The Data Malarkey Podcast (Sam Knowles)
Explorez tous les épisodes de The Data Malarkey Podcast
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| 26 Sep 2023 | How can you blend AI and data science with creativity and win an Emmy? With Les Guessing | 00:50:26 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Les Guessing, a 360-degree creative and marketer. Les is an Emmy Award-winning copywriter, video virtuoso, and self-professed data fool. He describes himself as a creative director “with a passion (some would say ‘personality disorder’) for using aspects of data, data science, machine learning, and AI … to make advertising creative better and more impactful”. On his website is, perhaps, one of the longest and most impressive resumés (CVs to British listeners) ever written, a full, 34-page PDF.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on Good Friday, 7 April 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
After an unsuccessful stint in Hollywood – “I was a wildly unsuccessful screenwriter” he observes with typical humility and wit – Les has 20 years under his belt as a creative director in advertising. His penchant for humour won him fans among the client community and awards from judges. But his past decade has been very unlike many of his peers in the creative and copywriting world. He’s steeped himself in AI, data science, natural language processing, and neuro-linguistic programming. An “auto-didact addict”, he’s become more and more data savvy at just the point that data has become the new oil – the new gold – in marketing communications. And how it’s paid off.
An experienced improv performer – so often the hallmark of a generous, lateral, insightful thinker – Les is fascinated by the structure of jokes. His scripts often lead viewers in one direction, only for a switcheroo to confound expectations, cause initial confusion then laughter, and serve to make the ad more memorable as a result. We should expect a book from Les on the structure of many different sorts of jokes in the years ahead.
The race to AI may at last be opening eyes in Madison Avenue, but Les has been fluent in R, SQL, and Python for many years, helping machines to learn underlying truths of a market from big data sets. And then subverting expectations with a joke. His experience with a wide variety of different types of data – particularly large language models and tabular data – has convinced him that copywriters should only ever brainstorm and develop ideas having first steeped themselves in data.
But Les doesn’t believe machines have insight – “they just do math over letters” – and it’s no surprise to him that ChatGPT struggles with metaphors and puns. “ChatGPT is like a junior copywriter, producing B or C grade content. Useful, but not making star performers redundant. Far from it. They’ll be more in demand than ever before.” Les sees copywriters and AI tools working together as the modern equivalent of ad guru Bill Bernbach putting copywriters and the art department together in the middle of the 20th century.
How very refreshing!
EXTERNAL LINKS Les’ homepage – https://lesguessing.com Two of Les’ projects - https://zombiedatahunter.com and https://creativealgorithm.org Les’ LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesguessing/ Les on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lesguessing/
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 10 Oct 2023 | How can you leverage data to be a diversity, equity, and inclusion change maker? With Sabrina Shadie | 00:40:06 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles meets Sabrina Shadie, a multi-award winning ethics and equity change maker; a diversity and inclusion advocate; and, a resilience champion. Sabrina’s the founder of the D’Rose Development Consultancy, a company that aims to simplify ethics and equality regulations so that caring business owners can deliver inclusive and sustainable strategies. She’s a catalyst for change not only through her own business and the impact it can have on its clients, but also in the networks and associations she creates, from Change the Balance to the Diverse Business Network.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on Monday 15 May 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Sabrina describes herself as having always loved facts, been up for an argument, but only an argument based on evidence; an informed debate. When helping organisations to become more equitable, she’s always cautious to ensure they’re not just doing it as a tick-box exercise and then moving on. “There’s no point being tokenistic,” she observes. “That benefits no-one.”
When challenging deeply entrenched views – often held of generations and based on little more than irrational prejudice – Sabrina has an awesome and impactful hack that empowers those whose attitudes she’s working with to become more equitable. She uses approaches taken from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to actively dismantle and then rebuild those whose identity is based on their misperception of superiority. Now that’s genuinely inspired, lateral, and impactful data storytelling.
EXTERNAL LINKS Sabrina on LinkedIn – where she’s very active, particularly on video – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrina-shadie/
D’Rose Consultancy – https://droseconsultancy.com
Change the Balance CIC – https://www.change-the-balance.org
Diverse Business Network – https://www.diversebusinessnetwork.com
To find out how you rank as a data storyteller, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are. | |||
| 21 May 2024 | How can experts provide the public with risk information that works? With Olivia Jensen, Director of the Institute for Public Understanding of Risk | 00:50:07 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, your host Sam Knowles is joined by Olivia Jensen, Director of the Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk (IPUR) based at the National University of Singapore.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 13 March 2024.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
IPUR is a research institute that seeks to narrow the gap between people’s perceptions and real-world risks, focused on the data and technology, environment and climate, and health and lifestyle. The Institute brings together basic science, engineering, social sciences, and the humanities.
Olivia Jensen is a passionate advocate and deeply pragmatic practitioner in the art and science of closing the gaps that exist between expert knowledge about risk and public perception of risk. IPUR and the global risk community of which it forms an integral part aims to empower citizens and societies to make better decisions about risk.
Olivia believes that risk-evidence communication is as much about getting experts to understand how and why citizens make decisions as it is about experts explaining the evidence to those citizens.
In considering risk evidence communication under uncertainty, we inevitably talk about Government communication under COVID. Olivia believes that the Government in Singapore got things “just about right”, clearly communicating regularly-updated data and basing its policy decisions on evidence. Sam is rather less complementary about the British Government’s over-politicised use of data in its pandemic communication.
One of the real challenges of risk evidence communication is looking back on events, with narratives constructed that fall victim to hindsight bias. Just because something was possible and it happened doesn’t mean it was inevitable.
Outside of the world of risk, Olivia is a passionate dancer, and in 2024 is learning to tango.
EXTERNAL LINKS IPUR home page https://ipur.nus.edu.sg Olivia’s IPUR profile https://ipur.nus.edu.sg/team/olivia-jensen/ IPUR’s EdX course “Understanding and Communicating Risk” https://bit.ly/4dcqQip Understanding Risk https://understandrisk.org Risk Know How – a joint venture with Sense About Science https://riskknowhow.org
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are. | |||
| 18 Dec 2024 | The Smartest Data Moments from Season 6 | 00:50:53 | |
In this special wrap-up episode of Data Malarkey, host and Master Data Storyteller, Sam Knowles, takes us through the standout moments from Season 6 of the podcast. From neuroscience-driven storytelling to data privacy law, this compilation showcases some of the smartest and most impactful ways people are using data to improve communication, branding, and societal outcomes. Featuring insights from a diverse lineup of experts, this episode is packed with lessons and strategies for anyone curious about making data work smarter. Key Highlights:
External Links:
Subscribe and Stay Connected: To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard. | |||
| 14 Feb 2024 | What can business learn from military logistics? With John McFall, ex-RAF and Amazon Web Services | 00:48:50 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles welcomes John McFall, a master of logistics and Founder of the business SupplyChainWise. Logistics – a term that originated in the military – is defined as: “the process of coordinating and moving resources – people, materials, inventory, and equipment – from one location to storage at the desired destination”.
