Curious Data

What if the smartest thing you can do with data is to admit how much of it you have to build yourself?

Diego Vallarino has spent a career at the sharp edge of risk, from Equifax and Scotiabank to Coface, where he and Bob first met, and now as a counselor to the board of the Inter-American Development Bank. He is also a prolific researcher who treats curiosity like a daily discipline.

In this conversation, Diego breaks down how he builds models on open and synthetic data, why the source of your data matters far less for public policy than for a credit score, and how you can turn a thousand real observations into ten million and still trust the result. Then it takes a turn. He walks through his study of why people abandon a Netflix series, built with the very same survival model he once used on startups.

Running through all of it is one human advantage no machine can copy. Listen now.

• [00:02:02] The board seat that puts one economist in the room with 47 countries
• [00:04:58] From a soccer ball in Uruguay to econometrics, and the pandemic model that changed everything
• [00:08:32] Why economists quietly resist open data, and what finally changed their minds
• [00:10:24] Clean government data you can’t trust versus messy open data you can: which risk is worse
• [00:16:08] Synthetic data, explained: turning 1,000 real records into 10 million without breaking the model
• [00:19:52] Designing a public policy and testing it before you ever roll it out
• [00:24:53] Porándu: the Guaraní word for wonder that Bob just calls curiosity
• [00:28:34] The startup metric everyone asks about that has almost nothing to do with survival
• [00:36:38] The same risk model, now aimed at why you quit a Netflix series halfway through
• [00:47:29] The question that isn’t in any book, and why only humans can ask it

• Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)
• Coface
• Equifax and Scotiabank

Diego Vallarino is a Uruguayan quantitative researcher and Counselor to the Board of Directors at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and IDB Invest in Washington, D.C. He leads Sandpile Economics, an independent research program that applies self-organized criticality, network geometry, and complexity economics to understand how financial, productive, and institutional systems become fragile, and how small shocks turn into large crises. His work has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as Computational Economics, the Journal of Complex Networks, and Nonlinear Science. Before joining the IDB, he spent roughly a decade in risk management at Equifax, Scotiabank, and Coface, working with hundreds of Chief Risk Officers on how organizations measure and reduce risk.

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Curious Data is an original production hosted by Bob Lytle. Brought to you by Centri Analytics. Production and editing by Podcast Your Brand.

What if the polls everyone loves to distrust are actually more accurate than ever, and the real problem is how we read them?

Collin Corbett has recruited and trained more than 3,500 candidates and helped put over 850 of them on the ballot. This year, he stopped running other people's campaigns and started his own, as an independent candidate for Illinois governor.

Bob and Collin get into how modern polling really works, why weighting and modeling can quietly distort the numbers, why AI still cannot replace real data from real people, and what two decades of trial and error taught Collin about asking the right question.

If you have ever wondered whether a poll can be trusted, or what it takes to turn messy public opinion into a smart decision, this one is for you. Listen now.

• [00:02:08] The stretch of a campaign nobody sees coming, and why candidates are exhausted before it even starts
• [00:03:50] Why the moment you are needed is usually the moment you are least ready
• [00:07:31] How almost 38,000 signatures beat the you need 50,000 conventional wisdom
• [00:08:13] The data wizard named Abe who built their ballot system over a weekend
• [00:12:22] The rule Collin teaches every candidate about talking to voters
• [00:14:13] Can you trust a pollster? The first thing to check
• [00:18:08] Why asking AI how people feel gives you the wrong answer
• [00:19:09] Actual data versus model data, and why a model gets his own wife wrong
• [00:22:20] The same question, worded two ways, and the swing that follows
• [00:25:19] Running on heart or running on polls, and how the best do both
• [00:27:23] Illinois ranked 46th in growth, and the crony capitalism behind it
• [00:41:43] The book that priced out every way to win a single vote
• [00:45:41] The three phases of a campaign and the method that fits each

Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout by Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber

Collin Corbett is a political strategist and pollster with nearly two decades in politics and the founder of Cor Strategies, a political consulting firm based in Palatine, Illinois. He has recruited and trained more than 3,500 candidates and activists and helped hundreds of them reach the ballot. In 2026, he left the Republican Party and launched an independent campaign for governor of Illinois, running alongside Carolyn Schofield.

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Curious Data is an original production hosted by Bob Lytle. Brought to you by Centri Analytics. Production and editing by Podcast Your Brand.

When a machine can pick the target, who keeps the humanity in the decision?

