Global Perspectives

I chat to statistician, Dr Alethea Rae, about how statistics and mathematics can help give us perspective on general topics we discuss in public discourse.Alethea gives some background on how someone ends up with a PhD in statistics. We discuss the importance of testing assumptions when discussing difficult issues and get into why no one needed be surprised when Trump was elected in the US and the UK voted to leave the EU. We also get into education and why it is so important for educators to arm students with robust tools to engage in the complex and nuanced world without reducing it to its simplest form.

I chat to Sammie Haywood. Sammie is an up and coming makeup artist, based in Christchurch. Sammie and I discuss her love of all things creative, like writing, poetry and makeup. We compare notes on growing up and we have some interesting conversation on the differences. Amongst other things we dive it some of the issues around social media.

I talk to friend and colleague, Bevan Jones, about running, training, hunting, life post teaching and setting goals.Bevan is the 2020 Coast to Coast two day champion. He has some really cool insights about what it takes to perform at an elite amateur level.

I talk to friend and colleague, Jimmy Bowens, about how to go about having civil discourse in our time. We interleave this with some of the political happenings, both, here in NZ and abroad. Some lovely tangential strides are made down the avenues of craft beer and running. It all makes for an interesting listen.

I chat with Paul Bacon, a metal fabricator. Paul and I discuss a range of things from a 2WD mountain bike he has designed through to the possibility of the spiritual reality around us. Paul has many talents and shares some of his music on this podcast. He talks a bit about his thoughts behind these songs then we take a deep dive into spiritual matters.

In this episode of Global Perspectives I chat to Marc Matsas, a regional manager of one of NZ's largest tech companies.Marc and I talk about all sorts of things, but in the second half we really flesh out what it means to be wrong and how we need to acknowledge and move on when we are wrong.

I chat to Christian Pera, the family man, father, adventurer, educator and thinker. Christian and I enter into this discussion with no preconception of what it should be or where it should go and it turns out to be really interesting.

I have a chat to Gemma Mackey, an NZ based nurse who has recently returned from a 10 week volunteer tour of duty on a medical ship around Papua New Guinea. Gemma is now back at Christchurch Hospital in the Covid Assessment Unit. She has some really interesting tales and insights into the profession. Have a listen.

I chat to an old childhood friend of mine, Shaun McGirr, about life working from home and his field of expertise - Data Science. Shaun was recently featured in the documentary movie, Data Science Pioneers. One of his great quotes was that things that happen 35% of the time happen all the time. This was in response to the a difficulty with Data Science communication during the Trump election as opposed to a failure to predict Trump would win. We chat a little bit about this and Shaun's earlier interest in Political Science. It's a really interesting chat.

In this podcast I chat to Andrea Crawford, a science teacher at Aoba-Japan International School.Andrea shares how she has managed to get through this time by using different technologies that enable learning to continue.If you want to connect with Ben you can via:Twitter: @benhilliamwebsite: benhilliam.com