Smart People Podcast

Our guest this week is Mike Lewis, Founder and CEO of When To Jump.When Mike was twenty-four and working in a prestigious corporate job, he eagerly wanted to leave and pursue his dream of becoming a professional squash player. But he had questions: When is the right time to move from work that is comfortable to a career you have only dared to dream of? How have other people made such a jump? What did they feel when making that jump—and afterward?Mike sought guidance from others who had “jumped,” and the responses he got—from a banker who started a brewery, a publicist who became a Bishop, a garbage collector who became a furniture designer, and on and on—were so clear-eyed and inspiring that Mike wanted to share what he had learned with others who might be helped by those stories. Out of these stories came When To Jump, a community dedicated to exploring the fundamental question we all think about: when is the right time to go do what you really want to be doing?Mike is the author of the brand new book, When to Jump: If the Job You Have Isn't the Life You Want, and he is also the host of the new hit podcast, When To Jump.—This episode is brought to you by:Health IQ, an insurance company that helps health conscious people get special life insurance rates. Go to healthiq.com/SPP to support the show and see if you qualify. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are all creators. Every day we go out into the world and use our unique human abilities to shape our environment. We create a life for ourselves, we create a product or service for others, we create relationships through it all. And what we all come to learn is that creativity is a messy business.We will run into road blocks, we will lose our motivation, we will fail. It is the destiny of every creator and their creation to get stuck from time to time. And it is in those times, that we need someone like Steve on our side.This week on the show we speak with Steve McKee - an expert on revitalizing stalled, stuck, or stale brands. The lessons we discuss can apply to all creative endeavors, and go far beyond business.Steve is the president and co-founder of McKee Wallwork & Company, an integrated marketing firm that specializes in revitalizing stalled, stuck and stale brands. MWC is an Inc. 500 company, has twice been awarded the American Marketing Association's Effie Award (one of the industry's highest honors), and has been recognized by Advertising Age as one of ten top small agencies in the nation. Steve has nearly three decades' experience coaching troubled brands as they look to better position themselves for success. Steve writes for SmartBrief and is the author of the books Power Branding: Leveraging the Success of the World's Best Brands, and When Growth Stalls: How It Happens, Why You're Stuck, and What to Do About It.—This episode is brought to you by:Health IQ, an insurance company that helps health conscious people get special life insurance rates. Go to healthiq.com/SPP to support the show and see if you qualify. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Money is a tool to create the things that we want. It is a proxy for security, health, and welfare for our families and loved ones. When we lose that holistic thinking about what wealth is, then our money winds up working at a very singular purpose to create more pieces of paper as opposed to create greater human and environmental welfare." - Morgan SimonWhen we put our money in a bank (or a mutual fund, pension plan, endowment, etc.) it doesn't just sit there, it is put to use. It is invested in the economy, and it has power. But have you ever stopped to wonder what your money is being invested in? Is it supporting the causes and communities you care about? Or is it being used to further the cause of individuals, organizations, or governments that you disagree with.It is time to recognize that we are all investors, and that it is up to us to make sure we are adding more value than we extract and that the risk and returns are balanced between our investments and the communities.This is the basis for impact investing. Impact investing is the support of social and environmental projects with a financial return, and it has become a hot topic in the world's philanthropy and development circles. In the next decade, it is poised to eclipse traditional aid by ten times. Yet for all the excitement, there is work to do to ensure it actually realizes it’s potential.This week on the show we are interviewing an expert in this field, Morgan Simon. Morgan is the author of the brand new book, Real Impact: The New Economics of Social Change. Over the past seventeen years, she has influenced over $150 billion in capital. Morgan currently co-leads Candide Group, which supports two clients, including members of the Pritzker family on behalf of the Libra Foundation. She is also co-founder and chair of the non-profit Transform Finance.Previously, Morgan served as the founding CEO of Toniic, a global network of impact investors, and as the founding executive director of the Responsible Endowments Coalition.—This episode is brought to you by:Health IQ, an insurance company that helps health conscious people get special life insurance rates. Go to healthiq.com/SPP to support the show and see if you qualify. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mindfulness is all the rage these days. And yet, even as the New York Times churns out articles like How to Be Mindful While Grocery Shopping and How to Be Mindful When You have Seasonal Allergies a quick look at NIMH or NIH data shows that Americans are sicker than ever, poorer than ever, more psychologically disturbed than ever. Though the literature has certainly been convincing, we have to ask ourselves whether the West's new cultural obsession with mindfulness is actually helping us.In contrast, our guest this week believes that mindfulness, which is a "top-down" approach to wellness, is only half of the picture, and it is yet another way we are persuaded to separate from the body and live in the head. If we could also learn to be in our bodies (approaching wellness from the bottom-up), we would have a chance at experiencing true balance and connection. We would be less anxious and more compassionate. We would cease to be okay with things that we've collectively learned how to be numb to.Our guest this week is Philip Shepherd. Philip is recognized as an international authority on embodiment. His unique techniques have been developed to transform our experience of self and world, and are based on the vision articulated in his celebrated books, New Self, New World and Radical Wholeness. The approach he takes heals the frantic, restless pace of the intelligence in the head, which tends to run on overdrive, by uniting it with the deep, present and calm intelligence of the body. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's work environment, our success is heavily dependent on our ability to consistently deliver strong results. And although there are multiple inputs that lead to our results, there is one secret weapon that outweighs everything else.The key to success ultimately lies in the strength of our relationships.You may be thinking to yourself, "But wait, we are talking about business! With all of the demands on my time, I don't have the luxury to think about something soft and fuzzy like relationships." But the truth of the matter is, given the complex and global nature of business, almost everything we accomplish happens with and through other people.So how do you improve these relationships and leverage them to create a true competitive advantage for your organization?This week on the podcast we answer this question and more as we talk with Todd Davis, author of the brand new book, Get Better: 15 Proven Practices to Build Effective Relationships at Work. Davis has over 30 years of experience in human resources, talent development, executive recruiting, sales, and marketing. He currently serves as chief people officer and executive vice president at Franklin Covey where he is responsible for their global talent development in over 40 offices in 160 countries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Narcissism—an inflated view of the self—is everywhere. Public figures say it’s what makes them stray from their wives. Parents teach it by dressing children in T-shirts that say "Princess." Teenagers and young adults hone it on Facebook, and celebrity newsmakers have elevated it to an art form.In a world that measures success by page views and number of followers, those with narcissistic tendencies often do what is necessary to reach "the top", at the expense of everyone else. So how does the average person contend with the narcissist? And what does this epidemic of "self love" mean for our society?This week on the podcast we speak with W. Keith Campbell, Ph.D. Keith is Department Head and Professor of Psychology at the University of Georgia, as well as a nationally recognized expert on narcissism, society and generational change. His work and lectures expose the rise of narcissism – and individualism more generally – and its influence on every level of society. Keith is the co-author of the book, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is no debate that a good education is a critical component of raising smart, well rounded, successful children. But cutting-edge research has proven that early childhood education is crucial for all children as young as 3 years old to gain the academic and emotional skills they need to succeed later in life.In essence, pre-K may actually be the most important year. Children who attend quality pre-K programs have a host of positive outcomes including better language, literacy, problem-solving and math skills down the line, and they have a leg up on what appears to be the most essential skill to develop at age four: strong self-control. In this episode, Harvard education researcher Suzanne Bouffard explains the sometimes surprising ingredients that make for a great pre-k program. What should you look for in a classroom? How should a teacher interact with young children? What can you do at home to help support a young child's learning? All this and more in this episode of Smart People Podcast. Suzanne Bouffard is a writer with a background in child development and education. She received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Duke University and has spent the past ten years conducting and writing about education research at Harvard University. She is the author of the brand new book, The Most Important Year: Pre-Kindergarten and the Future of Our Children. Sponsor: This week, we are brought to you by Audible! Get a free audiobook with a 30-day trial at www.audible.com/SMART. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Calling Trump crazy allows us to avoid confronting the craziness in our society—if we want to get sane, we must first gain insight about ourselves. Simply put: Trump isn’t crazy, but our society is." - Dr. Allen FrancesThis week on the show we interview one of the men who literally wrote the book on mental illness as we answer the question - Is Trump crazy? And what does it say about America that he was elected to the highest office in the land? Psychiatrist Dr. Allen Frances analyzes the national psyche, viewing the rise of Donald J. Trump as darkly symptomatic of a deeper societal distress. Drawing on his vast experience, Dr. Frances explains American society’s collective slide away from sanity and offers an urgently needed prescription for reclaiming our bearings.Dr. Allen Frances chaired the task force that produced the fourth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental disorders, which is is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and offers a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders. He then became critical of later versions, and he warned that we are currently "over-treating" mental disorders and finding problems where there are none. Dr. Frances is professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Duke University School of Medicine.He is author of the new book, Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most."Life and death are a package deal. They cannot be pulled apart and we cannot truly live unless we are aware of death. Awareness of death can be a valuable companion on the road to living well, forging a rich and meaningful life, and letting go of regret. But how can we sit with something that is so uncomfortable? And how can utilize the unavoidable nature of death to live a more rewarding life?This week we talk with Frank Ostaseski as he helps us understand how the experience of dying can reveal the secrets of living.As a renowned teacher of compassionate caregiving and the cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project, Frank Ostaseski has sat on the precipice of death with more than a thousand people. In 2001, he was honored by the Dalai Lama for his compassionate service to the dying and their families. Frank is also the founder of the Metta Institute, which is an organizations dedicated to training professionals in compassionate, mindfulness-based care. Frank is the author of the highly acclaimed book, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully. The Five Invitations is an exhilarating meditation on the meaning of life and how maintaining an ever-present consciousness of death can bring us closer to our truest selves.https://fiveinvitations.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know our world has ended five times? It has been broiled, frozen, poison-gassed, smothered, and pelted by asteroids. And in each of these catastrophic occurrences, climate change has been the culprit.You may be wondering, how do asteroids have anything to do with climate change? We will leave the details to our guest this week, but essentially there is a triggering event (asteroid, volcano, humans) that causes the oceans to become more acidic and very soon after the entire world dies. This is what happens every time...and it may be happening again.This week on the show we interview award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen about his new book, The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions. In his book and in this interview, Peter takes us on a tour of the 5 ways that the Earth has died, as well as what may be to come. Part road trip, part history, and part cautionary tale, The Ends of the World takes us on a tour of the ways that our planet has clawed itself back from the grave and casts our future in a completely new light.Peter Brannen is an award-winning science journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, the Washington Post, Slate, the Boston Globe, Aeon, among other publications. A graduate of Boston College, he was a 2015 journalist-in-residence at the Duke University National Evolutionary Synthesis Center and a 2011 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean Science Journalism Fellow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices