unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

Tina Seelig, executive director of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University, discusses the importance of creative problem-solving in education, teaching creativity in schools, mental models of failure, the significance of creativity in admissions, pre-dotyping, blurring the lines between work and play, and the future of universities and continuous learning.

Historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Greg LaBlanc discuss the history and shifts in fitness culture throughout the years, including how fitness has become part of a wellness movement and the inequality in access to fitness. They also explore the changing narratives and motives in fitness culture, the decline of physical education in schools, the connection between fitness and political ideologies, and the journey of yoga in the United States.

Tom Standage, Deputy Editor at The Economist, discusses how present tech concerns echo panics of the past, the discourse of self-driving vehicles, and the prevalence of smartphones. He explores the similarities between historical events and modern-day phenomena, emphasizing the importance of looking to the past to understand the future.

In order to fully appreciate art, does one have to have first-hand experience creating art oneself? How does experiencing art help artists with their own work? Artist Lincoln Perry is the author of the book, Seeing Like an Artist: What Artists Perceive in the Art of Others which aims to take the overwhelming and intimidating nature out of viewing and appreciating art. Lincoln and Greg discuss why experiencing art in person is paramount, the dangers of focusing too much on an artist’s biography, and the difference between a viewer of art and a participant. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What differentiates a participant from a viewer when encountering art?22:02: Viewing is a distancing implication. I enjoy implicating or trying to implicate the viewer. There are many numbers of ways you can do that. You can pull them in, say you have a tiny etching. Say you're Goya, and you have a tiny etching of the disasters of war, and you're holding it in your hand, and you're all of a sudden pulled into these horrors that are going on again. It's in the present. It's in your present, and you are participating, implicated. You have to wonder, Would I have been capable of this behavior? A viewer, somehow or other, does potentially walk through a space and not have an emotional reaction, but somehow or other, a participant will be answerable and also find enjoyment.Painting beyond accessibility16:37: I don't paint the way I paint to make it more accessible. I paint the way I paint because I can't do anything else.Paintings are more like music03:14: Paintings are more like music. They should wash over you, and if they pull you in and seduce you, you're motivated to read them at that point to figure out their content, their narrative, who's who, the iconography. But if you start with that, it's usually fairly intimidating and somehow off-putting to think that it's a quiz.Looking beneath art48:05: So what I'm advocating for in this book is looking beneath the surface of even touch. I don't talk about factors, but try to stress how you read art, how a sculpture carries your eye around, and how a painting guides your eye through depth and then back out again.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Delacroix at the LouvreJulian Barnes on the “Raft of the Medusa”The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space by John WhiteBarnes FoundationWhy Are Our Pictures Puzzles? by James Elkins Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings by James ElkinsGuest Profile:Professional Profile on The American ScholarLincoln Perry's WebsiteHis Work:Seeing Like an Artist: What Artists Perceive in the Art of OthersMore scholarly articles Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The prevalence of spending ample time indoors, engaging in screen-based activities, is narrowing our experiential landscape.As we constantly underutilize our sensory capabilities, we are missing out on the rich and vibrant information available from the colorful world around us.To thrive in a multi-dimensional world, reawakening our senses, enhancing our awareness of diverse experiences, and cultivating stronger connections with other species and nature are key.Charles Foster is an English writer, traveler, veterinarian, taxidermist, barrister, and philosopher. He is known for his books and articles on Natural History, travel, theology, law, and medical ethics. His latest publication, Cry of the Wild: Eight Animals Under Siege, explores the complexity, beauty, and fragility of wild lives living alongside humans.Charles and Greg talk about our potential to unlock additional sensory experiences, how to increase our “empathy muscles” by studying other species, nurturing our ability to see otherness, and the need for cultivating humanity in education.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How should we think about reconstructing education to cultivate humanity in a more authentic way?42:47: We need to teach the principle that relationships are everything, not just human relationships, but relationships with the non-human world. We need to say that the relationship between things is the web and weave of the cosmos and that anything which defeats that insight—whether it's the atomism of modern sociology which asserts that everyone is an island unto himself or whether it's things which lock us up physically in our rooms or on our screens—we've got to say that those things strike at the very heart of the way the universe is meant to be and that radical measures are therefore needed to restore relationship to its central place, not only in our philosophical understanding of the world but also in relation to our personal lives.On the theory of mind11:53: Direct experience is what we should be after, rather than a cognitive set of conclusions about what another person is thinking. So the theory of mind is a specifically adult human way of appreciating