A podcast for Architects and Engineers who want to thrive in this industry by creating more freedom, fulfillment and financial security. Join Scott Zurn, P.E. and guests in uncovering how to restore value and honor to the unique people who choose to be designers and caretakers of our built world and why it’s essential to the future of our society, our industry, and our planet.
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Part of UMass Boston’s Philosophy Department, the Applied Ethics Center promotes research, teaching, and awareness of ethics in public life. In this podcast, Applied Ethics Center Director Nir Eisikovits hosts conversations on the intersection of ethics, politics, and technology.
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Minimizing Financial Waste with Whitney Pogue, P.E., Value Engineering & Estimates Coordinator
46:19
Scott talks a lot about how taxpayer dollars are actually being used (or misused) to support our infrastructure. Today, we get an inside look with guest Whitney Pogue, Civil Engineer, P.E., Value Engineering & Estimates Coordinator for ODOT (Oklahoma Department of Transportation) for 10 years and now with Level Engineering. Part of Whitney’s role i…
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“The bridges and highways we fail to repair today will have to be rebuilt tomorrow – at many times the cost.” - President Ronal Reagan. Our conversation begins with a story set in the 1680s, describing the simple life of a young woman named Abigail in the Connecticut colony. We explore the evolution from local self-reliance to national and internat…
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Join us as we explore the state of infrastructure in the US, the cost and burden on taxpayers, the economic impact of infrastructure investment, and the need for increased investment. We dive into the political nature of infrastructure, the importance of infrastructure for competitiveness as a country, and the declining interest in civil engineerin…
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In this conversation, Miles and Scott explore the technical and non-technical skills that design professionals should focus on, such as keeping up with technology and developing strong people skills. The conversation highlights the changing business model in the industry and the need for engineers and architects to adapt to new technologies like AI…
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Why are Architects & Engineers leaving the industry in the US while the market is increasing and our country is in dire need of more designers? Scott shares his journey in engineering, why many of his peers (especially younger generations) are leaving, the need to restore value to the profession, and what we’ve been working on for the past 10 years…
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Fixing Existing Infrastructure, The Changing Regulatory Environment, AI, & Are Engineers & Architects Going Extinct?
25:04
In this conversation, Miles and Scott discuss the history of infrastructure in the US in the 1940s, increasing complexity of building regulations, AI’s impact on construction projects, improving existing buildings, and the shortage of engineers and architects in the US and the impacts of outsourcing. Where is there more opportunity and job security…
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After 17 episodes, we took a break to refocus on business. Now we’re back with a completely new format. You can expect 2 episodes a month (Audio + video) with a new cohost (Miles) and some incredible guests. We’ll be sitting down with engineers, architects, business leaders and entrepreneurs, city officials, and infrastructure experts to explore ho…
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The Case for a UBI: A Conversation with Scott Santens
1:05:24
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In our final episode in our mini-series on the future of work, we are joined by universal basic income (UBI) advocate and writer Scott Santens. Scott is the founder and president of the Income To Support All Foundation (ITSA Foundation), the Senior Advisor for Humanity Forward, and he also serves on the board of directors of the Gerald Huff Fund fo…
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Our fourth episode of our mini-series on the future of work features Gavin Mueller, Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam and the author of Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job. We speak with Gavin about the history of the Luddite movement, technological unemployme…
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The Value of Idleness: A Conversation with Brian O’Connor
1:08:32
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1:08:32
In the third episode of our mini-series on the future of work, we are joined by Brian O'Connor, Professor of Philosophy at University College Dublin. Brian and I discuss the value of idleness in our lives, the burnout caused by the work ethic, and the pressure to view oneself as a project to be continuously realized. We discuss the goods of learnin…
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In our second episode of our mini-series on the future of work, we are joined by Andrea Veltman, Professor of Philosophy at James Madison University. We speak with Andrea about what it takes for work to be meaningful, if meaningful work is available to all, and what kinds of economic and social changes are necessary to help others find meaningful w…
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Making Light Work - A Conversation with David Spencer
1:10:02
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In the first episode of our mini-series on the future of work, we are joined by University of Leeds economist David Spencer. We discuss the experience of alienated labor under contemporary capitalism, the importance of work for meaning and dignity in our lives, and the reduction of the working week. Spencer persuasively makes the case for less but …
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Breaking up the United States: A Conversation with Chris Zurn
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Political philosopher Chris Zurn has just published Splitsville USA, a bombshell book arguing for the dissolution of the US. We talk about why Chris thinks this has become necessary, how history unnecessarily prejudices us against such a split, and what a post Splitsville future might look like. Draw your own new national maps!…
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The IEET and the UMB Applied Ethics Center recently released a White Paper on the political, moral and psychological questions involved in regulating the metaverse. J Hughes is the Executive Director of the IEET. Alec Stubbs is the Future of Work Post Doc at the UMB Applied Ethics Center. We discuss the main findings of the paper. You can find the …
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Scott sits down with Wade Williamson and his team at Axium Inspections. Colorado's #1 inspection company and growing nationally. Over 20 Certified Home Inspectors who offer full-service home and commercial inspection services, including radon testing, sewer scopes, well & mold inspections, lead testing, asbestos inspections, drone inspections and m…
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Report from Kyiv: A Conversation with Journalist Alisa Sopova
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1:17:37
We continue our series on the war in Ukraine. In this episode Vlado and I talk to journalist and anthropologist Alisa Sopova about what everyday life feels like in Ukraine as the war passes the 100 day mark. We discuss the regional differences in how the conflict is perceived, we ask whether Ukrainians have different views about Russian politicians…
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Reading Between The Lines in Russia and Ukraine: A Conversation with Ambassador Vesko Garcevic
52:29
We continue our series on the war in Ukraine. Our guest is Vesko Garcevic, former ambassador of Montenegro to NATO, OSCE, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Vesko is currently Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. We talk about what it means to diplomatically…
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Making Russia Great Again?
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Vladimir Putin wants to put Russia back on the map as a great power. But what does it even mean to be a great power in the nuclear age? Is that idea still coherent? If it is, can Russia be such a power? And how is Putin using history to frame this quest? What does his framing reveal about him and about contemporary Russia? The second in a series of…
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Empires Strike Back - Did the “Balance of Power” Just Make a Comeback?: A Conversation with Vladimir Petrovic
1:07:21
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1:07:21
For a while, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we could tell ourselves that the American-led liberal internationalist order was on the rise. That story had some big holes in it, but if we squinted a bit it was almost believable. Not "the end of history", but maybe a long vacation from it. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, its insistence on de…
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A lot is changing in our industry. One thing we know won't work is to fight that change. Instead, how do we use technology and model changes to our advantage? What issues com from the old model? What can we learn from the Surfside condominium collapse in 2021? What needs to change, what's changing, and how can we evolve as Architects, Engineers, an…
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How should we understand efforts at school integration? And how are they related to the idea of equal education? Larry and I consider different historical understandings of integration and the problematic idea of integration as a vehicle for gaining social capital. Larry and Zoë Burkholder just published Integrations: The Struggle for Racial Equali…
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The New York Times 2017 front page story about UAP's (Unexplained Aerial Phenomena) spotted by Navy pilots, and the recent report to Congress by The Office of the Director of National Intelligence have generated tremendous public interest. I talk to Professor Avi Loeb about Harvard's new Galileo Project. We discuss what it means to explore UAP's sc…
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Bridge Engineering & Infrastructure Challenges with Ben Kenney, P.E. Owner of Engineering Operations
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617,000 bridges across the United States. Currently, 42% of all bridges are at least 50 years old, and 46,154, or 7.5% of the nation's bridges, are considered structurally deficient, meaning they are in “poor” condition. Ben Kenney, P.E. owner of Engineering Operations joins Scott and Murray to discuss some fascinating topics Corporate barriers Bri…
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Wait, but why? (flipping the business model on its head)
1:12:59
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Join Scott Zurn and Murray McBride as they discuss: Update on LDPI Flipping the business model on its head Outsourcing and the race to the bottom Entrepreneurship Personal growth and success Collaboration Peace of mind $2 Trillion infrastructure bill What’s right for our community? The zero-emission marketing lie And much more... Sign up for our ex…
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What happens when the ties between the people who study psychiatric drugs and the companies who make them become too cozy? A discussion with UMass Boston psychology professor Lisa Cosgrove. Lisa Cosgrove, PhD is a Clinical Psychologist and Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston where she teaches courses on psychiatric diagnosis and ps…
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In this episode, Scott & Murray discuss: Environmental consciousness Half of our environment impact is just “building stuff” Let’s take a conscious look at what we’re doing Is money always the driver for the design community Free, independent & flexible thinking Picking up where we left off in the early 1500s Climate change Greed and power, taking …
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My Favorite Passage: A conversation with Adam Beresford about Iliad, Book 24
1:01:51
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Adam and I discuss the famous, moving passage at the end of the Iliad describing the meeting between Achilles and Priam. We talk quite a bit about Achilles' curious account of how Zeus determines humans' fate by doling out happenings from jars of joy and misfortune. Adam Beresford teaches philosophy and classics at the University of Massachusetts a…
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Can we maintain our human conveniences and have less adverse impact on our planet? Are Architects & Engineers going extinct? What do we need to revive in our industry? Join Scott Zurn and Murray McBride as they discuss In this episode, they discuss: The human convenience Cost of infrastructure Communication challenges today Why we need more Archite…
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Sixty million Indigenous People lived throughout the Americas before European expansion. In a short amount of time, 90% of those people were lost to European disease and violence. An estimated loss of 55 million people; a 10% reduction of the world's population at that time. What happened to the infrastructure of each of these ancient people and wh…
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There is an impact to our world for every human convenience. Those conveniences are built around our infrastructure, but it’s not in the public’s consciousness. Why should we care? Because infrastructure is the most important thing in our world. Our economy, quality of life, and the future of humanity and our planet is intricately tied to infrastru…
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Engineers are traditionally men. Why? 30% of women who have left the engineering profession cite organizational climate as the reason. Only 30% of women who earn bachelor’s degrees in engineering are still working in engineering 20 years later. Source We need to empower A&E women if we want to build a thriving industry and future. We must evolve ou…
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Engineers are fleeing the industry at record numbers, unhappy with the status quo...so what? Why should we, and everyone else care? The bulk of human convenience relies on the intellect of the A&E community. But there’s a gap. A gap between the unique genius that goes into our infrastructure by A&E professionals, and the general public. In this fas…
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With a combined 70 years of design experience under their belts, Scott and Murray discuss a few common paths that design professionals have today and the future of our industry. In this fascinating episode, they cover… Environmental changes & our responsibility What's currently available as far as design career paths today The business model we’re …
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Most of our modern human conveniences are designed and produced by a community of brilliant but unseen professionals, and the public doesn’t know it. Why? Join Scott Zurn and co-host Murray McBride as they discuss their professional backgrounds and why communication and trust are imperative to understanding our failing infrastructures, and how the …
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Israel has signed normalization agreements with the UAE and Bahrain. These are the first Middle East peace agreements in two and a half decades. Why now? What does each of the main actors in this drama stand to gain from these accords? Can Middle East diplomacy really bypass the Israeli Palestinian conflict as these agreements attempt to do? And do…
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The US seems more polarized than it's been in decades. Can we communicate across ideological and political chasms? What does it mean to have a dialogue with someone we profoundly, even vehemently disagree with? If we do have such a dialogue, does it make us any less polarized? Do the effects last? We talk with Professor Barthold about her new book:…
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In the last few months, in the wake of recent protests against systemic racism, Confederate and other monuments have been torn down and defaced. What are these monuments supposed to convey? What's the argument for taking them down? Dana and I revisit our conversation about the ethics and politics of monument removal in light of recent events. Take …