John, too, originated in the military, and he has deep and broad logistical experience of in both the military and business. He spent more than 15 years in the Royal Air Force, including tours of duty in some of the world’s toughest hotspots and under the most extreme conditions. These included active service in both Kandahar in Afghanistan, and Basra in Iraq.
John’s transition to civvy street saw him bring his logistics skills and know-how to the world’s fifth biggest business, Amazon, whose market capitalisation as of October 2023 – when we’re recording this episode – was $1.3 trillion. At Amazon, John looked after operations, supply chain, transportation, and logistics. Until the middle of last year, he was the Head of the Global Speciality Practice looking after those core disciplines for Amazon Web Services.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 9 October 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
John teases out what he believes to be the similarities and differences between logistics in the military and civil domains. At a definitional level – and the end-to-end journey from extraction of raw materials, through manufacture, distribution, use, and recycling – logistics are the same whether you’re making jets or trainers. Tier 1 relationships are best; tier 3 and 4 usually the most tenuous and troublesome. Funding, tendering, and the typically-analytical individuals are also the same, as is the ubiquitous deployment of Excel.
Differences feature in purpose (profit vs defence) and also the Just On Time mantra of business logistics. Because of the sheer number of unknowns in the military theatre, Just On Time won’t cut it and the creation and storage of bulk inventory – “just in case” – is a characteristic of the military that business cannot tolerate. The operational certainties of business are often very different from the fluid operations of military logistics.
John’s detailed description of the interconnectedness of hardware, personnel, and systems in the military – across air, sea, and land – trigger two analogies for host Sam. The first – of the Wood Wide Web; the mycorrhizal network of fungi connecting all trees, so eloquently described in Merlin Sheldrake’s book Entangled Life – is perhaps a little poetic. But the second – of a market with competitors doing unpredictable things, imperfect knowledge, and the importance of taking decisions and not being paralysed by over-analysis – rings truer.
John identifies three magic numbers – the ‘Judas number’ of 12-14: the number of people who can be influenced by a charismatic individual; up to 100: the limit of one person’s direct influence by virtue of the number of connections and relationships we can hold in the human brain; and, 1,200-plus: the moment at which systems need to be in place.
Jeff Bezos’ legendary six-page memo – tabled at the start of Amazon meetings and read for 30 minutes before discussion – is John’s key for creating an effective, data-driven culture. It trumps charisma, extroversion, flashy slides, and emotional appeals every time and roots decision-making in evidence.
EXTERNAL LINKS John’s business, SupplyChainWise – https://www.supplychainwise.com John’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmcfall5/
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| 13 Mar 2024 | How is it possible to understand everything that the world’s Governments want to buy? With Ian Makgill | 00:37:44 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Ian Makgill, the Founder of Spend Network. Ian and his company are on a mission to improve the global public sector procurement market. Spend Network’s website boldly claims that it can help users to “Unlock the $13 trillion global procurement market through the world’s leading tender, contract, spend and grant data”. That’s about 13% of the total global economy.
Throughout his career – building databases for 20 years and working with AI for six – Ian has been a passionate believer that data can shape our world for the better. While it often feels as if data is used to point at bad stuff that has happened or show where everyone is failing, Ian is committed to telling stories of how his organisation is using data to shape the future.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 29 November 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
As the driving force behind Spend Network, Ian’s ambition is to level the playing field of Government procurement – from “haircuts in Mexican prisons to airports in China”. As a consequence, every moment of his every working day is steeped in data. Unruly, different, misaligned, fundamentally different data that very definitely is not “apples with apples”. At least when the Spend Network team get their hands on it, bringing together more than 700 diverse sources each day.
“All data is bad; all data is dirty!” observes Ian, “though most of it can be made to be useful”. His sentiment echoing the maxim from the British statistician, George Box, that “All models are wrong; some are useful.” Ian also has elements of the forensic scientist about him, with his observation that “the absence of data is a data point in himself”, bringing to mind our 25 October guest, Professor Angela Gallop, and her encouragement to go looking “when the dogs DON’T bark”.
Spend Network has so far analysed, cleaned, augmented, validated, and verified 220m lines of spend data from hundreds of Government departments around the world. And he and his data wranglers don’t just apply data science smarts to their heavyweight data. They’ve been using AI since 2017.
For Ian, The Financial Times’ John Burn-Murdoch – the paper’s Chief Data Reporter – is a hero of data storytelling and data visualisation, skills that he honed during the pandemic. Burn-Murdoch was the first to conceptualise and visualise excess mortality as the key indicator of Government success (and otherwise) in measures to tackle COVID. Jacob Rees-Mogg is his data devil, thanks to the politician’s imperial measures consultation that provided no option to object (reported here in The Guardian).
EXTERNAL LINKS Ian’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianmakgill/ Spend Network – https://spendnetwork.com OpenOpps – https://openopps.com Spend Network on Twitter / X – https://twitter.com/SpendNetwork
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 17 Jan 2024 | How can we ensure public, political, and media debate is based on evidence? With Tracey Brown, OBE, Director of Sense About Science | 00:40:46 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Tracey Brown, the director of Sense About Science, a role she’s held since its founding in 2002. Scientific evidence can be a powerful tool for insight, accountability, and change. Yet in public life – particularly in politics and the media – debate often revolves around claims based on shoddy or misrepresented evidence.
Sense About Science exists to change all that. The charity challenges the misrepresentation of science and evidence in public life and intervenes – often in partnership with others. It holds those responsible to account, and runs highly impactful, evidence-based campaigns. Under Tracey’s leadership, Sense About Science has assessed the transparency of many government departments, and championed peer review beyond academia – especially with the public, helping people make sense of science and evidence. In June 2017, Tracey was awarded an OBE for services to science.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 26 July 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Tracey reveals how the role of Sense About Science has evolved in the past 20 years. It started life with a baptism of fire and a cauldron of front page stories, with academics, activists, companies, and government departments battling it out. The issues it tackled included Andrew Wakefield’s bogus claims on the links between MMR and autism, mobile phones apparently frying your brain, and GM crops said to be accelerating the demise of healthy food. The truth, in each case, was rather different, and Sense About Science was in the vanguard of sharing real evidence, calmly and dispassionately.
