between balance and fact?04:59: Science itself cannot be racist. A fact is either true or false. There’s no moral element to simply a fact. There are younger people now, who simply cannot accept that a fact is just a fact. Now, you may react to it one way or another depending on your value system, but the fact by itself is not racist or not racist. So, this is a very serious problem, I think, in modern society because a lot of people have completely abandoned this distinction between fact and value. And it's wrecking, not nuclear physics or electronics, but it's wrecking the human sciences. Suppressing a fact can be just a harmful as promoting a lie07:04: Logic tells you suppressing a fact can be just as harmful as promoting a lie, and indeed, suppressing a fact will often lead to promoting a lie as a substitute for it. So, you've just gotta keep them [emotions and judgment of the truth or falsity of facts] separate.When uncertainty is the only honest answer in science13:54: One should be more skeptical of social science because it's much harder to obtain a definitive result. [14:13]: So the really only honest response is to say, "I don't know." The problem is that society doesn't want to say, "I don't know." Are there too many scientists and too many scientific journals, with too much effort invested in the sciences?22:19: Success in science, a lot of it's luck. You happen to be in an area where there's a problem that can be solved, and the opportunity comes, and you solve it. But it's certainly not true that by sheer effort you can find a fertile area. So that's one problem. The other problem, well, there are a number of points to make. One other one is that science is not a manufacturing process. It's like widgets, you know. If you want to double the number of people making widgets, you've got to double the number of widgets. Science is not like that. It has to be solvable problems. But if you double the number of scientists and the number of available problems is not doubled, you've got a problem because they've got to find something to do, and so on, and you're liable to generate as much noise as knowledge. Show Links:Recommended Resources:J.D. Bernal The Art of Scientific Investigation by William Ian BeveridgeThe Descent of Man by Charles DarwinTrofim LysenkoJerry CoyneRichard DawkinsAlvin WeibergB. F. SkinnerQueen Victoria by Lytton Strachey Alan GreenspanGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Duke UniversityHis Work:Science in an Age of UnreasonThe New Behaviorism: Second Edition Scientific Method: How Science Works, Fails to Work, and Pretends to WorkUnlucky Strike: Private Health and the Science, Law and Politics of SmokingThe Englishman: Memoirs of a PsychobiologistAdaptive Dynamics: The Theoretical Analysis of Behavior The Malign Hand of the Markets: The Insidious Forces on Wall Street that are Destroying Financial Markets – and What We Can Do About it

Ellen J. Langer is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. She is also the author of several books, including The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, Mindfulness, Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility, and The Power of Mindful Learning.Ellen and Greg discuss the profound influence of mindfulness on decision-making and work-life balance, while challenging the illusions of control, certainty, and predictability. Ellen also breaks down the extraordinary world of placebos, illustrating how mindfulness can have a placebo-like effect on health, and how our beliefs and thoughts can significantly impact our physical health. They also talk about mindfulness in education and healthcare, underscoring its invaluable benefits for patients, doctors, and individuals in general.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:On the importance of showing-up07:34: If you're going to do something, you should show up for it. And when you do show up for it, everything is better. So as you're actively noticing, you look alive. People find you more attractive. When you're being mindful, people see you as charismatic, authentic, and certainly attractive. Not only that, it makes you healthier, it's fun, and people are going to find you more appealing, but it actually leaves its imprint in the things that we do. They're just better. So if you're painting, playing a musical instrument, writing a report, no matter what you're doing, if you show up for the activity, you're going to produce something better. To my mind, there's no reason, once people truly understand what this work is about, that you would not try to change your ways in some sense and be mindful virtually all the time.Mindfulness is a way of being03:24: People need to understand that mindfulness has nothing to do with meditation. Meditation is not about mindfulness. Meditation is a practice you engage in to result in post-meditative mindfulness. Mindfulness, as we study it, is immediate. And it's not a practice. It's a way of being.Why is going from being mindless to mindful is hard?24:31: Going from being mindless to mindful is hard because when you're not there, you're not there to know you're not there. So that's why the instruction is, "Stop and smell the roses and be in the present." It's sweet but empty because when you're not there, you don't know that you're not there. So you can't fix it, but if you were to throw yourself into some new activity without worrying about being evaluated, and you feel how good it feels to be totally engaged, then just don't accept anything less than that.On being mindful of shifting point of view11:48: When people are mindless, they're more or less acting like automatons. And when you're mindful, you have a general sense of what you want to do. You can have goals and routines, but they're guiding what you're doing. They're not overly determining what you're doing. So I say to my students, "Okay, let's say, on your way to class today, you run into Michelle Obama. And she takes such a liking to you for who knows what reason. And she says, 'Do you want to go have a cup of coffee?'" It would be crazy for you to say, "No, I have to go to class." All right, but I think mindlessly, especially the A students, that's just what they would do, rather than say, "Well, circumstances now are so unusual, I should take advantage of it." And so when you're mindful because you're there, you get to take advantage of opportunities to which you'd otherwise be blind, and you avoid the danger that has not yet arisen.Show Links:Recommended Resources:SocratesEpictetusPrimingThe Counterclockwise StudyFrank A. BeachGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at HarvardEllen J. Langer's WebsiteEllen J. Langer on LinkedInEllen J. Langer on XHer Work:The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic HealthMindfulnessCounterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of PossibilityThe Power of Mindful LearningOn Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity

There’s a significant mismatch between our ancient brain's capabilities and the rapid advancements in technology. Simply put, our brains just can’t keep up in the digital age. But what does that impact look like from the brain’s point of view? What’s really going on with the neurotransmitters when we take in all that information? Richard Cytowic is a professor of neurology at George Washington University. His books like Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload and The Man Who Tasted Shapes examine the effects of technology on the brain and explore the rare but very real phenomenon of synesthesia. Richard and Greg chat about the energy economics of brain function, the inherent limitations of multitasking, and the benefits of a digital detox. They also explore synesthesia, how human neurology is uniquely wired for metaphor, and how babies might all have some form of synesthesia early on. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why multitasking is exhausting your brain04:05: Our brains today are no different from those of our distant ancestors. I mean, they have not evolved one iota, whereas technology has been advancing ten thousand, a million times more than that. So I do think we've reached the point where we're asking it to do what it simply can't do anymore. The brain has a fixed level of energy that it can use, and no amount of diet, exercise, supplements, or Sudoku puzzles can possibly increase that. So when you're asking it to multitask or to keep switching attention from one thing to another, you're asking it to do things that it was never designed to do, that it can't do very well, if at all. And so that's why people are burned out and fatigued.Why are people so concerned about what they put in their bodies, but not about what their mind consumes?35:13: People are so concerned about what they put in their bodies—non-GMO, vegan, no sugar, no artificial colorings. But why aren't they as picky about what they ingest through their senses? I mean, the mental garbage that we take in is certainly less harmful than the occasional cheeseburger and Twinkie. So people just don't think in terms of, "What is my sensory diet?" And again, I'm so unusual because I'm thinking neurologically and neuropsychologically, and most people never have the opportunity or the inclination to think about the way that they think—this metacognition kind of thing.Quiet is an essential nutrient 15:03: Quiet is the antidote to everything. I call it an essential nutrient. We need it to give ourselves space to think. And part of it has to do, I think, with people feeling that they don't like solitude. They think being alone is an odious, difficult state. But I say that solitude has. Loneliness wants. And so if you can distinguish between the two—that here, sitting in a park with a tree and a green space, and I'm quite happy, eating my lunch here in solitude—then this is a positive experience for me. I'm giving myself a nourishing experience. But if I'm thinking, Oh my God, I'm all alone. There's nobody to talk to. I don't know what to do; you're doing a number on yourself and freaking yourself out.The iPad as babysitter29:52: The iPad is the worst babysitter in the world. Look at a baby when they get to be on the move and start crawling. They put everything in their mouths. They're touching, feeling, and having a visual apprenticeship with the world. And when you put this screen full of mediated images in front of them, those characters, if they're Disneyfied or not, don't engage with the child in the same way that a real human being does. They talk at a child. They don't talk with a child. Whereas an adult who's playing peek-a-boo, and "so big," and other kinds of things like that, they're speaking to the child in normal adult language. And these kids are picking things up like sponges, believe me, and that's what they need to have. They need to have that one-on-one interaction.Show Links:Recommended Resources:What percentage of your brain do you use? | TED-EdWilliam JamesClifford Nass Her (film)Bernard-Henri LévyThe Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter by David SaxDaphne MaurerGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at George Washington UniversityProfessional WebsiteLinkedIn ProfileHis Work:Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory OverloadSynesthesia The Man Who Tasted ShapesWednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia

When does predicting the future become a science and not a fantasy? What can be learned from forecasts throughout the ages and across different industries? What does the future of energy look like, given certain unchangeable limitations of physics themselves?Mark P. Mills is the founder and executive director of the National Center for Energy Analytics and the author of the books The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s, Digital Cathedrals, and Work in the Age of Robots. Greg and Mark discuss the complexities and pitfalls of forecasting, why we often get it wrong, and the various types of forecasters. Mark explains the interconnectedness of energy, computing, and infrastructure, arguing against a simplistic view of an energy transition and highlighting the intricate dance of innovation and efficiency across centuries. He also touches on the future impact of AI, the importance of complementary investments for technological growth, and the profound phase changes society is currently undergoing. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:On forecasting and the future of technology06:04: In the book [The Cloud Revolution], what I chose to do was a framing of a forecast with technology that was very specific, and which I think can be highly predictive and accurate. And this is not about how much money people will make or what company will succeed, but if you want to forecast the next decade on technology, not about human nature, not about wars, not about who gets elected, those things all matter because the world is dynamic, and these things interact. Economies matter; they affect our ability to build things, fund things. So, an economy that's shrinking can delay the forecast of a new product or service because if the new product or service requires new capital, new infrastructure, and capital's expensive, then the actual emergence of that system might take longer than you thought, but it'll still happen. It'll just happen later.Efficiency fuels demand, not reduces it44:15: The idea, which we can find better and implement better through compute communications and AI, means that we have not tapped all the efficiencies, systems, and supply chains. There's enormous efficiency to be had. But efficiency creates demand; it doesn't kill demand…This complete misunderstanding of efficiency is a failure to understand how humans operate, how we live our lives, and what we like to do.Why big airplanes won't fly on lithium batteries40:39: When the technologies are new, there are two things about them: we haven't figured out how to make them at physics limits yet. Our knowledge is weak. We haven't refined the engineering because it's a new technology. So, as you do that, you approach physics limits. And this is what's going on now with batteries. You can't store more energy in a lithium battery than exists in the lithiated chemicals. You can't. I mean, it's the lithium atom. It's one of the most energetic atoms on the periodic table. But lithiated chemicals have one-fifth the energy per pound that hydrocarbons do. So, hydrocarbons start with a 50-fold. That's a pretty big advantage in energy per pound. So, what you would do then is make machines to extract the energy per pound, which is why big airplanes are not going to have lithium batteries. They'll carry them, but they're not going to fly with them. Little ones can because the advantage that the hydrocarbons have in the physics of the