unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

Are there reasons to doubt  the conventional wisdom of greenery as the cure-all for urban ills. What are the roots of the Garden City movement, and how has the reality of it been different than the theory?Des Fitzgerald is a professor of medical humanities and social sciences at University College Cork Ireland, and also the author of a recent book titled, The Living City: Why Cities Don't Need to Be Green to Be Great. (released in the UK with a different title: The City of Today is a Dying Thing.Greg and Des discuss how urban landscapes aren't just about aesthetics; they're intricately linked to our national identity and cognitive functions. Des helps us uncover how architecture influences our sense of place and impacts our brains, and explores the role of culture in shaping our environmental perceptions. The conversation spans everything from peat briquettes to Georgian-style facades. Des also guides us through an enlightening discussion on the burgeoning field of medical humanities and the innovative concept of green social prescribing within the NHS.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The transformative shift in environmental neuroscience39:32: Something that is becoming really interesting in this space is the emergence of environmental neuroscience, as I think a relatively new, increasingly interesting, and powerful discipline. Environmental neuroscience exists for a whole bunch of reasons, but certainly the increasing sense that we're able to take a brain measure while a person moves around the space in three dimensions. That's, I think it's something that can be done imperfectly now. It's still very much in progress, but at least we have a horizon in which that's going to become pretty possible at kind of high-resolution research grade relatively soon. And that is transformative, actually, if the three dimensions of a space become truly available as a variable for brain measurement. Then something does happen, and something does change in that moment.What’s wrong with planting a lot of trees?43:13: What concerns me about urban tree planting is what we're not talking about when we're talking about urban trees, right? So the amount of social and public problems that trees are meant to solve is ridiculous. It's everything from mental health to youth crime to skills in some parts of England, where they're planting trees in an English town because it's like the people of the town have low skills for some reason. It just seems to go for not tackling boring social problems, right? So, for instance, it's very real that there are major mental health problems in cities. I think there is something very serious about the way we have constructed the contemporary city—that it has bad effects for lots of people.We need to stop centering urban discourse on charismatic megafauna of global urbanism45:37: We need to stop centering urban discourse on the kind of charismatic megafauna of global urbanism, right? And look at the kind of, what I would genuinely call the crap cities, right? The kind of second-tier, slightly stronger places, like places like Cork, Cardiff in Wales, where I used to live. I'm not sure what your go-to North American examples would be, but I'm still in those kinds of, like, lower-tier, maybe Poughkeepsie, Peoria, these kinds of places. That's your kind of modular urban experience, I think. And those are places I think we need to take much more seriously culturally and socially.Interdisciplinarity in medical humanities49:09: I think what folks in the field are trying to do is do something a little bit more collaborative and a little bit more imaginative, and not just have the philosopher who will sign off your ethics forms, but try to think seriously about how philosophy can inform experimental design. How philosophical work can itself be informed by stuff that's happening in biology and the life sciences. I'm trying to really get at the kind of complex space between those things where you're doing work that is not quite humanities or science but some kind of magic third thing.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Le CorbusierGarden city movementFrederick Law OlmstedEbenezer HowardJohn MuirPlan VoisinEdwin LutyensPort SunlightWilliam LeverSamuel SmilesNeomEdward C. TolmanGeorges-Eugène HaussmannNapoleon IIIMedical humanitiesWellcome TrustGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University College CorkHis Work:Amazon Author PageThe City of Today is a Dying ThingThe Living City: Why Cities Don't Need to Be Green to Be GreatThe Urban Brain: Mental Health in the Vital CityRethinking Interdisciplinarity across the Social Sciences and NeurosciencesGoogle Scholar Page Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Associate professor of English Robin Reames discusses the power of rhetoric in modern conversations. They explore spontaneous speaking, historical roots of rhetoric, and the transformative potential of language in public debates. Learn how studying rhetoric can make you a tougher critic of persuasive techniques.

Joseph Rouse, a professor of philosophy and science, explores how human activities shape our biology through niche construction, connecting cultural and biological evolution. He discusses the intricate network of social justice, individual freedom, and political democracy within human life. Rouse challenges the simplistic view of human behavior as solely geared towards reproductive success, offering a fresh perspective on evolutionary biology

Gene Kim and Steven Spear discuss the three mechanisms of successful organizational design: slowify, simplify, and amplify. They address the evolution of organizational design and the need for management education to evolve. The podcast delves into enhancing efficiency through modularization, standardized interfaces, and breaking down complex tasks for improved productivity and innovation.

Nicholas Christakis, a Yale professor, discusses genes' influence on social networks, pandemic preparation, and human evolution towards goodness. They explore social contagion dynamics, the impact of genes on group behavior, and the intersection of social networks and genetics.

