The Sydcast

Episode Summary

Have you heard about "narrative medicine?" On this episode of The Sydcast, Syd talks with Dr. Rita Charon about how the blending of the art of humanity and the science of medicine created a new method for doctors to better treat their patients. It also turns out that the ideas of narrative medicine can be applied in many other contexts beyond medicine, including business, sports, entrepreneurship, parenting, and our lives in the age of COVID. Narrative medicine is tapping into something deep and fundamental in each of us as human beings - our personal stories and what they mean, and reveal. Insights that help bring us meaning, something we need today in a world under siege on multiple fronts.

Syd Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Dr. Rita Charon

Rita Charon is a general internist and literary scholar who originated the field of narrative medicine in 2000. She is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics and Professor of Medicine at Columbia University. She completed the MD at Harvard in 1978 and the PhD in English at Columbia in 1999, concentrating on the works of Henry James. Her research focuses on the consequences of narrative medicine practice, reflective clinical practice, and health care team effectiveness. At Columbia, she directs the Foundations of Clinical Practice faculty seminar, the Virginia Apgar Academy for Medical Educators, the Narrative and Social Medicine Scholarly Projects Concentration Track, the required Narrative Medicine curriculum for the medical school, and Columbia Commons: Collaborating Across Professions, a medical-center-wide partnership devoted to health care team effectiveness. 

Dr. Charon inaugurated and teaches in the Master of Science in Narrative Medicine graduate program at Columbia. She has lectured and served as Visiting Professor at many medical schools and universities in the US and abroad, teaching narrative medicine theory and practice. She has received a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio residency, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and research funding from the NIH, the NEH, the American Board of Internal Medicine, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, and several additional private foundations. She was chosen by the National Endowment for the Humanities to deliver the 2018 Jefferson Lecture, “the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.” Dr. Charon has published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, Narrative, Henry James Review, Poetics Today, Partial Answers, and Literature and Medicine. She is the author of Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (Oxford University Press, 2006) and co-author of Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2017). She is co-editor of Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics (Routledge, 2002) and Psychoanalysis and Narrative Medicine (SUNY Press, 2008). She is working on a book on the nature of narrative knowledge and why and how stories work.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on the theory of narrative medicine, its creation, and how this new field of medicine is changing the doctor/patient relationship.
• Differences between narrative medicine and traditional medicine practices.
• Benefits of narrative medicine including a decrease in emotional exhaustion among doctors.
• Strategies other professions are employing to integrate narrative practice into their fields.
• Reasons why narrative methods are especially important during COVID-19.
• Benefits of bringing creativity into traditionally non-creative fields and renewing focus on the arts and humanities.

Quotes from the show:

• On the effect of narrative medicine on doctor/patient relationship: “It became a way to make our account be really a joint account of who’s hearing, who’s listening, and we both have to be there.” – Rita Charon 
• “As you describe it, it sounds almost like a narrative equivalent to the science of medicine.” – Syd Finkelstein 
• “It’s not a matter of, you’re a warm person, you’re a cold person, but let’s make sure you have the experience of authentic conversation.” – Rita Charon 
• On the benefits of having a teacher: “For creativity, I don’t think we’re going to become a Picasso overnight, but we can try if we want to and, ideally, if there’s someone who can help you do that.” – Syd Finkelstein 
• “It has really developed into questions as much about social justice as about anything else and what is it that people deserve when they’re ill and come to their physician.” – Rita Charon
• “The machine of practice today is really quite relentless.” – Rita Charon 
• “There was a bedrock of interest in why aren’t the humanities and the arts better integrated into healthcare.” – Rita Charon 
• “It’s like inductive versus deductive research.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On creativity expanding into traditionally non-creative fields: “People interacting together, around creativity, which is so rare in life unless you’re in the creative fields as your career, I think that there must be a real longing for people to engage in this.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “It was the psychoanalysts that really struck me some time ago by saying what psychoanalysis is for is freedom, and I think what art is for is freedom.” – Rita Charon

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Dr. Rita Charon

Website: sps.columbia.edu

Twitter: @RitaCharon

Book: Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

Episode Summary

As Major League Baseball gets closer to starting up this season, we visit with the CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays, Mark Shapiro, and his father, the “accidental agent” and sports insider Ron Shapiro. These two baseball lifers tackle the social and economic architecture of the sport, share personal stories of life in and around the game, and discuss the challenges people in baseball are facing to get back on the playing field. And one more thing - listening to the interplay between father and son will stick with you long after this episode of The Sydcast is done.

