Joanne Limburg is an award-winning British writer known for her poetry, novels, and memoirs. In the podcast, she discusses her latest book Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism, Feminism, and Motherhood, in which she feels a kinship with historical female figures and addresses letters to them. Some notes on the conversation: - On Virginia Woolf: Joanne found connections in Woolf's personal writings about feeling like an outsider and struggling to dress appropriately for society. This resonated ...
Sep 14, 2023•1 hr 8 min
Fuchsia Dunlop is a cook and food writer specialising in Chinese cuisine. She was the first Westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine, and has spent much of the last two decades exploring China and its food. In her latest book, Invitation to a Banquet , Fuchsia explores the history, philosophy and techniques of China's rich and ancient culinary culture. Each chapter examines a classic dish, from mapo tofu to Dongpo pork, knife-scraped noodles to braised pomelo pith,...
Aug 30, 2023•1 hr 21 min
Fergus Butler-Gallie is a priest and writer. His latest book, Touching Cloth, is a memoir on his time as a priest in Liverpool. We cover many topics relating to Fergus's life, work, and perspectives on faith and the Church of England. I also ask him what he would do with the Church of England if he had a magic wand. Fergus provides insights into life in Liverpool, discussing local culture, diversity, and the famous Liverpool accent. He argues that many stereotypes and assumptions about the city ...
Jul 19, 2023•1 hr 22 min
David Edmonds is a philosopher, writer, podcaster and presenter. His most recent book is a biography of Derek Parfit. Parfit: A philosopher and his mission to save morality. “ Derek was perhaps the most important philosopher of his era. This scintillating and insightful portrait of him is one of the best intellectual biographies I have read. ” -Tyler Cowen Other books include: The Murder of Professor Schlick, Would You Kill the Fat Man? and (with John Eidinow) the international best-seller Wittg...
Jul 02, 2023•1 hr 36 min
David Ruebain is one of the most thoughtful thinkers I know on disability, equality and the law. He is currently a Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Sussex with strategic responsibility for Culture, Equality and Inclusion including dignity and respect. He is an adviser to the football premier league, the former director of legal policy at the equality and human rights commission and has been in the top 25 most influential disabled people in the UK. ( Link to transcript below ) We chat on:...
Jun 05, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Jennifer Doleac studies the economics of crime and discrimination. In July 2023, Jenn will join Arnold Ventures as the Executive Vice President of Criminal Justice. We chat about trends and causes of crime. How guns, drugs and policing interact with crime trends. …there was this huge increase in violent crime in particular in the late early eighties, early nineties. And suddenly violent crime started falling dramatically in the mid-1990s. We still aren't entirely sure why that is the case, this ...
May 08, 2023•1 hr 28 min
Patrick House is a neuroscientist and writer. His research focused on the neuroscience of free will and in particular how mind-control parasites altered a rat’s behaviour. We once had a long chat on the rainy streets of Glasgow. This chat – which I may not fully recall – involved speaking on what consciousness is, and touched on his work on mind-control bugs. He’s written a collection of essays: Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness “Consider different translations of a poem: Each has someth...
Mar 28, 2023•1 hr 50 min
Chris Stark is the Chief Executive of the UK’s Climate Change Committee. The committee is an independent statutory body which advises the UK and the devolved governments on emissions targets and preparing for and adapting to the impacts of climate change. I think he is one of the most important and thoughtful thinkers on climate change policy today. This is his second time on the podcast. We covered many topics in 2022 which you can check out here. This time I ask on: How does it matter that we ...
Feb 24, 2023•1 hr 23 min
Jade O’Brien was a stock broker (equity sales) for over 7 years. She then retrained as a teacher and has taught in both the state sector and the private sector in the UK. Jade used to pitch me stock ideas and speak about the investment world. I was very curious on why she decided to change careers to become a teacher. We chat about what drove Jade to the world of finance. What she viewed as the pros and cons, and what it is like as a woman in a male dominated world and advice she has. Jade outli...
Feb 03, 2023•1 hr 28 min
Kanjun is co-founder and CEO of Generally Intelligent, an AI research company. She works on metascience ideas often with Michael Nielsen, a previous podcast guest. She’s a VC investor and co-hosts her own podcast for Generally Intelligent. She is part of building the Neighborhood, which is intergenerational campus in a square mile of central San Francisco. Generally Intelligent (as of podcast date ) are looking for great talent looking to work on AI. We get a little nerdy on the podcast but we c...
