unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

The evolving economic landscape makes institutional reforms in areas like finance, planning, and public infrastructure, a necessity. AI is capable of causing an economic shakeup similar to the transition from horses to steam, with far-reaching ramifications throughout the world’s economies.

Jonathan Haskel is a professor of economics at Imperial College Business School, in London, and also the author of a few books, including Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy and Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy.

Greg and Jonathan discuss how traditional institutions, intellectual frameworks, and measurement disciplines are struggling to adapt to an economy increasingly dominated by intangible assets such as software, data, and branding. Jonathan explains the complexities of valuing and measuring intangibles, the role of venture capital, intellectual property laws, and the impact of AI and general-purpose technologies. 

The episode also covers the necessity for institutional reforms in areas like finance, planning, and public infrastructure to better support the evolving economic landscape.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

The two boosts of productivity

31:30: When you have a general-purpose technology, which is also an invention, method of invention, you get two boosts to productivity. The first boost to productivity is in the invention sector itself—what I would call the intangible sector itself, as in the R&D and the software and all that—you get a boost to productivity there. And then the second boost to productivity is when all of those new inventions—now think of steam—start spreading out to the economy as a whole, to be used in the transport sector, in companies, in firms, and all that kind of thing.

The intangible things the new economy makes

03:23: What does the new economy make? It's people writing software. It's people writing movie scripts. It's people trying to think of new ways to market their product or publicize their brand or rearrange their organization. Those are all very intangible things.

What makes the intangible economy unequal?

18:39: We first got into this. We were thinking that spillovers would be the predominant economic force, and therefore a more intangible economy would be, in some broad sense, a more equalized economy…[19:04] But that, of course, goes against people's intuition. We think the economy, in some sense, has become more unequal. And we changed our mind during the writing of the book, actually, and ended up thinking that the forces of synergies are a force, of course, for making it more unequal.

The human edge in a world of intangibles

55:01: Once you start thinking about the task of coordinating the synergies and getting all these people together—guess what—that needs people, people. And scientists might be really good at that, but artists and poets and historians and students of ancient Greek—they might be really good at that as well. So, I am optimistic, actually, that the future could admit people with all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of skills into this new world.

Recommended Resources:

• Diane Coyle
• Baruch Lev Books
• Intangible Asset
• Software Development
• Paul Romer
• Intellectual Property
• Data
• Thomas Phillipon
• Douglass North
• Abundance by Ezra Klein
• General-purpose technology
• Eric Brynjolfsson
• Robert Gordon

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Imperial College Business School
• Wikipedia Profile
• Princeton University Press Profile
• Bank of England Profile
• Social Profile on X

Guest Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy
• Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy
• Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century
• NBER Page
• Google Scholar Page

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What can be gained from looking back now at the pandemic response during COVID? What would a “postmortem” tell us about how policies were designed and how scientific discussions played out? 

Stephen Macedo is a professor of politics at Princeton University, as well as at the University Center for Human Values, and the author of several books including 

Greg and Stephen discuss the decision-making flaws during the COVID-19 pandemic, the lack of robust debate, the role of public health experts, and the increasing influence of partisanship. Stephen explores the potential long-term implications for democracy and science, the concept of noble lies, and the necessity of balancing expert advice with broader public interests. Their conversation also touches on the importance of liberal virtues and the need for both improved decision-making structures and individual adherence to professional ethics.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

When public health crowds out public values

09:52: The public health mindset is that you only pay attention to reducing disease, and so public health experts had too much power. Wider decision-making should have been made by people looking at the whole range of public values, not just disease reduction or attempts to reduce disease. So, the many things that came together—but we regard the book as a window onto the state of our democracy, and in a way, our—you know—the dangers of our epistemic tribalism, to put it that way. The degraded state of deliberation in our country.

How epistemic bubbles are making us dumber

50:57: We are making ourselves stupider by being ensconced in these epistemic bubbles. We are undermining our own capacity for critical thought by not being more open to disagreement.

