Thecuriousmanspodcast

Matt Crawford speaks with author Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio about her book: Diversity Dividend: The Transformational Power of Small Changes to Debias Your Company, Attract Diverse Talent, Manage Everyone Better, and Make More Money. Every leader endeavors to invest in and manage their key asset-talent- to be as high-performing as possible. Cecchi-Dimeglio breaks down how diversity is the key to a winning formula in all aspects of business and overarchingly in any formula for success.

Matt Crawford speaks with author Judith Pearson about her book, Crusade to Heal America: The Remarkable Life of Mary Lasker. "I am opposed to heart disease and cancer the way one is opposed to sin." With that her battle cry, health activist and philanthropist Mary Woodard Lasker had a singular goal: saving lives by increasing medical research. The way medical research is conducted, funded and fundraised is still impacted by Mary and Albert Lasker. As only Pearson can we are taken into the Lasker's lives and into their battle.

Matt Crawford speaks with historian and author Daniel Dain about his book, A History of Boston. Boston is today one of the world's greatest cities, first in higher education, hospitals, life science companies, and sports teams. It was home to the Great Puritan Migration, the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the first civil rights movement and the women's rights movement. Dain gives us a comprehensive and exhaustively researched history that is hard to put down. 

Matt Crawford speaks with author Benjamin Lewin about his book, Inside Science: Revolution in Biology and Its Impact. Drawing on 25 years of experience as the founding editor of CELL, the world's leading journal in biology, Lewin questions the dogma that scientific papers describe how research was done, the distortions caused by pressure to publish and considers the effects of changes in the way science is communicated as we move further into a digital era. A great book that bridges the scientific and layperson communities in an easy to digest read.

Matt Crawford speaks with author Ed Hess about his book: Own Your Work Journey: The Path to Meaningful Work and Happiness in the Age of Smart Technology and Radical Change. The Smart Technology Age will be a time of constant change that will require us to continually adapt and learn new skills to maintain employment. The best research from Oxford predicts that between 25-47% of the U.S workforce will be automated by the end of this decade. Hess highlights the tools we will need to be adaptable and employable. The time of getting a static position and working somewhere for 20-30 may be close to its end. Part psychology, self-help, business and technology this book should be required reading by all and, more importantly, required teaching.

Matt Crawford speaks with author Alan Questel about his book, Practice Intentional Acts of Kindness and Like Yourself More. Questel has never met a person who didn't want more kindness in their life. Are you kind? Would you like to be kinder? Kindness is a skill we can all develop. This book is a practical guide to creating more kindness in your life towards yourself and others. In this age of social media friends this book shows us how to change the way we feel about ourselves and I think is the perfect salve for some of the social issues we see in soceity. 

Matt Crawford speaks with authors Greg Glasgow and Kathyrn Mayer about their book: Disneyland on The Mountain: Walt, The Environmentalists, and the Ski Resort That Never Was. We all know the name Disney as a behemoth of a company and landowner, but in the 1960's this was far from being a given. How Walt Disney's desire to turn Mineral King in southern California into a skiing mecca, spurred an environmental momevent is truly fascinating. The outcome of this story has implications in how we protect our nations land today and the way in which Disney builds implements lessons learned from this fight to this day.

Matt Crawford speaks with authors Chris Mefford and Kyle Buckett about their book, Leadership Is Overrated: How the Navy Seal (and Successful Businesses) Create Self-Leading Teams That Win. What is leadership and where did we all learn to define it? For many of us it happens in the business world through perpetual motion. Where do our current leaders get the skill and training to be effective? In most cases it is self-taught and taken from bad examples. Mefford and Buckett merge corporate culture with that of the Navy Seals to show us all what really works and what doesn't. This book should be required reading for those already in and those joining the business world, but also anyone in a leadership position. I hope you will listen to the interview and give the book a read.

Matt Crawford speaks with authors John Roth and Leonard Grob about their book, Warnings: The Holocaust, Ukraine, And Endangered Democracy. American democracy is under the most sever threat since the Civil War. As Holocaust experts both Roth and Grob are aptly placed to make the careful comparison to the mechanisms that led up to the Holocaust and the similar patterns we see here in the U.S and abroad. Ignorance and lies are the foundation to autocracy, reading this book and discussing it is great way to counteract those forces. 

Matt Crawford speaks with author and educator Adam Bessie about his new book, Going Remote: A Teacher's Journey. An English professor at a community college in the Bay Area, Bessie shares with us what it was like for both teachers and students to have to go virtual. Unlike most of his colleagues however, Bessie was also in remission with brain cancer and had just returned to teaching after sabbatical. With students from diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic backgrounds, veterans, immigrants, the formerly incarcerated, parents and older returning students, his perspective is a wide ranging and an important voice to listen to. With images that are sure to move the reader and flood us with memory and emotion, I highly recommend it.