unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

Historical, moral judgment can be a difficult thing to navigate in the context of colonialism. Have you ever pondered the role of truth in history and its impact on today's political culture? 

Nigel Biggar is a p theologian, ethicist, and the author of several books. His latest work is titled,  Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning.

Nigel and Greg discuss whether historical accuracy should bow to political objectives or stand resolute in the face of revisionist pressures when it comes to European culture and the history of Western civilization. They reflect on the delicate balance between preserving facts and fostering reconciliation in a politically charged world. Nigel also talks about the Ethics and Empire Project's ambitious undertaking to assess empires across cultures and times and offer a deeper view that challenges historical judgments.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Historians and their moral judgements about colonialism

05:22: The problem with activist historians making moral judgments is, as it were, historians make moral judgments about colonialism, slavery, etc. They do so with the mantle of the authority of historians, but their moral judgments, from my point of view, really have no more moral authority than that of an ordinary person.

Why do we value understanding other cultures more than understanding other time periods?

32:11: An indiscriminate blanket condemnation of another culture is usually wrong and unwise because it is rare that every culture has got it right and every culture has got it wrong. So, we need to be open to the possibility that other cultures sometimes have something to teach us.

Considering context in moral judgments:

10:42: We can look back and judge certain instances where, let's say, European colonists were excessively violent, and the case of the Puritan attack on the Native American village of Mystic in Connecticut or Massachusetts in the 1600s. Fellow Puritans and Native Americans who were present were appalled at the excess and violence. So even at the time, people recognized excessive violence, but compared to our circumstances, theirs were very insecure and recourse to violent self-defense and often, of course, self-defense, will take the form of aggression. We need to put ourselves in those shoes before we judge what violence was excessive. So it's partly a matter of taking into account very different circumstances, and any good judgment, moral judgment, needs to do that, whether we're judging something that happened 200 years ago.

Is it possible to do history that is not presentist to some degree?

50:23: When it comes to making moral judgments about the past, which I think sometimes is perfectly appropriate, some people say, as you suggest, that one shouldn't use the norms of the present to judge the past. Well, when we're in the business of making judgments, we can't help doing that.

Recommended Resources:

• Colonialism
• Presentism
• Ndebele people
• Cecil Rhodes
• Francoist Spain
• Republican faction
• Garret FitzGerald
• Easter Rising
• Bantu peoples
• Raja Ram Mohan Roy
• American Colonies: The Settling of North America
• Ethics and Empire
• Pascal Bruckner

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Oxford University
• NigelBiggar.uk
• Wikipedia Profile
• Social Profile on X

His Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning
• What's Wrong with Rights?
• Behaving in Public: How to Do Christian Ethics
• The Ethics of War and Peace Revisited: Moral Challenges in an Era of Contested and Fragmented Sovereignty
• Between Kin and Cosmopolis: An Ethic of the Nation
• The Future of Christian Realism: International Conflict, Political Decay, and the Crisis of Democracy
• Aiming to Kill

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Since the pandemic, the term “burnout” seems everywhere. But is burnout something that’s always existed at work, or is it a modern phenomenon? Have jobs changed or have workers' expectations and needs shifted?

Christina Maslach, an emerita professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, has pioneered research on burnout. For decades, she’s studied its causes, effects, and potential remedies. Her work has led to many books on the subject, including The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs. 

Christina and Greg chat about the history of the term “burnout,” how it’s not merely a result of heavy workloads but also stems from the quality of work and the surrounding work environment, and the six core needs essential for employee well-being. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Is it burnout or are you just exhausted?

33:41: People often assume that if they're exhausted because of long hours and lots in a big load, is that burnout? And I'll say, "No, you're exhausted, but do you still like your job?” Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a great job kind of thing. How do you feel about the work you're doing? Oh, I'm good at this. I said, "You're not burned out. You are what we call overextended, and it's the exhaustion, and it's often a high workload and unable to get enough rest and recovery and stuff like that.” But that's what we call job burnout when the other two things kick in as well. It's not just that you're highly stressed. There is more than that. If you still love what you do and still feel good about what you're doing, there's all these other things about the work that are positive; you'll be more willing to cope with that and figure out how to deal with it, and so forth. It's just not another word for stress, and it's that negative, cynical response to the job that is, in a sense, more the hallmark of burnout. That's really what makes it job burnout, as opposed to people use burnout for everything.