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Before Covid 19 turned the world upside down we worried about Artificial General Intelligence and, ultimately, Super-intelligence - the moment when our machines, powered by sophisticated AI, catch up with us and, ultimately, out-perform us. But how coherent, how pressing, are these concerns, really? Dan Feldman is a senior research fellow at the UM…
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In the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides provides a vivid description of the physical and social toll that a terrible plague took on Athens, a year or so into its war with Sparta. What explains the staying power of Thucydides' account? And what can we learn from it as we grapple with our own (albeit far less deadly) Covid 19 crisis? Greg…
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Setting Priorities in a Pandemic: Who Gets Care? When do We Open the Economy? A conversation with J Hughes
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What are the moral criteria for triaging patients when the healthcare system is overwhelmed? How is Massachusetts thinking about this? And, more broadly, what is the appropriate balance between preserving public health and limiting an economic meltdown? Please note: the last 3 minutes of this conversation are missing due to a Zoom malfunction. So i…
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What is Social Democracy? A Conversation with Jeppe von Platz
1:08:21
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Jeppe von Platz teaches philosophy at the University of Richmond. His research focuses on political philosophy, political economy, and the history of philosophy. He has published on questions of distributive justice, the status of economic rights, just war theory, how we should respond to systemic injustices, and Kant’s practical philosophy. Jeppe'…
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UMass Boston's Jennifer Radden has made numerous seminal contributions to the philosophy of psychiatry. She has just published an entry on Mental Disorders in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. We talk about how philosophy can help us think about mental health and disorders.Nir Eisikovits
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I believe we are in an employee and employer revolution. I think we are in a place where there’s disillusionment from both parties about the other. Disjointed expectations between the two. The last time this happened at the scale was after the depression. So what's the solution to this problem? Let's explore. Episode Schedule: Every other Monday Ge…
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Innovative business structures are emerging. B-Corporation (For-Benefit) that are legally required to make business decisions based on profit, people, and the planet. In today's episode we explore how these new models can impact you and the old models are outdated and broken. It's time for a change. We are shifting our thinking so that Architects a…
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The modernization of the business of A&E is going to happen, and needs to happen. In fact, it is happening as we speak. In this episode we look at technology and new business structures that are changing the way we work, collaborate, market, buy, sell and live. We are shifting our thinking so that Architects and Engineers and thrive in this industr…
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How will the rise of AI change state and federal bureaucracies? Are AI mediated politics more democratic? More fair? What does post human governance look like? James Hughes is a senior research fellow at the Applied Ethics Center at Mass Boston. He is a bioethicist and sociologist who serves as the associate provost for institutional research, asse…
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How much of your Fair Market Value are you keeping? Based on conversations with architects and engineers across the country of all different disciplines and ages, we have a pretty good guess. We've looked at the past 40 years to project the next 40 within the design industry. In this episode Scott discusses the past, present, and future of your fai…
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In our conversations with architects and engineers across the country of all different disciplines and ages, we have started to hear a common theme. The business of A&E has diverged from the practice of A&E. Is today's episode, Scott explores the history of our industry, how we got here and what the future holds. If you are an A&E professional feel…
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Faneuil Hall, one of Boston's most celebrated public spaces and tourist attractions, is named after Peter Faneuil - an 18th century merchant and slave trader. Nir Eisikovits and UConn's Dana Miranda discuss the debate around renaming Faneuil Hall and place it in the context of the national debate around problematic monuments and memorials - from Ch…
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Eisikovits and Corradetti discuss the relevance of Kant's celebrated essay "Towards Perpetual Peace" Is peace a process to be constantly managed or an outcome? Why does Kant think that republicanism is conducive to peace? What's the best way to understand his call for creating a world state? Is that a concrete political proposal? A tool for assessi…
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