Smart People Podcast

Bill Shannon - Vice President of Post and Carrier Solutions at Pitney Bowes.  Bill is on the front lines of a long forgotten staple of communication, the mail.  That's right - not email, or vmail, but actual, physical mail.  Bill has been an integral part of the juggernaut that is Pitney Bowes for over 30 years. Pitney Bowes is a fortune 500 company that is nearly a century old and has managed to...

Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel Rasmussen - The Moment of Clarity: Using the Human Sciences to Solve Your Toughest Business Problems, Co-Founders at ReD Associates where they employ social sciences to study human behavior. Christian Madsbjerg has been leading projects and client programs since ReD’s foundation. He writes, teaches, and speaks about the kinds of methods and reasoning needed for fact-...

Eswar Prasad - Author of The Dollar Trap: How the U.S. Dollar Tightened Its Grip on Global Finance. Eswar is a Senior Professor at Cornell University, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he holds the New Century Chair in International Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was previously chief of the Financial Studies Division in the Int...

Larry Downes - Author of Big Bang Disruption and Unleashing the Killer App (named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the 5 most important books ever published on business and technology). Larry is an internet industry analyst and speaker, having held faculty appointments at Univ. of Chicago, Northwestern, Berkeley, and Stanford and he is a columnist for Forbes and CNET. What we discuss in this e...

Bob Sutton - Author of Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less and The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't, Professor of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford Engineering School, IDEO Fellow, ranked one of the "50 Best B School Professors". What we discuss in this episode: • What makes a great professor? What makes a gr...

Lance Fortnow, PhD - Author of The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and the Search for the Impossible, professor and chair of the School of Computer Science of the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, served as the founding editor-in-chief of the ACM Transaction on Computation Theory, served as chair of ACM SIGACT and currently sits on the Computing Research Association board of direc...

Christine Montross - Author of Falling Into the Fire: A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Brown University, staff psychiatrist at Butler Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. When you really get down to it, the entirety of our life is a function of our perception.  The way we interact with the world is completely dependent on the way in which o...

Colonel (Retired) Peter Mansoor - Author of Surge: My Journey With General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War, professor of military history at Ohio State University, served as Executive Officer to General David Patraeus. On September 11, 2001, the United States was the target of the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the world.  It was a day that would lead to over a decade...

Another “Best Of" episode is in the books! This week, we bring you a “Best of technology” episode.  While it was tough selecting some of my favorite technology episodes, I finally picked the ones that made me truly geek out. Sit back, relax, and listen to some of the best clips regarding various aspects of technology. If you want a cheat sheet of what is in this week’s episode, here you go! Part 1...

Maddy Dychtwald - Author of Influence: How Women's Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World for the Better, co-founder of Age Wave, world renowned speaker, leading expert on the changing demographic trends—both generation- and gender-related—shaping the marketplace, the workplace and our lives. The aging of the workforce has been well publicized.  The baby-boom generation is reaching retire...

This week we bring you a special "best of psychology and human behavior" episode.  Travel back to the beginning of Smart People Podcast with us and enjoy some of the best clips regarding psychology, the human brain, the decision making process, passion and more.  This is a can't miss episode packed full of great information with none of the fluff. Here is a brief overview of what this episode enta...

Jesse Sostrin, PhD - Author of Beyond the Job Description: How Managers and Employees Can Navigate the True Demands of the Job, consultant, speaker, and expert on the hidden world of work. As you are well aware by now, we here at Smart People Podcast do not believe that you have to work for the man, and put all of your own happiness aside just to achieve financial freedom.  We are all given unique...

Joe Whitcomb - Author of Reboot Your Relationship: Restoring Love Through Real Connection in a Disconnected World - Relationship coach and therapist. Episode Transcript: Episode 119 - Joe Whitcomb Connection is a human necessity.  We need to feel loved and accepted by others, it is a driving force behind much of what we do.  Perhaps no connection is stronger than the one we build with a significan...