Components of a burnout response

10:21: These are the three components of a full burnout response: The exhaustion of the stress response, the cynicism, the negative distancing from the job, and the negative self-assessment of my own effectiveness in this job. 

What can help in dealing with burnout in the workplace?

37:59: Often, when I've asked people if you could have something that you think would help, in terms of dealing with burnout, they will say, "Somebody who is a mentor, somebody, a safe harbor, somebody I can go to, or some people that I can go to and talk to, and we work out problems, or I get advice, or they help me out, and I do the same for other people, it's reciprocal, and that kind of thing," and if I feel I can't ever trust anybody that has been, a real cause of, I could do this work somewhere else. But if people talk about colleagues, they're like gold.

People do not recover as well from chronic stressors as they do from occasional stressors

07:09: Chronic job stressors—that means they're there all the time. They don't go away. You think you've dealt with something, and here I am all over again dealing with this. What we know from decades of work on stress and coping is that people do not recover as well from chronic stressors as they do from occasional stressors.

Recommended Resources:

• Harrison Gough 
• “The measurement of explained burnout” | Journal of Organizational Behavior 
• Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon” 
• Frederick Winslow Taylor
• Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance―and What We Can Do About It by Jeffrey Pfeffer
• “Globally, Employees Are More Engaged — and More Stressed” | Gallup, 2023

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at UC Berkeley

Her Work:

• The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs
• The Truth About Burnout: How Organizations Cause Personal Stress and What to Do About It 
• Banishing Burnout: Six Strategies for Improving Your Relationship with Work

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Prepare to have your notions of nature vs. nurture thoroughly examined as we navigate the intricate web of genetics, environment, and well-being. What is more impactful than parent influence on children’s development?

David Myers is a professor at Hope College and the author of many books, including Psychology Through the Eyes of Faith, How Do We Know Ourselves?: Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind, and The Pursuit of Happiness: Discovering the Pathway to Fulfillment, Well-Being, and Enduring Personal Joy.

David and Greg discuss the captivating terrain of psychology's overlap with philosophy. The transformative power of active educational engagement. We also delve into the 'religion factor' in personal happiness, contemplating whether secular institutions can replicate the community and meaning often found in religious congregations. David also explains the delicate balance between intuition and analytical thinking, inspired by an amusing interaction with Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

The science of happiness

9:31: Most people say they're pretty happy; three in ten Americans say they're very happy; six in ten say they're pretty happy; only one in ten say they're not very happy. But what does that really mean? Well, it turns out that people that say they're very happy or that describe their life as deeply satisfying rather than unsatisfied, in fact, they look happier to other people. They smile and laugh more. Their friends rate them as happier. They're less vulnerable to disabling depression, and so forth. So, I think there is a lot of evidence that those subjective well-being measurements by which people assess their own happiness and life satisfaction have validity. And they're connected to other things that are also indicators of well-being. And that's why we have a science of happiness and a whole field of positive psychology now.

Impact of religion on one’s well-being

10:37: We know that actively religious people who worship regularly with a faith community are much likelier to say they're very happy than are people who are religiously disengaged. These people are connected to other people in a communal experience where there's mutual support. Religion is also a meaning system, and people who live with a sense of meaning and purpose in life report greater happiness than others.

A shocking finding on the effect of parental nurture on children’s development

16:27: Behavior genetics research has also had an even more spectacularly shocking finding: the effect of parental nurture on children's developing traits, such as their intelligence and personalities, is, assuming we're within the normal range of parental variation, excluding abuse and neglect. Parental nurture is a surprisingly small variable. Parental nurture matters for values, politics, and the religious faith of children as they're growing up, but their basic traits are not much influenced by parental nurture. What does matter more than we've calibrated in the past is peer influence. Particularly as kids grow up into middle and high schoolers. They're really much more attuned to and adapting themselves to the ideas and the lifestyles and so forth of their peers than they are of their parents.

Do genetic factors play a role in one's personality, subjective well being and, and social factors?

13:17: I would say that I have been amazed by the results of behavioral genetic studies, which we now have on many millions of twins, for example, both fraternal and identical twins, and also comparing biological and adoptive siblings with their biological and adoptive parents. About 50 percent of the person-to-person variation in various important traits, like intelligence, extroversion, and even physical characteristics—psychological trait characteristics—are especially attributable to genetic differences. Note that that doesn't mean that 50 percent of my intelligence, yours, or your extraversion is attributable to genes. You are 100 percent the product of your genes in your environment. However, if we want to understand individual variation, the differences among individuals, genes are very important. 

Recommended Resources:

• TalkPsych.com
• Eudaimonia
• Judith Rich Harris
• Carol Dweck
• Daniel Kahneman
• Amos Tversky
• William James
• Blaise Pascal
• Isaac Newton
• Jonathan Haidt
• Jean Twenge

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Hope College
• DavidMyers.org
• Wikipedia Profile

His Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• Psychology Through the Eyes of Faith
• How Do We Know Ourselves?: Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind
• Loose-leaf for Social Psychology
• The Pursuit of Happiness: Discovering the Pathway to Fulfillment, Well-Being, and Enduring Personal Joy
• The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty
• Psychology in Everyday Life
• Intuition: Its Powers and Perils

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Democracy stands as one of humanity's most treasured institutions, but what if the very foundation it’s built upon is less solid than we believe? What is an epistocracy and how could it work better as a form of government?

Jason Brennan is a professor at Georgetown University and the author of several books. His latest work is titled Against Democracy.

Jason and Greg discuss how voting, often romanticized as the pinnacle of civic duty, hides a twisted web of irrational loyalties and tribal instincts that can lead us astray. Jason explains the historical context of political discord and the role of expertise in an era where trusted figures become polarizing symbols. They scrutinize the influence of political factions and social signaling, the curious ways in which political interests align across different cultures, and whether deliberation in democracy genuinely elevates decision-making or merely intensifies division. Jason concludes by revealing the hidden trials and tribulations of pursuing a PhD, and the emphasis on research productivity over teaching, the financial realities of academic life, and the necessity of guidance for non-academic careers.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Why don't voters admit their ignorance and defer to experts in policy matters?

16:37: You're right that even in markets when we do a lot of delegation, however, we still have a kind of check on this, right? So, I know only the most basic plumbing. So if I have any big problem, I'm going to have to call the plumber in. But when the plumber leaves, I can tell if there's still a leak underneath the bathtub, right? It's like, well, the water is still dripping, so he must have done a bad job. I couldn't fix it myself, but I can check to see whether he fixed it. [17:09] We don't have that same ability when it comes to politics. If a person implements a policy, I put in the Cares Act; did that make things better? How would you know? How would you measure that? That takes expert ability, not just to sort of know what's happened in the past five years as a result of it, but to disentangle the effects of that policy from all the other confounding things. I mean, you and I see policy papers where people try to do this, and it's extremely difficult. So the average person doesn't know how to do that. They do, however, defer to experts in a way, but the experts they defer to are people like comedians on late-night TV who make fun of the other side.

Politics as Social Signaling

28:46: A lot of what we're doing with politics is this kind of signaling to one another: we're the right kind of person, we're good, we're virtuous, we're kind. Please like me, be my friend, etc. I think that's what's happening in politics. We're using our vote as a way of getting social benefits for ourselves.

Why does Europe's political landscape look different?

23:21: One of the reasons why I think political distances, or differences, are less pernicious in most of Europe than they are in the U.S. is partly because when you have proportional voting systems, you have more viable political parties. And as a result, it's like your neighbors are all going to be people at different parties. It's really hard for you to segregate yourself in terms of your work, where you live, whom you date, and whom you befriend, because there's just so much variation. So, you can't afford to make that the same kind of signal that you do in the U.S., we have a first-past-the-post voting system that predicts there's going to be two major parties, and I think we get this behavior as a result.

In politics, you don't get the same kind of reward-punishment system that you get elsewhere

15:42: When it comes to politics, there are only two major parties, and so you can afford and get rewarded for excluding a bunch of people and just playing along with your team. So I think the incentive structure of politics is worse than the incentive structure we have in most other aspects of our lives.

Recommended Resources:

• Epistocracy
• Jeremy Waldron
• Alexis de Tocqueville
• Voltaire
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Thomas Christiano
• John Rawls

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Georgetown University
• Wikipedia Page
• Profile on PhilPeople.org

His Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• Business Ethics for Better Behavior
• Against Democracy: New Preface
• Democracy: A Guided Tour
• Cracks in the Ivory Tower: The Moral Mess of Higher Education
• Good Work If You Can Get It: How to Succeed in Academia
• Political Philosophy: An Introduction (Libertarianism.org Guides Book 1)
• Injustice for All: How Financial Incentives Corrupted and Can Fix the US Criminal Justice System
• Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know?
• Why Not Capitalism?
• When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice
• Why It's OK to Want to Be Rich
• In Defense of Openness: Why Global Freedom Is the Humane Solution to Global Poverty
• A Brief History of Liberty (Brief Histories of Philosophy Book 1)
• Compulsory Voting: For and Against
• Google Scholar Page

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What can we learn looking back on the paths of influential thinkers like Popper and Kuhn today? How are the motivations and passions of scientists left behind in the pursuit of scientific progress??

Micheal Strevens is a professor in the Philosophy department of New York University and the author of several books. His latest work is titled, The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science.

Michael and Greg discuss the unspoken motivations and aesthetic judgments fueling the progress of science. They explore the delicate balance between rigorous empirical data and the broader intellectual landscape in which it resides, offering insights into the irrational but inherently human elements of scientific inquiry. Michael shares his own experiences and the profound joy found in understanding causal models in a field where explanation often trumps prediction. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

The rule of science

10:11: I think science has its problems at any point, but it's in reasonably good shape in the sense that there's a sort of an agreed set of rules for playing the game, the iron rule, as I call them. I mean, even something like p-value null hypothesis testing, that has its downside, of course, but it is a rule for doing science. And if you just think of it as a kind of a set of boxes you have to check to have research that you can stick into a journal, then I think it mostly actually does what it's supposed to do. It's possible to game it and for things to go south in certain kinds of situations. But as long as you don't take it too seriously, it's actually telling you something about the intrinsic quality of the data. Basically, really just formal threshold the data has to pass. It's like a legitimate move in chess. Okay, a move can be legitimate and also a really crummy move, and likewise, data can satisfy these rules and still be terrible data.

Michael's motivation to tackle motivation in the world of science

03:46: Perhaps the most important things about modern science were more connected to the psychological or the sociological, to the institutional framework of science, rather than to the kind of thing that, more traditionally, stood out for philosophers of science—stuff to do with the method in a kind of logical, intellectual sense, a reasoning sense. And so it was a kind of switch in my thinking from arguing and logic to questions more subtle and background questions about motivation.

Diverse attitudes in science

11:34: I think there's a huge range of attitudes in science. There are a lot of scientists who it's just their daily job almost, and so they go and do the job and don't spend a lot of time worrying about it otherwise. And then there's some scientists who really feel like they want to make some breakthrough and come up with some revolutionary discovery. All of them have to, as it were, play the same game. And the game works ultimately independently of their personal motivations, simply by generating enough facts with enough systematicity and attention to detail that if there is some problem with the big framework, science will ultimately find it.

How do we optimize research efforts for maximum ROI on the frontier?