Syd Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Mark Shapiro

Over a career that spans 28 seasons, Mark Shapiro is one of the rare executives in Major League Baseball that has had the opportunity to lead and impact baseball, business, and league operations. Widely considered one of MLB’s top executives, he was appointed as President & CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays in November 2015, following 24 seasons within the Cleveland Indians organization. 

Mark began his career in baseball in 1992 when he joined the Cleveland Indians as an assistant in Baseball Operations. He quickly moved up the ranks and spent five seasons (1994 to 1998) overseeing all aspects of the Indians’ player development system as Director of Minor League Operations, before becoming Vice President of Baseball Operations & Assistant General Manager from 1999 to 2001. 

Following both the 2005 and 2007 seasons, Shapiro was named the Sporting News “Executive of the Year,” at the time the only active GM in MLB to win the award twice. In 2005 he was also named “Executive of the Year” by Baseball America, and after the 2006 season, the Indians organization was named “Organization of the Year” by TOPPS for the first time. In 2007, Mark was named to the elite “40 under 40” by Sports Business Journal, as well as being listed on Baseball America’s “10 to Watch” list. 

Ronald M. Shapiro

Expert Negotiator, Sports Agent, Attorney, Educator, New York Times Bestselling Author, and Civic Leader, Ron Shapiro attended Haverford College and graduated Cum Laude from Harvard Law School in 1967. USA TODAY called Ron Shapiro “one of baseball’s most respected agent-attorneys,” and the Sporting News named him one of the “100 most powerful people in sports.” His impressive list of clients included more Hall of Famers than any other agent, including Cal Ripken, Jr., Jim Palmer, Brooks Robinson, Kirby Puckett, Eddie Murray, and 2009 AL MVP, Joe Mauer, who have collectively benefited from the more than one billion dollars in contracts that Mr. Shapiro has negotiated on their behalf. 

In addition, Mr. Shapiro is the Special Advisor to the owner of the NFL Baltimore Ravens, and has played similar roles for the General managers of the NBA San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder and the Brooklyn Nets. He has written multiple bestselling books, lectured at numerous top universities, has appeared as a negotiations expert on ABC’s Good Morning America, ESPN’s Mike and Mike in the Morning, and many other media outlets. 

Committed to public and civic matters, Mr. Shapiro has chaired over 25 boards of charitable and community organizations. Mr. Shapiro has received numerous special honors and recognitions, including recipient of The American Red Cross Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. Mr. Shapiro’s dispute resolution techniques have settled a major symphony orchestra strike, facilitated solutions to human relations problems, and resolved disputes in governmental, corporate, and major biotechnology challenges. 

Mr. Shapiro has negotiated on behalf of, or served as deal coach to, Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, sports teams, and entertainment and news personalities. Ron Shapiro is frequently cited by parties representing each side in a negotiation as the ultimate Win-Win negotiator.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on how and why Ron Shapiro went from being a corporate securities lawyer to a sports agent in the mid 1970’s and how he helped shape the role of sports agent as a player’s advocate.
• How growing up in the world of baseball shaped Mark Shapiro’s life and career.
• Differences between the financial structure of Major League Baseball versus other major league sports institutions.
• Strategies Major League Baseball is employing to continue to move forward not just during the COVID-19 but also maintain relevance in the future. 
• Details on the biggest threat to Major League Baseball throughout its history and how that continues to impact the sport today.

Quotes from the show:

• On being an agent in the 1970’s: “Everything you did was groundbreaking because every new contract had a new implication.” – Ron Shapiro 
• “That was a different time of agents. Agents now are about recruiting and retention; my father modeled agents as advocates.” – Mark Shapiro
• How the Shapiro’s approach negotiations: “In the corporate world, in the baseball world, in any world you want to do good deals and you want the other side to feel that they’ve got a good deal, but you want to have a working relationship to build on that after the fact.” – Ron Shapiro
• On the effects of COVID-19: “Our country is becoming more and more divided economically and from a survival point of view.” – Ron Shapiro
• On our future with COVID-19: “People make predictions, but that’s all they are is predictions. We don’t know where we’re going with this.” – Ron Shapiro
• On leading people during COVID-19: “I’ve tried to walk that line between the importance of being transparent and being open but still being hopeful and optimistic.” – Mark Shapiro
• “I’ve always thought, as a citizen of the world, you have a responsibility to be alert to what’s going on and to try to help other people.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “When people view Major League Baseball they often don’t understand that the major league team is just the tip of the spear and that there’s an entire organization underneath.” – Mark Shapiro
• “We’re not dealing with challenges that are unique to MLB [Major League Baseball] we’re dealing with global challenges that people are facing at some scale and at some level throughout the entire world.” – Mark Shapiro
• On dealing with the stress of COVID-19: “That’s a principle that I think always applies; try to focus on things you can control and don’t let all those other things make you crazy.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “We will not shut down. We will keep playing.” – Mark Shapiro

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Mark Shapiro

Twitter: @MarkShapiro

Instagram: @bluejays

Ronald M. Shapiro

Twitter: @ronaldmshapiro

Website: shapirosher.com

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify. 

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

Episode Summary

With dubious news articles clogging the internet it can be difficult to know where to find information you can trust and that’s where the Nerdy Girls come in. A group of ten (and growing) female public health experts, including guests of The Sydcast Alison Buttenheim and Lindsey Leininger, came together to provide evidence-based information on the COVID-19 pandemic to the public. Using their “Dear Pandemic” social media profiles, the Nerdy Girls have gone viral for their fact-based answers to everybody’s questions about everything COVID. Prepare to feel better informed after this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd Finkelstein 

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Alison M. Buttenheim, PhD

Alison M. Buttenheim wants to understand how people make decisions about their health and focuses her research on the use of behavioral economics to increase the uptake of evidence-based care. Her work ranges from how households in Peru decide whether to apply insecticide to eliminate a disease-carrying insect to why parents in the United States request exemptions from child immunization laws. 

• Patricia Bleznak Silverstein and the Howard A. Silverstein Term Endowed Professorship in Global Women’s Health 
• Assistant Professor of Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine
• Senior Fellow, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics
• Associate Director, Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics
• Associate Director, National Clinician Scholars Program

Lindsey Leininger, PhD

Lindsey Leininger is a health services researcher who specializes in the health care experiences of vulnerable populations. Prior to joining Tuck, she spent a decade designing and managing advanced analytics projects supporting the Medicaid program. She pursued this work in both academic and non-academic settings, most recently as an associate director and senior researcher at Mathematica Policy Research. She has a longstanding interest in teaching and translating quantitative methods to professionals, and has taught and trained physicians, policy makers, and health care administrators.

• Clinical Professor of Business Administration, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College
• Adjunct Professor of The Dartmouth Institute

Insights from this episode:

• Benefits of using communication that is understandable by the general population to provide scientific information on a complicated subject to reach a broader audience.
• Details on the origin of the Nerdy Girls, how they curate and validate information, and how they are evolving.
• Strategies behind using social media to reach different audiences and age groups to disseminate accurate information.
• Secrets we can learn from how the 1918 flu pandemic was managed that can still help today.
• How to reduce your risk of becoming infected using “personal harm reduction” methods such as forming “pods.”
• Differences between Sweden’s approach to handling the COVID-19 pandemic versus the rest of the world.
• Benefits of wearing masks now more information has become available that highlights their efficacy.

Quotes from the show:

• On science communication: “I come with a lot of empathy towards scientists because their institutional rewards are not based on translation. They get rewarded for the grants that they get and the scientific publications that they write. I think it’s hard to expect scientists to be providing this service when their institutions don’t reward it.” – Lindsey Leininger
• On how COVID-19 is motivating scientists: “I really think there are a lot of people who are getting off the bench and into the game right now.” – Lindsey Leininger
• On using social media: ”I would say the climate change folks are actually ahead of the curve … on understanding the science, not just communicating science, but the science of communicating science.” – Alison M. Buttenheim
• On changing scientific terminology: “How you frame something is so important and climate change is a much, much more neutral name for something, global warming, it’s pretty clear what’s going on.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On comparing COVID-19 to the 1918 flu pandemic: “I think the context in which we’re living is different enough that it’s not unreasonable to be hopeful that we’ll have a better outcome.” – Lindsey Leininger
• On comparing COVID-19 to the 1918 flu pandemic: “The other interesting parallel is that there was fake news in 1918. It was just a lot slower.” – Alison M. Buttenheim
• On how to balance risk going forward: “That’s going to be the name of the game for summer is people figuring out their comfort level.” – Alison M. Buttenheim
• “It’s not that the mask is not going to help you, it’s your management of that mask that will reduce the odds that it’s going to help you. The mask itself is going to do a good job.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “I think the fight’s actually on three fronts. I think it’s on the vaccine front. I think it’s on the clinical protocol front, and it’s on the treatment front.” – Lindsey Leininger
• “I am hopeful. I really am hopeful on a vaccine and we have the best minds in the world working on this with a lot of resources.” – Lindsey Leininger

