Curious Minds at Work

Meaningful conversations can be a creative lab space. At their best, they're a place to share perspectives and be heard. They can also be a place to stress test new ideas and catch the limits in our thinking. When conversations work, we gain a stronger connection to the people we work with. We feel like we understand each other better and that we're channeling each other's knowledge and skills to achieve a bigger goal. Yet these kinds of conversations are far too rare. And I don't think it's intentional. I think it's because we don't know how to design them. That's what motivated me to read Fred Dust's latest book, Making Conversation: Seven Essential Elements of Meaningful Communication. A former senior partner and global managing director at international design firm, IDEO, Fred's designed these kinds of conversations for hundreds of organizations across multiple industries. Fred gives us permission to make better conversations a priority, and he shares insights on how to do it effectively. Episode Links Where Do Ideas Come From? Fred Dust at Aspen Ideas Active Listening Frank Osborn on Brainstorming Responsive Classroom The Op Ed Project Courtney E. Martin Curious Minds at Work Team Learn more about creator and host, Gayle Allen, and producer and editor, Rob Mancabelli, here.  Support Curious Minds at Work If you're a fan of the show, you can show your support by: Rating and reviewing the show on iTunes or wherever you subscribe. Telling someone about the show. Subscribing so you never miss an episode. Where to Find Curious Minds at Work Spotify iTunes Tunein Stitcher Google podcasts Overcast

For most of us, networking is a topic that brings up a lot of strong feelings. And most of those feelings aren't all that positive. Ultimately, we know we should network. But just thinking about it can make us uncomfortable. In fact, research shows that many of us associate networking with something dirty. On top of that, we feel guilty for not devoting more time to it. That's why I wanted to interview Marissa King. Author of the book, Social Chemistry: Decoding the Elements of Human Connection, Marissa is Professor of Organizational Behavior at Yale School of Management and an expert on social networks. Marissa's take on networking is refreshing because she emphasizes the relational aspect. She also provides tools for gauging how we network, so that we can easily see how well our approach is working. Her discussion of networking and her strategies for how to reframe it more positively help us to walk away without feeling icky. At the same time, her tips inspire us to tend to our professional network the way we would our personal one. If you're looking for a fresh take on networking, I think you'll enjoy hearing what Marissa has to say.  Episode Links Shout-out to Heather Cox Richardson for her Letters from an American Professional Networking Makes People Feel Dirty by Carmen Nobel Do People Mix at Mixers? by Paul Ingram and Michael W. Morris Marissa King's site for assessing your networking approach as convener, broker, or expansionist Self-monitoring How to Build a Better Social Network and the work of Ronald Burt Why Do People Gossip? by Sophia Gottfried and the work of Robin Dunbar Yo-Yo Ma and Silkroad Homophily Heidi Roizen Curious Minds at Work Team You can learn more about creator and host, Gayle Allen, and producer and editor, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support Curious Minds at Work If you're a fan of the show, there are three simple things you can do to show your support: Rate and review on iTunes or wherever you subscribe. Tell a friend, colleague, or family member about the show. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. Where to Find Curious Minds at Work Spotify iTunes Tunein Stitcher Google podcasts Overcast

