This week, I sat down with Derek Crager for a conversation on the intersection of neurodiversity and artificial intelligence. Both topics are often misunderstood by the wider public, sometimes leading to misinformation, stigma, or even apprehension.

We explore how embracing different ways of thinking can unlock new opportunities in technology, why AI might be uniquely positioned to support neurodiverse communities, and what it means to build tools and workplaces that value every kind of mind.

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It wasn’t until Derek was 50 years old that he himself was diagnosed with ADHD, Dyslexia, and Autism. Before that, he knew he was a bit different.

He described himself as the ‘weird’ kid in the classroom, but he never quite knew the core differences that he had compared to others. He didn't quite understand where he fit in the world. But his diagnosis completely changed his life and hs outlook.

I wanted to speak a bit more with Derek about what it meant to be neurodiverse, and what it meant to be neurodiverse in a world that's being immersed in artificial intelligence. What are some of the best ways that people can learn or develop in a world that's being completely engulfed by technology?

Well, Derek is an AI Solutions Architect and the Founder of Practical AI . Its Pocket Mentor product sets out to be an AI voice tool for those seeking assistance in some of their workplace tasks. Some of the company’s core beliefs include that:

* AI should be practical

* Shared learning fuels growth

* Shared earning rewards effort

* Transparency and fairness matter

* Neurodiversity is a strength

We also discuss some of the nuances that neurotypical and neurodiverse people experience each day. He cites studies from the New England Journal, and we each share what kind of tech helps us thrive in our environments.

Please feel free to also catch this episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple - it has gone live there, too.

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This week I listened to a podcast about the virtue of justice. It was hosted by Ryan Holiday and featured a conversation with Rutger Bregman - two of my favorite writers!

The conversation was called “You’re Not Wasting Time, You’re Wasting Your Life,” and it talked about moral ambition, the truth about success, work, and impact. It tied in nicely with a separate conversation I had with my recent guest, climate entrepreneur Josh Dorfman, which took place for The Spiro Circle this week.

“The idea always has been how I can identify solutions to help a consumer or an individual become more sustainable in their lifestyles - in a way they're going to want to do it,” Josh explained in the episode. “[Where] it's not about sacrifice, it's not about suffering, it's not about inconvenience, because if it is those things, very few people are going to stick with it.”

Josh is the creator of The Lazy Environmentalist and Co-Founder and CEO of Plantd, which produces carbon-negative building materials made from fast-growing plant fibers. He is also the host of the Supercool podcast, which showcases scalable, profitable climate solutions.

It’s all well and good to strive to become a powerful CEO or influential world leader, but if you’re not living up to your full potential or trying to make the world a better place, are you truly succeeding? I wanted to hear more about Josh’s mission of climate entrepreneurship and how the world is benefiting from scientific and technological innovation.

We discussed the following things:

* Climate Entrepreneurship and how it differs from regular entrepreneurship

* $2.2 billion of investment globally into clean energy technologies in 2025

* Cultural and societal shifts toward climate innovation

* The ‘ring’ of countries around the equator helping boost innovation

* How storytelling influences climate technology adoption

* Emerging technologies in the space

* Companies that are revolutionizing antiquated services

I love it when different topics and ideas that I explore converge like this. I urge you all to listen to Holiday’s episode and check out Bregman’s books (I’ve read his first two, “Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build The Ideal World” and “Humankind: A Hopeful History”. His newest, “Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference”, is on my list, and I am starting it soon!

READ: The time I visited Ryan Holiday’s bookstore in Bastrop, Texas

Of course, I also encourage you to check out Josh’s work in the space and to listen to this episode to learn more about how our actions can help improve the world. You can subscribe for more updates and to be notified when more episodes go live.

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Welcome back to The Spiro Circle, where today I want to dive deep into identity, culture, and the people shaping Jewish life today.

With Tu B’Av right around the corner (for those who don’t know, think ‘Israel’s Valentine’s Day’), I was excited to speak with Aleeza Ben Shalom: Matchmaker, dating coach, author, and star of Netflix’s Jewish Matchmaking.

