How is modern self-knowledge acquired? In what ways can ‘yoga of the mind’ help you find and explore new thoughts and thought processes, giving you ongoing courage to confront discomfort and realign consciousness beyond ego narratives? J. Eric Oliver is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and is also the author of several books. His latest titles are How To Know Your Self: The Art & Science of Discovering Who You Really Are, Democracy in Suburbia, and Enchanted Amer...
Mar 23, 2026•59 min•Ep. 632
What do particle physicists and Wall Street traders have in common? How did finance become more like physics, and how is physics now becoming more like finance? Emanuel Derman is an emeritus professor at Columbia in financial engineering and the author of several books, including My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance and Models. Behaving. Badly.: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life . His work examines the entanglement of physics a...
Mar 18, 2026•47 min•Ep. 631
Romantic relationships are something uniquely human — we form attachments and perceive compatibility in ways no other species does. So what explains the idiosyncratic preferences people have for one potential partner over another? And why have popular conceptions based on evolutionary psychology been wrong about when it comes to how humans choose their mates? Psychology professor Paul Eastwick is the head of UC Davis’ Social-Personality Psychology program and the director of the Attraction and R...
Mar 16, 2026•58 min•Ep. 630
What if the tale of Genesis were reframed as a story of humanity’s ascent into awareness of mortality and entropy? How are both connectedness and a “mattering project” key to flourishing as an individual? Rebecca Goldstein is the author of several fiction and non-fiction books, including The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away, and The Mind-Body Proble...
Mar 12, 2026•53 min•Ep. 629
A key precondition for democracy is civic trust and commitment to common goods; polarization and party identity undermine this, worsened by modern communication technologies that enable separate realities. Josiah Ober is a professor of Political Science and Classics at Stanford University and also the author and co-author of several books about Athens, Civics, and Ancient Democracy. His latest title is The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives . Greg asks Josiah about his work linking ancient At...
Mar 10, 2026•55 min•Ep. 628
How important are relationships and the feeling of being loved to human happiness? How have the fields of happiness studies and relationship studies converged? Sonja Lyubomirsky is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside. She is also the author or co-author of the books How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most , The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want , and The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy...
Mar 06, 2026•44 min•Ep. 627
How could AI shift medical value toward primary care relationships if pattern-recognition specialties are more automatable? What would people prefer if given the choice between discussing their problems with a human or with non-judgmental empathic AI? Allison J. Pugh is a Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University and the author of several books. Her most recent works are The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World and The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in ...
Mar 04, 2026•52 min•Ep. 626
We live in an age where uncertainty lurks around every corner, but what if uncertainty didn’t have to be an anxiety-inducing, uncomfortable part of life? The Upside of Uncertainty: A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown, by INSEAD professor Nathan Furr and entrepreneur Susannah Harmon Furr, presents strategies and tools to embrace uncertainty and turn it into opportunity. Nathan, Susannah, and Greg discuss why humans are naturally wired to avoid the unknown, and how our capacity to face i...
Mar 02, 2026•55 min•Ep. 625
What happens when you start thinking of time as a scarce resource? What practical strategies can you use to protect it from being passively spent or hijacked so that you can spend the time you have in more fulfilling and meaningful ways? Cassie Holmes is a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and also the author of the book Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most . Greg and Cassie discuss how to use time more intentionally to increase...
Feb 27, 2026•52 min•Ep. 624
What makes for a good entrepreneur in today’s start-up landscape? How do you work to scale and when is it right to go from bootstrapping to seeking funding? How are the roots of innovation now fundamentally different than the dot com era? Lori Rosenkopf is a Professor of Management and also the Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship at the Wharton School, San Francisco campus. She is also the author of the book Unstoppable Entrepreneurs: 7 Paths for Unleashing Successful Startups and Creating Value throu...
Feb 25, 2026•50 min•Ep. 623
In today’s world where every imaginable product can appear at your doorstep with the click of a button, the art that goes into manufacturing those products is increasingly overlooked. Tim Minshall is a professor of innovation at the University of Cambridge and the author of How Things Are Made: A Journey Through the Hidden World of Manufacturing . As head of the Institute for Manufacturing, Tim is shaping the future leaders of manufacturing and reinforcing the critical role manufacturing plays i...