Science can’t decide for a democracy alone

55:58: We need both more checking of a wide array of elites being involved in thinking, challenging, questioning decisions, but also some way of making sure—possibly through legislative oversight, House of Representatives being involved. The public voices need to be heard as well because they bear the cost of these—need to be heard as well because they bear the cost of these measures. And as we said before, science is not going to make these decisions for us. There are value judgments involved, and it is the people's value judgments that matter to some degree of risk tolerance…[56:35] We need more checking and balancing in these kinds of decisions that affect the public as a whole, and more open debate, discussion, more tolerance of disagreement—including, or maybe even especially, coming from the partisan other, as it were.

Science needs scrutiny, not censorship

14:17: We need empirical inquiry to test the assumptions behind these particular policies and assumptions—not censorship in advance of evidence that might be unwelcome with respect to, you know, certain kinds of policy claims. So, I think there's a wider politicization of science. I do think we need more viewpoint diversity in the academy, and people say, "Wasn't this the code word for having more conservatives?" And I'll say, yes. I think we're a bit too far out of balance. We should not reflect the American public—I mean, that's not the aim—but I think we do not take seriously enough, reasonable concerns coming from the other side of the political spectrum. So, it's a long-winded answer to your question, but I think the COVID experience is emblematic and indicative of a wider problem and deeper problem.

Recommended Resources:

• David Halberstam
• Graham Allison
• Neil Ferguson
• David Zweig
• Francis Collins
• Anthony Fauci
• Sandro Galea
• Stephen Haber
• John Ioannidis
• Scott Atlas
• Deborah Birx
• Alasdair MacIntyre
• Charles Taylor
• The Federalist Papers
• John Locke
• Adam Smith
• Consequentialism
• Ben Bernanke
• The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics (Politics and Society in Modern America) by Jefferson Cowie
• Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign by Frances E. Lee

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Princeton University
• Wikipedia Page
• Princeton Politics Page
• Social Profile on X
• PhilPeople.org Profile

Guest Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us
• Deliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement
• Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy
• American Constitutional Interpretation
• The New Right v. the Constitution | CATO Institute

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What historical forces have led to the rise of demagogues in the past and how to they compare to the increasing power of populism today? What are the benefits and drawbacks of empowering leaders from outside politics during these times?

Eric A. Posner is a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School and also the author of several books, including The Demagogue's Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy from the Founders to Trump, Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society, and The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic.

Greg and Eric discuss the definition of demagoguery and its historical context in American politics, particularly comparing presidents Donald Trump and Andrew Jackson. They explore the rise of populism, its implications for democracy, and the role of elites and institutions. Additionally, Eric explains his views on labor market power and antitrust law reforms, reflecting on recent American political dynamics and potential future reforms.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

How President Trump changed the presidential playbook

40:43: Trump is really not that popular, but he does—but he is very popular among his base. So I think he has decided, unlike—I think most presidents want to have, like, a large majority, super majority of support. And I think Trump, at some point, realized that he would never get that. And so he wanted to maintain his base plus a few swing voters. And if that is your goal, if that is your plan, it may be fine to do things that upset a lot of people. Whereas when these norms developed—if that is what we are going to call them—they developed in a context in which there was less partisan division, less ideological strife, and it made sense for politicians to be basically more cooperative, even though they represented people with very different interests.

Demagogues appeal to the emotion

08:12: Demagogues appeal to emotion, but it would be wrong to say that any politician who appeals to emotions is a demagogue. There are community and “let us work together” and “let us protect people, vulnerable people,” versus this kind of hatred, which is characteristic of the demagogue, who wants to find somebody to blame for people's problems.

What is the essence of populism?

06:37: The virtuous people, meaning something—well, not never really clear—definitely farmers and maybe working people, versus an establishment consisting of politicians and bankers and capitalists. I think that division is the essence of populism.

The threat of demagoguery

33:08: Usually people are worried about demagoguery because they are worried, basically, that ordinary people will be persuaded by somebody who is evil, basically, or does not have their interest at heart. It is still with us. Never went away.

