unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

Well, Rick Sander has been working on questions of social and economic inequality for nearly all of his career. From being an activist in Chicago back in the day, to his published works, Rick truly understands the longstanding roots of residential segregation in the United States, and how it continues to evolve.  But there is still some confusion about the origins of segregation and how it affects us, from our neighborhoods to our universities and everywhere in between. Rick is a professor of law at UCLA, an economist, and an author of  “Moving Toward Integration: The Past and Future of Fair Housing,” and “Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It.”Greg and Rick dive deep into segregation in this episode, discussing what really draws people to certain neighborhoods, the disappearance of ethnic enclaves, trends toward greater integration efforts, and getting rid of racial and legacy preferences.Episode Quotes:Why do academic institutions ignore mismatch?4:38: [Academic] mismatch is clearly a big problem. And the real frustration here is that our academic institutions have just ignored it. They're afraid to take on something that's politically sensitive.On economic segregation13:40: Economic segregation is a problem. But, it's wrong to think that we're gonna solve racial segregation by doing that stuff. And we tend to put a lot of political capital, as we’ll get to when we talk about affirmative action. We tend to put large amounts of political capital into strategies without thinking through in advance: Is this actually going to solve the problem we're trying to solve?Social mismatch37:47: There's a phenomenon we call: "social mismatch." So you might say, well, even given this academic mismatch, this is a price that we're willing to pay because we want to create these integrated campuses. And I think that's wrong for a couple of other reasons, but the key problem is that it endures social mismatch.Show Links:Recommended Resources:“Why Poor Families Move (And Where They Go)” - study by Ross Chetti and Stephanie DeLuca“Outliers” by Malcolm GladwellGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at UCLA LawRick Sander on LinkedInHis Work:Moving toward Integration: The Past and Future of Fair HousingMismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, psychologist Tom Patterson, were vacationing in Egypt when Tom came down with a stomach bug. What at first seemed like a case of food poisoning quickly turned critical, and by the time Tom had been transferred via emergency medevac to the world-class medical center at UC San Diego, where both he and Steffanie worked, blood work revealed why modern medicine was failing: Tom was fighting one of the most dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the world.Steffanie joins Greg this episode to discuss solving her husband's medical crisis, and what she learned from this horrific experience. They also discuss how Covid has ramped these trends up, how critical phages are for our bodies, and the open mindedness of PhDs vs MDs.Steffanie is Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences and Harold Simon Distinguished Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins and Simon Fraser Universities. She co-directs UCSD’s new center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH), Global Health Institute and the International Core of UCSD’s Center for AIDS Research. Stefanie has co-authored her memoir all about her husbands illness titled, “The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug.”Episode Quotes:The need for a phage library[30:40] What we need to do is build a phage library that maps onto a superbug library. And, of course, these are going to be constantly needing to be updated because these are organisms that are co-evolving to attack one another.What's the future looking for the advancement of phage[37:55] I can imagine a situation in the future, though, where, because we have, sequencers that are portable and cheaper than ever before, that you'd be able to sequence a phage and sequence a bacteria and be able to have a database to say, okay, you know, this phage will match that bacterium or to even genetically modify or synthesize a phage. So in a 3D printing model, some of my colleagues in Belgium have, you know, been working on that. So, I think that there's going to be advances that are going to help us make this work. But right now, we need phage libraries. We need more investment in clinical trials.Pushing beyond boundaries leads to discovery[39:49] When your back is up against the wall, whether it's you as an individual, us as a society, or a planet, we can sometimes have creative ideas to come up with solutions that we wouldn't otherwise do. And that's what I'm hoping that we'll do now because both climate change and antimicrobial resistance are colliding.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at UC San DiegoFaculty Profile at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public HealthProfessional Profile at Canadian Association for Global HealthSteffanie Strathdee on LinkedInSteffanie Strathdee on TwitterSteffanie Strathdee on InstagramSteffanie Strathdee on TEDxNashvilleHer Work:Steffanie Strathdee on Google ScholarThe Perfect Predator Website Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When trying to figure out how to understand humans, we tend to look to our nearest neighbors: bonobos, chimps, and monkeys. But our guest Mark Moffett believes that in many ways, we're unlike chimps and more aligned with social insects like wasps and ants. Mark Moffett is known for documenting new species and behaviors during his exploration of remote places in more than a hundred countries.  He is a high school dropout who began doing research in biology in college and went on to complete a PhD at Harvard, studying under the poet-laureate of conservation, Edward O. Wilson. He is now a research associate at the Smithsonian Institute and an author of books like “The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall Hardcover” and “Adventures Among Ants.”Mark & Greg discuss the complexity of ant societies, kin selection, the speciation of accents and the pros and cons of war for a society. Episode Quotes:What’s the commonality between humans and ants?14:16 - I came upon this idea when I realized that ants and humans, despite being virtually alien species to each other, have this commonality. Ants use, what is equivalent to their national flag, which is a scent on their body surface and all the ants and the colony have that scent. And as long as you have that scent, you're golden. If you don't, you are attacked, or if you're a colony, that's smaller, you run away. Humans use a lot more signaling, and that's a big part of social psychology, how this signaling works. Defining social networks12:49 - Social networks exclude a lot of people within societies and include those outside societies, and that's true in some other animals.You can save a lot of mental effort in societies by allowing strangers34:50 -  Chimpanzees and most species don't allow for strangers, and allowing for strangers was a big step in our evolution, even though it happened back in a point of time where our societies were quite small by modern standards, that was essential. When the opportunity came along for societies to grow, it had to be there already because you can add individuals to society at no cost, as long as they did the right things, behaved the right way, and so forth. We could be comfortable with societies that could grow to any size. And that's very unique to humans and a few ants. Show Links:Recommended Resources:E.O WilsonGuest Profile:Professional Profile at National Museum of Natural HistoryMark Moffett WebsiteMark Moffett on TwitterMark Moffett on Talks at GoogleMark Moffett's Interview on National GeographicHis Work:The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and FallAdventures among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of TrillionsFace to Face with Frogs (Face to Face with Animals) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lee Dugatkin is a professor of biology at the University of Louisville and the author of many books, including what Greg calls one of the seminal texts in the area of evolutionary biology, “Principles of Animal Behavior.”Lee’s other books include “Power in the Wild: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others," How to Tame a Fox and Build a Dog,” and “Cheating Monkeys and Citizen Bees.”Lee joins Greg in this episode to cover only a few of his many areas of research, touching on how he approaches his research, the relationship between theoretical and empirical work, how animal behavior stole game theory from economics, and the cost and benefits of pursuing and holding power.Episode Quotes:Why animal behaviorists think like game theorists22:22 - In the early '70s, we basically stole game theory from economics and we imported it and evolutionized it. Because people realized, what the fitness consequences of your action is depends on what others do, right? I mean, if you're aggressive, there's no inherent fitness effect of that. It depends whether or not the individual you're interacting with is aggressive or they're not, right? I mean it's a lot easier if they're not. You get the resource, and there's no threat to you. If they are, then, all of a sudden, the cost-benefit structure changes. And we need to take this into account. And so, animal behaviorists, ever since then, really do think like game theorists, in the sense of strategic behavior.The cost of being on top 36:29 - If you get into a lot of power struggles and you're on top, it's energetically costly. You're going to be fighting a lot more than others in your group.A good animal behaviorist understands theories (and knows how to test them)09:41 - It's all about work that's done in nature, in the wild. But there is as much, if not more, work done in much more controlled laboratory environments, at least for many species. I mean, you know, not for lions and chimps. Well, not for lions and that sort of thing. But there's a lot of work done in the field. There's a lot of work done in the laboratory. A lot of it is driven by theory. A lot of it is driven initially by observation, which is then tied to theory. But they're all very interconnected. You really can't be a good animal behaviorist these days without understanding theory and then how to test it.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Passions within Reason by Robert H. FrankPain experience in hermit crabs? by Robert Elwood Abigail MarshGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at the University of LouisvilleProfessional Profile at Psychology TodayProfessional Profile at The View of LifeLee Dugatkin WebsiteLee Dugatkin on TwitterLee Dugatkin on LinkedInHis Work:Lee Dugatkin on Google ScholarPower in the Wild: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control over OthersPrinciples of Animal Behavior, 4th EditionPushinka the Barking Fox: A True Story of Unexpected Friendship: A True Story of Unexpected FriendshipHow to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early AmericaThe Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When Alex Budak first started his course “Becoming a Changemaker” at UC Berkeley, he had to turn students away because it was too popular. This course was the first of its kind, providing experiential teaching that ignites the inner changemaker in students and future leaders from around the world. People are craving change. Alex Budak calls himself a social entrepreneur. He is also a faculty member at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and the author of the upcoming book, “Becoming a Changemaker.”In this episode, these UC Berkeley faculty chat about how to teach people to become changemakers, getting comfortable with failure, and the elusive work-life balance.Episode Quotes:Why you need to experience failure08:54 - We tend to make failure up to be a bigger thing in our head, but once we practice it, we realize that failure isnt fatal. We didn't get laughed at. And often, students come back with a new perspective. And so that's why I think doing is so important that you can't just read a book about failure. You learn so much more by actually doing it. So I want to create those experiences for students where they get to experience that.Desire for change14:44 - So I'm building off of this latent desire among so many people to have a sense of purpose, to have a sense of meaning, to see the world as it is and believe it can be better in some way—that I could play a role.Different ways to consider “change”26:08 - Now, as I think about change, it's a bit like technology. So I see technology as a value-neutral platform. Technology can be used for good and for bad. Change, as well, can be used for good and for bad.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking: Cain, Susan: 9780307352156Episode 163: Iddo Landau — unSILOed Podcast with Greg LaBlancSystems Thinking Resources - The Donella Meadows ProjectGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at UC Berkeley Haas School of BusinessProfessional Profile at The Science FactoryAlex Budak on LinkedInAlex Budak on TwitterAlex Budak on TIktokHis Work:Becoming a ChangemakerStartSomeGood Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Its no surprise to anyone in academia that the liberal arts and humanities are in crisis. Liberal arts colleges are closing down, departments are closing down, and students are fleeing from majoring in the social sciences. So what happened to this once essential element of higher education?Roosevelt Montás is Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University. There, he teaches “Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West,” a year-long course on primary texts in moral and political thought, as well as seminars in American Studies including “Freedom and Citizenship in the United States.” He also speaks and writes on the history, meaning, and future of liberal education and is author of “Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation.” He and Greg dive deep into the vanishing practice of reading great books, focusing on the history of liberal arts and the humanities in US universities, embracing liberal education in k-12 public schools, the destructive reliance on standardized testing, and normativity in academics. Episode Quotes:Fighting for the humanitiesWe are in a moment in human history where the questions that preoccupy the humanities and liberal education have a unique urgency. That facility with the kind of introspection and rootedness in human values, that the humanities foster are absolutely essential to navigate the landscape in front of us.I pray and I not only pray, but work towards that kind of education that equips an individual to engage the reality rooted in human values and self reflectively that that be not something that is rare and for the few, but that is as widely accessible to everyone as is absolutely possible.On losing the humanities in real timeLiberal arts colleges are closing down. Departments are closing down. Students are fleeing from majoring in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences. Those are real empirical factors that point to us being in a moment of particular crisis in the institutional instantiation of liberal education.On teaching humanities to high schoolersI always say, think about what it means for a 17 year old to disagree with Aristotle. That's extraordinary that introducing them to that kind of dimension of their own mind and of their own status as intellectuals and thinkers. It’s my favorite thing I do as a teacher.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile on Columbia University in the City of New YorkRoosevelt Montás on LinkedInRoosevelt Montás on TwitterHis Work:Roosevelt Montás on AeonRescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Character is a uniquely human feature, based on questions of agency, responsibility, free will and choice. But what qualifies as good or bad character, and how do we decide where we fall in this spectrum?Christian Miller is the A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University, and currently the Director of the Honesty Project. His main areas of research are meta-ethics, moral psychology, moral character, action theory, and philosophy of religion. He is the author of over 100 academic papers as well as a number of books including “The Character Gap: How Good Are We?,” and “Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue.” Christian and Greg talk about moral character, a brief history of 20th century ethics, finding happiness, whether or not there is a trade off in becoming more virtuous, and consistency in our values.Episode Quotes:Virtue comes in degreesSo, I like to say virtue comes in degrees. There can be someone who's weakly virtuous, moderately virtuous, fully virtuous. Vice comes in degrees too. So you can be really vicious, moderately vicious, weakly vicious, and then there's a middle space in between them. And that's what I call mixed character, where your character has some good sides to it and some bad sides to it. So you're not good enough to count as virtuous to any extent. You're not bad enough to count as vicious to any extent. You're in the middle. What are you losing when you become more virtuous?I think you have to accept that becoming virtuous will be at the expense of something that you might enjoy. That could be multiple things, but the easiest thing to cite would be moments of short-term pleasure. Unvirtuous form of motivationWhat would be an unvirtuous form of motivation? That would be self-interested motivation if you're doing it to benefit yourself. So, if you only stay at the level of self-interested motivation, even though your behavior is always admirable, you'll never get to virtue.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Honesty ProjectunSILOed: It’s Never Too Late To Examine Your Philosophy of Life feat. Massimo PiglucciGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Wake Forest UniversityContributor’s Profile at ForbesChristian Miller WebsiteChristian Miller on LinkedInChristian Miller on TwitterChristian Miller on FacebookChristian Miller on InstagramHis Work:Article on AeonChristian Miller on Google ScholarHonesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected VirtueMoral PsychologyThe Character Gap: How Good Are We? (Philosophy In Action)Character and Moral Psychology Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Its difficult to describe the work our guest Stephen Asma does, falling at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, religion, and study of the emotions. Greg calls it “Affective Neuro Philosophy.” So many different disciplines converge on what he is doing, but really it’s all about trying to understand humans.Stephen Asma is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, where he is also Senior Fellow of the Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture, and he is the author of ten books, including “The Evolution of Imagination,” “Against Fairness,” “Why We Need Religion,” and “On Monsters: an Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears.” Stephen is also a blues/jazz musician.Stephen and Greg discuss a range of issues including utilitarian values , American nepotism, the value & contracts of kith & kin, the costs of tribalism, and the decline of standardized religion.Episode Quotes:On living in a culture that’s hostile to nepotismIt's one thing for people to preach to us about discounting our loyalty bonds and that we should be acting for the good of strangers. And then to find that they're hypocritically provisioning their own family first. Again, I find this more human. It sort of humanizes them, but then shut up about why we all have to just help the strangers and not our own first. I think we live in a culture that's very hostile to nepotism doesn't know what to do with nepotism and then turns around, and each one of us enacts it, practices it, benefits from it.Neutral vs Natural bondsI do think we're living more and more the utilitarian dream where people are in less tight bonds and more neutral attenuated bonds. And as a result of that, I believe you're finding more depression, you're finding more social problems.We ignore nepotism, but it exists.Nepotism is alive and well and thriving. It's just that we don't want to look at it. We don't want to acknowledge it. We don't want to have a theory about it.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Gandhi AutobiographyunSILOed: The Psychology of the Arts feat. Ellen WinnerGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Columbia College ChicagoStephen Asma WebsiteStephen Asma on LinkedInStephen Asma on YoutubeStephen Asma on InstagramStephen Asma on FacebookStephen Asma on TEDxColumbiaCollegeChicagoHis Work:Articles on AeonStephen Asma on Google ScholarThe Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and CognitionWhy We Need ReligionThe Evolution of ImaginationAgainst Fairness Why I Am a Buddhist: No-Nonsense Buddhism with Red Meat and WhiskeyOn Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst FearsThe Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered BuddhaStuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Philip Delves Broughton was a news journalist before going to business school. And he ended up continuing his career as a writer since leaving. Now, there are not many journalists that have been to business school, giving Philip a unique perspective on this branch of academia. Philip is a journalist and author, now known for his business journalism. His books include “Ahead of the Curve” and “The Art of the Sale.” He chats with Greg about why he went to business school after being a journalist, where the ethics lie within that intersection, why people are squeamish when they hear the word, “sales,” and the importance of developing cognitive complexity.Episode Quotes:Learning to deal with rejectionsYou have to deal with being rejected, turned around, told to go, do that again. You have to deal with quarterly pressures. You have to learn not to take things personally. You have to think about what's going on in the other person's mind. You have to understand what's going on in their day, not just focus on yourself and all those things. I think you can learn in the field. You cannot learn them in a classroom, which perhaps is one of the reasons sales aren't taught to business school, because this is one area where you can learn models, you can learn processes, you can learn scripts, you can learn, you know, persuasion, but you cannot learn: 5:00 PM, 10 rejections, you're sitting in Des Moines 2000 miles from home, wishing you were back. Ah, that experience can only be experienced.What sales should representSales done properly with a proper mission, with some kind of integrity, is nothing more than a recognition of how to communicate to people. And how to understand their desires, their fears, to speak to them. And toggle them with your own. And that's not a vicious activity.Why we see some people in careers we don't think are business oriented (like priests), getting MBAsI think it goes to the idea that living well organized lives is not necessarily apart from leading a spiritual life. Leading a life that's successful in business is not necessarily divorced from leading a religious life.Show Links:Guest Profile:Professional Profile at Brunswick GroupSpeakers Profile at Chartwell SpeakersPhilip Delves Broughton WebsitePhilip Delves Broughton on LinkedInHis Work:Articles on Financial TimesCharlie Whistler's Omnium Gatherum: Campfire Stories and Adirondack AdventuresManagement Matters: From the Humdrum to the Big DecisionsThe Art of the Sale: Learning from the Masters About the Business of Life Life's a Pitch: What the World's Best Sales People Can Teach Us AllAhead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You can apply economics to just about anything. Economics provides you with a perspective and a toolbox that enables you to see things that you wouldn't otherwise see before. This is part of our guests specialty, with books titles like “An Economist Goes to the Game: How to Throw Away $580 Million and Other Surprising Insights from the Economics of Sports,” and “Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Economics I Learned from Online Dating.”Paul Oyer is the Mary and Rankine Van Anda Entrepreneurial Professor and Professor of Economics, as well as the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.Paul studies the economics of organizations and human resource practices. His current projects include studies of the "Gig Economy" the impact of peoples background on their entrepreneurial careers. In this episode, you’ll hear about talent acquisition & retention in Silicon Valley, what economics and other industries can learn from the sports world, dating markets, and the wealth of data in dating platforms.Episode Quotes:Dating market is just the same as employment So from my perspective, the dating market is no different than the employment market, except that no money changes hands. And that's what made it particularly interesting to me to write a book about, because people think, oh, economics, it's money, it's banking. It's whatever terms, they associate with economics. And as a micro economist, I don't see it that way at all. Right? Money is just a convenience by which we exchange. But you know, the world is about utility. It's not about money. So matching people in the dating market is really just the same as employment.How are athletes and managers different?The big difference between a baseball player or any athlete and managers in most organizations is the ability to measure their performance effectively.Do people fail to consider the complementarities and potential they can get from their employer?I think that people don't think enough before starting jobs, but I also think you don't know until you've started. And so, learning, figuring out on the job, just what does and doesn't work takes some time, and you sometimes have to try things before, you know, for sure. Show Links:Recommended Resources:unSILOed: Game Theory and the Art of Transforming Strategic Situations feat. David McAdamsunSILOed: Game Theory and Market Design feat. Al RothGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Stanford Graduate School of BusinessProfessional Profile at Freeman Spogli Institute for International StudiesProfessional Profile at National Bureau of Economic ResearchPaul Oyer on LinkedInPaul Oyer on TwitterHis Work:Paul Oyer on Google ScholarAn Economist Goes to the GameRoadside MBA: Back Road Lessons for Entrepreneurs, Executives and Small Business OwnersEverything I Ever Needed to Know about Economics I Learned from Online Dating Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.