Ben Yeoh Chats

What if Europe falls behind in AI? Alex Petropoulos is Chief of Staff at Arq Foundation and co-author of Europe 2031, a speculative story about Europe's future in a world transformed by artificial intelligence.
We discuss why speculative fiction might change policy more effectively than conventional reports, whether AI computing power will become scarce or abundant, and how Europe can compete with the US and China while preserving its values.
We explore AI risks, scientific breakthroughs, what becomes scarce when intelligence is abundant, and why institutions need to become better at taking risks and measuring progress.
Along the way, we discuss what competitive Overwatch taught Alex about teamwork, how he thinks and writes with AI, and what an ordinary Tuesday in a better future might look like.
Episode page, links and full transcript:
https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2026/10/18/alex-petropoulos-europe-2031-ai-power-and-the-future-we-actually-want
Contents:
00:00 Europe 2031 and the future of AI
04:01 Why speculative fiction works
10:53 European values and AI competition
20:09 Democracy, speed and institutional reform
25:24 AI catastrophic risks
29:52 Scientific breakthroughs and the limits of AI
36:53 Rethinking a European CERN for AI
43:01 ARIA and ambitious science
48:14 Bottlenecks and comparative advantage
50:40 Overwatch, teamwork and leadership
57:24 Writing and thinking with AI
01:01:22 Overrated / Underrated
01:06:24 A future worth wanting

When is the market genuinely irrational, and when have you simply failed to understand what the market understands?
Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School and author of The Madness of Markets, joins me to talk about market psychology, stories, bubbles and what behavioural finance can actually teach investors.
Alex explains his research showing that stock markets tend to fall after a country is knocked out of the World Cup, even though a football result should have little effect on corporate profits. From there we ask what really counts as market “madness”, why collective beliefs can sustain the value of assets such as gold and crypto, and how markets can show both short-term momentum and longer-term reversal.
We also discuss why investors still struggle to value intangibles such as culture and employee satisfaction; how share prices can change corporate decisions rather than simply reflect them; and whether professional investors are actually less biased than everyone else.
Alex is candid about his own mistakes. He talks about a failed investment in a fitness start-up, the one-minute delay he put on his email outbox to counter his tendency to interpret messages negatively, and why he deliberately seeks out people and evidence that challenge what he already believes.
We also cover Neil Woodford, cognitive diversity, sustainability and ESG, misinformation, AI, deep work and Alex’s creative process.
At the heart of the conversation is a difficult investing question: if you think the market is wrong, what evidence would convince you that it is actually you who is wrong?
Contents
00:00 Meet Alex Edmans
00:35 When are markets really irrational?
01:29 Football results and investor sentiment
07:47 Stories, narratives and bubbles
12:33 Momentum, reversal and behavioural finance
16:17 Why markets misprice intangibles
24:07 How prices change real decisions
33:02 Are professional investors less biased?
39:55 Alex’s failed start-up investment
43:03 Rethinking sustainability
47:48 Overrated / Underrated
56:06 Social media and AI
01:00:06 Deep work and creativity
01:03:36 Final advice
Transcript, links and key takeaways:
www.thendobetter.com/investing/2026/9/18/alex-edmans-the-madness-of-markets-when-are-markets-really-irrational

Fuchsia Dunlop returns to the podcast to discuss Five Tastes: The Magic of Flavour in the Chinese Kitchen.
We explore how Chinese cooking thinks about taste, balance and texture: from běnwèi, the essential flavour of an ingredient, and xiānwèi, umami, to qīngdàn, the light, understated dishes that balance a meal.
Fuchsia explains why Sichuan food is about far more than heat, how cooks correct unwanted flavours in meat and fish, why soups and plain dishes matter, and how texture can be as important as flavour.
We also talk about cooking by smell, sound and instinct, fermented tofu, wood ear mushrooms, jellyfish, menu planning, and why steaming is still underrated in the West.
Plus: hot pot, tasting menus, air fryers, and why Chinese cooking is much more accessible than many people think.
Transcript: www.thendobetter.com/arts/2026/9/4/fuchsia-dunlop-five-tastes-chinese-flavour-and-the-art-of-balance

Contents:
00:00 Welcome Fuchsia Dunlop
00:30 The Five Tastes and Chinese ideas of flavour
03:53 Balance and layered flavour
06:44 Correcting fishy and meaty flavours
11:34 Xiānwèi, umami and savoury depth
15:08 Guàiwèi: harmony in “strange flavour”
20:21 When to showcase or transform an ingredient
23:40 Qīngdàn: the importance of quiet food
30:15 Why texture matters in Chinese cooking
36:29 How to build a Chinese meal at home
41:37 Creating new recipes and fermented tofu
45:14 Thirty years of food, travel and field notes
49:55 Learning to cook by smell, sight and sound
53:16 Hot pot, steaming and tasting menus: overrated or underrated?
59:37 Chinese cooking needn’t be intimidating

Photo credit: (c) Kristin Perers

Soumaya Keynes joins Ben Yeoh to discuss How to Win a Trade War, co-written with Chad Bown, and what countries should do when economic conflict can no longer be avoided. They explore the weakening of the WTO system, supply-chain vulnerabilities, strategic stockpiles, tariffs, China’s economic power and the return of industrial policy. Soumaya also explains why defence should come before attack, what “winning” might mean for a country such as the UK, and why governments may need to tolerate some failures when building strategic industries. The conversation then turns to obesity, gender and income, the wider effects of GLP-1 medicines, writing in the age of AI, and Soumaya’s unexpected second career as an economics singer-songwriter.
Highlights:
Understand what tariffs really do
Map vulnerabilities without overreacting
Rethink industrial policy and strategic resilience
Explore the wider effects of GLP-1 medicines
Hear Soumaya’s trade-war song

Transcript and video: https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2026/7/14/soumaya-keynes-how-to-win-a-trade-war-tariffs-china-and-industrial-policy

Art historian and author Matt Lodder joins Ben Yeoh to explain why tattoo history is not a niche subject, but a way into art history, class, colonialism, gender, fashion, technology, archives, and the stories societies choose to preserve or forget.
Matt argues that tattoos have often been misunderstood because the historical record overrepresents people whose bodies were monitored: sailors, soldiers, prisoners and other surveilled groups. Meanwhile, tattooing among women, the middle classes, queer communities and “ordinary” people was often hidden under clothing, poorly documented, or preserved only in private archives.
The conversation moves from Matt’s childhood fascination with tattooing to the art-historical questions that animate his work. Rather than asking only whether tattoos are “art”, why people get tattooed, or what a tattoo “means”, Matt asks what tattoos reveal about style, taste, authorship, technology, reception and power.
They discuss myths around Captain Cook, the strange archival afterlives of tattooed skin, the invention of electric tattooing, Instagram’s acceleration of trends, AI-generated tattoo aesthetics, eye tattooing, and why museums still struggle to preserve an art form carried on living bodies.
It is a conversation about tattoos, but also about how culture gets remembered, flattened, misread and rediscovered.

Transcript: https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2026/5/28/matt-lodder-on-tattoos-memory-and-the-history-written-on-skin

Takeaways:
Tattoo history is a way of reading wider human history, because tattoos sit at the intersection of image, body, identity, fashion, technology and social judgement.

Many tattoo myths persist because archives preserve the bodies of people who were surveilled, while more private or ordinary tattooing often left fewer records.

Matt pushes against the narrow question of whether tattoos are “art”, arguing that art history is more useful when it asks about style, authorship, taste and reception.

Tattooing was not simply “discovered” by Europeans through Captain Cook. That story reflects later colonial myth-making more than historical reality.

Instagram has not changed the basic fact that people copy visual culture, but it has radically accelerated the life cycle of tattoo trends.

AI tattoo imagery is technically influential, but Matt is sceptical of its aesthetics and ethics, especially when it shortcuts artistic authorship.

Matt’s practical advice: ask tattooed people who did the work, look at healed portfolios, choose artists by style, and do not treat people’s bodies as public property.