Bob sits down with Brian Bengs, a retired military lawyer and independent U.S. Senate candidate in South Dakota, and Brianna Harter of the National Data Center Policy Project. The thread is not politics. It is who asks the questions when data and AI start making the calls.

They get into keeping a human in the loop on life-and-death military decisions, why one proposed data center could draw the power of 400,000 South Dakota homes, and what happens to local water, power bills, and voice when big money moves faster than the people it affects.

A clear-eyed look at curiosity, governance, and the facts underneath the headlines. Listen now.

• [00:02:33] A graduating class of 17, and a Navy hitch that never left dry dock
• [00:04:09] How a four-year plan in the JAG Corps became two decades
• [00:09:37] Inside the room where a lawyer signs off before a strike
• [00:11:08] The one decision Brian says AI should never make alone
• [00:12:09] Why only humans can be curious, and machines just execute
• [00:14:34] The war power the Constitution hands Congress, and almost no one uses
• [00:17:12] The link between a distant war and the price of your groceries
• [00:20:53] 400,000 homes of power in a state with 366,000 homes
• [00:22:25] Follow the money behind South Dakota’s data center push
• [00:26:58] What data centers will not tell you about their water and power
• [00:31:18] Why 45% of voters are independents, and both parties want it quiet

• Bengs for South Dakota
• National Data Center Policy Project, the data center policy reform effort directed by Brianna Harter, focused on Virginia and the federal level.
• Veterans for All Voters

Brian Bengs. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Brian Bengs is a 26-year veteran of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force. In the Air Force Judge Advocate General's (JAG) Corps, he worked as a federal ethics advisor and prosecutor, holding Air Force personnel to the branch's core values. He has taught law and policy at the U.S. Air Force Academy, the NATO School in Germany, and Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and has served as a National Park Ranger. A registered independent for most of his adult life, Brian is now running for U.S. Senate in South Dakota.

🔗 Website

Brianna Harter. Brianna Harter is a leader in Industrial-Organizational Psychology who helps organizations navigate change management and responsible AI adoption. As director of the National Data Center Policy Project, a policy reform effort focused on data centers in Virginia and at the federal level, she advocates for transparent data and policies that help citizens make informed decisions about data center development in their communities. She champions AI with meaningful human oversight, keeping people at the center of how AI shapes work and life.

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Curious Data is an original production hosted by Bob Lytle. Brought to you by Centri Analytics. Production and editing by Podcast Your Brand.

When anyone can buy the same AI, what still gives one side the edge?

Steve Woll spent the last eighteen years of his Navy career turning weather and ocean data into decisions that ships and lives depended on. Now a consultant and an independent candidate for Congress in Virginia, he joins Bob to work through how data actually creates advantage, and where that advantage is quietly shifting.

They get into the split between physics-based forecasting and AI pattern recognition, the post-war pact that makes even rivals share their weather data, why a military model cannot afford to hallucinate the way a chatbot can, and the one problem worse than bad data: data that goes missing.

It is really a conversation about where the human edge goes once the machines catch up. Listen now.

• [00:03:27] A zoology and computer science major at Duke, decades before anyone called it data science.
• [00:10:39] What a Navy meteorology officer actually works with, and why it all comes back to physics.
• [00:12:15] The hardest part of forecasting: merging a dozen kinds of data into one picture.
• [00:13:15] The post-war pact that makes even rivals hand over their weather data.
• [00:14:49] Why the military shares some of its data openly and quietly keeps the rest.
• [00:16:41] Cray supercomputers, and who really had the best forecasting on the planet.
• [00:18:00] Two forecasting systems now run side by side: physics equations and AI pattern recognition.
• [00:19:16] Why a weather model cannot afford to hallucinate the way a chatbot can.
• [00:21:23] When anyone can buy the same AI, what happens to a nation’s data edge?
• [00:30:41] The worst thing for a data analyst is not bad data. It is missing data.
• [00:49:13] Why human curiosity may hold the last edge over the machines.

• World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
• Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI)
• Internet Archive
• Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State by Michael Lewis
• Federal Election Commission (FEC)

Steve Woll is a retired U.S. Navy officer who finished his career as a Commander. He was surface warfare qualified and spent the last eighteen years in uniform as a Special Duty Officer for Meteorology and Oceanography, turning weather and ocean data into operational decisions. Raised in Pittsburgh, he studied zoology and computer science at Duke University and began his career in environmental science computer modeling before joining the Navy through Officer Candidate School. Today, he consults with data-intensive organizations, has worked extensively with NOAA, and is running for U.S. Congress as an independent in Virginia's 3rd District.

