Complex system
22
MENTIONS
9
EPISODES
9
PODCASTS
Search complete. 22 mentions across 9 episodes found for "Complex system".
Nov 3, 2026
Joe NatoliHOST
You're not failing.
Joe NatoliHOST
You're doing the hard work in a complex system that is filled to the brim with imperfect people.
Joe NatoliHOST
Sometimes it goes sideways.
Joe NatoliHOST
Sometimes it goes nowhere.
Maggie PerzynaHOST
To help us imagine what migration will look like in 2050 are Tanya Hichert and Lara El-Makawi.
Maggie PerzynaHOST
Tanya is a futurist and strategic foresight practitioner and co-chair of the UNESCO Chair in Complex Systems and Transformative African Futures at Stellenbosch University's Centre for Sustainability Transitions.
Maggie PerzynaHOST
Her work uses tools like scenario planning and strategic foresight to explore possible futures with the aim of helping people think through uncertainty, challenge assumptions, and make better decisions about the future.
Maggie PerzynaHOST
Lara is a research fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University's Global Migration Institute, where she works on FutureMig, a project exploring new ways of imagining the future of migration and human mobility.
28 MINS LATER
Tanya HichertGUEST
And if you'd asked me first, that would have been my answer.
Tanya HichertGUEST
We're assuming and taking for granted that the nation state looks the way it does now in 2050.
Tanya HichertGUEST
And 25 years might not seem terribly far away on the one hand, but on the other hand, a hell of a lot can happen, especially in complex systems where one has tipping points, where I think it was Lenin where he said in politics, nothing happens for decades and then everything happens in three weeks.
Tanya HichertGUEST
And you know what else is interesting is that this whole notion of nation state is just about 150 or so odd years old.
Jesse KeenanGUEST
Oh, man, it's complicated for everybody, including myself.
Jesse KeenanGUEST
So the next chapter is sector interactions, multiple stressors and complex systems, known generally as the complex systems chapter.
Jesse KeenanGUEST
It's a really fascinating chapter because it forces us to think about ways of knowing and how climate and non-climate factors sort of intersect with each other.
Jesse KeenanGUEST
And there's really great citations to complex adaptive human natural systems and things that I think are really interesting.
Doug CardellGUEST
No, but you're exactly right.
Doug CardellGUEST
But what people don't understand is that there are lots of complex systems in the world.
Doug CardellGUEST
And they all share in common the idea that you can't manage them.
Doug CardellGUEST
They are absolutely unmanageable.
Mohamed ImamHOST
It is about having the clinical and strategic fluency to know exactly when a tension is cascading downstream, when it is amplifying and crushing your staff, and when it has locked entirely, demanding that you seek the external key.
speaker_1UNKNOWN
That is the essence of the transition from a manager of tasks to a steward of complex systems.
speaker_1UNKNOWN
The standard tools of management, the algorithms, the efficiency models, the generic reorganizations are completely insufficient when paradoxes collide.
speaker_1UNKNOWN
The vocabulary we have explored today provides the diagnostic clarity required to stop fighting the symptoms and start navigating the structural reality.
Alex SmithHOST
We may already be there." Who makes these big claims? A lone blogger or a niche radio host? The warning comes from one of the world's most respected sources, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, known as PIK.
Alex SmithHOST
When I heard this in the middle of wildfires across the Northern Hemisphere and a string of heat waves, I went straight to the leader, Professor Anders Levermann, head of Complexity Science Research at Potsdam University.
Alex SmithHOST
That July twenty-nine broadcast began, "Humans are blowing up oil, gas, and each other.
Alex SmithHOST
The Northern Hemisphere breaks out in more record heat rashes.
Peter HerzGUEST
I discovered that there are in fact systems and problems where the engineering tools do not work.
Peter HerzGUEST
And this was my really key insight that I base a lot of my work on today, and that is that there's something called complex systems that include biological and human systems, and these engineering tools don't work on that class of system.
Peter HerzGUEST
And it was really an epiphany for me to realize this, that the engineering tools are built on something called reductionism, which is a term I'd never heard before.
Peter HerzGUEST
I'd gone through my whole college and 20 years of practicing engineering, and I'd never heard the term reductionism before.
36 MINS LATER
Peter HerzGUEST
And his insight was that nobody knows anything, that it's impossible to know what will succeed and what won't ahead of time.
Peter HerzGUEST
And this is a big part of why what I was saying earlier is the most crucial metric for a venture capital firm is to have a large portfolio.
Peter HerzGUEST
Because it-- there are so many factors, speaking of complex systems, startups and the markets they play in are all complex systems.
Peter HerzGUEST
What is successful and what won't succeed is impossible to predict.
Warren CottyNARRATOR
These national chapters also synthesize relevant content from the regional chapters.
Warren CottyNARRATOR
New national topic chapters for NCA4 include Chapter 13: Air Quality, Chapter 16: Climate Effects on U.S. International Interests, and Chapter 17: Sector Interactions, Multiple Stressors, and Complex Systems.
Warren CottyNARRATOR
Regional chapters.
Warren CottyNARRATOR
Responding to public demand for more localized information, and because impacts and adaptation tend to be realized at a more local level, NCA4 provides greater detail in the regional chapters compared to the national topic chapters.
6 MINS LATER
Warren CottyNARRATOR
Where supported by the underlying literature, authors were encouraged to describe the full scope of potential climate change impacts, both negative and positive, including more extreme impacts that are less likely but would have severe consequences, and communicate the range of potential impacts and their probabilities of occurrence.
Warren CottyNARRATOR
Describe the likelihood of the consequences associated with the range of potential impacts, the character and quality of the consequences, both negative and positive, and the strength of available evidence.
Warren CottyNARRATOR
Communicate cascading effects among and within complex systems and quantify risks that could be avoided by taking action.
Warren CottyNARRATOR
Additional detail on how risk is defined for this report, as well as how risk-based framing was used, is available in chapter one, Overview.
Joel FilliolHOST
It links also to the idea of coachability and trust that, again, many athletes, they could be stronger in terms of delegating programs and thinking to their coaches and teams and not engaging in that overthinking themselves that ends up sabotaging their performance.
Joel FilliolHOST
And following on that is the article, Triathlon is a Complex System.
Joel FilliolHOST
And this is the idea that training just isn't a simple stimulus and response, but that variables interact with each other in non-linear ways.
Joel FilliolHOST
And I just gave the example of adding heat training on top of a full training block where the evidence supports it, but the whole system doesn't necessarily absorb it.