Dr. Stephen Cowan (Part 2) - Author of Fire Child, Water Child: How Understanding the Five Types of ADHD Can Help You Improve Your Child's Self Esteem and Attention, Board Certified pediatrician with over 25 years of experience specializing in ADD, ADHD, Autism and the like. Dr. Cowan uses a holistic approach incorporating both Western and Eastern medicine to treat these difficult issues. This is...

Dr. Stephen Cowan - Author of Fire Child, Water Child: How Understanding the Five Types of ADHD Can Help You Improve Your Child's Self Esteem and Attention, Board Certified pediatrician with over 25 years of experience specializing in ADD, ADHD, Autism and the like. Dr. Cowan uses a holistic approach incorporating both Western and Eastern medicine to treat these difficult issues. Did you know that...

Debra Benton - Author of 7 leadership books including CEO Material: How to Be a Leader in Any Organization, founded Benton Management Resources, speaker, coach. Episode Transcript: Episode 116 - Debra Benton One of the things that I can really appreciate about our guest this week is her fearlessness.  Yes, she has a number of accolades and is often regarded as one of the top executive coaches in t...

Scott Sklar - Clean & renewable energy expert, Founder and President of The Stella Group, co-author of Consumer Guide to Solar Energy and The Forbidden Fuel. Until this episode, I must admit, I never thought much about what happens when I plug something into the wall. Even if you don't turn the thing on, it still accounts for nearly 10% of our total energy usage - it's called vampire power!  I did...

Josh Tetrick - A social entrepreneur who is solving our industrial farming problem one egg at a time! Josh is the CEO of Hampton Creek Foods, an amazing company that is creating better for you egg-like products using plant based ingredients.  These products are more healthful, sustainable, and humane - it's a win, win, win! Did you know that humans consume over 1 TRILLION eggs per year? How is tha...

Alivia Tagliaferri - Author of 'Beyond the Wall: The Journey Home', producer and director of the documentary film, Beyond the Wall: Homeless Zone. As we discussed in episode 76, war is a part of life.  Always has been, always will be.  In fact, in that episode, we even discussed how sometimes, war is seemingly justified - a necessary evil.  But regardless of your personal stance, or the stance of...

David Linden, PhD - Neurobiologist, Author of The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning and Gambling Feel So Good, and professor at Johns Hopkins. Ask and you shall receive! The data is in from the Smart People Podcast survey (which is open for anyone to still take, we would appreciate it!) and you all voted psychology and th...

Rosalind Wiseman - Author of Masterminds and Wingmen and Queen Bees & Wannabes, which is the book that was used as the basis for the movie Mean Girls.  Rosalind Wiseman is an internationally recognized expert on children, teens, parenting, bullying, social justice, and ethical leadership. The teenage years bring about a wide array of changes and challenges that make them some of the most difficult...

Alexis Ohanian- Author of Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed, co-founder of Reddit, internet entrepreneur, and advisor to Hipmunk and Breadpig. While Chris and I were in our dorm room playing FIFA 2001 on the Playstation2, Alexis Ohanian and his roommate, Steve Huffman, sat in their dorm room a mere 60 miles away working on a website that is now a cultural phe...

Jonathan Poneman - Co-Founder of Sub Pop Records, first to sign Nirvana and Soundgarden. Good bands can be found in any local watering hole.  Great bands are much harder to find even with the digital music era.  But the best bands, the bands that change the way we listen to music, the bands that define a generation - well they are truly a magical find.  And perhaps no band better defines the grung...

Daniel Roberts – Author of Zoom: Surprising Ways to Supercharge Your Career and the leading journalist for Fortune Magazine’s extremely popular “40 under 40” list. Although my 18 year old self would never admit it, there is of course plenty we can learn from those that come before us.  It is for exactly this reason that... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Barry Nalebuff – Mission in a Bottle: The Honest Guide to Doing Business Differently — and Succeeding, Co-Founder of Honest Tea, Harvard Professor, Entrepreneur, expert on game theory, negotiation and business strategy. So picture this – While teaching at Harvard University, Professor Barry Nalebuff is running his class through a case study comparing Pepsi and... Learn more about your ad choices....