unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

What is the aftermath of a global pandemic and its impact on public consciousness? Will the surge in awareness about infectious diseases lead to sustained interest and funding, or is it merely a transient response to recent events?

Dr. John S. Tregoning is a Professor in Vaccine Immunology at the Imperial College of London and the author of the recent book, Infectious: Pathogens and How We Fight Them.

John and Greg discuss the evolution of the war against pathogens, the complexity and significance of vaccines and the impact of pandemics on public health awareness. John lays out the role of scientific advances in diseases prevention, the potential of RNA vaccines, and future strategies to ward off pandemics.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

On clinical trials

48:49: The clinical trials and the burden of proof for the vaccines was the same as it was outside the pandemic. There was nothing different. It wasn't done quicker; the gaps between the trials was shorter. So normally, you do the first part, you pause, you publish, you get more money, you do the second part, and it was the pause and publish that disappeared. So, all the trials were done as stringently as they would normally do. The big challenge was that suddenly, you had this drug that was being given to a billion people. And if you gave apples to a billion people, some people would get sick. If you give aspirin to a billion people, a lot of people would get sick. If you gave paracetamol, anything to that many people that quickly, some people are going to get sick. And I think that communication of like, yeah, it's hard, right? Say for most of you, this is fine, but for some of you, and we don't know who, some of you are going to get very sick, and that's quite a tricky sell.

Science is an imperfect answer

08:28: That's all science ever is. It's an imperfect answer. There's always doubt, there's always questions, and we're just using the tools we have at the time to interpret the world around us.

How do we know in the world of public health, where we should be investing our resources?

18:49: The basic measure is that more public health, the bigger; every pound spent on public health saves two pounds later down the line. So, if I had the big pot of money, I would be investing in people's basic underpinning health, so make sure trying to reduce obesity, try to reduce smoking, try to reduce drinking—all of the things that make it worse when the pathogen gets to you—all of that investment is going to pay double because it pays you in. Not getting infected pays you in overall general health as well. The earlier you can nip it in the bud, the better. And so that goes for prevention. It probably goes for thinking about surveillance, investing money in making sure that we're catching the pathogens early, and then having high containment units.

What happens when a new virus emerges?

38:37: When a new virus emerged, it gave us insight into what would happen when a new virus emerged and the people most at risk. It doesn't have to be particularly pathogenic. There are people who have frail, damaged lungs, and if you put a virus into that, it's going to cause disease and death.

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Understanding the origins of species and the evolution of our planet has really become a multidisciplinary field. In order to understand how birds evolved to fly, or fish evolved to walk on land, you have to look at fossils. But you also need to think about the molecular biology part of that story. 

Neil Shubin is a professor of biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago. He’s the author of numerous books, including Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA and Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body. 

Neil and Greg discuss the importance of understanding both biology and geology when looking at evolution, the mysteries that still exist in our DNA, and what Neil was doing with thousands of dead salamanders in his lab once. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Evolution is not designing things for a blueprint

11:10: Evolution is not designing things from a blueprint; there's not a blueprint, and everything's designed from scratch, fit for purpose. No, what you're having is you have ancestors that are being modified to make new things. So you're modifying ancient genes to make new structures. That means history is very important; history provides constraints because you're not starting from scratch, but it also creates opportunities because you’re in a particular environment with particular genes, you may be in the right place at the right time.

Does evolution happen at variable speed?

10:41: Evolution happens, by all accounts, very gradually from generation to the next. But when we look at it over geological time—which is the window we have as paleontologists—it may look rapid, but it's probably very slow if you were on the ground watching it and measuring it year to year.

Evolution is not about rewiring, but about rerouting

15:14: When you think about these molecular switches—what we're looking at—is that you can look at not only where a gene is active in the body, but you can also look at the sort of almost the genetic software that tells the gene when and where to be active. And it turns out a lot of the big changes in evolution are not as much about evolving new genes—they're about using old genes in new ways: that is, changing when and where they're active. That's where those switches—the genetic regulatory elements—come into being. In part, there's a lot to that story, but the crazy thesis is right there.

How is it possible to be both broadened and specialized at the same time?

40:13: So collaboration is the answer to that. So, what we try to foster is a culture of collaboration among scientists. That is, when I train scientists in the lab, I don't ask them to be experts in both paleontology and development. I ask them to be experts in the empiricism of one field, particularly in parts of the fields that are relevant to them. But I insist that they be able to have critical thinking. And creative thinking across the fields, but their empiricisms, the way they do their work, whether it's lab work or field work or sometimes both, they have to specialize there.

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What is the correct balance between short-term profit and long-term resilience as far as healthcare is concerned? How does the 'panic, neglect' cycle underpin our societal and managerial flaws?

Bethany McLean is a journalist, editor, and author of several books. Her latest book, co-authored with Joe Nocera, is titled The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind. 

Bethany and Greg discuss the paradox of America's healthcare system—immense spending that does not equate to superior care, a disparity made glaringly obvious during the global COVID crisis. They dissect the financial interventions of recent administrations and biases that tip the scales in favor of the affluent, leaving small enterprises and the vulnerable in the lurch. Bethany gives a critical examination of the swift mobilization that birthed vaccines under Operation Warp Speed, an emblem of successful government-industry collaboration amidst a turbulent political backdrop.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

“I don’t know” isn't a weakness, it's a skill

48:42: The ability to say, "I don't know," in a way that isn't weak is a skill I hope our leaders can start to learn: "I don't know, but here's what we think. Here's what we're trying to do." I think, for all of us, not resorting to ideological divides as quickly as we do, and to really try and understand that where different people are coming from. I mean, I remember this whole ugly thing at the start of the pandemic: that you were a really bad person if you cared about the economy; that meant you cared about money over people's lives. And I was like, "The economy is people's lives.” I mean, what functioning society doesn't have a functioning economy? It doesn't happen there intimately bound up together. 

Is the healthcare system failing to deliver value for its costs?

17:52: I sometimes think our healthcare system just needs to be ripped out by the roots and replaced because everything we do jiggers around the edges, just ends up making matters worse and creating more loopholes that financial players come and take advantage of. And none of it seems to do anything for either lowering the cost of health care or actually keeping people healthy.

Science isn’t the truth, it is a method of ascertaining truth

25:59: There was a fundamental misconception, stoked by people who said, "Follow the science," as to what science actually is, and as well as I do science, it's a method of asking questions. It's formulating a theory and then gathering evidence and seeing if the evidence supports or disproves the theory. And then, if it disproves the theory, you adjust the theory. But science isn't truth with a capital T. It's a method of ascertaining truth, of arriving at truth. And we wanted to believe that there was truth with a capital T. And I think that was one portion of the damage done.

Is the government short-sighted when it comes to looking at crises?

09:38: The government is shortsighted, and part of it goes back to the issue that the government only knows how to look at the last crisis, not how to prevent the next one…[10:16] I think our government has become fairly incompetent and unwilling to lead. And that's partly because we are so divided as a society that it's difficult to lead, but partly because people would rather score ideological points than actually exercise leadership.

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As we wrestle with the notion of humans as complex biological machines, we confront the unsettling idea that our behaviors might be preordained by genetics and our environment rather than a result of conscious choice. How do we walk the tightrope of acknowledging scientific revelations while grappling with our innate need to assign blame and praise?

Robert Sapolsky is a professor in the neurology department at Stanford University and the author of several books. His latest is Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will.

Robert and Greg discuss the neurological underpinnings of punishment and question whether our justice system is in line with our evolving understanding of human behavior. They examine the dynamics within societies that prioritize rehabilitation over retribution, as seen in the Norwegian criminal justice system, and ponder if mercy and forgiveness should be more central to our own.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

On exploring religious perspective on free will 

40:32: If you've spent a hell of a long time thinking about where human goodness comes from, the human capacity to do evil, where its meaning from, what does pain mean and all of that, and it basically doesn't matter if you conclude there's a loving God or if you conclude it's an indifferent universe or if you conclude I am the captain of my fate or if you conclude we're just biological machines. If you've done that hard work, you are going to come out much, much more ethical than average. It's the people who say whatever in between where they are most easily malleable.

Is our brain prepared for adversity?

29:43: What we often view as a brain distorted by adversity early in life is a brain that was doing exactly what it should be doing for preparing for a world in which there was going to be nothing but that adversity, and it's only when you put someone in a different setting that you see the dramatic mismatch there.

The dopamine drive behind punishment and moral dilemmas

15:45: When I see some barbarian advocating some horrible, punitive, vicious, dripping with viscera sort of thing to do to some poor bastard or any such scenario like that, I got to remind myself of something that is a very, very reliable way of getting primate brains to release the neurotransmitter dopamine, and a sense of reward and good feeling is to get to punish someone, to get to punish someone when you feel in the right. That's an incredibly strong thing in us. That's a feature of how we're wired. Culture comes in; we can feel a sense of righteous justice being served by locking away somebody for life without parole, rather than in a town square, like using pincers to take out their eyes and then burn them in front of everyone, are shifting standards.

Where do we get our free will from?

18:19: I spend six chapters in the book going through the world of people who say, "Ooh, we get our free will from quantum indeterminacy. We get our free will from emergent complexity. We get our free will from chaoticism." Those are three totally cool areas, and they're amazing and all. That's not where you can get free will from, and the models they put up always require, at some point, things to work very differently from how they actually do.

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The word “creativity” as we understand it today didn’t become popular until the mid-20th century. So, what changed around 1950 that led to this mainstreaming of creative thought? And how was creativity described before that? 

Samuel Franklin at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands charts the recent history of creativity in his book, The Cult of Creativity. 

He and Greg discuss how the meaning of the word “creativity” has shifted over time, the invention of brainstorming, and why engineers and scientists of the mid-20th century were drawn to creative thinking.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Creativity as a cognitive ability and natural human process

11:48: When we want a creative job, it's often because it's something that we think is going to allow us to become our truest selves but also make a living creating economically valuable novelty. It was this thing that allowed people to have it both ways, to see economic and psychological goods as being aligned.

Creativity's constellation of concepts

03:32: Creativity isn't necessarily a totally new concept. It's a new term that allows us to pull together a constellation of different concepts, connotations, and vibes that allow us to say new things. So in that sense, it is a new concept because it's a new handle. So I think what it does is allow us to name some theoretical attribute that is a human attribute.

On individualism versus group work 

26:41: The debate in business seemed to be: when you're trying to come up with something new or trying to solve a problem, should you get people together to do it? Or should you send people off on their own to do it? This is a debate that is perennial. It goes on to this day. There are people who have methods that are elaborations of brainstorming, improvements to brainstorming that they swear are good for group work, and I'm sure they do serve their purposes quite well, given the right context. And then there's people who just swear that there's no way to do it. I don't think we'll ever resolve it. I think that it's probably all about context.

Changing the way we view creativity

47:55: We see creativity as a psychological thing—something that happens in the realm of brain work. And so I think that when we say that we should all be teaching our kids creativity, maybe that could be a good thing. It could result in educational policies that I like. But what it also does is it expects all of those kids to go on and be entrepreneurs and tech people. And I don't necessarily think that's what we should be training our kids from. Not because I want them all to be working in factories, but because I think that's not the role that education should serve.

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The financial world has to grapple with the complexities of climate change just like everyone else. 

Bob Litterman is an esteemed figure in risk management and investment and the author of the book Modern Investment Management: An Equilibrium Approach.

Bob and Greg discuss the dawn of quantitative finance and the integration of academic theory into the bustling trading desks of Wall Street. Bob sheds light on the intricate dance between market intuition and the precision of quantitative models, with the pivotal Black-Litterman model's influence on investment decisions. Bob helps peel back the layers of asset allocation conundrums, correlated assets, and financial forecasts. The conversation takes a deep look at the potential of carbon pricing, the inertia in climate policy, and the financial sector's crucial role in a sustainable future, highlighting the nuances of navigating investment strategies amidst these global challenges.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Why everybody hates taxes, but love subsidies

52:12: Incentives come in all different forms, and the IRA is a bunch of subsidies. People do love, and it is creating a lot of movement and a lot of investment. But, we just can't afford it. Like the subsidy to fossil fuel in the U.S. is an order of magnitude bigger than our piddling subsidies to low-carbon investments. And then you say, "Well, why don't we do more?" It's because who's going to pay for it? Ultimately, it's the taxpayers. And so that's why people don't like taxes. And that's why we can't subsidize our way out of this. We've just got to create the incentives. If you ask people, "Should polluters pay?" You know, it gets an 80% or 90%  approval rating. So, I'm sure we're going to get there. But, it's a tough political hurdle to get over; that's the problem.

