Simplifying Complexity

Jason Fried is the Co-founder and CEO of 37signals, the software development firm behind Basecamp (a project management app), and HEY (an inbox and calendar app). In this episode, Jason dives into what 25 years of business has taught him. He shares his advice for hiring staff, getting meaningful insight from reference checks, and why you should always hire a candidate who is the better writer.   R...

In this episode, we continue our conversation with Professor Jennifer Dunne, the Vice President for Science at the Santa Fe Institute. In this episode, Jennifer discusses her work to understand ‘human-centred interaction networks’ - how humans interact with non-human species in a range of ways, including for food - by examining Indigenous cultures around the world and historical migration to Polyn...

In this episode, Professor Jennifer Dunne, the Vice President for Science at the Santa Fe Institute, explains how you build a food web, focusing on her ecological work in the Gulf of Alaska.   Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean Brady on Twitter Sean Brady on LinkedIn Brady Heywood website This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for...

We're joined again by Rajiv Sethi, Professor of Economics at Barnard College at Columbia University and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute to explore the intersection between stereotyping, crime, and the justice system to understand criminal behaviour beyond simplistic explanations.   Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean Brady on Twitter Sean Brady on LinkedIn Brady Heywood we...

What will the city of the future be like? To explore the future of our cities, we’re joined once more by Luis Bettencourt, Professor at the University of Chicago and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, as he explains how urban areas will need to evolve in terms of infrastructure and sustainability to match pace with growing populations around the world.   Connect: Simplifying Complexity on...

In today’s episode, we’re once again joined by Seth Blumsack, Professor of Energy Policy and Economics and International Affairs in the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Pennsylvania State University, to talk about the power grid. In the past, we’ve spoken to Seth about the history of the power grid and how the power grid fails. In today’s conversation, we discuss how it is governed....

Today we're once again joined by Dmitri Tymoczko, Professor of Music at Princeton University. Last time, Dmitri talked about the geometry and patterns we hear in music and its history, particularly from the 1900s onwards. In this episode, Dmitri delves into some underlying principles that make music sound ‘good’.   Resources and links: Dmitri Tymoczko’s website ‘ Long As You Know You’re Living You...

Gerald Ashley is the Co-founder and Managing Director of St Mawgan & Co, a London-based strategy and risk consulting agency. In today’s episode, Gerald explores the difference between risk and uncertainty, the challenges of managing them in the financial world, and how it can be powerful to split issues into either puzzles, problems, or messes.   Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean...

Nicholas Gruen is the CEO of Lateral Economics, Patron of the Australian Digital Alliance, and a Visiting Professor at Kings College London.  In this episode, Nicholas discusses the limitations of traditional economic models and emphasises the importance of nuanced problem-solving. He advocates for critical thinking and an interdisciplinary approach to decision-making within complex economic syste...

J. Doyne Farmer is Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. In this episode, Doyne discusses his journey from chaos theory to complexity economics. He shares his experience developing a...

Continuing from our last episode, we’re joined again by Brooke Harrington, Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College and Herbert Chang, Assistant Professor of Quantitative Social Science at Dartmouth College. In this episode, Brooke and Herbert explore their research findings on the offshore financial system and discuss why policy interventions to date targeting wealth management have largely fa...

In today’s episode, we’re joined by Brooke Harrington, Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College and Herbert Chang, Assistant Professor of Quantitative Social Science at Dartmouth College, to discuss the world of offshore finance. You’ll hear about how using offshore finance is akin to eating at a restaurant and skipping out on the bill, and how Brooke trained to be a wealth manager to better un...

What role do cities play in driving economic progress? In today’s episode, we’re joined by Luis Bettencourt, Professor at the University of Chicago and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, who explains how cities allow us to do something magical - they allow us to specialise.   Resources: Luis Bettencourt on Simplifying Complexity - Cities as social reactors Geoffrey West on Simplifying Com...

How does a group of molecules transition into something that is life? And what do even mean when we say 'life'? To explore the origin of life, we’re joined again by Sara Walker, Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Associate Professor in Earth and Space Exploration and Complex Adaptive Systems at Arizona State University, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe In...

In today’s episode, we continue our conversation with Rory Sutherland, UK Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, where he discusses how our decision making, especially as consumers, while often appearing irrational, is actually the result of us deploying heuristics that have served us well in situations of low trust or when we don't have all the information.   Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean Bra...

In today’s episode of Simplifying Complexity, we’re joined by Rory Sutherland. Rory is the UK Vice Chairman of the iconic advertising agency (and inspiration for the television series Madmen) Ogilvy, where he has worked for close to 40 years. In today’s conversation, you’ll hear how Rory became interested in complexity science, how bees build resilience, why short-term rationality can lead to long...

Today we're joined by Dmitri Tymoczko, Professor of Music at Princeton University. Dmitri will talk about the geometry and patterns we hear in music, as well as explore its history, particularly from the 1900s onwards.   Resources: Spotify playlist of songs mentioned in this episode   Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean Brady on Twitter Sean Brady on LinkedIn Brady Heywood website This...

Experts often build models to help predict how systems will behave. But what happens if, instead of asking the experts to build models, we ask laypeople to simply predict outcomes? This is what happens in 'prediction markets'. And it turns out that in some situations, the 'wisdom of the crowd' often outperforms experts' models. To break down what prediction markets are and how they work, we're joi...

We’ve spoken previously on the show about the complexity of the power grid. Today we’re focusing on how it fails, in the form of blackouts, and we're joined again by Seth Blumsack. He'll discuss why blackouts are so difficult to understand, and whether or not it's possible to model them. Seth is a Professor of Energy Policy and Economics and International Affairs in the Department of Energy and Mi...

In our last episode, Neil Johnson explained how there was an underlying power law with a slope of 1.8 that described the number of casualties that occur in wars. Today’s episode digs deeper into where this power law comes from, the route that Neil's research took to explain it, and how the arrival of the internet finally provided the missing datasets required to understand the underlying structure...

When we think of what caused a certain number of people to die in a specific war, we tend to think about a number of factors. for example, the terrain or political drivers. But what if the number of deaths that occur in a war is actually dictated by something far less obvious? Neil Johnson, Professor of Physics and Head of the Dynamic Online Networks Lab at George Washington University, has return...

Throughout the history of science, the concept of time has changed many times - from Newton and thermodynamic definitions to the weirdness of relativity and quantum mechanics. And as our understanding of life and the universe continues to grow, is it again time to reevaluate how we think about time? To explore this mind-bending idea, we’re joined again by Sara Walker, Deputy Director of the Beyond...

Hidden in plain sight over our heads, under our feet, and in the walls of our homes and workplaces, is the backbone of modern society: the power grid. To explain how something as seemingly straightforward as the power grid has become one of the greatest socio-technical systems on the planet, we’re joined by Seth Blumsack, Professor of Energy Policy and Economics and International Affairs in the De...

Economic policies are often gamed by individuals for personal benefit. In this episode, we explore how this gaming takes place and what economics can do about it. To do that, we're joined again by W. Brian Arthur, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and Researcher at the Palo Alto Research Center, formerly Xerox PARC.    Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean Brady on Twitter Se...

In this series so far, we've applied complexity science to a whole range of systems, particularly those more obvious complex systems like economies or cities. In this episode, we're going to do something a little bit different and apply complexity science to something not so obvious: creativity.  To do that, we're joined again by Tyler Marghetis, Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Information Sc...