unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

Alexandra Hudson, author of 'The Soul of Civility', discusses the importance of civility in a divided world. She explores the difference between politeness and civility, shares wisdom from historical figures like Augustine and Pascal, and explains why cultivating virtues is vital for societal harmony. The episode offers actionable insights for integrating timeless principles of civility into everyday life.

Camilla Nord, Neuroscience researcher at the University of Cambridge and author of 'The Balanced Brain: The Science of Mental Health', discusses the intertwined relationship between psychology and physiology in mental health. Topics covered include the influence of phobias on immune responses, the role of dopamine in motivation, the dynamics of mental health treatments, and the shifting landscape of mental health research.

The family household is a fundamental unit of economics, and by extension – a fundamental unit of society. But the amount of research and study on the family within the profession of economics is still developing. Melissa Kearney is a professor of economics at the University of Maryland, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, and the director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group. Her book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, examines how the makeup of families can determine a child’s economic success. She and Greg discuss the success gap between children from two-parent homes vs. one-parent homes, the role families play in the overall economic state of our country, and what needs to be done to bridge that inequality and address poverty.  *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why does family structure matter in economic success and social mobility?03:43: When you look at all of the research that economists have done on poverty, inequality, and social mobility, family structure is important and determinant of all of that. And so what I'm doing is not uncovering something that isn't there in all of the academic evidence. I just think it doesn't get the attention it deserves when we then say, so what should we do about inequality, threats to social mobility, or poverty? We take family structure as a given in all of our research, and so it matters because it is so determinant. Even if we wish it were otherwise, it is so determinant. We just see that over and over and over again that kids from one-parent homes are less likely to graduate high school, graduate college, go on to achieve high earnings. It's really determinant of all of these markers of what we might think of as economic success.The real constraints of higher educated parents vs. economically constrained parents36:58: Higher-educated folks, married parents; they have more resources that allow them to be the kind of parents that they want to be. And more economically constrained parents have less; they have fewer resources, allowing them to be that.The impact of diverging structures on social disparities08:02: We don't just want to think about single moms and their kids being more likely to live in poverty, but I think the right way to think about it now is that the divergence in family structure between the college-educated class and everybody else is perpetuating inequality. It's exacerbating inequality precisely because these gaps are really large.Shared income and time are key for positive child development14:46: As an economist, my earnest wish is that this shouldn't be such a third-rail topic to talk about because nobody is blaming single parents for not doing an awesome job and putting in the hard work. But when there's a second parent in the house, there's more income coming in; there's more time coming in; there's more supervision; and there's more bandwidth. And we see that all of that collective input yields better outcomes for kids.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Gary BeckerRaj ChettyClaudia GoldinNicholas EberstadtLouisiana Fathers Form 'Dads on Duty' Group to Help Stop Violence at Their Children's High School (People Magazine)Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of MarylandDirector, Aspen Economic Strategy GroupNonresident Senior Fellow, Brookings InstituteHer Work:The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling BehindParental Education and Parental Time with Children

David Sloan Wilson, professor emeritus of biology and anthropology, discusses the interdisciplinary nature of evolution and its application in various fields. He explores major transitions in evolution, the persuasive power of simulations, and the combination of diversity and cooperation. Wilson also emphasizes the need for an overarching theory to dissolve boundaries and the possibility of organizing humanity as a cooperative super organism.