Recommended Resources:

• Daniel Kahneman
• Populism
• Demagogue
• William Jennings Bryan
• Andrew Jackson
• Federalist Party
• Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Pat Buchanan
• Huey Long
• Second Bank of the United States
• Napoleon
• Douglas MacArthur
• Henry George

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at The University of Chicago Law School
• EricPosner.com
• Faculty Profile at NYU Law School
• Wikipedia Page
• LinkedIn Profile

Guest Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• The Demagogue's Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy from the Founders to Trump
• Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society
• The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic
• How Antitrust Failed Workers
• Law and Social Norms
• Climate Change Justice
• The Twilight of Human Rights Law
• Last Resort: The Financial Crisis and the Future of Bailouts
• Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts
• Economic Foundations of International Law
• The Perils of Global Legalism
• Google Scholar Page

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How has the landscape of legal education shifted, and what ramifications has that already started having? How do politics factor into judicial appointments more than ever before, and how did we get to this point?

Ilya L. Shapiro is a senior fellow and the director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. He’s also the author of several books, including Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America's Highest Court Cato Supreme Court Review.

Greg and Ilya explore issues related to Supreme Court nominations, cancel culture, and the impact of bias in legal education. Their conversation also addresses the longstanding politicization of judicial appointments, challenges within legal academia such as DEI and student activism, and the broader implications for law and society. Ilya also shares potential reforms for improving the legal profession and education system.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

When the law becomes just another form of activism

35:49: Another failure of our systems of legal education or of the culture of the legal profession. Young lawyers seeing themselves as the law or their legal tools as just another part of activism, rather than as a profession. Or law schools not teaching lawyers the same way. The way to be a good lawyer is to be able to understand and see all sides of a given argument or issue or dispute. That is how you can best advocate your own sides, your own client's position. Well, if half of that 360 degrees is illegitimate, or you cannot even discuss beyond the pale, outside the Overton window, as they say, then you are going to be a much less effective lawyer. And yes, I think the legal profession has suffered, in general, its credibility, its reputation.

What universities were meant to be

43:19: It is the purpose of universities to develop, to have free inquiry, to have civil debate, to confront new ideas. And if universities have not been doing that for a whole host of reasons, then I think that is a level of criticism—something that they should be held to account for.

On judges and legal objectivity

04:36: You would hope that law and policy are different things, because there is a reason why we separate out the judicial power, and that reason is for it to be a counter-majoritarian check. You do not need judges to buttress popular opinions. You need judges to protect against abuses of power by elected officials. You need judges to protect individual rights against mob rule. And so, it cannot be the case that what is right on the law is always going to be what the majority of policy views. 

When fear shapes the future of the legal profession

30:27: Most students just want to get their degree, get their credential, get a job, have some fun while they are at it, and that is about it. They are not politically motivated or philosophically motivated. They are just there because—especially when we are talking about law schools, rather, or some other professional school as opposed to college—they are there because this is the next step on their career trajectory, and they are just trying to keep their head down so as not to be caught in the cancellation crossfire. And it is fear, and this is how I counsel students, is that you do not have to be a martyr. You do not have to stand up and be an individual, objecting to every injustice you face.

Recommended Resources:

• Ketanji Brown Jackson
• Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
• Robert Bork
• Theodore Roosevelt
• James Madison
• Alexander Hamilton
• John Jay
• Mancur Olson
• William Treanor
• The Paper Chase
• Lewis F. Powell Jr.
• John Paul Stevens

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at The Manhattan Institute
• Profile at the CATO Institute
• Profile for Burke Law Group
• LinkedIn Profile
• Social Profile on X

Guest Work:

• Substack - Shapiro’s Gavel
• Amazon Author Page
• Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites
• Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America's Highest Court
• Cato Supreme Court Review
• Religious Liberties for Corporations?: Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the Constitution
• Amicus Brief -- Alvarez v. Smith

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What if there was a system that could decide who to consult for a decision in real time? How would the diversity of the available sources affect the information gathered?

Scott E. Page is a professor of management, social science, and complexity at the University of Michigan. He’s also the author of several books including The Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You, Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life, and The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.

