The Human Risk Podcast

What does jazz singing have to do with LinkedIn? More than you might think. This week's guest, Anna Rössler , has built a career helping senior leaders find their voice online while simultaneously developing her own as a singer-songwriter. Rather than separating her professional and creative identities, Anna has found a way to bring them together, and in doing so offers some valuable lessons about...

What happens when two people who spend their careers thinking about human behaviour meet in a London pub and start complaining about conferences?  Apparently, they decide to organise one. Episode Summary In this episode I'm joined by David Grosse , founder of behavioural risk advisory firm Behavor , to talk about The Unconvention, an event we're creating together that aims to rethink how conversat...

Why is it so hard to stop people playing vides, music or phone calls out loud on public transport — and what does that tell us about changing human behaviour? Show Summary This episode of The Human Risk Podcast is a little different. It is a cross-cast from The Freewheeling Podcast , hosted by Thomas Ablema n, in which I join Thomas to tackle a problem raised by the show's most important listener:...

What if the best way to improve cybersecurity — or any other form of human risk — wasn't another policy, training course, or piece of technology, but a board game?  That's the kind of question my guest, Jill Wick, loves asking. Episode Summary  Jill is a cybersecurity awareness consultant, business psychologist, podcaster, and author. Her work sits at the intersection of psychology, marketing, beh...

What can businesses learn from cults? It might sound like an uncomfortable comparison: one involves strategy meetings, values statements and quarterly targets; the other manipulation, charismatic leaders and extreme behaviour. But perhaps the distinction isn't as clear as we'd like to think. Both create identities and shared beliefs. Both shape how people think and behave. And both can evolve grad...

What makes great service? It’s one of those things we instantly recognise when we experience it, but struggle to define. And while organisations spend huge amounts of time trying to design seamless customer experiences, the reality is that service doesn’t happen in strategy documents or training manuals. It happens in real time, between real people, in messy and unpredictable situations where even...

What if prediction isn’t about knowing the future, but controlling it?  On this episode, I'm joined by a leading thinker on digital ethics, privacy and technology to explore the idea of prophecy. Episode Summary My guest is Dr Carissa Véliz and in our discussion, we talk about humanity’s long-standing obsession with predicting what comes next, and why today’s algorithms may be the most powerful (a...

We like to think we choose what matters. But what if the goals we’re chasing… aren’t actually ours? Episode Summary My guest on this episode is Dr. C. Thi Nguyen , philosopher and author of The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game, a book about how metrics, scoring systems, and “games” shape our behaviour—often without us realising it. Thi explains how his work on games led him to a dee...

We tend to assume that if we’re working hard, we’re working well. But what if that isn’t true? Episode Summary My guest on this episode is  Phil Dobson , author of The Brain Book and founder of Brain Workshops , about what he calls 'cognitive leadership': using neuroscience and psychology to help people sustain performance, think more clearly, and navigate uncertainty. Phil explains how a broken a...

What lessons does a religious protest that led to an uprising  in 1549 have to do with human risk? At first glance, not very much. It’s easy to see it as a distant historical event — something about religion, kings, and a very different world. But as my guest, Professor Mark Stoyle explains, the Western Rising of 1549 is far more than that. It’s a powerful example of what happens when authority im...

What exactly is a sign?  At first glance, that might sound like a strange question. Signs are everywhere: telling us where to go, what to do, what not to do, and sometimes what might happen if we ignore instructions. But as my guest, Jeffrey Ludlow Saentz explains, signs are much more than bits of information on walls or beside roads. Episode Summary Jeffrey is a signage designer who works on comp...

What Can a Cocktail Teach Us About Curiosity and Creativity? At first glance, documenting Negronis around the world might sound like a frivolous hobby. But could a simple cocktail become a vehicle for curiosity, experimentation and creative thinking?   On this episode, I speaks with geopolitical strategist Marc A Ross about an unusual passion project: ordering and documenting Negronis wherever he...

What’s the difference between a mistake… and a bad decision? My guest knows this only too well. Tom Hardin has been on the show several times before. As Tipper X, he wore a wire for the FBI and helped build the largest insider trading investigation in US history.  Since then, he has spent nearly a decade speaking to organisations around the world about slippery slopes, rationalisation, and how goo...

