Vantage Point with Eli Amdur

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. A thousand years from now, linguists will look back and ask what happened to all but two adjectives. Eli takes on "amazing" and "awesome," the lazy words crowding out the richest language on earth, and explains why communication remains the one skill that separates those who move forward from those who don't. In this episo...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. Every invention humans have ever made, from flight to dynamite to penicillin, has been put to both constructive and destructive use. Now AI is moving faster and reaching farther than anything before it. Eli's warning: the greatest challenge of this century isn't technology. It's ethics. In this episode The ethics of progress versus...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. On May 26, 1953, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans came within 328 feet of the summit of Everest - about a football field - and turned back, citing exhaustion. Three days later Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made it. Same mountain, same weather, same supplies. Eli argues the difference was never exhaustion but determination, and what Hillary mea...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. In 1976 Queen Elizabeth II sent an email over ARPANET. The United States Postal Service - an organization whose entire business was carrying messages - watched the future arrive and did nothing. Then it handed out free AOL discs on its own counters, letting customers walk in to mail a letter and walk out with the tools to stop needing one. Eli tra...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. Anyone can learn Excel. The superstar you hire today could be your CEO by 2050 — and hire the CEO who leads your company into the 22nd century. So why are we still hiring for skills, when it is traits that will decide who is in the driver's seat? In this episode A hard look at hiring for traits instead of skills, plus 3 of Eli's aphorism...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. Would you hire this candidate? Eli runs the hiring thought experiment an executive search committee would use for the biggest job on the planet, to show how we keep making the same bad call, no matter which side of the aisle it comes from. In this episode • Why do we make decisions that work against our own best interests • What would happen if yo...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. An open letter from a liberal arts graduate makes her own case, point by point, for why you should hire her — and then Eli tells you what actually happened when a real hiring manager read it. In this episode A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 4 of Eli's aphorisms, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. You have hundreds of thoughts a day and almost no ideas. The guy who invented pizza had an idea; the guy who orders it for lunch has a nice thought. What separates the two — and why does every organization starve for the first? In this episode A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 5 of Eli's aphorisms, Dr. Jonas Salk...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. In 1752, Britain's calendar reform erased eleven days overnight - no one actually lost a minute of life, but the country rioted anyway. Eli unpacks why the mere idea of missing time was enough to make people lose their minds, and why Ben Franklin was the only one who didn't blink. In this episode Why did September 3rd through 13th, 1752...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. Suppose every idea reached you anonymously, judged only on its merit. How many of the ones you'd actually accept come from the sources you'd never have expected? In this episode A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 13 of Eli's aphorisms, Dr. Jonas Salk, born 1914 in New York to European Jewish immigrant par...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. Two nearly identical New Jersey towns put nearly identical open-space questions on the same ballot. One passed, one failed. The only difference anyone can find is the wording. In this episode A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 3 of Eli's aphorisms, Abraham Maslow from great minds, a "What If?" to ponder....

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. Three months in, a listener asked where the how-to instructions were. Answering that question would have sabotaged the whole point. In this episode A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 8 of Eli's aphorisms, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. from great minds, a "What If?" to ponder. Eli’s Aphorisms “When you're...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. Critical thinking from an unusual angle — sports. Sandy Koufax, and why you should quit trying to be better than others and only try to be continuously better than yourself. In this episode The Sandy Koufax story and why becoming great is a decision, 10 of Eli's aphorisms, G.K. Chesterton, Sandy Koufax, and Thomas J. Watson from great minds,...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. Ten practices to develop the gift — from Faulkner's 1,288-word sentence to your delete key. In this episode A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 12 of Eli's aphorisms, Albert Einstein and Akio Morita from great minds. Eli’s Aphorisms “Don't mistake motion for action.” “Management manages within paradigms. L...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. The weighty, wonderful responsibility of putting words on a page — and the only way in. In this episode A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 11 of Eli's aphorisms, John Wooden, Pablo Casals, and Mark Twain (twice) from great minds, and a Christopher Columbus "What If?" to ponder. Eli’s Aphorisms “When we le...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. Why making something more efficient makes us use more of it — and what that means for AI. In this episode A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 10 of Eli's aphorisms, Harold Geneen, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas J. Watson, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from great minds. Eli’s Aphorisms “When something becomes more efficien...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. Why the loss of real dialogue may be more dangerous than any other global condition. In this episode A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 14 of Eli's aphorisms, William Ernest Henley and Merriam-Webster from great minds. Eli’s Aphorisms “If you can honestly state your problem, then you can solve it.” “Look for where...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. What a 1950s public education and a Greek ideal still teach us about holistic learning. In this episode A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 4 of Eli's aphorisms, a "What If?" to ponder. Eli’s Aphorisms “Everyone dreams at night. It's when you dream during the day that things happen.” “To many people,...

Vantage Point - the podcast for critical thinkers. What critical thinking really is, where it went, and the 10 forms every thinker should know. In this episode A definition and a hard look at the episode's theme, plus 3 of Eli's aphorisms, Einstein and Bohr from great minds, a "What If?" to ponder. Eli’s Aphorisms “Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lip...