Cognitive Engineering

Magic, spells and wizardry aren’t things you normally associate with local government(unless you're in Environmental Services). But in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, a man employed as the ordained city wizard was let go after 23 years of toil and trouble. In this week’s podcast, we address the vital topic of unemployed wizards. We start by discussing if there might be more value in employi...

Irritability, sleeplessness, muscle tension and fatigue are all potentially caused by too much noise. Was Schopenhauer right when he called noise the "most impertinent of interruptions"? This week, we discuss the issue of noise pollution... ...as quietly as we can. The European Environment Agency estimates there are 10,000 premature deaths from noise exposure each year. So why are our cities noisi...

How often do you use the interrobang, asterism or SarcMark? Do you ever find yourself scrolling to find the perfect emoji? Or perhaps you might feel frustrated by the overuse of punctuation?!? In this week’s podcast, we discuss new punctuation. In a world awash with corporate-speak and scare quotes, what should we add or remove from conventional punctuation and how could it be optimised? We consid...

With the UK's terrorism threat level being raised from substantial to SEVERE, following the 14 November incident in Liverpool, we are revisiting our podcast with Jerry Smith from CHC Global. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-terrorism-threat-level-raised-to-severe ---- Ever wondered how we measure the amount of terrorism? We talk to Jerry Smith from CHC Global, who explains how the Global Terr...

Do you prefer Rembrandt or Rothko? The Vatican or The Shard? A Georgian terrace or a 1960s housing estate? Ever wondered why we stopped building beautiful old buildings and how architectural modernism came to dominate our skylines? This week we discuss the theory of the Tartarian civilization. It claims that our most ornate buildings are the work of a lost civilization called the Tartarian Empire...

With Remembrance Day occurring next week, it seems only fitting to re-release a podcast we recorded in 2018. In this podcast, we discuss Remembrance Day, what it means, why we commemorate, and how its purpose has changed over the decades. Remembrance Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website alephinsights.com or to get in touch about...

You don’t see any job listings for archers, spinners or falconers on LinkedIn these days, yet these trades were once thriving professions performed by ordinary people. Many of these jobs only survive through historical reenactment at fairs and festivals, which invites the question: in hundreds of years from now, which jobs of today will be regarded as cultural heritage for future reenactors? This...

Feed the cat, take the bins out, listen to this podcast. From the timeless paper and pen to the more recent digital calendar or kanban board, to-do lists - whatever their form - are an attempt to remove chaos and inertia from our lives. But do they work? In this week’s podcast, we discuss the efficacy of to-do lists. We try to ascertain whether there is an optimal number of things that should go o...

We take for granted the speed, reliability and ubiquity of today's internet, but it wasn't ever thus. Do you remember AltaVista, the ZX Spectrum or the iconic tones of a dialup modem? What about the absurdly long wait times to download an image or to log in to an internet chat room? We indulge our nostalgia to gain insights into the evolution of one of humankind's most important inventions. In thi...

Why do some small things give us so much pleasure? Tidying up the desk, putting on new socks or changing the washing-up sponge, all seemingly insignificant and yet capable of providing us with an immense sense of joy and satisfaction. In this week’s podcast, we discuss pleasure. We ask why we routinely undervalue the things from which we derive pleasure, if we spend too much money on big things an...

Greatness is a tricky subject: it is difficult to pin down yet we know it when we see it. In this week’s podcast, we mark the passing of technology pioneer and Aleph Insights hero Sir Clive Sinclair by discussing what makes greatness. We discuss objectivity versus subjectivity: can we simply call someone great or is it a title for which unspoken, yet consistent criteria exist? We also look at whet...

Humans have been on the move since time immemorial. But with the fabled age of discovery well and truly over are there still geographical mysteries left to uncover? Is there an innate human capacity for exploration and what drives our desire to venture into uncharted territory? In this week’s podcast, we discuss discovery. Is human exploration a metaphysical quest in search of the unknown or is it...

Does being the first to market give you a competitive edge? Is first-mover advantage still the harbinger of success that economic theory suggests? When does being the first mean you might end up finishing last? In this week’s podcast we discuss first-mover advantage. Now that Amazon have suspended their drone delivery service, will it be easier for others to succeed? We present some of the most si...

Why is it that public spaces, like petrol stations, shopping malls and airports, are depressing and boring? These spaces are extremely useful and functional, but why do they seem to lack any real architectural flair or soul? This podcast discusses the trade-off between the utility of a building and aesthetics. We examine what factors should influence the design of a building (e.g cost of maintenan...

Some fashions come and go quickly, but others move in slower cycles (e.g. the bowler hat). What drives the rate at which given fashions shift, and most importantly, what does this mean for the future of facial hair? In this podcast, we delve into enduring fashions and try to understand how their cultural context, evolving meaning and basic function might contribute to their longevity. We examine t...

As the UK continues its withdrawal from Afghanistan and the covid-19 pandemic lingers on, this week we revisit a podcast from March about the effectiveness of governments. ------------ The Covid pandemic has seen a sharp rise in government spending, and large scale testing and vaccination programmes. Some of these have been successful, while others less so. We look at whether, on balance, governme...

Identifying a friend or family member from a baby photo seems like a trivial task. Conversely, showing someone a photo of a child and asking them to determine the corresponding adult can be immensely difficult. Why does matching the faces of friends and family to photos create the illusion that it is a simple and straightforward task? In this episode, we look at hindsight bias. Why do our brains p...

When bad luck befalls us, we often say, “wrong place, wrong time.” Rather than accepting that our daily choices continually expose us to new and ever-changing risks, we tend to view life events in terms of good and bad luck. But to what extent are we in control of our own fortunes and can we find solace in the aphorism, “you make your own luck”? In this week’s podcast, we discuss the virtues of lu...

What makes an idiot? Sometimes those who are meant to be the best and brightest among us say the most idiotic things. This suggests intelligence and idiocy are not mutually exclusive characteristics. Can we prevent our own stupidity from becoming manifest or are we all just idiots in waiting? In this podcast, we look at the existence of intelligence and idiocy. We unpick recent examples of utter i...

Traditionally newspapers are published daily or weekly, but what if they were only published every ten years or perhaps, even longer? How would you decide what stories to include and which ones should be left on the cutting room floor? Inspired by a chapter in Tim Harford’s new book, “How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers”, our latest podcast examines the n...

Opposites are one of the first things we teach children: big-small, short-long, happy-sad. But how universal is the idea of opposites? What's the opposite of a banana for example? In our latest podcast, we take an in-depth look at the concept of opposites. We attempt to define opposites, exploring whether they are based on categorical or quantifiable features, or some intuitive interpretation of c...

The word 'cheugy' has become a key weapon on the battlefield of intergenerational conflict. We might be its user, its target or utterly oblivious to its meaning. Does our relationship with the word tell us anything interesting and is the modern concept of generations a meaningful one? In this podcast, we look at intergenerational conflict and its causes. We also attempt to determine whether the us...

In the apocryphal story of the Hartlepool monkey, the residents of the town hang a shipwrecked monkey for being a French spy. Why do we search for scapegoats and how can we prevent ourselves from blaming the wrong person? In this podcast we examine the phenomenon of scapegoating and try to understand the human desire to find someone else to blame for our problems. We tackle the concept of blame, l...

Is the internet becoming unusable? Does it have a life beyond the constant barrage of annoying pop-ups, cookies, self-playing video commercials, captchas, paywalls and requests to turn off your ad blocker? In this week's podcast, we discuss all the things we think are wrong with the World Wide Web and consider what should be done to rescue the internet, looking at ideas to make it a more informati...

Is administering a Covid-19 test on yourself difficult, or are the instructions just confusing? How should we explain complexity and is there a limit to how much we can simplify things? In our latest podcast, we discuss different ways of simplifying information, how to judge the right level of detail for a given context, and whether reductionism is always a useful concept. We look at how simplific...