Feb 20, 2026•55 min•Ep. 622
What is the impact of land reform on economic development? What are the implications of property law when a financial crisis hits? This episode offers a comprehensive look at how land has shaped socio-economic landscapes. Mike Bird is the Wall Street editor at The Economist and the author of the new book, The Land Trap: A New History of the World's Oldest Asset . Greg and Mike discuss the historical and contemporary importance of real estate as an asset class, its undervaluation in modern invest...
Feb 18, 2026•55 min•Ep. 621
What if a company could deliver high quality products at low cost, improving the value for customers and giving it a competitive edge, all while offering higher pay and career growth opportunities for its employees and not hurting the bottom line? Zeynep Ton is a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, president of the Good Jobs Institute, and author of The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone's Work . Zeynep joins Greg to explain the interco...
Feb 16, 2026•54 min•Ep. 620
When did society change from matriarchal to patriarchal, and why? What was the advice on fatherhood from Plato and Aristotle, and how did other writers on the subject put one philosophy of fatherhood on the page but live a very different one in practice? Augustine Sedgewick is the author of two books: Fatherhood: A History of Love and Power and Coffeeland: One Man's Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug . Greg and Augustine start by discussing the lesser-explored history of fatherhood....
Feb 11, 2026•53 min•Ep. 619
What challenges come with taking a marketing strategy global, and what strategies can be created to account for and even take advantage of differences from one market to another? How are differences in Japanese culture reflected in the buying practices of the population? Katherine Melchior Ray is a global marketing executive and consultant, who also teaches global marketing at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, and is the author of the book Brand Global, Adapt Local: How to Build Brand Value A...
Feb 06, 2026•56 min•Ep. 618
How do bad leaders persist in current-day environments, and how do they use factors like fear, rewards, and the natural difficulty of uprooting entrenched authority to their advantage? Despite the challenges inherent to speaking out, what duty and role do followers play in identifying and addressing bad leadership? Barbara Kellerman is the founder and a fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of many books, addressing many different aspects of lead...
Feb 03, 2026•55 min•Ep. 617
There’s no instruction manual for how to be a CEO, and that role has undergone massive change in recent decades. So how do the leaders of great corporations today prepare themselves to make the hard decisions? Jeff Immelt, former CEO of GE and now current instructor at Stanford University, shares some of his top lessons on leading a major corporation in his book, Hot Seat: What I Learned Leading a Great American Company . Jeff joins Greg to reflect on his long career at GE, discussing his sense ...
Jan 30, 2026•45 min•Ep. 616
What are practical strategies to avoid overload and exhaustion in today’s digital world? What norms can organizations create for tool usage, and how can finding offline activities that provide a mental contrast to digital work? Paul Leonardi is the Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at UC Santa Barbara, a consultant and speaker on digital transformation and the future of work, and an author of several works. His latest book is called Digital Exhaustion: Simple Rules for Reclaiming Yo...
Jan 26, 2026•1 hr•Ep. 615
What changes happened in the histories of Europe and China to create two economies that developed so differently? How did different forms of local cooperation influence state development, rule of law, and economic progress? Guido Tabellini is a professor of Political Economics at the University of Bocconi in Milan, Italy. He is also the author of several books, most recently co-authoring Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000–2000 . Greg and Guido discuss the...
Jan 23, 2026•54 min•Ep. 614
Where did the concept of management as a profession come from, and how did it develop? Why do bureaucratic practices persist? How can companies break free from those constraints to unlock greater potential and adapt more effectively to the relentless change and competition in today’s business world? Gary Hamel is the founder of the Management Lab, a professor at the London Business School, a visiting professor at the University of Oxford, and the author of several books. His recent titles includ...
