unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

Greg La Blanc
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Jan 9, 2023 • 54min

232. Cancer, Cooperation, and Cheating feat. Athena Aktipis

All multicellular organisms face the risk of cancer cells developing and growing. When these cells work together and cooperate they can create new problems that require novel approaches to solve. Healthy cells also cooperate with each other in the effort to eliminate the cancer as the two sides battle for territory in the body. Athena Aktipis is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, the Director of ASU’s Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative, and a member of the Center for Evolution and Medicine. Athena is also the author of The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer. She is a cooperation theorist, theoretical evolutionary biologist, and cancer biologist working at the intersection of these fields, and she searches for general principles of cooperation that manifest across diverse systems. Athena and Greg discuss the world of cancer cells, and the way in which they cooperate with each other. They go over different theories for cellular evolution that relate to cancer and Athena shares some surprising strategies to deal with cancer when it evolves in a body. They also discuss ways to deal with evolutionary management, and the different approaches that some disciplines have that lend themselves well to interdisciplinary study.Episode Quotes:How should cancer intervention be approached?33:24: If we think about cancer as an evolutionary system, as an evolutionary problem, we think of cancer as fundamentally being a process, right? It's a process of evolution happening inside the body in a way that is favoring cells aligned with our interests as beings. Then that allows us to really shift the question about intervention to, how we could, instead of targeting cancer and trying to kill cancer, which, you know, sometimes that makes sense. But we can instead think, "How can we actually shape the process of evolution in the body?"23:03: One of the dirty tricks cancer cells have up their collective sleeves is that within their genomes are all of the genes that allow cells to cooperate really well to make our bodies functional.Our bodies are a vast ecosystem for cancer cells24:00: Our bodies are a vast ecosystem for cancer cells. And there are so many sub-habitats, regions, and places where cancer cells and groups of cancer cells can be early in the evolution of cancer before you can even detect anything like invasion and metastasis. There could very well be these microscopic populations of these groups of cancer cells that are, in all these little niches, that may be competing with each other.The trade-off with treating cancer18:49: In order to have a body that would be not susceptible to cancer at all, the ways that evolution could select for that include shutting a lot of things down that are important for other functions.Show Links:Recommended Resources:[Andrew Read] How to use antibiotics without driving the evolution of antibiotic resistanceGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Arizona State UniversityProfessional Profile on This View of LifeAthena Aktipis WebsiteAthena Aktipis on LinkedInAthena Aktipis on TwitterAthena Aktipis on InstagramHer Work:Athena Aktipis on Google ScholarArticles on SlateArticles Scientific AmericanZombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains PodcastThe Cheating Cell Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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Jan 6, 2023 • 1h 1min

231. Pandemics and Public Health feat. Mark Woolhouse

In February 2020, Mark Woolhouse, a UK epidemiologist, called the Chief Medical Officer of Scotland. Mark wanted to talk to the leader about what the country was doing to prepare for the inevitable arrival of a virus that was spreading through China. Thus began Mark’s years-long critique and study of the worldwide system failure in reaction to COVID-19. On this episode of unSILOed, Greg and Mark discuss some of the things Mark thought we did wrong (lockdowns), what we might do going forward (bring medicine outside of hospitals) and how epidemiologists, journalists, and politicians need to communicate better during moments of public health emergencies. Mark Woolhouse is a Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. His latest book is The Year The World Went Mad: A Scientific Memoir. Episode Quotes:On the failings on the pandemic response57:38: It's very hard to pin the failings of the pandemic response in the US and the UK and elsewhere on a single section of that overall response community, as it were. It's not just the scientist's fault. It's not just the advisor's fault. It's not just the civil service's fault, the politician's fault. It's not just the healthcare worker's fault. All of us were at fault in some ways. So I described that as a system failure. Our system was challenged with this particular event, which wasn't that different from what we planned for; it wasn't massively different from pandemic influenza, but it was different enough that it flew threw our system into complete disarray.04:03: There's a lot of humility needed in the public health and scientific community to try and understand that preparedness and vulnerability are different things, and they're different things to a virus.Lockdowns should be implemented with greater caution21:22: We better take a long, hard, critical look about the evidence, strengths, and weaknesses of the lockdown approach before we wholeheartedly embrace it as part of the next generation of pandemic preparedness plans. I think there's a real big danger there that we'll just jump into lockdown again the next time anything comes along to threaten us.Doesn't lockdown protect everybody?37:30: There was this rather naive argument that, well, doesn't lockdown protect everybody? Well, it's true to a degree. But it demonstrably doesn't protect all of those vulnerable people…(37:56) So whether you are against lockdown or somewhere on the fence, clearly, we needed other strategies, ones that did a better job of protecting the people who were most vulnerable.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of EdinburghProfessional Profile at The Academy of Medical SciencesHis Work:Mark Woolhouse Academic Research The Year The World Went Mad: A Scientific Memoir Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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Jan 4, 2023 • 45min