We focus on data science and what can and should be done to make it not only palatable but also comprehensible to an uninformed lay public, starting the Sense About Science’s 2018 guide on the topic. The guide asks (and answers) three key questions: where did it come from, on what assumptions does it rest, and can it bear the weight of the expectations we heap upon it?
Tracey contends that statisticians and researchers need a change of perspective. They need to think of themselves less as producing evidence and more as answering questions that matter to society. This requires them to reframe their perspective and put themselves in the public’s shoes. She also argues – elegantly and persuasively – that Big Data is often not better data, and highlights both huge potential positives (and equally huge potential negatives) offered by the new generation of AI tools. The negatives are less ‘Skynet’ and more banal error, rolled out at scale.
Tracey also details her organisation’s global AllTrials campaign, designed to ensure that data from every study conducted are reported in the public domain, not just those that bring benefits and advantages to the company, research institution, or compound that benefit from positive research outcomes. The campaign highlights researchers’ legal, moral, and ethical responsibilities and is bringing about genuine change.
EXTERNAL LINKS Sense About Science website – https://senseaboutscience.org The charity on Twitter – https://twitter.com/senseaboutsci Tracey’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracey-brown-42b2788/
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 02 Jul 2024 | Why should you put people, love, and relationships at the heart of business? With John Hibbs of CoEfficient | 00:39:03 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by John Hibbs, the Co-Founder of CoEfficient, a company that helps organisations grow from the human perspective. It does this by gathering genuinely useful feedback from those who work for an organisation and then deploying this intelligence in the most productive way possible, to drive both individual and organisational growth.
Founded on the principle that businesses are simply groups of people, CoEfficient gives hearts and minds that make up a business a voice, ensuring that they feel heard and are valued. This – John believes – is what enables businesses to serve as creators of positive change within society. CoEfficient serves all sorts of different clients right around the world, and today John is based on his native island of Guernsey.
But his journey to becoming a pioneer in using data smarter to help companies grow is neither traditional nor expected. 25 years ago, he was running a personal training business that he was struggling to scale. A chance meeting with a business mentor first opened his eyes to the power of data, measurement, and evaluation. This set him on course to develop both his Monergy Flow model of growth and a thriving, scalable business that few – least of all John himself – would ever have predicted.
EXTERNAL LINKS Make friends with John on LinkedIn, his preferred social media platform https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-hibbs-coefficient/ There’s more about CoEfficient at https://www.coefficient-solutions.com John explains his Monergy Flow model – including the hand-drawn, periodic table version – at https://www.maddyness.com/uk/2023/08/09/the-monergy-flow-by-john-hibbs/
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 18 Jun 2024 | How can you tell if you should invest in a media company? With Ian Whittaker of Liberty Sky Advisors | 00:48:34 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Ian Whittaker, one of the leading financial and commercial analysts covering the media and advertising sector. Ian is the managing director and owner of Liberty Sky Advisors, has twice been the City AM Analyst of the Year – first in 2014 and again in 2019 – and he writes regularly for both the media and the financial press. He helps marketers speak the language of the CFO – the Chief Financial Officer – and is the go-to guy for understanding how the media, digital, and marketing world is performing.
Ian takes a no-nonsense approach to explaining how the media category makes its money, and in a sector that’s often very much at home to spin and storytelling, takes an evidence-based, data-driven approach to cutting through the hype and telling it how it is. This means he’s particularly good at understanding which innovation is just a shiny new toy and which has the potential to revolutionise the world of media and marketing.
Understanding whether you should invest in a media company – be it one of the mega advertising agency holding companies, one of the big tech platforms, or a streaming service – demands a knowledge of more than just the media sector. Ian tells us why understanding macroeconomic trends and geopolitics matters just as much as being able to read a balance sheet.
An Oxford historian by training with an MBA from London Business School, Ian is currently studying for an MA in the History of War at King’s College, London. His analytics and evidence-assessing skills from all three degrees enable him to sort the signal from the noise. “Data is the bedrock, but data is neutral,” Ian says, “though there does come a time when the data talks to you and reveals the hidden truth.”
A hypothesis-tester and very definitely not a hypothesis-prover, he’s very much against trying to force fit data into a pre-ordained world view. Ian is also a fan of the “data is the new oil” analogy – provided we realise that oil is useless in and of itself and that the value comes from what we do with it once we’ve zoned in the right area, mined it, and refined it.
We learn the surprising truth about why Meta (Facebook’s parent company) is doing so well. There’s been no great recovery in its previously dominant US and European markets, which grew just 2-3% in the last quarter of 2023. The stellar performance in that reporting period was down to massive investment from just a couple of Chinese gaming companies, meaning Meta’s sudden surge in value is almost certainly built on sand.
EXTERNAL LINKS Ian’s LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianwhittakermedia/ Liberty Sky Advisors: https://ianwhittakermedia.com Learn the Language of the CFO for Success in the Boardroom – JC Decaux podcast on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnYV7JuId1g
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| 01 Aug 2023 | What does it take to be a data leader in business today? With Elizabeth Press, D3M Labs | 00:37:13 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks to Elizabeth Press, the creator and owner of D3M Labs – “the Data-Driven Decision Making Blog”. Elizabeth is an experienced data leader, having held data and business intelligence leadership roles with a variety of different businesses in Europe, particularly Berlin, including more than five years with Dell and the same period running her own consultancy. Originally a journalist, it’s to these roots that she’s recently returned with the Data-Driven Decision Making blog.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 4 April 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
In our discussion, Elizabeth paints a bleak picture of the state of data leadership and data usage within most businesses today.
In part this is the result of “data people” and the rest of the business failing to speak the same language and – as a consequence – failing to understand what each other does and how they can be useful to one-another. Businesses fail to treat data as an asset, and data people are often unable to demonstrate quite what an asset it can be. Elizabeth puts this down to a ‘human centricity problem’.
In part, it’s the result of the hyper-technical focus of data teams, looking to solve technical and data problems before business problems. Any amount of ad hoc coding, making elegant data pipelines, and subscribing to yet another platform or dashboard is unlikely to solve any real business problem.
And in part it’s the result of the siloed nature of businesses and a failure of leadership to invest in the planning tools and structures necessary to make data more useable by and useful to businesses.
“Genius doesn’t scale,” observes Elizabeth. “But neither should management treat the data team as a concierge service.” Without the application of empathy, techniques such as Design Thinking, and listening to the voice of the customer, she’s not optimistic many organisations will be able to successfully bridge this divide. And there are responsibilities to address this on both sides.
