Smart People Podcast

Few people have had a better perspective on the rise of the "technology revolution" than our guest this week, Kevin Kelly. As a young hippie backpacking his way around the world, Kevin aspired to make art and to learn about the world. By his own admission, he disliked most technologies, especially the computer - which was a large, clunky, useless machine. However, when he snuck his way into one of...

Tiffani Lennon - Are women better? Although we like to think that we are an equal opportunity economy, the glass ceiling still very much exists.  As a matter of fact, in 2011, women ran only 12 of the Fortune 500 companies. So how does this impact our ability to compete in a global environment? If women aren't given an equal chance to succeed, aren't we missing out on half of the talented people i...

Just as polio loomed over the 1950s, and AIDS stalked the 1980s and ’90s, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) haunts us in the early years of the twenty-first century. Over a decade into the United States’ “global war on terror,” PTSD afflicts as many as 30 percent of the conflict’s veterans. But the disorder’s reach extends far beyond the armed forces. In total, some twenty-seven million Americ...

Erica Peitler - How to Lead. The simple truth is that how you lead is the precursor to what you can achieve, yet it is often underestimated or dismissed. The need to leverage the talents of those around you is a defining trait of the successful. But what is the best way to lead? And how can you manage the various personalities of people you work with on a daily basis? This week we talk to leadersh...

Dave Birss - How to be creative. Creativity is surrounded by such mystique. It seemed so magical to the ancient Greeks that they attributed the moment of inspiration to muses rather than people. And in our modern work environment, regardless of your job title you are continually being asked to come up with creative solutions to new, complex problems. That's why it's important to understand that th...

This week on Smart People Podcast we are helping you get lucky... wait a second. Richard Wiseman bring us a groundbreaking new scientific study of the phenomenon of luck and the ways we can bring good luck into our lives. What is luck? A psychic gift or a question of intelligence? And what is it that lucky people have that unlucky people lack? Psychologist Dr. Richard Wiseman put luck under a scie...

This week, the hosts of the show look back on 2014 by putting together clips from their favorite episodes of the past year.  From free diving and philanthropy, to physics and education, we covered a lot of ground last year on Smart People Podcast, and this episode is your highlight reel. Enjoy and Happy New Year! Chris's favorite episodes of 2014: Episode 151 - Roger Hamilton Episode 139 - Gerald...

Mary Lee Esty - Conquering Concussion. What do Henry VIII, Mary Todd Lincoln, Howard Hughes, and Elvis Presley have in common? They suffered traumatic brain injuries that had a significant impact on their lives, and perhaps the course of history. Concussions are a hot topic these days, specifically due to the recent findings of the impact of head injuries on professional football players.  However...

Shane Harris - Cyber warfare is the greatest threat to national security. @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex "Readers will squirm as they learn how every communications enterprise (Google, AT&T, Verizon, Facebook) cooperates with the national security establishment. Harris delivers a convincing account of the terrible cyber-disasters that loom, and the intrusive nature of the fight to...

What are smart drugs? Can you supplement your way to genius? These are primary burning questions I was anxious to ask my guest this week, Dr. Andrew Hill.  You see, Dr. Hill received his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from UCLA in 2012, studying how attention operates in the brain. He is also the director of the Alternatives Brain Institute, where they help clients look at their brain function as w...

How to have the strongest mind in the room with Tony Stubblebine and Erin Frey. This week we talk to the CEO and head researcher of Lift App, an app that helps people create and maintain new habits. With hundreds of thousands of users from across the world, Tony and Erin have a front row view to learning what makes habits stick and why. They have also learned which habits tend to bring out the bes...

Peter Buffett - What's it like to be the son of the richest man on Earth? This week we interview Peter Buffett, youngest son of the "Oracle of Omaha" and once dubbed "richest man on Earth", Warren Buffett.  In this interview we ask Peter what it was like to have a household name as a father, what advice did his dad pass along to him, how did the shadow of his last name affect his childhood, and wh...