When challenging situations arise, how do we make the shift from bystander to helper? What are the factors that determine whether or not we take action? And what if helping means disobeying an authority figure? These are the kinds of questions that made me want to read Catherine Sanderson's latest book, Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels, and to interview her on the show. In particular, her discussion of the Milgram Shock Experiment, a study that's always fascinated me, got me thinking more deeply about those pivotal moments when we decide whether or not we're going to speak up or step in, rather than stand by. For some background, the Milgram Shock Experiment was first conducted in the 1960s by Stanley Milgram, a psychology professor at Yale. He wanted to find out how far people would go in obeying an authority figure when their obedience knowingly caused harm to another person. In the study, participants delivered an electric shock to a subject they couldn't see. The voltage increased with every wrong answer given. If they refused to administer the shock, a member of the research team - the authority figure - responded with one of four scripted statements. The electric shocks weren't real, but the participant in the study didn't know that. If they refused to administer the shock, the authority figure would recite one of the four scripted statements, for example, "The experiment requires that you continue," or "You have not other choice but to continue." Aside from statements like these, the authority figure never forced participants to deliver the shocks. Yet every participant did. Not one refused. Even when the person receiving the shocks sounded out in pain with moans, shouts, even pleas to stop, the participants kept going. What Catherine talks about in her book, though, are the many participants who wanted to stop. The ones who communicated, at some point along the way, that they didn't want to continue. That's the moment I'm curious about. What would it have taken for them to disobey authority? And what would I have done in that same situation? Catherine is a professor at Amherst College. She's studied what neuroscientists and psychologists have learned about why we stand by and why we speak up. She's also studied what leaders can do to make it safer for people to speak up, which training programs work best for teaching these skills, and what drives the brave souls who always speak up. Episode Links This week's shout-out goes to Emily Levesque, author of the book, The Last Stargazers Bystander effect Young Children Show the Bystander Effect in Helping Situations Social loafing Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart The Pain of Social Rejection KiVa anti-bullying program Curious Minds Team You can learn more about creator and host, Gayle Allen, and producer and editor, Rob Mancabelli, here.  Support Curious Minds If you're a fan of the show, there are three simple things you can do to support our work: Rate and review the podcast on iTunes or wherever you subscribe. Tell a friend, colleague, or family member about the show. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. Where to Find Curious Minds Spotify iTunes Tunein Stitcher Google podcasts Overcast

What will the world look like when we're living and working with robots every day? Robots work on assembly lines. They zoom around warehouses. And they even fly planes. Most of us aren't surprised to hear these stories anymore. But how will we work with robots when they're driving our cars or delivering our food? When millions of robots populate our sidewalks, offices, and residential buildings - when they move beyond the factory floor - we'll need to learn how to interact with them, even teach them. Julie Shah, co-author of the book, What to Expect When You're Expecting Robots: The Future of Human-Robot Collaboration, believes we'll need to tap into our ability to create, problem solve, and learn from experience, in order to "transfer those insights to machines and integrate machines into our work and our everyday lives." She also believes we'll need to think differently about how we design robots and how we gather and share robot data. In particular, she argues that industry and government will need to work more closely together so they can share information on robot performance. This information will help us make rapid improvements, so we can integrate robots more quickly and safely into society. She explains, "The capability of these systems is so dependent on the data used to train them. Being able to share learnings across companies and across an industry is equally important." Julie Shah is a roboticist who directs the Interactive Robotics Group at MIT, where she is also the associate dean of social and ethic responsibilities of computing. Episode Links Inner Workings: Can Robots Make Good Teammates? by Carolyn Beans Integrating Robots into Team-Oriented Environments by Julie Shah Don Norman Three-body problem You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane Affordance Aviation Safety Reporting System - NASA MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Julie Shah's co-author Laura Major Curious Minds Team You can learn about creator and host, Gayle Allen, and producer and editor, Rob Mancabelli, here.  Support Curious Minds If you're a fan of the show, there are three simple things you can do to support our work: Rate and review the podcast on iTunes or wherever you subscribe. Tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. Where to Find Curious Minds Spotify iTunes Tunein Stitcher Google podcasts Overcast

What if mathematics could help us rethink gender equality by questioning how society is structured? Women are often told that, to succeed, they need to be more. More competitive. More confident. Even more resilient. In other words, women need to fit themselves into environments created mostly by men. But Eugenia Cheng, author of the book, x + y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender, argues that it's not about what women lack but about how society operates. For her, the question is not, "society is like this, how can women become more successful in it?" Instead, it's about asking "why is society like this in the first place?" Eugenia rejects associating certain traits with traditional, binary gender roles. For example, she doesn't think it's helpful to think of men as more competitive or women as more caring. She disagrees with the notion that there's only one way to achieve success, such as the myth of the resilient individual achiever who's unaffected by criticism. Instead, she argues that we're stronger and more resilient when we "build networks of people to help support [us], rather than just having to be strong all by [ourselves]." Eugenia Cheng is Scientist in Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and honorary visiting fellow at City University of London. Her previous books include, How to Bake Pi, Beyond Infinity, and The Art of Logic. Episode Links Higher-dimensional algebra Mean, median, mode Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez No Contest by Alfie Kohn Equity: A Mathematician Shares Her Solution by Jory Lerback Curious Minds Team You can learn more about creator and host, Gayle Allen, and producer and editor, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support Curious Minds If you're a fan of the show, there are three simple things you can do to support our work: Rate and review the podcast on iTunes or wherever you subscribe. Tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. Where to Find Curious Minds Spotify iTunes Tunein Stitcher Google podcasts Overcast