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Curious Data is an original production hosted by Bob Lytle. Brought to you by Centri Analytics. Production and editing by Podcast Your Brand.

What if the biggest source of AI waste is not the data centers, but the rest of us?

Bob sits down with AI architect, technologist, and ethicist Matt Konwiser for a conversation about the gap between how loudly we argue about AI and how little we actually understand it.

They get into why governance keeps falling behind, what the real water and energy numbers behind a data center actually say, and why the fights over slop, disinformation, and trust may come down to individual choices more than policy.

It is a first-principles look at using a powerful technology wisely, from someone who builds with it every day. Listen now.

• [00:04:53] Thirty years in tech, and the throughline that led Matt to AI governance.
• [00:06:16] Why Matt says almost no company is truly dealing with AI governance.
• [00:07:25] The schoolyard speed limit that explains what ethics really is.
• [00:09:12] How Matt turns a daily news habit into a public voice, with nothing scheduled.
• [00:11:57] The zero-trust lesson from cybersecurity.
• [00:13:23] AGI and RSI in plain terms, and why together they are new territory.
• [00:16:26] The February to September swing that split two allies.
• [00:19:51] Is everything AI now, and have people stopped caring?
• [00:24:43] The line between useful AI and the slop quietly draining resources.
• [00:37:13] The water math behind a single data center, and what the headline number hides.
• [00:42:11] Jensen Huang’s blunt rule for anyone building something that is not safe.
• [00:46:11] What if the smartest AI simply refused to do our wasteful work?
• [00:51:27] Matt’s closing case for hope about AI and humanity.

• Environmental Cost of Artificial Intelligence: Carbon, Water and Land Footprints

Matt Konwiser is a Field CTO at IBM and a longtime technologist whose work spans telecommunications, cybersecurity, data, and artificial intelligence. Over three decades he has advised executive teams on how to actually put new technology to work, and today he is one of the more direct public voices on AI governance and ethics. He also serves on the AI Advisory Council of the Global Technology Industry Association, advises a carbon-first marketing startup, and co-hosts the AI Diatribe podcast. The views he shares here are his own.

🔗 LinkedIn | AI Diatribe

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Curious Data is an original production hosted by Bob Lytle. Brought to you by Centri Analytics. Production and editing by Podcast Your Brand.

What if the real edge in a data-driven world is the one thing data can't give you?

Bob sat down expecting a conversation about facts and figures. Whitfield Harrington, a Chicago pastor and independent Senate candidate, redirected it to the thing that decides what those facts actually mean: wisdom.

They get into why AI can calculate but never discern, what the Strategic Petroleum Reserve says about American preparedness, how the healthcare middleman quietly drives up costs, and why an independent believes the real solutions live in the middle.

It is a rare conversation that treats data as the start of the story, not the end. Listen now.

• [00:04:08] The civil rights history Whitfield did not learn until 11th grade
• [00:10:05] How a small-town no-name reached an international audience
• [00:16:12] Why "who wins, a lion or a crocodile" reframes every political fight
• [00:18:14] What a Sesame Street memory taught him about propaganda
• [00:26:20] Why wisdom beats knowledge when the stakes are highest
• [00:30:44] The one thing a faster computer chip will still never have
• [00:32:51] What military chatter reveals about America's oil vulnerability
• [00:38:49] How many days of oil America actually has in reserve
• [00:43:48] The middleman quietly driving up the cost of your care
• [00:45:52] The $75 doctor membership that points to a different kind of healthcare
• [00:58:55] What "renovate the American dream" actually means

• Strategic Petroleum Reserve
• Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)
• NAACP
• Direct primary care

Whitfield Harrington is a Chicago pastor, musician, author, and independent candidate for the U.S. Senate in Illinois. Born the 20th of 21 children in Belzoni, Mississippi, he grew up in a family shaped by faith and the civil rights movement, where his father served as a pastor and chairman of the Humphreys County NAACP. He moved to Chicago in 2013 and built a ministry that now reaches people across states, countries, and continents, known for teaching on dream interpretation and spiritual discernment. Drawing on that background and a career in the financial industry, he is running as an independent under a plan he calls Renovate the American Dream, arguing that the real solutions live in the middle.

