Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchGoodhart's Law: When a Measure Becomes a Target, It Stops Measuring
Episode 11438
Tie a car salesman's bonus to sheer volume and he will slash prices until the dealership goes bankrupt while still collecting his bonus. That is Good…
4 days, 19 hours ago
Socrates: The Barefoot Soldier Who Questioned Athens to Death
Episode 11437
A barefoot man in a single unwashed coat wandering a wealthy ancient city, cornering its most powerful citizens with unanswerable questions and never…
4 days, 19 hours ago
Camus and the Myth of Sisyphus: Finding Meaning in an Absurd World
Episode 11436
Condemned to push a boulder up a mountain forever, only to watch it roll back down every time, Sisyphus sounds like the definition of pointless tortu…
4 days, 19 hours ago
The Streisand Effect: Why Censoring the Internet Backfires
Episode 11435
Delete a text message and the recipient suddenly cares far more about what you retracted. This episode explores that reflex at internet scale, starti…
4 days, 19 hours ago
Karma Explained: Intention, Rebirth, and Jainism's Karmic Dust
Episode 11434
The driver who cuts you off and then gets a flat tire two miles later feels like instant karma, but the traditions that originated the idea never des…
4 days, 19 hours ago
Kant's Categorical Imperative and the Murderer at the Door
Episode 11433
A friend hides in your closet and a murderer knocks asking where they are. Nearly everyone says lie, but when Benjamin Constant posed this scenario, …
4 days, 19 hours ago
The Tragedy of the Commons: From Hardin's Pasture to Ostrom's Nobel
Episode 11432
Add one more cow to the shared village pasture and you keep all the profit while the damage is split among your neighbors. When everyone runs the sam…
4 days, 19 hours ago
Ikigai Explained: The Japanese Reason for Being Beyond the Venn Diagram
Episode 11431
The four-circle ikigai diagram you have seen online, the one that says your purpose sits where what you love, what you are good at, what the world ne…
4 days, 19 hours ago
The Social Contract: Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and the Consent Problem
Episode 11430
Imagine waking up in a world with no laws, no police, no courts, and no property deeds. Is that a violent nightmare or a peaceful utopia? Philosopher…
4 days, 19 hours ago
The Peter Principle: Why Hierarchies Promote People Into Incompetence
Episode 11429
Why does the person in charge so often seem spectacularly bad at the job? This episode digs into the Peter Principle, the 1969 satirical book by Lawr…
4 days, 19 hours ago