What's driven our relentless obsession with economic efficiency and who are its winners and losers? For much of the twentieth century, the U.S. economy benefited most individuals and families, no matter their social class. In recent decades, that's not been the case. Roger Martin examines this shift in his latest book, When More is Not Better: Overcoming America's Obsession with Economic Efficiency. He shares data indicating that, while the wealthy continue to prosper, the average American family does not. While Roger is concerned with what lies ahead for these families, he is equally concerned about the future of the U.S. economic system. He says, "What set off the project behind this book is that the median family, who is also the swing voter, is going to give up on capitalism as the system it wants to have run this country." Professor of Strategic Management, Emeritus, at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, Roger previously served as Dean and Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute. In addition, he's published eleven books, written numerous articles for Harvard Business Review, and has been named the number one management thinker by Thinkers50. Based on his extensive research and his work with hundreds of companies, Roger believes organizational leaders can change things for the better. In this interview, he shares examples of how companies, like Southwest Airlines, have done just that. At the same time, Roger discusses how our longstanding model of the U.S. economy as machine got us here. He points out, "It's kind of an accident. We've done some things based on models we thought were good that have gotten us in places we don't like at all." Episode Links Why Information Grows by Cesar Hidalgo The Persona Project  Wassily Leontief Pareto Distribution David Ricardo and comparative advantage Cristiano Rinaldo Curious Minds Team You can learn more about creator and host, Gayle Allen, and producer and editor, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support Curious Minds If you're a fan of the show, here are three simple things you can do to support our work: Rate and review the podcast on iTunes or wherever you subscribe.  Tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. Where to Find Curious Minds Spotify iTunes Tunein Stitcher Google podcasts Overcast

How did humans, a species of self-centered apes, come to care deeply about complete strangers? From an evolutionary standpoint, we shouldn't be kind to strangers. Yet, history shows, time and again, we are. Scientists see it as a puzzle to solve. Michael McCullough, Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, believes it's what sets us apart. He says, "[We] love to talk about ways in which humans are biologically unique, and there's a million ways. But I really do think that our regard for strangers, absolute strangers, is one of them." Michael is author of the book, The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a Moral Code. Drawing on multiple fields, he crafts a story of how our empathy for strangers has changed over time.  He covers a lot of ground, moving from ancient history to modern psychology. Ultimately, he arrives at the pandemic present, where he asks, "How are you going to bring the tools of reasoning, ethics, and science all together to make rational choices about collective courses of action?" A Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Michael is also the author of two previous books, To Forgive is Human and Beyond Revenge. Episode Links The War for Kindness by Jamil Zaki The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins David Sloan Wilson Group Selection Behavioral game theory Robert Trivers Code of Hammurabi Curious Minds Team You can learn more about creator and host, Gayle Allen, and producer and editor, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support Curious Minds If you're a fan of the show, there are three simple things you can do to support our work: Rate and review the podcast on iTunes or wherever you subscribe. Tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. Where to Find Curious Minds Spotify iTunes Tunein Stitcher Google podcasts Overcast