Humans have always had the propensity to be irrational. In fact, humans may be as irrational today as they were centuries ago. But with a more educated and technologically advanced society, why does this level of irrational thought and behavior persist? Steven Nadler is a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. His books like When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People: How Philosophy Can Save Us from Ourselves and Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die encourage readers to examine their lives through a philosophical lens.He and Greg discuss how social media has contributed to the perpetuity of irrationality in society, why more education doesn’t necessarily lead to more rational thought, and why philosophy should be more widely integrated into our education systems. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Exploring Spinoza’s determinismNobody can be truly free from external influences because we have to live in the world. But you can liberate yourself insofar as your life is guided by reason and not by passion. Now, for Spinoza, the world is deterministic. Everything happens because of its antecedent causes. And this is as true as much for leaves falling off trees and rocks rolling down hills and for our bodies, which respond to the physical influences of the world. But it's also completely true with respect to the human mind. Our mental states, our thoughts, our beliefs, our desires also exist within a deterministic system.Where do irrational beliefs come from?02:46: I don't think that human beings are necessarily more or less irrational now than they were centuries ago. However, the difference is that irrationality can flourish more easily now with the advent of social media internet sites that traffic in irrational beliefs that encourage irrational thinking, and that make it very easy for a person to be overwhelmed by misinformation and thus form beliefs without any evidence and never really be exposed to counter-evidence.Two kinds of bad thinking07:08: In the book, we distinguish between two kinds of stubbornness or two kinds of bad thinking. We call the first, epistemic stubbornness, and the second, normative stubbornness. Epistemic stubbornness is where you adopt beliefs without sufficient evidence in favor of their truth. (08:19) What we call normative stubbornness is more a matter of behavior. And maybe here, temperament plays a bigger role. A person who is normatively stubborn applies rules without thinking the actions they choose and the courses of behavior that they adopt.What Nadler says is one of the root causes of persistent bad thinking11:46 Very often we know what the right thing to do is, we know what is good, but we act contrary to our better judgment. That's not just something that's a matter of our actions and behavior, but even in our minds, sometimes we know that a belief is not probably the right thing. It's probably not true, and yet somehow through peer pressure, for example, we feel compelled to go with the crowd, and we find ourselves believing things that we have no evidence for believing, and in fact stand in the face of contrary evidence.Show Links:Recommended Resources:PlatoEthics by Baruch SpinozaMeditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume  Immanuel KantSocratesConatusApology of Socrates by PlatoClytemnestraAchillesStoicism AristotelianismThomas HobbesGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of WisconsinHis Work:When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People: How Philosophy Can Save Us from OurselvesThink Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to DieA Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular AgeThe Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Frances Frei, an expert in operational design and leadership, discusses the importance of fostering curiosity, the drawbacks of 'move fast and break things' mentality, and how inclusion can empower organizations. The conversation includes insights on layoffs, organizational design, blame culture, fostering curiosity, and leadership challenges.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a history professor, discusses the Spanish Empire's global impact, challenges popular historical narratives, and explores engineers' crucial role in empire building. The podcast also delves into the significance of food history and the debate on history's classification as a social science or humanities.

Without the Dutch revolution of the 16th century, England may never have taken its place as a world superpower and there could have been no such thing as the American Revolution. Yet, the pivotal role the Netherlands played in the development of the modern world seems to go overlooked and under taught in history courses. Why? Jonathan Scott is a professor of history at the University of Auckland and the author of numerous books, including England's Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context and, most recently, How the Old World Ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution 1500-1800. He and Greg discuss how the Netherlands' geography played a crucial role in its rise to dominance in the 17th century, why that power eventually shifted to favor England, and how the Anglo-Dutch influence has permeated throughout history. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What inspired the American revolutionaries?30:46 The people by whom the English Republicans and revolutionaries of the 17th century were themselves inspired, who were the Dutch revolutionaries of the 16th century, were very important for the American revolutionaries of the 18th century. So, I think the most important influence in America is the Anglo-Dutch. And the Dutch part of that has been forgotten in America. Why exactly is, again, complicated, but one reason might be that when England ends up dominating, the Dutch component of the American founding and of the American revolution is just quietly forgotten.Was the Anglo-Dutch Revolution seminal to the success of England?03:52 What happens in 17th and 18th century England, which is remarkable and of global importance, derives very substantially from competition with the Netherlands, a competition during which the Netherlands is initially dominant and during which they're eventually overtaken.The complex alliance and rivalry between the English and the Dutch04:43 Not just rivals and frenemies, but they were also very close allies and dependent on each other for the survival of their Protestant religion and political regimes. So, they were close military allies in the war against Spain during the Elizabethan period in the 16th century. Then, they were equally close military, political, and religious allies from the Glorious Revolution in 1689 against France in the nine-year war until 1697. So the framework is one of close alliance, but between those two dates, between the Elizabethan and that end of the 17th century, that is, during the 17th century itself, there's an increasingly bitter rivalry between the merchants of these two countries, which ends up involving three very bloody naval wars between 1652 and 1673.The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution33:12 The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution in the early modern period is a series of political revolutions which put in place a new kind of state, which is federated and the product of parliamentary representation and parliamentary votes. And so the United Provinces of the Netherlands is the first one established in the 16th century, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain is the second established in 1707. Then, the United States of America is the third. Each of these is conscious of its place in a sequence where there is copying and adaptation going on.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Hanseatic LeagueMark Kurlansky | UnSILOedNavigation ActsJohn LockeMontesquieuBaruch SpinozaHugo GrotiusGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of AucklandHis Work:England's Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European ContextWhen the Waves Ruled Britannia: Geography and Political Identities, 1500–1800 How the Old World Ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution 1500-1800 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Katharina Pistor, a Professor of Comparative Law, delves into how legal coding shapes wealth distribution and economic inequality. She discusses the evolution of property rights into powerful financial instruments, the biases in economic development due to legal constructs, and the influence of corporate power on the legal system. The conversation also explores the interplay between legal systems and global capitalism, the emergence of new property rights like carbon emission rights, and the impact of digital code on social relations.