If you are a fan of animated comedy, chances are you have laughed at a joke written by Mike Reiss. Mike Reiss is the four-time Emmy award-winning producer, a 28 year veteran of ‘The Simpsons’ and has contributed to more than two dozen animated films — including four ‘Ice Age’ movies, two ‘Despicable Mes’, ‘The Lorax’, ‘Rio’, ‘Kung Fu Panda 3’, and ‘The Simpsons Movie’ – with a worldwide gross of $8 billion. He was the showrunner behind Season 4 of ‘The Simpsons’, which Entertainment Weekly called ‘the greatest season of the greatest show in history.’ Mike has also seventeen children’s books, including the best-seller ‘How Murray Saved Christmas’ and the award-winning ‘Late for School’. I caught up with Mike at his apartment in New York City to learn about the dark arts of writing comedy, the impact of the digital age on content, and why China and Latin America are such important export markets for entertainment.

I met Seth at this secret, underground gathering of thinkers in New York, known as ‘The Influencers’ where he was giving a disturbingly funny talk entitled ‘you can tell a lot about a man by the sex bot he makes for himself.’ Seth Porges is a journalist covering a wide range of topics from pop culture to emerging technologies. He has written for everyone from TechCrunch to Maxim, and is a regular commentator on numerous televisions shows on the National Geographic, Discovery and History channels. I probably should have asked him about the reference in his Wikipedia profile about his work as a test pilot on the maiden voyage of an experimental pulse jet-powered carousel, but we ran out of time talking about why pinball was once a moral hazard in New York City, the challenges of translating social interactions in virtual reality and the future of robotics.

When Roy walked into my apartment in Hong Kong. it felt like I was about to get a spirited lesson from the blind sensei Stick, from the comic series Daredevil. I had grown up watching Roy as a kid, playing characters in the Bruce Lee and Jackie Chain Kung Fu movies I loved. Since retiring from film, Roy has gone on to become a global expert in creativity and innovation, founding Innovea, a company specializing in high performance and well-being for both business and education sectors. Roy also teaches as an assistant professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s School of Design where he focuses on creative and higher order thinking as both a teacher and researcher. In this podcast episode, we shared a fascinating discussion on the power of meditation and mindfulness, and its links to creativity and break-through thinking.

Talking to Robyn Benincasa about performance - a world champion adventure racer, a CNN hero and a full time firefighter - was a bit like interviewing Sarah O’Connor about her thoughts on Judgement Day. Robyn is the ultimate adventure addict. She holds three Guinness World Records for distance paddling, and has competed in the extreme sport of adventure racing from the jungles of Borneo to the Himalayan peaks of Tibet, the rivers of Fiji to the rainforests of Ecuador and the desert of Namibia. These experiences have given her a unique perspective on what it takes to build successful teams, and what leaders need to become, if they want to inspire commitment rather than simply securing compliance.

Ted C. Fishman is a global expert on populations, demographics and emerging markets. When we met up in Chicago, he slipped through the crowded hotel lobby to greet me, in a wonderful Indonesian batik shirt - like a covert character from a Graham Greene spy novel. Ted is a veteran journalist, essayist and former member and trader of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. His most recent book, Shock of Gray, The Aging of the World’s Population and How it Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation looks at how the aging of the world is propelling globalization, redefining nearly every important relationship we have and changing life for everyone young and old. He also wrote the international bestseller, China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World, which describes the effects of China's emergence as a world power on the lives and businesses of people across the globe. In this podcast, we had a wide-ranging chat about the future impact of shifting population demographics on global growth, the rapid urbanization of China and how technology has impacted daily life there, as well as Ted’s latest journeys and insights about the Indonesian market.