Podcasts by The Not Unreasonable Podcast

Ga Bartick on How To Sell from 2021-12-03T15:00

GA Bartick teaches people how to sell an underappreciated skill with very general applications. GA wrote a book called Silver Bullet Selling and in this conversation we talk about
- how smal...

Scott Sumner on Monetary Policy from 2021-11-19T22:00

Scott Sumner is the Ralph G. Hawtrey Chair of Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and blogger at themoneyillusion.com and econlog and author of two books: The Midas...

David Zuby on Crash Test Dummies from 2021-11-06T10:00

David Zuby is executive vice president and chief research officer for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and also a worldwide expert on crash test dummies! I found myself in an amazingly...

Craig Hupper on ESG from 2021-10-25T15:00

Craig is Head of ESG for Trans Re, a global reinsurance company and in this episode we dig into what ESG is about generally and what role reinsurers and the insurance industry plays today. In th...

Joe Henrich on Cultural Evolution from 2021-10-04T15:00

Joe Henrich is Professor and Chair of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University. He has written two books that have been incredibly eye-opening for me: The Secret of Our Success and the WEI...

Mahbod Moghadam on Controversy from 2021-09-20T10:00

Mahbod Moghadam is the co-founder of Genius (formerly Rap Genius), co-founder of everipedia.org, and co-founder of ozone.ai. 
My words but Mahbod helped ...

Uwe Dulleck on Credence Goods from 2021-09-07T17:00

Uwe Dulleck is a leading theorist on Credence Goods, a class of economic good defined by the fact that consumers can't verify the quality of what they've bought. Think car mechanics or...

Bryan Caplan on the Myth of the Rational Voter from 2021-07-18T10:00

Bryan Caplan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and for Bryan's second appearance we're talking about how voters aren't all they're cracked up to be in term...

Jessica Leong on Who Actuaries Are from 2021-06-21T12:00

Jessica Leong is the President of the Casualty Actuarial Society and the Lead Data Scientist at Zurich North America.
Jessica used her conversational Jiu Jitsu powers to make me talk a fair ...

Steve Mildenhall on Insurance History Part 2 from 2021-05-12T11:00

Steve Mildenhall returns to talk insurance history! Int his follow up to our earlier episode we dig even deeper into data by different line of business and observe all kinds of interesting thing...

Doug Hubbard on How to Measure Anything from 2021-04-29T20:00

Doug Hubbard is the author of several books and I've read two: *How to Measure Anything* and *The Failure of Risk Management*. I can honestly say that one of my career goals is to implement...

Robert Hoekman on The Tao of User Experience from 2021-04-13T14:00

Since joining the technology business I've had a whole variety of mental upgrades but Robert Hoekman has given me the chance to dig into what may be the most profound of them all: UX. In th...

David Soloff on O.T.T Risk from 2021-03-26T11:00

David is the founder of Ottrisk, a startup building technology to support the underwriting of business interruption Insurance. Previous to Ott-risk, David was a founder of Premise, a collector o...

Clip - David Soloff of OTT Risk on the Opportunity in Business Interruption Insurance from 2021-03-24T13:00

This is a clip from my upcoming interview with David Soloff on the opportunity in business interruption insurance. 

David is the founder of Ottrisk, a startup building technology to sup...

Samir Shah on Innovating Capital from 2021-03-19T07:00

Samir Shah is Co-Founder and CEO of Ledger Investing, former Chief Reinsurance Office and Head of Capital markets at AIG. Samir started his career as a pension actuary and management consultant....

Steve Mildenhall on The Macro History of The Insurance Market from 2021-03-11T10:00

This episode marks the return of Steve Mildenhall, principal at Convex Risk, former Assistant Professor of Actuarial Science at St John’s University and former CEO of Analytics at Aon. This time...

John Shettle on How to Sell Insurance from 2020-12-10T11:00

I talk a lot about selling these days and was reminded of this moment from my conversation with John Shettle where he launched into an impromptu tour de force sales lecture. This experience real...

Otakar Hubschmann on AI In Reinsurance from 2020-11-02T10:00

My guest for this episode is Otakar Hubshcmann, Head of Applied Data at Trans Re. The reinsurance industry is absolutely FULL of interesting data about insurance but there are a bazillion challe...

Actuaries and Data Scientists at Root from 2020-08-17T08:00

My guests for this episode are from Root Insurance: Matt Bonakdarpour, VP of Data Science, Alex Carges, Chief Actuary and Isaac Espinoza, who leads Root's reinsurance efforts. 

Thi...

Alex Lazarow on Frontier Startups from 2020-07-29T07:00

My guest for this episode is Alex Lazarow, VC with Cathay Innovation and author of OUT-INNOVATE How Global Entrepreneurs–from Delhi to Detroit–Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley. In this ...