230. Using Literature to Know Ourselves feat. Leonard Barkan

When we read fiction, our brains are able to suspend our awareness of the fiction so we can fully immerse ourselves in the story we’re reading. When this happens, we are able to think about our own lives and personal beliefs in the context of the story. That’s the power of great art- the themes of a text should transcend the particulars of that story, its setting, or those characters. Leonard Barkan, professor of literature and classics at Princeton, has had this experience over and over in his life when it comes to the work of Shakespeare. His new book, Reading Shakespeare Reading Me, details the different personal revelations he’s had throughout the course of his life through reading or watching Shakespeare’s play. Leonard and Greg discuss the role of art in modern society, how we should all approach our personal reading practices to get the most out of it and the power of seeing Shakespeare’s plays performed on stage. Barkan is also the author of The Hungry Eye: Eating, Drinking, and European culture from Rome to the Renaissance, which explores the role of food in European culture and art through the years. He teaches comparative literature at Princeton. Episode Quotes:How arts & literature shape who you become as a person43:19: My choice is great art. I can't make it, but I need to embrace it and figure out how it reads me. What is there in me that has some chance of growth, of development of responsiveness, beyond what my ordinary experience gives me? These are fields of experience that I am allowed to have, say Shakespeare. Not only as good as a real experience but better, more complicated, more troubling, more thrilling. That makes me more complicated, troubled, and thrilled than all those other things.38:59: Aesthetics is about the validity of beauty and the study of what makes something beautiful, how to produce the beautiful, how to recognize the beautiful, and how to take pleasure in the beautiful.What's the difference between watching a play versus simply reading it?24:26: What happens in a theater, of course, the text is narrowed down. Let's not forget that it's narrowed down to a particular trajectory that the director and the actors chose, but ideally, that trajectory is life itself. It is happening for real. The actors look like certain things. Their expressions are saying something. The way they listen is important. Novels don't have that. Their bodies on a stage- beautiful, ugly, fat, thin, whatever, and their voices are a certain way.Show Links:Recommended Resources:King Lear Winter’s TaleAby WarburgGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Princeton UniversityProfessional Profile at The American Academy in BerlinLeonard Barkan’s WebsiteLeornard Barkan on LinkedInLeonard Barkan on TwitterHis Work:Reading Shakespeare Reading MeThe Hungry Eye: Eating, Drinking, and European culture from Rome to the RenaissanceBerlin for Jews: A Twenty-First-Century CompanionMichelangelo: A Life on PaperMute Poetry, Speaking Pictures (Essays in the Arts)Satyr Square: A Year, a Life in Rome Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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Jan 3, 2023 • 1h 18min

229. Demography: A Window Into History feat. Paul Morland

What drives fertility? What drives mortality? What drives migration? These are some of the questions that drive the field of demography. Paul Morland is the author of three books: 'Demographic Engineering: Population Strategies and Ethnic Conflict' which looks at the links between demography and conflict, 'The Human Tide: How Population Shaped the Modern World' which charts the last two hundred years from a demographic perspective, and his most recent, 'Tomorrow's People' which examines current and future population trends.Greg and Paul analyze how economics and cultural values affect fertility in a society, population size & productivity, the political attitudes to demography, the relationship between demography and power, and what sort of future current trends may bring.Episode Quotes:Demography has a unique insight to history02:05: Demography has indeed a unique insight into history. It's a field of its own. So, apart from history, people are studying: What drives fertility? What drives mortality? What drives migration? It can be a very contemporary study. It can be a highly mathematical, highly statistical study, but thinking of it historically, it is a window on history, and there are many windows on history, and to see history properly, we need to look through all those windows.Defining postmodernity 08:34: Your fertility rate is going to be driven hugely not by how much you earn or even the level of education you have, but by your beliefs.Who controls fertility12:15: Control of fertility tends to start at the top and work its way down. So access to contraception, it was often quite expensive or you needed to know about it, you needed education. So very often in societies it's the wealthier that start using contraception and it filters down.  Show Links:Guest Profile:Speakers Profile at Chartwell SpeakersProfessional Profile on Pan MacmillanPaul Morland’s WebsitePaul Morland on LinkedInHis Work:Tomorrow's PeopleThe Human Tide: How Population Shaped the Modern WorldDemographic Engineering: Population Strategies in Ethnic Conflict Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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Dec 23, 2022 • 57min

228. Design for a Better World feat. Donald A. Norman

Design is the science of the artificial, but what makes for good design? Everything designed is man-made, but not everything man-made is designed. There are ways to study and teach good design theory, but implementation and human use is needed to refine and inform the field to make things more efficient and intuitive. Donald A. Norman is a professor emeritus at the University of California San Diego, who has also taught at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He is the founding Director of the Design Lab and was a member of the Nielsen Norman Group. Don is also the author of several books. His latest book on design, Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered, will be released in early 2023 and joins a large library of other notable books he has written on the subject, including The Design Of Everyday Things, Living with Complexity, and Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things among many others.Don and Greg discuss Don’s work at Apple and how design thinking has evolved over time. They talk about what it means to think of design in human-centered or people-centered ways and how optimal design can be different depending on the user and the needs of the space. They talk about how design has spread from product design to service design to even business model design. Don recounts resistance to design thinking in his business school classes and why the students have difficulty reframing the way we all think of this essential element of the world.Episode Quotes:On the integration design doing and thinking55:38: The problem was design thinking was good in the sense that it taught people that design is not just making it look pretty. It's much deeper than that. But it also made it look too easy because these courses were so much fun, and they say, "Oh, now I understand." No. In fact, the hard part is design doing not design thinking. And if you try to implement or do things, you discover your thinking wasn't complete. So you need to integrate doing and thinking.23:15: Simplicity is in the head, not in the world. If you understand something, it's simple, and if you don't understand, then it's complicated.The trade-off between costs and service quality45:35: Most people who look at productivity and cost look at the short term. They don't look at the long term. And the long term includes, yes, everything is more efficient and faster, but you make and get errors along the way, and the cost of repairing the error more than makes up for all the savings.The important component of humanity-center20:25: Human-centered is an important component of humanity center. It's just that it isn't enough. We have to worry about climate change, the environment, the loss of species, the loss of natural habitats, and the way we've treated all the disadvantaged people in the world. And what does "disadvantage" mean? It means we've treated them badly.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Tesler’s Law | Laws of UXGuest Profile:Professional Profile at Nielsen Norman GroupDonald A. Norman’s Website Donald A. Norman on LinkedInDonald A. Norman on TwitterDonald A. Norman on TEDTalkHis Work:Donald A. Norman on Google ScholarDesign for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity CenteredThe Design Of Everyday Things Paperback – IllustratedThings That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the MachineLiving with ComplexityThe Design of Future ThingsEmotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday ThingsThe Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the SolutionTurn Signals Are The Facial Expressions Of Automobiles Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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Dec 21, 2022 • 1h 3min

227. The Mysterious World of Bankruptcy Law feat. Doug Baird

Bankruptcy law and laws that govern corporate restructures play an important role in our economy. How a business moves forward after declaring bankruptcy is determined by these laws and the judges who uphold them – but how this all works can be somewhat of a mystery to many people. Doug Baird is the author of the new book ‘The Unwritten Law of Corporate Reorganizations,’ which explains these laws and how they impact our modern economy. Doug and Greg discuss the history of bankruptcy laws (this was an important topic to the Founding Fathers!) and how the first large businesses in the U.S. used them. Baird is a professor of law at the University of Chicago and focuses a lot of his work on bankruptcy law. He’s written one of the foremost textbooks on the subject, The Elements of Bankruptcy Law, which is one of the most heavily used texts on the subject. Episode Quotes:US has always been a debtor nation18:00: We've always been a debtor nation. And indeed, if you look at debates over the Bill of Rights, I think people who aren't lawyers or aren't familiar with this history would be surprised that a big issue about the Bill of Rights was basically protecting debtors.One fundamental principle of bankruptcy07:58: Bankruptcy takes non-bankruptcy rights as it finds them. And it doesn't create new substantive rights. If you're a debtor in bankruptcy, you have to obey the law just like anyone else.What bankruptcy judges shouldn't do08:45: Bankruptcy judges shouldn't invent new substantive rights. They shouldn't give you a right; you never had before. But that's different. These substantive rights are different than the rules that govern the bargaining, you know, these meta rules. What are the conditions and the norms of the bargaining environment? And, you know, it's not a question of the deal, but rather who gets a seat at the table and how we figure out the agenda and all these other things.The relative priority rule 47:41: Relative priority says, "Look, we have a company; we need a new capital structure." But it's not a day of reckoning. It's like an exchange offer. There's no reason to cash out interests, even if they'd be out the money in a day of reckoning because it's not a day of reckoning. Show Links:Recommended Resources:Jerome FrankWilliam O. DouglasAnn KruegerThe Folklore of CapitalismGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at The University of ChicagoProfessional Profile on American Academy of Arts & ScienceHis Work:The Unwritten Law of Corporate Reorganizations Reconstructing Contracts The Elements of BankruptcyGame Theory and the Law Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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Dec 20, 2022 • 60min

226. Beauty Lessons From the Animal Kingdom feat. Michael J. Ryan

What can the study of animals tell us about beauty? How can the mate choices of birds or frogs give us insight into human attraction? As a part of the animal kingdom, humans share more than we think with the ways of other animals, and by studying how they assess and reward beauty, we can unlock truths about our relationship to beauty as humans, too.Michael J. Ryan is a biologist and author of several books. He is a Senior Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and a professor of Zoology in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin. Michael is an expert in the fields of animal communication and sexual selection. His latest book, A Taste for the Beautiful: The Evolution of Attraction, examines the ways in which animals display, enhance, and evaluate beauty in choosing mates.Michael and Greg talk about Michael’s famous work with Túngara Frogs in Panama, as well as the mating preferences and selection habits of several other animals, from fish to birds, as well as bats and bees. They discuss beauty in the wild and how it drives natural selection. They go over some discoveries of surprising factors that enhance or decrease attraction and how adding a third choice can resolve a stalemate in preference.Episode Quotes:The female brain as agents of selection10:50: The female brain, they're agents of selection because they generate selection on the males. They determine who gets to mate, who gets to pass on their genes. But they're also the target of selection because if those preferences backfire, for instance, if they mate with the wrong species, then usually they're not going to have any offspring. So then there's going to be evolution of female preference. So it becomes the target. And that is very unusual, if not unique, that one aspect of a phenotype can both generate selection and be the target of selection.3:00: Natural selection favors traits for you to survive, but if you survive and you don't reproduce, then you're not passing your genes on to the next generation.Is sexual selection a subset of natural selection?01:53: Some people consider sexual selection as a subset of natural selection, a type of natural selection. And Darwin clearly proposed it as a parallel theory, but if you consider it within the realm of sexual selection, that's fine too. The important thing is that we understand that selection is acting on different functions.Why do people in biology don’t worry about nature vs. nurture?31:00: Most of us in biology don't worry about nature versus nurture anymore. We don't think that's conflict because we think that everything has some kind of gene-by-environment interaction. So nothing is purely nurture, and nothing is purely nature. But these genetic predispositions, even in animals that are learning, can be very important in having a genetic disposition to learn some things more easily than others.Show Links:Recommended Resources:University of Texas at Austin’s Influential People in BiodiversityGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of Texas AustinMichael J. Ryan on TwitterHis Work:Michael J. Ryan on Google ScholarThe Michael Ryan LabAn Introduction to Animal Behavior: An Integrative ApproachA Taste for the Beautiful: The Evolution of Attraction Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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Dec 16, 2022 • 57min

225. Create Your Own Luck feat. Christian Busch

Imagine yourself at a dinner party filled with people you don’t know. As you head to the appetizer tray to get another snack, there’s someone already standing there. You have two options: one, you could make boring small talk by asking how they know the host or what they do for a living. But according to Christian Busch, this is also a moment where you could create a serendipitous event. You could ask that stranger what their biggest passion in life is, what kinds of challenges they are facing, and the answers might lead the two of you to create a personal, professional, or creative relationship. Christian Busch is the author of the books The Serendipity Mindset and Connect the Dots: The art and science of creating good luck, which outlines the psychology behind creating your own luck by opening yourself up to new experiences. Christian is a professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and also teaches at the London School of Economics.Christian and Greg talk about how we can all create these serendipitous moments for ourselves and how the most successful business leaders and entrepreneurs embody this desire for serendipity. Christian explains how creating luck is like a muscle we need to exercise. They also discuss real world examples of organizations embracing change and instability as a way to learn and find success.Episode Quotes:Do you need to work hard to get more luck?10:48: The traditional approach to luck is either luck or hard work. Or this idea that there's a tension between, if you're a hard worker, then you created that yourself, and you were in control to do that. And then luck is the thing that happens. And you know what our research shows: no, a lot of people work extremely hard to have more luck, and that's in a way in itself then a skillset. A skill set that you're able to cultivate serendipity.02:32: Serendipity is really about smart luck. It's about the luck we create by how we react to the unexpected end, and how we can create the positive unexpected. Informed vs. uninformed experimentation15:23: There's informed experimentation, where you learn from mistakes and build on it. And then there's uninformed, which is just naive, and you kind of spend money. And that's what we all want to avoid in some way or the other.It’s not a bad thing to cultivate serendipity07:40: The old-school leadership style tries to legitimize this illusion of control that you pretend to always be in control. You think you get power by pretending that you know everything and do everything. But the shift is essentially saying, "No, it's not bad if you cultivate serendipity."Show Links:Recommended Resources:Viktor FranklPsychology Today- Creating meaningful connections in a disconnected worldGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at New York UniversityFaculty Profile at London School of EconomicsProfessional Profile on Psychology TodayChristian Busch on LInkedInChristian Busch on TwitterChristian Busch on InstagramChristian Busch on ​​TEDxConnecticutCollegeHis Work:The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck (US Version)Connect the Dots: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck (UK Version) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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Dec 14, 2022 • 45min

