Ethics For Humans: Recent Episodes
Dallin Cooper
Every day, we face ethical and moral challenges that invite us to make the world a better place. Sometimes those questions are complicated and don’t have easy right answers. Shoot, sometimes they don’t have right answers at all.
At Ethics For Humans, we’re asking these questions and attempting to get as close to the answers as we can. Whether we’re pulling back the curtain and providing insight into what goes on behind the scenes in different jobs or chatting with experts about how our habits affect those around us, we’ll explore what it means to be a person so we can do our best to be good ones.
I've debated whether I should do my podcast in seasons for a while now, and I've finally decided the answer is yes. We're calling the first 18 episodes up until now Season 1, and will return in the fall for Season 2. Thank you for all your support!
John Southard learned the power of empathy when he studied US Marines living in local villages during the Vietnam War. Now, he helps businesses and organizations apply those lessons by incorporating empathy into their leadership practices. In this episode, we talk about his research with empathy, my research with empathy, and how it can make our lives better.
Learn more about John at https://johnsouthardspeaks.com/
Caitee Cooper is a professional content writer, a debut novelist, and most importantly, my wife. As tools like ChatGPT and Jarvis make it easier to create a lot of decent content very quickly, I wanted to talk to Caitee about whether she felt threatened by AI, and how she felt it could fit in the writing space. As a bonus, Caitee is also about to launch a Kickstarter for her debut novel Silverskin, which you can follow and support at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/caiteecooper/silverskin-book-1-of-the-portlock-series
Ernie Harker has extensive experience in branding, specifically convenience store branding. In this episode, we discuss branding as a whole, when it becomes manipulation, and I get overly excited about an old Maverick rebrand.
Joe Mull is helping the world build better and more humane workplaces, and has been doing so for more than 15 years. In this episode, we talk about his new book, Employalty, while Joe diagnoses my past work history. He quickly shows that the Employalty scorecard even works on a weird fringe case like me, and that we can all be happier when our work aligns with our values.
Pre-order Employalty: https://www.amazon.com/Employalty-Ignite-Commitment-Keep-Talent/dp/1774582902
Srushhti Trivedi is a bioethicist working in the pharmaceutical industry, which makes for a lot of interesting questions. We hit on some of the ethical concerns in the pharmaceutical industry, as well as how AI is going to be changing and revolutionizing that industry.
Brenden Kumarasamy is a speaker and coach, mainly focusing on helping clients learn better communication and public speaking skills. He founded MasterTalk, both the company and YouTube channel as part of those efforts.
Brenden and I didn't have a specific topic in mind for this episode, so the conversation got interesting and a bit unrelated to ethics, but I think it was interesting regardless. I hope you enjoy it!
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is a hot topic and a growing industry. Despite how much I like all of those words, I have serious concerns about DEI policies that may inadvertently make things less diverse, equitable, and inclusive. Julie Kratz willingly puts up with my shenanigans while we talk about some problematic policies that have been implemented and how they could be made better.
Jessi Johnson has a side hustle side hustle. After working in leadership positions at companies like GoDaddy and Wix, she now has a side hustle is helping other people with their side hustles. She shares some of her wisdom when it comes to embracing your courage, both in forging your own path and standing up for what's right.
You can learn more about Jessi at: https://www.embraceyourcourage.com/
As remote work and work-from-home arrangements have become more common, so have various tools to monitor those remote employees. Recently, Chase Thiel (along with Julena M. Bonner, John Bush, David Welsh, and Niharika Garud) ran a study that showed that many employee surveillance techniques actually make employees behave less ethically.
In this episode, we break down why and how to fix it!
View the original Harvard Business Review article here: https://hbr.org/2022/06/monitoring-employees-makes-them-more-likely-to-break-rules
We had a listener ask what to do when an employer changes policies rapidly, specifically mentioning work from home policies. They felt like they couldn't trust their employer anymore, and wanted to know how to handle it. To answer that question, we've brought Dave Cornell from the Trust Edge Leadership Institute to give us his thoughts on the situation!
If you have a question or topic you'd like us to address, let us know at https://ethicsforhumans.org/podcast/
In addition to snack companies, wedding photography, and who knows what else, Morley Baker is the co-founder of VAAS (Virtual Assistants As A Service). Given that VAAS is all about outsourcing labor overseas, I thought Morley would have a pretty biased opinion on the big question of today: Is outsourcing ethical? But we quickly found that there was a lot of nuance to this question, with no easy answers.
Weigh in with your opinion by joining the conversation on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dallincooper/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_feed%3BWLgeK9MCSHO2mxV9V07ktA%3D%3D
In this episode, Julian Placino teaches us the importance of building trust with your employees if you want to recruit top talent. We also discuss his journey, including his own podcast Pathways To Success, and how he made the leap from his full time recruiting job to being a speaker and consultant helping other people improve their recruiting strategies.
We've all heard the stereotype of the fast-talking used car salesman who will tell you anything it takes to close a deal. But how accurate is that trope? And more importantly, how often are those sleazy sales tactics used in other areas in life? Learn how to recognize them as a customer and avoid them as a salesperson from Devin King, current director of sales for Kairos Communications/County 10, and former car salesman.
Sugar is perhaps the most common and most culturally accepted addiction, at least in the United States. David Jacobowitz is the founder of Nebula Snacks, a sugar-free chocolate snack company that's aiming to help with the sugar overload. On this episode, we talk about the role that sugar plays in our culture, our economy, on our bodies, and more!
As the father of two young boys, I have concerns about Santa. Beyond the obvious "Should we lie to our kids?" question, there are a lot of other concerns I have. Does Santa escalate income inequality issues? Does he cause trust issues? Does Santa teach children to lie to their parents and others?
I'm probably a bit more anti-Santa than most, but I wanted to get the inside scoop from someone who knows more about parenting than me. Susan G. Groner, The Parenting Mentor, helps parents learn to raise their children with sanity and joy. In the end, despite having some differing opinions, Susan and I found some answers that should help anyone struggling with the question "What do I do about Sants?"
You can find all the stats from The Exeter Santa Survey here: https://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_697103_en.html
David Anderson has a PhD in Applied Mechanics and decades of experience in various types of engineering and data science. From naming debit cards, to making airplanes safer, to designing offshore windmills, David has seen it all. He shares some of his experiences on safety in the workplace, understanding data to make decisions, and how to frame the hard questions.
David mentions using the California ISO to pull energy data, which you can find here: https://www.caiso.com/Pages/default.aspx
Public trust in the media is painfully low. Abysmally low. 15% or less of people have high trust in national media. That feels pretty problematic, so I sat down with Amanda Fehring, head reporter for County 10 and recent graduate of a journalistic ethics program, to talk about how journalists can make the world a better place.
Here are some of the sources we mention in the show:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/07/13/u-s-journalists-differ-from-the-public-in-their-views-of-bothsidesism-in-journalism/
https://www.axios.com/2022/07/08/news-republicans-democrats-trust-partisanship
Jace Flanagan is a human factors engineer working to make hospitals safer by creating systems that minimize errors for healthcare workers. Today we talk about what goes on behind the scenes at hospitals and the dangers of creating a culture where people are afraid to admit to their mistakes.
Jace references the RaDonda Vaught homicide case, but couldn't remember where it took place. It turns out it was Tennessee, and you can learn about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaDonda_Vaught_homicide_case
Ethics For Humans explores the interesting and difficult moral questions we all face, but does so without focusing on fear, guilt, punishment, or shame. Instead, we tackle complicated issues and discuss what will bring our listeners respect, trust, freedom, and peace.