Mary Hirschfeld on Aquinas and the Market from 2020-07-02T22:00

My guest for this episode is Mary Hirschfeld, Associate Professor of Economics & Theology at Villanova University. Mary has a PhD in Economics from Harvard University and a PhD in Theology f...

Ken Brandt on the Impact of COVID-19 from 2020-06-05T17:00

Ken Brandt is the co-President of Global Underwriting at Trans Re and in this episode, recorded on June 3, 2020, we're talking COVID-19. In this episode we cover: 

• What are good ...
  Listen

How COVID Hits the Poor with Jennifer Brady from 2020-03-25T06:00

My guest for this episode is Jennifer Brady, Executive director of Oasis, a non-profit helping women, teens and children rise out of poverty in the greater Paterson, NJ, area, one of the poorest...

What COVID Might Mean For Insurance with Michael Tanzer from 2020-03-23T07:00

Michael Tanzer is a portfolio manager at a hedge fund called Callaway Capital and author of a newsletter I read each week call Stuff to Read Over The Weekend (STROTW). Michael asked me if we cou...

Christy Ford Chapin on the History of Health Insurance in America from 2020-03-10T18:00

My guest for the latest episode is Christy Ford Chapin, Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Christy wrote *Ensuring America's Health: The Public ...

Monica Mason on Catastrophe Modeling from 2019-11-18T22:00

My guest for this episode is Monica Mason, head of catastrophe analytics as Trans Re. Catastrophe modeling is an analytical field of insurance concerned with predicting the cost of all kinds of ...

Ty Sagalow on the Making of Lemonade from 2019-09-22T06:00

My guest for this episode is Ty Sagalow one of the founding members of the Lemonade Insurance Group. Ty has held various underwriting and product development position at AIG over his 25 year car...

Tyler Cowen on Big Business from 2019-08-12T01:00

Tyler Cowen, professor of economics, blogger at marginalrevolution.com, columnist for Bloomberg, host of Conversations with Tyler and author of numerous books returns to the Not Unreasonable Pod...

Melissa Perri on Escaping The Software Build Trap from 2019-07-28T22:00

This episode is about how to build an organization that itself builds great products, especially great software products. I am absolutely not exaggerating when I say that this is the most import...

Alex Tabarrok on Innovation and The Baumol Effect from 2019-07-08T04:00

My guest for this episode is Alex Tabarrok, the Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center and Professor of Economics at George Mason University, blogger at Marginalrevolution.c...

Matt Moore on Analyzing Highway Safety from 2019-06-17T22:00

My guest for this episode is Matt Moore, SVP of the Highway Loss Data Institute. At HLDI Matt manages the research function for HLDI's massive insurance and automobile dataset. In this epis...

Dinos Iordanou on Cyprus, Hard Work and Culture from 2019-06-03T01:00

My guest for this episode is Dinos Iordanou, former Chairman and CEO of Arch, which he co-founded as Arch in 2001 and led from 2003 until retiring last year. In this incredible episode we cover:...

Mango and Mosher on Actuarial Innovation from 2019-05-05T23:00

My guests for this episode are Don Mango Global Head of Actuarial Pricing and Modeling at Everest Insurance, Two-term Casualty Actuarial Society Board Member and former CAS Vice President of Res...

Mike Sapnar, CEO of Trans Re: There's always a Buyer and a Seller from 2019-04-21T21:00

My guest for this episode is Mike Sapnar, CEO of Trans Re, a 4.5 bn premium reinsurer based in New York City. For many in my business Mike needs no introduction: we cover what the differences ar...

Social Media Changes Politics with Martin Gurri from 2019-03-08T00:00

Martin Gurri is a former CIA analyst whose book, the Revolt of the Republic, has put together the best explanation I’ve heard yet for how and why social media has changed politics everywhere in ...

Judah Cohen on the Winter of 2019 from 2019-02-12T00:00

This episode is an update from last year's check in with Judah Cohen, Director of Seasonal Forecasting at AER, a Verisk Company and a Research Affiliate at MIT. We talk about the winter of ...

Ted Tafaro and Chris Lack on Insuring Exceptional People from 2019-01-28T05:00

My guests for this episode are Ted Tafaro, Founder and CEO of Exceptional Risk Advisors and his partner Chris Lack. Exceptional Risk Advisors writes insurance policies covering complex human cap...

Agnes Callard on Aspiration, Socrates and What does Philosophy Feel Like? from 2019-01-11T06:00

Agnes Callard is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and her specialties are in ethics and ancient philosophy. Agnes recently wrote a book called Aspiration which tack...

[3-min clip] Entrepreneurs as Underwriters with Bart Hedges from 2018-12-21T00:00

Every manager wants the dynamism of an entrepreneurial spirit in their company. The benefits of empowering highly skilled people are enormous and there is a long list of organizations that do th...

Tyler Cowen Reads A Precept Then Interviews Me! from 2018-12-16T17:00

While my interview guests are getting settled in I occasionally ask them to read out some of the actuarial code of conduct and we discuss it. I'm assembling those clips into some content fo...

6-min Clip: The Moral Puzzle of Sales feat. Jonathan Beach from 2018-11-26T00:00

My second interview, with Jonathan Beach, is easily (easily) the most underappreciated show I've done. JB is one of the most influential people in my professional life. We don't all ge...

Blockchain! With Steve Mildenhall from 2018-11-12T00:00

Today we have the return of Steve Mildenhall where Steve and I talk blockchain! Steve suggested the idea to me a few months ago and that sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole exploring this techno...

Terri Vaughan on The Financial Crisis and Why State Regulation Works from 2018-10-15T00:00

This episode features Terri Vaughan, professor of actuarial science at Drake University and CEO of the NAIC during the Great Recession. We can call this the Not Unreasonable 10-year retrospectiv...

Tyler Cowen on Stubborn Attachments, Tyrone and Multiple Perspectives from 2018-10-01T00:00

This is a special interview for me because Tyler Cowen has been an enormous intellectual and moral influence on me over the last ten years or so.

I'm not alone. Tyler blogs with Ale...

How Specialty Insurers are Like Arbitrageurs - Deep Dive with Rich Derr from 2018-09-20T00:00

This episode is about diving deep into a comparison between stock market arbitrageurs and specialty insurance underwriters. The idea for the show came from the guest, Rich Derr, an actuary at Na...

[3-min clip] How Surviving A Terrorist Attack Changes Your Life from 2018-09-10T00:00

In this clip from my conversation with Barbara Chabbaga, Barbara talks about being in trapped in a storage closet for hours while terrorists massacred mall shoppers outside the door. She was sure s...

Joshua Gans on Prediction Machines from 2018-08-23T00:00

How are we supposed to think about Machine Learning? How are businesses going to change? This week I interview Joshua Gans, Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School of Business at ...

The Not Unreasonable Book Club With Steve Mildenhall- Episode 1 from 2018-08-02T00:00

Today I'm kicking off a new series tentatively called the Not Unreasonable Book club to be co-hosted with Steve Mildenhall (who is running for the board of the Casualty Actuarial Society, s...

How's Lloyd's Doing? With Rob Johnson from 2018-07-17T00:00

Rob Johnson returns to the Not Unreasonable Podcast for a deep dive into the financial results of the Lloyd's market. Rob almost always has a contrarian view of insurance company results. Usua...

Joe Petrelli is Disrupting Rating Agencies from 2018-06-26T00:00

My guest this week is Joe Petrelli, the founder and CEO of Demotech, a rating agency based in Columbus, Ohio. This interview was a particular delight for me, folks, because I've finally fou...

Managing Hedge Funds, Insurers and Reinsurers with Todd Hart from 2018-06-14T00:00

Todd has had the following jobs: political campaigner, investment banker, hedge fund trader, hedge fund portfolio manager, private equity investor, reinsurance company CEO, insurance company CEO...

Why Building Systems Is Hard With Bill Jenkins from 2018-05-30T00:00

My guest this week is Bill Jenkins. Bill is a technology specialist in the insurance industry. I like to joke that the customer satisfaction rate for insurer systems is 0. But does that need to ...

Barbara Chabbaga on Insurance Product Development in Kenya from 2018-05-14T00:00

Barbara Chabbaga is an insurance product consultant in Kenya. She trained as an actuary in Canada before returning to Nairobi and working for a carrier there. After surviving a terrorist attack ...

Insurance is Not Sold with John Shettle from 2018-04-30T00:00

Recently I've gotten to know today's guest, John Shettle, and all along I've been trying to figure out how to just hook up the cables and suck as much information out of him as I ...

A Spirit Guide For Insurance, Rick Lindsey from 2018-04-15T00:00

I sometimes think of insurance as a morality game. The problem of assessing and pricing risks is so hard that we fall back on human concepts of fairness and relationships to guide our actions. Listen

Paul Ingrey on Marc Grandisson (1 min clip) from 2018-04-03T00:00

Marc Grandisson recently became CEO of Arch Capital Group. Ever wonder what he was like as a young man? Well find out in this re-air of a clip from my episode with Paul Ingrey on how Marc joined Arch.

Gabe Glynn on Iowa, Manufacturing and Sending People Home From Work from 2018-03-27T00:00

Today's guest is Gabe Glynn, co-founder and CEO of MakuSafe and host of the Advanced Manufacturing Podcast. Gabe's company is a technology startup designing wearable sensors to dramati...

Why Cut Education with Bryan Caplan from 2018-03-20T00:00

This show's guest is Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason Unviersity and his latest book is *The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Mone...

At The Cutting Edge of Insurance Modeling With Jim Weiss from 2018-03-08T00:00

Today's guest is Jim Weiss, the director of analytic solutions for ISO. ISO houses perhaps the richest insurance data repository on the planet and among Jim's responsibilities is building...

Weapons of Math Destruction with Cathy O'Neil from 2018-02-08T00:00

This week's guest, Cathy O'Neil, wrote a book called Weapons of Math Destruction, which explores how pervasive...

Fighting Against Weather Models With Judah Cohen from 2018-01-31T00:00

Ever wondered what the polar vortex is and why it can get so cold in the winter? Judah Cohen is among the few who has been able to predict these things has an answer.

Judah is director ...

No Change Without Fear With Paul Ingrey from 2018-01-23T00:00

For reinsurance people, this interview is electric.

Paul Ingrey founded three of the most successful reinsurance companies of the last 40 years: Prudential Re (Everest Re), F&G Re (10...

Paul Ingrey on Capitalizing Arch in Shadow of World Trade Center (1 min clip) from 2018-01-22T00:00

Paul Ingrey, founder of Pru Re (Everest Re), F&G Re (10% of staff became CEOs) and Arch Re (as we know it today) sat down with me recently. I can't wait to get this content out so I'l...

What's Next For the Winter of 2018? With Judah Cohen (4 min clip) from 2018-01-21T00:00

Judah Cohen of AER is a winter weather expert and each year develops a forecast using his own methods that the meteorological mainstream ignores.. But the things is, you see, it works. Check out...

Paul Ingrey on the First Hard Market (3 min clip) from 2018-01-19T00:00

Paul Ingrey, founder of Pru Re (Everest Re), F&G Re (10% of staff became CEOs) and Arch Re (as we know it today) sat down with me recently. I can't wait to get this content out so I'l...

Not Unprofessional with Don Mango from 2018-01-15T00:00

This episode is an experiment. Actuaries need to attest to having done 30 hours a year of continuing education and three of those need to be in what we call "professionalism" which can...

Taranto on Greenberg Teaser from 2018-01-08T00:00

How is Hank Greenberg Misunderstood?

Turning Around Two Reinsurers with Joe Taranto from 2018-01-08T00:00

Joe Taranto is one of the most successful reinsurance executives in the last 40 years. He has turned around and taken public two reinsurers who even today are very prominent and successful compa...

Robin Hanson Will Change How You Think from 2018-01-03T00:00

Long ago Robin thought he had uncovered some ways to make the world a better place. He expected disagreement. Instead he got indifference. How could that be? This led Robin to becoming an econom...

In Love with Chaos with Michel de Lecq Marguerie from 2017-12-18T00:00

This episode features Michel de Lecq Marguerie. Michel, a most English sounding fellow with a most french sounding name was my first boss in reinsurance.

Michel is a classically trained...

Intangibility, Economics 2.0 and What Makes A Modern Firm with Arnold Kling from 2017-12-10T00:00

Hey folks, today we are zooming out to the big picture.

We talk a lot about technological trends (software eating the world, bitcoin, AI) but *organizational* trends aren't given th...

How Ted Blanch Left His Dent in the Universe (or at least in Minnesota) from 2017-11-29T00:00

This episode features Ted Blanch. Ted to me is one of the greatest leaders the reinsurance industry has ever seen and one of the most underrated leaders of any industry in any era. Ted ran the firm...

Sales, CEOship and Unknown Unknowns with Bart Hedges from 2017-11-19T00:00

[technical note: there is some garbled audio from time to time (especially around minute 55) because, well, Bart is calling in from a boat. Not the greatest connection. I've decided to leave i...

The Explorer: Don Mango on Writing, Culture and the Future of Insurance from 2017-11-12T00:00

Don Mango is one of the most important thinkers in insurance. He has published numerous papers and helped, in my mind, the rest of us figure out what on earth to do with all the computational ad...

How Jonathan Beach is An Awesome Salesman from 2017-10-30T00:00

Jonathan is founder of Beach and the best salesman I've ever met. His style was an enormous influence on me personally and on the culture of my firm as a whole. I wanted to do this intervie...

How Insurers Hide From Themselves With Rob Johnson from 2017-10-22T00:00

Rob has been an important mentor to me through most of my career here at Beach. I wanted to take an opportunity to record some of my favourite stories of his and the key lessons he's taught...

How Insurers Hide From Themselves With Rob Johnson from 2017-10-22T00:00

Rob has been an important mentor to me through most of my career here at Beach. I wanted to take an opportunity to record some of my favourite stories of his and the key lessons he's taught...

How Insurers Hide From Themselves With Rob Johnson from 2017-10-22T00:00

Rob has been an important mentor to me through most of my career here at Beach. I wanted to take an opportunity to record some of my favourite stories of his and the key lessons he's taught...