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

The Nerdy Girls

Facebook: Dear Pandemic

Twitter: @Dear Pandemic

Instagram: @Dear_Pandemic

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Sydcast the tables have turned on Syd and he is the featured first guest on the forthcoming podcast from the Tuck School of Business, Office Hours hosted by Kirk Kardashian. Kirk meets Syd at the intersection of psychology and strategy to find out what he has learned about leadership from his interviews, current topics in the business world, and what Syd thinks it takes to be a successful Tuck student and future entrepreneur in this evolving business world.

Syd Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Kirk Kardashian

Born in New York City and raised in Montclair, New Jersey, Kirk Kardashian graduated from Colgate University in 2000 with a Bachelor's degree in Peace Studies, then received his J.D. from Vermont Law School in 2004. 

Kirk practiced law for five years in Vermont while freelance writing on the side. In 2011, he joined the Tuck School of Business as a senior writer in the Office of Communications and this shift allowed him to pursue writing and journalism in a more full-time capacity.

Kirk is an avid road and mountain biker, Nordic and backcountry skier, and fly fisher, and I’ve been lucky enough to write about these activities that fuel my passion.

He lives in Woodstock, Vermont with his wife and three children.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on how and why Syd got into podcasting and how he got to 50 episodes in Season One of The Sydcast.
• Strategies on how Syd approaches each interview for The Sydcast and what he has learned from his guests.
• Benefits of being curious, talking with people, and expanding your network to continue learning new things.
• How to be successful at incorporating your work and personal life by creating a balance that allows you to pursue both.
• Details on how the enforcement or lack-there-of in business regulation will impact the interaction between businesses and the public in the future.

Quotes from the show: 

• On podcasting: “You really get to know someone and you get to learn who they are and how they got to be who they are and along the way try to draw out interesting lessons about their life. ” – Syd Finkelstein
• “One of the things that has driven me my entire career is a kind of restlessness to try do different things and I’ve gone through different stages and phases in my career.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “I think every one of us has a story, an interesting story to tell.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On Syd’s interview strategy: “The biggest thing I had to decide is what the first question was going to be.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “I know that you are a very thoughtful and reflective person who just thinks about the world very deeply.” – Kirk Kardashian
• “What’s beautiful about the podcast is you just get regular people, whoever they are, they tell their story in very personal terms about how they did what they did.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “What differentiates high performers from the highest performers is that in both cases they will do the job they have been assigned to do and their boss will be happy, but the highest performers are going to do more than their boss asked them to do.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On creating a work/life balance: “Most people I talk to are looking for ways to integrate the professional life and the personal life.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On the future of business regulation: “I think that going forward we are going to see a more fair, or potentially fair, regulatory regime in place that hopefully will not scuffle innovation.” – Syd Finkelstein

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Kirk Kardashian

Website: https://www.kirkkardashian.com/about

LinkedIn: Kirk Kardashian

Twitter: @kirkkardashian

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

Episode Summary

When extraordinary events cause extraordinary compensations to be made, Ken Feinberg is the man on the world’s speed dial for action.  Ken talks candidly about the emotional toll that comes with administering of some of the largest and most well-known compensation funds and how he established a career of being fair and objective in the face of extreme criticism in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Ken Feinberg

Kenneth R. Feinberg is one of the nation’s leading experts in alternative dispute resolution, having served as Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, the Department of Justice Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, the Department of the Treasury’s TARP Executive Compensation Program and the Treasury’s Private Multiemployer Pension Reform program.  In 2010, Mr. Feinberg was appointed by the Obama Administration to oversee compensation of victims of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Most recently, he has served as Administrator of the New York State Dioceses’ Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Funds (along with dioceses in four other states), the One Orlando Fund, the GM Ignition Switch Compensation Program, and the One Fund Boston Compensation Program arising out of the Boston Marathon bombings.  He has been appointed mediator and arbitrator in thousands of complex disputes over the past 35 years.

He has had a distinguished teaching career as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Harvard, Georgetown, The University of Pennsylvania, New York University, the University of Virginia and Columbia.  He has also taught as a visiting lecturer at various other law schools, including UCLA, Vanderbilt, Duke and New York Law School.