224. The Changing Definition of Mental Illness feat. Allan Horwitz

Most people fail to realize how much the process of what we regard as normal, healthy, or sick is influenced by social, cultural, political, or financial factors.Dr. Allan Horwitz joins Greg to talk about how the public’s perception of many common conditions, such as depression, anxiety or PTSD, has evolved over time and no longer involves the stigmatization they once had. Dr. Horwitz also shares how "psychiatry's bible," the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM, consciously or unconsciously shaped the general public’s view of many conditions.Dr. Allan Horwitz is an American sociologist who is Board of Governors Professor in the Department of Sociology and Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University. He was trained in psychiatric epidemiology at Yale and is the author of over one hundred books, articles, and chapters in the mental health area. Dr. Allan Horwitz has studied a variety of aspects of mental health and illness, including the social response to mental illness, family caretaking for dependent populations, the impact of social roles and statuses on mental health, and the social construction of mental disorders. Episode Quotes:What makes something a mental disorder? 33:51: To be a mental disorder, any condition has to have two components, not just one. And one would be dysfunction, which is analogous to a physical disease. That is: some psychic mechanism isn't working in the way that nature designed it to work. So that's a necessary but not sufficient condition. You also have to have the cultural judgment that dysfunction negatively harms the individual. Those definitions differ tremendously from culture to culture. A mental disorder requires both some dysfunction and a negative cultural judgment.The distinction between psychiatry and medicine3:29: There are some distinctions between medicine and psychiatry, and in particular, for most medical conditions, there are objective tests. You have X-rays and blood tests, and there certainly are judgments that are involved, but at least there are some biological baselines you can use. Psychiatry does not have any physical test for their condition, so psychiatry is completely reliant on the diagnostic criteria. Is there a way that we can objectively measure mental illness?21:04: The purported increases in conditions like anxiety and depression, and PTSD are not entirely, but for the most part, artifacts of the way that we measure them. With these symptom-based questions that ask you, "Well, have you been anxious in the last two weeks?" Or "Have you been depressed?" or so on, as the meaning of the questions changed over time.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Robert SpitzerEmil KraepelinGuest Profile:Faculty Profile on Rutgers UniversityProfessional Profile on PsychwireAllan Horwitz on LinkedInHis Work:DSM: A History of Psychiatry's BiblePersonality Disorders: A Short History of Narcissistic, Borderline, Antisocial, and Other Types Creating Mental IllnessAnxiety: A Short History (Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease)All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry's Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental DisordersThe Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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Dec 12, 2022 • 52min

223. There Are No Magic Bullets in Economic Development feat. Stefan Dercon

What does it take for a developing economy to grow and thrive? There are many obstacles that stand in the way, but they can be overcome with the knowledge of where to apply efforts for best results. To understand another country or advise their government on how to grow economies takes someone who has been to the places, spoken to the people, listened to their needs, and can communicate the challenges. Stefan Dercon is a professor of Economic Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Economics Department at Oxford University, a Fellow of Jesus College. And the Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. His newest book, Gambling on Development: Why Some Countries Win and Others Lose, deals with his research into what keeps some people and countries poor: the failures of markets, governments and politics, mainly in Africa, and how to best affect change in the different countries there.Stefan and Greg talk all about development economics, the differences between developing economies in Africa and elsewhere, and what successes and mistakes have happened in that region so far. They discuss what pitfalls to watch out for when dealing with planning and action coming from abroad. Stefan talks about the difficulties of foreign organizations understanding the needs of these countries and the ways to use local help to make aid more effective, and help developing economies to flourish.Episode Quotes:Why you can’t wait until perfection in anything16:10: You're not going to first spend all your time building good foundations because then you're totally wet, and you don't sleep ever any night. You probably build something that's not quite perfect, but actually make sure that it has a roof that doesn't fall off entirely. So now, after a bit, if you don't put in some things, you have a very weak floor. We put a few more things that you need to strengthen that floor as well. And I'm a strong believer that the more I worked on development, there is agency here and now to already do something. You can't wait until perfection in anything.A framework that we can use for political markets31:51: The best way to be taken seriously by the central state is by starting an armed uprising. And so, for political entrepreneurs, the only route was to create more chaos. So you want to create enough opportunities that new elites can come in as well. And that's political markets thinking about entry and exit, entry deterrence. Learnings from the policy space over the last 20-30 years11:38: It doesn't help to be very ideological. You need to be pragmatic about what you're doing in your own country. Do common sense, and there are certain things we know more in economics about the things we shouldn't be doing than actually the things we should do. So we know that in a particular moment in time, a massive tax cut is probably not a good idea. In other moments, well, maybe it's okay. We don't know. And so it's like that—sensible macro policies and so on. Show Links:Recommended Resources:Ashraf GhaniGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of OxfordStefan Dercon on LinkedInStefan Dercon on TwitterHis Work:Stefan Dercon on Google ScholarGambling on DevelopmentGambling on Development Amazon Listing  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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