Building Bridges – Details, episodes & analysis

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I’m delighted to share my interview of Azeem Azhar, tech investor and creator of the successful Exponential View newsletter and Harvard Business Review podcast (of which I was one of the lucky guests nearly two years ago).

In a new book titled Exponential: Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It, he explains that while technology continues to develop at an exponential rate, our institutions (norms, policies, organisations) only change slowly, incrementally (if at all), which results in an exponential gap that can explain many of society’s problems.

Azeem and I talked about his life story, his EV newsletter, the process of writing a book, the exponential gap, tech pessimism, the winner-take-all mindset, the future of work, the skills of the future and much more.

On the one hand, there are technologies that develop at an exponential pace—and the companies, institutions and communities that adapt to or harness them. On the other, there are the ideas and norms of the old world. The companies, institutions and communities that can only adapt at an incremental pace. They get left behind—and fast. The emergence of this gap is a consequence of exponential technology (…)

For all the visibility of exponential change, most of the institutions that make up our society follow a linear trajectory. Codified laws and unspoken social norms; legacy companies and NGOs; political systems and intergovernmental bodies—all have only ever known how to adapt incrementally. Stability is an important force within institutions. In fact, it’s built into them (…)

The gap leads to extreme tension. In the Exponential Age, the divergence is ongoing—and it is everywhere. (Exponential)

👉 I also shared some thoughts inspired by Azeem’s book in my newsletter Laetitia@Work: Mind the Exponential Gap. Laetitia@Work

👉 And I recommend Azeem’s book Exponential 🚀 📚

I hope you enjoy this podcast! Do not forget to share it with people who might be interested 👇

Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I’m thrilled to share my interview with Chris Bruntlett, Marketing Manager at the Dutch Cycling Embassy.

He and I talked about the impact of the pandemic on urban mobility, the Dutch model and its genesis, Paris, London, Berlin, and many other things. I found Bruntlett’s case for more bike lanes very convincing. Urban mobility is not a zero-sum game! We should focus on positive externalities.

Chris and his wife Melissa are urban mobility activists who wrote two great books about cycling: Building the Cycling City and Curbing Traffic. Two years ago they moved from Vancouver, Canada to Delft in the Netherlands to experience the joys of the cycling lifestyle. Chris even made it his day job to champion cycling around the world!

Working at the Dutch Cycling Embassy, he spreads the word about the Dutch model, sharing his new country’s “expertise on building what supports the Dutch cycling culture to those interested”, thus building (cycling) bridges between cities, countries and cultures.

👉 I also wrote about it in this newsletter Laetitia@Work: Why the future of work needs bike lanes:

When you look at the infrastructure decisions made in the Netherlands in the 1970s, you see that they were designed as very democratic and inclusive infrastructures: the old use them, people with disabilities use them, so do families with children. Cycling is cheap. And it has the potential to transform our (work) lives for the better.

👉 For more on the subject, I do recommend their latest book Curbing Traffic which I’m currently reading and enjoying very much 🚴‍♂️ 📚

In the planning field, little attention is given to the effects that a “low-car” city can have on the human experience at a psychological and sociological level. Studies are beginning to surface that indicate the impact that external factors—such as sound—can have on our stress and anxiety levels. Or how the systematic dismantling of freedom and autonomy for children and the elderly to travel through their cities is causing isolation and dependency.

I hope you enjoy this podcast! Do not forget to share it with people who might be interested 👇

Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)

Today’s episode of the Building Bridges podcast is my conversation with Tyler Cowen, an economist, director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, blogger at Marginal Revolution, and host of the podcast Conversations with Tyler.

I first met Tyler back in 2019 when my colleague Zineb Mekouar and I spent a few days in Washington, DC to promote my book Hedge and to connect with John Dearie’s Center for American Entrepreneurship. We had lunch with Tyler and his colleague and co-author Alex Tabarrok in a Chinese restaurant near George Mason University. Most of our conversation that day was about exchanging ideas and impressions about the relative situation of America, Europe, and the rest of the world.

Since then I’ve kept reading everything I could find about the political situation in the US, the state of the transatlantic relationship, and recently how COVID-19 was impacting the distribution of power and wealth across the world. Then last year, I realized something: Americans are, by far, the most inspiring contributors to this conversation—yet alas they’re mostly speaking about America, leaving the rest of the world untouched, uncommented on, almost undocumented!

In this context, how about launching a podcast series in which I’d interview American thinkers, but having them focus the conversation on Europe?

Fast forward to today: my 2020 idea has morphed into the Building Bridges podcast which I’m co-hosting with my wife Laetitia Vitaud. The value proposition of our podcast is to provide a platform for anyone who has interesting ideas to share with our vast community of “unapologetic globalists” (to quote my recent guest Chris Schroeder).

* Not everyone that’s part of this roster has much to say about Europe. But whenever I catch one who does, I make sure to focus our conversation on that very subject—and I must say Tyler is one of our recent guests who has the most to say and to share about the Old Continent!

And so if you’re interested in Europe, economics, libertarianism, or the prospects of various other regions in the world, I urge you to give my conversation with Tyler a listen. Here’s what you’ll hear:

* What Tyler likes and dislikes about Europe, and the various countries he’s lived in or traveled to here (which is most of them!).

* Why he thinks Europe is one of the least fragmented regions in the world—which is the exact opposite of how I view Europe!

* Why Americans should be present and invest in India if they want to retain some influence in the future.

* What advice he would give to young Europeans and young Americans who want to prepare themselves for our coming world.

* Why he expects Europe to remain a wealthy and prosperous region, despite, well, everything. And many, many more interesting topics and ideas.

This podcast and the related article were originally published at Around Europe w/ Tyler Cowen. Lobbying. Startups Across Borders. Biden’s Global Tax Reform. as part of my newsletter European Straits (which is about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).

Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

* Also Building Bridges is part of a network of Substack newsletters, which you may want to discover: there’s Laetitia Vitaud’s Laetitia@Work (about the future of work, with a feminist perspective), and my own European Straits (about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).

(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I’m excited to share my interview with Ian Leslie, a journalist and author of several books on human behaviour. His latest book, Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes should be made compulsory reading in all the schools of the world. 

Disagreement improves our decisions, sparks new ideas, and, counterintuitively, brings us closer together — but only if we do it well. Right now we’re doing it terribly. We either get into fights or, more likely, avoid disagreements altogether, because we find them so stressful. This is a hard skill that neither evolution nor society has equipped us with, but it’s one we all need to learn, because it’s critical to the success of any shared enterprise, from a marriage to a business to a democracy. Isn’t it high time we gave more thought to how we disagree better?

Like a lot of other animals we humans respond to threat with two tactics: fight or flight. Either we become very hostile or we do everything we can to avoid any kind of argument. But both these reactions are completely dysfunctional. The internet isn’t helping: social media are designed to turn what could be productive exchanges into useless cockfights in a public arena.

The counterintuitive truth is that we need conflicts to move forward and live and work together more happily. Conflicts can bring us closer. “Couples and teams are happier when they are in the habit of passionate disagreement. Conflict can draw people together.” That’s why the author devotes the second half of the book to his 10 “rules of productive argument” to help us get better at disagreeing with others.

Establish a relationship of trust with the other person, accept them for who they are, try and make them feel good about themselves, consider that you might be perceived as “weird” by the other person, be curious about their point of view and actually listen to what they have to say...and above all else be real and honest when you interact with them. 

The stories told in the book and the insights shared show this guide to productive disagreement is indispensable reading. I found this conversation with Ian fascinating. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed having it! Do not forget to share it with people who might be interested ⚔️ 💌

Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

* Also Building Bridges is part of a network of Substack newsletters, which you may want to discover: there’s my Laetitia@Work (about the future of work, with a feminist perspective), and Nicolas’s Colin European Straits (about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).

