The Bottleneck Podcast Rory Sutherland, Elfried Samba and Nicholas Gruen on why systems break and how to fix them
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Nov 24, 2025 
Nicholas Gruen, an economist focused on public policy, and Rory Sutherland, a behavioral economist and advertising executive, dive into the chaos of modern politics. They discuss how extreme voices overshadow moderate debate and critique the inadequacies of GDP as an economic measure. The duo emphasizes the importance of local communities in managing differences, explores how education and housing have become status bottlenecks, and reflect on the unpredictable solutions that can arise from randomness. They urge a shift from adversarial arguments to collaborative problem-solving.
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Categories Drive Biases In Systems
- Categorizing things creates blind spots that shape how we think and act around them.
- Nicholas Gruen argues asking why systems don't work reveals assumptions embedded in their categories.
Politics Trains People To Precommit
- Political debate has been structured as perpetual competition 'for' or 'against' since the French Revolution.
- That creates instant ideological grips on new questions, turning curiosity into entrenched positions.
Choose Solving Over Winning
- Decide whether you want to win an argument or solve a problem before debating.
- Rory Sutherland recommends broadening solution sets instead of forcing binary trade-offs.