What happens when someone runs with a business idea they've heard as a thought experiment on a podcast? Can a business have an expletive in its name? And is it possible to run a business that sells a single very specific product? Episode Summary On this episode, I’m joined by Charlie Hurst, Tom Noble and Will Sudlow — the founders of Flat White or F* ck Off *, a coffee brand inspired by a thought...

What if we stopped telling women how to stay safe, and started asking why violence against them keeps happening in the first place? On this episode, I’m joined for a second time, by Amy Watson, the founder of social enterprise HASSL. She’s trying to tackle violence against women and girls at its root. Not with another awareness campaign or  safety app. But by building a global movement designed to...

Who determines what 'good' Compliance actually looks like?  The obvious answer is regulators (and in some jurisdictions) prosecutors. But what if it were the regulated Firms themselves?  That's the idea behind purpose-driven compliance, which I'm exploring on this episode. Episode Summary To explore this, I'm joined by Veronica Root Martinez, Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law , to...

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) gets smarter and tkaes over more tasks, what happens to human dynamics like trust, transparency, leadership and empathy. How can humans and machines wowrk togehter effectively?  And how can leaders lead in this new world? Episode Summary  AI is often discussed as a technical challenge, but the more interesting question is how it impacts humans and how we will interf...

What lies behind Romance Fraud? Romance fraud is one of the fastest-growing forms of fraud worldwide, and one of the most emotionally devastating. It’s also one of the most misunderstood. On this episode, I’m speaking to Becky Holmes , author of the bestselling book Keanu Reeves Is Not in Love With You . Becky didn’t become interested in romance fraud through victimhood or research. She stumbled i...

Why do we struggle to talk about grief? Why that matters and what we can do about it, is the subject of this episode. Summary Grief is something almost all of us will experience, and yet something we still struggle to talk about openly. Not because it’s rare, but because it makes us uncomfortable. We lack a shared language for it, feel uneasy about how long it lasts, and often don’t know how to si...

Are we losing our ability to think critically as we rely more on AI? Episode Summary My guest is social psychologist Dr Guy Champniss to explore the role of behavioural science in business and the emerging challenges of AI in the workplace. We discuss why behaviour change is so hard to sell, the myth that behavioural science is only needed when everything else fails, and how organisations often ov...

Why do governments rely on coercion and punishment when voluntary cooperation often produces better, more sustainable outcomes? Episode Summary On this episode, I’m joined once again by Professor Yuval Feldman , who returns to explore the core question behind his latest book: Can The Public Be Trusted? Instead of asking how much we trust our governments, Yuval flips the script, asking how much gov...

We all intuitively know that hypocrisy is a bad thing. But what if it isn’t a flaw, but a feature? But maybe the real problem isn’t hypocrisy, it’s how we think about it. Episode Summary On this episode, I'm talking to Dr Michael Hallsworth , a leading behavioural scientist and the author of The Hypocrisy Trap. We explore a topic that’s instantly recognisable but not often properly understood. Hyp...

Can a single sentence change the way you see the world? My guest on this episode, James Geary thinks so. Episode Summary On this episode, I speak with writer and journalist James, whose lifelong fascination with aphorisms — the world’s shortest literary form — reveals why brevity really is the soul of wit. James explains what makes an aphorism work, shares the five laws that define them, and explo...

What can war teach us about how the human brain really works? And why is human decision-making a more significant factor than military strength in wars? Episode Summary On this episode, I'm exploring how the human brain truly manifests in conflict—and what that reveals about everyday decision-making. Dr Nicholas Wright , a neurologist-turned-neuroscientist who advises the Pentagon Joint Staff, joi...

What if your body is learning things your mind doesn’t know? What if memory wasn't just something that our brain has? Episode Summary  On this episode, I'm exploring a bold idea with neuroscientist Dr Nikolay Kukushkin : memory doesn’t just live in the brain. It might be a basic property of life itself. We unpack how scientists define memory (behavioural change over time) versus how the rest of us...