Sam draws two analogies – that great academics don’t necessarily make great administrators, however close they may be to a Nobel Prize or being the most widely-respected individual in their field; and, data visualisation is a great skill, but working out the story has to come before any application of Tableau, PowerBI, or any other graphical software. In the same way, the best programmers don’t necessarily make the best data leaders.
Elizabeth concludes by focusing our attention on the unintended consequences of the “banality of evil”; of factoring in religion, gender, sexuality into algorithms and those factors being used to deny groups access to healthcare, finance, or housing. Sam compares this with the Chinese Citizen Score, parallels of which are being built into code serving (and categorising) citizens right across the world.
EXTERNAL LINKS D3M Labs blog – https://d3mlabs.de Elizabeth’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethpress/
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| 28 Feb 2024 | How can Kevin de Bruyne be worth 100 Leah Williamsons? With Kieran Maguire, Professor of Football Finance, University of Liverpool | 00:48:42 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles welcomes Kieran Maguire, an acclaimed expert in football finance. Kieran’s a chartered accountant, academic, author, and podcaster. For the past decade, he’s been a lecturer in football finance at the University of Liverpool’s Management School. He often appears in print and particularly broadcast media, making sense of the often bewildering and often chaotic world of football finance. He has a reputation for his “clear-headed and rigorous analysis of the financial imperatives and challenges facing football”.
Kieran’s the author of the critically-acclaimed, award-winning book The Price of Football, the second edition of which was published in 2021. The Price of Football is also the name of his twice-weekly podcast which – since 2019 – has clocked up more than 400 episodes. Kieran presents the podcast alongside the comedian, Kevin Day. He truly is a multi-media expert in football finance.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on Transfer Deadline Day at the start of the 2023-24 football season, 1 September 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
A Brighton & Hove Albion fan, chartered account Kieran argues that he doesn’t have the communications and networking skills required to pursue a career in finance. He spends his days obsessively updating spreadsheets of football clubs’ finances, ably assisted by more than 250 alerts from the Companies House website. As well as teaching.
The most egregious act of data malarkey Kieran’s observed in the many years he’s been following football finance was the attempted (and still not-dead) breakaway European Super League; “an attempt to steal the heart and soul of football”.
For Kieran, the three biggest myths in football finance are: 1. Spending other people’s money – recklessly – is a good thing 2. Footballers’ wages are too high 3. Tickets for the Premiership are too expensive
The Premier League’s broadcast deals generate 60% of the 20 top flight clubs’ revenues, and the league is the world’s most popular, with live broadcasts and highlights packages sold in 190 countries. And while women’s football is enjoying its highest profile and a surge in popularity thanks to the Lionesses’ ongoing success, Kieran doesn’t think that there will be wage or playing budget parity at elite men’s and women’s clubs (outside of Lewes FC) any time soon.
Manchester City’s men’s team generated £610m in revenue in the 2022-23 season; its women’s team generated £6m. That 100:1 ratio is reflected in the £20m its (injury-prone) midfielder, Kevin de Bruyne, trousers as an annual salary, compared with the highest-paid England women’s player, Leah Williamson, currently on £200,000 a year (or about half of what Harry Kane receives each week from Bayern Munich).
EXTERNAL LINKS The Price of Football – podcast, books, merch – https://priceoffootball.com Kieran on Twitter (X) - https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire Kieran’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kieran-maguire-a085033/ A Memorable Gov.uk blog on how Kieran uses Companies House data to keep track of football finance
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just a couple of minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 20 Dec 2023 | Very different – yet spookily very much the same: on the radically different types of data used in different jobs in the modern knowledge economy, but the very similar approaches we all deploy to solve data-driven problems. | 00:53:47 | |
After our third set of six great guests, it’s a wrap for Season Three of Data Malarkey – the podcast about using data smarter. Your host, master data storyteller Sam Knowles, picks out common themes and chooses his highlights from a lively series of conversations – recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, between April and September 2023.
Thanks as ever to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Les Guessing, Emmy Award-winning copywriter and Zombie Data Hunter.
Sabrina Shadie, diversity and inclusion expert, founder of the D’Rose Development Consultancy.
Professor Angela Gallop, the forensic scientist’s forensic scientist.
Andrew Cooper, political pollster, and President of Yonder Consulting.
Digital marketing maven, Shai Reichert, the co-founder of XDS – The Experience Design Studio.
Alexis Kingsbury, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of AirManual.
Data Malarkey is back with Season Four from 17 January 2024, and there’s another glittering array of guests from an increasingly diverse set of professions. We’ll be hearing from women and men at the top of their game from the worlds of scientific research, pharma, supply chain logistics in both the military and on civvy street, football finance, public sector procurement, and our first data visualiser. Their common approaches to using data smarter have lessons for us all.
To find out how you rank as a data storyteller, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes to answer 12 questions, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 01 Apr 2025 | Truth Before Meaning: Scott Taylor on Data Storytelling & Business Impact | 00:51:54 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey Podcast, host Sam Knowles welcomes Scott Taylor, The Data Whisperer, to break down why data storytelling is the missing business skill in the world of AI, analytics, and business intelligence. Scott shares why he believes in Truth Before Meaning, the idea that businesses need clean, structured data before they can extract meaningful insights. He also explains why tech jargon is holding the data industry back, why business leaders don’t care how data works, and how he’s making the world of data more relatable through Data Puppets. What You'll Learn in This Episode:
Resources Mentioned:
Join the Conversation:
Connect with Us:
Rate, Review, and Follow!If you enjoyed this episode, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. It helps us reach more people who care about data and storytelling!
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| 23 May 2023 | Could you live without your smartphone? With Anastasia Dedyukhina, Chief Inspiration Officer of Consciously Digital | 00:45:23 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks to Anastasia Dedyukhina, the founder and Chief Inspiration Officer of Consciously Digital. Consciously Digital is a coaching, training and development company – it’s more than that; it’s a movement – that’s looking to build a world in which technology brings out the best in humanity. And very definitely not the worst, as many of the apparently “free” social and digital platforms have done with such negative impact. When their currency is our attention, we and our mental and physical health are the losers. Herself a digital marketer for more than a decade, Anastasia has first-hand experience of what it’s like to constantly battle the dopamine hit of another like, share, or retweet. She rose to prominence and public attention in 2016 with her TEDxWandsworth talk titled “Could you live without a smartphone?”, which currently has almost 400,000 views on YouTube. She followed this two years later with her powerful book, Homo Distractus – Fight for your choices and identity in the digital age, and is today one of the world’s leading digital wellbeing coaches through her consultancy, Consciously Digital, which she founded before both the TED talk and the book came out. Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 16 March 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Anastasia’s business, Consciously Digital, is not anti-data or anti-tech. The company has 100-plus digital wellbeing coaches, all providing guidance to people of all ages so that they can get proper balance in their life when it comes to data, social and digital media platforms, and digital devices. Anastasia often finds herself outside, in the garden, and moving; walking, playing volleyball, and above all dancing. When doing any of those things, digital devices and social media don’t have a chance to get in the way.
