In this episode of The Decision Corner, Brooke Struck sits down with Cathy O’Neil, CEO of ORCAA and author of the New York Times bestseller Weapons of Math Destruction. Having studied and worked at some of the most prestigious universities in the world, including Harvard, MIT, Barnard College, and Columbia, O’Neil has been outspoken about the social risks of algorithms. 

In this conversation, O’Neil dives into some of the “invisible” problems that algorithms pose for society, and how decision-makers can create more responsible algorithms to better outcomes for society.

This episode includes discussions about:

- The political nature of algorithms
- How algorithms don’t predict the future, but create conditions for future events to occur 
- How algorithms influence predictive policing 
- How these biases invade hiring platforms and processes
- The purpose of algorithms, which tend to serve those who create them
- How policymakers and decision-makers can generate more responsibility among technicians

Algorithms that Run the World with Cathy O’Neil

In this episode of the podcast, Brooke speaks with Clare Flynn Levy - CEO and Founder of Essentia Analytics, a company that uses behavioral data analytics to help professional investors make more skilled investment decisions. Drawing from her own experience as a fund manager, Clare shares her insights into the types of biases that influence investment decision making and the evolution of behavioural interventions that seek to address them. Some of the things discussed include:
- How investors can identify patterns in their decision-making and understand where things might be going wrong.
- Exit-timing and the role of loss aversion.
- The endowment effect, fear of missing out and other common behavioural patterns.
- How Clare and her team work to automate the questions investors should be asking themselves before each important decision. 
- Strategies that investors can adopt to overcome the behavioural biases that might be hindering their performance.

The behavioral biases behind our investments with Clare Flynn Levy

In this episode of the podcast, Brooke chats with Julia Galef - co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality and host of the podcast 'Rationally Speaking'. They discuss the topic or Julia's book, 'The Scout Mindset' which looks at the underlying motivations that guide our beliefs and behaviors. Some of the things covered include…
- Scout versus soldier mindset - how they differ and why we rely on both, depending on the situation.
- The downsides of soldier mindset and why our tendency to defend our beliefs no matter what can get us into trouble.
- The benefits of adopting an evidence-based mindset and being open to things that challenge our beliefs, aka 'drawing the map in pencil'.
- Practical ways we can embrace a scout mindset in our personal and professional lives.

Soldiers and Scouts with Julia Galef

In this episode of the podcast, Brooke chats with Britt Wray - author of Generation Dread and a Human and Planetary Health Fellow at Stanford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Britt talks about her work around eco-anxiety, the reasons and extent to which different people feel it, and the tools people can deploy to harness it and achieve positive, climate-friendly outcomes.

Some of the topics discussed include:
- The drivers of eco-anxiety, media hysteria, and the evolutionary experience of an existential threat.
- Why do some communities experience higher levels of eco-anxiety than others?
- The role of time perception and present bias in eco-anxiety, and why it can be compared to Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
- Why climate change is a unique ever-evolving challenge for us to contend with psychologically.
- Tools to help us acknowledge and accept eco-anxiety as being real and valid, and move beyond a state of anxiety-induced paralysis.

Keeping Cool in the Face of Eco-Anxiety with Britt Wray

In this episode of The Decision Corner, Brooke is joined by Grace Lordan, an associate professor of Behavioral Science at LSE and author of Think Big, Take Small Steps and Build the Future You Want. Together they discuss the importance of narratives in the workplace, and how the stories that we tell can improve opportunities, diversity, and well-being within organizations. 

This podcast covers a variety of topics, including:
- How marginalized communities can wield behavioral science to shatter glass ceilings
- Why having a growth mindset often falls short - and how talking to three people can fix it 
- A numerical strategy to prevent likeability from biasing your hiring decisions
- The paradox of cronyism in the workplace
- How to defeat the “cascade effect” that causes toxic meeting environments

The stories we tell at work with Grace Lordan

In this episode of The Decision Corner, Brooke discusses disagreement with Julia Minson, an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and former lecturer at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her research explores the psychology behind disagreement and collaboration — why we often suck at turning the former into the latter, and how we can be better. Brooke and Julia dissect the thought processes that often fuel our discussions, how discussions turn into arguments (particularly, unproductive ones), and the reasons we can’t seem to figure out why. Julia gives us practical interventions, applicable on a personal level, that can help us avoid the feared Thanksgiving dinner screaming match and other conversations like it.

Specific topics include:
- Advocacy v.s. Inquiry mindset
- Why being a know-it-all is a problematic blindspot
- How to effectively signal open-mindedness
- Active listening: body language and verbal acknowledgement
- Cognitive misconceptions about our counterpart’s open-mindedness
- Scopes, baselines, and defaults
- The role of asking questions, and how to ask them with genuine curiosity
- Conversational receptiveness, intentional vocabulary, and the HEAR technique