universe we live in is so much greater. So, it doesn't matter how cheap the lithium is. If it were free, it wouldn't change the fact that the fuel for the airplane would weigh more than the airplane because it's not dense enough.Systems have inertia33:48: Systems have inertia, economic systems, and financial systems. Physical systems all have inertia. It's a physics term, but it's anchored in how the universe really operates. You can't change big things quickly, except by explosions, right? In social economic terms and physical terms. You can change things quickly and explosively, but explosions are destructive, whether it's a financial, economic, or physical system. So, the velocity of change first begins with the size of the system you're trying to change. Show Links:Recommended Resources:1939 New York World's FairFuture ShockPeter DruckerIrving FisherKenneth J. GergenMalthusianismSimon–Ehrlich wagerFirst Jewish–Roman WarRobert SolowThe Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic ProgressGuest Profile:LinkedInProfessional Profile on National Center for Energy AnalyticsMark P. Mills Tech-Pundit.comProfile on XHis Work:Amazon Author PageThe Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020sDigital CathedralsWork in the Age of RobotsForbes Articles

How do you measure the quality of management at a company? And how much do management practices impact a firm’s overall performance? Nicholas Bloom is a professor of economics at Stanford University and co-director of the Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research on working from home and management practices has been published in numerous scientific journals, including the Journal of Political Economy and Nature. Nicholas and Greg discuss the historical trends of productivity growth, why management is often overlooked as a technological advance, and the challenges of measuring and improving management quality. Nicholas also shares some of his key management tips from his years of studying firms across the world. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Is high uncertainty an opportunity for big returns?43:42: High uncertainty is where the money is. When life's uncertain, that's where the profits have been made. Kind of Warren Buffett/VCs. A good example of that would be the dot-com boom. So, in the dot-com boom, everyone knew in the early 2000s, look, the internet's going to be a big thing. And it turns out it was a big thing. You just don't know which bit and when and how. And so the view is, look, if we invest in the internet, we have a lot of these implicit options on it. And if it takes off, these are valuable. If they’re not, we wasted our money, but no more. And so, there's also kind of what I call exploratory investment when demand or markets are uncertain. You do, on the other hand, want to spend some kind of R&D-ish type money or open subsidiaries or open up a website or whatever. And it's like placing a bet. It's like investment in equity, if you think about it. And if it works out well, great. You've 10x your money. And if it doesn't, you've lost your cash.The key for hybrid work is coordination35:53: Hybrid is coordination. So, it sounds obvious, but if you're on a hybrid plan, whereby, say, you've got to be in the office three days a week, you want to make sure it's the same three days as your team because the thing that sends people mad is coming in and then spending all day on Zoom because everyone else is at home.Why do owners struggle to recognize great management?23:12: So, part of the problem why management isn't great is that owners don't appreciate it or aren't aware of it. The other hard part of it is that it's intangible, so it's hard to buy it. So, you have ten candidates; they all claim they're great managers. How do you know? It's a tough thing to actually turn. Ten consulting firms—every consulting firm claims that it will make you so much money, but whether they do after the event is much less obvious.Do government-owned organizations struggle with managing underperformance?16:34: You find in the data, on average, government-owned organizations tend not to be very well managed, and where they're particularly poor is what I'll call dealing with underperformance. So, if you look at our data, government organizations can be reasonably good at collecting data and having targets, and they can be—they're okay but not great on incentives if you perform well. They're just terrible at dealing with underperformers, and it's partly just politically—it’s painful for politicians; partly they're heavily unionized; partly there's typically also a reason why a government owns a firm.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Frederick Winslow TaylorGeorge StiglerDanaher CorporationunSILOed episode with John RobertsunSILOed episode with Lynda GrattonunSILOed episode with Gene Kim & Steven SpearEconomic Policy Uncertainty IndexRobert PindyckWorld Management SurveyGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Stanford UniversityProfessional Profile on LinkedInNick Bloom on XHis Work:The Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research Research papersGoogle Scholar page

Women have been systematically marginalized throughout history. However, new research shows a growing gender gap in the other direction. Today, men may face many disadvantages regarding education and the workforce. So, how should society address the disadvantages of both women and men in a nuanced and inclusive way?Richard Reeves founded the American Institute for Boys and Men after writing the book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It. His work on class and inequality can also be found in publications like The New York Times and The Atlantic. Richard and Greg discuss the current disadvantages faced by men, the historical context of gender inequality, and potential solutions like “redshirting” boys in education to better serve their developmental needs. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Zero-sum thinking undermines gender progress for all03:41: It feels to some people like it is zero-sum, and that, somehow, to acknowledge the problems of boys and men is to dilute the necessary work that still needs to be done for women and girls. You sort of have to choose, pick a side, or certainly this was the experience that I was warned about, which is that it's just really hard to elevate the problems of boys and men without somehow falling into the trap of being seen as anti-women and girls or anti the progress that they need. And so that zero-sum thinking around gender is a big part of the problem too.Nature matters, but nurture is key in expressing our differences49:14: The thing I find most frustrating about this whole ridiculous nature-nurture debate is that acknowledging some role for nature doesn't make nurture less important. It makes it more important because that is how we learn how to express these natural differences.Are women excelling more educationally?12:26: I think a lot of women have inherited this message: that if you want to get ahead, you're going to have to work even harder. It's almost like an immigrant mindset. It's like, you're going to have to be even better, work even harder. And so that message, I think, has really affected at least one or two generations of women who just seem to have much greater aspiration educationally than boys and men do. And that's playing out in the data.Not a lack of rights, structural shifts leave men unmoored and vulnerable14:25: There are real problems facing boys and men in different areas, but it's not because of a lack of rights, and it's not because of discrimination; it's a result of a series of quite big structural changes in the economy and society that have left a lot of men kind of feeling unmoored, uncertain, and vulnerable, and that problem is just a different problem.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Claudia Goldin | unSILOed Joseph HenrichDavid DemingManhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs by Josh HawleyJordan Peterson The Rise of the Meritocracy by Michael YoungDarrin McMahonGuest Profile:Fellow Profile at Brookings InstituteProfessional WebsiteAmerican Institute for Boys and MenHis Work:Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about ItDream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About ItRedshirt the Boys | The AtlanticStop Pretending You’re Not Rich | The New York Times

