I met Sean when we both in Tokyo speaking at an intimate summit for banking executives. As an information junkie myself, I was fascinated by his company, Quid, which offered analysts and decision makers a visual platform for seeing patterns in complex data. Not surprisingly, Sean’s background is also a nexus of complexity. He is a physicist, decathlete, political advisor, and a TED fellow. Sean studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar where he received a PhD for his research on the mathematical patterns that underlie modern war. In this episode of Between Worlds we talked about the power laws behind violence and insurgency, what Kasparov learnt from his infamous chess defeat by Big Blue, the merits of creative exploration through visualization and the art of defining the 21st century concept of manliness.

Despite being the founder of Mubi, an arthouse movie streaming platform, Efe Cakarel is not what you might call a conventional cinephile. He studied electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, got an MBA at Stanford and then worked at Goldman Sachs - before throwing it all in to dedicate himself to the world of film. In his office, situated in the heart of London’s Soho, and surrounded by old film posters, vinyl records and computer equipment - we talked about the influential behaviours of Asian consumers, the dynamism of emerging markets, the economics of online streaming, the paradox of infinite choice, and why the Middle East is so in love with Turkish drama. 

I caught up with Aaron Dignan for breakfast at the Soho Grand Hotel in New York. Aaron is the CEO of the digital consulting firm, Undercurrent. Aaron is, however, no ordinary consultant. The first line of his bio explains that he “dressed up like a super hero for 180 straight days of the first grade, which marked the beginning of his life as an iconoclast, observer, theorist, and performer”.

Tariq Krim describes himself as a dreamer and a doer. He is also the founder and CEO of Jolicloud, a pioneer in personal cloud computing. Prior to Jolicloud, Tariq founded Netvibes, the personal startpage used by millions around the world. Tariq and I have been friends for many years, and I was happy to have him as the first guest on my new podcast series, Between Worlds. Sitting in a beautiful courtyard in Paris, enjoying the late afternoon sun - we had a far reaching conversation ranging from the rise and fall of French innovation, the slow-tech movement, culture, luxury, and the future of consumer product design.

I was fascinated with dictionaries as a child. Not just the traditional ones, full of obscure words and mysterious meanings, but the great dictionaries of history, the illustrated medieval texts and secret alchemical treatises. A dictionary is as much a celebration of type as it is a stage for words and meaning. Letters and typography have their own magic, and as I started planning my own book, I wanted to bring that power to life in a new way.