🔗 Website | YouTube

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Curious Data is an original production hosted by Bob Lytle. Brought to you by Centri Analytics. Production and editing by Podcast Your Brand.

What happens to our decisions when we can no longer trust that our data, or the people behind it, are real?

Bob sits down with Alejandro Reskala, a technology executive who has spent his career on one deceptively simple question: how do you know the data in front of you belongs to the person you think it does?

It was meant to be about credit bureaus. It became something bigger. Alejandro traces a line from video games and medical imaging to credit scoring in 15 to 20 countries, then lands on the problem facing every AI system. If a machine cannot verify where data came from, how can it make a decision worth standing behind?

This one gets into identity, fraud, watermarking, and whether trust is what decides how far AI can go. Listen now.

• 00:04:08 The check readers Alejandro coded in assembler, before databases were normal
• 00:05:35 From owning every game console to building augmented reality that reached NASA
• 00:07:10 The Black Swan, 9/11, and the collapse that redirected a career
• 00:08:08 The job offer built on trust, not experience
• 00:09:21 The biggest myth about credit bureaus, and why it will not die
• 00:13:39 Is scoring your credit the same as reading a medical scan? Bob presses the analogy
• 00:14:16 Before you can pull Bob’s file, you have to prove the file is Bob’s
• 00:21:33 Inside the work of building credit bureaus in 15 to 20 countries
• 00:23:57 The case that a credit bureau is closer to a human right than a hassle
• 00:25:43 Move countries and your credit history vanishes. Why that still is not solved
• 00:31:15 Two Bob Lytles, one misspelled name, and the cost of guessing wrong
• 00:35:43 The fraud problem growing fastest, and who is impersonating whom
• 00:40:20 Why matching the data still does not prove you are you
• 00:43:34 Why data provenance just became a must, not a nice-to-have
• 00:45:16 Should we stop AI? Alejandro calls it a rhetorical question
• 00:49:15 How anyone can lie with data, and the toothpaste that proves it

• The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Google SynthID
• TransUnion
• Real Vision

Alejandro Reskala is a technology executive who builds the systems that decide whether data can be trusted. He most recently served as Vice President, International and Regional Chief Information Officer for Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean at TransUnion, and a former Chief Information Officer of the credit bureau in Mexico. His career runs from digital image processing and early augmented reality work in Seattle to building credit bureaus in 15 to 20 countries. Today, his focus is identity, entity resolution, and the growing problem of proving where data actually comes from.

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Curious Data is an original production hosted by Bob Lytle. Brought to you by Centri Analytics. Production and editing by Podcast Your Brand.

When anyone can collect your data, who gets to decide whether they should?

Sarah Zabel spent 31 years in the Air Force and retired a two-star general in cyber and communications. She learned early that being able to gather data never settles whether you should.

She and Bob get into surveillance and the guardrails that keep it honest, how to read a statistic without getting played, and why she phones the researchers behind a study before she trusts it. Along the way: what it takes to think clearly in a partisan age.

The tools are new. The questions are old. And the answers shape how free we stay. Listen now.

[00:05:40] Two majors at the Academy, and why the pilot track was off the table

[00:07:20] The programming job in Japan that was really early analytics

[00:11:18] The one rule she keeps returning to about what data lets you do

[00:11:58] The line the Department of Defense is not allowed to cross

[00:14:48] Why the technology is new but the questions never are

[00:17:49] The forgotten 1960s data company that predicted our present

[00:23:58] Government is not a business, but it should be one thing

[00:29:24] The detail missing from Air Force records that reframes a heated debate

[00:44:16] The free tool that cracked open her hardest research question

[00:48:03] How she interrogates a headline-grabbing study before believing it

[00:51:21] Data, analysis, presentation: three levels most people blur into one

If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future by Jill Lepore

Fighting Chance, Sarah Zabel's award-winning book on the science of depression.

Google Scholar

National Institutes of Health

Flock cameras

Sarah Zabel is a retired U.S. Air Force major general and a 31-year veteran of the communications and cyber field, with assignments ranging from the National Security Agency to Vice Director of the Defense Information Systems Agency. A computer scientist by training, she is the author of Fighting Chance, an award-winning book on the science of depression, and is running as an independent candidate for U.S. Congress in Idaho's First District.

🔗 Website: Zabel for Congress | Author site

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Curious Data is an original production hosted by Bob Lytle. Brought to you by Centri Analytics. Production and editing by Podcast Your Brand.

