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In this episode of The Banker’s Bookshelf, host Paolo Sironi welcomes Tony Fish, author of Decision Making in Uncertain Times, for a wide-ranging conversation on navigating fundamental uncertainty in finance, technology, and leadership. 

Tony explains that the book stems from his experience as a severely dyslexic and autistic thinker. Written primarily for neurotypical readers, it shows how people who see the world differently approach uncertainty, so that boardrooms can better understand and use those perspectives. Rather than offering a single framework or model, the book presents ten distinct ways of viewing the same situation. Central to this is the idea of paradox: the same data can support two valid but opposing interpretations. Fish argues that every important decision should contain a paradox; without it, decisionmakers remain trapped inside an existing frame. The final chapter explores “Peak Paradox.”

He contends that many foundations of modern decision-making—money, law, time, and especially counting—are human inventions that do not exist in nature. Counting does not equal truth, yet metrics and trend lines are routinely treated as truth. KPIs often begin for narrow reasons (incentives, bonuses) and then persist as “ghosts in the system,” even after the original purpose disappears and the underlying data changes.

On AI and geopolitics, Fish describes sovereignty as Schrödinger’s cat: simultaneously alive and dead. What once meant freedom from asking permission now means interdependence. Claims of AI sovereignty, he says, are “unbelievable levels of madness.” Companies are becoming more sovereign than states, while limited-liability structures are failing. He points to the need to rethink what companies are for.

Fish distinguishes choices, decisions, and judgment. Children are typically offered A or B and asked to decide but rarely taught to ask whether the right choices were even presented. Dyslexic thinkers often see the missing options. Judgment—reflection on whether the available choices were adequate—should begin early and be central to leadership, not reserved for later life.

Finally, he introduces “consurgence,” an old English word meaning “rising together.” Trust, leadership, and success cannot simply be built; they may emerge from conditions, or they may not. There are no guarantees. The constructionist mindset that tries to engineer the perfect outcome (the best teams, the best pitch, the best game) fails to account for this. Banking, he notes, often claims to “build” trust, yet trust cannot be constructed on command.

In this week’s pod international bestselling author Kevin J Anderson (Star Wars, Dune) returns. With more than 23 million books in print, Kevin has just embarked on his most ambitious personal project yet – creating the complete works of the Saga of Seven Suns epic. Kevin started this series in 2002 but is just launching his own Backerkit campaign. Along the journey Kevin explains how the business of publishing has been reshaped by technology and time.

James Garvey, Founder and CEO of Self Financial, joins Social Currency to discuss the challenges millions of Americans face when building or rebuilding credit. From the personal experience that inspired Self to the company’s mission of helping more than four million people establish credit, James shares insights on financial inclusion, fintech innovation, and expanding access to opportunity. Listen in as we explore the future of credit building and the impact of creating pathways to a stronger financial foundation.

Anand Chandrasekaran does not sit on the sidelines. He jumps into the game. He is the managing partner at Celesta Capital and co-founder of two AI companies, Crescendo and HiO. He explains why AI only transforms an industry when insiders drive the change, and why he expects the shift from scarcity to abundance to transform fields like customer care. He also describes how tokens have become the new capital, that is, the vital resource that CEOs must ration. Rob Tercek talks to Anand about what happens to the career ladder when AI automates the call center jobs that built India’s middle class, how the role of the VC has evolved, and Anand’s view that we are in the earliest stage of the AI super cycle.

Barq means lightning in Arabic, and for once the brand name might be underselling it. One million users in three weeks, more than 15 million users across over 210 nationalities today, with around $118 billion processed since launch.

In this episode hosts Jason Henrichs and Brett King are joined by Mohamed Al Sabea, Chief of Staff and Chief Strategy Officer at barq, to discuss the rapid growth and strategic approach of barq, a digital payments company in Saudi Arabia.

For context, barq has achieved in two years what has taken many of today’s neobanks the better part of a decade to accomplish. And then last month, they did something even rarer: raising $329.5 million in a Series A funding round that values the business at $1.85 billion. It is the largest Series A round in MENA / GCC history. Barq is also the fastest growing neobank outside of China serving 70% of the Saudi banked population in just two years.

Listen as the trio explores how barq achieved its lightning-fast user acquisition, built trust through transparency, and planned for regional expansion and new product offerings.

Stay tuned for more!

