The Decision-Making Studio Podcast

I am delighted and honoured to bring you an amazing conversation that comes at an excellent time. While the world is currently gripped by the Coronavirus, there was a time when the world's foremost news story was something completely different – and more positive. In 2018, the world's foremost international news story was something that made us all feel good – the rescue of the Wild Boars football...

Today, we go back to some lessons from a game that mimics life – the game of poker. We welcome Alec Torelli to the show. Alec is a professional high stakes poker player, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker. He is the founder of Conscious Poker , a popular poker training platform. He has spend 14 years as a poker pro, including 3 he spent in Macau. It goes without saying that Alec has made many high-...

Today we take a close look at some advice, some perceived wisdom that is everywhere: "going with your gut" - that is, making decisions based on what feels right. It's advice that is incredibly popular. It's incredibly common. And it's incredibly wrong . A gut feel is a terrible way to make a decision. To explain, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is back with his third appearance on the podcast. Gleb has authore...

This one is a conversation about innovation, diversity, and of course, uncertainty. Our guest is Frans Johansson , one of the world's leading thinkers and practitioners around innovation. Frans' mission is to prepare individuals and organisations to prepare for the future. Frans is the author of the best-selling book on innovation The Medici Effect , the ideas of which led to Frans founding The Me...

We welcome Daniel Wagner back to the show, this time to discuss his latest and insightful book The America-China Divide: The Race to Control the World .  The book is an important follow-on to China Vision, which was published last year and on which he joined the podcast. The America-China Divide describes how China has benefited from the US-led international system, the complexity of the US-China...

This is Part Two of our annual "best of" the year episode for 2019. We have clips from: Episode 111 – Alastair Humphreys Episode 114 – Tikiri Herath Episode 110 – Nancy Roberts Episode 104 – Ed Dowding Episode 118 – StJohn Deakins Episode 105 – Sam Wilkin Episode 102 – Daniel Wagner Episode 117 – Paul-Olivier Dehaye Episode 113 – Jeremy Gilley _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Like what you heard? Sub...

This is Part One of our annual "best of" the year episode for 2019. We have clips from:   Ep. 100 - Hilary Gallo Ep. 101 - Luke Tyburski Ep. 112 - Nicole Davis Ep. 103 – Nadia Finer Ep. 115 – Christian Hunt Ep. 109 – Alex Hutchinson Ep. 107 – Anna Glover and Bryan Huneycutt Ep. 116 – Alex Sidorenko Ep. 120 – Allison Schrager Ep. 108 – Katie-Jane L'Herpiniere Ep. 106 – Usman and Adeela Omar _ _ _ _...

After doing 120+ episodes of All Things Risk, it's hard not to have some episodes that completely embody the ethos of the show – to embrace uncertainty. This is one of those episodes. My guest is adventurer, travel risk expert, author and speaker Lloyd Figgins. In 2012, Lloyd and his friend David Whiddon rowed 3,000 nautical miles (~5,000 km) from Morocco to Barbados on a plywood boat. This was an...

What can we learn about risk from how services are priced at legal brothels? What does systemic risk have to do with the paparazzi? How are big wave surfers a bit like actuaries? What does fraud tell about how people mis-calculate probabilities? Meet Allison Schrager, author of An Economist Walks Into a Brothel . Allison is an economist, a journalist and co-founder of LifeCycle Finance Partners. S...

It's always a pleasure to welcome back Daniel Wagner to the show. Daniel has been a guest several times. He is a geopolitical risk expert, CEO of Country Risk Solutions, and has written several books on risk topics – including China Vision , AI Supremacy , and Virtual Terror amongst others. In this episode, Daniel joins me from Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire where he is on assignment and we check in on th...

Today we continue exploring data, ethics, technology, and risk. There is a continuation of some of the ideas in Ep. 117 , and many alternative viewpoints provided as well. My guest is StJohn Deakins . StJohn is the Founder and CEO of CitizenMe , a company that enables organisations to solve problems and build closer relationships with the public through ethical user data and research tools. His vi...

We have a big-picture conversation today that is a fascinating look at social media, data protection, privacy, accountability and much more. Our guest is Paul-Olivier Dehaye . Paul is a Swiss-based mathematician who helped lift the lid on the Cambridge-Analytica / Facebook scandal. He has extensive expertise in and has conducted research on how social media platforms predict our behaviour and can...