Greg and Scott discuss the importance of diverse models and perspectives in decision-making. Scott also shares insights on the evolving nature of information access and the role of AI in augmenting diversity in team decision-making processes. The conversation covers themes like cognitive diversity, the role of selection and treatment in maintaining diverse perspectives, and the challenge of fostering a healthy organizational culture where diverse ideas can thrive.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

How do we design institutions for diversity and better decisions with AI

01:01:46: So how do we design, especially now with AI, institutions, organizations, whether they're for-profits, universities, governments, that creates, you know, better people in a way, right? We're so focused on the allocation or the decision that's being made. At the end of the day, the decisions and the allocations are going to be made by those people. So you're getting the outcome, but you're also getting the people. And how do we kind of—and to your point about the treatment—you also want those people to be diverse, right? And you want to allow them and encourage them to be learning new things. In fact, I think you do not want to solve it because you could not solve it, because it would be like social engineering. But I think you want to have some awareness that particular institutional structures and incentives of structures that you're putting in place are not necessarily creating the world you want—or are creating the world you want.

How AI’s power to curate makes culture more important than ever

28:58: We all know AI can know—these are really nice knowledge maps. But the question is: when you start linking people to the knowledge maps and start saying, ‘We can dynamically bring people into the meeting and get their feedback,’ now you’re suddenly curating. I think AI’s ability to curate, to your point, is amazing. But now, let’s pull the culture thing in. How do I not feel like a gadget? How do I not feel like some sort of widget that the AI is using? I think this is where creating the right organizational team culture is going to be really important.

Invisible forces behind organizational design

01:01:30: What comes for free, whether you like it or not, whenever I design an institutional structure and organizational structure, are the norms, the behaviors, the beliefs, the networks—all that other stuff. The kind of dark matter that really matters for society.

Why simple models fail on complex problems

07:59: If you take something like inequality, it is a complex problem, right? Or the environment. It is a complex problem. Models are simple. So there is no way you can explain something complex with something simple. You are kind of explaining a 16 with a three or something. You just cannot. If the problem is this big and your model is this big, you cannot get it all. But if you have a bunch of models in conversation with one another, then I think you can, potentially, reach a deep understanding. You could predict better, right? I think it is a better way to advance science.

How AI can bridge decision gaps across social inequality

58:12: People who come from families who are well socially connected, who have wealth, who are educated—they get good advice on big decisions that maybe other people do not get. And you can go to the internet to get advice, but you are going to get it pointing in a thousand directions. The question is: will there be ways to have—like, will banks, will others—will they develop AI that they say, “Look, okay, we are going to approve this, but why do you not, you know, use this software and go through this process? It may help you think about particular things.”

Recommended Resources:

• Keynesian Economics
• James G. March
• Markov Model
• Porter's Five Forces
• Charlie Munger
• Bayesian Statistics
• Philip E. Tetlock
• Daniel Kahneman
• John Seely Brown

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at the University of Michigan
• Wikipedia Profile
• LinkedIn Profile
• Social Profile on X

Guest Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• The Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You
• Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life
• The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies
• The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy
• Diversity and Complexity
• Google Scholar Page

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Liberalism is a term that has been adopted and adapted in different ways over the centuries of its use. How do we need to rethink and communicate the core principles of liberalism in the face of modern challenges?

Helena Rosenblatt is a professor in the History, French, and Political Science departments at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is also the author of several books, including The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century and Liberal Values: Benjamin Constant and the Politics of Religion.

Greg and Helena discuss the shifting meanings and history of liberalism, focusing on key themes such as the Anglo-American appropriation of liberalism, the evolution of liberal values, and the struggle between individual rights and civic virtues. Helena also touches upon the impact of religious influence, the educational system, the rise of new liberalism, and the relevance of civic education in contemporary society. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Liberalism began with character, not politics

09:10: With the advent of Christianity, we started to talk about God's liberality towards, so there was no liberalism. The noun was liberality, as you mentioned. And then it became Christianized, and it meant then charitable. And then eventually, in the 18th century, with the Enlightenment, it started to mean tolerant and sociable. A gentleman was liberal in that he was open-minded. He was polite. He was educated, and we should not forget liberal arts education. Right? So very important to liberality. And it is good to think about today when the liberal arts, we think anyway in the humanities, are under siege, if you will, you know, and people lamenting the decline of civic engagement and of qualities of a citizen—that is what the liberal arts education was supposed to teach.

Why liberalism was never meant to be direct democracy

26:00 We are for the people, and we are accountable to the people. But it is for the people. It is not by the people. Government—we are supposed to be generous. We are supposed to be thinking about them. We are supposed to rule for them, but we cannot possibly allow them to rule.

What happens when liberal face strongmen

22:00: The notion that a strongman politics, which we are seeing again today, was something that liberals became very especially concerned with because they saw what could happen when people place their faith in a strongman who appealed directly to—you know, populism is not a recent thing. They did not call it populism then? I do not think so. But this idea that I am the people, I understand the people, your so-called representatives are just, you know, in deadlock. They cannot make—they are just talking. They are just a bunch of lawyers who, you know—this is an old, very old accusation that strongmen used in order to get, very often, elected democratically, but then unravel and destroy all the safeguards that were there or were meant to be there to safeguard individual rights, for example.

Recommended Resources:

• Liberalism
• John Locke
• Thomas Hobbes
• Germaine de Staël
• Benjamin Constant
• French Revolution
• Freemasonry
• Otto von Bismarck
• Adam Smith
• Walter Lippmann
• Liberal Party
• Napoleon
• Richard T. Ely
• Friedrich Hayek
• Alexis de Tocqueville

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at CUNY
• Wikipedia Profile
• Social Profile on X

Guest Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century
• Liberal Values: Benjamin Constant and the Politics of Religion
• The Cambridge Companion to Constant
• Rousseau and Geneva: From the First Discourse to The Social Contract, 1749–1762

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Technology is now involved in all industries, and there is a need for a critical and ethical approach to technology's development and integration into daily life for the betterment of all.

Greg M. Epstein is the Humanist chaplain at both Harvard and MIT, and also the author of the books  Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation and Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe.

In this episode, Greg discusses the concept of humanistic chaplaincy, its historical roots, and the emergence and acceptance of humanism as an alternative to theistic religions.. Greg explains the idea that technology, specifically the tech industry, functions as a modern religion complete with its own beliefs, practices, and influence over human lives. He also discusses the potential wins and pitfalls of this new 'tech religion' and the need for a reformation akin to that of historical religious movements. They also focus on the ethical implications of tech's pervasive role in society and compare it to traditional religions. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

The belief system behind Silicon Valley

19:15: This is the myth of the Silicon Valley unicorn. You’re disruption, right? You are going to disrupt taxi cabs and you are going to get Uber and Lyft. You are going to disrupt, you know, on and on and on, right? And so, what I would say is that the religion is a religion that we actually are teaching a lot of young people today. I mean, we may not frame it as a religion, but to say that it's simply, "We're just doing an MBA, man, it's fine." Like, "We're just teaching people how to run a company." Like no, you're teaching people a very particular ideology for how they should relate to who they are as humans, how they should relate to their fellow human beings, what it is to be a good person and live a good life, and how we should structure communities. Because our entire society is structured around the whims and ideals of this religion now.

Reclaiming humanity from tech worship

30:58: The technologies that were created should be about making human lives more human and humane, not getting people to devote themselves more and more fanatically to tech, as if it were the God that demanded jealously that we worship it.

When AI becomes a god  

46:40: The biggest problem in the world today, they have been saying for years now, is not climate change or nuclear war, or the lack of ethics, or authoritarianism, or what—it's unaligned AI. And that they have been advising through their 80,000 Hours website. Effective ultras have, for years now, said that any young person wanting to do the most good should put their efforts, their life, their 80,000 hours of work—which, by the way, is a lot of work... They should put their 80,000 hours of work into making sure that this tech God that we are building likes us and, you know, likes us back, worships us back, or at least takes good care of us, as we are now becoming its flock. And that, to me, is—as bizarre as any other theological tenet I have ever read about in 30 years of feeling.

Recommended Resources:

• Humanism
• Jonathan Haidt
• Constantine the Great
• Technopoly
• Millenarianism
• Ray Kurzweil
• Elon Musk
• SMART Recovery
• Sam Altman
• Satya Nadella
• Luddite
• Effective Altruism
• Sam Bankman-Fried
• William MacAskill

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Harvard University
• Faculty Profile at MIT
• Profile on Wikipedia
• HumanistChaplaincy.org

Guest Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation
• Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

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What is the relationship between philosophy, rhetoric and law? What can we still learn from ancient Greek and Roman philosophers like Socrates and the Socratics? How is thinking like a martial art? 

