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
If ideas and knowledge are the software, then books have always been the longest-running hardware. Author and former publishing executive Joel J. Miller’s latest book, The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future , delves into the history and evolution of books as a physical technology for idea transmission. Joel and Greg discuss the book’s origins from ancient times with Socrates and Plato, to the development of the codex, and the impact of modern digital reading. Joel also ...
Dec 01, 2025•47 min•Ep. 602
How did the US Dollar become the dominant currency internationally? What keeps other currencies, fiat or crypto, from displacing the dollar's role? Does the aggressive use of sanctions by the US Government put the dollar's role at risk? Paul Blustein is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as well as an author and journalist. He has written several books including his latest work King Dollar: The Past and Future of the World's Dominant Currency and previous works, Off Balance...
Nov 27, 2025•52 min•Ep. 601
Unlike some other academic fields, the study of business has always had the challenging task of striking a balance between theory and practice. How can theoretical concepts aid business practitioners in real-world situations? And how can business academics expand their understanding of theory through that real-world application? Jay Barney is a professor of strategic management at the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business. His work, including numerous books, journal articles, and te...
Nov 24, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 600
Why might ‘bring your whole self to work’ be terrible professional advice, and what should we be thinking about instead? Why does authenticity come into play more now than in previous generations? Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia. He is also the author of several books, including Don't Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead) , Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It) , an...
Nov 20, 2025•52 min•Ep. 599
How do evangelism and business go hand in hand? Well, for today’s guest, evangelism is the purest form of sales. Guy Kawasaki is the Chief Evangelist at Canva and former Chief Evangelist for the Macintosh Division at Apple. He’s a prolific author, speaker, and podcaster, with hit books like Think Remarkable: 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference , Wiser Guy: Life-Changing Revelations and Revisions from Tech's Chief Evangelist , and Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, a...
Nov 17, 2025•54 min•Ep. 598