Can the numbers tell you when it is time to bet on a long shot?

Michael Bridgford spent his early career crunching data as an investment banking analyst at William Blair. Now he is running for Congress as an independent in what may be the tightest district in the country. Bob asks the obvious question. What did the data actually say?

They dig into the numbers behind the decision, a House margin of two votes, a district once decided by six, and a voter base where independents outnumber both parties. Along the way they get into AI reshaping finance, why Iowa ranks second in the nation for data centers, and the counterintuitive research on how long a representative should really stay.

It is a conversation about reading the odds before you act, and what the numbers reveal about a system most people feel is broken. Listen now.

• [00:01:17] From a farm in the middle of nowhere to a career in finance
• [00:02:54] A 23-year-old analyst, 100-hour weeks, and a deal that involved Warren Buffett
• [00:04:28] How AI now does in minutes what a $300,000 analyst used to do
• [00:05:56] What government owes workers as AI reshapes the economy
• [00:07:44] The state AI law that is already on the books next door
• [00:10:48] Why attention has become more valuable than money in politics
• [00:15:02] The data point on Iowa data centers that surprised even the candidate
• [00:18:43] The numbers that made a long shot look like the right bet
• [00:22:25] A district decided by six votes, and why that changes the math
• [00:33:31] The case for term limits, starting with a 10 percent approval rating
• [00:39:18] A 50-year study on congressional seniority that defies common sense
• [00:45:14] The Gallup number that says nearly half the country is up for grabs

• William Blair, the investment firm where Michael began his career
• Claude, the AI assistant referenced on automating analyst work
• Gallup, the source for the independent voter figure

Michael Bridgford grew up on a family farm near the Quad Cities and built a career in finance, starting as an investment banking analyst at William Blair before moving into investments, sales, and distribution across the country. He lived in Chicago, Texas, and California before returning to the Quad Cities area, where he lives with his family. He is now running for Congress as an independent in Iowa, his first run for public office, making the case that the numbers point to a rare opening for a candidate outside the two parties.

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Curious Data is an original production hosted by Bob Lytle. Brought to you by Centri Analytics. Production and editing by Podcast Your Brand.

What if the smartest thing you bring to data is not an answer, but a better question?

Craig Simpson has spent 15 years at IDC learning to pull signal from messy, incomplete data. He left South Africa at 18, finished two degrees by correspondence while working full time, and kept walking away from the classroom for the real world.

In this episode, he and Bob get into why AI is often very wrong, why first-party human conversations still beat anything you can scrape, and how curiosity separates a real analyst from someone staring at a spreadsheet. Then the conversation takes a turn into wildlife, drones, and using data to fight rhino poaching across Southern Africa.

It is a case for the human edge in a world racing to automate it. Listen now.

• [00:05:45] The backwards career path: leaving university at 18 to build a life abroad
• [00:07:07] Finishing two degrees by correspondence while working full time
• [00:12:49] Why anyone who claims to know exactly where a market is heading is lying
• [00:15:39] First-party data vs the AI prompt, and why one always comes up short
• [00:18:11] The trait that separates a real analyst from someone staring at numbers
• [00:21:19] Why AI is often very, very wrong, and who has to catch it
• [00:23:18] Beyond connectivity: why telcos could compete with the hyperscalers
• [00:24:23] 6G being built with AI baked in from the start
• [00:27:47] Why the future data war moves to the skies above us
• [00:28:59] How the mobile phone, and now Starlink, changed everything in Africa
• [00:30:36] A live, unplanned data test: how many Africans have a smartphone
• [00:34:22] Using data and drones to fight rhino poaching
• [00:36:00] Why shutting down all tourism is not how you save the wildlife
• [00:40:40] What triggered the massive 2010 poaching spike
• [00:43:35] The family ledger Craig has kept every day for 20-plus years

IDC (International Data Corporation)

Starlink

Pew Research

Craig Simpson is a Research Director in IDC's Data & Analytics group, based in Prague and originally from Cape Town, South Africa. He has spent more than 15 years at IDC across multiple stints in technology market research, with a current focus on telecom operators and IT services. He left university early to build his career abroad, later finishing his studies by correspondence, and he brings a first-principles, endlessly curious approach to data. Outside of work, he supports wildlife and anti-poaching efforts across Africa, using data to help balance conservation and tourism.

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Curious Data is an original production hosted by Bob Lytle. Brought to you by Centri Analytics. Production and editing by Podcast Your Brand.