In this week’s Futurist network we are joined live in the Dubai studio with two active AI architects, Jean-Baptiste Isnard (founder of Quantum Spirit) and Dr. Julia Michelin (founder of LumaBrush AI) a returning guest. The issue of whether AI is conscious continues to be debated at large but the question is perhaps not about if they are conscious but how the debate itself will change the view of human consciousness itself. In this very philosophical conversation Jean Baptiste and Julia present us with many of the challenges that emerge when mankind has to deal with embedded AI that is smarter than us collectively, while not necessarily being conscious or aligned. There’s no debate that AI is coming, but perhaps the biggest contribution it will make is helping us instead our own consciousness and the breadth of intelligence in the world around us.

In this episode, Brett King sits down with Carl Rivera, Chief Product Officer at Nubank—one of the world’s largest digital banking platforms—to discuss how Nubank is redefining modern banking.

With customer-centricity at its core, Nu continues to pave new paths in financial services. In this conversation, Brett and Carl discuss Nubank’s exponential growth, international expansion, U.S. market entry, design philosophy and product strategy. They also explore Nubank’s recent launch and leap forward with Nu Global, a multi-currency digital account for people with global lives.

From the beginning, Nu had a cultural value mission: to be the first bank that customers love fanatically. People go to banks for the most important decisions in their lives. By prioritizing customer experience and intuitive UI, Nu ensures users can easily navigate financial tasks—from KYC to global remittances—with the same ease as using a familiar social network or app. Building across borders.

Listen now and stay tuned for more!

In this episode of Banker’s Bookshelf, Paolo Sironi sits with Eric So, Sloan Distinguished Professor of Global Economics and Behavioral Science, to discuss his new book “The Collision”.

The conversation opens on a distinction most AI talk skips. The industry asks what the technology can do for us. So asks what it is doing to us: to the skills we still bother to build, to our tolerance for difficulty, to what we remember, and to the way we judge the world. He treats AI less as a tool upgrade than as an invasive form of intelligence already reshaping the people who use it. The frame is Steve Jobs’s 1980 line that a computer is a bicycle for the mind, the most efficient mover on the chart. So’s revision is blunt. In the age of AI, the bicycle has become a motorcycle. It offers speed and self-propulsion, and it multiplies the cost of a bad decision. The title is chosen for the same reason. “Adoption” and “shift” sound orderly. “Collision” names a rapid force that is changing human intelligence and machine intelligence at the same time.

From the research, he draws four rules. Value the struggle: products sell the removal of friction, but struggle is how knowledge becomes yours. Students who outsource essays look strong at home and collapse in the exam room. Value who you are without AI: a polished deck you cannot defend is not your work, and the same failure shows up in a client pitch. Reinvest the surplus: history’s transformative tools did not merely speed the old task; they let people reach harder problems. Saved time spent scrolling is a wasted surplus. Make AI a cognitive trainer: personalized tutoring has long delivered a two-sigma learning gain, and AI can approximate it only if it walks you to the answer instead of handing it over.

Banking sits in the middle of the argument. The sector’s instinct is to strip friction and automate cost. So’s warning is cognitive short-termism: fewer juniors, less mentoring, and a thinner bench of people who can still trace a problem when the model is wrong. Efficiency that deskills the institution is not a saving. It is a debt.

The episode is a call to treat AI as a behavioral problem, not only a productivity one.

Alex Serdiuk is the co-founder and CEO of AI voice company Respeecher in Kiev. Alex and Rob Tercek discuss how synthetic voice generation will transform the motion picture industry, including some surprising reversals such as: how AI voices will change the global distribution strategy for feature films; how human actors can benefit from AI voice clones; why ethical approaches to AI yield optimal results; how the talent guilds have come to accept AI in film production; the business value of trust in times of rapid change; new legislation to prevent deep fakes.  

In this episode of Breaking Banks Africa, Matteo Rizzi sits down with Selma Ribica, founder of First Circle Capital, to explore Africa’s evolving fintech and venture capital landscape. Ribica reflects on her journey from M-Pesa to investing, highlighting how mobile money demonstrated the potential for technology to bring financial services to underserved populations. She explains why First Circle Capital focuses on early-stage fintech founders and how regulation, talent, capital and market maturity shape opportunities across Africa. The discussion also covers regional differences, developing entrepreneurial talent, helping startups scale, and the realities of building and fundraising for a first-time African venture capital fund.