Susan MacTavish Best interviews Jim Kennedy,  President at ThREE Consulting & Caldera Holding LLC.  Susan and Jim discuss the economic, national security and geopolitical ramifications of China’s rare earth monopoly. 

Live music from Queen Esther and Firas Zreik. 

Susan MacTavish Best interviews Ali Kashani, CEO and co-founder of last mile robot delivery company Serve Robotics (NASDAQ: SERV). Musicians Queen Esther and friends perform live. About Ali Kashani: Dr. Ali Kashani is the co-founder and CEO of Serve Robotics, the maker of Level 4 autonomous sidewalk delivery robots that has received investments from Uber and NVIDIA.  Founded in 2017 as the robotics division of Postmates, Serve has completed tens of thousands of deliveries for enterprise partners such as Uber Eats and 7-Eleven.

Ali is a serial founder with multiple exits, including smart-home hardware maker Neurio (sold to Generac) and Lox (sold to Postmates). Following Postmates acquisition of his venture, Ali launched Postmates X, the internal innovation unit that created Serve’s award-winning robot.

Ali received his Ph.D. in Robotics from the University of British Columbia in 2012. He is the recipient of Canada’s premier scholarship, the Alexander Graham Bell Fellowship, and has been awarded over 15 patents. 

I'll be speaking with Hind Hassan, the 2024 winner of The Neal Conan Prize for Excellence in Journalism.  We'll be discussing her life, experiences, and views on the current state of journalism. 

With live performances from Posthoc's artist in residence, Queen Esther & pianist Sharp Radway.

I'll be speaking with national security expert and geopolitical thinker Dmitri Alperovitch. Dmitri recently published World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century. With live performances from Posthoc's artist in residence, Queen Esther.

The History of Intelligence with Max Bennett.  Max is the author of The Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains, and is the cofounder & CEO of Alby, an AI company based in NYC. This salon features music by Queen Esther & Friends and is supported by a grant Posthoc received from Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF).  Templeton World Charity Foundation’s Diverse Intelligence (DI) initiative seeks to break down disciplinary boundaries and build a new scientific community. DI is a multiyear, global effort to understand a world alive with brilliance in many forms. Its mission is to promote open-minded, forward-looking inquiry in animal, human, and machine intelligences. TWCF collaborates with leading experts and emerging scholars from around the globe, developing high-caliber projects that advance our comprehension of the constellation of intelligences.

Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba.  Neil is a specialist in the philosophy of human rights, philosophy and technology, sexual ethics, and research on alternative sexualities. He is the co-editor of Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications (MIT Press) and Fragile Freedoms: The Global Struggle for Human Rights (Oxford University Press).  He is particularly interested in the intersection of sex and technology and is the co-author of “The Rise of Digisexuality: Therapeutic Challenges and Possibilities" where the authors argue a new sexual identity is emerging: digisexuality. Digisexuals are people for whom technology is an integral part of their sexual identity, and who may not feel the need for human partners.

Posthoc Salons founder, Susan MacTavish Best, interviews Lisa Ferri about her experiences covering the Trump trial, the verdict, and what she sees ahead in the media landscape in the run up to the Presidential election.  

Lisa is an Emmy award-winning journalist who's spent three decades covering politics and culture inside some of America's most storied newsrooms: 60 Minutes, MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and Deadline White House, ABC's Good Morning America and World News Tonight.

Does Consciousness Matter?  A conversation w/philosopher David Chalmers in SoHo for evening filled with conversation, live music, homemade food and our warm NYC Posthoc community.  The salon is supported by a grant Posthoc received from Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF). TWCF funds grants that are accelerating research on consciousness, and David is a fellow grantee of TWCF.

In this episode of the POSTHOC Digital Podcast, Susan interviews Deborah Bonello, former Head VICE News Latin America and author of NARCAS: The Secret Rise of Women in Latin America's Cartels. Deborah made the journey to the POSTHOC LA warehouse all the way from Mexico City to discuss her reporting on female-led organized crime that ultimately led to writing NARCAS.

For our last Posthoc salon of 2023 we invited economist Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg into our living room for an evening of conversation and music.  Hilda is an entrepreneur, investor, author and philanthropist. She is the founder and chairman of Strategic Investment Group, an independent investment management firm. For a dozen years, Hilda was the Chief Investment Officer (Pensions) at The World Bank. She’s served on the board of numerous public companies  (US Airways, McGraw-Hill, Harvard Management, General Mills etc) and nonprofits (National Opera, National Symphony). She is the founder of Orchestra of the Americas  which finds diverse musical talent in underserved communities and gives musicians a platform to develop their talents and launch a career playing music professionally in orchestras around the world. Under the umbrella of OA is the Global Leaders Institute, which offers students an opportunity to study for an MBA for the Arts, a degree supporting artistic innovation and social impact. And so we had the most sublime folk music from half a dozen artists throughout the evening from the OA program which you’ll hear throughout the conversation.

This salon fell under the Economics & Human Flourishing priority at Templeton World Charity Foundation and it was supported by a grant POSTHOC received from the Foundation. TWCF funds grants that investigate individual freedom, free market theories, entrepreneurialism and how they relate to human flourishing globally.