Studio Sessions
The patterns behind innovation decisions. The signals to watch for, the questions that matter, and the thinking tools you can use immediately. New episodes every Wednesday. Audio wherever you get your podcasts. Video on YouTube. Twenty years and 20 million downloads. Now sharper than ever.
Mindjacking: When Your Opinions Aren't Yours
Every day you make decisions you think are yours. Most aren't. The algorithm decided, the expert weighed in, the crowd chose. You just clicked agree.
CES 2026: Battle of the AI Robots
This week, I'm in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the annual Consumer Electronics Show 2026. If you've been following me for long, you know I do this every year. This is 20-plus years I've been coming to the Consumer Electronics Show. Normally, I don'
Mental Models — Your Thinking Toolkit
NASA engineers and management had the same data. Their conclusions were 1000x apart. The difference? The mental tools they used to think.
Thinking 101: A Pause, A Reflection, And What Might Come Next
Twenty-one years. That's how long I've been doing this. Producing content. Showing up. Week after week, with only a handful of exceptions—most of them involving hospitals and cardiac surgeons, but that's another story. After twenty-one years, you learn what lands and what doesn&
Mental Models — Your Thinking Toolkit
Before the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, NASA management officially estimated the probability of catastrophic failure at one in one hundred thousand. That's about the same odds as getting struck by lightning while being attacked by a shark. The engineers working on the actual rockets? They estimated
Numerical Thinking: How to Find the Truth When Numbers Lie
Quick—which is more dangerous: the thing that kills 50,000 Americans every year, or the thing that kills 50? Your brain says the first one, obviously. The data says you're dead wrong. Heart disease kills 700,000 people annually, but you're not terrified of cheeseburgers.
The Clock is Screaming (And My Grandson is Listening)
I stepped out of the shower in March and my chest split open. Not a metaphor. The surgical incision from my cardiac device procedure just… opened. Blood and fluid everywhere. Three bath towels to stop it. My wife—a nurse, the exact person I needed—was in Chicago dealing with
Second-Order Thinking: How to Stop Your Decisions From Creating Bigger Problems
In August 2025, Polish researchers tested something nobody had thought to check: what happens to doctors' skills after they rely on AI assistance? The AI worked perfectly—catching problems during colonoscopies, flagging abnormalities faster than human eyes could. But when researchers pulled the AI away, the doctors' detection
How To Make Better Decisions When Nothing Is Certain
You're frozen. The deadline's approaching. You don't have all the data. Everyone wants certainty. You can't give it. Sound familiar? Maybe it's a hiring decision with three qualified candidates and red flags on each one. Or a product launch where
You Think in Analogies Every Day (And You're Doing It Wrong)
Try to go through a day without using an analogy. I guarantee you'll fail within an hour. Your morning coffee tastes like yesterday's batch. Traffic is moving like molasses. Your boss sounds like a broken record. Every comparison you make—every single one—is your brain&
