Smart People Podcast

Dr. Michio Kaku - He is the face (and mind) of science! Dr. Kaku is a theoretical physicist, the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City College of New York, a futurist, and a communicator and popularizer of science. He has written two New York Times Best Sellers: Physics of the Impossible and Physics of the Future. His most recent book was released in February and is titled, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind. Additionally, Dr. Kaku is the host of the weekly, one-hour radio program Exploration. You probably recognize Dr. Kaku from TV - he's basically been in every science related show that was released in the past 20 years! Quotes from Dr. Kaku: What we learn in this episode: Did you know we can photograph a dream? Yeah, we talk about that! What is telekinesis and will we ever have the capability to move objects with our minds? Soon, we will be able to record our memories and then upload them to help people with diseases such as Alzheimer's. Is it true that we only use a small portion of our brain? Why do we remember scary dreams much more often than pleasant dreams? Resources: http://mkaku.org/home/ http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/6zj4ki/michio-kaku Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Corinne Woods - Director of the UN Millennium Campaign, which supports citizens’ efforts to hold their governments accountable for achieving the Millennium Development Goals and leads the outreach to citizens and stakeholders to get their voices and concerns to feed into the Post-2015 global development agenda. Previously, she served in a variety of roles at UNICEF, including as Senior Adviser on the HIV/AIDS Global Campaign Coordination and as Chief of Advocacy and Partnerships in India, the agency’s largest country operation. Quotes from Corinne: What we learn in this episode: The 4 H's: Humility, Honesty, Hopeful, Help.  These are very key with Corinne. What's it like to work alongside Nelson Mandela and Bill Gates?? How has the UN convinced over 100 countries to work together to tackle our most difficult global issues? What has the WORLD voted on as being the number one challenge today? How do you convince people all over the world to take a "global survey"? How do you get people without internet, computers, or even simple infrastructure (roads) to participate in this incredible survey? Resources: http://www.myworld2015.org/ http://data.myworld2015.org/   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Olof Dallner - WINNER of the Quintuple Ironman. The 12 mile swim, 560 mile bike, and 131 mile run is the distance of 5 Ironmans! WTF? Olof explains what it is like to sleep 6 hours over 4 days while completing (and winning) the worlds toughest endurance event. Olof also has his PhD in Molecular Physiology and is currently a postdoctoral scientist at Rockefeller University, researching the genetics of the hormone Leptin and its role in obesity and metabolism. What we learn in this episode: How do you deal with fear of failure? Can the average person compete in long distance events? How does the hormone Leptin affect body weight and body composition? What are some scientific advances we are making now and what do we expect will happen soon regarding the fight against obesity? Resources: Twitter: @olofdallner http://empiretriclub.com/blog/olof-dallner-wins-quintuple-ironman-2/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carmine Gallo - "Talk Like Ted: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds", Former anchor and correspondent for CNN and CBS, communications coach for the world's most admired brands, best-selling author, columnist for Forbes and Monster.com. Carmine has worked with Coca-Cola, Intel, LinkedIn, Stanford, Cisco, and many more. Learn the secrets of how these companies communicate! What we learn in this episode: • How to stand out as a communicator. • What are the most common problems that brands face when trying to communicate with their customers? • What is the best way to land a sales job? • Did you know that passion is contagious? It's science! • What is Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks most passionate about? • All great presentations have 3 key components: They are emotional They are novel They are memorable Resources: http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/ http://gallocommunications.com/   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bill Shannon - Vice President of Post and Carrier Solutions at Pitney Bowes.  Bill is on the front lines of a long forgotten staple of communication, the mail.  That's right - not email, or vmail, but actual, physical mail.  Bill has been an integral part of the juggernaut that is Pitney Bowes for over 30 years. Pitney Bowes is a fortune 500 company that is nearly a century old and has managed to navigate through a world of change.  There is a lot we can learn from a company with such longevity! What we learn in this episode: • What really caused the decline in mail? It's not just technology and email! • Have you ever asked yourself, exactly what is mail? You may not have realized but there are a number of different types of mail. Not just the letter you send your grandmother, or the junk mail you put straight in the trashcan.  There is a world of mail out there that is actually really interesting...we promise! • What type of mail has actually been growing in popularity? • What types of technology are used behind the scenes that help get mail where it needs to go? • How does a big company like Pitney Bowes, or any company for that matter, succeed in this rapidly changing environment? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel Rasmussen, Co-Founders at ReD Associates, discuss the importance of using human sciences to solve business problems. They explore the limitations of relying solely on data analysis, the complexity of approaching unknown problems, and the process of understanding consumer behavior through field work and ethnography. They also highlight the four phases of problem-solving and the ability to predict consumer trends.

