unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

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.

Robert J. Gordon, a Northwestern University professor specializing in labor and capital productivity, dives into the complexities of measuring economic health. He critiques GDP as a metric, highlighting its failure to capture societal progress. Gordon discusses the rapid growth era from 1929 to 1950 and questions whether AI can spark a new productivity boom. The conversation also uncovers how historical infrastructure developments and modern technology interplay to affect labor productivity and inequality, provoking thoughts on future economic trajectories.

In ancient times, debtors were treated with severe punishment, even sometimes being dismembered. So when did things start to shift towards debt forgiveness leading up to the modern-day concept of filing for bankruptcy?David Skeel is the S. Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He’s the author of several books that look at the history of corporate law, debt, and bankruptcy, including Icarus in the Boardroom: The Fundamental Flaws in Corporate America and Where They Came From and Debt's Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America. He and Greg discuss the origins of debt forgiveness in the world, how Christianity and the Bible played a role in that shift, and the proper amount of risk corporate leaders should take. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:A biblical perspective on debt and bankruptcy17:40:  There's a verse in the Old Testament that says you cannot take as collateral a debtor's millstone. And the idea there is that is the tool of the trade. There's another verse that says if you take the debtor's cloak as collateral, you've got to give it back at the end of the day. The idea being that the debtor's going to need that to keep warm. Even going back thousands of years, a sense that there needs to be a balancing. You need to make it possible for creditors to get repaid, but you also need to be aware of the humanity of the debtor and the needs of the debtor.Debt is like sex and fire09:28: Debt is like sex and fire; both of them were important in the ancient world and are important now, but they also have some dangerous downsides if they're misused. And that's the picture you get of debt: that people need debt is inevitable, but it's easy for people to get in over their heads, and there needs to be a way to deal with that possibility.How do you respond to risk-taking?29:43: One simple response to the risk-taking concern is to be mindful of regulations that create bad incentives in that respect, such as tax rules. And also, things like disclosure can make a difference.Sometimes lots of failures is an indication of a good economy or a good system, not a bad one23:32: There is empirical evidence that shows that in countries where you have a more generous bankruptcy system and more generous availability of a fresh start, you do get more entrepreneurship. There is a direct relationship between the two, but risk-taking can sometimes be problematic.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence by Bruce MannThomas H. JacksonBankruptcy Reform Act of 1978Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of PennsylvaniaDavid Skeel on XHis Work:Icarus in the Boardroom: The Fundamental Flaws in Corporate America and Where They Came From (Law and Current Events Masters)The New Financial DealDebt's Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in AmericaTrue Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How much does venture capital actually have to do with finance? It turns out, not that much. Rather, venture capital has more to do with psychology, network theory, and organizational dynamics. Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He’s written numerous books, including The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future and More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite. He and Greg discuss how venture capital can be a form of finance without much finance, why governance plays such an important role in successful venture capital, and why other places have found it difficult to replicate the Silicon Valley model. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Embeddedness is essential for startup success 45:09: Most of the good GPs I wrote about in my book either had an engineering degree or some other skill which would add value to the portfolio company, maybe be an expert in go-to-market strategies. Secondly, they know something about business and finance; perhaps they have a business degree. Thirdly, they may have started a startup or been an early employee in a startup. So that experience from the inside of being an entrepreneur, and you don't need maybe all three of those things, but you probably might need two. That's the obvious thing. The less obvious thing is that You need to be what I call embedded. You need to be in a network which is going to be generating startup founders, and you need to have standing in that network. You need to have thought leadership such that the founders that emerge from this network are going to want to come to you for money because they're also going to want you as their advisor, and that embeddedness is super important.What VCs are looking for04:00: Credibility, storytelling, embeddedness in the network, a sense of vision, a sense of passion, and commitment from the founding team. These are what the Venture Capitalists are looking for.Is there any chance we could create a more factory-like system for identifying good investments and good founders and investing in them?41:42: I think fundamentally the things that AI will not cannibalize are things where human-to-human contact is super important, and that is true of venture investing because it is about a venture capitalist, a human being, meeting a startup entrepreneur. They have to agree that they're going to be partners together and that this is going to be something you can't exit very easily, and you're probably going to be meshed together if it goes well.Behavioral dynamics23:28: Behavioral dynamics are super interesting when you think about the question of whether solo venture capitalists—whether that's a good model—became fashionable in the last three, four, or five years. I think partly a function of the bull market leading up to 2021 because it was relatively easy to raise capital. If you had some decent claim to be embedded in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, you could go out as an individual and raise some money, and why not do it by yourself? But I think that when you're trying to make slippery judgments on early-stage ventures, which have no quantitative guidelines, as I began by saying, all you have is the ability to test your human judgment on a smart partner who will push back against you and say if they disagree. So I think the dynamics within venture companies like that Monday morning meeting when you decide what to invest in, you've got six or seven partners around the table. That's super important.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Ronald CoaseRegional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee SaxenianSequoia CapitalKleiner PerkinsGuest Profile:Professional Profile for Council on Foreign Relations His Work:The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New FutureMore Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite The World's Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bent Flyvbjerg, Professor at Oxford University and the IT University of Copenhagen, discusses the influence of strategic misrepresentation on project outcomes, power dynamics within organizations, and case studies from Sydney Opera House, Pixar, and Amazon.