what, if we were non-adult humans, we would be able to have naturally.Is there a way we could foster a better relationship with the non-human world and instill this connection in our children?43:59: Relationship breeds an appetite for relationship, and if we go out into green, we will learn to love green, and that green is better than the gray of the breeze blocks from which our houses are made. There also needs to be a part of the compulsory curriculum in which people just go out and lie in a field or climb a tree. If you have had a childhood marinated in greenness, not only are you far less likely to suffer from ADHD or depression, but you're also far less likely to become, when you are an adult, a major trasher of the natural law.The business of observing is a two-way conversation.11:53: The whole business of observing is necessarily a two-way conversation; that's what relativity is all about, and it seems to me that exactly that principle applies at the level of a human looking at the bird that he's studying or the human looking at the rock that he's studying as well. Unless we enter into a conversation which allows both the observer and the observed to be changed, our perspective is going to be distorted by the fact that we have fallen prey to the delusion that we can be objective.Show Links:Recommended Resources:The Peregrine by J.A. BakerGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of OxfordCharles Foster's WebsiteCharles Foster on TwitterHis Work:Cry of the Wild: Eight animals under siegeBeing a Beast: Adventures Across the Species DivideBeing a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of ConsciousnessThe Screaming SkyIn The Hot Unconscious: An Indian JourneyChoosing Life, Choosing Death: The Tyranny of Autonomy in Medical Ethics and LawA little brown seaMedical Law: A Very Short Introduction Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is the practice of making a company sustainable a performative act, one motivated by a company's true values, or a move made for profit? And furthermore, does it matter if the effects are all the same? Companies all over the world are starting to align with newer, greener trajectories, and they do it for a myriad of reasons.Andrew S. Winston is the founder of Winston EcoStrategies, and an author whose latest book, co-authored with Paul Polman, Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take, examines precisely these questions. Greg and Andrew discuss what sustainability really means and how it differs and overlaps with ESG. Andrew recounts how the company Unilever has solved problems of sustainability and implemented them on a multinational scale. Greg and Andrew talk about the problem of the terms ballooning to include things originally outside the original definitions, what the future looks like on the sustainability landscape for corporations, and why Andrew is so optimistic about it.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The impact of individual actions on the environmental footprints24:22: The reason an individual can only do so much on their footprint is because they can't control that the grid is 80% coal in their area or whatever. Like the way that they can impact that is how they vote, right? How they support companies that are promoting the right things are not like it's much bigger elements of their lives than just literally what are they buying day to day. They can vote with their feet, and they should, and there's a few things people can do that move their footprint noticeably like eating less meat is the most immediate thing you can do, starting right now. But there's actually not a thousand things that really have any impact. There's a few, there's a handful. What you eat, what you drive, how close to work you live, and a bunch of these decisions don't come every day. Does sustainability make a company outperform? 12:12: There's been a long correlation between doing well on sustainability and doing well as a business, and the correlation causation there is difficult and impossible to parse. And it's because companies that are good at most things are good at most things. Climate change and the inequality issue46:33: The poorest people on the planet are the least responsible for climate and are basically the ones getting hit the hardest. And the people producing all of the emissions over the last 50 to 100 years are the richest; the richest billion or so of us have created the entire problem.Is the CEO job harder today than it was before?48:45: I was speaking with a CEO group recently, and they said the CEO job is much harder than it ever was before. Well, clearly, look at what's going on, right? You have to chime in on an LGBTQ law if you're Disney. These are hard things. I can't say I feel too bad for CEOs. The average Fortune 500 CEO makes what, $10–15 million a year? Like they're getting paid a lot. Like they're supposed to deal with the hard problems, and they're now being put to the test. And I'm not saying these things are easy, but I have these debates all the time. People say, 'Well, how come my company doesn't respond to everything? ' They don't have to. But the hard reality is that if you don't say something about an issue, you're still saying something.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Paul PolmanESGGeorge Serafeim Faculty Profile at HarvardGuest Profile:Andrew S. Winston’s WebsiteAndrew S. Winston on LinkedInAndrew S. Winston on TwitterAndrew S. Winston on TEDTalkHis Work:Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They TakeGreen to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive AdvantageThe Big Pivot: Radically Practical Strategies for a Hotter, Scarcer, and More Open WorldGreen Recovery: Get Lean, Get Smart, and Emerge from the Downturn on Top Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Science writer Philip Ball discusses the perks and pitfalls of interdisciplinary work, the cultural significance of invisibility, the concept of mind space and its relevance in understanding cognition and AI, the limitations of the Turing test for AI consciousness, and the challenge of knowing when to stop researching and start writing a book.