Eswar Prasad - Author of The Dollar Trap: How the U.S. Dollar Tightened Its Grip on Global Finance. Eswar is a Senior Professor at Cornell University, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he holds the New Century Chair in International Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was previously chief of the Financial Studies Division in the International Monetary Fund's Research Department and, before that, was the head of the IMF's China Division. What we discuss in this episode: • Is the dollar still the world’s safest currency, even after the financial crisis? • What does it mean that the US is $17 trillion in debt? Is debt bad? • At what point does the United States have to pay back its debt? • How does the euro compare to the dollar? • Is China a safe place to invest? Notable quotes from Eswar:   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Larry Downes - Author of Big Bang Disruption and Unleashing the Killer App (named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the 5 most important books ever published on business and technology). Larry is an internet industry analyst and speaker, having held faculty appointments at Univ. of Chicago, Northwestern, Berkeley, and Stanford and he is a columnist for Forbes and CNET. What we discuss in this episode • What industries are PRIMED for innovation? The answer may surprise you. • The nature of innovation has changed dramatically, in even the last 10 years. • What industries should younger people consider working in to take advantage of the upcoming innovation? • What can existing companies do to fend off new, more agile start-up companies? Quotes we liked from Larry Resources for you • www.larrydownes.com • Big Bang Disruption: Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation • Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bob Sutton - Author of Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less and The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't, Professor of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford Engineering School, IDEO Fellow, ranked one of the "50 Best B School Professors". What we discuss in this episode: • What makes a great professor? What makes a great boss? • Can leadership be taught? Learned? • How do you maintain a good corporate culture as a company grows? How does a company grow/scale effectively? • As a company grows, how does it maintain it's fundamentals, while also allowing individuals to be creative and unique? Quotes we liked from Bob: Resources for you: Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't http://bobsutton.typepad.com/ -- This episode is brought to you by Squarespace – the all-in-one platform that makes it easy to create your own website. For a free trial and 10% off, go to Squarespace.com and use offer code SPP. • Easy – Everything is drag and drop. You can use drag and drop to add content from your desktop, and even rearrange elements of content within a page. • 24/7 support – Squarespace has an amazing 24/7 support team in New York City. They do live chat during the week, and have extremely fast email support throughout the day and night. • Design Focused – Squarespace really cares about design. All their templates are extremely clean, and allow your content to be the focus of your website. -- This episode is brought to you by Warby Parker. – Warby Parker was founded with a rebellious spirit and a lofty objective: to create boutique-quality, classically crafted eyewear at a revolutionary price point. Go to warbyparker.com/smartpeople to get choose your 5, free Home Try On frames! By visiting, you will get FREE 3 day shipping! • Warby Parker believes glasses should be viewed as a fashion accessory—just like a bag, a shoe, a necktie, a hat. At $95, Warby Parker makes it easy to accessorize with glasses. • Warby Parker makes buying glasses fun, easy, and pain-free. • With the Home Try-On Program, you can order 5 pairs of glasses to be shipped directly to you (free). You can try all the frames on, get a feel for them and get feedback from others! (5 pairs, for 5 days). Mail back to Warby Parker in a prepaid package.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lance Fortnow, PhD - Author of The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and the Search for the Impossible, professor and chair of the School of Computer Science of the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, served as the founding editor-in-chief of the ACM Transaction on Computation Theory, served as chair of ACM SIGACT and currently sits on the Computing Research Association board of directors. He served as chair of the IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity from 2000-2006. It's time to bend your brain and mess with your mind with one of Smart People Podcast's most intellectual and in-depth interviews EVER! Did you know that there is a problem known as the "P versus NP problem" that, if solved, could cure cancer, predict the weather, rid us over poverty, and pretty much change the entirety of our world? Our guest this week goes so far as to say, "What we would gain from P = NP will make the whole Internet look like a footnote in history!" But there is one pretty big problem. We have had the best and brightest people in the world (including this week's guest) working on this problem for decades and they still can't even decide IF it can be solved! Due to the complexity and positive implications that a solution would have on our society, the "P versus NP problem" is one of the seven Millennium Problems for which the Clay Mathematics Institute will give you one million dollars if you can prove it. We are going to leave the heavy lifting to Lance, but as a primer, P versus NP basically states that if these two variables are equal, we would be able to solve every complex issue with a very simple equation.  Oh, you want more than that? Ok fine.  P stands for "Polynomial Time" and represents the entire class of problems with efficient solutions. NP stands for "Nondeterministic Polynomial-Time" and represents the entire class of the very hardest, most difficult problems. Therefore if the 2 were equal, we would be able to apply this algorithm to all of our most difficult, complex problems and come up with a simple solution. Believe us, even those that aren't math or computer savvy will love to hear the way that Lance breaks down such a complicated idea into a real life scenario. Imagine the possibilities if P = NP! (I never thought I would write that in my life) Lance Fortnow is professor and chair of the School of Computer Science of the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on computational complexity and its applications to economic theory. Fortnow received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at MIT in 1989 under the supervision of Michael Sipser. Before he joined Georgia Tech in 2012, Fortnow was a professor at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, a senior research scientist at the NEC Research Institute and a one-year visitor at CWI and the University of Amsterdam. Since 2007, Fortnow holds an adjoint professorship at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago. Fortnow's research spans computational complexity and its applications, most recently to micro-economic theory. Fortnow's survey The Status of the P versus NP Problem is CACM's most downloaded article. Fortnow has written a popular science book The Golden Ticket: P, NP and the Search for the Impossible loosely based on that article.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices