Episodes

Ed and Ron will interview Dr. Jules Goddard, author of one of the best business books we read in 2014: Uncommon Sense and Common Nonsense. Dr. Goddard has many profound insights into corporate strategy, value creation, efficiency vs. effectiveness, and much else. This promises to be an insightful and educational conversation.

Ron and Ed interview Adam Davidson, a journalist focusing on business and economics issues for National Public Radio. He is currently one of the co-hosts of the Planet Money podcast. Previously he has covered globalization issues, the Asian tsunami, and the war in Iraq, for which he won the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. His work has won several major awards including the Peabody, DuPont-Columbia, and the George Polk Award. brbr Adam came to our attention when he mentioned the VeraSage Institut...

Ron and Ed will interview Dr. Thomas Sowell, world renowned economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. His appearance on TSOE coincides with the release of a new edition of his international best seller on economics, Basic Economics – 5th Edition (Basic Books, December 2014). In this soon-to-be released volume, Sowell revises and updates his popular book on common sense economics, bringing the world into clearer focus through an understanding of the fundamental economic princ...

On Friday's episode, Ron and Ed will interview Jody Thompson, the Co-Founder of CultureRx® and Co-Creator of the Results-Only Work Environment™ (ROWE™), along with Cali Ressler. CultureRx® is the sole global authority on ROWE™ and the sole executor of organizational and individual certification. Thompson provides domestic and international keynote presentations on the 21st century workplace and has been featured on the covers of BusinessWeek, Workforce Management Magazine, HR Magazine, and HR Ex...

On Friday's show Ron and Ed will interview Tim Williams, a noted author, international speaker, and presenter for major advertising associations, agency networks, universities, and business conferences worldwide. brbr He is author of the book, “Take a Stand for Your Brand: Building a Great Agency Brand from the Inside Out” ranked by Amazon as one of the top ten books on brand building. His booklet “Defining the Agency Brand,” published by the American Association of Advertising Agencies is regar...

On Black Friday, the biggest Holiday shopping day of the year, Ed and I thought it would be fun to review the book, Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays, by Joel Waldfogel, published in 2009. Waldfogel estimates that giving gifts nobody wants is a deadweight loss to the economy to the tune of approximately $12 Billion, mostly on credit cards. Money we don’t have to buy things people don’t want. As he writes, when you say to your mother-in-law, “A cribbage board. You sho...

Charging different prices to different customers is the definition of price discrimination, a term coined in 1920 by Arthur Cecil Pigou in The Economics of Welfare. Price discrimination occurs when a good or service is sold at different prices that do not reflect differences in production costs. Companies engage in this practice in order to extract the consumer surplus from various customers. It is worth noting that price discrimination does not imply discriminating against people based on race,...

Rabbi Lapin is one of America’s most eloquent speakers and his ability to extract life principles from the Bible and transmit them in an entertaining manner has brought countless numbers of Jews and Christians closer to their respective faiths. In 2007 Newsweek magazine included him in its list of America’s fifty most influential rabbis.

Ed and I discussed Peter Block’s seminal book, The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Matters.In my first discussion in May 2004 with Ed

We are honored to have the opportunity to interview Dr. Reed K. Holden, Founder of Holden Advisors, and a world-renowned expert in pricing. Reed had a major impact on Ron since he first read him back in October 1998. His book, co-authored with Thomas T. Nagle, The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing (STP) is a seminal work, adorning the bookshelves of anyone who takes pricing seriously. Ed and I have also had the pleasure of meeting and corresponding with Reed innumerable times, exchanging ideas, di...

In today’s competitive business environment, low self-esteem is a competitive disadvantage while high self-esteem among your people confers a competitive advantage. Yet how can folks feel good about themselves, their work, their service to the customer and the greater community if they believe they are commodities, and are constantly being beat up over their price? Ed and Ron will tackle the issue of self-esteem, heeding what Lord Chesterfield wrote: A man had better overvalue than undervalue hi...

Ron and Ed interview Father Robert A. Sirico, the president and co-founder of the Acton Institute and the pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish, both in Grand Rapids, MI. A regular writer and commentator on religious, political, economic, and social issues, Rev. Sirico's contributions have been carried by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Washington Times, CNN, ABC, CBS, NPR, and the BBC, among others. In his recent book Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Fre...

The average knowledge worker is so busy doing they do not have the time to reflect on what they have done, let alone discover major breakthroughs. The Army’s use of After Action Reviews began in 1973, not as a knowledge management tool but as a method to restore the values, integrity, and accountability that had diminished during the Vietnam War. Perhaps we ignore innovations in the military because its mission, to break things and kill people, is so divergent from that of a civilian organizatio...

Top Ten Business Myths, Part 2 (Myths 5-1). This episode is dedicated to the possibility that many myths exist about business and it would be better to rid ourselves of these ideas. Thinking about these myths is difficult because it requires us to examine some of our most deeply held beliefs and either dismiss them or at least think differently about them. If you are interested in challenging the conventional wisdom about these business myths, you are invited to listen to this episode of The Sou...

Top Ten Business Myths, Part 1 (Myths 10-6). This episode is dedicated to the possibility that many myths exist about business and it would be better to rid ourselves of these ideas. Thinking about these myths is difficult because it requires us to examine some of our most deeply held beliefs and either dismiss them or at least think differently about them. If you are interested in challenging the conventional wisdom about these business myths, you are invited to listen to this episode of The So...

Ed and Ron will explore the moral hazards of measurements. Exact measurements of the wrong things can drive out good judgments of the right things, imperiling our future. The illusion of certainty in our measurements creates, to borrow an important concept from the insurance industry, a moral hazard. If people are insured, they may just act carelessly and cause the very thing they are insured against. Fire insurance causes arson; unemployment insurance allows people to not be as diligent in find...

This episode is dedicated to the possibility that the majority of leadership thinking is wrong as it is ultimate based on manipulation - trying to “get someone to do something.” Coming to terms with this idea is difficult and not for everyone because it requires us to examine some of our most deeply held beliefs and either dismiss them or at least think differently about them. If you are interesting in hearing a conversation about healing leadership, you are invited to listen in as Ed and Ron in...

Ed and Ron will explore the Corporate Social Responsibility movement, since even the most ardent defenders of capitalism seem to have contempt for businesspeople and entrepreneurs. An often-heard remark is: The problem with capitalism is capitalists. It appears capitalism suffers from a unique paradox, it's better in practice than it sounds in theory. Businesses are often praised for what they do worst, e.g., social work, fighting inflation, reducing welfare, and denounced for what they do best,...

We are excited to announce that Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy Group UK, in London, will be our guest on August 29, for the entire show. Rory has delivered several TED talks, along with many others, including our favorite, a Zeitgeist talk at Google. They are all incredibly thought-provoking, and rooted in behavioral, and Austrian, economics. In his spare time, Rory collect self aggrandizing job titles. He was president of the Direct Jury at Cannes in 2007, and was elected President of t...

On this show, Ron and Ed will explore how we humans are comprised of both Mr. Spock—our rational side—and Homer Simpson—our irrational side, and how to optimize decisions from both sides. Learn why economists assume people are “rational” even though, at times, this assumption seems to be false––e.g., why do we leaves tips in restaurants we will never visit again? Anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of human behavior, explore the ideas of the world’s most innovative economists, as wel...

All businesses have a vested interest in virtue. Business is dependent on the moral and cultural institutions of a free society. The economic and ethical point of a business entity is to serve others. Business is a morally serious enterprise, in which it is possible to act either immorally or morally. It requires moral conduct to thrive in the long run. Yet business ethics means a great deal more than obeying the civil law and the various accountancy acts and regulations. It means imagining and ...

Why did the Industrial Revolution happen where and when it did? Our guest will be the Distinguished Professor of Economics Deirdre McCloskey, who teaches economics, history, English, and communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ron and Ed will focus on her latest book, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (2010), which argues that it was an ideological change, rather than saving or exploitation, that made us rich. The book is the second in a widely notic...

Do you know anyone who was motivated going into, or coming out of, their annual performance appraisal? Most organizations and employees are dissatisfied with the performance appraisal process, so it remains a curiosity why this methodology continues to exist. Performance appraisals don’t improve performance and they don’t drive careers; they are an incidental effect of other dynamic systems. In essence, appraisals are the paper-shuffling ritual that sanctifies decisions already made. Ed and Ron ...

Ed and Ron will explore the following insight from Thomas Sowell: After all, the caveman had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today. We will also discuss the five stages in human economic history, from hunter and gatherers to the Industrial Revolution, and now a knowledge economy; the differences betwee...