41:10: In a world where doing science costs millions and millions of dollars, it's not so easy to just leave it up to the judgment of scientists as a whole. It's a tough problem, but on the whole, I think it's good not to try to pick out just a few projects and funnel everything towards those few projects. I'm afraid I don't have too many good ideas about the alternative, apart from that, except to allow diversity to flourish in one way or another. 

Recommended Resources:

• Karl Popper
• Thomas Kuhn
• Newtonian Dynamics
• Quantum Mechanics
• Arthur Eddington
• Albert Einstein
• Isaac Newton
• René Descartes
• Robert Boyle
• Bruno Latour
• Philosophy of Science
• P-Value
• Case Method

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at New York University
• Strevens.org
• PhilPeople.org Profile
• Profile on the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

His Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science
• Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation
• Bigger than Chaos: Understanding Complexity through Probability
• Tychomancy: Inferring Probability from Causal Structure
• Google Scholar Page

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Unlock the mysteries of human connections as we share a compelling dialogue with the man behind ‘Dunbar’s Number,’ the number of connections that humans can and do maintain across different cultures and time periods. What evolutionary forces have sculpted the essence of friendship and religion, also impacting our well-being and longevity?

Robin Dunbar is emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford. He is also the author of several books, including Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships, How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures, and The Science of Love and Betrayal.

Robin and Greg discuss storytelling and its influence on religion, probing how our cognitive prowess has enabled us to imagine unseen worlds and foster expansive social networks. Robin explains the transformative power of religious rituals and their ability to engender deep community bonds and emotional transcendence. They also examine the practical applications that our ancestral social constructs hold for the contemporary world. From the role of HR departments in nurturing community to the competitive edge ingrained within the collegiate system, they dissect the building blocks of successful organizational cultures and also what it looks like to cultivate meaningful relationships in an increasingly digital world.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Is religion what makes humans unique?

10:11: Of the things that distinguish humans from all other animals, birds, mammals, whatever: religion is certainly a key one, but I would probably want to argue that religion itself is derivative of something else that's more generally important; that is, actually storytelling. It's the ability to tell stories, as it were. And stories are about thinking about and concocting tales about worlds that we can't physically see. So if you like invisible worlds, things that, as in a sense of fiction, is the classic case, but all the kinds of many different kinds of stories you tell—fictional and even factual stories about places far away, metropolis tales, are all about things that we can't physically see. We have to imagine in our minds, and religion is part and parcel of that spread.

Friendships affect your lifespan

07:10: The single most important factor affecting your mental health and well-being, your physical health and well-being, and even how long you're going to live into the future from today on is the number and quality of friendships you have. And the optimal number seems to be about five.

Storytelling is a key component of religion

39:10: A key component, I think, of religion, storytelling seems to play a very strong supplementary role in bonding communities. So if we want to bond large-scale communities of the kinds we have now and then, one of those is having a shared history of that we are here, not necessarily as the favored sons and daughters of God, but that we are here because of a certain kind of history.

Is there a way to create a sense of belonging in an organization?

46:15: There's no silver bullet that applies to every organization; you have to look at the particular local culture and think about what kind of works in that kind of environment. And given the fact that these days people have families, they want kids, they want to get home to put to bed, and they have other friends that, outside, as it were. So you've got to design it around people's natural lives as we live them these days.

Recommended Resources:

• Theory of Mind
• New Zealand National Rugby Union Team (All-Blacks)
• Haka
• Multinational Corporation
• The Increasing Importance of a Best Friend at Work - Gallup
• Amazon’s Two-Pizza Teams
• Dunbar's Number

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Oxford
• Wikipedia Profile

His Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups
• Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships
• How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures
• Primate Social Systems (Studies in Behavioural Adaptation)
• Evolutionary Psychology: A Beginner's Guide (Beginner's Guides)
• How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Dunbar's Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks
• Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language
• Evolution: What Everyone Needs to Know
• Human Evolution: Our Brains and Behavior
• The Science of Love and Betrayal
• Human Evolution
• Google Scholar Page
• ResearchGate Publications

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Have you ever considered the transformative power of a simple hello or the profound effect of asking someone about their day? Why might our attempts at perspective-taking be inadequate compared to  the straightforward solution of ‘just ask.’

Nicholas Epley is the John Templeton Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science, and Director of the Roman Family Center for Decision Research, at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is also the author of a book titled, Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want.

Nicholas and Greg discuss how social nuances influence every aspect of our lives. Nicholas’s expertise, combined with Greg’s teaching experiences, bring to light the nuanced dance of cross-cultural social engagement and the impact of technology on our interactions. This episode isn't just about making more friends or being likable—it's about harnessing the often overlooked science of social cognition to enrich every interaction you have. Discover why the 'superpower' of social cognition might be the most underutilized tool in your personal and professional arsenal.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Conversation is an entirely cooperative process 

16:25: Conversation itself is just an entirely cooperative process that tends to pull us together with somebody else. So, for us to have a conversation, we have to start by establishing some common ground with each other, figure out what we're going to talk about.That's inherently cooperative. We're going back and forth. We're taking turns. We're cooperating, right? And cooperation tends to pull people together. Reciprocity is, without question, the dominant social norm in social interaction. So, if I were to punch you in the face, you would probably punch me in the face back, right? That'd be a bad interaction. But if I reach out and say hello to you with sort of authentic kindness, you tend to respond back in the same way. And, it's those iterative social processes—those complicated social processes—that people tend to really underestimate the power of.

Deep talk is better than small talk, but small talk is better than no talk

25:43: Small talk is better than no talk in a given moment; deep talks are a little better, or not as bad as you might think it is. But when you see people reporting that having a really deep conversation with somebody is better than a shallow one, it's typically when they have both and can compare them on their own; the small talk is actually pretty good. 

How our social thinking keeps us from getting feedback

07:50: I think a bigger problem with a lot of our social thinking is that it can create reality, which then keeps us from getting the feedback we need. So Greg, if I thought you wanted to talk to me, I'd have a conversation with you, and I'd figure out if that assessment was right. So I'd get feedback on that because I would approach you and would find out if we're in a coffee shop, I didn't think you want to talk to me or didn't look very interesting, whatever. I decided, nah, I'm not going to have this conversation. Notice I wouldn't have anything to learn from. So when it comes to social thought, sometimes, particularly when it's about whether doing engage with somebody to connect with somebody or not, our beliefs are self-fulfilling, and they can keep us from getting the feedback we need.

The truth about our fear of social engagement

28:05: Our fears about how social engagement is going to go, particularly when it's positive, just tend to be a little off, a little overly pessimistic, in part because we don't seem to fully appreciate that when you reach out positively to others, they tend to reach out positively to you in return, and people are happier to be seen and have somebody take some notice of them. That's just very powerful—surprisingly powerful.

Recommended Resources:

• Juliana Schroeder
• Einfühlung
• Liz Dunn - UBC Cell Phone Research

Guest Profile:

• NicholasEpley.com
• Faculty Profile at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business
• LinkedIn Profile

His Work:

• Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want
• Google Scholar Page

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How did higher education come to be dominated by academics on the ideological left, and what are the potential consequences of this monoculture on diverse fields such as literature and engineering? What’s the mechanism behind this shift, and where did it originate?

John Ellis is Chairman of the Board of the California Association of Scholars, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of several books. His most recent work is titled, The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, the Damage It Does, and What Can Be Done.

John and Greg discuss the transformative changes happening in higher education. John questions the sustainability of the ideological shift towards political correctness and identity politics within humanities departments. Together they examine the impact of the marginalization of traditional scholarly perspectives and the wider implications for society's dialogue.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

What happens when one political ideology dominates the campus

1:00:01 The more you get a group of people in one room that agree with each other,  the more you ban from that room any contrary opinion, the more those people will descend into stupidity because there's nothing to check them. What keeps people like you and me alive intellectually is that if we say something that has a flaw in it, someone is going to see those, spot the flaw. And in a thriving university, there are enough bright people around you, that if you say something with a weakness in it, there'll be someone who'll point it out to you, and you'll be better off. Because now, when you have a group of people that  all agree with each other, that discipline, self-correction is gone. And so you'll descend into greater and greater irrationality and stupidity, and that process is still ongoing.