With a PhD in media and communication, Anastasia is very familiar with data and statistics, but in her current role she seeks to blend data-driven decision-making with softer skills. This hybrid – narrative AND numbers, stories AND statistics, shared with humanity and empathy – is her preferred mode of making sense of the world. A world which seems to have found a new god in Data.
The data we collect helps us to create more or less imperfect models of the world, and with a nod to the British statistician George Box, we agree that while “all models are wrong”, nevertheless, “some are useful”. Collecting data affects the data – just like particles being observed in physics change behaviour – and Anastasia shows herself to be very skilled at citing, reporting, and explaining the meaning of scientific (particularly psychological) studies. The one about wearables reporting on sleep patterns is worth the entry fee for this podcast alone.
In terms of practical advice for bringing balance into our digital lives, Anastasia recommends:
Very wise advice from someone who knows, who’s been out of balance with digital and data, and now spends her time advising people how to find and enjoy the balance she’s found for herself.
EXTERNAL LINKS Anastasia’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/anastasiadedyukhina/ Consciously Digital – https://www.consciously-digital.com/ Anastasia’s TEDxPeterborough talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOul_7qAOws&feature=youtu.be
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes to answer 12 questions, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 22 Oct 2024 | Sir John Curtice on Election Insights, Exit Polls, and Data Storytelling | 00:41:25 | |
Join master data storyteller, Sam Knowles, for an enlightening conversation with Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde and senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Research. As we navigate 2024 which has been dubbed "the ultimate election year," Sir John shares his insights on polling accuracy, political volatility, and data-driven decision-making in the UK and US elections. We explore the intricacies of his more-accurate-than-most exit polling methodology, the challenges of interpreting voter behaviour, and the future of electoral systems. Plus, Sir John reveals his secrets for communicating complex data effectively.
Key Takeaways: - Sir John Curtice's approach to accurate exit polling - Analysis of the 2024 UK General Election results - Challenges of predicting the outcome of the 2024 US election - Insights on communicating data clearly and avoiding the Curse of Knowledge
EXTERNAL LINK: https://bit.ly/4hij0FG - University of Strathclyde
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are. | |||
| 29 Mar 2023 | Why do evidence, insight, and academic impact matter? With Brighton University’s Professor Rusi Jaspal | 00:42:24 | |
In the second episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks with Professor Rusi Jaspal. Rusi is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange – and a Professor of Psychology – at the University of Brighton. He’s in charge of both the REF and the KEF – the university’s preparations for the UK Government’s seven-yearly Research Excellence Framework as well as its Knowledge Exchange Framework. This means that data and evidence, insight and impact are central to everything he does.
His own research is focused on psychological and physical health outcomes, especially in minority groups, including HIV prevention, care, and mental health. From psychological wellbeing among gay men to management of identities in conflict, from prejudice and discrimination to the psychological impact of the COVID pandemic.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 27 February 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
With Rusi’s work split between his role as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange and as a Professor of Psychology, data, evidence, and data-driven decision-making is at the heart of everything he does. We talk more than once about the pioneering “Brains at the Bevy”, a Community University Partnership Programme at which Brighton academics present their work at the Bevendean Community Pub in Moulsecoomb, the suburb of Brighton where the main campus of the University is located. The Bevy is the first community-owned pub on a housing estate in the UK, and the programme requires Brighton academics to explain the meaning and impact of their research to the local community in layman’s terms. No opportunities for getting bogged down in too much data there, for sure. No role for the Curse of Knowledge.
Rusi talks about the mutually supportive role and value that qualitative research data has for quantitative data, and vice versa, as well as the difficulties of capturing elusive human qualities such as “self-esteem” in a single number. As a psychologist and member of the British Psychological Society, he feels a keen responsibility to ensure that his and his team’s research findings are correct, clear, and easy-to-understand. To move from data to insight, Rusi often deploys theory – while always remaining aware that data must not be force-fitted to support a particular favourite theory. The moment of transition from data to insight requires honesty.
For Rusi, academic findings are best presented in the form of a story, though he urges caution in using the right type of data to draw conclusions about causation. While experimental data can allow us to generalise from the particular, cross-sectional survey data cannot and should not be.
EXTERNAL LINKS Rusi’s Twitter handle – https://twitter.com/ProfRJaspal Rusi’s Brighton University page – https://www.brighton.ac.uk/about-us/governance-and-structure/leadership/university-executive-board/professor-rusi-jaspal.aspx
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are. | |||
| 25 Sep 2024 | How can we communicate numbers clearly so that people can better understand the choices they face in life? With Mike Ellicock, Founder & CEO of Plain Numbers | 00:47:09 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, master data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Mike Ellicock, Founder and Chief Executive of The Plain Numbers Project. Plain Numbers says of its purpose: “We enable clear communication of numbers everywhere so that people can better understand the choices they face in life.” This matters, because about half the adults in the UK have the numeracy skills expected of a primary school child. And one in five suffers from “maths anxiety”.
Plain Numbers works with all sorts of organisations to help them communicate the numbers that matter in ways that are clear, fair, and never misleading. Organisations like banks and building societies, insurers and utility companies, national and local government. Plain Numbers trains, assesses, and accredits individuals, teams, and whole organisations to communicate their data more effectively and transparently.
The company’s approach is both deeply practical – developing the skills that businesses need for clear and simple communication of numbers – and deeply strategic, going and gaining access to the most senior decision-makers (often Government ministers) to effect meaningful, systemic change.
The progress Plain Numbers has made in just a few years has been accelerated by the introduction of the Financial Conduct Authority’s rules and guidance on Consumer Duty which “sets high standards of consumer protection across financial services and requires firms to put their customers' needs first”.
Before founding Plain Numbers, Mike was the Founder and Chief Executive of the charity National Numeracy, which he ran throughout the twenty-teens. Prior to that he ran Numicon, an innovative, multi-sensory approach to teaching maths at primary school level, up to the time when Numicon was acquired by Oxford University Press.