Jonathan Levi - Here on Smart People Podcast we get the opportunity to talk with a lot of amazing authors.  Doing this on a consistent basis has turned us into what you might call "book worms".  However, with only so many hours in the day, there are still thousands of books that we'll probably never have the time to read.  If only there were an easier way? What if you could increase your reading s...

Daniel Cloud - This week we tackle the question, "What is life?" Seriously, our guest wrote an entire doctoral dissertation on that exact question. And we don't just stop there! We also discuss the evolution of human language, where it came from, and where it may be going. Have you ever thought about what words mean and where they came from? Why do you use a certain work in conversation instead of...

Christine Clapp - Back by popular demand, more than a year later, we are talking with our favorite communications expert - Christine Clapp.  In this episode we cover crucial topics such as the most common mistakes amateur speakers/presenters make, the most powerful ways to persuade others through communication, the 5 steps of Monroe's motivated sequence, and the best system for speaking off the cu...

Uri Gneezy - Can economics help us understand human motivation? By asking the right questions, and running the right experiments, can we finally understand why we do what we do? Apparently our guest this week believes so, and he's put together a pretty rock solid argument supporting his case. Uri Gneezy is the Epstein/Atkinson Endowed Chair in Behavioral Economics and Professor of Economics & Stra...

Robert Richman - Have you ever noticed that many of the most admired companies these days tend to have one common thread, and it's not just a great product? They have one thing that everyone seems to be talking about, despite what industry they are in, where they are located, or what they do. That one thing is culture. Culture has become a buzzword that gets thrown around in every coffee shop in S...

Stephen Law - From Postman to PhD. The beauty and curse of the human mind is that if we want to believe something bad enough, we can convince ourselves that it's true.  And even worse, we will convince others that it's true.  In order to support these fabricated beliefs we will form "intellectual black holes", which are belief systems that we support through a variety of illogical and unsupported...

Ed Hess - Learn or Die. That is the message this week! In order to stay competitive in today's fast paced environment, you must continue to learn and grow.  Those that refuse to do so will find that their jobs and skills have been replaced by a cheaper and more efficient technology. So how do you become a better and faster learner? How do you stay ahead of the curve? These are the questions we dis...

For SPP listeners only, the first 100 people to purchase a book via www.leadtosucceed.me will receive a signed copy of "Lead to Succeed". Order now and thank us later :) Chris Roebuck  - Everyone, everywhere is under pressure to work harder.  Many of us work to survive and get paid.  Bored and trapped, performance is low, family relationships suffer and organizational performance deteriorates.  To...

Alan de Queiroz  - Have you ever wondered how the same species of monkey (or tree, or snake for that matter) ends up located on different countries around the world? Keep in mind, they obviously can't just swim across the ocean, and they were there far before humans, so we didn't bring them.  Sure, continental drift explains it in some instances, but definitely not all of them.  So how did it happ...

Savannah Ellis - If men and women are meant to pair up for a lifetime of eternal happiness with the primary goal of continuing the growth of our species, why is it so damn hard? The communication differences between men and women is so apparent, that we often joke that the two sexes are from opposite planets. Much has been said about these differences, but little has been agreed upon.  So let's do...

Collis Ta'eed - Our guest this week was recently named one of the Top 10 Richest Bloggers in the World! However, that can be slightly misleading because his company is far from a blog (in fact, just insinuating that he is in the same genre as Perez Hilton makes my skin crawl).  Not only is he an extremely successful on-line business mogul, but his entire blog and business is built around educating...

Jared Dean - Have you ever wondered how your Netflix account knows exactly what movies to recommend? Or how Amazon can keep you continually buying random things you never thought you needed? Or how those Facebook ads are always eerily targeted directly at you? Well the answer is simple, Big Data.  Ok - maybe it's not simple, but it is something we can understand and even harness to make a differen...

Josh Shenk - Want to be great? Then don't go at it alone. Throughout history teams of exactly 2 people have made the biggest impact - think Lennon and McCartney, Wozniak and Jobs, Orville and Wilbur Wright...the list goes on and on. But why? This week we crush the myth of the "lone genius" and learn how the best creations of all time came from people who worked in pairs. Josh Shenk, author of Powe...