Do universities only appoint people like themselves

58:48 The universities will not change. They are, at the moment, peopled by a sect, a minority sect, a political sect that is extraordinarily tenacious and unwilling to compromise. Extraordinarily intolerant and intemperate, and they will go on appointing people like themselves. And we're still seeing the grip on this. The grip of the radical left is growing ever tighter, day by day. People don't seem to grasp this, but it is true.

The idea of objectivity in sciences and engineering

40:25 There is definitely an assault on the idea of objectivity in sciences and engineering. I mean, you've heard about black mathematics and so on, which is a nonsense ideal. My favorite saying is, "Only an engineer can build a bridge that will stand up. It will only just stand up. anyone can build a bridge that is overbuilt." These standards are seriously under assault now. No one quite knows how far they'll go. Certainly, there's some good work still being done in the sciences.

DEI as a reflection of the values of a radical faculty

56:14 The reach of the radical faculty, its grip on American academia, is extensive. It is pervasive. It is everywhere.  And one of the things that I've found is very odd. What I don't understand is the fact that what was happening on one campus was replicated on almost every other campus,  and yet it seemed so, you know, irrational to me, and yet the whole country, the universities in the whole country were exhibiting the same kind of directionality.  And I still marvel at this. That there weren't more holdouts,  but, no,  the DEI is a reflection of the values of the radical faculty. 

Recommended Resources:

• Michel Foucault
• Jacques Derrida
• McCarthyism
• Students for a Democratic Society
• David Lodge
• Lawrence Summers

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at UCSC
• LinkedIn Profile

His Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, the Damage It Does, and What Can Be Done
• The Theory of Literary Criticism: A Logical Analysis
• Against Deconstruction
• Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities
• Language, Thought, and Logic

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What does the changing value of salt over history tell us about the future of oil? How are the views around milk and dairy products connected to class politics? 

Prolific author and journalist Mark Kurlansky has written 39 books with more on the way. His work has ranged from historical nonfiction to children’s literature to deep dives on food like his latest book, The Core of an Onion: Peeling the Rarest Common Food―Featuring More Than 100 Historical Recipes.

Mark and Greg chat about the underestimated historical value of cookbooks, the evolution of dietary habits, and Kurlansky's work on nonviolence. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

On the birth of the idea of his book “Salt”

03:03: In my Cod book, I realized the importance of salt because you couldn't have a fishery if you didn't have salt. And my publisher was very interested in me doing something on salt and really pushed me to do it. And I kept saying, "But where's the story?" And then I realized that the story is that there was this ingredient, commodity, mineral, that was of tremendous value that nations would go through…. I mean, they founded colonies, went to war, and went to all these lengths to get this salt, and then salt lost its value. So what was it for? And I believe that is the trajectory of oil.

The role of salt and cheese in the international economy

22:35: You have to think about: Before the Industrial Revolution, if you wanted to have an international economy, what did you trade? Mostly food. And you couldn't trade food unless it was salted. So basically, if you didn't have salt, you didn't have an international economy. And as far as dairy farmers go, your possibility for trade was to make cheese.

Do we need to reprioritize our food?

43:19: The way I think commercial fishing should go, fish aren't going to be cheap. They can't be cheap. Cheap fish is the enemy, because if you're going to tell a fisherman to catch less fish, you better get more money for it, or he's going under. So does that mean that poor people can't eat fish anymore? This is a real question. It's a question about improving agriculture, improving beef and dairy, and everything that you do to improve it ends up making it more expensive.

