251: Sir Peter Gluckman | Former Chief Science Advisor Details Unintended Consequences Of Innovation In “Ingenious”

From his start as a pediatrician, to serving as Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand for nearly a decade, Sir Peter Gluckman has represented category of science and society. He joins on this episode to discuss his career, along with his recently released book Ingenious: The Unintended Consequences of Human Innovation.

As President-elect of the International Science Council, Sir Gluckman will continue to provide value in the fields of science, health, global impacts, and more. His book Ingenious focuses on how our innovation has led to impacts we did not plan for, and how we can work with these consequences, and help to prevent unwanted future consequences.

Show notes:

• how Sir Gluckman’s career has panned out over time, and how he started out as a pediatrician
• his experience as Chief Science Advisor for the Prime Minister of New Zealand
• what it means to be a “knowledge broker”, and how connecting people to the right people is an important skill
• the ways that Sir Gluckman has written about or focused on reduction of obesity, as well as being co-chair of the Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity
• partnering writing books with his co-author Mark Hanson, and what each brought to the table across the decades
• how the early experience between parent and child affects so much of a person’s life
• the important of psychological resilience, and how it separates segments of individuals
• how evolutionary thinking is a unifying element of biology
• the global impacts we are facing now, which we did not have in place 200 years ago
• the belief or non-belief by citizens that their governments can help to take care of basic societal needs
• dealing with misinformation that is released, and how governments or public companies can adapt
• the level of research put out by smaller countries, versus the percentage put out by some of the larger countries, along with some specific examples
• whether a centrally-situated response wins out against solutions around the world, to global issues
• a message about how to cope with rapid environmental, social, and technological changes which are taking place

You can check out Sir Peter Gluckman’s Wikipedia page, University of Auckland page, or Ingenious on Amazon. Glad to have him on~.