TODAY'S GUEST One of the most tragic aspects of the accelerating pace of change, and rapid evolution of new technologies — is that we as humanity have lost our elders. We begin to see older generations as detached from the current world of innovation, and have to discount advice and experiences gained in an age that feels so different from our own. Whereas prior generations could count on a world pretty similar to that of their ancestors, when we look to the future, pretty much the only...

TODAY'S GUEST Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is an Israeli-born, Jewish educator, writer, and performance artist. He's the creator of Storahtelling, Inc. and the founding spiritual leader of Lab/Shul in NYC, an artist-driven, everybody friendly, God-optional, pop-up experimental community for sacred Jewish gatherings. Amichai is a member of the Global Justice Fellowship of the American Jewish World Service, a founding member of the Jewish Emergent Network, serves on the Leadership Council of the...

TODAY'S GUEST   Jerry Colonna is the CEO and co-founder of Reboot.io, an executive coaching and leadership development firm whose coaches and facilitators are committed to the notion that better humans make better leaders.   For nearly 20 years, he has used the knowledge gained as an investor, an executive, and a board member for more than 100 organizations to help entrepreneurs and others to lead with humanity, resilience, and equanimity. He’s been called the CEO Whisperer and the...

TODAY’S GUEST   Kathy Davies wears many hats - she’s a Design Lecturer at Stanford University. She's the Managing Director of the Stanford Life Design lab, where she and her team have trained 150 universities globally to use the life design processes on their campuses to help students design, prototype, and test the right career paths for them.   She is also a Cofounder and CEO at DYL Consulting where she uses design thinking and life design principles to build a better world.    ...

TODAY'S GUEST   Vicki Tan is a Product Designer, a public speaker, a student of Behavioral Psychology, and a dog mom based in Brooklyn. She currently works at Spotify, and has previously worked at Headspace, Lyft, and Google. She cares deeply about the human aspects of design, and the insights that data cannot provide. In her spare time, she's working on an illustrated book on cognitive bias.   We spoke in mid-July 2022, and I was excited to talk to Vicki because she's been at the center...

TODAY'S GUEST   Dr. Geci Karuri-Sebina is a futurist, urban planning thinker, and the author of Innovation Africa: Emerging Hubs of Excellence. She's a faculty member at Singularity University South Africa with a focus on urban futures, including smart cities, networks, urban planning, governance and development, and innovation systems. She's an associate of The South African Cities Network and had worked with The National Treasury, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the...

TODAY'S GUEST   Dan Formosa consults with companies and organizations worldwide on design and innovation. He was an early proponent of “design for all” (a.k.a. Inclusive Design). He lectures internationally on design, research, and the future of design, and is the recipient of numerous design awards.   Dan holds degrees in product design, ergonomics, and biomechanics. He co-founded the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He is the host of the very...

TODAY'S GUEST   Greg Hoffman is Nike's former Chief Marketing Officer, a global brand leader, advisor, and speaker, and the author of Emotion by Design: Creative Leadership Lessons From a Life at Nike.   In his book, Greg shares lessons and stories on the power of creativity drawn from almost three decades of experience within the company. It's a celebration of creativity and a call-to-arms for brand-builders to rediscover the human element that makes consumer bonds.   EPISODE...

TODAY'S GUEST   Today, I'm speaking to Richard D. Bartlett, aka Rich Decibels.   During the Occupy movement in 2011, Rich caught a glimpse of a different way of being together — more compassionate, more intelligent, more creative, inclusive, and animating than he'd experienced as a student worker or citizen up to that point. Since then, he's been on a mission. In 2012 he co-founded Loomio, a digital tool for deliberation and decision-making in groups of 3-300 people.   In 2016 he...

TODAY'S GUEST   Irene Au is Design Partner at Khosla Ventures, where she works with early-, mid-, and late-stage startup CEOs. She is dedicated to raising the strategic value of design and user research within software companies through better methods, practices, processes, leadership, talent, and quality. Irene has unprecedented experience elevating the strategic importance of design within technology companies, having built and led the entire User Experience and Design teams at Google,...

TODAY'S GUEST   Jay McClelland is a Computational Cognitive Neuroscientist and one of the founding fathers of the field of neural networks and deep learning in the 1980s, which led directly to today's explosion in AI and machine learning algorithms that are transforming our lives. He is the Lucie Stern Professor at Stanford University, where he was formerly the chair of the psychology department, and is currently a Consulting Research Scientist at DeepMind, perhaps the leader in machine...

TODAY'S GUEST Today we're talking about transgender issues. Specifically, what should the rest of us know about transgender people? This is a topic that I admit I know very little about, but one that feels important at the very least, if one wants to avoid causing unnecessary pain. Language itself seems to be changing when it comes to gender, and while some resistance is natural and no generally agreed upon set of rules has been widely accepted, it's important to understand why these...

