Disrupt Yourself Podcast with Whitney Johnson

When we talk about robots, machines, artificial intelligence, it’s usually within the context of something theorists call the singularity. That’s the moment when AI figures out how to upgrade itself, and leaves us in the dust. After all, it can...

“If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” Famous words by Bruce Lee, sure, but...

After 49 days fasting under the Bodhi tree, Siddhartha Guatama was struck by an idea. We suffer because we are attached to things, to people, to desires. When we can’t have it, we feel an emptiness. But what if we never wanted it in the first place?...

When’s the last time a customer service phone menu left you… genuinely angry? We build these systems to make things easier, layer systems on top of other systems, but who’s doing the gardening and pruning – the upkeep? Our guest today calls...

What does it take, day in and day out, to lead a group of people effectively? It’s not easy, that’s for sure. On a very granular level, leading is balancing a thousand decisions, huge and small, every day. So what guides your hand? Republican...

We find ourselves compromising every day – it’s how things get done in a society where we all want something else. But what’s the root of compromise? Isn’t it this idea that solving the issue, whatever it is, is more important than checking...

In middle school physics, we learned that an object at rest has potential energy – an amount of currency it has to spend, if it wants to move. When you pull back an arrow, the potential energy flows from your muscles, to the bow, to the string, and...

Do you know that feeling when you’re cooking, and you’ve got all your ingredients chopped and ready to go, spices measured, oven pre-heated? All that’s left is for you to spin your magic as a cook. In the kitchen, the French call it mise en...

Isn’t it frustrating when we feel like a passenger to our own thoughts and actions? In Buddhist thought, we’re supposed to watch our thoughts pass by like clouds in the sky… but that’s the ideal, after all. It’s a hard truth to swallow, that...

What does it mean to have a friend? What does it mean to be a friend? Someone you can rely on. Someone who understands you, not just the “you” that you project into the world. A friend is someone who knows they can rely on you, too.  How many...