She has helped thousands of Jews navigate the complex, emotional, and challenging world of modern Jewish dating. Aleeza is also a Voice of the People Council Member and is working with them on a new series exploring the emotional, cultural, and generational challenges that define Jewish relationships in 2025.

We discuss everything from traditional matchmaking techniques vs. modern-day AI dating apps, spiritual connections and family pressures, and what the global Jewry is facing post-October 7.

This episode also included this podcast’s first ‘lightning round’ - hang around until the end to hear some surprising insights.

If you haven’t subscribed to The Spiro Circle yet, now’s a great time. If you upgrade to become a paid subscriber, you will get the first three months free — with full access to comment sections, exclusive articles, and special perks. Your support is always appreciated. - JS

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Today, I wanted to dive into another episode from the CTech BiblioTech archive. This time, I am highlighting my conversation with Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, author of “I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique”, which was recorded in August 2023.

The book is an exploration of how AI will change our lives and what we can do to ensure we maintain our personalities and uniqueness. Many of the topics we address in the conversation relate to how different generations might respond to the algorithms living beside us.

For example, he cites tech leaders like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, who present concerning views of AI, but also respond positively to how Gen-Z might learn to adopt such technologies.

“One of the things that the digital age has introduced is ever more and more ADD-like behaviors,” he said. “We are pressed to do things quicker and quicker. And therefore, there are few rewards for pausing and thinking.”

Even though he believes humans are “perfectly capable” of stopping and taking time to consider their thoughts and actions, most decisions made today in the AI age are so rapid that they become predictable and therefore easily outsourced to machines.

“Gen-Z and the next generation will need to showcase their expertise in a different area or a different way,” he told me during the recording for CTech. “Expertise is mutating from knowing a lot of answers to asking the right questions - from memorizing and retrieving facts to knowing how, why, and where the facts are wrong… Demonstrating and cultivating expertise is a big challenge for the young generations.”

MORE: I asked Eric Weinstein about my baby's future in an AI world.

Tomas is an organizational psychologist who works mostly in the areas of personality profiling, people analytics, talent identification, the interface between human and artificial intelligence, and leadership development. He is the Chief Innovation Officer at ManpowerGroup, a professor of business psychology at University College London and at Columbia University, co-founder of deepersignals.com, and an associate at Harvard’s Entrepreneurial Finance Lab.

Those interested in an extended written interview with Tomas can find it on CTech by following this link.

You can also buy your own copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Human-Automation-Quest-Reclaim-Unique/dp/1647820553

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The Voice of the People, a global initiative spearheaded by President Isaac Herzog to unite and empower Jewish communities worldwide. The organization recently released its 2025 Jewish Landscape Report based on responses from over 10,000 Jews across six continents.

The results were shocking.

It revealed that rising antisemitism - across campuses, workplaces, and social media - has overtaken all other issues as the number one concern uniting Jews of all ages, backgrounds, and denominations.

Some troubling figures that caught my eye highlighted that respondents in Israel (89%) expressed deep concern for the safety and stability of diaspora communities, and British Jews (81%) reported a growing need to conceal their identities in public.

I spoke to CMO and CPO Neta Danciger about these results and what they meant. Interestingly, she told me that, however many people were hiding their Jewish identities as a result of real-life events, it also caused many others to speak out louder than usual and reidentify with their heritage.

She described these people as “October 8th Jews.”

“I learned it from the answers to our survey,” she said in today’s episode. “So many people refer to themselves as ‘October 8th Jews.’ They felt that after October 7th, something changed in their identity, in the way they feel as a Jewish person in the world. Many started to feel they wanted to be involved in the Jewish community or network.”

