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Five Good Questions Podcast

Welcome to Five Good Questions. I’m your host, Jake Taylor. Fact: the average American watches 5 hours of television per day. What would the world be like if we dedicated one of those hours to reading books instead? I don’t know, but I’d like to find out. So to inspire others to read more, I ask five good questions of interesting authors and share the results with you every Friday. Let’s see if together, we can’t rescue some of those lost hours. In addition to author interviews, we also publish "The Hikecast." The Hikecast is a show where interesting people take me on their favorite hikes or walks and we talk about big ideas in an unconstrained format.  No planned agendas, just deep conversations, recorded out in nature. The idea is for you to put on The Hikecast and get outside to simulate taking a hike with us.  I want you to feel like you're there with us out in nature.
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Now displaying: September, 2019
5GQ John Browne - Make, Think, Imagine 0
Sep 27, 2019

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Lord John Browne about his book Make, Think, Imagine.

John Browne trained as an engineer, was CEO of BP from 1995 to 2007 and remains an influential leader in the energy business. He is Chairman of the Crick Institute, a Fellow of the Royal Society, past President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and former Chairman of Tate. He is a collector of antique books and art and the author of four previous books, including The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out is Good Business.

Five Good Questions:

1. Do you have a sense that much of cutting edge technology relies on intervention into complex, nonlinear systems and fattens the probability tails of undesirable outcomes? Said more simply, does technology invite more black swans?

2. What’s the one new tech on the horizon that you’re most excited for?

3. How was the stirrup such a powerful invention and what does it tell us about the future of technology?

4. How did gunpowder ironically lead to greater peace in the world?

5. Investors like Warren Buffett have borrowed the engineering principle of margin of safety for their investment processes. What’s another concept from engineering that might also be useful for us?

5GQ Mark Simpson - Excellent Investing 0
Sep 6, 2019

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Mark Simpson about his book Excellent Investing.

Mark is a UK-based deep value investor and author with over 15 years of experience investing in individual securities. He writes about finding sources of edge in the market, investor psychology, avoiding investment mistakes and building better portfolios.

Five Good Questions
1. Why do you think the microcap space is inefficient, and how much less efficient is it?
2. Wes Gray has this concept called the “God Portfolio.” What is it and what does it mean to knowing yourself as an investor?
3. What are your thoughts on averaging down when a stock you own drops in price? What are assassins, hunters, and rabbits in this context?
4. A percentage of the Kelly Criterion (½ Kelly or ⅓ Kelly) are popular upper limits for position sizing. What are lower limits and why are they important?
5. What do oxytocin and empathy have to do with story stocks?

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