What happened when El Salvador made Bitcoin an official currency? Who uses cryptocurrency the most? How does the blockchain both help and hinder would-be scam artists and criminals?Zeke Faux is a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg News, a National Fellow at New America, and the author of Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall.Zeke and Greg discuss crypto bubbles, the crypto space, and the memorable characters Zeke encountered, such as Sam Bankman Fried. Zeke explains his investigations into Tether, the mass scamming compounds in Southeast Asia, and his personal experiences within this fluctuating industry when he bought his own Mutant Ape NFT.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why crypto investors overcome risks18:25: If you are making a crypto investment and your money is on some DeFi exchange or some centralized exchange, that seems pretty good. What kind of yield would you want just to let them hold your money? It'd have to be a pretty high-yield investment just to get over the risk that something unforeseen will happen, right? There's some chance that even if it seems great, that's something you didn't think is wrong with this because it keeps happening again and again in crypto. And I think what makes these people overcome is that they're not dumb. They know that these risks are there, the crypto investors. But they think, okay, maybe there's a 10% chance that something goes wrong here…[19:22] That's what makes people overcome everything: this desire to get rich quick, in this sense that it's possible because they've seen a lot of other people do it and get rich.The difference between internet and crypto bubble07:29: In crypto, the crypto guys do use crypto, but only to buy it. It's not serving any purpose other than just buying it, trading it, and doing things within this crypto world. Whereas with the internet, it was clearly a lot of fun, and it was affecting a lot of parts of real life. The internet bubble got way ahead of what could be justified by how much money these companies were making. But to me, there was never any doubt that the internet was a powerful innovation that was going to change our lives.Exploring 'Number Go Up' psychology in blockchain03:29: The key to it is psychology, and the title "Number Go Up" comes from this saying that I heard at my first crypto conference in 2021. I flew down to Miami. I thought I would hear more about technology. I thought I'd see bankers or fintech entrepreneurs who had ideas about how they're going to disrupt the financial system with this new technology, replace intermediaries, and make global transfers faster and cheaper. And instead, I heard this guy on stage saying, "Our technology is called number go up, and number go up technology means the price goes up, and that makes people excited, and they buy more, and the price goes up more, and then more people get excited, and pretty soon, Bitcoin is going to be at a million." And I just couldn't believe it. I was like, "Is that what it's really all about?"The treatment of crypto wallet transactions vs. traditional banking in stablecoins37:25: I can open a PayPal account, and I send money to PayPal. And now I have PayPal dollars that I can zap to your account. And that's not so different from a stablecoin. However, PayPal wants to know who I am. They follow all the banking rules and regulations about knowing your customer. They want to know who you are. You can't hold PayPal dollars without disclosing your identity. However, if I have a crypto wallet on my phone, like Metamask or any of the tons of other options, I can hold tethers on my phone and send them to your phone without disclosing any identifying information. And it seems like it's a very similar transaction that's treated very differently by regulators right now. And I just wonder if that will continue, especially if stablecoins keep growing.Show Links:Recommended Resources:BlockchainBitcoinDogecoinDecentralized financeSam Bankman-FriedTetherBitfinexCantor FitzgeraldGuest Profile:ZekeFaux.comProfile at NewAmerica.orgLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on XWikipedia ProfileHis Work:Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering FallBloomberg Articles

Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at MIT Sloan School of Management, discusses cultural evolution and its impact on organizational culture. They explore why humans are unique collaborators, the role of technology in shaping workplaces, and the need for an education system overhaul. The podcast delves into embracing science over opinions in decision-making, the suffocating effects of bureaucracy in companies like Microsoft and Nokia, and the importance of integrating cultural evolution insights in business and engineering education.

For centuries, the health of the body was the province of doctors while the health of the soul was the domain of the clergy. What happened with the discovery of a concept of mind as thinking matter? In this episode, we trace the emergence of mind and mental health as a new aspect of what it means to be human.George Makari is a psychiatrist, historian, and the author of three books: Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia, Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis, and Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind.George and Greg discuss the transformation in the way we perceive the mentally ill, thanks in part to the contributions of Philippe Pinel and others who dared to challenge the status quo. They explore the early intersection of sensibility, vitalism, and literary movements that have shaped modern mental health practices. They also dive into xenophobia, where it came from, and how it persists.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Do people in the world of intellectual history need to spend time thinking about medicine and the history of medicine?02:38: When you went in search of the history of mind, what you found was maybe a history of the mind through the lens of philosophy. Charles Taylor wrote a good one like that. But the more and more I looked into it, it became so clear that the notion of the mind was highly implicated in science, medicine, politics, and broader social change. And that a lot of our 21st-century categories apply back to a time where they didn't really exist…[03:38] The argument in the book is that claims about these major human essences—the soul, the mind, the brain—have very important socio-political ramifications and, not just downstream, but can be affected by socio-political cultural beliefs. So, I tried to tell that bigger story—medicine being part of science, being part of politics—and trying to piece out how these different kinds of things interacted in the creation of the kind of state that we're in now, thinking about soul, mind, and body.Are we all a little mentally ill?26:32: Sensibilities getting disrupted, causing depression or something like that. We are all, potentially, the victims of that. So, there is this notion that the mind is a fragile thing. It's not simply that God gave us one, and it's fine. It's part of the body; it's part of the physiology; it's part of this sensible creature who the environment can deeply impact and who can deeply impact the environment.On the origins of xenophobia33:12: I did a little bit of etymology and whatnot and found that the Greeks actually, in antiquity, had never used the word xenophobia. And that was critical because phobos in antiquity is just fear. It doesn't mean anything medical. But by the time the term gets invented in the late 19th century, phobia was a medical term, and there were a multiplicity of phobias that had emerged in the late 19th century, up to 75 different ones. And xenophobia was one of them, so that it was now an irrational fear, and that makes all the difference, that adjective. It's an irrational fear; it's a mental illness; it's not just a fear. And so, when you talk about the irrational fear of the stranger, that becomes one of the origins of the concept of xenophobia. As it kind of makes its way.The "Other Anxiety" of encountering difference48:03: Bringing people from foreign worlds together works to some extent, and I call that other anxiety. I was like, we shouldn't call that xenophobia because we all have that. If I meet someone who looks different than me, who speaks a different language than I do, and who worships differently than I do, I am going to have some anxiety about what goes on with that person and how they're different and how they're thinking about me. So that's almost universal, and we should think about that as the easiest part of the problem: bringing people together.Show Links:Recommended Resources:René DescartesJohn LockePierre GassendiBaruch SpinozaFrancis WillisPhilippe PinelBethlem Royal HospitalCharenton-le-PontSensibilityVitalismFranz MesmerFranz Joseph GallG. Stanley HallGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Weill Cornell Medical CenterFaculty Profile at Yale UniverstyGeorgeMakari.comWikipedia ProfileHis Work:Of Fear and Strangers: A History of XenophobiaSoul Machine: The Invention of the Modern MindRevolution in Mind: The Creation of PsychoanalysisAcademic Publications

