The Human Risk Podcast

What does it actually take to prevent sexual harassment at work? Policies, training, reporting mechanisms and statements of zero tolerance are one thing. Creating a workplace where sexual harassment is genuinely less likely to happen is something else entirely. Episode Summary In this episode, I talk to Dr Nina Burrowes , a psychologist who has spent more than 20 years working on the psychology of...

What can financial markets teach us about human behaviour? Why might the size of a CEO’s signature tell us something useful about the company they run? And why, even when smart investors know something is probably a bubble, might they keep investing anyway? Episode Summary My guest on this episode is Professor Alex Edmans , who returns to the show to discuss his new book, The Madness of Markets: W...

What if understanding regulation could help us spot when politicians are promising the impossible? Regulation sounds simple in theory. Something poses a risk, so we create rules and a regulator to control it. In practice, things get complicated very quickly. It's something we all benefit from, but equally can experience as redtape that prevents us from doing what we think we ought to be able to. O...

What if AI could help us understand people better, rather than simply replacing what humans do? Episode summary How can we use AI to become better at persuasion, communication and understanding human behaviour? My guest on this episode is Roger Dooley, author of The Persuasion Engine, a new book exploring what happens when behavioural science meets rapidly evolving technology. Roger argues that to...

What’s the last thing you learned simply because you wanted to know? Episode summary Why do we feel the need to justify what we learn? My guest on this episode is Annie Wagstaff , a musician and composer whose career has taken her around the world touring with Take That and into writing music for advertising. But alongside her work in music, Annie has developed another passion: learning about what...

What happens when someone who spends his life thinking about risk, decision-making and human behaviour is confronted with an uncertainty he simply can’t control? Episode summary My guest is Paul Craven, a behavioural scientist, former investment professional, magician and keynote speaker, and one of my favourite people to talk to. When we sat down to record this episode, I noticed that Paul’s voic...

Why do we rate everything and why do we do so on a scale of one to five stars? What happens when systems designed to help us make better choices start influencing our behaviour in ways we don’t necessarily notice? Episode Summary My guest is Benji Wilson , a journalist, TV critic and author of Rate This Book . Benji’s day job involves rating other people’s work, but when his children pointed out t...

What parts of yourself have you learned to hide in order to be taken seriously? My guest on this episode is Mark Heywood , a friend of the show, returning guest and someone I've collaborated with on a number of projects. Episode Summary & Guest Profile Mark has spent more than twenty years working in crisis management and operational resilience, while simultaneously building a successful caree...

When something goes badly wrong, we investigate it. Reports are written. Recommendations are made. Lessons are identified. But do we actually learn them? Episode Summary Returning to the show, Gill Kernic k joins me to discuss the substantially revised second edition of her book about the Grenfell Tower disaster , following the publication of the Grenfell Inquiry's final report. Gill has a unique...

What does jazz singing have to do with LinkedIn? More than you might think. This week's guest, Anna Rössler , has built a career helping senior leaders find their voice online while simultaneously developing her own as a singer-songwriter. Rather than separating her professional and creative identities, Anna has found a way to bring them together, and in doing so offers some valuable lessons about...

What happens when two people who spend their careers thinking about human behaviour meet in a London pub and start complaining about conferences?  Apparently, they decide to organise one. Episode Summary In this episode I'm joined by David Grosse , founder of behavioural risk advisory firm Behavor , to talk about The Unconvention, an event we're creating together that aims to rethink how conversat...

Why is it so hard to stop people playing vides, music or phone calls out loud on public transport — and what does that tell us about changing human behaviour? Show Summary This episode of The Human Risk Podcast is a little different. It is a cross-cast from The Freewheeling Podcast , hosted by Thomas Ablema n, in which I join Thomas to tackle a problem raised by the show's most important listener:...

What if the best way to improve cybersecurity — or any other form of human risk — wasn't another policy, training course, or piece of technology, but a board game?  That's the kind of question my guest, Jill Wick, loves asking. Episode Summary  Jill is a cybersecurity awareness consultant, business psychologist, podcaster, and author. Her work sits at the intersection of psychology, marketing, beh...