Jan 17, 2023•1 hr 39 min
Florence Evans is an art dealer, historian, curator, collector and mud larker. We chat on what does mudlarking tell us about history ? What does art tell us about being human ? …we mustn't forget is that ultimately there's a real human connection with beauty. So conceptual art aside which serves an important purpose and helps us to think and challenges us in many ways. On the other hand, there's a human need, I think, a kind of nesting instinct to have art for the home, things of beauty to lift ...
Dec 29, 2022•1 hr 13 min
Michael Nielsen is a scientist at the Astera Institute. He helped pioneer quantum computing and the modern open science movement. He is a leading thinker on the topic of meta science and how to improve science, in particular, the social processes of science. His latest co-authored work is ‘A Vision of metascience: An engine of improvement for the social processes of Science’ co-authored with Kanjun Qiu . His website notebook is here , with further links to his books including on quantum, memory ...
Nov 15, 2022•1 hr 37 min
Saloni Dattani is a founding editor at Works in Progress, a researcher at Our World in Data and a commissioning editor at Stripe Press. She has recently been profiled by Vox as part of the Future Perfect 50. Saloni is an excellent thinker on progress and science with recent articles for Wired (on making science better) and Guardian (on challenge trials). Saloni tells me what are the most important questions in science that we should be working on. We discuss making science better and thinking ar...
Nov 08, 2022•1 hr 6 min
Jérôme Tagger is CEO of Preventable Surprises . Jérôme is a thinker on long term ESG trends (a catch-all phrase for extra-financial environment, social and governance) and systemic risks. He was a Director at the Global Impact Investing Network, the founding COO of the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment, Head of Research at Eurosif and Chief Revenue Officer at ImpactAlpha. Link to video and transcript: www.thendobetter.com/investing/2022/11/2/jrme-tagger-sustainability-esg-as-a-nego...
Nov 02, 2022•52 min
Mark Koyama is an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason. Mark researches comparative national state economic development and the rise of religious tolerance. He is interested in how historical institutions functioned and in the relationship between culture and economic performance. Transcript: www.thendobetter.com/investing/2022/10/9/mark-koyama-how-the-world-became-rich-economic-history-intangibles-culture-progress-podcast I ask why it has taken economists and historians so long to f...
Oct 09, 2022•1 hr 13 min
Jacob Soll is a professor of philosophy, history and accounting. His latest book is Free Market: The History of an Idea. Jake has works on the history of accounting, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations (2014); the influence of Machiavelli, "The Prince" (2005) and Louis XIV’s First minster, Jean-Baptiste Cobert, The Information Master (2009). Jake works on accounting standards and financial transparency as well as the history of ideas. Transcript, video and li...
Sep 24, 2022•1 hr 27 min
Naomi Fisher is a clinical psychologist. She has written a book: Changing Our Minds: How children can take control of their own learning. The book is an excellent look at self-directed education also known in the UK as home education, or in the US as home school or unschooling. We discuss her background as a psychologist and her work with autistic people. We chat about her experience of eleven schools and why she has ended up asking questions about control. Why we control people and particularly...
Aug 31, 2022•1 hr 23 min
Kana Chan is living in Kamikatsu which is Japan’s first “zero waste” village in rural Japan. She writes a substack at Tending Gardens and runs INOW which is an educational homestay programme to stay to at Kamikatsu. In 2021, she was selected as an Emerging Climate Leader Asia-Pacific through the ProSPER.Net Leadership Programme. She has lived and worked in Bangladesh, and travelled widely as a photographer and story teller. Kana cares deeply about climate action, sustainable tourism, and educati...
Aug 10, 2022•48 min
Larry Temkin is a moral philosopher. He has major works on inequality (book: Inequality) ; transitivity and social choices (when A > B > C, A > C ?; book: Rethinking the Good) and recently on the philosophies of doing good (critiquing some aspects of Effective Altruism, long-termism, international aid, utilitarianism | book: Being Good in a World of Need ). As of 2022, he was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. The podcast is in two parts. The second part focuse...
Jul 27, 2022•1 hr 27 min
Larry Temkin is a moral philosopher. He has major works on inequality (book: Inequality) ; transitivity and social choices (when A > B > C, A > C ?; book: Rethinking the Good) and recently on the philosophies of doing good (critiquing some aspects of Effective Altruism, long-termism, international aid, utilitarianism | book: Being Good in a World of Need ). As of 2022, he was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. The podcast is in two parts. The second part focuse...