The future has a landscape that is navigated as it comes, but across industries, legacy firms, and newly formed start-ups will do that very differently. All companies will be used to having sound strategies in the product world but may miss ways to capitalize on their data streams and what opportunities they open up. Mohan Subramaniam is a professor of Strategy at IMD in Lausanne, and he is also the author of the book The Future of Competitive Strategy: Unleashing the Power of Data and Digital Ecosystems.Mohan and Greg discuss the operational and strategic differences between digital firms and legacy firms in business with Mohan’s research into how companies like Ford compare to a company like Tesla. Mohan talks about the value chains created by the utilization of data but also the real-time access to it for use by third parties that you may not have initially planned for, having its own set of risks and rewards.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How can legacy firms navigate digital ecosystems?04:38: My hypothesis is that increasingly legacy firms will have to find ways of expanding their revenue base beyond their product and service worlds into the data world. And if you want to compete with data, it requires different principles. You have to figure out what digital ecosystems mean for you. They're not the same as Uber's or Amazon's digital ecosystems. They're different, and you have to understand what those digital ecosystems are. And figure out how to expand your business scope beyond what is defined by value chains through digital platforms.What is the incumbency advantage in the digital world?12:25: The bigger your value chain infrastructure and the greater your product footprint, the more powerful your digital ecosystems can become. But, of course, it requires a different way of framing and thinking about competitive strategy.How do you look at your buyers in the digital world?10:58: How do you look at your buyers in the industrial world? Buyers are those who basically buy your products. But in this digital world, your customers, or buyers, are those who give you data. Now, that's a very different ballgame. Selling a product and getting data from customers. It's a very different proposition. I call them digital customers. These are customers who give you sensor data.Adapting to the new frameworks51:34: If you want to impact practice, you have to give frameworks that tell you that in your business what makes sense. What is the new value that data can give you? What's the nature of the digital ecosystems you can build? How does it influence your competitive advantage? Now, it may fit in with the theory of the firm. I'm not denying that. But we need to now move forward with more specific frameworks for the new world that we are in.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Michael PorterJeff ImmeltEric SchmidtGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at IMDMohan Subramaniam’s WebsiteMohan Subramaniam on LinkedInMohan Subramaniam on TwitterHis Work:The Future of Competitive Strategy: Unleashing the Power of Data and Digital EcosystemsGoogle Scholar Page Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The significance of early childhood skill development and its influence on long-term income and success differentials is widely recognized today. However, there exists a reluctance within society to allocate substantial resources toward extensive research and development endeavors aimed at innovating and enhancing the effectiveness of this pivotal learning process.While discussions about educational inequality receive significant attention, it is important to note that formal education constitutes only a small portion of a child's overall time. This places the primary responsibility for child skill development on parents as a private obligation, without providing them adequate training or addressing unrealistic expectations.Nate G. Hilger is a researcher and writer with a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He has worked as a professor of economics at Brown University and as an economist and data scientist in Silicon Valley. His book The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis exposes the true costs of our society’s unrealistic expectations around parenting and lays out a profoundly hopeful blueprint for reform.Greg and Nate discuss how the limited political influence of parents leads to the lack of funding for child skill development research and how cultural discussion about gender and race in the curriculum distracts from more valuable and universally supported concerns such as financing childcare and extracurricular activities, as well as ensuring access to comprehensive health and mental healthcare for children.They also talk about how to close the gap between kids of lower and higher-income families by providing access to high-quality early learning environments before kindergarten for everyone.