For seven years either side of the millennium, Mike was a Captain in the Parachute Regiment. Outside of the day job, he still takes fitness and the realisation of what’s possible physically to new heights – and always through a data-driven, evidence-based lens.
In 2015, Mike broke the world record for running a marathon wearing a 20lb back-pack, shaving ten minutes off the previous best by clocking a time of just 2h 56m 39s, a record that stands to this day. Next year he’s aiming to row around the British Isles in under 40 days.
EXTERNAL LINKS
Plain Numbers home page – https://plainnumbers.org.uk
The Plain Numbers in Practice report from June 2024 – https://bit.ly/4c2e0Bv
Mike’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-ellicock/
FCA Consumer Duty – https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/consumer-duty
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 16 Jul 2024 | How can we make the world better and fairer for all? With Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen from the University of Cambridge and the Autism Research Centre | 00:53:48 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, where he also runs the Autism Research Centre. Simon has been working in the field of autism for approaching 40 years and is one of the world’s leading authorities on the subject.
Since the mid-1980s, the research he’s led and undertaken has led him to advance several different, complementary theories of the condition including: the mind-blindness theory, the prenatal sex steroid theory, and the empathising-systemising theory of autism and typical sex differences.
Some corners of autism research have a somewhat shady and disreputable reputation for their misuse of data; for drawing conclusions about the general population from tiny sample sizes that the data could not warrant. Indeed, it was in the wake of the MMR scandal that the charity Sense About Science was founded in the early 2000s – to encourage researchers to present their findings responsibly and the media to report them responsibly – and Sense About Science’s director, Tracey Brown, was a recent guest on Data Malarkey.
By contrast with the shady stuff, Simon’s research has been a shining light of empiricism and evidence-based, data-driven truth, with sample sizes sometimes in the tens or hundreds of thousands. His 2018, empathising-systemising study famously collected data from 36,000 autistic people and 600,000 non-autistic people.
Described by the medical journal The Lancet as “a man with extraordinary knowledge … his passionate advocacy for a more tolerant, diverse society, where difference is respected and cultivated, reveals a very human side to his science” it is our honour to welcome Simon to Data Malarkey. A very fitting, very high-profile end to Season Five, a season bookended by two great Cambridge minds, as we started with Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter.
To secure Simon as a guest on Data Malarkey, I’m delighted to say I had to drop my son Max’s name. At the time of recording, Max had recently hosted Simon at an excellent event run by the recently-reborn Cambridge Psychology Society, of which Max is now President. At the university, he is studying Psychological & Behavioural Sciences. #proudfather
EXTERNAL LINKS Profile of Simon on The Lancet – Psychiatry site https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(15)00461-7/fulltext
The Autism Research Centre https://www.autismresearchcentre.com
The extraordinary output of 750+ articles from the Autism Research Centre on PubMed https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=simon+baron-cohen&sort=date
Auticon, the social enterprise on a mission to improve the employment prospects of neurodivergent people, whose board Simon advises https://auticon.com/uk/
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 04 Dec 2024 | Unlocking Creativity: Natalia Talkowska on Neuroscience, Storytelling & Innovation | 00:48:27 | |
In this episode of Data Malarkey, we sit down with Natalia Talkowska, founder of Natalka Design, to explore the fascinating intersection of neuroscience, visual communication, and storytelling. Natalia shares her inspiring journey and how she helps people overcome self-doubt, embrace creativity, and communicate their big ideas with impact. From her revolutionary Visualise Futures tool to the importance of breaking perfectionist habits, this episode is packed with insights for anyone looking to unlock their creative potential. What You'll Learn in This Episode:
Links & Resources:
Follow Natalia Online:
If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on your favourite podcast platform! 🎧 | |||
| 15 Mar 2023 | What does it mean to be a digital humanist? With Quadriga University’s Professor Ana Adi | 00:41:46 | |
In the first episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks with Professor Ana Adi, Head of the Department of Corporate Communications, and Vice President of Quadriga University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. Ana describes herself as a “digital humanist”, whose work focuses on online strategic communications. This includes both corporate social responsibility and activist communication, and she has a special interest and expertise in communication that features innovative and online-based research methods.
This conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 24 February 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Our discussion touches on how Ana works with data and how she overcomes the challenges of working with incomplete data sets. In a current project, she’s working with data from 25 countries in three languages. She’s following a well-established (and always-evolving) playbook that sees her move from qualitative to quantitative research techniques to boil down data into themes and ultimately insights.
To get there, she pressure-tests data using five key questions:
Ana’s compelled by the art and the science of digital forensics and what data we leave behind reveals about us and our attitudes to data. In the maxim of the father of modern forensic science, Edmond Locard, “every contact leaves a trace”. As a digital humanist, Ana’s interested in determining the value of every interaction we have with the digital world, every trace we leave.
When it comes to data storytelling, Ana is attracted to the approach taken by the brothers Chip and Dan Heath in their seminal 2006 book, Made to Stick, and their use of analogies, metaphors, epithets, and proxies. By keeping it simple and dialling up the emotion and humanity of data at the root of a story, we humanise it and make it relatable.
Outside of the day-to-day, Ana calls out the ways in which her perennial quest for balance informs her work and her life/work balance, with recent experience both painting and playing the piano.
EXTERNAL LINKS Ana’s LinkedIn page – https://www.linkedin.com/in/anaadi/ Ana’s “Women in PR” podcast – https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/women-in-pr/id1484683946 Ana’s personal page – https://www.anaadi.net/
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are. | |||
| 10 Sep 2024 | How might we bring about gender equity in academic research? With Ylann Schemm, VP for Corporate Responsibility at Elsevier, and Executive Director of the Elsevier Foundation | 00:49:29 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, master data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Ylann Schemm, Vice President for Corporate Responsibility at the leading academic publisher, Elsevier, home to almost 3,000 academic journals, specialising in scientific, technical, and medical content. Elsevier describes itself as “an information analytics” business – so right up our alley here at Data Malarkey.
In a career with the publisher spanning almost two decades, Ylann has been on a remarkable journey of both personal and corporate development, moving from communications to corporate relations and from there into corporate responsibility. And for more than a decade, she has been a leading figure in the Elsevier Foundation, first as Program Director – running the Foundation’s New Scholars program designed to expand the participation of women in STEM – and since 2017 as its Director.
Under Ylann’s leadership, the Foundation is taking pioneering steps and making a tangible difference. This is manifested most clearly in the organisation’s regular, data-driven reporting into gender and diversity in research. The latest, 2024 report showed that, although as many as 41% of all academic researchers today are women, this is much lower in STEM subjects. At the current rate of change, parity is not expected to be reached until 2052.