Math is all around us. When you’re debating when to cross the street to avoid oncoming traffic, you’re doing math. When you sing in the shower and you notice how your voice bounces and sounds, that’s math. Kit Yates is a professor of mathematical biology at the University of Bath. His books, How to Expect the Unexpected: The Science of Making Predictions―and the Art of Knowing When Not To and The Math of Life and Death: 7 Mathematical Principles That Shape Our Lives look at real-world applications of scientific and mathematical concepts. He and Greg discuss why the idea of math needs to be reframed, what it takes to scientifically predict the future, and why it’s more important than ever to have basic math skills in this world. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Math is a creative discipline40:52: Maths is a creative discipline. Sometimes, it involves stewing and thinking about things, and in my case, it involves applying mathematics to the real world and building models of the real world. It's a really creative process because you've got to decide which bits you want to keep and which bits you can throw away, which are the most essential parts. And that's not a thing that you do in 10 seconds. This is something that you have to think really hard about and try and do trial and error and get things wrong, right? We don't encourage people to get things wrong enough. Getting things wrong is the way that you learn how to get things right. And in modeling, we go around in these cycles. When I'm doing a mathematical model of the biological process, we go through this process: model, predict, test, and alter. And then you go back. So you build your model, make a prediction, and then test it against biology, and it's not right. And that's good because you've learned something, and you go and change your model, make a new prediction, and go around the cycle. And this is how mathematical modeling works in general. But it's a really creative process.You don’t need to be good at math to understand it32:09: We don't need to be mathematical geniuses, but we do need to be aware of the places where mathematics can have an impact, and those are increasing in frequency over time. We're increasingly presented with more and more data.On thinking of math in form of stories and narratives03:09: We’re seeing the products of mathematics all around us all the time, and I think that I wanted to share that through the medium of stories because people connect with that. I wanted to tell the stories of real people's lives where they've been impacted by mathematics, perhaps without even being aware of it, so that other people who read the book can then be aware of what's going on and spot those situations when they start to come up.It's better to be uncertain about a prediction than to trust a hundred percent in a poor prediction05:56: We are so convinced that we're right; we fail to check the possibility that we could be wrong. We fail to ask the question, "What if I'm wrong?" And actually, we can get into trouble with that. It's much better to be uncertain and to admit and acknowledge that uncertainty about a particular prediction than it is to be 100 percent certain with the risk that the prediction is wrong.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Bayes’ theoremPonzi schemeGoodhart’s lawStreisand effectMonty Hall problemJohn Forbes Nash Jr.Independent SAGEGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of BathProfessional WebsiteHis Work:How to Expect the Unexpected: The Science of Making Predictions―and the Art of Knowing When Not ToThe Math of Life and Death: 7 Mathematical Principles That Shape Our Lives

Ashley Ward, Professor of Animal Behavior at the University of Sydney, explores the world of animal senses and their role in understanding the environment. They discuss smell's influence on human communication, the power of smell in social insects, and intriguing theories about human behaviors like kissing. The podcast also delves into animal behavior, group decision-making, and the fascinating hunting abilities of hyenas. Additionally, the speakers explore the potential of using animals and electronic noses in medical diagnostics.

Theresa MacPhail, a medical anthropologist and author, discusses the history of allergy research, the impact of industrialization on immune responses, and the spike in allergies due to climate change. She also talks about food labeling laws, the dangers of overusing antibiotics, and the importance of early intervention in conditions like asthma and eczema. They explore the concept of a smarter societal immune system and the need to invest in early understanding and preparation for future pandemics.