(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)

🐰 Today, I’m pleased to share a new episode of Building Bridges in which I interview Noah Smith, an opinion columnist at Bloomberg and writer at Noahpinion, which I highly recommend subscribing to since it covers so many topics that resonate with this newsletter—from economic development to immigration to the current paradigm shift to industrial policy to economics in general.

My idea was to focus the conversation on Europe, and indeed Noah has many insights to share. One of them, which I find particularly compelling, is the idea of “optimal fragmentation”. There was a time, in the 19th century, when Europe actually benefited from being a fragmented continent. Britain, Germany and France were of roughly equal sizes; the world was the stage on which their rivalry played out; and the technology of the day made it so that each could grow their national industrial champions and claim to be part of the club of the more advanced countries.

* Today, the situation in Europe is very different, however. The advanced technologies of the day (computing and networks) call for growing corporations whose scale far exceeds the size of any European market. And because they have realized fragmentation isn’t much of an advantage anymore, European countries have been trying to join forces under the umbrella of the European Union—alas encountering many frictions and obstacles along the way.

Here are the other topics I discussed with Noah:

* The various places he’s lived, including Texas, Japan, New York, and the Bay Area—and what specifically attracted him to Japan, where he spent 5 years in total.

* Industrial policy: what it is, why it is so difficult to design and implement during a paradigm shift, and how Europe has been performing on that front.

* Texas and its (so far) failed attempts at catching up on Silicon Valley: it’s all about non-compete clauses, urban sprawling, and universities.

* Where to look for inspiration: Noah shared his assessment of how various European countries are doing and what other regions in the world we should all study.

* Finally, I made sure to ask Noah about his pet rabbits, and he shared the reasons why everyone should consider adopting their own—tl;dr, “they’re like clumsy, vegetarian cats”.

This podcast and the related article were originally published at Discussing Europe (& Rabbits 🐰) w/ Noah Smith. Deliveroo. Delaware. Defensibility. Software Digesting the World. as part of my newsletter European Straits (which is about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).

Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

* Also Building Bridges is part of a network of Substack newsletters, which you may want to discover: there’s Laetitia Vitaud’s Laetitia@Work (about the future of work, with a feminist perspective), and my own European Straits (about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).

(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I’m thrilled to share my interview with Diana Lind, a writer and urban policy specialist whose book Brave New Home: Our Future In Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing I devoured a few months ago. 

In her book, Diana explains that the ‘American Dream’-like single-family home so typical of the 20th-century has become “a lonely, overpriced nightmare”. Even though nuclear families are no longer the norm, housing hasn’t yet caught up with changing social norms and demographics. 

Diana champions new, more ambitious housing policies and she is adamant that we need more options to solve the biggest problems of our times: climate change, loneliness and insufficient healthcare. In this podcast we discuss the emerging trends, the housing crisis, the impact of the pandemic and why there’s some reason to be hopeful about the future of housing.

👉 Read the Laetitia@Work newsletter I wrote about Brave New Home.

Here are some quotes from Brave New Home:

Over the past several decades, American demographics and social norms have shifted dramatically. More people are living alone, marrying later in life, and having smaller families while their lifestyles have also become more virtual, more mobile, and less stable. But despite a different and more diverse America, our housing is still stuck in the 1950s.

This style of living, centered around the single-family home, is a relatively new concept in the history of humankind. Up until World War II, families traditionally lived in more communal situations, ranging from multigenerational households to close-knit neighborhoods full of friends and family. (...) 

The more I searched these issues, the more I became convinced that the presumed benefits of single-family homes masked their negative social, economic, and environmental consequences. The data suggest that the current housing paradigm—predominantly oriented around owning a single-family home—is unaffordable, unhealthy, and out of step with consumer demand. And a large and growing portion of the population is unable to access the homeownership lifestyle, even if they desire it.

I loved talking with Diana about demographics, changing social norms, housing history and housing policies. I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I enjoyed recording it! Do not forget to share it with people who might be interested 🏘️ 💌

Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

* Also Building Bridges is part of a network of Substack newsletters, which you may want to discover: there’s Nicolas Colin’s European Straits, there’s my Laetitia@Work, and our French newsletter, Nouveau Départ.

(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)

I’m delighted to share a conversation I had with Chris Schroeder, an American entrepreneur, global investor and author of the book Startup Rising about the thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Middle East. Chris and I met 2 years ago when I was visiting Washington, DC, where he lives, all thanks to my friend Ian Hathaway (co-author of The Startup Community Way with Brad Feld).

Chris, Ian, and I share a deep interest in entrepreneurship as a global phenomenon, specifically the fact that as technology becomes available across the globe, founders can succeed not only in Silicon Valley, but in every entrepreneurial ecosystem that’s emerging on the global map. Chris was led to write his book (whose first edition dates back to 2013) after attending a startup event in Dubai where his mind was blown by the sheer scale and passion of the startup community he encountered there.

* His background was also a contributing factor, however. Before becoming an entrepreneur in the media industry and later focusing on investing in startups around the world, Chris worked as a staff member for then-Secretary of State James Baker, right when the world was undergoing the most radical transformation in our lifetime. He criss-crossed the world with his boss, practically witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first Gulf War that the US waged against Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime, and many other (incredible) things.

As he tells me in our conversation, Chris emerged from this experience with an unapologetic global outlook and a deep interest in what is happening in the rest of the world. It was only a matter of time before this interest converged with his passion for entrepreneurship, and now he’s one of the best experts and practitioners I know when it comes to knowing entrepreneurial ecosystems and working with founders based all over the world—a rather unusual positioning for an American.

I hope you like this podcast! If you want to dig deeper into Chris’s thoughts and works, check out his newsletter as well as his book, now in its second edition, Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East.

This podcast and the related article were originally published at Investing Across the World w/ Chris Schroeder. Stripe. Consulting. IPOs. Digital Government. as part of my newsletter European Straits (which is about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).

Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

* Also Building Bridges is part of a network of Substack newsletters, which you may want to discover: there’s Laetitia Vitaud’s Laetitia@Work (about the future of work, with a feminist perspective), and my own European Straits (about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).

(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I’m happy to interview Kelly Hoey, a networking expert, author of the book Build Your Dream Network: Forging Powerful Relationships In A Hyper-Connected World.

“Networking needs a rebranding”, says Kelly. We’ve long seen it as this (mostly male) activity that consists in “schmoozing at boring parties or scrolling through LinkedIn” and wondering how you can benefit from others.

But that’s not what networking is really about! The pandemic and the social distancing that comes with it have proved one thing: more than ever we need strong relationships to survive and thrive. Our careers but also our mental and physical health depend on the strength and authenticity of the relationships we cultivate. Perhaps we’ve let loneliness become the epidemic of this century because we’ve not learned how to genuinely connect with others in this hyper-connected world.

Dissatisfied with the business-card-minded definition of networking, Kelly looked to the definition of ‘net’ for more inspiration—“an openwork fabric made of threads or cords that are woven or knotted together at regular intervals”—because, she writes,

For me networking is an ongoing process of establishing and strengthening relationships. It is not confined to a single activity such as email introductions or cocktail receptions in the lobby of a corporation's headquarters.

Kelly wrote this book a couple of years ago. But her messages sound more relevant now than ever before. We need a better ‘net’. As the line between life and work gets blurrier and blurrier, it seems more obvious that a new approach to networking will help us in both. 

The first thing we could do is stop presenting “digital” networking as “inferior” or less “real”. Online and offline connections complement one another. The former are no less real than the latter. In fact the two are deeply intertwined. There are so many things we can do to get better at cultivating meaningful relationships, both online and offline.