Our conversation includes more results from the survey as well as an examination of the sentiment felt among Jews as a whole. In addition to our conversation, you can also download the full report here: https://www.voiceofthepeople.network/landscape-report/#full

You can follow Voice of the People below:

Facebook | Instagram | Linkedin

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We all have incentives. I have an incentive to produce this podcast well enough so that I attract more readers and listeners, and hopefully, you have an incentive to tune into new episodes with a goal to learn something or get enjoyment from it.

I also carry personal incentives, such as being a good father, husband, brother, son, colleague, and member of my community.

Some incentives are more cynical. Money or fame often drives people to big things, but not without risk or without affecting their ego, health, or safety.

Reward and punishment, each on different sides of a coin, can determine incentive structures.

“Incentives are something that drives families, economies, companies, and societies,” I wrote for CTech in 2023. “We are told as children that if we behave well, we can have a candy bar or play outside with our friends. As employees, we may be incentivized with money or status, or find fulfillment from within by knowing we are doing something that adds meaning to our lives and our communities.”

I wanted to share this conversation with you today from CTech’s BiblioTech archive because I believe it relates strongly to each of us. The interview, which was conducted for CTech as part of its BiblioTech series, is still as relevant as ever.

About Uri Gneezy:

Uri Gneezy is a Professor of Economics and Strategy and the Epstein/Atkinson Chair in Behavioral Economics at the University of California San Diego Rady School of Management. Before that, he was a faculty member at the University of Chicago, Technion, and Haifa. Uri’s research focuses on using both lab and field experiments to study how people react to incentives. He is the co-writer of The Why Axis, which discusses how using field experiments can improve our understanding of economic interactions in the real world.

You can read the entire (albeit lightly edited) transcript of this interview directly on CTech:

You can also catch a copy of Mixed Signals: How Incentives Really Work on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Mixed-Signals-Incentives-Really-Work/dp/0300255535

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Today, I want to share a conversation with Josh Wheeler, founder of Be Broadcast, about the state of UK broadcast media and, notably, how it covers certain topics. The conversation follows a report written by Be Broadcast that outlines how TV and radio stations in the UK approach their reporting on climate change [linked below].

It was a 6-month analysis examining media coverage for events such as the Spanish floods, the Californian wildfire, and the US withdrawal from the Paris agreement. Specifically, I wanted to look at how the media presents its messaging versus how the public sentiment reacts to it.

I was quite amazed at the use of language. The report found that 55% of all UK media coverage regarding climate change is ‘alarmist’ and uses extreme expressions such as ‘ticking time bomb’, evoking a sense of catastrophe among its viewers.

Should UK media be conveying any form of emotional messaging in its reporting, and what does that do to its credibility? We discuss it all.

Those who follow this channel know that I sometimes talk about Israel and I sometimes talk about the United States, but I very rarely talk about my hometown, the UK. Since I studied Broadcast Journalism as my first degree over there, I thought this was the perfect topic to dive into.

Click below to see the entire report: Be Broadcast Mission Control: The Climate Conversation »

https://bebroadcast.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Be-Broadcasts-Mission-Control-The-Climate-Conversation.pdf

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This week, I spoke with Hillel Fuld, an American Israeli business technology advisor.

A lot of you are probably already familiar with Hillel. He's got a large social media following online where he talks about all things Israeli high-tech, Startup Nation, Zionism, but also Israel's fight with Hamas.

Importantly, he's also fighting for its reputation as it struggles to gain sympathy among young people.

I wanted to speak to Hillel about a bunch of things. Honestly, we could have spoken all day. But we limited it to Israel's tech sector and also the fight online against ‘anti-Zionism’ - which, as many of us know, is often a dog whistle for antisemitism.

We spoke about some of the media personalities in the space and how they've tackled the conversation surrounding Israel. Notably, Piers Morgan and Joe Rogan’s recent episode with Dave Smith and Douglas Murray.

We also spoke about Israel's tech sector and what the anti-Zionists may be missing when they think of Israel.

Those calling to boycott our country underestimate the presence that Israel has in shaping the technology of our world.

I hope you enjoy.

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Today, I wanted to dive into another episode from the CTech BiblioTech archive. This time, my conversation with Nimrod Vromen, author of “Prompting Happiness: A Guide to Prompting a Life Worth Living” recorded in July, 2024.

The book is an exploration of the human condition and the pursuit of true happiness. Nimrod navigates the complexities of midlife challenges, leveraging the potential of AI to provide practical strategies for personal growth and well-being.

In perhaps one of the first times I can think of, Nimrod also openly admits to using ChatGPT to help him pen his work.

“When I suddenly started playing with ChatGPT in October 2022, my philosophizing exploded because I felt that I was playing around with a technological revolution that was akin to the atomic bomb,” he told me during the episode. “I felt that I had seen technological revolutions in my 17 years as a professional. I saw the Internet in 1999 as a teenager, and computers before that in 1993. I thought to myself, ‘there's been nothing like this’. Every single technological revolution since the atomic bomb was an acceleration of a process that humanity has been dealing with forever, which is a process of interconnectivity, working together, and increased productivity.”

“But if you think about the atom bomb, that's a revolution where you do not live in the same world afterward. You think about AI now in that context, a day before this revolution. Humans are defined by their subjective experience of life and their collective experience of life, which is defined through their communication with one another, right? A day after AI passes the Turing test, the whole experience is going to change because now I can connect with infinite versions of humans. It's just a different world. And that set me off on a course of thoughts about my profession, about my family, about education.”

Nimrod is Founder and CEO of Ark Empowerment and Consiglieri - aiming to transform the world of professional services with AI. He is also the Chief Growth Officer for the Startup Sector at Arnon, Tadmor-Levy, after 16 years as a corporate lawyer at the firm. For the soul, he wrote and produced “Startup: Confidential”, an internet video series hosted on CTech and Calcalist, and authored “Prompting Happiness: A Guide to Prompting a Life Worth Living”. The book follows Nimrod as he addresses the complexities of modern life while offering a road map for navigating those intricacies, ranging from stimulating conversations on the future of AI to helpful strategies for fostering happiness in an increasingly digital society.

Those interested in an extended written interview with Nimrod can find it on CTech via following this link.

You can also buy your own copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Prompting-Happiness-Guide-Worth-Living-ebook/dp/B0D369PVDN

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This week, I decided to do something a bit differently. I wanted to post a video episode from BiblioTech, a CTech video series I produced just over a year ago.

In the summer of 2023, I interviewed several authors about their newly published books, and today’s episode will be from its archive: Meet Yaniv Rivlin.

Yaniv is the Founding General Manager of Bird in Israel, where he also ran the EMEA Government Partnerships department. Before that, he co-founded and served as the Executive Vice President of Comtribute, a company that provided organizations with an online platform to raise funds and engage with consumers.

When we recorded this episode in September 2023, he had just celebrated the English release of "Live Like a Startup: Take The Initiative and Transform Your Life”. The book, originally published in Hebrew, was a #1 bestseller in Israel and is available now for readers looking for invaluable insights on creating genuine, lasting success in business and life.

“It is totally chaotic, but our life is chaotic. One of the things that I talk about throughout the book is getting into that state of fear,” he told me at the time. “When you start a startup, you take a risk. You go into that state of fear.”

In some ways, The Spiro Circle has been my startup. I left my comfort zone to take on a new task, learn a new skill, and make myself more vulnerable. I am incredibly proud of what I have achieved so far and look forward to seeing all the ways this project will go in the future.

For now, please enjoy our conversation. We discuss:

* Yaniv’s personal journey and the start of his career.

* The concept of Israeli “Chutzpah” and how it helps founders.

* What business leaders, entrepreneurs, or startup founders can learn from this book.

You can also read my entire interview with Yaniv on CTech’s website, which goes into far more detail about his book and journey.

Those who enjoyed our conversation are invited to purchase Yaniv’s book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Live-Like-Startup-Initiative-Transform/dp/B0CGL4H5S5

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