Prof. Leddin is a Wall Street Journal best-selling author of The Five-Week Leadership Challenge. For more than three years he has hosted the popular weekly Leadership Lab Podcast (1% of all podcast nationally). He is an associate professor at Vanderbilt University where he teaches Corporate Strategy, Negotiation, Advanced Marketing, and Crisis Management and is the Director of the Practice of Business Studies. His hands-on leadership experience has ranged from leading soldiers in the U.S. Army to working with senior leaders for KPMG Consulting and FranklinCovey.

Professor Brittany Ackerman is a writer from Riverdale, New York. She has received her bachelor of arts degree from Indiana University and her master of fine arts degree from Florida Atlantic University. She is a 2x Pushcart Prize Nominee and her work has been featured in Electric Literature, Jewish Book Council, Lit Hub, largehearted boy, The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Hobart, and more. Professor Ackerman’s collection of essays entitled, The Perpetual Motion Machine, has won the Red Hen Press's Nonfiction Award in 2017. And she published her debut novel in 2021 titled, The Brittanys. She is also currently a lecturer at Vanderbilt teaching classes like English Composition.

What is a story [00:07]

Writing as a craft [3:31]

Does writing come naturally to some? [7:04]

Writing as an imitation [9:35]

Characters that are similar to their author [12:55]

Writing as therapy [16:18]

Journaling [16:55]

Fiction instead of nonfiction [19:00]

Is structure important? [24:08]

Writing routine [36:19]

Author’s image in relation to their work [41:50]

Location on the impact of story [45:10]

Getting published [48:22]

What is the most important book you’ve ever read? [56:37]

What is writing to you? [59:14]

NFN is switching things up this week as I talk about Oscar Wilde's essay published in 1891, "The Decay of Lying" with the undergraduate Economics & Russian major, Evan Regan. We discuss Wilde's  bizarre yet intriguing theory of truth being found in art and reality being something that merely imitates the former. We talk about meaningful serendipity, the purpose of life as a form of expression, pretending, and if nature really is inherently beautiful. 

Prof. Garnett Slatton is the former CEO of the NBA Washington Wizards, then called the Washington Bullets. At the time, he was the youngest CEO in the NBA. He is credited with doubling the basketball team’s revenues and reviving it from chronic unprofitability and making the Bullets a respectable team in the NBA. As an intern at Duke, Prof. Slatton also invented a banking software that became the basis for a new business model. He has consulted at Bain and Company, later becoming the CEO of a Bain Capital portfolio company. Later in his career, Prof. Slatton earned his Masters of Divinity leading him to establish his own church and be a pastor himself. Prof. Slatton earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Timestamps:

David A. Owens is the professor of practice of management and innovation and is the Evans Family Executive Director at the Wond’ry Innovation Center. Over the years, Owens has done consulting for NASA, The Smithsonian, LEGO, Nissan LEAF, Cisco, and many other organizations. He has also product-designed for companies such as Apple and Dell Computer. He holds a Ph.D in management science and engineering from Stanford and an MS in engineering product design and is a registered professional electrical engineer. Owens has also published a book called Creative People Must Be Stopped: 6 Ways to Kill Innovation (Without Even Trying) in 2011, an excellent book that addresses the full complexity of what it takes to innovate.

Here are some of the things we talked about:

- What is convergent/divergent thinking and how are they important in the workspace?

- Why is structure so important in meetings?

- Are some people more creative than others in creativity?

- The importance of articulation of unique ideas

Notes from Nash is a long-form conversation show that’s all about exploring ideas, concepts, and understanding one another better by having experts and other brilliant folks join us every Monday. This week’s guest is Social and Religious Studies Instructor at TMI Episcopal in San Antonio, TX, Dr. LePort. He has taught courses on the Hebrew Bible, the Christian New Testament, comparative religion, and American religion for the past seven years. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Bristol (Bristol, UK) with a focus on Religion and Theology. His thesis was on the Christian Gospels, specifically the figure of John the Baptist.

Notes from Nash is a long-form conversation show that’s all about exploring ideas, concepts, and understanding one another better by having experts and other brilliant folks join us every other Monday. This week’s guest was professor of French literature, law, and long-time friend of Noam Chomsky, Prof. Robert Barsky. The following is what we explored: