Explore every episode of the podcast The Mindset Economy

Trust isn't just a feeling. According to Dr. Paul Zak, it's a measurable neurochemical process and it might be the strongest predictor we have of whether a person, a company or even a country will thrive.

In this episode, host Jean Gomes talks to Paul Zak, a professor at Claremont Graduate University, the founder of neuroeconomics as a field, and one of the most cited scientists in the world. They dig into 25 years of research on the biology of trust: how his early work linking oxytocin to trusting behaviour changed the conversation around leadership and culture, why trust tracks so closely with a country's GDP, and why social media might be quietly wearing it down.

The conversation covers a lot of ground: how to build accountability without micromanaging, why open-plan offices and flattened hierarchies actually work, and how ‘peak experiences’ can pull a stale team or relationship out of a rut. Paul and Jean also get into AI: the research agent Paul built to help him write, the risk of burning yourself out managing a fleet of AI tools, and what's left for humans to do well once the machines can handle the rest.

In this episode:

• Where the oxytocin-trust discovery came from, and what it actually showed
• What's happening in your brain when you trust someone (and when you don't)
• Building a high-trust culture without losing accountability
• Why trust is one of the best predictors of national prosperity
• The ‘well-being paradox’ and why thriving is rarely a solo activity
• How to engineer a peak experience for your team or your marriage
• Paul's take on AI agents, ‘AI vampires’ and where human value goes next
• An experiment you can try this week to break out of autopilot

Read more from Paul in his book Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies

If you enjoyed this conversation, please share it with your network and subscribe to The Mindset Economy so you don’t miss our future episodes. 

What do you do when your chatbot understands you better than the people in your life?

Dr Charlotte Blease is a health informaticist and philosopher who's spent the last decade surveying doctors about how they actually use AI, not how they're supposed to use it. She holds positions at Harvard Medical School, the University of Melbourne and Uppsala University, and she's the author of Doctor Bot. Her research keeps landing on the same uncomfortable point: medical error is far more common than we like to admit, and AI is already changing what "good care" looks like, whether the medical profession has caught up or not.

In this conversation, Scott and Jean talk to Charlotte about:

• Why between 5 and 20% of primary care visits involve a diagnostic error, and why that number is probably too low
• Why more than half of UK GPs are now using tools like ChatGPT, most with zero training on how to do it safely
• The strange finding that doctors sometimes make AI less accurate when they try to work alongside it, because their own instincts get in the way
• Why written responses from ChatGPT have been rated as far more empathetic than responses from human doctors, and what that says about the "art of medicine"
• The rise of a shadow health system, where patients turn to chatbots for grief support, therapy and diagnosis before they ever see a doctor
• What Charlotte would tell a young person trying to build a career in a world where the machines are getting better at the things we thought were uniquely ours

Further reading can be found in Charlotte's book, 'Doctor Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us - and How AI Could Save Lives'.

If this episode made you think differently about your own job, send it to a colleague, and if you want more conversations like this, subscribe and leave us a review, it genuinely helps other people find the show.

Raising kids to handle failure matters more than teaching them any specific fact about how the brain works, and our guest on episode 8 of The Mindset Economy podcast Nicholas Wright makes that case using his own family history. His Great Uncle Sydney fought through World War II as a tank commander, one of just three from his officer training class to survive without death or serious injury, and lived to a happy old age surrounded by family. That story anchors a bigger point about human resilience being far greater than most people give it credit for. 

Nicholas also puts a number on the future his kids are heading into: roughly a one in three chance of a global catastrophe on the scale of a world war by the end of the century, but he balances that with an optimistic read on where humanity has been, arguing the world is measurably better now than it was fifty years ago.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

Dr. Leo Anthony Celi thinks half the deans at universities and half the seats in health ministries should go to young people, and he's got a story to back it up. Back in 2022 during a basketball game that was taking place at the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon, the basketball net got tangled. The men on the court kept trying to out-jump each other to fix it, but it was the women's cheering squad who solved it in under a minute by forming a pyramid. 

During his conversation with Jean Gomes on The Mindset Economy podcast, Leo draws three lessons from that: competition kills the kind of collaboration complex problems actually need, homogenous rooms can't see a problem from more than one angle, and the people who caused a mess rarely have the fresh eyes needed to fix it. He also makes a case for rebuilding medical school curriculums around problems that can't be solved by AI, instead of testing students on the ones that already can be.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

COVID forced fast, sweeping change in a way almost nothing else has, and design futurist Sarah Housley says the reason why is worth understanding properly. 

Talking on The Mindset Economy podcast, Sarah explains the Overton window, the range of ideas a politician can propose and still keep their job, and how it flew wide open during the pandemic because there was one clear problem and one clear solution.

Today's crises don't work that way. We're dealing with a plurality of problems and a plurality of solutions at once, which makes the message far harder for leaders to land. Sarah argues that periods of uncertainty like this one actually create more room for ideas that once seemed impossible, for better or worse, and she talks through how those ideas actually move.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

Leor Zmigrod won't hand you a five-step plan to become a more flexible thinker, because that would just be another rigid system to follow. Instead she offers two things worth sitting with: question the rules and routines that quietly narrow your life, and chase creativity that actually breaks the mould instead of following a recipe.

Earlier this year, Leor was a guest on The Mindset Economy podcast during which she also talks about her research on people who left comfortable lives to join ISIS, and what she found wasn't what the media assumed. It wasn't poverty or lack of education driving most of them. It was brains tuned toward rigid ideologies that offered a clear identity, especially in adolescence, when the need to make sense of the world is at its peak.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

Five years from now, organisations will look smaller, portfolio careers will be normal again, and your employer will have a far better read on your mood than you'd probably like. If you listen to episode 5 of The Mindset Economy podcast, you’ll hear Ja-Naé Duane and Steve Fisher lay out where they think work is heading, from agentic technology replacing whole roles to digital twins reshaping what collaboration even looks like.

The conversation then takes us through the nine "super shifts" as described in their book SuperShifts, deep systemic changes like generational drift, techceleration, and intellifusion that are reshaping authority, identity, and decision-making all at once. None of them arrive on the same timeline, which is exactly why people feel exhausted and confused without being able to name what's actually happening to them.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

Complaining feels productive right up until you realise it's getting you nowhere, and during his conversation with Mindset Economy co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender, guest Chris Hirst breaks down what he calls the ROI of complaining. His argument is blunt: the vast majority of what happens to you, your team, or your business sits outside your control, from the economy to your competitors' next move, so obsessing over it just moves the focus away from where it actually belongs.

Spotting a problem is trivially easy. Anyone can do it. What separates people worth having on a team is a willingness to go and fix the thing, not just describe it accurately in a meeting. 

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

Mind wandering isn't a sign you're slacking off. On The Mindset Economy podcast, Mithu Storoni explains it's actually your brain telling you it needs a break, and reaching for coffee instead of listening to that signal has consequences you won't notice until later.

Mithu breaks down her three-gear model of the brain, from the floaty, unfocused state of gear one to the locked-in focus of gear two to the frantic, creativity-killing state of gear three that caffeine and stress push you into. Get stuck in gear three all day and your brain can defend but it can't create, and you'll pay for it that night when you can't wind down. This is a practical look at why working with your brain's natural rhythm beats forcing it into a fixed schedule.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

Most conversations inside your organization don't meet a basic bar for quality according to Amy Edmondson, and during episode 4 of The Mindset Economy podcast she'll tell you exactly why. Amy lays out three things that separate a genuinely useful conversation from one that just fills time: everyone's either contributing or listening, there's a real mix of statements and questions, and people leave feeling like they actually learned something.

She talks through what a healthy ratio of advocacy to inquiry sounds like in practice, and how AI might eventually help teams score their own meetings against these criteria. There's also a sharp point in here about the difference between being nice and being kind when a colleague is talking too much, or not enough.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

Winston Churchill packed one and a half working days into every single day of World War II and still made time to reflect. In episode 8 of The Mindset Economy podcast, guest Nicholas Wright walks through a handful of historical examples that sharpen the point: Eisenhower building a wide base of knowledge thanks to a mentor who forced him to read widely, Stalin outperforming Hitler partly because he ran the war by committee instead of alone, and Nelson Mandela reading and thinking his way through decades in a prison cell the size of a small desk. 

The practical takeaway: build a wider range of reference points, get honest feedback from other people, and watch out for the false confidence that comes from being fluent in something.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

In 2026, AI is mostly being used to retrieve information faster, and during his conversation with Jean Gomes on The Mindset Economy podcast, Dr. Leo Anthony Celi shares that that's a massive waste of what the technology could actually do. He wants AI built to make us more creative, more humble, more curious, and less gullible, and explains why training it on nothing but the internet's corpus leaves out centuries of moral wisdom from religious and indigenous traditions.

Leo reminds us of AlphaGo's famous move 34 against Lee Sedol, the move nobody expected, making a case for why creativity needs a mix of different bodies of knowledge, not just more data from the same sources. He also talks candidly about the pushback he gets from people building these systems, and why he thinks the answer isn't to lecture them but to warm up the room a couple of degrees at a time.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

"People are not excited about the future anymore." 

That's the opening line of design futurist and guest on The Mindset Economy podcast Sarah Housley's book Designing Hope, and it's where this conversation starts. She talks through why the big visions of the last century, fossil fuels and plastic among them, delivered real progress and real damage in the same breath, and why nobody's replaced them with anything new.

In conversation with co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender, Sarah also discusses how the constantly refreshing newsfeed on your phone has trapped everyone in a permanent present, unable to think properly about the past or the future. Her answer isn't utopia and it isn't dystopia either. It's something she calls protopia, a future that's a little better than yesterday, built by people willing to be ambitious without pretending it'll be perfect.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

Forget fascism and communism for a second. Leor Zmigrod studies ideology as a way of thinking, not a specific set of beliefs, and that reframe changes the whole conversation.

On The Mindset Economy podcast, Leor explains what actually makes someone ideological: a rigid system of rules they refuse to question, and a habit of sorting the world into who belongs and who doesn't. It has nothing to do with which side of a political debate you're on. Leor pushes back hard on the idea that unshakable convictions are admirable, arguing instead that they narrow how you think in every part of life, from your job to your family to your hobbies, and that this rigidity leaves a mark on the brain itself.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

Leaders are being asked to solve problems from this century with mental models built for the last one, and talking on The Mindset Economy podcast futurist, innovation leader and co-author of SuperShifts Steve Fisher tells us that makes that point often. Steve raises a question worth sitting with: when AI spots a pattern humans can't see, who actually makes the final call?

Steve argues that we're moving from a world built on knowing to one built on sense-making, and explains why so many AI initiatives fail even with a huge budget behind them, because organisations are upgrading their tools without upgrading their beliefs. He also draws a sharp comparison between the shift from Windows to web development in the early 2000s and what's happening now, except this time the change is faster and it's hitting everyone at once.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

'Whatever you do, don't turn up and be yourself.' 

That line got Chris Hirst plenty of grief on social media, but he stands by it. Appearing as a guest on The Mindset Economy podcast, Chris tells us that he can't stand the phrase 'authentic leadership' because he's watched too many senior people use it to excuse bad behaviour. His actual advice is simpler: show up as the best curated version of yourself, not whatever version happens to be easiest that day. Chris breaks career progress down into aptitude and attitude, arguing aptitude gets you in the room but attitude gets you the job, because there's always someone else with your exact skill set waiting behind you. There's also a sharp point on why so many people say they want to work in strategy, when he thinks execution is actually the harder and more valuable skill.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

Your brain isn't a muscle, but we've been running our workplaces as if it were since the 1950s. Neuroscientist Mithu Storoni traces that mistake back to the Industrial Revolution, when the idea of efficiency got applied to assembly lines and then, without much thought, to knowledge work.

In a conversation with Jean Gomes and Scott Allender on The Mindset Economy podcast, Mithu explains what happens inside the brain when you push through sustained attention for twenty or thirty minutes past its limit, why that feeling of boredom at eleven in the morning is actually a signal, and what alpha waves have to do with clearing mental clutter. Her point lands hard for anyone stacking back-to-back meetings all day: a brain forced to behave like a machine ends up performing like a very basic AI.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

Psychological safety isn't about being nice, it's about permission for candour. In this short extract taken from The Mindset Economy podcast, Amy Edmondson (who built her career studying psychological safety) explains why. Learning is never comfortable. You're taking a risk every time you admit you don't know something or that you got it wrong.

Amy walks us through why hierarchy makes this harder, what leaders can say to open the door for honest input, and why asking a genuine question is one of the most powerful things a leader can do. She also makes the case that anyone on a team, not just the person at the top, can practice this kind of leadership.

If you enjoyed this extract, find the full conversation on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@TheMindsetEconomy

How much of global conflict is driven by our own biology? In this episode of The Mindset Economy, we are joined by Dr. Nicholas Wright to examine the "brain-war" connection through the lens of neuroscience and military strategy.

We explore the neuroscience of war, how our evolutionary wiring influences modern battlefields and how the experience of conflict fundamentally reshapes the human brain. Nicholas breaks down the cognitive biases that lead to escalation and shares insights on how understanding cognitive psychology and military psychology can help us navigate a more stable future.

In this episode, we discuss:

- The biological origins of human conflict and aggression.
- How war physically alters brain function across societies.
- Overcoming cognitive pitfalls in high-stakes strategic decision-making.
- The future of neuro-influence and its role in international relations.
- The impact of AI on warfare and autonomous drones.

Resources Mentioned: Nicholas Wright's book, Warhead: How the Brain Shapes War and How War Shapes the Brain, is available now.

Reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender: 

Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, Wiley, 2023) 
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, Baker Books, 2023)

Social:

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The Mindset Economy Podcast is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside Consulting Ltd production.

AI is not failing because of bad technology. It is failing because of bad questions.

Dr. Leo Anthony Celi, critical care physician and researcher at MIT, has spent years exposing a problem that the machine learning community would rather not face. The datasets training our most powerful healthcare AI do not just underrepresent certain populations. They reflect, and quietly reinforce the inequalities already baked into our systems. Building bigger models on broken foundations does not fix medicine, it scales the dysfunction.

In this conversation with Jean Gomes and Scott Allender, Celi makes a counterintuitive case; that AI could become a Trojan horse for genuine transformation, not because the technology will save us but because confronting its failures might force us to ask better questions about who gets seen, who gets studied, and who gets to shape the tools that increasingly govern our lives.

Dr Celi shares why he is bringing musicians, indigenous philosophers, and religious communities into rooms usually reserved for data scientists, what a basketball game and a tangled net reveal about who actually solves hard problems, and why the four qualities most needed from AI are the same ones most needed from leaders: creativity, humility, curiosity, and a healthy scepticism toward easy answers.

For leaders navigating the AI era, this is a conversation about what it really means to build systems worthy of human trust.

Reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender: 

Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, Wiley, 2023) 
 The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, Baker Books, 2023)

Social:

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The Mindset Economy Podcast is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside Consulting Ltd production.

What does leadership look like when nobody really knows what’s coming next?

In this episode, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are joined by Chris
Hirst, former global CEO and leadership advisor, to explore how leaders and
individuals make decisions in a world shaped by uncertainty and AI. Chris
challenges some familiar ideas, arguing that working hard is not enough, and
that the real differentiator is how you show up, not just what you can do.

What follows is a fascinating conversation about ownership, mindset, and
the small behaviours that compound over time, from how people actually get
hired and promoted, to why complaining and blaming quietly hold us back. This
episode offers a practical lens on what creates real value and what does not.
It is less about theory, and more about what it takes to move forward when the
rules are no longer clear.

Reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender: 

Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, Wiley, 2023) 
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, Baker Books, 2023)

Social:

Instagram           @mindseteconomypodcast
LinkedIn             The Mindset Economy Podcast
Bluesky            @mindseteconomy.bsky.social
YouTube           @TheMindsetEconomy

The Mindset Economy Podcast is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside Consulting Ltd production.

The rules that got you here may be the very thing holding you back.

Ja-Naé Duane and Steve Fisher call them super shifts, fundamental changes so significant that many of the assumptions underpinning how we work, lead, and create value are quietly becoming obsolete. Expertise, control, certainty: the frameworks that once provided stability are starting to break down. Most organisations are yet to reckon with what that actually means.

Jean Gomes and Scott Allender, leadership authors and advisors who have spent their careers working at the sharp end of organisational change, push Duane and Fisher on what this means practically for leaders who are already stretched, already uncertain, already looking for ground that holds. Together they examine why our sense of agency may be more fragile than we think, why the shift from control to co-creation is not optional, and what kind of mindset is required when the past is no longer a reliable guide.

If you sense that something fundamental has shifted but struggle to articulate what, or what to do about it, this episode is a good place to start.

Reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender: 

Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, Wiley, 2023) 
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, Baker Books, 2023)

Social:

Instagram           @mindseteconomypodcast
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Bluesky            @mindseteconomy.bsky.social
YouTube           @TheMindsetEconomy

The Mindset Economy Podcast is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside Consulting Ltd production.

Most leaders say they want candour. Almost none of them have it.

Amy Edmondson, Harvard professor and the world's leading researcher on psychological safety, argues that the problem isn't culture, it isn't trust, it isn't people. It's the invisible interpersonal risk that makes speaking up feel more dangerous than staying quiet. In a world where AI is accelerating the pace of change, that silence is becoming increasingly costly.

Edmondson sits down with Jean Gomes and Scott Allender, authors and leadership experts who have spent their careers working at the sharp end of organisational change, to reframe psychological safety not as comfort, but as permission for candour, a subtle but important distinction that changes how leaders should think about the environments they create. She explains why intelligent failure is a capability to be built, not a mistake to be tolerated, while learning, not knowing, is fast becoming the defining leadership skill of the AI era.

For anyone leading teams through uncertainty, this episode offers a sharper understanding of why high-quality conversations are the most underleveraged asset in most organisations, and what it actually takes to have them.

Reading from Amy Edmondson:

Right Kind of Wrong: How the Best Teams Use Failure to Succeed (Penguin, 2024)
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Wiley, 2025)

Reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender: 

Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, Wiley, 2023) 
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, Baker Books, 2023)

Social:

Instagram           @mindseteconomypodcast
LinkedIn             The Mindset Economy Podcast
Bluesky            @mindseteconomy.bsky.social
YouTube           @TheMindsetEconomy

The Mindset Economy Podcast is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside Consulting Ltd production.

 The greatest risk of the AI era may not be losing our jobs. It may be losing our ability to imagine something better.

Futurist Sarah Housley has noticed something troubling. As AI advances and change accelerates, many people are experiencing less agency, not more. The collective imagination about what the future could look like seems to have stalled, replaced by anxiety and short-term thinking at precisely the moment when bold, hopeful vision is most needed.

Her book Designing Hope introduces the idea of protopia, futures that improve gradually through experimentation, human ingenuity, and collective action, and it sits at the heart of this conversation. Jean Gomes and Scott Allender, authors and leadership experts who bring their experience working with senior leaders around the world to every conversation, explore with Housley why rapid technological change erodes our sense of agency, why non-linear thinking is becoming an essential leadership capability, and what it practically takes to create hopeful visions of the future rather than simply managing the present.

Imagining better futures is not a luxury. For leaders operating in the age of AI, it may be the most important capability of all.

Reading from Sarah Housley:

Designing Hope: Visions to Shape Our Future (2025, Indigo Press) 

Reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender: 

Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, Wiley, 2023) 

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, Baker Books, 2023)

Social:
Instagram           @mindseteconomypodcast
LinkedIn             The Mindset Economy Podcast
Bluesky            @mindseteconomy.bsky.social
YouTube           @TheMindsetEconomy

The Mindset Economy Podcast is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside Consulting Ltd production.

Intelligence does not protect you from dogmatism. In some cases, it makes it worse.

This is one of the more unsettling findings to emerge from the work of Dr. Leor Zmigrod, neuroscientist at Cambridge and author of The Ideological Brain. Her research reveals that ideology is not defined by what you believe, but by how you believe it. When thinking becomes rigid and fused with identity, the brain narrows. Cognitive flexibility declines. Empathy weakens. Even physiological responses to other people's suffering can change.

Jean Gomes and Scott Allender, whose combined experience advising and writing about leadership at the highest levels informs everything they explore on the show, press Zmigrod on what this means for leaders specifically: the sharp distinction between values and ideologies, why uncertainty makes certainty feel irresistible, and how AI is shifting radicalisation from passive consumption to active dialogue, potentially reinforcing bias in powerful new ways.

The question running beneath the whole conversation is one every leader should sit with: how often do we confuse conviction with clarity, and what would it take to cultivate the kind of flexibility that allows us to think freely in a polarised, AI-accelerated world?

Reading from Dr Leor Zmigrod:
The Ideological Brain: How Rigid Beliefs Harm Our Minds & Bodies – And Why It Matters (L Zmigrod, Penguin, 2026)

Reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, Wiley, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, Baker Books, 2023)

Social:
Instagram           @mindseteconomypodcast
LinkedIn             The Mindset Economy Podcast
Bluesky            @mindseteconomy.bsky.social
YouTube           @TheMindsetEconomy

The Mindset Economy Podcast is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside Consulting Ltd production.

For more than a century, humans have tried to mimic machines. First with our bodies, then with our minds. It hasn't served us well.

Mithu Storoni, neuroscientist and author of the Business Book of the Year 2025, wants to change the way leaders think about productivity. Not by doing more, but by understanding how the brain actually works. Because most workplaces still run on industrial-era logic, treating knowledge work like assembly line work, despite clear evidence that the brain operates in rhythms, states, and cycles that bear no resemblance to a factory floor.

Jean Gomes and Scott Allender, two of the more thoughtful voices in leadership today, both authors with deep experience working alongside senior leaders globally, explore with Storoni what emerges as both practical and counterintuitive. Mind wandering is a signal, not a failure. The timing of different types of work matters more than most leaders realise. Movement and rest are not obstacles to high performance, they are preconditions for it.

As AI takes over routine cognitive work, the leaders who thrive will be the ones who understand what the human brain does best, and build environments that allow it to do exactly that.

Reading from Mithu Storoni:
WINNER OF THE BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2025
Hyperefficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work (2024, Yellow Kite)

Reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, Wiley, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, Baker Books, 2023)

Social:
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Bluesky            @mindseteconomy.bsky.social
YouTube           @TheMindsetEconomy

The Mindset Economy Podcast is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside Consulting Ltd production.

Launching on Thursday 15th January 2026, The Mindset Economy Podcast explores a profound shift in how value is created in an automated world.

As we move beyond the industrial, service, and knowledge economies, a new multi-trillion-dollar era is emerging. One where beliefs, resilience, and adaptability are no longer background traits, but the currency that shapes success.

Hosted by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender, the podcast examines why mindset, the interplay of how we feel, think, and see, will increasingly determine our economic prospects, our wellbeing, and our ability to navigate uncertainty.

Subscribe on your favourite platform and join the conversation about how humans can not just survive, but thrive, in the mindset economy.

After five years and hundreds of episodes of The Evolving Leader, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are excited to announce a bold new chapter. In a world that is rapidly being reshaped by AI, climate change and shifting social, political and economic realities, the need for a new conversation is clear.

The Mindset Economy explores how leaders can thrive in a world where machines can think. The core premise of The Mindset Economy podcast is understanding the forces transforming work and society, and equipping yourself with the mindsets needed to navigate and shape the future.

EPISODE ONE LANDS THURSDAY 15TH JANUARY 2026.