Balance and Breakthrough

Noah Maurer

This podcast is for anyone who wants to do well and do good, without sacrificing one for the other. Join Noah Maurer, a PhD student at Imperial College London, if you want to lead a happy and healthy life while pursuing impact that is purposeful and positive. With expert guests—from world-class authors, disruptive founders and entrepreneurs, to cutting-edge scientists—we delve into personal stories of stumbles and success, provide science-based insights, and share practical tools to help you cultivate more balance and unlock breakthroughs in your life, work, and the world.

Episodes

  1. MAY 8

    Ikigai Expert: Why Gen Z & Millennials Are Right About Purpose at Work

    9/10 Gen Z & Millennials prioritise purpose and well-being, yet 70% of employees feel disengaged. Frank Brueck explains why it’s not your fault if you feel exhausted and empty coming from work.  Frank Brueck, PhD, is the creator of Imperial Business School’s Financial Times award-winning Executive Sustainability Leadership course and the author of Ikigai for Leaders and Organisations. Using his own assessment framework, he measures multinational companies’ culture and has worked with thousands of leaders to help them unlock meaning, well-being, and sustainability in the workplace.  Together, we talk about: What are 4 questions you must answer to discover your Ikigai What is the business case for purpose and happiness? Learn about the breakthrough study that proved that well-being boosts productivity  Why less than 1% of companies achieve business IkigaiWhat a huge bank's value assessment reveals about what’s broken with corporate culture The surprising science of why meditation makes the brain sustainable  00:00 Teaser: The Emptiness Of Modern Work  01:21 Meet Ikigai Author Frank Brueck  03:23 Discovering Ikigai In The Blue Zones  05:38 The Disengagement Crisis Draining 70% Of Workers  07:21 The 4 Questions You Need to Answer 08:04 Where Does The World Actually Start?  10:30 The "Bermuda Triangle" Trapping Top Graduates  12:30 How To Pursue Purpose Despite Economic Pressure  14:50 How To Assess Your Leadership Type  16:55 Oxford Study: Why Wellbeing Causes Productivity  18:05 Why Purpose Makes Companies More Innovative  19:21 Can Companies Actually Achieve Ikigai?  21:37 This Financial Institution's Leadership Team Was Shocked  23:58 Why Company Culture Is Fundamentally Disconnected  26:21 The Power Of Meditation To Foster Sustainability  28:36 How Self-Transcendence Changes Everything  30:56 How Meditation Physically Alters The Brain  31:54 The Antidote To The Corporate Hamster Wheel  34:33 The Unfortunate Truth About Corporate Change  36:40 How To Assess Your Company’s Culture 37:19 Frank’s Breakthrough Wish For Humankind 👨‍💻 FOLLOW THE GUEST: Frank Brueck (Leadership Lab Lead at the Leonardo Centre on Business for Society) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-brueck-3966415/  Website & Ikigai Assessment: http://ikigai-cooperation.com Ikigai for Leaders and Organizations: The Way to Individual and Collective Purpose and Meaning https://www.amazon.co.uk/IKIGAI-Leaders-Organisations-Individual-Collective/dp/171660530X  🎙️ CONNECT WITH THE HOST: Noah Maurer  (PhD Student at Imperial Business School at the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noah_ehw/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-maurer/ 📑 Sources and Studies Mentioned  Deloitte: 2025 Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/issues/work/genz-millennial-survey.html Forbes: 69% Of Workers Are Disengaged In The AI Era. A CEO Explains Why https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelwells/2026/05/01/69-of-workers-are-disengaged-in-the-ai-era-a-ceo-explains-why/ Wellbeing-Productivity Study: Does employee happiness have an impact on productivity? https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4766 Purpose-Performance Study: The contingent relationship between purpose and profits. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/stsc.2023.0194

    41 min

  2. APR 19

    Can We Do Good & Do Well – Without Sacrificing One For The Other?

    In this first solo episode, I share why I started the podcast, explain why it's called balance and breakthrough, and what you can expect from the show! We are living through chaotic times. AI disruption, cost of living and mental health crises, the climate crisis. The list is long and the challenges real. Most of us feel the weight of it, and we want to do something about it. But we tend to react in one of two ways: 1. We go all-in, and burn out. 2. Or we tune out and retreat into our bubble of self-improvement. My mission: This podcast is where both paths meet. I started this show to bring together two worlds I'm deeply passionate about: the inner world of a happy, healthy, and impactful life, and the outer world of messy global challenges. In this episode I unpack: Why Balance & Breakthrough? To bridge the gap between doing well and doing good at the same time.What is it about? Create positive change in our life, our work, and in the world.Who is it for? For anyone who wants to be ambitious and anchored. Successful and sustainable. Burning bright, without burning out.The Problem: From personal burnout, to struggling businesses, to climate change. The closer I looked, the more I saw the exact same problem : Imbalance.The Idea: Getting back to balance requires overcoming resistance through breakthroughs. And balance propels our next breakthrough.Biking Analogy: Balance is hard when you stand still, but easy when you ride.Who to expect on the show? Thinkers, builders, and changemakers. We'll be connecting the dots between personal health and planetary breakthroughs. Join the Journey and the Conversation: Hit the follow button to be part of this journey! I would love for you to be part of the conversation, too. Drop a comment and let me know what topics you would like me and my guests to tackle next.

    14 min

  3. FEB 14

    Debut Episode - The Brain on ChatGPT: 2 Mistakes We All Make and 3 Protocols to Augment, Not Automate Our Intelligence

    In this debut episode, I sit down with my buddy Marcel Gregoriadis — a PhD candidate in Computer Science — to talk about everything AI. We break down exactly how LLMs work and the most common mistakes we all make using AI. We cover exciting research out of Harvard and Wharton showing how working with AI can boost productivity by 40% and how to harness AI’s creativity for your projects. But there is the danger of using AI on autopilot and as a shortcut. An MIT Media Lab study found that 83% of participants couldn’t remember their own work and that outsourcing work to AI dramatically reduced brain activity and connectivity. We also share 3 practice-backed protocols to get smarter, not dumber with AI.Finally, we speculate on what this all means for our generation entering the job market. Timestamps:  00:00 Intro to Balance & Breakthrough  00:20 Teaser and Take-Aways 1:24 Welcome to the Debut Episode: Meet my buddy Marcel 01:27 AI Fundamentals: Breaking down LLMs  07:44 The Breakthrough: How the attention mechanism changed everything  10:45 How the transformer architecture fixed the "Chinese whispers" context problem 11:27 How LLMs became smart: Multi-head attention 21:28 Mistake #1: Context Rot - Why your chat gets dumber as it grows 23:01 Mistake #2: Don’t just tell chatbots what to do, create the vibe and persona  29:05 The Manager and Minions: How to think about AI collaboration  30:12 Danger of Using AI: Shortcutting hard thinking and hitting brick wall 31:41 The Harvard/Wharton Study: A 40% quality boost for consultants  34:32 The Autopilot Danger: Falling asleep at the AI wheel  35:58 Groupthink: Why AI can make organisations less creative  38:31 The Creativity Test: Why ChatGPT beats MBA students 35 to 5 in start-up competition 42:47 The MIT Brain Study: 83% of users forgot their own work!  48:59 Protocol 1: The "Brain First" Rule: Do the hard thinking first, then bring in AI to augment your intelligence 50:46 Protocol 2: The “Lean Startup” Prompting Method: Using AI iteratively to stop it from building a "nonsense cathedral" 53:04 Protocol 3: The “Sequential Thinking” Protocol: The trick to force the AI to critique its own answers  1:00:28 The Future of Work: Are juniors becoming irrelevant?  1:04:34 Dystopia vs. Utopia: Universal Basic Income and the 10-hour work week?!  1:09:45 The Paradox: Use AI less to use it more  1:10:56 Closing Tradition: Marcel’s search for balance and his breakthroughs 🔗 Sources Mentioned in this Episode: 📚 Books: Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick: https://www.amazon.com/Co-Intelligence-Living-Working-Ethan-Mollick/dp/059371671X 📑 Research Articles and Studies: Google Study: Attention Is All You Need (2017): https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2017/file/3f5ee243547dee91fbd053c1c4a845aa-Paper.pdf The Harvard/Wharton/BCG Study: Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality (2023): https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/24-013_d9b45b68-9e74-42d6-a1c6-c72fb70c7282.pdf The MIT Media Lab Study (2025): Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task: https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/your-brain-on-chatgpt/overview/  👨‍💻 Connect with the Guest Marcel Gregoriadis (PhD Candidate in Computer Science, TU Delft)  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcel-gregoriadis/  🎙️ Connect with the Host:  Noah Maurer (PhD Student in Management and Entrepreneurship, Imperial Business School)  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noah_ehw/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-maurer/

    1h 12m

  4. 09/20/2025

    Trailer: Balance and Breakthrough

    We're living through chaotic times - AI disruption, social polarisation, mental health epidemics, and climate breakdown. Most people either burn out trying to fix everything or retreat into comfortable self-improvement. But what if the solutions we need aren't separate fixes, but integrated breakthroughs? Welcome to Balance & Breakthrough - where inner growth meets outer impact. I'm Noah, a lifelong meditation practitioner and PhD student at Imperial Business School. After having to rebuild my own balance while studying breakthrough ideas, I created this space to ask the big questions and explore solutions to our most pressing challenges, from self to society. In each episode, I sit down with athletes and authors, entrepreneurs and changemakers, world-class scholars and researchers who've cracked the code on transformation - whether that's optimizing human performance, building innovative organizations, or tackling global challenges. We dive into science-backed insights, real-life stories of stumbles and success, and actionable tools you can use immediately. Join me for thought-provoking conversations that connect the dots between personal development and planetary change, between inner wisdom and outer transformation. This is where ancient wisdom meets cutting-edge science, where breadth meets depth, and where balance meets breakthrough. Balance keeps you steady; breakthrough moves you forward. But they aren't just opposites - they fuel each other, and often you need one to find the other. Master both to lead happier, healthier and more impactful lives - without choosing between inner peace and outer impact. New episodes weekly. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

    2 min

Trailer

About

This podcast is for anyone who wants to do well and do good, without sacrificing one for the other. Join Noah Maurer, a PhD student at Imperial College London, if you want to lead a happy and healthy life while pursuing impact that is purposeful and positive. With expert guests—from world-class authors, disruptive founders and entrepreneurs, to cutting-edge scientists—we delve into personal stories of stumbles and success, provide science-based insights, and share practical tools to help you cultivate more balance and unlock breakthroughs in your life, work, and the world.

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