Recommended Resources:

• Waverley Root
• Jacques Pépin
• Frederick Douglass
• William Lloyd Garrison
• Mario Savio
• E.O. Wilson
• David Dellinger

Guest Profile:

• Professional Website

His Work:

• Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World
• Salt: A World History
• Milk!: A 10,000-Year Food Fracas
• The Core of an Onion: Peeling the Rarest Common Food―Featuring More Than 100 Historical Recipes
• The Food of a Younger Land: A portrait of American food from the lost WPA files
• Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Modern Library Chronicles)
• 1968: The Year That Rocked the World
• BIG LIES: from Socrates to Social Media
• Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man
• The Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation
• The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell
• Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of Their Common Fate
• Paper: Paging Through History
• The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing
• The Food of a Younger Land: A portrait of American food from the lost WPA files
• The Last Fish Tale
• Havana: A Subtropical Delirium

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Our healthcare system is a complex dance of costs and inefficiencies, yet it's one we can't afford to sit out. What results have flowed from shifting the cost of healthcare to employers, and how have attempts to change that system sometimes backfired in unexpected ways?

Vivian Lee is a healthcare executive, an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School, and an author. Her latest book is called, The Long Fix: Solving America's Health Care Crisis with Strategies that Work for Everyone. 

Vivian and Greg discuss the disconnect between healthcare consumers and payers and dissecting the employer-based insurance model. They scrutinize payment models and incentives, discussing the stark consequences of shifting healthcare costs to employees and the resultant avoidance of crucial preventive care. Vivian talks about the financial motivations of health providers versus patient demands, creating a landscape where escalating costs and quality care seem to be in constant conflict.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Why we need to know where our dollars are going in healthcare

22:19: I think it's very important that everyone really understands a little bit about healthcare and where their dollars are going. When you look at the graphs, all of us would be doing a lot better if our healthcare expenditures were lower. It's just hidden from us because it's taken out before we even get our paychecks, because our employers are using those dollars that should have been going to our pay raises for the last 20–25 years and using it instead to pay for healthcare costs. I think we need to know it for a number of reasons. One, because we need (we need was deleted in the audio-perhaps restore) the public to move forward to be able to improve healthcare payment policies in this country. We have to act through the way in which we vote. We also need it because we need to understand better our own actions. What of our behaviors are most important for our own health outcomes? And so having a more nuanced understanding of what we can do in terms of our daily behaviors that can impact our own health, I think, would be also really, really important.

The US lacking universal healthcare for everybody is a key factor in its healthcare economy

05:28: In health care, we are responsible for caring for people when they show up to us, and we can't decline people just because they don't have health insurance. So, as a result, we also have this strange subsidization model within health care where we have to overcharge some people in order to cover the costs of care for those who aren't covered.

Money affects change in healthcare

16:49: Any time we want to change the system, it's going to be hard. It is hard because there's already so many dollars in healthcare and there's so many vested interests who, naturally, if they're doing well, want to maintain the status quo. So change is always hard, especially in healthcare, because of how much money is already involved.

How can we maximize the data from digital health systems

37:11: Increasingly, we have the opportunity to use the data from all the operating rooms that are going on in the country and in the world every single day, where we have information about how surgeons are doing things in particular ways with different kinds of patients. We know about the different patients, we know about what the surgeons are doing, and we also know about the outcomes that happen six months, a year later, two years later. We've been collecting these data with our digital health systems for a long time now. What we haven't been doing is using the data to create more evidence to say, "Oh, actually, we really do know that doing it exactly this way with this artificial hip provides really good outcomes," and that would be the evidence that you would need to talk to the surgeon or convince everybody to go to that standard approach.

Recommended Resources:

• RAND Study: Skin in the Game
• KFF Study: Health Care Debt In The U.S.: The Broad Consequences Of Medical And Dental Bills

Guest Profile:

• VivianLeeMD.com
• LinkedIn Profile
• Wikipedia Profile

Her Work:

• The Long Fix: Solving America's Health Care Crisis with Strategies that Work for Everyone
• Cardiovascular MR Imaging: Physical Principles to Practical Protocols
• Genitourinary MRI, An Issue of Magnetic Resonance Imaging Clinics
• Select Topics in MR Imaging, An Issue of Magnetic Resonance Imaging Clinics

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