2 Pages with MBS
Discover the best bits of the best books read by people you admire. Michael Bungay Stanier hosts the podcast where brilliant people read the best two pages of a favourite book. Listen as authors, leaders, activists, academics, celebrities, and entrepreneurs dig in with MBS to explore the insights and ideas within. Whether it’s books that inspire leadership, change, self-development and growth, power, strategy, ambition, productivity, or creativity and innovation - this is hand-curated wisdom from people who know. These are the books that change minds, shape lives, and inspire great work and worthy goals.
Episodes
December 5, 2023 • 43 mins
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I remember being in New Orleans some years ago where people were offering to read your palm and tell your future. I was interested – I’d like to know how the future pans out. So, I picked somebody, and she proceeded to provide an amazingly disappointing performance that was mostly a combination of boring, wrong, and clichéd. I didn’t get my $20 worth, but what if you could s...
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November 28, 2023 • 44 mins
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Are you living for 70 years, or are you living the same year 70 times?
It’s one of the great existential questions that writers and creators face, too – Am I writing many books, or am I writing the same book many times? Sure, the “best” answer seems obvious, but I’m not sure the true answer is always clear-cut. Malcolm Galdwell made popular a study that showed the differenc...
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November 21, 2023 • 44 mins
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So how are politics going in your country? ... No, no, don't tell me - you're just delighted with how your version of democracy is currently showing up. ... I am truly feeling the pain and the confusion. And the inadequacy, of course, not knowing what to do about it right now.
But what if in the future the good guys win? And if you knew that you were one of the good guys - ...
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November 14, 2023 • 58 mins
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‘The map is not the territory.’
This is one of those obvious yet profound insights: the thing we use to try and understand reality, is not reality. It’s true for all charts in companies, for instance. While they tell you a lot, they don’t have all the answers. Your map of the world, what does it tell you and what does it not?
Tiziana Casciaro is Professor of Organizational...
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November 7, 2023 • 40 mins
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What was your first dream that felt big? The first time you set your eyes on something and thought, ‘I’d like to strive for that.’ Or, on the flip side, ‘I’m not accepting the status quo anymore, something needs to change.’ You were probably young, and though the motives may have not been entirely clear to you, it was a moment of stepping up and claiming your authority; of c...
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October 31, 2023 • 41 mins
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I did a beginner’s class in ceramics earlier this year, and it was a pretty interesting experience to go up against a potter’s wheel and lose. Forget actually trying to create a pot, I found it nearly impossible just to get the lump of clay centered on the wheel. I did end up with a few lumpy, bumpy things to glaze - and glazing is its own adventure where you never really kn...
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October 24, 2023 • 42 mins
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I often get asked how I sold more than a million copies of The Coaching Habit. I wish I had one, but, of course, there is no singular answer - just a combination of things going well and a healthy dose of magic fairy dust. One thing we got right, though, is the design of the book itself. So many books feel heavy - a wall of text - and I wanted a book that felt lighter, acces...
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As I’m recording this, I’m currently in Australia where we’re about two weeks out from a national referendum on whether or not to change the Australian Constitution to recognise the first peoples of Australia, by establishing a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. I’m embarrassed to say that it doesn’t look likely to pass, and by the time you’re heari...
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October 10, 2023 • 42 mins
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The very first hotel that I got quarantined into, I looked out over Darling Harbour in Sydney. I knew just over the rise was the Sydney Opera House. It was my only view for two weeks. It changed constantly. It was on fire, lit up by a sunset. It was looming with threat as a storm passed by. It became lit up at night. It was actually a Ferris wheel, a carnival, like an underw...
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What does it take to be an ambassador, to be a diplomat? …If you had to list three core characteristics, what do you think they should be? Now, for me, part of me goes all espionage... You know, it's about blending in. It's about staying skeptical, perhaps wearing tweed. Part of me, of course, thinks of my brother Nigel, who actually works for the Department of Foreign Affai...
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My great grandparents feel fictional to me. Sure, I’ve seen pictures and I know their names, but do I feel their touch and influence? No, not really. My grandparents, however, are four presences I definitely notice.
What have you learnt from your ancestors? And how might they be present in you, today?
Sarah Lewis is an art and cultural historian, author of The Rise: Creati...
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September 19, 2023 • 57 mins
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The idea at the heart of my book, How to Begin, is that we unlock our greatness by working on the hard stuff. Now, when I wrote the first draft of that book …and I shared it with friends, the feedback I got was it was confusing and a deeply underwhelming mess. And so when I picked myself up off the floor and I picked through the rubble to see if there's anything that could b...
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In today's fast-paced world, change is the only constant. Yet, how do we truly understand, manage, and channel the emotions that accompany transformations, both personal and organizational? Whether you're an individual seeking personal growth, or a leader aiming to steer an organization, understanding the emotional dimensions of change can be a game-changer.
Dr. Hilary Jac...
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September 5, 2023 • 33 mins
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Tolstoy famously started his novel Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” A twist on that: stories of success are all alike. Stories of failure are where things get interesting.
I love someone who knows how to share their failures well. When I get introduced as a keynote speaker, I have them mention that I was banned ...
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Today, we're pulling one of our best episodes from the vaults, featuring the brilliant Kathryn Mannix.
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What makes you uncomfortable? And, how do you hold yourself when you’re in that space? Some years ago, I noticed that a pair of leather shoes I was wearing was badly creased across the top of the right shoe. A friend of mine pointed out the problem - when I get nervous in ...
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August 22, 2023 • 50 mins
Today, we're pulling one of our best episodes from the vaults, featuring the brilliant Brian Christian.
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One thing I don't mention often is that the thesis I wrote for my law degree was an attempt to combine my interest in literature with a perspective on law. So I wrote about the phenomenon of plain English: that's trying to write law without the legalese. And I tried to wr...
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Today, we're pulling one of our best episodes from the vaults, featuring the brilliant Haesun Moon.
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I’m a bit of a geek about models, specifically the ones that reveal patterns and invite new possibilities, helping us expand our understanding of what the world is. My favorites are: the periodic table and its various alternatives, the Roman architect Vitruvius’ three attribu...
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Today, we're pulling one of our best episodes from the vaults, featuring the brilliant Madeleine Dore.
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I still remember reading my first Nicholson Baker book, The Mezzanine. This extraordinary book slows down the pace of life to one where all the details are able to be noticed. For someone like me–a little bit in my head and moving too fast–reading the book resembles bulle...
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Today, we're pulling one of our best episodes from the vaults, featuring the brilliant Caroline Webb.
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How are you labeled? How have you been labeled by others? And how have you labeled yourself? You listen to this podcast, which means that you're the type of person who thinks about who they are in this world, who they've been and who they're becoming. One of the ways we cla...
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July 25, 2023 • 39 mins
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The previous guest on this podcast was W. Dave Ball, a fellow Rhodes scholar whom I met at Oxford. One of the things I remember from my time there is the signs that were everywhere: Don’t walk on the grass. Entry forbidden. Don’t bring a naked flame into the Bodleian Library. Fair enough - I understand the last one, but most of the signs just made me feel like rebelling agai...
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