Giant Ideas

Today on the podcast we are joined by one of the world’s leading designers: Thomas Heatherwick [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Heatherwick]. Thomas has created many of the world’s most striking new public spaces and buildings.  Heatherwick Studio [https://heatherwick.com/] is behind culture-defining projects like the Vessel in New York’s Hudson Yard, and London’s Coal Drops Yard in Kings Cross, where we are recording this podcast. They’ve also designed iconic cultural moments like the London 2012 Olympics cauldron, and cultural landmarks like the reimagined double decker bus in London. From Cape Town’s coolest building to Google’s new office, Thomas is building daring urban landscapes that will outlive all of us.  Our cities and our buildings have such a profound impact on our lives, but often we don’t have time to really think about why that is, and how things could be so much better.  Today Thomas joins the podcast to talk about why we need to humanise cities - he’s even written a book called Humanise [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Humanise-Makers-Guide-Building-World/dp/0241389798] which talks about exactly this. We also cover the surprising health and climate consequences of not taking this ambition seriously.  We’ll talk about why design matters for you, how to put the soul back into buildings and why we’ve got cities so badly wrong for a century.

Today on the podcast we are joined by Alistair Brownlee [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair_Brownlee], Double Olympic Triathlon Champion - to talk about his incredible career and the extreme mental discipline that got him to the very top of athletics. It’s his first in depth interview since he announced his retirement. Alistair Brownlee is the only athlete in history to hold two Olympic titles in the individual triathlon event, having won gold medals in both the 2012 and the 2016 Olympic Games. He is also a four-time World Champion in triathlon. Famously, his younger brother Jonny Brownlee is also a decorated triathlete. The Brownlee brothers were considered the dominant male Olympic distance triathletes of the 2010s - often competing together. In 2016, Alistair famously spotted his brother suffering from exhaustion and pushed him across the line in the final stretch of the race that he had been leading.  Alistair Brownlee is widely regarded as one of the greatest male athletes ever to have lived. Today Alistair is building a new chapter to his career focused on a range of new ventures, building on his on decades of experience working in sports. We are also very lucky to count Alistair as an investor in Giant’s funds. In this conversation, we talk about why relying on willpower is a recipe for failure, what you can learn from elite athletes, nature vs nurture for excellence, and the characteristics that define Olympic champions and top founders.

Today on the podcast we have Ali Parsa [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Parsa] - founder of two unicorn health businesses - Babylon Health and Circle Health. Ali was born in Iran, but left when he was 16, in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution.  Amazingly, he taught himself UK high school, and went on to study civil and environmental engineering at University College London. He sold a media company he started during university, and then joined the investment banking world. 20 years ago, he set up Circle Health - the first private company to run a UK NHS hospital, which became Europe's largest partnership of clinicians with around £200 million of annual revenue and about 3,000 employees. Circle Health was taken public in 2012, when Ali stepped down as CEO. Then, in 2014 - Ali formed Babylon Health, a health service provider that enabled users to have virtual consultations with doctors via text and video on its app. At its height, Babylon was a unicorn - and Ali led Babylon’s listing on the NYSE. But share prices dropped at flotation to below $1, with Ali calling the decision to go public through a SPAC an "unbelievable, unmitigated disaster". And now he’s bringing a lifetime of lessons from right at the top of American and British healthcare to his next company: Quadrivia [https://www.quadrivia.ai/] - an all-in-one AI health assistant. In this episode we talk about how AI can transform healthcare, what Ali learnt from Babylon Health, and what the perfect age is to build a startup.

Today on Giant Ideas we bring you a conversation with a titan of American business and society, Arianna Huffington. Arianna is the co-founder of The Huffington Post [https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/], which built an audience of 200 million, and the founder and CEO of Thrive Global [https://thriveglobal.com/]. She also sat on the board of Uber during its succession drama.  Arianna is also the author of an astonishing fifteen books - on everything from Sleep to Becoming Fearless. She has been named on Time Magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people, and the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. Her latest company, Thrive Global, is on a mission to improve the world's health, and productivity, through science-based behaviour change. Thrive Global recently launched Thrive AI Health, in collaboration with Sam Altman’s OpenAI, to find solutions for the 130 million Americans diagnosed with a chronic condition. In this conversation we discuss Arianna’s predictions for the future of health, why she thinks joy is more important than productivity and why AI can supercharge your wellbeing, and how she uses gratitude to create her own reset. You can also watch Arianna Huffington's reset here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFuqjIMuL4U].

In 1975, in a two bedroom apartment in New York City, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm. Over forty years later, this firm - Bridgewater Associates - has grown into not just the world's largest hedge fund, but also what Fortune has called the “fifth most important private company in the United States”. Ray Dalio himself appears on Time Magazine's list of the world’s top 100 most influential people.  His philosophy has travelled far beyond the four walls of his hedge fund through the medium of multiple best-selling books, most notably Principles, a distillation of the intense rules he built an empire around. Cameron McLain - Co-founder and Managing Partner at Giant - sat down to talk with Ray about the unique ingredients behind his success and the creation of a culture of radical transparency that has attracted admiration and disagreement in equal measure. We cover his Principles and how in reality you can live your working life by them, especially when challenged.