Ward Farnsworth is a professor of law and former dean of the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s also the author of numerous books that explore law, philosophy, and rhetoric including, The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking about the Law, The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook, and The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual.

Ward and Greg discuss the symbiotic relationship of law and philosophy, stoicism and its modern relevance, and the value of philosophical thinking particularly through the lens of the Socratic method in legal education and at universities as a whole.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

The Socratic method isn’t just a teaching technique but a way of living and thinking

05:09: The Socratic method is a style of thinking first before it's a style of teaching or a way to talk to others. It's a style of thought. And the reason it's an effective teaching method, as far as I'm concerned, is that in the classroom, if it's used effectively, it can provide a model that you can internalize and use as a style of thought for yourself, which is important because most of us do not spend a lot of our lives engaged in real Socratic dialogue with others.  So we have the 99% of our time when we are not doing that. What's going on then? And hopefully the answer is still something Socratic. It's obviously a lot easier to do well when you've got another person doing it, because other people can see your own blind spots a lot more easily than you can uncover them. But still, in the end, I think it's trying to—the Socratic method I see as being a model for thought that, when thinking is going well, is internalized. And it's something you do yourself.

Why great lawyers need to think like philosophers

02:21: If you really want to be a great lawyer, you have got to understand something about psychology. I think you have got to be a little bit of a philosopher. You have got to understand some economics.

Legal education is about thinking like a judge

03:07: If you are doing legal education right, you are often trying to teach students how to think like a judge would, and a judge is trying to find the right answer—whatever that might mean—or the best answer. We can talk about the nature of the answers the judge searches for. But I think in a case like that, it is helpful to be thinking not as if you have a dog in the fight, but as if you are trying to discover what the best way is to resolve the case. And then if you are a lawyer, you are trying to anticipate the way the judge will think and beat that. It is also true that if you are a lawyer, you are trying to understand your case and also the other side's case. And that is a very important part of what I call Socratic thinking—being able to anticipate the response to whatever you are imagining saying or thinking, and to be good at going back and forth.

Recommended Resources:

• Socrates
• John Stuart Mill
• Daniel Kahneman
• Seneca the Younger
• Arthur Schopenhauer
• Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at the University of Texas at Austin
• Professional Website

Guest Work:

• The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking about the Law
• The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook
• The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual
• Farnsworth's Classical English Argument
• Farnsworth's Classical English Metaphor 

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Before the Mona Lisa became one of the most famous and beloved paintings in the world, it sat in obscurity for hundreds of years away from the public eye. During that time, no one would have considered it the timeless, classic masterpiece that it is today. How did that change? Who decides what is worthy of the title “classic” and is it possible to have classics in our modern age? 

Rochelle Gurstein is an intellectual historian, critic, and fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities. Her latest book, Written in Water: The Ephemeral Life of the Classic in Art explores what it means for something to be labeled “classic” and how the notion of the classics has evolved over centuries. 

Rochelle and Greg discuss the historical fluidity of aestheticism and taste, the shifting perception of iconic artworks, and unearth the forgotten contributions of critics and artists who shaped our understanding of what it means for art to transcend time. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Is the world being threatened by new art?

42:07:   One of the things that I try to trace in the book is this idea that one's world is being threatened by new art, and the sense that it's not the importance—by the 19th century and the 20th century—of what is at stake. It's not just that there is another work of art in the world, or a style that has entered the world. Instead, it is that a whole sensibility, taste, worldview is under attack.

What is the strongest foundation for a classic?

52:39: The strongest foundation for a classic is when artists keep a work alive in their own practice. So that, as long as people could still see the Venus de’ Medici in the works of all the artists who took it as the exemplar, they would continue to love it because they were all part of a continuum—an aesthetic continuum, a moral continuum—that, in the 20th century and 21st century, became harder and harder to maintain, because contemporary art shifted so dramatically every 10, 20 years—every other year these days. The way that we could keep art alive from the past is: the more we know about what other people have said about it—the people who have loved it, or the people who have not loved it.

What really keeps art alive

57:00: The practice of art itself—what artists are doing, not what collectors or museums and all the rest are doing, which is, of course, important. But I do not think that that is the most important thing. I think the artist’s practice and what they are keeping alive. And then knowing enough, caring enough about the art of the past, to try to understand what their aims were, and knowing it changed over time, and that these works were loved or not loved at different moments of time—and why?

Recommended Resources:

• Raphael
• Venus de' Medici
• Joshua Reynolds
• William Hazlitt
• John Ruskin
• Studies in the History of the Renaissance by Walter Pater
• Giovanni Morelli
• Roger Fry

Guest Profile:

• Fellow Profile at New York Institute for the Humanities 
• Professional Website

Guest Work:

• Written in Water: The Ephemeral Life of the Classic in Art
• The Repeal of Reticence: America's Cultural and Legal Struggles over Free Speech, Obscenity, Sexual Liberation, and Modern Art

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It’s a button most people these days don’t think twice about before clicking online: the like button. But there's no argument that the button has turned into a powerhouse of an icon, with its purpose now reaching far beyond the creators’ original intent. So, how did we get here? Why was the button originally invented, and what can its ubiquitous role online teach us about our culture?

Martin Reeves, chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, and Bob Goodson, founder of Quid, are the authors of the new book, Like: The Button That Changed the World, which tells the fascinating story of how a tiny piece of code completely transformed the way we interact online. 

Martin and Bob join Greg to delve into the micro-history of the “like” button, including Bob’s original sketch for it when he was at Yelp, the role of serendipity in innovation, the booming business that sprang out of “likes,” and how the like button has shaped our understanding of not only online social interaction, but offline socializing as well. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

How the like button transformed online behavior

23:50 [Bob Goodson]: So when Yelp was being created, it was not obvious at all that you could get large numbers of people to contribute content, because normal people who had the opinions needed to rate restaurants and bars and doctors and so on were not really adding content to the internet.

So it was part of that wave where everyone was trying to figure out, separately and for different business reasons, how do we get people to contribute content—which is why, in some ways, it was the movement of user-generated content. And nowadays we do not think twice about it. And the Like button—really, something Martin and I cover in the book—is that the Like button really greased the wheels for that process, because it is the simplest way to contribute content to the internet. And it still is. With one click, people do not think that they are contributing content; they just think of it as something else. Like it is a type of reading almost: “I am giving my reaction.” But it is contributing content. You are putting your name on something, and you are adding data to a complex system—which is why we call it the atomic unit of user-generated content.

A button that tells a thousand words

25:46: [Martin Reeves] There is something quite brilliant and impressive about the Like button, in a way.…[26:25] It's the simplest and most compact thing you can say that is actually meaningful to others. And so, there really is something quite brilliant about the simplicity of this thing.

When a small fix becomes a big thing

04:52: [Martin Reeves]  The strangest thing about all of the pioneers of the Like button—and we spoke to about 30 companies—was that none of them saw any special significance in the day that they made their contribution. They were just addressing that day's tactical challenge. It might be voting, or content stream prioritization, or something. And it was only later that the Like button turned out to be a thing. I call it the moment when a thing becomes a thing, and then—then it becomes a big thing. But it was absolutely not a grand design. So I thought, wow, this is the perfect story of what I had long suspected about innovation, which is: it is neither as planned as the hero stories we tell about it, nor as manageable as the managerial structures and metrics and plans and goals that we put in place to manage it.

The idealism involved before social media

19:52 [Bob Goodson]: We put so much emphasis on social media now that we easily forget. Before it was possible for citizens to share information, the only way to get information out there was through these usually individually owned, massive media companies. So there was a lot of dissatisfaction about censorship and about media being controlled by only the wealthy, and so on. So there was a lot of idealism involved.

Recommended Resources:

• Episode 64 of unSILOed feat. Martin Reeves
• Max Levchin
• Pollice Verso (Gérôme)
• Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
• Russel Simmons 
• Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

Guest Profile:

• Martin Reeves’ Profile at Boston Consulting Group
• Martin Reeves on LinkedIn
• Bob Goodson’s Professional Website
• Bob Goodson on LinkedIn

Guest Work:

• Like: The Button That Changed the World

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