Ripple Effect Knowledge at Wharton

This is an insightful podcast. The issues are important, relevant and scholarship is discussed in ways that are accessible.

I give up.

It’s Wharton! I figured they be great. So after several disappointments, I gave them one more shot. The topic was great, consumer behavior. I listened to Faber, Bernstein and Santiago (going by memory so apologies if I got it wrong).

I defy any senior business person to get any useful takeaways from this. Fabers recommendations could be summed up as buy my book and everyone doing retail (vs. I who just study and consult on it) is a moron. This is so consulting from the 90s. Bernstein (though less obnoxious) was similar. Lots about trends that you can hear anywhere and recommendations like CFOs need to look carefully at the numbers. Santiago may have been a bit better, but I was dozing by that point. They just don’t understand how podcasts work.

Bye.

**** previous review **

Sometimes very good; sometimes meh. Working from home was filled with the obvious and lots of opinion but little research mentioned. Diversity training was excellent with good descriptions of experiments, generative AI was lots of general arm waving (this is what I think and I don’t need to support it) and it was all obvious. Given it’s Wharton, where’s the data?!! I may drop it soon; we’ll see. And btw, no one cares about why a prof got into his or her area of research. Ok, that was a cheap shot. [my comment below from a couple weeks ago] I’ve listened to only 3 so far. Good insight, well produced, interesting topics (I looked over others). However could use more depth in some areas. For example, in the episode on the debt, the speaker mentioned taxing just people asking over 400K, was not enough. Well, what does that mean? It’s not enough to solve the problem, but does it make a dent? How bout if it’s part of cuts? It could turn out to be another NPR biased broadcast, but I’ll listen to more. The psychology safety one was filled with simplistic and unrealistic bias. Their was one example of minorities not being allowed to voice opinions in meetings, because they are minorities (my words, but I think close to what they said). Have either one of the speakers ever been in a corporate meeting? People fall over themselves to compliment even the most ridiculous opinions of a minority (and everyone has ridiculous opinions). And they do this because every professional dreads any hint that they are racist. Nice episode on housing too. It’s definitely worth my time listening to more. If the psychological safety one was a burp, I’ll update this. There are always people who see everything in terms of race.

Love the first month’s focus on women & work