What can businesses learn from cults? It might sound like an uncomfortable comparison: one involves strategy meetings, values statements and quarterly targets; the other manipulation, charismatic leaders and extreme behaviour. But perhaps the distinction isn't as clear as we'd like to think. Both create identities and shared beliefs. Both shape how people think and behave. And both can evolve grad...

What makes great service? It’s one of those things we instantly recognise when we experience it, but struggle to define. And while organisations spend huge amounts of time trying to design seamless customer experiences, the reality is that service doesn’t happen in strategy documents or training manuals. It happens in real time, between real people, in messy and unpredictable situations where even...

What if prediction isn’t about knowing the future, but controlling it?  On this episode, I'm joined by a leading thinker on digital ethics, privacy and technology to explore the idea of prophecy. Episode Summary My guest is Dr Carissa Véliz and in our discussion, we talk about humanity’s long-standing obsession with predicting what comes next, and why today’s algorithms may be the most powerful (a...

We like to think we choose what matters. But what if the goals we’re chasing… aren’t actually ours? Episode Summary My guest on this episode is Dr. C. Thi Nguyen , philosopher and author of The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game, a book about how metrics, scoring systems, and “games” shape our behaviour—often without us realising it. Thi explains how his work on games led him to a dee...

We tend to assume that if we’re working hard, we’re working well. But what if that isn’t true? Episode Summary My guest on this episode is  Phil Dobson , author of The Brain Book and founder of Brain Workshops , about what he calls 'cognitive leadership': using neuroscience and psychology to help people sustain performance, think more clearly, and navigate uncertainty. Phil explains how a broken a...

What lessons does a religious protest that led to an uprising  in 1549 have to do with human risk? At first glance, not very much. It’s easy to see it as a distant historical event — something about religion, kings, and a very different world. But as my guest, Professor Mark Stoyle explains, the Western Rising of 1549 is far more than that. It’s a powerful example of what happens when authority im...

What exactly is a sign?  At first glance, that might sound like a strange question. Signs are everywhere: telling us where to go, what to do, what not to do, and sometimes what might happen if we ignore instructions. But as my guest, Jeffrey Ludlow Saentz explains, signs are much more than bits of information on walls or beside roads. Episode Summary Jeffrey is a signage designer who works on comp...

What Can a Cocktail Teach Us About Curiosity and Creativity? At first glance, documenting Negronis around the world might sound like a frivolous hobby. But could a simple cocktail become a vehicle for curiosity, experimentation and creative thinking?   On this episode, I speaks with geopolitical strategist Marc A Ross about an unusual passion project: ordering and documenting Negronis wherever he...

What’s the difference between a mistake… and a bad decision? My guest knows this only too well. Tom Hardin has been on the show several times before. As Tipper X, he wore a wire for the FBI and helped build the largest insider trading investigation in US history.  Since then, he has spent nearly a decade speaking to organisations around the world about slippery slopes, rationalisation, and how goo...

What happens when someone runs with a business idea they've heard as a thought experiment on a podcast? Can a business have an expletive in its name? And is it possible to run a business that sells a single very specific product? Episode Summary On this episode, I’m joined by Charlie Hurst, Tom Noble and Will Sudlow — the founders of Flat White or F* ck Off *, a coffee brand inspired by a thought...

What if we stopped telling women how to stay safe, and started asking why violence against them keeps happening in the first place? On this episode, I’m joined for a second time, by Amy Watson, the founder of social enterprise HASSL. She’s trying to tackle violence against women and girls at its root. Not with another awareness campaign or  safety app. But by building a global movement designed to...

Who determines what 'good' Compliance actually looks like?  The obvious answer is regulators (and in some jurisdictions) prosecutors. But what if it were the regulated Firms themselves?  That's the idea behind purpose-driven compliance, which I'm exploring on this episode. Episode Summary To explore this, I'm joined by Veronica Root Martinez, Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law , to...