Want to take control of the future? In each episode of this podcast, Entrepreneur magazine editor in chief Jason Feifer takes something that seems concerning or confusing today, and then learns its surprising history, what important things we’re missing, and the solutions that can make us smarter and better. (The show was previously called Pessimists Archive.)
For decades, people have been told they have a certain “learning style.” Maybe you think you’re a visual learner, for example, or a reading/writing learner. But new research is upending all that. Here’s what we got wrong — and how we can become truly better learners.
In 1923, a famous scientist predicted how work would change in 2023. Now, 100 years later, we can confirm: He was shockingly right… and yet totally wrong. What happened? The answers can tell you a lot about what’s coming in the next 100 years, and how technology will (and maybe won’t) change work forever.
Everyone’s freaking out! How can that be put to good use? In this episode, we discuss the unexpected benefits of the bubonic plague, what the four-day workweek tells us about the future of work, how world-changing technologies become adopted, why business failures lead to success, how to use crises to change the status quo, and more.
This episode originally aired on The Jordan Harbinger Show, as he interviewed me, Build For Tomorrow host Jason Feifer.
Have you ever messed up — or just thought you messed up! — and then obsessed over what you could have done better? This episode is about what’s happening in your brain, why you’re doing it, and how to finally let it go.
You can find opportunity in the hardest situations. But how?
To answer that out, we take lessons from one of the most fascinating changes in cultural history -- when the record player was invented. Many people loved it, but musicians hated it. They tried to stop it. But their anti-recorded-music campaign did not go as planned.
This is a story about what it takes -- for us all! -- to let go of the past and embrace the future.
Want to fix the problem with work today? It starts by understanding the common phrase “nobody wants to work anymore” — including what’s right about it, what’s wrong about it, and why critics have been using these exact same words for more than a century.
Barbie sales were plummeting. A new leader had a vision: The doll needed to be “a reflection of our times.” But how do you make something more modern? In this episode, we learn how Barbie took some big risks — and then take a trip through toy history, to discover just how much our toys say about ourselves.
Teddy Bears Are History’s Most Subversive Toy (Classic)
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The teddy bear: Is it cute and cuddly, or a “horrible monstrosity” that’ll destroy humanity? In 1907, many people feared the worst — that this new toy would ruin young girls’ developing maternal instincts, and lead us to a terrible fate. This is the story of how the teddy bear changed us all… and how we then changed the bear.
Our brains are full of fun facts: the memory span of a goldfish, Marie Antoinette’s famous words, the vomitoriums of Rome, and more. But what if it’s all wrong? In this episode, I debunk more than a dozen common misconceptions and then ask: Why do we remember misinformation so easily? And is there a better way to learn?