Ylann was allowed to lay the – shall we say? – foundations for the Foundation’s work in “a climate of benign neglect” as she found her feet and built networks and partnerships inside and outside of Elsevier. But it was with the 2019 arrival of the company’s first female CEO, Kumsal Bayazit, that Ylann’s work moved front and centre of the publisher’s strategic vision.
EXTERNAL LINKS
Ylann’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ylann-schemm-a5a3632/
Elsevier home page – https://www.elsevier.com/en-gb
The Elsevier Foundation – https://elsevierfoundation.org
2024 Elsevier Foundation gender and diversity in research report – https://www.elsevier.com/en-au/insights/gender-and-diversity-in-research
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 15 Aug 2023 | Is it possible to clean up the digital advertising market, providing the same level of information for both buyers and sellers? With Stijn Gimbrère, Media Futures Market | 00:35:26 | |
It’s fair to say that one of the markets that has become most complex and least transparent in the digital age has been advertising. The market was described in 2016 by Marc Pritchard – the Chief Brand Officer of Procter & Gamble, both the world’s biggest consumer goods business and the world’s highest-spending advertiser – as “murky at best, fraudulent at worst”.
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks to Dutch media entrepreneur Stijn Gimbrère, Founder and CEO of Media Futures Market. Media Futures Market is an innovative platform that directly connects buyers – that’s brands and their agencies – with high-quality media owners and publishers selling advertising inventory. In a market that’s been weighted for too long against advertisers – whose budgets fund every link in the chain – Media Futures Market’s mission is to provide buyers and sellers with the same information; simply, clearly, and transparently .
Before founding his current venture in June 2020, Stijn cut his teeth at the Dutch media network, RTL Nederland, before holding a variety of strategy and corporate development roles at advertising platform SpotX. he identified the gap in the market for his new venture while on a round-the-world trip with his wife, just pre-pandemic.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 4 April 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
For too long, middlemen who only erode value have squandered advertisers’ marketing budgets. Stijn is driven by a desire to bring transparency to the advertising market. One of the ways Media Futures Market does this is by enabling buyers to “compare apples with apples” and understand what an investment on one media property will deliver compared with any other.
Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and Alphabet (Google, YouTube) make it easy – though not totally transparent – for buyers to know what they’re buying. By making it easy, they account for up to 80% of the online ad market. But there’s huge value in other properties and platforms, and Media Futures Market makes it straightforward for buyers to know where the value is for them.
As a data storyteller, Stijn appreciates the need to “read the room” and understand the likely data tolerance of those you’re speaking to. You need a different type of narrative – and a different blend of narrative and numbers – if you’re talking to a CEO compared with a Finance Director. Knowing your audience is, for Stijn, a critical dimension of being a better data storyteller.
Media Futures Market first attracted media attention – from the Dutch equivalent of the Financial Times – by telling a data-driven story which showed the numbers in the advertising market don’t add up; that demonstrated the poor value many buyers were getting. This was particularly true of the unregulated, automated, programmatic advertising market. That – Stijn says – was the Wild West. Thanks in no small part to businesses committed to transparency and information symmetry like Stijn’s Media Futures Market, the days of the Wild West are rapidly becoming history.
EXTERNAL LINKS Media Futures Market – https://mediafuturesmarket.com/en/ Stijn’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/stijn-gimbrère-830b852a/
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes to answer 12 questions, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 30 Jul 2024 | On risk, uncertainty, and impact: how using data smarter is the fast track to success | 00:54:31 | |
Using data smarter is an attitude of mind. It’s characterised by those who choose to communicate simply, clearly, and effectively, by making sense of the signals and cutting out the noise. Above all, it’s about empathy, humanity, and appreciating the likely data tolerance of your audience.
After our fifth collection of six great guests, it’s a wrap for Season Five of Data Malarkey – the podcast about using data smarter. Your host, master data storyteller Dr Sam Knowles, picks out common themes and chooses his highlights from a lively series of conversations – recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, between February and May 2024.
Thanks as ever to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
In Season Five, our guests included:
Sir David Spiegelhalter, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at the University of Cambridge.
Olivia Jensen, Deputy Director and Lead Scientist at the Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk based out of the University of Singapore.
Sorin Patilinet, Senior Director for Marketing Effectiveness at Mars (who’s also the Marketing Engineer).
Ian Whittaker, founder of Liberty Sky Advisors, the award-winning city analyst specialising in media and marketing.
John Hibbs, Co-Founder of CoEfficient, a software as a service company that helps organisations grow by measuring performance from the human perspective.
And Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at Cambridge University, and director of the Autism Research Centre.
Data Malarkey is taking an extended summer vacation and is having all of August off – and then some. We’ll be back with Season Six on 11 September 2024 with another eclectic group of guests from an ever-more diverse set of professions. We’ll be hearing from women and men at the top of their game from the worlds of publishing, consumer goods, political punditry in the wake of the U.K. General Election, journalism, neuroscience, and numeracy. As usual, their common approaches to using data smarter have lessons for us all. And we start with Ylann Schemm who is both the Vice President of Corporate Responsibility for Elsevier, the world’s leading scientific publisher and data analytics company, and Director of the Elsevier Foundation.
To find out how you rank as a data storyteller, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes to answer 12 questions, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 09 May 2023 | What’s the connection between Harvey Keitel’s Winston Wolf, 200g pouches of cat food, and neurodiversity? The answer is marketer, coach, and podcaster Mark Evans | 00:43:08 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks to Mark Evans, one of the most successful marketers of his generation. Mark worked for ten years at Mars, rising to be Brand Director of Petcare Europe, before spells at 118118 Media UK and HSBC.
In 2012, Mark joined leading UK insurance business Direct Line Group where he helped to transform the business and the fortunes of its brands. Perhaps most notably – and in the teeth of stiff competition from the price comparison websites – he relaunched and reenergised the company’s flagship Direct Line brand. In that time, as well as championing the role of data and analytics in the company’s decision making, he even persuaded Harvey Keitel to reprise his role as Winston Wolf from Pulp Fiction, and in the process to drive the brand to new heights.
In 2023, Mark’s gone plural, and is a non-executive director, coach, speaker, and podcaster. Indeed, he’s the regular co-host of “The Places We’ll Go Marketing Show”, now WITH well over 100 episodes. Guests have included many of the great names in modern marketing, from Unilever’s Paul Polman to Professor Philip Kotter, from Mark Ritson to Byron Sharp – though for those who know these academic luminaries, they won’t be surprised to hear Ritson and Sharp didn’t appear together.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 14 March 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Mark describes his route into marketing as neither typical nor traditional. An economics graduate with a Masters in corporate finance, the job he was due to take up at Hill Samuel disappeared “in a puff of smoke”, thanks to a corporate merger.