Jan 19, 2026•52 min•Ep. 613
When are meetings the best way to coordinate and make decisions and when do they make things worse?? How do you use the two-pizza rule to hold effective meetings and what happens when you start including too many people in a process? Rebecca Hinds is the head of the Work AI Institute at Glean and the author of Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done , a book outlining the way to address one of the ways productivity is lost in organizations. Greg and Rebec...
Jan 15, 2026•55 min•Ep. 612
Whether in markets, organizations, or the universe itself, today’s guest is a master at navigating complex systems where existing models have stopped working, and new ones must emerge. Geoffrey Moore is a consultant in the high-tech sector and a prolific author, with titles including Crossing the Chasm , Inside the Tornado: Strategies for Developing, Leveraging, and Surviving Hypergrowth Markets , and, most recently, The Infinite Staircase: What the Universe Tells Us About Life, Ethics, and Mort...
Jan 12, 2026•55 min•Ep. 611
What is the real importance of understanding architectural history, and how is its teaching different from the histories of other disciplines? How can good design influence business decisions? Witold Rybczynski is an emeritus professor in the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the author of several books on architecture and its history. His most recent titles have been The Driving Machine: A Design History of the Car , Now I Sit Me Down: From Klismos to Plast...
Jan 08, 2026•51 min•Ep. 610
What was the role of experimentation in early science? How did past scientific paradigms continue to influence current scientific discourse? What is the utility of understanding the history of science for modern scientists? Peter Dear is a professor emeritus of history at Cornell University, and the author of several books, including The World as We Know It: From Natural Philosophy to Modern Science and Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution . Greg and Peter...
Jan 05, 2026•45 min•Ep. 609
While evolution is often thought to be conducive to perfect adaptation, there are plenty of reasons why we never get there. Laurence D. Hurst is a professor of evolutionary genetics in the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath. His book, The Evolution of Imperfection: The Science of Why We Aren’t and Can’t Be Perfect is an expansive look into the imperfections of the human genome and why humans seem to be predisposed to so much bad genetic luck. Laurence and Greg explore the evol...
Dec 22, 2025•56 min•Ep. 608
How can organizations make more equitable changes to their internal norms and structures, to promote fairness over merely seeking profit? What are alternate ways to tackle the difference in agreeableness that underpins many professional gaps between men and women? Cordelia Fine is a professor in the history and philosophy of science department at University of Melbourne, as well as the author of several books, including Patriarchy Inc.: What We Get Wrong About Gender Equality and Why Men Still W...
Dec 18, 2025•55 min•Ep. 607
Despite its long-held place in history as the lynchpin of America’s recovery from the Great Depression, what if the New Deal did more to hinder the country’s recovery than help it? George Selgin is a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Georgia and former director of the Center on Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute. His books like, False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery and Floored!: How a Misguided Fed Experiment Deepened and Prolonged the Gr...
Dec 15, 2025•55 min•Ep. 606
How does our legal system treat children today, and how do policies affecting their parents and communities cascade down to shape their lives? What forces create a pipeline to criminalization, and what would it take to break that cycle for the children who come next? Adam Benforado is a professor of law at Drexel University and the author of two books titled A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All and Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice. Greg and Adam discuss the deep...
Dec 11, 2025•53 min•Ep. 605
Is the point of life to minimize suffering, or to understand and embrace it on some level? How do different belief structures view the ideal human response to negative situations? Is there a degree of suffering that would be bearable in order to enable something pleasurable that could offset it? Scott Samuelson is a professor of philosophy at Iowa State University and also the author of several books, Rome as a Guide to the Good Life: A Philosophical Grand Tour , The Deepest Human Life: An Intro...
Dec 08, 2025•55 min•Ep. 604
What are the nuances of organizational design and risk-taking? What are the roles of both curiosity and trust in fostering an environment ripe for innovation? How can you create serendipity intentionally, and harness its power for your organization? David Cleevely is a British entrepreneur and international telecoms expert who has built and advised many companies, principally in Cambridge, UK. He is also the author of the new book Serendipity: It Doesn't Happen By Accident . Greg and David discu...
Dec 04, 2025•54 min•Ep. 603
