2 Pages with MBS

When my wife, Marcella, retired from Box of Crayons about three years ago, she spent a bit of time feeling her way into what retirement means. But, a year or so ago, she totally found her groove; she’s become part of a brilliant group of smart, funny, make-your-path-in-this-world women, and she’s having a great time. I have to admit, I do look on with a little envy. Sure, I have people I see, talk...

Sometimes it’s just hard to wrap your head around science. How old the planet is, is actually impossible to really grasp; the Tyrannosaurus rex is closer in time to the iPhone, than it is to the Stegosaurus. Five hundred million years is just … unimaginably vast. So, too with exponential growth. Humans are wired to understand linear, but critical to our survival and understanding our current world...

My surname is Bungay Stanier. It used to be just Stanier, but when I got married back in 1995, Marcella and I combined our surnames. ‘Stanier Bungay’ was never going to work, so, Bungay Stanier it was - and so it remains. When people get my surname right, there’s not much expectation that it’s a clue to who I am, where I’m from, or what I do.  But that’s not the case with my guest today; her surna...

What’s the clearest memory you have of something from a while ago? I’ve got a few flash moments that come to mind right away, but the truth is, I remember more of a feeling than I do the details, and I’m not even totally sure of the details I do remember. What if you remembered everything perfectly? Would that be amazing, or would it be onerous? My memory only gets dodgier day by day, as time tick...

I’ve just come back from a run. Today is a beautiful autumn day, and yet I missed most of it. It wasn’t just that I was experiencing the pain of restarting exercise, it was that I was in my head the whole time; thinking about work, thinking about the new book and how to launch it, thinking about all sorts of stuff. Trying to figure it all out, and in doing so, missing the glory of it all. Here’s t...

If you’re listening to this podcast, my bet is that you, like me, are a reader. You love a good book, and if you’re lucky, you’ve loved them all your life because someone introduced the power of stories to you. My parents read to me when I was young, but the real gateway drug for me was my dad making up stories. As a reader, I followed the conventional path. I started with kids’ books and moved on...

We don’t know about matter. 96% of the universe’s mass is unaccounted for. We don’t understand consciousness either. No one is really sure why or how consciousness works. We don’t even understand time - we don’t know when or how the universe began, and we’re not even clear how it will end. There are theories for all these phenomena, but nobody is quite sure. Spirituality is not an exact alternativ...

During the first phase of the pandemic I experimented with a type of online gathering, which I called Cocktails and Questions. After getting myself a cocktail, five people in my circle would gather, and we all had six minutes to reflect on a question I had sent them the day before; they would talk without interruption. The question I had sent was designed to provoke reflection, vulnerability, and...

Shell ran their first scenario planning session in 1971, and they’ve been sharing some of their insights since then. In their new LENS report from 2013, they talk about three central paradoxes to our world: the prosperity paradox, the leadership paradox, and the connectivity paradox. Here’s the connectivity paradox. On one hand, we’ve never been more connected, and that has, in an extraordinary wa...

Now I’m in my fifties, I’m no longer calling myself ‘young’. That time has come and gone. Being this age, I’m starting to feel the slight insults of my body breaking down. All in all, I’m fine. I adapt, and try to make things easier to accommodate my new limitations. However, all of this is happening to me within the bounds of what you’d call ‘normal.’ I’m cognitively and physically in the middle...

Have you ever done a trust fall? The strong hands of your team catch you and support you, and in that moment, years of resentment, dissatisfaction with the underlying power structures, and petty politics are washed away; we are all together, united! At the heart of this version of trust-building, there is certainty. I know what’s going to happen. I can trust the future.  I’ve just finished reading...

Christmastime in Australia is in mid-summer. The Northern hemisphere traditions of ugly sweaters, roasted meats, and roaring fires really just don’t vibe there. We’ve even got a Christmas carol about Santa’s sleigh being pulled along by kangaroos, rather than reindeer. Many years ago, on a hot Christmas day, my family packed a picnic and headed for Tidbinbilla, the nature reserve about an hour’s d...

I have a new book coming out in January, it’s called How to Begin. The book is about setting a worthy goal for yourself; something worthy of your life, something thrilling, important and daunting. I know you probably want that in theory, but in practice - what does it take to find a worthy goal, and what does it take to commit to it? Naphtali Bryant, Director of Learning & Organization Development...