Is there a secret recipe for start-up success? Probably not. But if you take a close enough look at some of the massive success stories like Twitter and Lyft, patterns start to emerge. Venture capitalists Mike Maples, Jr. and Peter Ziebelman pull back the curtain and examine how start-ups go from seedling ideas to billion-dollar companies in their book, Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future.Mike, Peter, and Greg discuss the roles that insight and implementation play in determining a start-up’s chance at success, how investors distinguish between genius and crazy, and why the best founders are like artists.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Distinguishing idea vs. insight25:33: [Mike Maples Jr.] A lot of people confuse risk and uncertainty. And so, like, I might have an idea in an existing market that there's a clear need for, but it's a bounded upside idea. But I can connect the dots between the idea, customers wanting it, and a successful business. I might, on the other hand, have an idea that's like Justin TV, right? Which is a reality 24/7 streaming TV show, which is crazy online. But it embodied a lot of inflections and insight. It was a terrible idea, but a great opportunity. And so what we're interested in is not certainty about the future, because if we're going after a non-consensus idea, if we have real insight, we can't know we're certain yet. All we can know is that we're non-consensus. Just because we don't know how the dots will forward connect doesn't mean they won't forward connect. And it doesn't mean that the expected value of the upside isn't higher. So that's what we kind of encourage people to say: just because you don't know how success will happen doesn't mean that it's not way better to pursue that path.The crucial elements that contribute to startup’s breakthrough06:10: [Peter Ziebelman] There's still a lot of luck and perhaps intuition and guesswork to determine whether you're going to find a breakthrough or build a breakthrough. But having said that, we do believe there are elements that can tip the balance—inflections. Another element is seeing that the entrepreneur has insight, something they know to be true that others do not yet believe, and we believe insights are one of the things that explain a lot about startups.Being a founder is like being an artist52:34: [Mike Maples Jr.] A lot of people think about what type of business person is an entrepreneur. And what I've come to believe is that the right way to think about it is they're more like an artist than they are like an engineer, a salesperson, or anything else. [53:06] And by that, I mean two things. First of all, artists notice something that other people don't notice, right? And then the other thing that artists do is convince people to abandon their logic. And so, like, no rational employee would join a startup. No rational customer would buy from a startup. No rational investor would invest in a startup. [53:45] So the founder has to convince all of us to abandon logic and go on a journey where we're 85 percent likely to not succeed. And so the best founders I've ever met have those. Attributes of the artist, and they have the artistry to notice from their sensitivity, and they have the artistry to persuade and convince people. They have the artistry to notice from their sensitivity, and they have the artistry to persuade and convince people. How does a founder balance persistence with openness to new data and insights?21:06: [Mike Maples Jr.] If you have the right insight, when we talk about pivoting, your insight, like in basketball, is like your pivot foot. You hold it planted firm, and you move your body by either modifying your implementation, modifying the audience that you talk to, or some combination. But if you have to leave your pivot foot, you're no longer attached to anything as a startup, right? You might as well start over. You might as well try a new idea or just give up. And so that's where I think you reconcile it. You want to be flexible in your experimentation of navigating your insight to the desperate, but you want to be fixed about what you believe is different about the future.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Hamilton HelmerVilfredo Pareto Reed HastingsScott Cook Justin.tvFounders FundVinod KhoslaGuest Profile:Mike Maples, Jr. Professional Profile at FloodgateMike Maples, Jr. Podcast, Pattern BreakersPeter Ziebelman Professional Profile at Palo Alto Venture PartnersPeter Ziebelman Faculty Profile at Stanford Graduate School of BusinessTheir Work:Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future

How does drawing from experiments and scientists on the fringes of science help all of science and strengthen the core? How does luck actually work? How did the early members of NASA treat scientists who made mistakes in the quest to reach the moon?Richard Wiseman is a professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, a magician, performer, and the author of several books. Two of his latest titles are Moonshot: What Landing a Man on the Moon Teaches Us About Collaboration, Creativity, and the Mind-set for Success and Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives.Greg and Richard discuss Richard's unique career path, his popular books, and how psychology can have real-world applications. The conversation delves into various topics such as the public's fascination with luck, the importance of empirical research, and the psychology behind the successful teamwork that achieved the Apollo moon landings. Wiseman also shares insights from his background in magic and how it has influenced his understanding of human perception and deception. The episode highlights the need for applying psychological research to improve everyday life and the significant role of creativity and open-mindedness in both science and education.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why conservative thinking limits scientific innovation34:01: Organizations, I think, have become very conservative in terms of risk-taking, which is sort of sad for the next generation of students within science. I think we want to encourage people to be expansive thinkers, to have crazy ideas. Obviously, you need to find out whether they're true or not. But again, even within science, I think we're quite conservative. We want to encourage students to think in a certain way, to do science in a certain way, and so on. And I'm just rather pro the more maverick approach in some extent; the only students we have are those people that are good at passing exams. And I often think, I wonder what talent is out there that just happened to not be so good at passing exams—that maybe who have had creative, amazing ideas that would have changed the world, and they don't sit in our labs or in our universities because they're not the sort of people who want to sit in a hall and write something on a piece of paper.Why is creativity important in science?37:56: I'm so pro-creativity in science and getting people to think differently because that's where your good ideas are going to come from, and sometimes those people are not the ones that perform best in an exam hall. They're the ones who just want to get out there and change the world.What magic taught Richard about psychology50:47: Magic is incredibly important, and it shows you, fundamentally, that you can be very, very confident and very, very wrong. You know, when a magician shows you an empty box and makes something appear in it, the audience has to be 100 percent certain that there's nothing in that box. And they are 100 percent wrong because an object is going to appear in that box. So it should teach us a bit of humility as well.How Quirkology was born from a disappointing psychology experience21:06: Quirkology came about because psychology broke my heart a bit. People are astonishing—when you think of your friends, partners, and family, they're amazing, complex, and fun to talk about. They experience emotions, behave differently in crowds, do things that surprise you, do things that disappoint you, and so on. That kind of buzzy energy of humanity, which was the reason I got into psychology, I really just loved it. Then I'd open a psychology journal, and I just saw this dusty old paper that reduced that buzzing humanity to a number that wasn't very interesting, and I thought, there must be some interesting psychology out there; there has to be. And that was the path into quirkology, where it was all the quirky psychology that I love, some of which I've carried out myself.Show Links:Recommended Resources:William JamesNeo-FreudianismBayesian inferenceMalinowski, the Trobriand people and the Kula (anthropologyreview.org)Glynn LunneyApollo 1Apollo 11Christopher C. Kraft Jr.Inattentional blindness - WikipediaGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at the University of HertfordshireRichardWiseman.wordpress.comWikipedia PageSocial Profile on XSocial Profile on InstagramQuirkology YouTube PageHis Work:Amazon Author PageMoonshot: What Landing a Man on the Moon Teaches Us About Collaboration, Creativity, and the Mind-set for SuccessQuirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday LivesRip it Up: Forget Positive Thinking, it's Time for Positive ActionThe As If Principle: The Radically New Approach to Changing Your LifeThe Luck Factor: The Four Essential PrinciplesParanormality: The Science of the Supernatural59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a MinutePsychology: Why It MattersMagic in Theory: An Introduction to the Theoretical and Psychological Elements of ConjuringDeception & Self-Deception: Investigating Psychics

Are we a more addicted society now than ever before in history? And if that’s the case, is it because there are more things to be addicted to or has the thinking around addiction simply shifted in the last century? David Courtwright is an emeritus professor of history at the University of North Florida. His books like, The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business and Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World examine the history and proliferation of drugs and addiction in society. David and Greg discuss the expansion of addiction from substances like alcohol and hard drugs to today's digital vices such as gaming and social media, how “limbic capitalism” is perpetuated by not only the manufacturers of these products but governments as well, and the history of society’s quest for pleasure. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Is the rise in addictive behaviors more of a supply or demand phenomenon?08:27: I try to tell the story of “The Age of Addiction" in the context of a larger, big history story of the quest for pleasure. Because that's where this really comes from. I mean, human beings have always been looking to expand their repertoire of pleasures. And nothing wrong with that. Life is hard. Life has been hard. Life was even harder for our distant ancestors. And so that people should discover brewing, that they should discover tobacco, that they should discover psychoactive plants, and that they should use those for both pleasure and ritual purposes—none of this is surprising. And, in fact, the first chapters of the book show how there was a kind of expansion, throughout time, in the pleasure resources that were available.Addiction begins with exposure46:57: Nobody becomes addicted to anything unless they're exposed to it. And exposure varies with social and cultural circumstance...[48:35] So, social circumstance is a key variable in determining exposure to potentially addictive products.Are we living in the age of addiction?44:22: Addiction is socially constructed. It's something that expands over time, but it turns out there is a biological foundation for this. I was initially skeptical. [02:11] And I started looking into it, and the question was basically, is this just hype, or is this real? And the more I looked into it, and the more I studied the neuroscience behind it and the economics and the sociology of it, I became convinced that, yes, we are living in an age of addiction. Addiction is becoming more conspicuous, more commonplace, and more varied.Is there a historical parallel in American susceptibility to addiction, particularly with things like the internet?45:38: Vices are more likely to flourish in what I call bachelor societies. So, if you have a bunch of young, unmarried men congregated in a place—whether it's an army camp, frontier mining town, or cattle ranch—their behavioral patterns are going to be very different from a male of the same age who's, say, living in a residential neighborhood, married, and has a family. I mean, the indulgence in vice—the likelihood of indulging in what contemporaries would have called vice, like consorting with prostitutes, getting drunk in a saloon, et cetera—is much higher for the people in the unsupervised, unparented, competitive masculine group.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Volstead ActHarrison Narcotics Tax ActMichael MossSteven PinkerPareto PrincipleGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of North FloridaProfessional WebsiteHis Work:The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big BusinessForces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern WorldViolent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City