  It's no secret that open plan offices suck. This has been confirmed by a recent study from Harvard . Their only redeeming quality is that they're cheap – great if the only thing that matters to the work that gets done in them is cost. For everything else, they're terrible. One of the things open plan offices seem to assume (in addition to assuming human beings are unaffected by distractions) is...

This episode is all about risk awareness. And in many ways, it's an unusual episode in that we get into risk management as a profession. I tend to stay away from this as a topic because I don't believe risk should have its own jargon and rituals that only certain hallowed people can use. We all take risks, and as you will hear, the science of risk and decision-making has been around for a while. M...

Let's talk about "human risk" - the risk of people doing things they shouldn't or not doing things they should. That definition comes from this episode's guest, Christian Hunt. Christian is the founder of Human Risk , his company which embodies his mission to bring behavioural science to organisations so they they, and their people can do the right things.   The whole area is incredibly important...

  This is a conversation about uncertainty and decision-making - for certain – but it's also one about culture, travel, books, writing, the way women are treated, justice, and career transitions. And it's also a super fun one. My guest is Tikiri Herath . Tikiri is an award-winning author who has written four fiction (thrillers) and four non-fiction books that focus on overcoming fears and upliftin...

Is it possible for humanity to have peace? To not have violent conflict, wars or violence in our homes, schools or online via cyberbullying? As you ponder this question, you might draw on your hopes, experience of human behaviour and possibly what you think is realistic – this is a show about risk and uncertainty after all. Meet our latest guest, Jeremy Gilley . Jeremy is the founder of Peace One...

This conversation is all about mindset. How do you train your mind? How do you mentally approach uncertainty? Meet Nicole Davis . Nicole is a retired volleyball player who excelled at the highest levels in the sport. That means the Olympics, where she was a silver medallist in the 2008 Beijing games and again four years later at the 2012 London games. She has played professionally in Europe and fo...

  Think about your life, particularly your routines. Yes, these can serve us – up to a point. They help us get on with life. In other ways, however, they are harmful. They can prevent us from learning and growing. They can get us stuck. Our thought patterns are similar - psychologists and neuroscientists talk about something called the " default mode network " – our familiar thought patterns. It's...

Today we talk about diversity, inclusion and equality, particularly in the workplace. This is one of those topics that is important, but polarising – the famous Jordan Peterson / Cathy Newman interview of a few months ago being a good case in point. Our insights aren't really data-based, and that's crazy because it's 2019. Data is the new oil. And diversity might also be an organisational superpow...

What are the limits to human performance? This episode is all about that. It's not an easy question to answer. As you'll hear, those limits are elastic – and they are about the body and the mind.  My guest is Alex Hutchinson . Alex is an award-winning journalist and author. He has a regular column in Outside magazine . His most recent book Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Hu...

    One of the types of people we love to have on the All Things Risk podcast are adventurers. Adventures capture so much about risk and uncertainty and they are a microcosm of what we face and deal with in our broader lives. If that sounds like we believe that we should live our lives a bit like adventures, you're right. Our guest today embodies exactly that and we can learn a lot from her. Meet...

  This episode was put together as a bit of an experiment – and a very successful one at that. This was our first live recording with an audience and it took place in Louisville, Kentucky at the USITT 2019 conference. USITT is the US Institute for Theatre Technology – and it aims to advance the skills and technology of those working in theatre, entertainment, and the performing arts. Basically, if...

  For the last few episodes, we have had "big picture" conversations (which BTW I love). However, as much as I enjoy those types of conversations, and as much as we like to frame them in positive terms, when we think about the state of our politics, divisiveness, intolerance and the closed-minded we often see around the world, it is hard not to think that a certain level, the world is in a dark pl...

Today, we have a big picture conversation about populism – that thing that seems to be taking over the world, whether we are talking about Donald Trump, Brexit, Bolsonaro in Brazil or Duterte in the Philippines. But, what is populism? Why do people vote for populists? Besides unhelpful explanations that are unhelpful (like everyone is insane), how can we better understand this phenomenon? Today we...