This was a fascinating discussion about a challenging topic: Miles Spencer's 'Reflekta: - an AI generated avatar of one’s deceased loved ones. We explored the thorny ethical issues of whether this will prevent people from full acceptance and/or grieving successfully. This led to the distinction between sadness as accepted loss and grief as no-yet-accepted loss. We explored likely family issues about which is the 'true' reflection of people who have passed. We also agreed that everyone does grief differently and this resource may well be cathartic and help people build on their relationships with deceased loved ones. We also explored the other applications for Reflekta: for people to create their own Reflekta legacies before dying and for a range of uses in aged care homes. All in all, this fruitful discussion posed as many interesting questions as it answered.

My guest on today’s episode is Miles Spencer who’s done so much in his life it is hard to summarise! He has founded, financed, built and exited three digital media companies and his new startup, Reflekta, is the subject for this podcast. Reflekta is an ai-driven platform for interactions with one’s deceased loved-ones.
The big picture is that Reflekta moves beyond existing digital tools in assisting those in grief or helping to counter memory loss, to more celebratory interactions such intergenerational storytelling and legacy building. Behind this is a philosophy of ‘Soul Tech’ or human centred AI. Topics discussed included: The benefits for storytellers in creating their own legacy reflections (including for those who may have dementia or are near end of life); The benefits for family and loved ones in terms of comfort, resilience and having a growing resource throughout life; Growing one’s relationship with a deceased loved-one; The distinction between grief therapy and legacy-based interactions; The distinction between reflections and attempted simulations; Promoting tradition and legacy for subsequent generations; The broader social benefits of the passing down of wisdom at scale; Discussion of the thorny ethical questions involved - including the guardrails established by Reflekta to try to deal with these.
All in all, probably a conversation to follow up when there is more water under the bridge for this very new Reflekta!

A wonderful podcast with musician Jake Isaac led to an equally wonderful roundtable with my friends from Nettwerk Music. We began with a discussion of creativity as communal experience. This led to the insight that this is the opposite of being precious or needing to be validated. Rather, music is a driving for connection and, for Jake Isaac, a quintessentially sacred experience. We also discussed suffering as a road to deep learning - which then morphed into a conversation about wellbeing and contentment as the natural consequence of being attuned to reality. Finally, we explored the live environment, jamming, improvising and creative interaction and concluded it is a type of public conversation. When done authentically, it converys a unique expressiveness and brings about a miracle of communication: that I am not alone in my experience. This reflects Isaac’s philosophical ground in ‘Ubuntu’: ‘I am because we are’.

With two senior HR Practitioners and a CEO, I had real expertise for this particular roundtable discussion of the Mark Murphy podcast discussing his book ‘Team Players: The Five Critical Roles You Need to Build Winning Team’. We dug deep into the concept of Psychological Safety and how this allows for a diversity of roles, for robust discussion, for curiosity and tough questions and for creative outcomes. This led to a discussion of how to apply the idea of the 5 roles in decisions for hiring - and how to talk with teams and those on interview panels well before new hires about what roles they actually need. This was to avoid the ‘hiring like me’ tendency to clone oneself in hiring decisions. Comparative advantage was seen as a crucial concept for legacy and succession, with founders/CEOs etc needing to hand over key functions and bring people through well before they themselves are due to leave. Another deep conversation was around setting objectives and key results, and the discussion landed on the need to frame these in terms of peoples’ natural role types.

This is a deep dive into the dynamics of winning teams. Mark Murphy's research has identified five key team roles: Director, Achiever, Stabilizer, Harmonizer & Trailblazer. Our discusion ranged widely from psychological safety, to comparative advantage, to reciprocal expertise affirmation. This podcast is essential for anyone who manages or who participates in teams. There is also a deep practicality in Mark's approach to overcoming common social and cognitive biases in teams including herding, groupthink, confirmation bias, personality dynamics and power differentials.

I found this roundtable discussion of the 6 Missing podcast to be both delightful and thought-provoking. First, we discussed the idea of an addictive personality and how we can convert such impulses into 'useful addictions'. We also agreed how 'comforting' TJ Dumser is as a person as reflected by his insights, vocal tone and general demeanour. We explored the idea of ‘state dependent cognition’, which led to a discussion of the shift in psychology to include somatic or body-based therapies. A quite profound discussion followed about accepting our relative insignificance and how this takes a self-imposed weight off our shoulders. We agreed that a new insight was that ambient music doesn’t so much dictate what emotions we are to feel, but allows us to uncover what's there and finally, we explored how TJ’s music is a type of mindfulness practice.

Not surprisingly, the podcast with Chloe Carmichael ('Can I Say That?') stimuated a very spirited and thoughtul roundtable discussion. Topics discussed included: the importance of finding a common humanity with people whose views we strongly disagree with; how technology amplifies our differences and deeply reinforces more and more extreme ideas; how our own authenticity and integrity is restored when we do speak up; the talking cure - which allows us to articulate that which ails us; the devestating impacts of self-censorship and self-suppression; the limits of free speach, especially speech inciting violence and intended harm; the deep need to continuously have the debate and conversation about protecting free speech for everyone.

This podcast discusses Chloe Carmichael's book: 'Can I Say That? Why Free Speech Matters and How to Use It Fearlessly'. Chloe explains how to unlock the mental health benefits of free speech. We also discussed the neagtive side of thought and speech suppression: we explored secondary gain, especially the growing prevalence of victimhood. We also explored the link to bullying, poor mental helath and lowered resilience. More positively, we discussed not only how free speech unlocks creativity and growth, but is also a key foundaiton for civic virtue and civic health.