TODAY'S GUEST   Dr. Tobias Rees is CEO of Transformations of the Human School, and was formerly the William Dawson Chair at McGill University and the Reid Hoffman Professor of Humanities at the Parsons School of Design. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and holds degrees in philosophy, anthropology, and neurobiology.   In the early 2010s, he recognized that contemporary technology not only disrupts our historical established ways of thinking and doing, but...

TODAY'S GUEST   Karoli Hindriks is the CEO and founder of Jobbatical, a startup Forbes named one of Europe's 10 Most Exciting Technology SMEs for 2018. Jobbatical is working on removing the friction of international relocation by making immigration processes seamless through technology.     In 2020 the EU Council named her one of the 8 most inspiring women in Europe. In 2021, she was a speaker at the TED conference in Monterey, CA talking about reinventing the passport.   EPISODE...

TODAY’S GUEST   Dr. Hila Lifshitz-Assaf is an Associate Professor at NYU Stern. She is also a faculty associate at Harvard’s Lab for Innovation Science. Her work received the prestigious INSPIRE grant from the National Science Foundation, has been recognized to have a strong impact on industry, and has been taught at a variety of institutions around the world including MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, London Business School, Columbia, and Carnegie Mellon.   Hila spent 3 years at NASA,...

TODAY'S GUEST   Shari Davis is a TED speaker, a participatory budgeting facilitator, and as she defines it, a recovering local government employee. She joined the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) after nearly 15 years of service and leadership in local government. As director of youth engagement and employment for the City of Boston, she launched Youth Lead the Change, the first youth participatory budgeting process in the US, which won the US Conference of Mayor's City Livability...

TODAY’S GUEST   Dr. Shahar Avin is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at Cambridge University, focusing primarily on risks associated with artificial intelligence and deep learning algorithms.   EPISODE SUMMARY   We discuss: Shahar’s unique approach of discovering truths through simulation and gaming. His insights into how to fix the broken system of science-funding. The existential risks associated with the rise of machine intelligence....

TODAY'S GUEST   Today, we're talking about coliving.   I've long believed that paying attention to the fact that humans evolved to live in tribes, as opposed to isolated nuclear families, was the key to unlocking a tremendous amount of latent needs, wellbeing, and happiness. Today, a convergence of different trends is making coliving a real movement in the west.   Whereas in much of the world, living in community is a thing as old as time. The rise in real estate costs, financial...

TODAY'S GUEST   Jordan Ellenberg is a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking. His new book, Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else, came out earlier this year. Jordan lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and his blog is called Quomodocumque, which means "after whatever fashion" in Latin.   EPISODE SUMMARY   In this conversation we...

TODAY'S GUEST   Dr. Leidy Klotz is the Copenhaver Associate Professor at the University of Virginia, where he is appointed in the Schools of Engineering, Architecture, and Business. He co-founded and co-directs the university's Convergent Behavioral Science Initiative, which engages and supports applied, interdisciplinary research.     Leidy studies how we transform things from the way they are to the way we want them to be. His research on the science of design has appeared in both...

TODAY'S GUEST   David Peter Stroh is the bestselling author of Systems Thinking for Social Change: A Practical Guide for Solving Complex Problems, Avoiding Unintended Consequences, and Achieving Lasting Results.   For the past 40 years, David has helped leaders to apply systems thinking to organizational strategy, and achieve breakthrough, sustainable change. He is a founding partner of the influential consulting firm Bridgeway Partners, a faculty member of the Academy for Systems...

TODAY'S GUEST   Today, we talk about anger.   Everywhere you look, it feels like outrage and anger are on the rise. Populist politicians win elections based on popular anger, and when they lose, they claim their elections had been stolen to further sow outrage. Social media seems to feed on and amplify anger. So much so that we now have new names for the various things that people do when they are angry online — words like cyberbullying, trolling, and doxxing.   At the same time, our...

TODAY’S GUEST   Donatella Caggiano is a Global Creativity Hacker. With her methodology crossing design, storytelling, and strategy, she works at applying creativity to processes of change and transformation for brands, communities and people.   She made a crucial decision to leave the high powered Business World of Corporate America in mid-life, return to her home country of Italy, and to do so intentionally, and mindfully.   Her new podcast in the making, “The Design of Return”, will...

TODAY'S GUEST   Today, we talk about the practice of design, and how designers who learn to work with and understand technology can bring a humanistic, creative perspective to technology that can truly transform our understanding of what it can do. I've long believed that advanced technology can be beautiful, poetic, and philosophical in nature. In fact, that's what's called for in an age where tech shapes our lives, takes an increasingly greater part in creative work, and even makes...