Positive Feedback Loop

Positive Feedback Loop

By Positive Feedback LoopSociety & Culture
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Positive Feedback Loop episodes

  • Ep. 23: The Madness of Genius
    The synonym of genius: Einstein
    The IQ test
    Can you be a genius without realizing you are a genius?
    The troubled genius
    Artists and other creative geniuses
    Does genius come at a cost?
    Incidental genius
    Are you born with it?
    Genius as divine inspiration
    The role of curiosity
    Gifted children
    Can genius be taught?
    Beyond intellectual and creative genius
    Isn’t genius relative?
    Galileo Galilei: the risks of genius
    Unsuccessful genius
    Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison
    Commercial: Genius Garden
    The unnoticed geniuses
    Giving women credit for discoveries
    Happy Mothers Day: mothers who facilitate our learning
    We build upon past genius
    Artificial intelligence: surpassing human genius?
    Evolution and magical DNA
    Imagination
    44 min
  • Ep. 22: Time Travel – Omega
    Hermione’s time turner
    Time zones: Stephanie lived the same day twice
    Boston: the city out of time
    The Lake House, First Edition, Primer, Back to the Future
    If you could time travel, what would you do?
    Paradox: a changed past = a changed future
    Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
    Could you actually survive in the past?
    What would you wear?
    Commercial: Time Paradox Box
    Creating an alternate universe
    Evil baby orphanage
    If you traveled in time, who would you bring with you?
    Traveling back to when tyrants were teenagers
    You can only travel back in time to the first time machine
    Stephen Hawking’s huge party
    Time travel is dangerous business
    The information creation paradox
    Involuntary time travel, The Time Traveler’s Wife
    Bonus: Steph and Luis attempt to make “flashback” sounds as they go back in time… or are they snorkeling?
    29 min
  • Ep. 21: This Episode is Sweet
    Ep. 21: This Episode is Sweet
    Our favorite desserts
    Cheesecake is not a cake
    Stephanie’s birthday tradition
    Luis’ childhood experiences with cake
    International desserts
    Childhood candies that are hard to find
    Ray’s history with the Crunch bar
    Holidays, candy, and consumerism
    Sugar and childhood development
    Sugar as anesthetic
    Sugar is a drug
    Sugar in beverages
    The ethics of sugar: products marketed as “healthy”
    How orange juice is made (you’ll be horrified)
    The ice cream flavor all three co-hosts love
    Sean Spicer and Dippin’ Dots
    Concession stand: what do you get at the movies?
    Stickiness
    Desserts as a short-term reward
    Dessert cheese
    Anise, absynthe, and hot dogs
    --Commercial: Bobbin’ for Apples
    Why do we eat dessert last?
    The history of chocolate
    Ancient desserts
    Mormons, horehound hard candy, and taffy pulling
    The candy bomber
    Candy as hope and a reminder of home
    Guava paste
    Confectionary trends
    The rise of “healthy candy"
    47 min
  • Ep. 20: Stress Without Distress
    It’s finals period! Are you stressed?
    Smiling
    Yoga
    Amy Cuddy
    The benefits of stress
    Impacts of stress: self-destruction or motivation?
    Inside-out
    Is stress perception?
    Natural response vs. self-control
    Fight or flight
    Stress vs. worry
    Commercial: InAudible
    The ups and downs vs. chronic stress
    History and perspective
    Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: Midwife’s Tale and “well-behaved women seldom make history"
    Recording history in an era of digital innovation
    History written by artificial intelligence
    Experiencing history through VR
    Data privacy and record-keeping
    Journal-writing: who is your journal for?
    Can feeling and experience be recorded and passed on?
    The Giver
    Stress is human and normal
    31 min
  • Ep. 19: Platform Revolution (with Geoffrey Parker)
    About Geoffrey Parker
    What is a platform?
    Demand, supply, and matching
    Network effects, two-sided markets, multi-sided markets
    The sharing economy
    Regulation
    Fun question: a historical debater
    Commercial: Platform Revolution, the book!
    International regulations
    Data for machine learning
    Driverless vehicles
    Crowdsourcing trust: AI, blockchain, bitcoin
    Security and tradeoffs in innovation
    32 min
  • Ep. 18: The Culture of Entrepreneurship (with Ian Mashiter)
    With guest Ian Mashiter, Professor and Director of Entrepreneurship Activities at BU Questrom School of Business
    Why entrepreneurship is critical for the economy
    The relevance of entrepreneurship to large corporations
    “It’s really about a transformation of minds. It’s really about getting people to have an entrepreneurial way of thinking.”
    Entrepreneurship at Boston University
    Is entrepreneurship innate or can it be learned?
    Experiential learning as a model for entrepreneurship education
    The investor’s perspective
    Bubbles and the Internet
    Ian Mashiter’s history as an entrepreneur
    Commercial: The BUzz Lab
    The role of problem-solving
    Passion and persistence
    SnowMonkey
    The BUzz Lab resources: mentorship, Summer Accelerator program, etc.
    Artist entrepreneurs
    Hacker, Hustler, Hipster
    The cultural dimension to entrepreneurship
    Exit strategy
    Failure
    The pivot
    The path to entrepreneurship
    41 min
  • Ep. 17: Bucket Lists and Guilty Pleasures (with Jen Gates)
    What is a Bucket List?
    How many countries has Jen been to? A lot.
    What was on your bucket list when you were 5-8 years old?
    We add things to each other’s bucket lists
    What is on your “Non-bucket List”?
    Commercial: The Guilterizer
    What is a guilty pleasure?
    We create the storyline to a Lifetime Holiday Special
    Ray plays the photographer who is also Santa’s son
    BTW, who is Santa?
    Can you share a guilty pleasure with others?
    Are guilty pleasures inherently negative?
    Is “guilty pleasure” a misnomer?
    Is becoming a cyborg on your bucket list?
    Neurolink
    Would you want to live forever?
    Stem cell therapy
    Dan Bilzerian
    Would immortality reduce our motivation to live a fulfilled life?
    Is there a current social norm that will become a guilty pleasure for the next generation?
    38 min
  • Ep. 16: The Future of Graduate Education (with guest Karen Phillips)
    Graduate education on the high seas
    What’s it’s like overseeing all aspects of graduate education at a business school
    Introverted and extroverted leadership
    Giving and receiving feedback
    How to respond to angry tweets
    Commercial break: #questromlife
    The future of education
    BU Questrom’s Micromasters
    The relational aspect of digital learning
    MOOC certificate programs
    Employers and competency-based digital learning
    The role of industry in the future of education
    The spectrum of hybrid learning: where does the residential university end and online learning begin?
    BU’s unique MSMS program
    Where does education end and work begin?
    Hiring curious employees
    Are you learning what you need today or what you’ll need tomorrow?
    Innovation: don’t sit on your laurels
    Skills that have been important over the decades
    Do what you are passionate about
    37 min
  • Ep. 15: Laughter – The Good, the Mad, the Funny
    Laughter: humorous or social?
    Did you pick your laugh?
    Uncontrollable laughter
    When have you laughed the hardest?
    The giggle loop
    Should we do the “ha-ha” game at a PFL retreat?
    Trash in the Himalayas
    Is that funny, punk?
    Memes
    The irony of laughing at something that’s not funny
    Watching bad movies—on purpose
    The Room, Tommy Wiseau
    Stephanie’s high school summer of bad sci fi
    Blockbuster: the virtue of escaping recommendation engines
    Best of the Worst and Neil Breen
    Trying to beat Netflix’s recommendation engine
    Chef’s Table, Switched at Birth, and other good finds
    When have you laughed the hardest?
    Commercial break: Laugh Assistant
    Laughter is auditory
    Evolution and laughter
    Comedians as laugh-makers
    Evolution of humor
    Laughter as a way to de-stress
    Gallows humor, laughter as a way to cope
    Humor in older age
    Two extremes: outrage and laughter
    When humor goes wrong
    Knowing your audience
    Michael Richards
    Justine Sacco
    Mocking others: when people pile on
    Are trolls normal people?
    The woman who followed up with her troll
    Bullying on social media
    The implications and context of laughter
    Laughter because of anxiety and as a medicine for anxiety
    Do you practice self-censorship to avoid possible offense
    Or, do you feel free to say what you feel?
    When a comedian calls out their audience
    Have courage, try your best—continue to bring laughter to the world!
    53 min
  • Ep. 14: What’s in a Dream?
    The biology of dreams
    Theories for why we dream
    The spiritual side of dreaming
    Eat late at night, get more dreams
    Lucid dreaming
    Can we really ever control our dreams?
    Can you dream about something you’ve never experienced?
    Dream genealogy
    Break: Dream Sequence
    Emotions in reality vs. in dreams
    Dreamtime (Aboriginal Australia)
    Is there a parallel reality for every dream?
    The physics of dreams
    Is innovation new or an iterative recombination?
    Are our dreams genetically carried through generations?
    39 min

About Positive Feedback Loop

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Positive Feedback Loop! We discuss tech, history, and culture and we have fun disagreeing with each other. ;-) Co-hosts: Luis, Ray, and Steph. Find us on Twitter: twitter.com/thepflpodcast!