This week our guest is science writer, Annie Murphy Paul, who just recently released her latest book, The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain . In the Extended Mind, Annie takes us on a tour of the different types of intelligence we are able to tap into, focusing primarily on three often overlooked forms: thinking with our bodies, thinking with our surroundings, and thinking with our relationships. In this episode we explore these ideas in much greater detail, and also dig int...
Sep 13, 2021•45 min•Season 2Ep. 23
This week our guest is renowned futurist, Amy Webb. Amongst her many accomplishments, she is the founder of the Future Today Institute, a professor of strategic insight at the NYU Stern School of Business, and author of numerous books including The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity and The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream. This is just a small taste of her efforts, but to give you an idea of how significant her influence...
Sep 06, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 22
Anna Lembke is a psychiatrist currently working as the Chief of Addiction Medicine at Stanford’s Dual Diagnosis clinic. She was recently interviewed for the Social Dilemma, the amazing Netflix documentary exploring the dangers of social media. On this episode, we really dive deep into the heart of addiction--how it starts, how it controls our behavior, and how to escape its magnetic pull. But more specifically, we explore the role of social media and smartphones, and how these tools are hijackin...
Aug 30, 2021•43 min•Season 2Ep. 21
This week our guest is Tan Le, who is CEO of the bioinformatics company Emotiv, which makes wearable EEG neuro-headsets that enable people to collect data on their brain activity. Tan Le has a truly remarkable story, from Vietnamese refugee, to studying Law, to becoming the Young Australian of the Year, all the way to her current role helping to drive the accessibility of neuroscience. In this episode, we explore her journey, including how someone without neuroscience training can nonetheless cr...
Aug 23, 2021•50 min•Season 2Ep. 20
Today we are joined by actor, comedian, and musician, Reggie Watts, who many of you might recognize from the Late Late Show with James Corden, where he leads the house band, or from one of his many amazing performances, including TedTalks and music videos that have garnered tens of millions of views. In this episode, Reggie and I talk about creating content with technology, the failures of the digital advertising model, how to escape the attention economy, the benefits of basic income, and how t...
Aug 16, 2021•49 min•Season 2Ep. 19
Today we have one of my favorite comedians, Duncan Trussell, who many of you might recognize from his frequent appearances on the Joe Rogan Podcast, on Drunk History, or his latest Netflix show, The Midnight Gospel. He also has his own podcast, the Duncan Trussell Family Hour , which provides a steady stream of humor and thought-provoking conversation. On this episode, we take a wide exploration of humanity's relationship with technology and how it's impacting our behavior. ** Sign up for your 2...
Aug 09, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 2Ep. 18
This week our guest is Stephen Fry, famed actor, comedian, writer, and director whose prolific list of creative and intellectual endeavors have touched so many aspects of our lives. On this episode, we start by exploring the lessons myth can teach us about technology in honor of Stephen’s latest book release, Troy, which follows Mythos and Heroes , a series of compendiums where Stephen retells the myths of ancient Greece, albeit with his trademark proclivity towards wit and wisdom. From there we...
Aug 02, 2021•51 min•Season 2Ep. 17
This week our guest is the renowned Kevin Kelly, who many of you will no doubt recognize as the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and author of revelatory books such as What Technology Wants and The Inevitable. We dig deeply into what drives Kevin’s techno-optimism, the ideas of spiritual technology, China’s future, the regulatory landscape of AI, and ultimately how technology has shaped our species and what we define as the human condition. Show Notes: Get 2 free weeks of Singularity...
Jul 26, 2021•49 min•Season 2Ep. 16
Principle, Meet Practice, with Kyle Nel. Episode 4: Today we’re going to cover the topic Sustainable Organizations with Ryan Kushner, Co-Founder and Director of Startups at Third Derivative, and Carola Wijdoogen, Director of Sustainability University Foundation. Creating a sustainable organization is imperative in today’s world. We are living in a critical time to action against the global climate crisis, which has dire effects on ecosystems, agriculture and humanity. If that isn’t enough to pus...
Jul 19, 2021•40 min•Season 2Ep. 15
This week our guest is Liv Boeree, who got her start studying astrophysics in England, became well known as one of the world's most successful poker players, then transitioned into effective altruism and science communication. In this conversation, we dip our toes into Liv’s background, game theory, and the mental frameworks and motivations Liv uses to navigate reality. But the greater part of discussion explores the ways in which social media is negatively influencing rational discourse and our...