Jul 27, 2022•1 hr 31 min
Leigh Caldwell is a cognitive economist. Leigh has done excellent work around the psychology of pricing and exploring how people consume intangible products with their mind. He has founded several software companies and is co-founder of the Irrational Agency. We chatted on Leigh graduating from university at 18, what attracted him to the internet and wanting to start companies and what lead him to the path of psychology, behavioral economics and ultimately to cognitive economics. How the questio...
Jul 22, 2022•1 hr 30 min
David Finnigan is an award winning theatre maker, writer and games creator from Ngunnawal country, Australia. David produces performances and writing that explores concepts from Game Theory, Complex Systems science, Network Theory and Resilience. He has also had the dubious honour of performing on stage with me, in our performance lecture collaboration, Thinking Bigly. He has a show coming up at The Barbican, London, 27 September, 2022: You’re Safe Til 2024: Deep History. We discuss how all art ...
Jul 05, 2022•1 hr 26 min
Sophie Purdom co-writes a climate and innovation newsletter read by tens of thousands, ClimateTech VC. Sophie has worked in start ups as an operator. She is a venture capitalist investor. She has written widely on sustainable investing. We speak on how Sophie came to climate tech investing, the importance of knocking on doors and being helpful. What Sophie learned working for local government (Providence) and how climate has always been her through line into investing. We discuss what areas of c...
Jun 26, 2022•55 min
Francesca Sanderson managed an ethical equities fund at JPMorgan as an asset manager but quit that to live for a year living off grid. She then became a social impact investor with Big Society Capital and now runs the Arts Impact programmes currently at Nesta. We chat about what she learned, missed and loved about living off-grid. How she has a more pluralist world view. Fran talks about what she learned at JP Morgan. The power and the weaknesses of institutional and organisational strength. “wh...
Jun 19, 2022•59 min
Nadia Asparouhova (previously writing under Nadia Eghbal) is an independent researcher with widely read essays on a range of topics most recently philanthropic funding including effective altruism and ideas machines, and recent ideas in funding science. She’s written books about the open source community. She has worked in start ups and venture. She set up and ran Helium grants, a microgrant programme. She is an Emergent Ventures fellow. We speak about what she learned from microgranting and rev...
Jun 11, 2022•1 hr 4 min
Carl Saxton-Pizzie trained as an actor and worked in tv before founding a sustainable grocery delivery company, Wholegood, in 2007 (with a van and £500). Wholegood is on track for £30m in revenue and employes 160 people. This is a small business success story, a start up in the “old economy” but very much touching “new economy” ideas such as sustainability and delivery services. You can find Wholegood products in most UK retailers, Ocado one of the largest examples . We talk about Carl’s entrepr...
May 20, 2022•1 hr 10 min
Annemarie is Director of Innovation for the Seetec Group. Before that, she was, Director of Policy and Strategy at Future Care Capital - a national charity that uses the insight gathered through evidence-based research to advance ideas that will help shape future health and social care policy to deliver better outcomes for society. We chat about what is under appreciated about libraries and how to think about public goods and common ownership of those goods. Annemarie discusses the idea of a Sov...
Apr 22, 2022•1 hr 8 min
What is it like to go deaf and then gain back your hearing? On this episode, I speak to Sophie Woolley. Sophie is a writer, performer and theatre maker. We have been friends for a while and I have learned a lot about Deaf culture and from her personal journey and one as a creative. We have a meandering chat about her creative journey, how felt she had to write about her story of going deaf and then gaining hearing again via a cochlear implant. We recorded the podcast while Sophie is in Taiwan. S...
Apr 10, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Stian Westlake is the chief exec at the Royal Statistical Society, and before that he was a policy advisor to government and the executive director at Nesta. He is the co-author with Jonathan Haskel of Capitalism without Capital, and they have a new book out, Restarting the Future (22 March 2022). Stian discusses how recessions might be different under an intangible economy. I ask him (H/T Tyler Cowen) how national security concerns might be different in a very intangible world. Part of his answ...
Mar 21, 2022•1 hr 18 min
Stephan Guyenet completed a PhD in neuroscience, then went on to study the neuroscience of obesity and eating behavior as a postdoc. He’s also been involved with Givewell and Open philanthropy projects. In 2017, he wrote the book the Hungry Brain. We discuss two competing obesity models: one based around a model of energy balance with the brain as one of the main central controllers. And one model which s based more around an insulin - carbohydrate pathway. The carbohydrate - insulin model empha...
Mar 14, 2022•1 hr 20 min