I loved meeting Kelly (online) and chatting with her. It felt empowering! Thank you for this, Kelly! I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I enjoyed recording it. Do not hesitate to share it with people who you think would be interested (yes, that’s “networking” and it’s a good thing!) 🕸️ 💌

For access to the full transcript, there will a paid version of Building Bridges to which you’ll be able to subscribe soon. Stay tuned.

Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

* Also Building Bridges is part of a network of Substack newsletters, which you may want to discover: there’s Nicolas Colin’s European Straits, there’s my Laetitia@Work, and our French newsletter, Nouveau Départ.

(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)

For this new episode of the Building Bridges podcast, I’m delighted to interview Dr Rachel Kowert, a research psychologist from Austin, Texas, who’s dedicated her career to studying video games and gamers. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve spent more time playing video games than ever before in the history of video games. But what if it wasn’t a bad thing?

I discovered Rachel’s work in one of my favourite newsletters, Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study. That particular edition was titled: "Parents deserve so much more when it comes to the ways video games are discussed in our popular media." A few days before, the New York Times had just published yet another gloomy piece about the dangers of games and parents’ “alarm”.

In a fantastic Twitter thread following the publication of this lazy piece of journalism, Rachel showed that it was “far more moral panic than actual information”. When the wise man points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger, especially if it can generate more clicks and views.

It’s high time we stopped blaming games (and screens) for everything. In her Parent's Guide to Video Games (which I couldn’t recommend enough: it’s the shortest, most effective read on the subject!), she writes:

“First it was the radio. Then it was film, television, rock and roll, and comic books. Today, video games have become the scapegoat of choice for a variety of societal problems, including gun violence, obesity, and addictive behaviours. The fears surrounding the potential negative influence of video games have become more exaggerated and widespread as they have become more popular, more realistic in design, and now, as they are networked online.”

In this interview, Rachel shares fascinating lessons from decades of video games research. What is video games addiction? What’s the link between games and crime? What’s their impact on cognitive development? What about physical and mental health? Do they help us connect better with others or not? In these times of pandemic and social isolation, many gamers see video games are a lifeline. Their experience of games is more relevant than the “moral panic” of clueless video games detractors…

I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast! Do not hesitate to share it with your friends and colleagues, gamers and non gamers alike! 🕹️

For access to the full transcript, there will a paid version of Building Bridges to which you’ll be able to subscribe soon. Stay tuned.

Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

* Also Building Bridges is part of a network of Substack newsletters, which you may want to discover: there’s Nicolas Colin’s European Straits, there’s my Laetitia@Work, and our French newsletter, Nouveau Départ.

(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)

I sat down for a conversation with Bill Janeway, an economist, faculty member at Cambridge University, and author of the landmark book Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy.

* It’s a book that really has had a profound influence on me—basically containing everything you need to know about how venture capital came to be and why it’s so relevant today in the context of the transition to the digital economy.

Bill’s long career in venture capital, primarily with Warburg Pincus, and his academic work let him comment on today’s economy from both a business and an institutional perspective. And I consider myself, and the world at large, really, to be quite lucky that he is also such an affable person and generous with his time and thinking.

Our conversation spanned how he’s experienced the very strange year that was 2020, his thesis regarding the retreat from hyperglobalization, the consequences of Joe Biden’s election on America, the world at large, & the tech industry specifically, how he sees Europe’s future, and much more.

This podcast and the related article were originally published at The Digital Economy w/ Bill Janeway. Reinvention. Bezos. Musk. Communications. as part of my newsletter European Straits (which is about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).

Follow Building Bridges on Twitter! You can listen to all our podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

* Also Building Bridges is part of a network of Substack newsletters, which you may want to discover: there’s Laetitia Vitaud’s Laetitia@Work (about the future of work, with a feminist perspective), and my own European Straits (about the Entrepreneurial Age, viewed from Europe).

(Credit: Franz Liszt, Angelus ! Prière Aux Anges Gardiens—extrait du disque Miroirs de Jonas Vitaud, NoMadMusic.)