Mr. Feinberg was designated “Lawyer of the Year” by the National Law Journal (December, 2004).  He is listed in “Profiles in Power:  The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America” (National Law Journal, May 2, 1988; March 25, 1991; April 4, 1994; June 12, 2000; June 19, 2006).  He is the author of numerous articles and essays on mediation, mass torts and other matters and is the author of two books:  What is Life Worth?  The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11 (Public Affairs 2005); Who Gets What: Fair Compensation After Tragedy and Financial Upheaval (Public Affairs 2012).

Mr. Feinberg’s book detailing his work as Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund has been the subject of a major motion picture (to be released in Spring 2020). He is also the subject of a movie documentary, “Playing God,” released in 2018.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on the compensation formulas and distribution processes Ken has used to adminster funds from programs such as the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and the One Fund Boston Compensation Program.
• How to maintain professional objectivity and process the emotions that come with challenging assignments.
• Strategy for overcoming criticism when you are administering funds from controversial programs. 
• Benefits of being one of the nation’s best known names in dispute resolution when it comes to negotiating with companies in crisis.
• Details on how people have tied to their self-worth and identity to their careers and salary, making those values their only definition of self.
• Secrets to dealing with people who have suffered emotional trauma and financial loss.

Quotes from the show: 

• “You learn in these programs that the toughest challenge by far is the emotional context of doing this work.” – Ken Feinberg
• On facing challenges: “Brace yourself for what you’re going to hear and what you’re going to be asked to do.” – Ken Feinberg
• “The [September 11th Victim Compensation] Fund is now a part of American history rather than contemporary affairs but it [has] not lost its impact on the American people.” – Ken Feinberg
• “An entire generation will remember where they were when they heard about the [September 11th] attacks in the same way that a previous generation knew where they were when [President John F.] Kennedy was shot.” – Syd Finkelstein 
• “Nothing is more effective in challenging criticism of a program than by pointing to the generosity of the program, the speed of the program, the efficiency of the program.” – Ken Feinberg
• On working with so many challenging programs: “If you can handle the emotional part … the rest of it kind of falls into place.” – Ken Feinberg
• “We are in a crisis now with the level of [wage] inequality that exists in this country.” – Syd Finkelstein 
• On self-worth being tied with career compensation: “I would have thought that people have other anchors of self-worth; community church, community work, family love, it doesn’t work that way.” – Ken Feinberg
• On job as identity: “The identity that these people have, how they define themselves as human beings, is completely interconnected to their job even though our identity has so many other dimensions.” – Syd Finkelstein 
• Ken’s feelings towards his work: “I think what I do is not really fair or just, it’s mercy; mercy is what I’m dispensing on a financial plane.” – Ken Feinberg
• “You learn, in what I do, empathy is a valuable commodity.  The less you say the better.” – Ken Feinberg

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Ken Feinberg

LinkedIn: Ken Feinberg

IMDB: What is Life Worth

Website: feinberglawoffices.com

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by  Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

Episode Summary

Have you ever wondered how some people seem to have their entire lives in order?  They have probably read the works of Cal Newport and learned how to work smarter, not harder by employing deliberate practice theory and avoiding the hyper-active hive mind to work less and relax more.  Learn how to up your focus game and find passion in your work, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Cal Newport

Cal Newport is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. In addition to researching cutting­ edge technology, he also writes about the impact of these innovations on our culture.  Newport is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller, Digital Minimalism, which argues that we should be much more selective about the technologies we adopt in our personal lives, and Deep Work, which argues that focus is the new I.Q. in the modern workplace.

Newport’s work has been published in over 25 languages and has been featured in many major publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the Economist.  He regularly writes articles on these topics for a variety of outlets, including the New Yorker, the New York Times, and his long-running blog Study Hacks, which receives over 3 million visits a year.  He’s also a frequent guest on NPR.

Insights from this episode:

• Secret of how he was able to write and publish a book on student success while being a successful student at Dartmouth University.
• Benefits from creating and employing a structured system, including time control and knowledge work, to achieve your goals.
• How to succeed in problem solving by using focused thought and repetition.
• Details on deliberate practice theory and the impact it can have on your workflow.
• How the advice “follow your passion” is detrimental and simplistic and what really motivates people to perform well.
• Secrets to what really makes employees love their work and how to achieve that in the job marketplace.
• Benefits of cultivating and prioritizing concentration over productivity in the workplace to gain competitive advantage. 
• How to get a higher return on your cognitive capital.

Quotes from the show:

• “I had this insight that the very top 1% [of students] seemed to be working a lot less than the 5% below that are grinding through [studying] in the library and the secret seemed to be that they cared a lot about process.”  – Cal Newport
• “To get to the very highest level, you have to get very structured, but once you get very structured the work requirement falls.” – Cal Newport
• “There’s almost no formal academic thinking on productivity maximization and knowledge work.” – Cal Newport
• “Most of us think we’re experts at what we are doing.” – Syd Finkelstein 
• On gaining perspective on a problem: “When you go for a walk, you let things percolate, you let the brain do its work, and you don’t worry about it.” – Syd Finkelstein 
• On how to reach mastery in complex things: “You have to practice in ways that are designed to stretch you past where you are comfortable; you have to put in the hours.” – Cal Newport
• On deliberate practice theory: “It’s not enough to just know a lot about something, it’s not enough just to do something a lot, you have to actually practice in a way that makes you better.” – Cal Newport
• On the “follow your passion” job advice: “Follow the goal of ending up passionate about your work.” – Cal Newport
• “Passion is not the independent variable, it is the dependent variable; it’s what you’re trying to get to, you don’t start with that [passion].” – Syd Finkelstein 
• “There’s this myth when people think about skill development that you have to have, in advance, a sufficient store of passion for the pursuit to last you through this really long process of hard work to get really good at something, but the reality is that it’s a feedback loop.” – Cal Newport
• On how to have a productive organization in the virtual world: “You have to separate tools from workflow; I think this is the fundamental issue.” – Cal Newport

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Cal Newport  

LinkedIn: Cal Newport

Website: calnewport.com

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify. 

This episode was produced and managed by  Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

Episode Summary

An unusual outfit for an unusual man, Steve Swayne unravels his connections to knitting and jazz and divulges how an almost perfectionist learned to improvise, find his own authentic self, and become an expert on Steven Sondheim all while describing an outfit that few would dare to wear. A pattern emerges of a man who will not be contained by rigid categorization and is leading us by example into a more tolerant, musically rich world, in this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Steve Swayne

Steve Swayne teaches courses in art music from 1700 to the present day, opera, American musical theater, Russian music, and American music. He has received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His articles have appeared in The Sondheim Review, the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, American Music, Studies in Musical Theatre, the Indiana Theory Review, and The Musical Quarterly. He has written two books—How Sondheim Found His Sound (University of Michigan Press, 2005) and Orpheus in Manhattan: William Schuman and the Shaping of America's Musical Life (Oxford University Press, 2011; winner of the 2012 ASCAP Nicolas Slonimsky Award for Outstanding Musical Biography)—and is at work on three projects: 1) the development of the chamber musical, with a focus on composer/lyricist William Finn; 2) intersections between music, neuroscience, and ethics; and 3) American composer David Diamond. He was an inaugural recipient in 2017 of the Professor John Rassias Faculty Award, given to faculty for their exceptional educational outreach to alumni. In addition to his work at Dartmouth, he has taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; the University of California, Berkeley; and Quest University, and he is the president-elect of the American Musicological Society, the premier organization for musicologists in the English-speaking world. He is also an accomplished concert pianist.

Insights from this episode:

• Secret to how Steve can play a song after listening to it only once and how that skill is useful in many aspects of life.
• How to deal with standing out by standing out even more and using that to direct the conversation you want people to have about you.
• Benefits of living your life internally as you express yourself externally.
• How to have an authentic conversation involving race in a racially complicated world. 
• Strategies artists use to appeal to audiences to increase their success and how that can impact their perceived value as an artist.
• Benefits of working with Steven Sondheim as his biographer and becoming more of an expert on Steven Sondheim than Sondheim himself.  

Quotes from the show:

• “I am a clothes horse by nature and so I have a shoezeum at home and it’s almost exclusively in Doc Martens [shoes].” – Steve Swayne
• “There are different ways of being you rather than the ones, maybe, that you have chosen or that society has chosen for you.” – Steve Swayne
• “It’s very interesting to think about how people perceive others … from how we look and how we dress and you’re actually turning [that perception] on its head to share a lesson.” – Syd Finkelstein 
• “As humans, all of us can do what any other human in all of the human race has done, is doing, or has a dream of doing. We are all capable of doing all of it.” – Steve Swayne
• On studying east coast Jewish composers: “I learned a lot of things that I never would have thought to know.” – Steve Swayne
• On the appropriateness of telling a story of a community you are not part of: “I have a view of that community that I can only have because I’m not in it and things that might be transparent to other people, I begin to question.” – Steve Swayne
• “We are not what we present necessarily; because I’m black doesn’t mean I can only do things marked as black … we contain multitudes, all of us.” – Steve Swayne
• “I feel like we are in an era now where with this idea of having the nerve, the audacity to speak for some other group that you are not part of is really looked down upon.” – Syd Finkelstein 
• “I want to be about the business of increasing the circle of  we and decreasing the circle of they.” – Steve Swayne
• On elitism in general culture: “There’s a thing about whatever is considered popular by the masses that somehow gets denigrated … we seem to have all these rules in place for what’s acceptable, for what’s good culturally and we don’t know who wrote those rules.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On Steven Sondheim’s style of composing: “The way he conveys the life of a character through his choice of notes is very much the way certain opera composers do that type of work.” – Steve Swayne

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Steve Swain

Instagram: @dr._kiltmartens

Website: Dartmouth College - The Montgomery Fellows Program

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify. 

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

Episode Summary

Everyone loves puzzles, and our guest on this episode of the Sydcast is a master. Pete Winkler is a Dartmouth College professor, author, mathematician, scientist, and puzzle master at the Museum of Mathematics in New York City. He’s playful, engaging, and ingenious. He teaches the art and science of deciphering puzzles in everyday life to students, hedge fund managers, and senior executives, and in this episode of The Sydcast, he teaches all of us a thing or two about puzzles and life. 

Syd Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Peter Winkler

Peter Winkler is William Morrill Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Dartmouth College. He is the author of about 160 research papers and holds a dozen patents in marine navigation, cryptography, holography, gaming, optical networking, and distributed computing. His research is primarily in combinatorics, probability, and the theory of computing, with forays into statistical physics. He is a winner of the Mathematical Association of America's Lester R. Ford and David P. Robbins prizes.

For the academic year 2019-2020, Dr. Winkler is serving as Distinguished Chair of the Public Dissemination of Mathematics at the National Museum of Mathematics.

After getting an AB summa cum laude from Harvard, Dr. Winkler went to work for the government and then enlisted in the U.S. Navy. After serving, he began graduate work at Yale and wrote his PhD thesis in mathematical logic. He took academic jobs at Stanford and then Emory, becoming professor and chairman of Mathematics and Computer Science. While there he solved a notorious problem that had arisen at Bell Labs, and was offered jobs at Bellcore and then Bell Labs, where he became Director of Fundamental Mathematics Research. In 2003-4 he spent a year at the Institute of Advanced Study before moving to his present position at Dartmouth.

Along the way Dr. Winkler has written two collections of mathematical puzzles (Mathematical Puzzles: A Connoisseur's Collection and Mathematical Mind-Benders) and a book on cryptography in the game of bridge (Bridge at the Enigma Club), which was a runner up for the 2011 Master Point Press Book Of The Year award. He's working on a new puzzle book.

Insights from this episode:

• Details on different puzzles and what they test and how people benefit from puzzling.
• Benefits of reader feedback including better solutions and ideas for new puzzles.
• Strategies on teaching students, getting them interested in why versus how, and making math fun.
• How to use math and puzzles to improve your reasoning and intuition in other aspects of life.
• How to design a good puzzle and what makes a good puzzle according to Pete.

Quotes from the show:

• On a particular puzzle question: “What makes this a beautiful question is that reasonable, rational thought leads to the wrong answer.” – Peter Winkler
• “It’s easier for people to learn how to do something, than it is to learn why it works.” – Peter Winkler
• On getting students involved in learning: “They get that spark and then later they actually want to understand it better.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On associating math with fun: “If we could just make that association and do no more, I think that would be a major accomplishment.” – Peter Winkler
• “Puzzles help us to figure out where our intuition is likely to go off the rails.” – Peter Winkler
• “Having something there when you need it, is just as good as having something that is there all the time.” – Peter Winkler
• On superstition: “There’s evidence in various places that when you think something is true you behave in a way that is consistent with that.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “What makes a puzzle a good puzzle is not being easy or hard, it’s being clever, it’s being engaging, it’s being fun.” – Peter Winkler
• “Most things about leadership are not linear.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “I have a theory that puzzles actually help you think more about finding the truth and a little bit less about arguing a point of view before you think about it.” – Peter Winkler

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Peter Winkler

Dartmouth College: Professor Peter Winkler

Museum of Mathematics: https://momath.org

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify. 

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)

Episode Summary

The second golden age of radio is upon us and Michael Lutzky, the first Vice President of Business Distribution, pulls back the curtain on what NPR has in store for their loyal audience and hints at a future that might include a Netflix style news source. Fans of The Tiny Desk and NPR1 will appreciate this look into how NPR plans to survive and thrive far into the future, in this episode of The Sydcast. 

Syd Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Michael Lutzky

Michael Lutzky is Vice President of Business Development and the first to hold the position at NPR. In this role, he scopes and secures partnership opportunities for NPR that fuel continued innovation and audience service in public radio.

Lutzky joined NPR in February 2016. Reporting to NPR's chief operating officer, he works closely with the chief legal officer, as well as leaders across NPR's News, Digital Media, Digital Services, Programming, Music, Marketing, and Finance teams, and with National Public Media.

Having spent over ten years as a staff photojournalist for The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post, Lutzky is not new to journalism. As a photojournalist, he covered national and international stories including the White House and Congress, the Clinton impeachment, and a variety of special projects on social and urban issues, as well as global conflicts in the Middle East, Bosnia, and Kosovo. His work was recognized by the National Press Photographers Association, the White House News Photographers Association, and received several Pulitzer nominations.

 After earning his MBA in 2006, Lutzky joined the international strategy and management consulting firm McKinsey and Company. In 2008, he became the director of product development and then global director for sports at the Associated Press, where he led global joint ventures; managed product portfolio, new ventures, and partnerships; and negotiated licensing, sponsorship, content, and promotional partnerships. At the Associated Press, Lutzky received the Chairman's Prize, for innovation to AP and the news industry. Most recently, he was the principal and founder of Oveo Solutions, a strategy consultancy with clients including PBS, AARP, Verve Mobile, and several Fortune 100 and private equity firms.

Lutzky received his bachelor's degree in photojournalism from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and earned an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

Insights from this episode:

• Benefits NPR receives by successfully balancing between being a news brand and a lifestyle brand and their ability to encompass many different personas within their brand.
• Strategies used by news organizations to monetize their audience and how being a non-profit organization allows NPR to stand apart from that standard model of business.
• How to compete in a constantly evolving news marketplace by knowing your demographic and creating original programming designed for that audience.
• How to determine and form partnerships in an evolving distribution market that benefits and promotes NPR without diluting their brand. 
• Details on how being a non-profit with limited resources forces NPR to create a strategy that prioritizes what they produce and how they deliver it to their audiences.
• Secrets behind how NPR continues to be one of America’s most loved names in news and media and how they are tackling brand familiarity.

Quotes from the show: 

• “The local news, the national news that NPR provides is sort of the life blood of the public radio system.” – Michael Lutzky
• On competition in the media news market: “The New York Times has been … very effective at monetizing an incredible number of assets that they have had forever and a lot of that seems to have nothing to do with news, for example the New York Times crossword.” – Syd Finkelstein 
• “The more the publisher knows about the audience, the more that audience is worth.” – Michael Lutzky
• On forming good relationships: “Partnership has to have a purpose.” – Michael Lutzky
• On the current second golden age of radio: “Who would have guessed that the most exciting things happening in media really have been coming from radio? It’s fantastic, if you love radio, you love this era.” – Syd Finkelstein 
• On NPR’s continued success in an evolving media market: “We give people a lot of room to grow, a lot of great training, a lot of freedom; they know that what they’re doing here is a little bigger than just the product.” – Michael Lutzky
• On Michael’s position as the first Vice President of Business Development at NPR: “You’re bringing in some modern business practice at a pretty sophisticated level.” – Syd Finkelstein 
• On NPR updating their business model: “We can’t keep complaining about our headache and not take any aspirin.” – Michael Lutzky
• On using NPR’s status to create financial sustainability: “We are really, really valuable; 40 million [listeners] a week, a brand that everyone loves.” – Michael Lutzky
• “Turns out that the things that are the most difficult when it comes to change are the psychological ones.” – Syd Finkelstein 
• On NPR keeping up with the changing modality of the media market: “We can still do what we do, the what doesn’t change but the how does.” – Michael Lutzky
• “NPR has a tremendously strong high brand affection, brand love, it’s one of the highest among all the of the media companies; we aren’t terribly strong in familiarity relative to all of the other media companies, ironically.” – Michael Lutzky
• On NPR being the default news source on a smart refrigerator: “This is the wild west in terms of distribution, it’s the golden age of radio in terms of content, but it’s a wild goose chase in terms of distribution.” – Michael Lutzky

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Michael Lutzky

LinkedIn: Michael Lutzky

Website: NPR

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)