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Should we start investing in parenting?20:40: I think the reason why we don't have hundreds of large-scale clinical trials, testing what works and what doesn't work in parenting and, more specifically, child development every year is just because we're not choosing to invest in the development of this knowledge. And I think it's a huge mistake we're making as a society. Shifting perspective on childhood development02:39: Once we reframe how we see child development, it starts to become clear that asking parents to organize 90% of this complicated activity on their own, in their spare time, on their dollar, is not a realistic expectation.A promising direction for progressives to push on49:31: If we could all come together and agree that kids need more universal support from professionals, like tutors, teachers, counselors, and nurses in their local communities, that would help people reach adulthood ready to stand independently and not rely as much on government programs.A big shift into the broader portfolio of skills that feed into lifelong success09:52: Economists tend to fixate on what they can measure and do statistics with. So now economists are coming on board as well to realize the extreme importance of things like social skills, empathy, your ability to speak clearly and persuasively, communication skills, your ability to persevere when you suffer a setback or a rejection, and your ability to control your emotions and your impulses in hot situations. So it's this broader range of skills that we're talking about here in terms of the burden we place on parents and what schools can achieve given that they have such a small share of children's time.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life by Annette LareauRecoding America by Jennifer Pahlka Tiebout modelGuest Profile:Nate G. Hilger's WebsiteNate G. Hilger on LinkedInNate G. Hilger on TwitterHis Work:The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality CrisisArticles on Medium Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The concern for human rights seems to be deeply rooted in history and based on longstanding moral concerns, but the modern human rights movement has very different motivations and concerns than previous rights-based movements. Samuel Moyn is a Professor of History and Law at Yale University and Yale Law School. He is also the author of several books, the most recent of which being Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War.Samuel and Greg discuss common perceptions and misconceptions about the growth of human rights doctrine, how the modern human rights movement is anti-utopian, and the role of Christianity in human rights movements. Samuel points out that governments throughout America’s history and also that of the West have used Human Rights as a rallying cry from both the left and the right to justify invasion, destruction, and violence. Samuel zooms out to talk with Greg about what morality these rights have been latched onto and where that morality has derived its authority at different times, and they talk about the current state of politics and the use of human rights as a chess piece in a very divided political landscape.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Historians’ role in imparting knowledge for progress or correcting past misunderstandings52:48: Historians can play a powerful and useful role in challenging dominant narratives, especially when they leave a lot out. And I've tried to do that in my work—not because I know what we should do, but because I wanted to disrupt a consensus that has been earned through historical myth. And once that myth is cleared away or less distortion, to rarely lie, it would be a lot easier if we could just say, "Our enemies are lying." But it's clear that history is a war in politics, and there's no way to free history from politics, although hopefully, we can have some conventions that keep our stories, at least from outright propaganda.Christianity and its connection to the human rights movement21:26: We can't say that Christianity always leads to human rights; often it leads to opposing human rights, but at various pivotal moments, there's a connection that we have to recognize.Human rights can mean a lot of things to different people48:53: Human rights can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, so I wouldn't rule out that there could be some movement that says it's a human rights movement that sets the world on fire. And after all, I'm claiming that human rights 1.0 - revolutionary human rights - did so. But if we take that for granted, then we have to ask: is the current version of the idea of human rights and the movement associated with it going to have that same effect without being radically reimagined? And I think the answer is no, especially if we care more than ever about the distribution of the good things in life.Is utopia a recipe for terror?38:03: Before the human rights movement, these Cold War liberals think utopia is a recipe for terror, and it's just people didn't get the memo for a while, but in our time, I think we've kind of embedded Cold War liberalism as our kind of second nature.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Universal Declaration of Human RightsPeter Benenson Amnesty International BiographyHuman Rights Watch WebsiteThe Church of The Left by Adam MichnikWikipedia for Jeane KirkpatrickWikipedia for Daniel RocheWikipedia for Invented TraditionGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Yale UniversityFaculty Profile at Yale Law SchoolSamuel Moyn’s WebsiteSamuel Moyn on TwitterHis Work:Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented WarThe Last Utopia: Human Rights in HistoryChristian Human Rights (Intellectual History of the Modern Age)Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times (Available on August 29, 2023)The Right to Have Rights Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal WorldHuman Rights and the Uses of History: Expanded Second EditionOrigins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics A Holocaust Controversy: The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France (The Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry) Google Scholar Page Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.