Numbers and Narrative

Former producer and friend of the show Quint Gribbin sits down with Jagan Kaja, a traffic engineer at WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff, to talk about the complex problems facing our current traffic infrastructure. There's a gap between mathematically optimal traffic patterns and the unpredictable nature of human behavior. What are traffic engineers doing to solve these problems, and what will the future of transportation look like?

The critically acclaimed, Sundance- and Cannes-screened film Songs My Brothers Taught Me just hit Netflix, so we're revisiting our interview with director Chloe Zhao. When she sat down with Joe, they talked about making independent movies, entrepreneurship, and the beauty of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

As CTO of Splunk, Snehal Antani leads the technology vision for the innovative, high-growth company that enables IT operations, cyber analysts, and business analytics professionals to collect, index, sort, and analyze machine data. In this episode, Snehal explains how every time he has made a career move, people have told him he's crazy. For example, in the middle of the year 2000 tech bubble, he chose to work for IBM in Poughkeepsie over Silicon Valley. Then he jumped from a software development role to product management and business development. Later, he left IBM for GE Capital. Recently, he left GE for the CTO role at Splunk. When he sat down with Renny McPherson, he shared his theory of apprenticeship and how it has allowed him to grow as a leader and keep moving in directions that look impossible to others. 

Joe Flood talks to Bailey Clifford, a budding but stymied entrepreneur on the Pine Ridge reservation.

Joe talks to Bailey Clifford, a budding but stymied entrepreneur on the Pine Ridge reservation.

Joe Flood brings the recording gear on a trip to New Orleans to talk to French Quarter street artists and performers.

He starts with his old friend and former teaching colleague, Jenelle Campion to talk about how Jackson Square artists work together to bring their individual artwork to life, to fellow painter Morghan Brookens about bringing New Orleans' musical history to bear on her work, and caricaturist and puppeteer Andrew Wilkie about...a  bunch of things.

Portfolio Manager, Author, Marine Vet Dr Wesley Gray

Before launching his asset management firm Alpha Architect, Dr. Wesley Gray served as a Marine Corps officer in Iraq. Already a student of economics at the time he joined the Marine Corps after graduating from Penn's prestigious Wharton undergraduate program, he found that his military experience gave him insights into the nature of people and financial markets alike. Now an acclaimed author and portfolio manager who received a doctorate in finance from University of Chicago, Wesley shares in this conversation the lessons he took from the military that he applies to his current investment approach. Musing on the balances between human emotion and the systematic procedures that curb it, between confidence and humility, and between narrative and formula, Wesley illustrates just how universal the rules of combat and competition can be.

Thomas joins Joe Flood to talk about her new book, Louisa, on the life of Louisa Catherine Adams, wife of president John Quincy Adams.  A woman both ahead, and very much of, her times, Louisa is a fascinating history that deals with thoroughly modern issues like race, electoral posturing, and women's roles in politics. A former Grantland editor, tennis writer, and author of the book Conscience, about World War I and it's impact on her great grandfather, Socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas, Louisa Thomas talks about the forces that shaped America's early political history and their implications for today's political climate

-Numbers and Narrative

Not many people get the idea for a financial technology on thebeach in Ibiza, but not many people come up with some of theformative ideas for Facebook, either. Entrepreneur, Olympic rower,and co-founder of the bitcoin investment fund Gemini, TylerWinklevoss joins Joe Flood to talk before this week's Consensus2016 bitcoin and blockchain technology conference in New YorkCity.