The Unlearn Project

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Episodes

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The Unlearn Project

Sydney Business Insights•sbi.sydney.edu.au

The Unlearn Project is about changing common sense. The way the world works has changed. Things you thought you knew like automation will make our work easier, music is something to listen to, large companies can’t innovate, or data is the new oil are no longer true. Hosts Sandra Peter and Kai Riemer set out to unlearn old wisdoms and discover new ones. From Sydney Business Insights at the University of Sydney Business School.

Episodes

Why you should never retire: unlearn retirement

We discuss why collecting that gold watch and retiring at 65 might not be the best thing and why it’s time to change the retirement narrative. A lot has changed since Otto von Bismark invented retirement in 1883: we live much longer, more and more of us do knowledge work, and the latest research shows that our brains don’t actually decline as we get older. Could retirement be making us worse off mentally, physically, financially? What if it’s also bad for the economy? We hear from psychiatrists,...

Dec 22, 2022•50 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast

Coming soon… unlearn retirement

Coming soon… we look at retiring retirement. We talk with a leading mental health researcher, an economist, a former Prime Minister, Nobel Prize winners, a linguist, and an octogenarian human computer. Stay tuned in 2022 for more episodes of The Unlearn Project, our podcast about changing common sense. Hosts Sandra Peter and Kai Riemer will continue to unlearn old wisdoms and discover new ones. From Sydney Business Insights at the University of Sydney Business School. You can find links f...

Dec 23, 2021•4 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast

Extra: a music deep dive

In this extra episode, we take a deep dive into the history of the music industry. We go down rabbit holes that take us from Victorian England to Sydney harbour in the 70s and then on to the hip hop culture of New York in the 80s. We trace the music industry as it resisted and adapted to the rise of new technologies and came to understand music as a product. We hear from a leading researcher on popular music, the creator of the first music sampler, a renowned hip hop artist, and even Thomas Edis...

Dec 20, 2021•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast

Why music is no longer just for listening: unlearn music

We discuss how the way we engage with music is fundamentally changing - from something we just listen to, to something we create with. On platforms like TikTok, music is becoming a material for creation, for self-expression, for storytelling. And this very real shift in what people do with music, has implications not only for the music industry and what music is, but ultimately for all of us. We hear from the head of music at TikTok, record breaking artists, influencers, musicologists and narrat...

Oct 20, 2021•49 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast

Why automation makes your job harder: unlearn automation

We discuss why it’s no longer true that automation and AI will make all our jobs easier. While automation might reduce the amount of work available to humans and leads to job losses, at least the remaining work will be of higher quality. This common wisdom has always underpinned the idea of automation. Yet surprisingly, in many industries AI can leave workers worse off, as the quality of work declines, making life harder and more stressful for workers across industries. We hear from pilots...

Sep 13, 2021•52 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast

Why the unlearn project, and computers

We set out to unlearn old wisdoms and discover new ones, starting with computers. When the world changes, we also need to change our common sense. And as it turns out we live in a time when lots of things change, and many of them have to do with technology. Computing is now everywhere. But it didn’t use to be. So maybe the first thing to unlearn is computers: what they are and what they are for. From human computers to algorithms, we are no longer just using them, they increasingly govern ...

Sep 07, 2021•37 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast

Introducing The Unlearn Project

Aug 23, 2021•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast