The Human Risk Podcast

What if the biggest risk isn’t saying the wrong thing, but being dull? Why do so many conference panels feel pre-cooked? Why do organisations hire people for their brains and then make them nervous about saying what they think?
 
Episode summary
My guests on this episode are Anna Cairns and Kerry Collinge, co-founders of The Illuminari. They describe it as a collective of some of marketing’s sharpest minds, including Rory Sutherland, Les Binet, Orlando Wood, Margaret Heffernan and Dr Karen Nelson-Field. It’s built on a philosophy Rory calls “delightful disobedience.” We talk about why they call themselves Chief Connectors, how a mischievous dinner in Cannes became a business, and why they’d rather run a fire starter than a fireside chat. We also discuss open-plan offices that leave no room to be silly, why fun and serious work aren’t mutually exclusive, and why dull ideas cost far more than we think. Along the way we cover moths, pubs, Channel 4’s After Dark, careers that don’t follow a straight line, and why authenticity matters more than ever when people can’t trust what they see.

Guest bios
Anna Cairns is co-founder of The Illuminari. She spent years at Ogilvy, starting in its behavioural science unit (then Ogilvy Change) as its “Excellence Manager.” She later became Rory Sutherland’s talent manager and led Nudgestock, Ogilvy’s festival of behavioural science and creativity.

Kerry Collinge is the other co-founder of The Illuminari. She has more than 20 years of marketing leadership behind her, at Carlsberg, AB InBev and Cadbury/Mondelez as well as at fast-growing brands. Most recently she spent several years as the driving force behind the Uncensored CMO podcast and worked on the Cost of Dull project.

AI-Generated Timestamped Summary

• 00:00 — Introduction
• 02:33 — “Chief Connectors”, silly job titles and hierarchy
• 05:52 — How Illuminati became The Illuminari, and why the moth is their symbol
• 08:12 — A “concatenation of dissenters” and hiding behind data
• 11:16 — Killing the boring panel: fire starters, not fireside chats
• 13:23 — Building the collective, and plans for an Illuminari pub
• 17:45 — AI, efficiency culture and why creatives need to get out of the office
• 23:00 — Sneaking off to the cinema, Lemon and the problem with open-plan offices
• 29:18 — Fun as a core value, and why serious subjects need lightness
• 34:35 — No five-year plan: Margaret Heffernan and embracing uncertainty
• 37:15 — “Best practice”? Says who? And the Cost of Dull
• 40:03 — Long tenure, messy careers and why the “safe” path is the risky one
• 46:20 — Optimisation, doing nothing and the value of curiosity
• 49:51 — Unrehearsed debates, Cannes and Channel 4’s After Dark
• 55:23 — Performative fun, and changing your mind in public
• 1:00:02 — “Views my own”, command and control, and being asked to plug products

Links

• The Illuminari: theilluminari.com
• Anna Cairns on LinkedIn
• Kerry Collinge on LinkedIn

People and things we mention

• Rory Sutherland on LinkedIn
• Orlando Wood on LinkedIn, and his book Lemon
• Margaret Heffernan: mheffernan.com, including her book Embracing Uncertainty. You can also hear my earlier conversation with Margaret
• Les Binet: IPA profile
• Adam Morgan, eatbigfish: The Challenger Project
• Peter Field: profile
• Dr Karen Nelson-Field: Amplified Intelligence
• Greg Hahn: Mischief
• Mark Denton: COY! Communications
• Nir Eyal’s book Beyond Belief
• Greg James’s book All the Best for the Future
• Uncensored CMO podcast
• Stella Artois’s “Reassuringly Expensive” campaign
• Channel 4’s After Dark
• My episode with Annie Wagstaff on The Joy of Curiosity

What does it actually take to prevent sexual harassment at work? Policies, training, reporting mechanisms and statements of zero tolerance are one thing. Creating a workplace where sexual harassment is genuinely less likely to happen is something else entirely.

Episode Summary
In this episode, I talk to Dr Nina Burrowes, a psychologist who has spent more than 20 years working on the psychology of sexual harm and is the author of All Reasonable Steps: How Psychology Transforms Workplace Sexual Harassment Prevention.

Nina argues that organisations need to stop treating sexual harassment simply as a compliance problem and recognise it as a human one. Weexplore why conventional training can become little more than “solution theatre”; why a lack of reports doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of problems; why automatically escalating incidents to HR can have unintended consequences; and why prevention requires people to have the skills and confidence to intervene before situations escalate.

The conversation also goes much wider than sexual harassment, exploring what happens when organisations try to manage messy human behaviour through neat rules and processes — and why trust, feedback, consent, judgement and psychological safety matter across organisational life.

Ultimately, Nina offers a different way of thinking about healthy cultures: not places where nothing ever goes wrong, but places with the maturity and skills to respond intelligently when it does.

Guest Profile - Dr Nina Burrowes
Nina is a psychologist, author and founder of The Consent Collective. Her work focuses on the psychology of sexual harm and helping organisations move from compliance towards meaningful prevention.

AI-Generated Timestamped Summary
00:00 — Introduction: when organisational solutions don’t solve human problems
02:30 — Nina’s journey into the psychology of sexual harm
08:15 — All Reasonable Steps: from compliance to prevention
13:45 — Why workplaces have a role to play
17:15 — The illusion of simple solutions
21:30 — Understanding who causes harm — and why
27:00 — Moving beyond “stranger danger”
30:30 — The danger of “that doesn’t happen here”
37:00 — Creating a culture where difficult conversations can happen
42:00 — Sexual harassment as a cultural stress test
47:00 — When everything becomes an HR problem
52:00 — Why HR isn’t the culture
55:00 — AI and the future of Human Risk
56:30 — Consent as a transferable human skill
01:00:30 — Building organisations that walk the talk

Resources
Nina's website, including details of her book 'All Reasonable Steps'  - https://www.ninaburrowes.com/

The Consent Collective - https://www.consentcollective.com/

The Consent Collective — Workplace Sexual Harassment Prevention
https://www.consentcollective.com/workplace

What can financial markets teach us about human behaviour? Why might the size of a CEO’s signature tell us something useful about the company they run? And why, even when smart investors know something is probably a bubble, might they keep investing anyway?

Episode Summary
My guest on this episode is Professor Alex Edmans, who returns to the show to discuss his new book, The Madness of Markets: Why Smart Investors Make Crazy Decisions and How to Exploit Them. As the title suggests, this is a book about financial markets. But our conversation is really about something much broader: human behaviour.

Markets ought to be places where irrationality gets eliminated. They contain millions of participants, huge amounts of data and some of the smartest and best-paid people in the world. Yet people still overreact, follow the herd, become overconfident, refuse to admit mistakes and pay attention to things that shouldn't matter.

Alex explains why that happens and what it can teach us about decision-making beyond investing.We explore why seemingly trivial information can move markets, the fine line between conviction and delusion, and why information that's hiding in plain sight can sometimes tell us more than sophisticated financial analysis. Alex share why corporate jets, unusual locations for shareholder meetings and even the size of a CEO's signature can offer clues about how a company is run.

We also discuss information overload and our preference for things we can measure, why more disclosure isn't necessarily better disclosure, and how organisations can exploit the limits of human attention — including the strategic release of bad news on Friday afternoons.

He also considers the impact of AI; machines can process enormous quantities of quantitative information without some of our human biases, but qualitative judgements about character, culture and trustworthiness may still require people. The future, Alex argues, isn't necessarily human or machine, but human and machine. Along the way, we explore bubbles, loss aversion, sunk costs, incentives in investment banking, financial literacy and regulation.

And, ultimately, we return to a simple idea: markets behave irrationally because they're made up of human beings.

Guest Biography
Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School, an author, speaker and expert on behavioural finance, responsible business and corporate governance. Before entering academia, Alex worked in investment banking at Morgan Stanley. His research has been widely published, and he has won numerous awards for teaching. His previous books include Grow the Pie and May Contain Lies, the latter of which was the subject of his previous appearance on the podcast.

Links
Alex Edmans' website: https://alexedmans.com/

Alex Edmans on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aedmans/

The Madness of Markets: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/821903/the-madness-of-markets-by-alex-edmans/

Alex's previous appearance on the show — Professor Alex Edmans on Misinformation: https://www.humanriskpodcast.com/professor-alex-edmans-on-misinformation/

AI-Generated Timestamped Summary
[00:00:00] Introduction — what financial markets can teach us about human behaviour

[00:01:45] Why Alex wrote The Madness of Markets and why markets are driven by psychology as well as economics

[00:03:15] Markets as a laboratory for human behaviour — if millions of investors can get things wrong, what does that tell us about small groups making decisions?

[00:04:40] Three types of mistakes: overreaction, underreaction and focusing on the wrong information

[00:06:20] Loss aversion and the sunk cost fallacy — why admitting a previous decision was wrong is so difficult

[00:07:20] Combining memorable anecdotes with large-scale evidence, from Isaac Newton to market bubbles

[00:08:45] Why highly intelligent and sophisticated investors still make systematic mistakes

[00:10:40] Finding signals in unexpected places — why more data isn't necessarily better data

[00:12:20] What corporate jets, remote shareholder meetings, CEO photographs and signature sizes might reveal about leadership[

00:14:00] Information hiding in plain sight and how Alex's collection of unusual academic research became a book

[00:17:00] Why more corporate disclosure isn't necessarily helpful — and our preference for quantitative over qualitative information

[00:19:30] Creativity, silos and finding connections that other people miss

[00:21:00] Football, national mood and the stock market — demonstrating how emotion can affect prices

[00:23:00] Recognising our own humanity and why stress and emotion affect even highly experienced decision-makers

[00:24:00] AI and investing — what machines can do better and where human qualitative judgement still matters

[00:26:30] Why market inefficiencies don't disappear even after researchers reveal them

[00:28:00] Knowing there's a bubble but continuing to invest — why being right in the long term can still get you into trouble in the short term

[00:30:00] Investment horizons, other people's money and why your objectives determine what counts as a sensible decision

[00:31:40] Information overload — why watching markets too closely can make investors worse at investing

[00:33:15] How these principles extend beyond financial markets to housing, collectibles and other major decisions

[00:35:20] Mergers and acquisitions, investment bankers and the problem of misaligned incentives

[00:37:00] How organisations exploit human attention — including why bad news tends to arrive on Friday afternoons

[00:39:00] Could changing when and how we work help us notice information that everyone else misses?

[00:41:00] How writing the book changed Alex's own investment decisions, from rebalancing tech holdings to paying attention to fees

[00:43:00] Why Alex hasn't set up his own investment fund and how he applies behavioural insights to his portfolio

[00:46:00] Taking the broader view — why Alex prefers researching, teaching and explaining markets to running money

[00:48:00] Why The Madness of Markets was really 22 years in the making

[00:50:00] Democratising investing, financial literacy and helping people understand the risks they're taking

[00:53:30] Regulation, hidden costs and why making the right information salient may be more useful than simply providing more information

[00:55:45] Are markets really crazy — or are they simply an unusually visible example of humans being human?

[00:58:00] Why the lessons of the book ultimately go far beyond investing

What if understanding regulation could help us spot when politicians are promising the impossible? Regulation sounds simple in theory. Something poses a risk, so we create rules and a regulator to control it. In practice, things get complicated very quickly. It's something we all benefit from, but equally can experience as redtape that prevents us from doing what we think we ought to be able to.

On this episode, I'm exploring the inner workings of regulation; so whether you are a regulator, a compliance officer, work in a regulated industry or just a member of the public, this'll help you understand what is and isn't possible and why regulation can often seem ineffective or overbearing.

Episode summary
My guests on this episode are Lyndon Nelson and Gavin Stewart, two highly experienced former financial regulators and authors of Building Better Regulators: The Art of the Impossible.

Regulators are expected to protect consumers, maintain stability, encourage competition, support innovation and increasingly promote economic growth. The problem is that those objectives don't always point in the same direction. As Lyndon and Gavin explain, making trade-offs is part of regulation; pretending those trade-offs don't exist is where things become problematic.

In our conversation, we explore the tension between rules and principles, why firms don't always respond to regulation in the way regulators expect, and how enforcement involves choices about which cases not to pursue. We also look at regulatory perimeters, the hidden costs of collecting data, and why having more information doesn't necessarily lead to better regulation.

We also discuss AI and crypto, behavioural science, consumer protection, international regulation, the temptation to fight the last war, and why regulators need imagination as well as analysis. Ultimately, this is a conversation about regulation as a human system — shaped by incentives, politics, judgement, uncertainty and the behaviour of both regulators and the regulated.

Guest bios
Lyndon Nelson spent 33 years at the Bank of England, much of it working in regulation, and ultimately became Deputy CEO of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA). Since leaving the Bank, he has worked with organisations including London Business School and the International Monetary Fund.

Gavin Stewart began his career as a banking supervisor at the Bank of England before moving to the Financial Services Authority (FSA), where he held a variety of senior roles. He later became Chief Risk Officer at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and subsequently worked in the private sector.Together, they are the authors of Building Better Regulators: The Art of the Impossible, a book designed to help regulators — and those who interact with them — better understand the practical realities of regulation.

Links

• Building Better Regulators: The Art of the Impossible — book website
• The Enforcement Game — try the exercise discussed in the episode
• Lyndon Nelson on LinkedIn
• Gavin Stewart on LinkedIn

AI-Generated Timestamped Summary
00:00 Why regulation matters — and the trade-offs politicians often prefer not to acknowledge

03:00 Meet Lyndon Nelson and Gavin Stewart

05:00 Why they wrote the book — and why regulation is so badly understood

07:00 The impossible mandates politicians give regulators

10:00 Primary objectives, secondary objectives and the problem of “have regards”

14:00 Why understanding regulatory failure doesn’t mean letting regulators off the hook

18:00 Regulation as a fundamentally human and behavioural endeavour

21:00 How firms respond to, interpret and game regulation

22:00 Rules vs principles — the impossible search for certainty and flexibility

28:00 Enforcement: what happens when regulators have more cases than resources

31:00 Choosing whom to enforce against — severity, coverage and the “splash test”

34:00 Who are rules really written for — the compliant, the gamers or the criminals?

38:00 The regulatory perimeter — and why technology makes boundaries increasingly difficult

44:00 BCCI, Barings, Wirecard and FTX: the challenge of regulating across borders

48:00 Why more regulatory data doesn’t necessarily produce better regulation

59:00 The “Maginot Line” problem: regulating to prevent the last crisis rather than the next one
 
01:01:00 Failure of imagination, stress testing and learning to think the unthinkable
 
01:04:00 Accountability regimes, senior managers and regulation as an ongoing experiment

01:09:00 The industry that interprets regulation — and the strange business of regulatory “Kremlinology”
 
01:13:00 Who should work for regulators — career regulators, industry secondees and the value of both

01:17:00 Should regulators be better at following the standards they impose on others?

01:19:00 What “risk-based regulation” actually means — and why regulators struggle to admit they have a risk appetite
 
01:22:00 Why better public debate about regulation matters — and final thoughts on the book.

What if AI could help us understand people better, rather than simply replacing what humans do?

Episode summary
How can we use AI to become better at persuasion, communication and understanding human behaviour? My guest on this episode is Roger Dooley, author of The Persuasion Engine, a new book exploring what happens when behavioural science meets rapidly evolving technology.

Roger argues that tools once available only to large organisations — from behavioural science expertise to eye-tracking — are becoming accessible to almost anyone. We explore how AI can act as a personal “nudge unit”, helping us apply ideas from behavioural science, test communications and understand how different audiences might respond.We also discuss why simply asking an AI for an answer isn't enough, how to push LLMs beyond predictable responses, and why human judgement remains essential.

Roger introduces his idea of a “60-second audit” — using AI to identify how communications might be misunderstood or backfire before we send them.Along the way, we talk about Cialdini, cognitive biases, invisible calls-to-action, board papers, cultural disasters, AI collaborators, rally driving, long division and why the best analogy for AI might be a power tool rather than a replacement for human thinking.

Guest bio
Roger Dooley is an author, speaker and behavioural science expert who has spent years exploring a deceptively simple question: why do people do what they do?

His latest book, The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026), looks at what happens when behavioural science meets AI — and how tools once available only to big companies with big budgets are now becoming accessible to almost anyone.Roger is also the author of Friction, named a Top 3 Management Book by PwC’s strategy+business, and Brainfluence, which has been published in 11 languages.

He brings an unusually practical perspective to the subject. Roger co-founded College Confidential  and today he combines that entrepreneurial experience with behavioural science in his writing, speaking and teaching.He is a lecturer at McCombs Business School, a Forbes contributor and host of the Brainfluence podcast — and his work focuses on helping organisations understand people better, remove unnecessary friction and communicate in ways that actually work.

AI-Generated Timestamped Summary
00:00 — What if AI could be your behavioural scientist?
05:00 — Cialdini, behavioural science and why people don’t know why they decide
10:00 — Eye-tracking, attention and what people actually notice
15:00 — Making important information more visible
20:00 — Board reports, visual hierarchy and designing for human attention
25:00 — Better prompting and getting AI beyond obvious answers
30:00 — What happens to human expertise when AI knows the theory?
35:00 — Reactance, unintended consequences and communications that backfire
40:00 — Cultural context, reputation and Roger’s “60-second audit”
45:00 — Using AI to become better at understanding other audiences
50:00 — Roger’s lifelong interest in technology and what comes next
55:00 — Cognitive offloading, critical judgement and rally driving
57:00 — Why AI is best thought of as a power tool

Links to topics discussed

• The Persuasion Engine — Roger’s latest book on how AI, behavioural science and neuromarketing tools are becoming accessible to organisations of all sizes.
• Roger's previous appearance on this podcast talking about Friction.
• RogerDooley.com — Roger’s website, including his books, articles, speaking and latest work.
• Roger on LinkedIn — where Roger regularly shares ideas on behavioural science, persuasion, AI and marketing.
• The Brainfluence Podcast — Roger’s podcast exploring behaviour, persuasion, neuroscience and business.
• Roger’s episode on The Persuasion Engine — his own introduction to the ideas behind the book, including what he calls “Neuromarketing 2.0”.
• Friction — Roger’s previous book, and the subject of his earlier appearance on The Human Risk Podcast.

What’s the last thing you learned simply because you wanted to know?

Episode summary
Why do we feel the need to justify what we learn? My guest on this episode is Annie Wagstaff, a musician and composer whose career has taken her around the world touring with Take That and into writing music for advertising. But alongside her work in music, Annie has developed another passion: learning about whatever happens to make her curious.That could be vine tomatoes, animals, colour, knots, the human body, or simply something she notices while walking through a supermarket.

Annie shares what she discovers on social media, not because the knowledge necessarily has an obvious purpose, but because she finds it interesting. And that raises a fascinating question: what happens to the natural curiosity we have as children as we become adults?In our conversation, we explore creativity and constraints, sonic branding, why children pick up stones while adults tell them to put them down, the pleasure of knowing a little about a lot, short attention spans and hyperfocus, authenticity in an age of AI, and why learning something without knowing what you’re going to do with it might be exactly the point.We also talk about Take That, vine tomatoes, staring at flowers, doomscrolling, notebooks, knots and sailing — the kind of eclectic mix that an episode about curiosity really ought to contain.

Guest bio
Annie Wagstaff is a London-based guitarist, musician and composer.She has worked as a session musician, toured internationally with Take That, and composes music for advertising and other commercial projects.

Earlier in her career, Annie also released her own music and built a large following online through her guitar playing.More recently, she has used her social channels to share the things she learns simply because they interest her — turning subjects ranging from science and animals to everyday observations into short, accessible explorations of curiosity.

AI-Generated Timestamped Summary
00:00 — Why curiosity matters
05:00 — Touring the world with Take That
10:00 — Writing music for advertising
15:00 — Sonic branding and the power of sound
17:00 — From “Guitar Girl” to curiosity creator
22:00 — Vine tomatoes and unexpected rabbit holes
25:00 — Why children are naturally curious
34:00 — Flowers, distraction and noticing the world
38:00 — Becoming a “knowledge butterfly”
45:00 — Authenticity, social media and AI
50:00 — Why does knowledge need a purpose?
55:00 — Rediscovering curiosity — from five minutes to sailing

Links

• Annie's Website: anniewagstaff.com including her books
• TikTok: @annieplaysguitar on TikTok
• LinkedIn: Annie Wagstaff on LinkedIn
• Instagram: @annieplaysguitar on Instagram
• YouTube: Annie Plays Guitar on YouTube

What happens when someone who spends his life thinking about risk, decision-making and human behaviour is confronted with an uncertainty he simply can’t control?

Episode summary
My guest is Paul Craven, a behavioural scientist, former investment professional, magician and keynote speaker, and one of my favourite people to talk to. When we sat down to record this episode, I noticed that Paul’s voice sounded different.

His explanation — that he had recently been diagnosed with oral cancer — took our conversation in an unexpected and deeply personal direction.We explore what his experience has taught him about uncertainty, why he deliberately chose not to Google his diagnosis, and the difference between having information and having useful information.

From there, we explore luck and skill, decision and gratitude journals, relationships versus transactions, the dangers of binary thinking, and why sometimes the best thing you can do when you’re in a bad mood is go for a walk in the rain. It’s a conversation about behavioural science, but also about perspective, paying attention and what we discover about ourselves when life doesn’t go according to plan.

Key themes

• Living with uncertainty and the psychological value of having a plan
• Why more information isn’t always better information
• AI, search engines and our desire for certainty
• Nuance versus binary thinking
• Luck, skill and decision journals
• Gratitude and paying attention to what matters
• Relationships versus transactions
• Storytelling, lived experience and different ways of seeing the world
• Chameleon Thinking and the value of changing perspective

Guest Profile - Paul Craven
Paul is a behavioural scientist, keynote speaker and former investment professional who brings together insights from psychology, behavioural science, finance and magic to explore how people really think and make decisions.


Links

• Paul Craven — speaker profile and booking enquiries
• Paul Craven’s website
• Iain McGilchrist
• Martin Shaw
• Mark Vernon

Paul’s previous appearances on the Human Risk Podcast
Solo: Paul Craven on Magic, Money & The Mind

With Gerald Ashley: Gerald Ashley & Paul Craven on Statistics, Spreadsheets & Scam Artistsand Paul Craven & Gerald Ashley on Context, Consequences & Changeability

With Rory Sutherland: Rory Sutherland & Paul Craven on Alchemy & Magic and Paul Craven & Rory Sutherland on Magic & Alchemy

With Rory Sutherland & Gerald Ashley at Abbey Road

Timestamped summary
00:00 — Introduction

01:35 — Paul’s diagnosis and living with uncertainty
Paul reveals his cancer diagnosis and reflects on why not knowing can sometimes be harder than receiving difficult news.

07:00 — Medicine, empathy and different perspectives
What Paul’s experience of the NHS taught him about communication, multidisciplinary thinking and the importance of context.

10:00 — Appreciating life, stories and walking in the rain
From Iain McGilchrist and Martin Shaw to Rowan Williams’ wonderfully simple advice for dealing with a bad mood.

17:10 — Reframing, Chameleon Thinking and “All shall be well”
Why changing perspective can help us navigate difficult circumstances — including Paul’s own illness.

25:45 — Why Paul chose not to Google his cancer
The risks of searching without context, what AI adds to the problem, and why life rarely provides simple binary answers.

31:20 — Luck, skill and keeping journals
What investment management can teach us about hindsight, decision quality and the value of both decision and gratitude journals.

37:20 — Relationships, transactions and the limits of efficiency
Why trust and relationships matter, and what can be lost when we optimise purely for efficiency.

43:25 — Authenticity, AI and Chesterton’s Fence
The value of individuality in an AI-mediated world and why we should understand what we’re discarding before we replace it.

47:10 — Wisdom under every rock
Paul brings together the themes of reframing, curiosity and learning from different perspectives.

49:10 — An update on Paul
Christian shares encouraging news following Paul’s surgery and looks forward to welcoming him back to the show.

Why do we rate everything and why do we do so on a scale of one to five stars? What happens when systems designed to help us make better choices start influencing our behaviour in ways we don’t necessarily notice?

Episode Summary
My guest is Benji Wilson, a journalist, TV critic and author of Rate This Book. Benji’s day job involves rating other people’s work, but when his children pointed out that Rotten Tomatoes was also rating him, it prompted him to investigate the ratings culture that surrounds us. In our conversation, we explore where ratings came from, why the five-star system became dominant and the psychology that makes us pay attention to the opinions of people we’ve never met.

We discuss social proof and the wisdom of crowds, why we often use ratings to avoid making bad decisions rather than to identify the very best option, and what happens when reviews are fake, manipulated or simply unfair.

We also explore the consequences of moving from rating products and services to rating people, including Uber drivers, hospitality workers and doctors, and why a single negative review can have significant consequences.Benji also explains how ratings might have applications in places we wouldn’t necessarily expect, including workplace appraisals and even democracy, where alternative voting systems use ratings to allow people to express more nuanced preferences.

And, appropriately for someone who has written a book called Rate This Book, we discuss what it feels like when the ratings are turned back on you — including why an anonymous three-star review might actually be more useful than a perfect five-star score.

Guest Profile
Benji is a journalist, author and TV critic. His book, Rate This Book, explores how ratings and reviews came to dominate modern life, the psychology that makes them work and what happens when the systems designed to help us make choices begin shaping those choices themselves.

Links

• Benji's website — more about Benji and his work.
• Rate This Book — How Star Ratings Took Over the World, published by New Modern Arcade.
• Rate This Book audiobook — read by Benji Wilson.

AI-Generated Timestamped Summary

00:00 — Introduction: why we rate everything
01:45 — Benji’s life as a TV critic and discovering that Rotten Tomatoes was also rating him.
03:30 — Where ratings came from, from our instinct to rank things to the emergence of star ratings.
08:30 — The psychology of ratings: prospect theory, avoiding bad decisions and why we rely on other people’s opinions.
10:15 — Why five stars became the dominant rating system.
16:00 — Experts versus crowds, social proof and why thousands of reviews can feel so persuasive.
20:00 — Fake reviews, manipulated ratings and why critical thinking still matters.
25:00 — What happens when we move from rating products to rating people — and the real-world consequences of negative reviews.
29:30 — Reputation management, review blackmail and whether ratings platforms need greater regulation.
33:30 — Ratings and democracy: could STAR voting offer a less binary way of choosing politicians?38:30 — Workplace appraisals, reciprocal ratings and what happens when a numerical score overwhelms everything else.
43:00 — Uber and how our relationship with rating systems changes over time.
44:30 — What it feels like to have Rate This Book rated — including Benji’s mysterious three-star review.
47:30 — Why three stars may be our most natural — and least useful — rating.
52:30 — How writing the book changed Benji’s own behaviour and why trusted personal recommendations can beat aggregated reviews.
56:30 — Why companies really want our ratings and the commercial incentives behind endless requests for feedback.
01:01:00 — Amazon Vine, gamification and how rating systems can influence the people doing the rating.
01:02:30 — Where to find Benji and Rate This Book, plus the inevitable invitation to rate both the book and the podcast.

What parts of yourself have you learned to hide in order to be taken seriously? My guest on this episode is Mark Heywood, a friend of the show, returning guest and someone I've collaborated with on a number of projects.

Episode Summary & Guest Profile
Mark has spent more than twenty years working in crisis management and operational resilience, while simultaneously building a successful career as a bestselling novelist, screenwriter and, more recently, stand-up comedian.

On the morning we recorded this conversation, Mark published an article marking his fifty-first birthday. In it, he reflected on the pressure many of us feel to present only one version of ourselves professionally, arguing that his creative and corporate lives were never really separate.

As he puts it, they were 'not two jobs, but one obsession wearing two different lanyards.' That simple idea becomes the starting point for a much wider discussion about the stories we tell ourselves, and the stories organisations tell themselves.

Along the way we explore:

• Why "stay in your lane" may say more about other people's expectations than your own potential.
• Why organisations often encourage people to bring their whole selves to work, while rewarding conformity.
• What interviews, dress codes and organisational culture reveal about human behaviour.
• Why stories often influence behaviour more effectively than rules, policies and frameworks.
• What films can teach us about operational resilience, cybersecurity and crisis management.
• Why the Titanic remains one of the most powerful lessons in organisational failure.
• How imagination is a strategic capability rather than a soft skill.
• Why thinking through "severe but plausible" scenarios requires organisations to become better storytellers.

Links

• Mark's birthday article: "A Birthday Declaration from Someone Who Spent Over Twenty Years Pretending to Be Half of Himself" (LinkedIn)
  
  
• Mark's Behind The Spine podcast
  
  
• The Writing Salon
  
  
• Behind The Spine podcast
  
  
• Mark on LinkedIn
  
  
• Mark's previous appearances on the show talking about The Creative Industries under COVID, and Human Risk in the Creative Industries
  
  
• Films, Stories & People Mentioned
  • Die Hard  
  • Apollo 13 
  • The Martian 
  • The Odyssey (Christopher Nolan)
  • Don't Look Up
  • Snakes on a Plane 
  • Sharknado 
  • Noah's Ark 
  • RMS Titanic
  • Rachel Heyhoe Flint 
  • Jeremy King 

AI-Generated Timestamped Summary
00:00 – Why do we hide parts of ourselves to be taken seriously?

03:40 – Mark explains why he stopped separating his creative and corporate identities.

08:00 – Which hobbies and outside interests are considered professionally acceptable—and why?

10:30 – Job interviews, authenticity and bringing your whole self to work.

16:00 – Jeremy King on why behaviour matters more than dress codes.

19:00 – Rachel Heyhoe Flint, the MCC and what institutional rules reveal about culture.

23:00 – Why stories influence behaviour more effectively than rules.

24:00 – The Trojan Horse and using films to teach cybersecurity and resilience.

29:00 – The Titanic as a lesson in organisational resilience rather than maritime history.

32:00 – Conduct versus outcomes: why testing matters more than compliance.

36:00 – Using stories and popular culture to make risk real.

38:00 – Noah's Ark, history and the enduring power of storytelling.

40:30 – CrowdStrike, PPE and why organisations keep repeating the same mistakes.

46:00 – Stories aren't predictions—they're a way of exploring possibility.

49:00 – A ransomware exercise and the danger of relying on fixed policies.

52:00 – Returning to the Titanic: preparing for the inquiry before the crisis.

55:00 – Thinking like an attacker and challenging assumptions about cyber risk.

58:00 – Taylor Swift, insurance and why seemingly ordinary data can become highly sensitive.

1:02:00 – The idea of "risk inflation" and why yesterday's rules aren't enough.

1:10:00 – Why memorable stories change behaviour more effectively than realistic scenarios.

1:15:00 – Reverse stress testing and imagining what could really break an organisation.

1:20:00 – RAG ratings, reporting and the danger of looking resilient instead of being resilient.

1:23:00 – Final reflections on creativity, identity and why being more than one thing is a strength.

When something goes badly wrong, we investigate it. Reports are written. Recommendations are made. Lessons are identified. But do we actually learn them?

Episode Summary
Returning to the show, Gill Kernick joins me to discuss the substantially revised second edition of her book about the Grenfell Tower disaster, following the publication of the Grenfell Inquiry's final report. Gill has a unique perspective on Grenfell. She lived on the 21st floor of the tower before moving out three years before the fire. Professionally, she has spent decades helping organisations in high-hazard industries understand leadership, safety and major accidents.

When Gill first appeared on the podcast, the Inquiry was still underway. Seven years later, its conclusions have revealed an even more disturbing picture—not of one catastrophic mistake, but of systemic failure involving government, regulators, manufacturers, certification bodies and the construction industry.

But this episode isn't just about Grenfell. It's about why organisations struggle to learn from failure, why compliance isn't the same as understanding, why we crave simple explanations for complex problems, and why genuine learning is much harder than writing another report. If you haven't already listened to Gill's previous appearances on the podcast, I'd strongly recommend doing so. Together, the conversations chart how understanding evolves as new evidence emerges.

What you'll learn In this episode
In a wide-ranging discussion, we explore:

• Why Gill decided to write a second edition after the Grenfell Inquiry concluded
• The shocking scale of the systemic failures uncovered by the Inquiry
• Why disasters rarely have a single root cause
• The hidden dangers of deregulation and "compliance theatre"
• Why organisations identify lessons but rarely learn them
• The importance of understanding the spirit—not just the letter—of regulation
• Why complexity requires different kinds of leadership
• How AI might help organisations learn lessons in real time
• Why hope is, as Gill puts it, "an act of resistance"

AI-Generated.Timestamp Summary
00:00 – Do we really learn lessons from disasters?
02:45 – Gill's personal connection to Grenfell Tower
05:15 – Why the second edition became necessary after the Inquiry 
06:30 – The Inquiry's most shocking findings
10:00 – When regulators knew the risks—but failed to act
12:00 – Implicit trust and why we rely on systems we don't understand
13:00 – Deregulation and the unintended consequences of political narratives
17:00 – Compliance versus understanding the intent behind regulation
20:00 – Why regulations struggle to keep pace with technology and complexity
24:00 – Hope as an act of resistance 25:00 – Why we don't actually learn lessons 
27:00 – Is a seven-year inquiry too long?
33:00 – Why "post-Grenfell" reforms miss the real point
37:00 – Communities of grief and change 
39:00 – Why Gill rewrote the book instead of writing a new one
44:00 – How the experience changed Gill's own thinking 
50:00 – Speaking up in ways that actually get heard
53:30 – Practical advice for learning in complex systems
55:00 – "Lessons learning" instead of "lessons learned" 
59:00 – Final reflections

Links
Gill's website, The Grenfell Enquirer


Her book 'Catastrophe & Systemic Change'

Gill's LinkedIn: 


Her previous show appearances

• Gill Kernick on the Grenfell Tower Disaster — Part One
• Gill Kernick on the Grenfell Tower Disaster — Part Two

Topics discussed

• Grenfell Tower Inquiry – Final Report
• The Grenfell Enquirer (articles and resources)
• Arup's Building Safety Change Framework

People and ideas mentioned

• Dave Snowden (Cognitive Edge)
• Cynefin Framework overview

Background incidents referenced

• Piper Alpha disaster (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
• Lakanal House fire (Wikipedia)
• Deepwater Horizon oil spill (Encyclopaedia Britannica)