Emily Austin, Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University, discusses Epicureanism and its relevance today. Topics include comparing Stoicism and Epicureanism, the significance of shared meals, mitigating the fear of death, and living unnoticed in a hyper-connected world.

Christian Stadler, Professor of Strategic Management at the Warwick Business School and author of multiple books on strategy and success, discusses the challenges of idea generation in established companies and the benefits of promoting a culture of openness and reshuffling within organizations. They also explore the importance of involving different stakeholders in decision-making processes, the effectiveness of crowdsourcing, and the potential conflict between human nature and change.

Is History driven by heroic individuals or by variation and selection? What determines the speed of innovation? Matt Ridley is a science writer, journalist, and businessman. His books include The Red Queen, The Origins of Virtue, Genome, Nature via Nurture, Francis Crick, The Rational Optimist, The Evolution of Everything, and How Innovation Works.Matt and Greg discuss the integral role freedom, idea exchange, and trade play in driving innovation. They delve deep into the concept of creative destruction and how it's essential for large corporations to reinvent themselves to stay competitive or be allowed to cease to exist suddenly. Matt talks about the debate surrounding the origin of COVID-19, its implications for virology, and the spread of false information in our interconnected world. The discussion examines the controversial lab leak hypothesis and the impact of China's rise on global innovation.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why is it that evolutionary thinking is like the gift that keeps on giving?02:25: The message of my book, "The Evolution of Everything," is that we don't want to let this insight remain confined to biology. It's just as useful as a way of understanding human society in lots of different aspects. Not just economics, but social change as well. Because really, the simple idea that if there's variation, if there's trial and error, if there's experimentation going on, then some ideas are going to survive at the expense of others. And that's going to lead to progressive adaptation. That's going to lead to progressive improvement in some technology, in some social habits, whatever it might be.Innovation is more about rearranging the world14:20: Recombination of existing genes is the main way that innovation happens in evolutionary biology, much more common than de novo mutation, and that's true of us too. Most of the new products we produce in the world by innovation are actually just the same old materials combined in new and interesting ways. Innovation is more about rearranging the world than it is about coming up with completely new things.Crony capitalism extends corporate lifespans, stifling innovation27:41: Crony capitalism, corporate favoritism, is a tried-and-true and tested way to stay in the game. But it tends to come at the expense of innovation, and it tends to leave you more and more vulnerable to collapse when you do. Get to face real competition. It tends to leave the company vulnerable to disappearing. Everybody thinks they know innovation, but only few people can pin it down30:46: The main reason we're living lives of far greater comfort than we did 500 years ago is still somewhat mysterious. We can tell you things like it needs freedom, it needs trial and error, and things like that, but we can't switch it on and off, let alone tell you when and where it's going to happen. In that sense, it's a surprisingly slippery thing, innovation. Everybody talks about it. Everybody thinks they know about it, but surprisingly, few people can really pin it down. And as I say, you can't put it in a mathematical model, at least not in a very convincing way.