We recognize the biases we hold around race, class, and gender, but what about language? Katherine Kinzler, author of the book, How You Say It: Why You Talk the Way You Do - and What It Says about You, explains, "The language you speak, and the accent or dialect you use to speak it, is such a foundational part of social life." Yet speech and language are often overlooked aspects of social identity. In fact, Katherine's research reveals that the way we speak can "determine who you might connect with, but also the judgments you make about other people, and the judgments they might be making about you." In her book, Katherine discusses how language, accents, and speech influence life experience and outcomes. In particular, they can be tools for social division, discrimination in hiring and firing, and other forms of bias and prejudice. It's one of the reasons Katherine advocates language learning in school. She says, "a lot of times, we think of language [learning] as 'icing on the cake'...nice to have but not really a fundamental part of learning. I think we could do so much more if we changed how we thought about the necessity of more than one language." Katherine Kinzler is Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago. She holds degrees from Yale and Harvard, has written for the New York Times, and was recently named a Young Scientist by the World Economic Forum, one of the 50 scientists under 40 working to shape the future. Episode Links Bilingual Brains Better Equipped to Process Information  Neuroplasticity as a Function of Second Language Learning by Ping Li, Jennifer Legault, and Kaitlyn a. Litcofsky Want to be More Rational? Learn Another Language by Rob Smith How Speaking a Second Language Affects the Way You Think by David Ludden How Ruth Bader Ginsburg Found Her Voice by Katy Steinmetz Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World by Olga Khazan Meyer v. State of Nebraska Emotions Shape the Language We Use, but Second Languages Reveal a Shortcut around Them by Beth Daley The War against German-American Culture: The Removal of German-Language from Indianapolis Schools, 1917-1919 Linguistic Insecurity Bilingual Children's Social Preferences Hinge on Accent by Jasmine M. DeJesus, Hyesung G. Hwang, Jocelyn B. Dautel, and Katherine D. Kinzler The Native Language of Social Cognition by Katherine D. Kinzler, Emmanuel Dupoux, and Elizabeth S. Spelke Research: How Speech Patterns Lead to Hiring Bias by Michael W. Kraus, Brittany Torrez, and Jun Won Park Multilingual Environments Enrich Our Understanding of Others by Christopher Bergland Jane Elliott Ways to Support the Podcast If you're a fan of the show, there are three simple things you can do to support our work: Rate and review the podcast on iTunes or wherever you subscribe. This week, tell one person about the show. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. Where to Find Curious Minds Spotify iTunes Tunein Stitcher Google Podcasts Overcast Curious Minds Team Learn more about creator and host, Gayle Allen, and producer and editor, Rob Mancabelli, here.

Ashley Whillans, Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School, discusses the negative impact of feeling time poor on our health, productivity, and relationships. She shares tools to help us rethink our relationship with time and highlights the importance of prioritizing how we spend our time for greater happiness. The podcast explores time traps such as technology and overcommitment, the intersection of psychological safety and asking for more time in the workplace, valuing time over money in decision-making, and the impact of the pandemic on our relationship with time.

How did we get to a place where life's become an endless treadmill of work? In her latest book, Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, Anne Helen Petersen tackles this question. Her book is for anyone who feels their life has become an endless to-do list. In particular, Petersen describes the plight of today's millennials, a generation she believes is under constant pressure to perform. She explains how, for many millennials, it begins in childhood, when activities originally intended for fun get repurposed for resume building. She argues, "You're taking things that are meant to be leisure, that are meant to be those joyful corners of your life that are not work, and you're turning them into work." Petersen discusses the social and economic forces that have led to this cultural shift, including the demise of labor unions, increasing reliance on contract workers, and the rise of the gig economy. In each case, she points out how companies benefit, while workers struggle to make ends meet. At the same time, she wonders if millennials are the generation that can break the cycle. She muses, "I'm curious if we can refigure our relationship to work. I am curious if millennials are broken, if we are just too far down this road, or if we can take a different road." Anne Helen Petersen is a senior culture writer for BuzzFeed. A former academic, she received a Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, where she focused on the history of celebrity gossip. Her previous books, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud and Scandals of Classic Hollywood, were featured on NPR, Elle, and The Atlantic. Curious Minds Team Learn more about creator and host, Gayle Allen, and producer and editor, Rob Mancabelli, here. Episode Links The Remix: How to Lead and Succeed in the Multigenerational Workplace by Lindsey Pollak How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen Annette Lareau Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary by Louis Hyman The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can be Done to Improve It by David Weil The Effects of 'Clopening' on Employees: What Employers Can Do by Tom Starner Are You Just LARPing Your Job by John Herrman How Does Your Ugly Garden Grow? by Anne Helen Petersen Ways to Support the Podcast If you're a fan of the show, there are three simple things you can do to support our work: Rate and review the podcast on iTunes or wherever you subscribe. In the next week, tell one person about the show. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. Where to Find Curious Minds Spotify iTunes Tunein Stitcher Google Podcasts Overcast