The Reason For The Rhymes: Mastering the Seven Essential Skills of Innovation by Learning to Write Songs with Cliff Goldmacher
Studies show we pass fear and biases from generation to generation. We must be vigilant of how we sculpt the brains of those who come after us, because sculpting brains sculpts our realities.
Robert Sapolsky’s Behave is one of the most dazzling tours de horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do…for good and for ill.
One of my favourite episodes of all time.
This genre-shattering attempt to answer the question of human behaviour by looking at it from every angle.
Our guest starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person’s reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its genetic inheritance.
And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. What goes on in a person’s brain a second before the behavior happens?
Then he pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell triggers the nervous system to produce that behavior?
And then, what hormones act hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli which trigger the nervous system?
By now, our guest has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.
But he keeps going—next to what features of the environment affected that person’s brain, and then back to the childhood of the individual, and then to their genetic makeup.
Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than that one individual. How culture has shaped that individual’s group, what ecological factors helped shape that culture, and on and on, back to evolutionary factors thousands and even millions of years old.
The result is one of the most dazzling tours de horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do…for good and for ill.
Wise, humane, often hilarious, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanising, and downright heroic in its own right.
What a pleasure to welcome author of “Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst” Robert M. Sapolsky
We name a Ponzi scheme after Charles Ponzi, an infamous proponent of the scheme. A Ponzi scheme leads victims to believe that profits are coming from product sales or other means, and they remain unaware that other investors are the source of funds.
Mark Esposito shares a fresh, holistic way to think about tomorrow by preparing for it today: He calls it DRIVE.
The DRIVE framework examines five interrelated megatrends:
• Demographic and social changes
• Resource scarcity
• Inequalities
• Volatility, complexity, and scale
• Enterprising dynamics
We should celebrate the gainsayer, we should celebrate the people who make changes for the greater good.
Michele Wucker shares How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore with her book The Gray Rhino.
Change of direction training is not the same as agility training. Change of direction training prepares an athlete for predictable, steady situations. Agility helps the athlete’s overall performance. Agility includes cognitive agility.
In a world of rapid change. Reactive decision making must bolster proactive decision making. Reactive decision making is a key ingredient for flexible mindsets required for a world amid rapid change.
The Nocturnal Brain: Tales of Nightmares and Neuroscience with Guy Leschziner
You can survive longer without food than without sleep. The fact that sleep is fundamental to life is unarguable, but in modern society, at least until recently, we have taken for granted that sleep simply happens, and is a necessary evil to allow us to live our waking lives. Recently, however, there has been a shift in how we view sleep. Rather than being a hindrance to our working and social lives, a biological process that keeps us from being productive, the concept of the importance of sleep is percolating through. Its role in the maintenance of our physical and mental health, our sporting prowess, our cognitive abilities, even in our happiness, is slowly being appreciated. And rightly so. People are taking sleep seriously
The normal expectation of waking up feeling ready for the day ahead is rarely found among our guests patients. Their nights are tormented by a range of conditions, such as terrifying nocturnal hallucinations, sleep paralysis, acting out their dreams or debilitating insomnia. The array of activities in sleep reflects the spectrum of human behaviour in our waking lives. Sometimes these medical problems have a biological explanation, at other times a psychological one, and the focus of the clinical work that He and his colleagues do is to unravel the causes for their sleep disorders and attempt to find a treatment or cure.
More about Guy here: https://guyleschziner.com/