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Intentional stanceGreat man theoryFrancis CrickInfinite Improbability DriveMemeGeoffrey WestLinear modelFrancisco MojicaCOVID-19 lab leak theoryZoonosisMichael ShellenbergerGuest Profile:Speaker’s Profile on Chartwell SpeakersMatt Ridley's WebsiteMatt Ridley on LinedInMatt Ridley on XMatt Ridley on YouTubeMatt Ridley on TEDTalk Matt Ridley on Talks at GoogleHis Work:Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity EvolvesHow Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in FreedomThe Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas EmergeThe Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human NatureGenome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 ChaptersThe Origins of VirtueNature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us HumanFrancis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic CodeClimate Change: The Facts 2017 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How does one tell the story of knowledge through the centuries? And what kind of knowledge is being discussed when looking at its history? Peter Burke, a professor of history at Cambridge University, has written more than 30 books over the course of his lifetime and has taken a special interest in studying the history of knowledge and polymaths. He and Greg discuss a couple of his major works like The Polymath: A Cultural History from Leonardo da Vinci to Susan Sontag and What is the History of Knowledge? (What is History?). They also discuss how the history of knowledge can not come without a history of ignorance, whether or not polymaths are a thing of the past, and if the aggregate amount of knowledge is increasing today.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Decision-Making, where history of knowledge meets general history39:59: I got into decision-making, and the nice thing about it is it connects history of knowledge with general history more clearly than other studies in the history of knowledge. So it breaks down one more barrier because one great thing about history in the last couple of generations is the interest of different historians in different other disciplines: economic historians studying economics, social historians studying sociology. The great price has been that in having a fruitful dialogue with their colleagues in the neighboring discipline, they no longer speak to other historical colleagues, but this history of knowledge and ignorance has the potential for connecting things. All these different practical areas where decisions are taken that is influencing the history of the world, and knowledge is playing this crucial part, or the absence of knowledge is playing this crucial part.What unique insights do historians offer to understand knowledge creation and innovation?48:30: Historians are people who specialize in telling you that the problem that you think is unique is one that has occurred a number of times in the past. And that's the most specifically historical. Otherwise, I think historians are like sociologists and even more like anthropologists because they try to understand the mindset of people in other cultures, and this is an absolutely indispensable kind of knowledge, which we need more and more in a globalizing world where we're constantly living. Meeting people from other cultures, constantly misunderstanding them, and constantly being misunderstood by them.How does the brain of polymaths work?21:17: Polymaths need a great power of concentration. So, they're described by their families and friends as they pick up a book, and they somehow sort of suck the contents out in half an hour, but they do this because they've got this incredible concentration. But because they're concentrating on the problem, and they're living in the everyday world, what other people notice is their failure: The failure of the polymaths to notice what's happening around them, absent-mindedness. But their mind, if it's absent from ordinary everyday life, is extremely present next to the problem they're trying to solve.New knowledge is always associated with new ignorance42:33: New knowledge is always associated with new ignorance, and this is inevitable given that human beings still sleep for eight hours a night except for a few polymaths. And they don't spend all their time acquiring knowledge. So if they acquire some of the new knowledge, for example, about IT, and then they've got less time to acquire some of the old knowledge.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Karl MannheimEdward ShilsGottfried Wilhelm LeibnizPierre BourdieuThomas AquinasLewis MumfordCs lewis discarded image Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Cambridge UniversityHis Work:Ignorance: A Global HistoryThe Polymath: A Cultural History from Leonardo da Vinci to Susan SontagThe Art of ConversationWhat is the History of Knowledge? (What is History?)French Historical RevolutionThe Italinan REnaissanceWhat is Cultural History?Social History of KnowledgeFortunes of the CourtierEyewitnessingCultural Hybridity Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.