Risk is covariance with marginal utility

21:57: Most people think about risk as volatility…We think of risk as covariance with marginal utility. I've probably lost half the people out there, but it means that money in good times is not as valuable as money in bad times.

How can we get the price of carbon tax right?

26:41: We don't have good models, and those models have a lot of uncertainty as to what the right parameters are and so on. I think we just have to buy into that and recognize that we aren't going to have the right answer. There is no right answer. And so the uncertainty means you have to err on the side of caution. We have to have a price that's high enough today that we react very strongly, and then we have to respond to new information. We shall see if things are worse than we expect and have to raise that price. The price should be high enough, though, right today, that we expect to solve the problem. And we expect the price to come down as the uncertainty is resolved over time. That's how high it should be, that we expect it to come down over time. 

Are economists helpful on climate risk?

26:28: I remember reading an IPCC report, probably ten years ago, that said economists aren't very helpful on climate. They tell us that the damage from another ton could be anywhere from $2 to $200 a ton. What good is that? The answer is risk management. That's risk. Yes, it could be all over the place. So the right question to ask is, "What does your model say it will be? $100 a ton." The right question is, at what price are you highly confident that we're not going to go off the cliff, run into those tipping points? And that's a different question.

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In the 20th century, the multidivisional firm was born. It quickly redefined business strategy and the way our world runs. Now, as the digital age advances and AI continues to become more and more critical to the way industries operate, a new kind of firm is emerging. 

Karim R. Lakhani is a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School and co-founded the Digital, Data, and Design Institute (D^3) at Harvard. His book, co-authored with Marco Iansiti, Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World, looks at the ways corporations have attempted to restructure in the digital age. 

Karim and Greg discuss what it takes to adapt a business model to the age of AI successfully, some of the missteps companies have made when trying to go digital, and what should be deemed proprietary knowledge when it comes to AI. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Rethinking the multi-divisional model

06:02: Over the last hundred years, the multi-divisional firm has enabled this built environment that we live in, right? All the accoutrements of, I'm using such a technical term, accoutrements. All the features of the modern world, what we take for granted: the fact that our plumbing works, our electricity works, our subway systems work, our transportation systems work mostly. But the modern world we live in, the built environment that we live in, has come about because the multi-divisional firm, the firm was established; the multi-divisional firm was established, and we were able to marshal capital, technology, and people to do productive things. And so this is a massive achievement, right? And the shadow of that lives on today. Most of us live in these multi-divisional, siloed firms.

Is your organization mirroring your technology?

03:21: The mistake that most incumbent companies make—the companies that aren't coming from Silicon Valley or aren't born natively digital—is that they think it's just an add-on. They just think, "We'll just sprinkle this on top, and it'll be business as usual." When, in fact, Conway's Law basically says there's a mirroring hypothesis, right? The structure of the technology mirrors the structure of the organization. And if you're going to have a new architecture for your technology, you need a new architecture for your organization.

Is innovation still an afterthought?

24:31: Innovation was often an afterthought in most organizations because, once you figure it out, you've stumbled into something good and just milk the heck out of it for a while. And then you were like, okay, let's acquire something else, right? And because the rate of change was very slow, while there were lots of innovation scholars back in the fifties and sixties writing stuff, it wasn't viewed as a core strategic imperative for most organizations.

Balancing openness and advantage in the data age

51:40: Now that this new tool is available, why would we stop it from being available? But you can imagine the discussions in the dean's offices, the provost's offices, and the board of directors for these presses about, oh my god, all of our knowledge is being stolen. The same dilemma is going to happen inside and outside of companies. And what is your data strategy? What will you select and reveal? What will you keep private? What will give you an advantage or not?

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