Jul 12, 2021•53 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Today we’re going to talk about how access to water and food impacts global education with Carmen Burbano de Lara, Director of School Feeding for the World Food Programme, and Georgie Badiel, CEO and Founder of the Georgie Badiel Foundation. Access to food and clean water enables millions of children globally to be able to attend school. Today, we’ll talk about what this means for humanity now and in the future, and how listeners can take action and get involved.
Jul 05, 2021•43 min•Season 2Ep. 13
This week our guest is David Brin, renowned science fiction author of dozens of short stories and novels, including The Postman, which was adapted to film and starred Kevin Costner, as well as the Uplift series, which centers around the theme of genetically engineering pre-sapient species such as chimpanzees and dolphins to a human level of intelligence. While science fiction is what he’s known for, David shows us that the real power of storytelling is that it makes us students of history and al...
Jun 28, 2021•45 min•Season 2Ep. 12
We all know about the all-too-familiar retail apocalypse that led to closures of many brick-and-mortar chains due to the ‘08 financial crisis and the e-commerce boom, but it’s not over yet. In this episode, we talk about shifts in consumer behavior, how retailers should cope with the current pandemic and how they can prepare for the future. Meet our guests: V. “Paddy” Padmanabhan is the Unilever Professor of Marketing, INSEAD-Singapore and Academic Director of the Emerging Markets Institute, INS...
Jun 21, 2021•42 min•Season 2Ep. 11
For many, balancing work and home life is always a challenge, but now, due to Covid-19, work and home are more intertwined than ever. This can be fun for some, overwhelming for others and downright stressful for many. In this episode, Kyle Nel discusses strategies to balance both work and home life with Jennifer Petriglieri & Karen Tay . Get the Show Notes Meet our guests! Jennifer Petriglieri is an associate professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD and the author of Couples That Work:...
Jun 14, 2021•43 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Singularity University presents the Principle, Meet Practice podcast! Season one is sponsored by our good friends over at INSEAD and focus' on Managing through Uncertainty. Join your host, Kyle Nel , and experts from SU, INSEAD and leading organizations for bi-weekly discussions on what actions society, enterprise, and individuals can take to manage chaos and stay ahead of the growing exponential curve. Each episode will feature an expert on theory and a practitioner discuss a specific topic -- ...
Jun 14, 2021•38 sec•Season 2Ep. 9
This week our guest is Toby Ord, a senior researcher at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, where he focuses on existential risk. Toby recently released his book Precipice: Existential Risk & the Future of Humanity , which explores the many threats capable not only of ending human civilization, but even causing our entire species to go extinct. It may seem like an unrealistic concern out of a sci-fi movie, but Toby suggests humanity has roughly a 1 in 6 chance of destroying ourselves with...
Jun 07, 2021•53 min•Season 2Ep. 8
This week our guest is Dr. David Eagleman: renowned Stanford neuroscience professor, author of 8 books, and CEO and co-founder of NeoSensory, a company specializing in creating sensory substitution devices. In this conversation, we'll be exploring his 2020 novel, Livewired, where he examines and redefines the idea of neuroplasticity--the brain’s ability to rewire itself as we experience the world around us. We'll also go in depth on the newest devices from his company, https://neosensory.com/ , ...
May 31, 2021•49 min•Season 2Ep. 7
This week our guest is Dr. Diana Fleischman, an evolutionary psychologist and active member of the effective altruism community. We explore a range of topics, including social engineering, our evolutionary relationship with technology and language, effective altruism, and using the concept of Skinner boxes to create systems for ourselves that condition us towards better behaviors. You can find more of Dr. Fleischman's work at her website: Dianaverse . And if you want to learn more about our podc...
May 24, 2021•45 min•Season 2Ep. 6
This week our guest is Renee DiResta, the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory , a cross-disciplinary team exploring the abuse of our current information technologies. Specifically, Renee investigates the spread of narratives and propaganda across social networks such as pseudoscience conspiracies, terrorist activity, and state-sponsored information warfare. We focused heavily on these topics during our conversation, exploring how Renee’s interest was first piqued by t...
May 17, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 2Ep. 5
This week our guest is William Von Hippel, a social psychologist who teaches at the University of Queensland in Australia, and author of the 2018 novel, the Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Makes Us Happy . We explore how the challenges of our evolutionary past shaped many of the most fundamental aspects of our behavior in the modern day, traversing a journey from several million years ago to the present day. Along the way we touch heavily on ...
May 10, 2021•56 min•Season 2Ep. 4
This week our guest is musical artist, filmmaker, digital storyteller and all around renaissance woman, Taryn Southern . You may recognize her from early career with American Idol or from her Youtube videos which have garnered over 750 million views. But in recent years, Taryn became the first person to create an entire musical album composed by an artificial intelligence and she led the groundbreaking production of I AM HUMAN —a 2019 documentary exploring brain computer interfaces. In this epis...
Apr 26, 2021•53 min•Season 2Ep. 3
This week our guest is renowned sociologist, physician, and Yale professor, Nicholas Christakis, who was once listed by Time magazine as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in the world. He’s particularly known for his expertise on social networks, as well as his work exploring the evolutionary and socioeconomic determinants of behavior and health. Dr. Christakis is the author of the renowned 2019 book, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society , and more recently, Apollo’s Ar...
Apr 26, 2021•59 min•Season 2Ep. 2
This week, our guest on The Feedback Loop is British documentary filmmaker and journalist, Jenny Kleeman. We discuss topics from her recently published and provocative book: Sex Robots & Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex, and Death. In addition to these existential and controversial topics, we also discuss how technology is preventing humans from partaking in the personal growth they need for their own health and happiness, as well as how these technologies dispropor...
Apr 26, 2021•53 min•Season 2Ep. 1
This week we sit down with cognitive psychologist and long-time professor at UC Irvine, Donald Hoffman. Hoffman has a long history working with some of the greatest minds in the history of humanity, including Francis Crick who was part of the team that discovered the double helix of DNA. His own endeavors are no less revolutionary, as he's currently spearheading a new theory that argues humans evolved a perception of reality that looks drastically different from the true appearance of objective ...
Aug 11, 2019•1 hr 19 min
This week we sit down with journalist, author, and transhumanist, Zoltan Istvan. Zoltan Istvan is most commonly known for his book the Transhumanist Wager, his 2016 Presidential Campaign—where he drove across the United States in a bus shaped like a coffin—and his many contributions and appearance with media outlets such as National Geographic, Vice, and Wired. In this conversation, Zoltan and I explore the ideas of transhumanism and why he's so passionately dedicated to the cause. This takes us...
Aug 04, 2019•1 hr 1 min
The Feedback Loop - Episode 6 This week we talk to author, editor, and consultant to science writers, Annaka Harris, whose brand new book, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind, just became a New York Time's Bestseller. In this episode, we explore some of the fundamental questions Annaka explores in her book, such as: what is consciousness? How did it evolve? Does free will exist? What are some of the common intuitions that we have wrong about our own minds? And panpsyc...
Jul 28, 2019•1 hr
The Feedback Loop - Episode 5 This week we talk to media theorist, professor, and author: Douglas Rushkoff. With roots deep in the psychedelic, philosophical, and techno-utopian culture of the late 80s and early 90s cyberpunks, Douglas Rushkoff is one of the most original thinkers exploring humanity's relationship with technology. Douglas has written more than a dozen books, which include "Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus", "Coercion", "Program or Be Programmed" and his latest book "Team Human"-...
Jul 21, 2019•1 hr 14 min
Feedback Loop - Episode 4 - This week we talk to Mike Gilliland and Euvie Ivanova, who are well known for their widely popular podcast: Future Thinkers. After leaving behind their normal life in the western world, this pair of long-time digital nomads dedicated much of their newly found free time to cultivating their shared passion for personal growth and societal transformation. In this episode, they take us through the many lessons they learned as we explore concepts like tribalism, personal s...
Jul 14, 2019•59 min
Feedback Loop - Episode 3: This week we talk to neuroscientist and social entrepreneur, Raya Bidshahri. After giving a TEDxYouth talk at 18 years old, Raya spent the next 6 years founding numerous organization such as SciFest Dubai, Intelligent Optimism, and her current project of focus: Awecademy. Through the exploration of these endeavors, we dig into the need to update and upgrade our education system to meet the modern yearning for awe, empathy, and mental well-being.
Jun 30, 2019•40 min
This week we chat with futurist and techno-philosopher, Gray Scott. Together, we explore the philosophical, evolutionary, and biological urges transforming society. This took us on a fascinating tour through the ideas of reflection, mirroring, and simulating as they relate to the digitization of reality, the creation of artificial intelligence, and the psychedelic renaissance taking place in tech.
Jun 23, 2019•48 min