What factors influenced the development of early democracies, the role of technology in governance? Who came up with the concept of fairness in taxation, and the evolution of democratic institutions over time?David Stasavage is in the department of Politics at New York University, and also the author of several books. His latest book is titled The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today.Greg and David discuss the historical divergence between Europe and China in both economic and political terms. They explore themes such as the emergence of representative assemblies in Europe, the necessity of rulers to obtain consent and information, and the contrasting ability of Chinese rulers to tax without broad-based consent due to their developed bureaucratic systems. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Is democracy on the rise, or on the decline in today's world?50:32: We're still in a position today, I think, where there's certainly a lot more people living under democracy than was the case in the early 19th century, right? And that's a very significant thing because, in the early 19th century, of course, we had sort of proto-democracies in some cases, and it then spread in Western Europe, but the rest of the world had been conquered by Europeans. And, pushed into having conqueror Europeans, colonizers weren't particularly eager in early stages to promote democratic institutions in areas that they colonized. In fact, sometimes they did away with indigenous democratic institutions. So that is why the book does say decline and then rise because, yes, there's some backtracking going on; it's serious, it's important, but there's been a pretty big rise all the same.The more you expand democracy’s meaning, the less meaningful it becomes26:59: The important thing to recognize about democracy is that the more you load on to the term, the less meaningful it becomes.The ripple effect of a bond default43:26: I think with today's economy, everybody recognizes that if you have a default—like, say, something on U.S. Treasuries—that's going to have massive, obviously massive, negative economic consequences. Whereas, if you think of England with those first few loans they issued in 1688, if they had been defaulted on, things wouldn't have been great in London, but it's not like there would have been some massive negative economic shock.England's balancing act—bureaucracy and democracy32:36: Chapter 9 of the book (The Decline and Rise of Democracy) is called "Why England Was Different," and different in the sense of having simultaneously pursued this sort of consensual route of governance, while also seeing over time a bureaucracy develop. So that today, when we think of democracy, we don't think in a modern democracy that bureaucracy is, I mean, apart from someone that wants to say, "Oh my God, we have to abolish the IRS because otherwise we'll be in, you know, a dictatorship," that we don't think of these two things as being opposites. We think, of course, we need a bureaucracy to run things because who else is going to do this on a daily basis in such a large republic?Show Links:Recommended Resources:Song dynastyMancur OlsonTacitusCharles I of EnglandCharlemagneMissus dominicusJames C. ScottYu the GreatDomesday BookQing dynastyTlaxcalaDanegeldQ.O.Tl A Romano-Canonical Maxim, ‘quod omnes tangit,’ in Bracton | Traditio | Cambridge CorePlena Potestas and Consent in Medieval Assemblies: A Study in Romano-Canonical Procedure and the Rise of Representation, 1150–1325 | Traditio | Cambridge CorePostal Service ActGuest Profile:Stasavage.comLinkedIn ProfileX ProfileWikipedia ProfileHis Work:Amazon Author PageThe Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to TodayStates of Credit: Size, Power, and the Development of European PolitiesTaxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and EuropePublic Debt and the Birth of the Democratic State: France and Great Britain 1688–1789The Political Economy of a Common Currency: The Cfa Franc Zone Since 1945Google Scholar Page

The fear of AI taking our jobs has been buzzing for years, but it’s not a new conversation. Technology has been shaking up industries and displacing workers since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.In this episode, Greg sits down with Carl Benedikt Frey, the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI & Work at the Oxford Internet Institute, to dive deep into these shifts. As the Director of the Future of Work Programme and author of The Technology Trap, Frey sheds light on the historical and current impacts of automation, the Industrial Revolution, and the role of political power in technological progress. Together, they explore who wins and loses in the AI era and what history can teach us about the future. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Will AI drive long-term productivity or just short-term automation?46:21: If all that AI is about is automation, then the future of productivity simply depends on the potential scope of automation, so to speak, and that will then eventually peter off. Whereas if it's about creating new tasks, new products, and new innovations, then it can be more sustained, right? And I think that's a key reason that the second industrial revolution lasted for a very long period of time: it created a host of entirely new types of economic activities. And so I think a key question going forward is: can we design our institutions to help make sure that AI is more being used to create new activities? I think it's likely to have a much more sustained impact on productivity growth going forward.Starting from the past to predict the future03:07: If you want to say that the future is likely to be very different from the past, then at the very least, I think we should be able to state why. So I think history should always be our starting point. On the race between technology and education39:18: The race between technology and education is a world in which everybody is better off, right? That has not been the case. So we need to somehow modify that model of the world, and what we've seen since the 1980s, in particular across advanced economies, but also in some emerging economies, is labor market polarization and the decline of middle-income jobs, right? And so the race between technology and education and the view of technological change does not explain that part of the story, right? That's sort of the task-based view, and things like replacing versus enabling technologies do have some explanatory power.Should we be thinking of this new revolution as being more like the first  than the second?44:22: I think it is more like the first industrial revolution. And I still think that I can't think of a single AI application that is not about automation or doing something that people are already doing a bit more productively, whether it's writing, coding, or image generation. Show Links:Recommended Resources:Engels' pauseLudditesGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Oxford Martin SchoolCarl Benedikt FreyCarl Benedikt Frey (@carlbfrey) / XHis Work:The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation

Discover how the American dream of meritocracy, rather than being a ladder to success,  may actually be fueling inequality, eroding the middle class, and even harming the elites it was meant to reward.Our guest today is Daniel Markovits, the Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School and the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Private Law. Markovits publishes widely and in a range of disciplines, including law, philosophy, and economics. Greg LaBlanc sits down with Daniel in this episode to discuss his influential book, 'The Meritocracy Trap.' Listen as they inquire into the historical and structural reasons behind this phenomenon, the heritability of elite status through education, and the challenges of reconciling societal norms with economic realities. They also touch upon the precarious status of non-elite workers in the face of technological advancements and the cultural shifts needed to address these systemic issues.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How leisure took priority over income before the 17th century23:30: This idea of seeking to maximize your income and viewing your wage as the price of your leisure is quite new historically. Until the 17th century or so, people thought of their income as, in some sense, secondary to their virtue. And they wanted to earn enough money or make enough money to be able to fund socially appropriate consumption. And after that, they preferred the combination of less money and more leisure over the combination of less leisure and more money. And you see this because when wages went up, the labor they yielded went down.What did the founding fathers fail to foresee in this new type of aristocracy?02:43: Meritocracy allocates income, status, and general advantage based on accomplishment. There are two obvious inputs into a person's accomplishment: their natural talent and their effort. But there's a third input, and this is the one the founders, I think, didn't really foresee. The third input is the extent of the person's training.Is inequality more transmissible than it was in the past? 12:08: I think it's more transmissible for two reasons, maybe three. First, human capital might survive the war, whereas physical capital gets destroyed. Second, this mechanism of elite transmission has a happy side effect if you're a dynasty: the way in which you give your children wealth also gives them the skills and character to keep their wealth. Whereas if you just give your children a bequest, when you die, they could be wastrels and free it away.[12:47] And then the third, which I think is really important, and this matters a lot to what we do about this, is that because we still in some way associate labor income with merit and virtue, elite labor income is extremely resistant to political redistribution.Are the economic elites using DEI for their own economic privilege?16:38 [Daniel Markovits]: The DEI is, in a fundamental way, consistent with the meritocratic vision.16:43: [Gregory LaBlanc]: Right. I mean, that's why elites can all agree that diversity is a good thing and that we need to knock out any kind of remaining obstacle to achievement. 16:53 [Daniel Markovits]:  The darker side of this. And the thing that I think when populists, including right-wing populists and some sort of nativist populists, complain about elite commitments to DEI, the thing I think that they're not wrong about is that economic elites use their commitment to diversity. Partly, they genuinely believe in it for the reason that it's morally required, but at the same time, they use it instrumentally to justify their own economic privilege.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Alexis de TocquevilleGini coefficientGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Yale Law SchoolHis Work:Yale Law School Center for Private LawThe Meritocracy TrapA Modern Legal Ethics: Adversary Advocacy in a Democratic AgeContract Law and Legal Methods

Why have historians often overlooked childhood despite its significance in shaping culture and political views? How did trends in family demographics and child-raising change across the country as new research became popular or new technology became widely adopted?  Paula S. Fass is an emerita professor of history at UC Berkeley and also the author of a number of books. Her latest books are Inheriting the Holocaust: A Second-Generation Memoir, Children of a New World: Society, Culture, and Globalization, and Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America.Greg and Paula discuss how American childhood has evolved distinctly due to factors like land availability, mother's roles, and the education system. They explore the impact of historical figures like Locke, Rousseau, and de Tocqueville and how post-WWII global changes influenced childhood. The conversation also touches on contemporary parental practices, the effects of smaller family sizes, and whether the unique characteristics of American childhood are fading in the modern world.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How distinctive has American childhood actually been?06:42: We in the United States, becoming aware of the fact that we're no longer so unique, have become much more conscious about not giving our children as much leeway as we used to have. What I call the managed child, helicoptering, and a variety of things like that have now become a very common American experience, precisely because we're worried that the kind of mobility—both geographic and social—and,  as a result, economic—that we used to have is now no longer a given. We are competing in a very different world than we were competing with before. And so trying to give our children a leg up, and the fear that, in fact, their mobility will be downward mobility, has led American parents to organize their children's lives much more than they have ever before.The pressures of parenting are driving a sharp decline in birth rates in the U.S55:11: We are now in a situation where parenting is so fraught that young people just don't want to do it. And given effective contraception, the birth rate has declined radically. On the intersection between politics, economics and they way children are raised in America57:58: One of the realities that we talked about at the very beginning is the intersection between politics and economics and the way children are brought up. And certainly, the way American children were brought up in the 19th century and even in the 20th century led to an emphasis on  entrepreneurial innovative spirit. that the American economy has prided itself on. And it's not clear to me—I'm not an economic historian, and I'm not an economist—whether we are any longer providing children with the kind of home structures that would pivot them into those struggles. It is certainly possible that we've come to the point where what we prided ourselves on as Americans will no longer be the dominant form of American enterprise and American life. Yes, it's possible. And that would be related to childhood.Can heightened awareness of children's needs lead to both overindulgence and overcontrol?49:57: I won't describe that as an overindulgence. It is different than what happened in the 19th century, where there was not that much room for worrying so much about what your children were doing, worrying about what kinds of things they were playing with, and making sure they had appropriate reading material. Again, I won't call that overindulgence. Child consciousness, awareness of what you think children might need—yes. At the same time, that can lead to, and often does lead to, overcontrol becShow Links:Recommended Resources:Ulysses S. Grant - WikipediaLenore SkenazyAdam GurowskiClaudia GoldinBenjamin SpockJohn B. WatsonUnited States Children's BureauAmy ChuaGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at UC BerkeleyWikipedia ProfileHer Work:Kidnapped: Child Abduction in AmericaChildren of a New World: Society, Culture, and GlobalizationThe Routledge History of Childhood in the Western World (Routledge Histories)Inheriting the Holocaust: A Second-Generation MemoirThe End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting from Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child

How was the financial world changed by the structured use of wooden sticks with dents in them? Why did silver coins disappear from England as soon as they were minted? How did one country that aimed to eliminate money ultimately end up creating the most stable currency in Europe?Paolo Zannoni is  Executive Deputy Chairman at Prada, and the author of the book Money and Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World. Greg and Paolo discuss Paolo’s career choices between academia and banking, his research into the history of financial systems, and the key historical figures and places that have shaped modern banking practices. They also delve into the importance of trust in finance, the transparency of early banking methods, and the pivotal role Italy played in the origin of modern banking.Zanoni and Greg discuss the significance of historical financial transactions and their transparency, comparing them to present-day financial technologies like blockchain. They also cover the interesting evolution of financial instruments such as the bill of exchange, public finance systems, and the impacts of these systems on the state and society.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Common debt before common currency34:07: It was cheaper issuing debt in Écu than issuing debt in your own national currency. That was the beginning of the common currency and could have been the beginning of the common debt. But the first part went fast, reasonably fast, and reasonably far. The second did not take off. And that shows the areas in which the Continental Congress of the United States was much superior to the EU. The Continental Congress of the United States had common public debt because before having a common currency. That I found is so marvelous, so innovative, and so great. They did not have a common currency, but they had common debt.When banks fail, they turn to financial history45:55: When banks go bad, they start confronting that particular crisis of the past, and depending on how good the financial history is, they go back in time. How an orderly banking system preserved centuries of financial history27:44: Bank debt was a combination between a registered IOU and a banknote. And so when the bank was making promises, they were issuing these pledges of credit, but the pledges of credit afterward, to be deposited in a bank account, had to be entered into a special ledger by bank employees. And when that ledger, when that pledge of credit was entered into the ledger, was returned, all hundreds of years of pledges of credit are neatly stacked on the shelves. That's how you can find how much Caravaggio was paid for his painting. Isn't it amazing? With enough time and knowledge, you can find almost every big transaction.On Venice's early banking transparency09:49: They had two features. The first one was that they were public, and banking was transacted. The banker opened up his ledger, and the two parties, maybe not at the same time, appeared in front of him. And the second was that the government was checking those ledgers. I mean, Venice had magistrates that were required to supervise the ledgers of the bank. At the ledgers of the bankers, and they did supervise the ledger of the bankers, and the only place where you find those ledgers today are in the part of the archives that comes from those magistrates and from the senate.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Luca PacioliFibonacciLiber AbaciPhilip II of SpainTally stickÉcuFerdinando Galiani - WikipediaAlexander HamiltonRudolf HilferdingGresham's lawunSILOed - William Goetzmann - How Finance Made Civilization PossibleBernardo DavanzatiPolymathGuest Profile:Board of Directors page for PradaHis Work:Book - Money and Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the WorldArticle - Fortune - The government using taxpayer money to bail out banks will unavoidably continue. Here’s why

The thing about sovereign debt is that if a country defaults on its loan, there are no international bankruptcy laws in place to ensure the creditors get their money back. So what happens then?Gregory Makoff, a physicist turned banker, is a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and the author of the book, Default: The Landmark Court Battle over Argentina's $100 Billion Debt Restructuring. In this debut, Makoff tells the gripping story of Argentina’s years-long court battle in the U.S. to settle a massive debt. He and Greg chat about the tricky nature of sovereign debt, the inner-workings of the Argentina case and why it took more than a decade for the debt to be settled, and the lasting impact the case has had on sovereign debt law. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Is the IMF failing broke countries?01:06:51: The biggest problem with most countries, for me, is going to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) too slowly because you're in a deeper hole. You have more debt. It hurts the debtors more. You need a bigger adjustment. So, for me, the IMF isn't the problem. It's countries hearing all this negative IMF theory and politics and that anti-IMF view hurts them. And so, I think they do as well as they can. They're a member organization. Are they perfect? Nobody's perfect. You work with them. That's why you need countries to understand IMF programs, how they work. They need to do their own economic models. They need to be proactive with the fund and say, we need this and that. We don't want to do this and that.Bridging differences and highlighting the role of arbitrators through 'Default’31:34: The book (Default) is really about two things. One is good-faith negotiation—getting people to settle their differences and not letting the partisans far on the left or far on the right dominate the solution. And the other one is the role of arbitrators.Why is it that we don't have an orderly process or system for sorting out government debt?102:10: The answer is the word sovereignty. And you can ask the same, similar question: well, why isn't there an international court that makes wars not happen? And it's, a country wants to go to war, you can't stop it. My country doesn't want to pay its debt. In fact, when you buy a security, a bond, or a loan from a foreign country and they don't want to pay, there's not much you can do about it.Can Argentina break free from its debt trap?33:39: What does Argentina do? It's got a big debt load again. Does it just keep defaulting? Or does it wake up someday and say, We're going to start honoring our debts? We're going to live within our means. And they elected Javier Millie. He came with a chainsaw. He said, We're going to honor contracts. It's going to hurt. But the people are exhausted by crisis of the 80s, crisis of the 90s, crisis of the 2000s, crisis of the 2010s. And they're like enough. We value financial stability more than we do short-term increased pension, increased wages. And how that plays out is incredibly important, and it's unchartered territoryShow Links:Recommended Resources:Anne Osborn KruegerInternational Monetary Fund (IMF)Elliott Investment ManagementCristina Fernández de KirchnerGuest Profile:Fellow Profile at Harvard Kennedy SchoolSocial Media Profile on XBook WebsiteHis Work:Default: The Landmark Court Battle over Argentina's $100 Billion Debt Restructuring