I’ve never been that great at following a map. When I’d go hiking or tried orienteering, I’d struggle to put it all together. Now, we’ve all got phones, so the physical journeys are easier, but navigating the world? That’s as tricky as ever. There’s rarely a map, rarely a compass. Often, what we need is a guide. So, who’s your hero, your guide for how you navigate the world? Whose playbook do you...

How do you head for the heights and not lose yourself? Is it possible to be ambitious and strive for a worthy goal, and still stay grounded?  Well, wait. What exactly is groundedness? According to Brad Stulberg, there’s more to it than meets the eye. Brad has just published the third of a trilogy of books, including Peak Performance, The Passion Paradox, and most recently, The Practice of Grounded...

I’m seven, playing cricket in my backyard in Canberra. I’m batting, my seventy-year-old grandmother is bowling, and I hit an amazing shot. Granny, the most competitive person I have ever met, hurls herself sideways and plucks an amazing catch inches from the ground; I utterly lose my mind. I throw the bat, I cry, I stomp off the field, and I lock myself in my room. Turns out, I was as competitive...

Jenny Valentish reading from William Giraldi’s The Hero’s Body and discussing the ups and downs of reinventing yourself.  How far have you pushed yourself? What’s the most fragile edge of yourself that you’ve stumbled out towards? If I had to choose one instance, it would be the time I ran a marathon with no training. I came in last, and I came in at the very limit of what I could’ve done. I was a...

Tom Vanderbuilt reading from David Epstein’s Range and discussing the art of beginning and learning new skills. There’s a New Yorker story called The Dolt by Donald Bartheleme. The final sentence reads thus: ‘Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.’  Tom Vanderbilt, journalist, and author, calls himself a perpetual beginner. He has wr...

Here’s a saying I heard once - it used to be hilarious, now I guess it’s just painfully true: “Inside every old person is a young person wondering ‘What the hell just happened here?!’” When you hit midlife, is it just a slower, creakier version of being a thirty-year-old, or do things actually shift? What is contentment or ambition? What actually matters?  Kieran Setiya is a professor of philosoph...

When I think of philosophy, I think ... lots of words, mostly humourless. So, it’s extraordinary when someone can make me think more wisely and gratefully about life using very few words. Jessica Hagy is one of those people. She is an author and cartoonist, best known for her blog Indexed. Her most recent book is How to be Fearless in 7 Simple Steps. Get‌ ‌book‌ ‌links‌ ‌and‌ ‌resources‌ ‌at‌ http...

Part of the genius of humankind, the very bedrock of civilization is our ability to have ideas and to share them. “Hey, have you noticed ...? Hey, what if...?” That’s why it’s SO irritating that it’s SO hard to actually transmit your best thoughts. Tamsen Webster can help. She bridges worlds as an English-to-English translator. She’s worked with hundreds of TEDx speakers to help take ideas from ne...

Most of us understand why diversity and inclusion matters, in theory. But, how do you go from theory to practice? How do you understand and then champion different perspectives, experiences, and lives? How do you truly learn that? Pamay Bassey is someone who may have answers to these questions. She’s the Chief Learning and Diversity Officer for the Kraft Heinz Company. Pamay also is Chief Experien...

Science and economics, two models underpinning society, base their theories on humans being rational people doing rational things. Yeah. You, me … we’re not rational, not even most of the time. But we can dream. Julia Galef is the author of The Scout Mindset, a book that seeks to explain how to improve human reasoning and judgement. In this episode of 2 Pages with MBS we dig into just what is rati...

I started my career in market research, running focus groups. I was seeking consumer insights so we could find and build new products and services. Then, I moved into the world of leadership training and personal growth. Now I was after insight into myself: who am I? But, perhaps insight is not enough. Perhaps, we also need outsight. Today’s episode is perfect for anyone in the world of learning,...

The pandemic has accelerated this conversation around the future of work in a way that would have felt inconceivable two years ago. But the future of work isn’t just ‘Zooming’ everything. The bigger questions are: How does power work? How do we stay human-centred? How do we find our way through complexity? In this episode, author and podcast host, Lisa Gill, explores the need for quantum shifts in...