Two Men Talking: Recent Episodes
James Wilson & Sean Purcell
Sean Purcell and James Wilson discuss the soft skills that professionals need to use to make their technical expertise shine through
JUST WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET TO THE TOP?
What is the magic spark that sees David Beckham and Tiger Woods soar above all their competitors, and could the secret lie in the practice regime of Mozart? Matthew Syed's dazzling investigation of high achievement draws on the stories of sports stars and the most up-to-date science to uncover the surprising factors that lead to world beating success. Along the way he explains why the most successful figure skaters are those that have fallen over the most, how a Hungarian father turned his daughters into three of the best chess players the world has ever seen, and why one small street in Reading - Matthew's own - produced more top table tennis players than the rest of Britain put together. Bounce will revolutionise our ideas of what it takes to get to the top.
About the AuthorMatthew Syed is an award-winning journalist on the times, writing for both the sports pages and the comment pages.
He is a three-time Commonwealth table-tennis champion and competed in two Olympics.
He studied PPE at Balliol College Oxford where he was awarded a prize-winning first class degree.
Sean and James's chat about the second half of this engrossing and thought-provoking book.
From the guy who founded Netflix...
These are some of the ground rules behind a unique cultural experiment, one that explains how a DVD mail-order service transformed itself, at lightening speed, into one of the most radical and successful businesses in history: a streaming power that rivals the likes of Disney.
James and Sean discuss a seminal book on branding, widely credited for inspiring Innocent smoothies
In this episode Sean and James review the first half of Deep Work.
'Deep Work' is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. Coined by the author on his popular blog, Study Hacks, deep work will make you better at what you do, let you achieve more in less time and provide the sense of true fulfilment that comes from the mastery of a skill. In short, deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive economy.
James and Sean discuss the book that kicked off the 'self help' industry and find that while it is a little old fashioned there are timeless lessons that modern professionals can learn from today.