Throughout his career, he’s brought the rigour, analytical skills, and test-and-learn approach of financial markets to a wide variety of different marketing roles. Every decision he’s taken and encouraged his teams to take has been driven by the evidence. This has helped him to elevate marketing and marketing decision-making up the food chains in corporate hierarchies. It’s driven by his desire to test, prove or disprove hypotheses, a skill he cut his teeth studying high school science.
We talk at length about the way that Direct Line Group uses the Net Promoter Score (NPS) – a measure of how likely customers are to recommend products and services to friends and family – as the single metric everyone in the business was measured against. This unified, simplified approach made it clear to everyone in the business how important both measurement and measurement of customer experience is to the top and bottom line. For the better experience customers have with a business, the more likely they are to remain customers – and recommend the company to others.
Mark details the transformation journey he led from 2019 to turn Direct Line into a properly agile business, as well as his passion for building and championing “whole brain teams” across the full spectrum of neurodiversity. Many on the systemizing end of the autistic spectrum are brilliant at solving analytical challenges but at the same time find the interview process difficult. This means that many who could be hugely valuable to all sorts of businesses remain outside the workforce. Mark details his experience of working with the social enterprise Auticon – whose purpose is to help businesses “become a destination for neurodivergent talent” – to address this.
EXTERNAL LINKS Mark’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/markevans2/ The Places We’ll Go Marketing Show – https://open.spotify.com/show/3zajAP9qA031znCniJnHuV
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes to answer 12 questions, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are. | |||
| 18 Jul 2023 | How do you know what matters and what you can ignore when it comes to online reputation? With Sam Michelson, Founder & CEO, Five Blocks | 00:31:13 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks to Sam Michelson, Founder & CEO of Five Blocks – a technology and a consulting firm specialising in digital reputation management. He and his team of more than 50 truly do make smarter use of data to understand what the world says and thinks about companies, brands, and corporate executives – and if their opinions really matter or are just froth, bluster, and noise. The company is based in both Jerusalem, Israel, and New York City.
A psychology graduate from Yeshiva University, New York, Sam is also a Master of Science in Management from Boston University. He founded Five Blocks in 2009, and says that the company uses “proprietary technology and big data analysis … to empower top brands and prominent individuals to tell their best story, via search, to the audiences that matter most”.
Sam believes it’s very easy for corporations and their leaders to get very hung up on signals and content online that don’t matter. His company collects time series data from Google (and Bing) search results in dozens of markets all round the world, covering more than 100,000 companies. It also collects Wikipedia data, not least because Wikipedia searches often rank so highly in natural search, plus also – recently – Bing AI, ChatGPT, and Google’s Bard. The data is ingested into Five Blocks’ proprietary IMPACT tool which gives search data proper context, comparing ongoing results with those from peers and what’s normal, what’s exceptional, and what’s volatile.
Five Blocks’ clients tend to engage with the company when there’s an opportunity or a threat. Sam and his team don’t have data quality challenges so much as data over-abundance issues. They’re like “kids in a candy store”, he notes. But it’s the firm’s data-driven approach that takes the emotion out of digital reputation management.
Because the business was boot-strapped and not venture-backed, this has given Five Blocks the opportunity to test and learn and move more slowly than it might otherwise have been forced to. It also started early (2009) and benefits from having no team members with a big consultancy background – though unusually in this market, Five Blocks is both a technology AND a consultancy business.
When looking for insight, Sam is an advocate of mapping out the current situation, identifying what you’d expect to see, and then zeroing in on what’s missing. Like a great forensic scientist, he’s as keen to explore “when the dogs don’t bark” – as the forensic scientist of her generation, Professor Angela Gallop put it in the title of her 2019 book – as when they do.
Sam finds distraction, centres himself, and finds time for reflection away from Five Blocks through his eight (yes, eight) children – not all of whom are still at home – a daily prayer service, and mountain biking in the countryside outside Jerusalem.
EXTERNAL LINKS Five Blocks – https://www.fiveblocks.com Sam’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammichelson/ Five Blocks on Twitter – https://twitter.com/5blocks
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes to answer 12 questions, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 19 Mar 2025 | The Science of Kindness & Finding Joy in Data | Prof. Robin Banerjee on Psychology & Empathy | 00:51:57 | |
Is kindness just a “soft” concept, or is there real science behind it? In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, Master Data Storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Professor Robin Banerjee, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global and Civic Engagement at the University of Sussex. Robin’s research explores the psychology of kindness, empathy, and human connection, revealing how data can unlock powerful insights about our social world. From leading the BBC Kindness Test – a groundbreaking study with over 60,000 participants – to his work on how fiction and television shape empathy, Robin shares fascinating insights about the science of human connection. He also explains why he finds joy in data – a phrase that might just change how you see statistics forever. What you'll learn in this episode:
Chapters:00:00 - Introduction About our guest:Professor Robin Banerjee is a leading researcher in developmental psychology and the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global and Civic Engagement at the University of Sussex. His work focuses on kindness, empathy, and social development, and he is the founder of the Sussex Centre for Research on Kindness. Robin’s research has been featured widely, including his collaboration with BBC Radio 4 on the Kindness Test, the largest study of its kind, exploring how people experience and perceive kindness across different cultures and communities. Resources mentioned:
Join the conversation:
Connect with us:
Rate, Review, and Follow!Enjoyed the episode? Please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support helps us bring more thought-provoking discussions to you!
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| 07 Jun 2023 | On digital balance, neurodiversity, and cat food. A look back on Season One of Data Malarkey – the podcast about using data smarter | 00:47:13 | |
After six great guests, it’s a wrap for Season One of Data Malarkey – the podcast about using data smarter. Your host, master data storyteller Sam Knowles, picks out common themes and chooses his highlights from a lively series of conversations with his mixed bag of academics, marketers, a leading voice in clearing down space junk, and a coach helping bring balance to our data-rich, digital lives.
Our conversations were recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, in February and March 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Professor Ana Adi, Quadriga University, Berlin
Professor Rusi Jaspal, University of Brighton
Katherine Courtney, Steering Board Chair of GNOSIS – the Global Network on Sustainability in Space
Laetitia Zinetti, RVP Southern Europe at DoubleVerify
Mark Evans – NED, coach, advisor, and former Chief Marketing Officer at Direct Line Group
Anastasia Dedyukhina, Chief Inspiration Officer, Consciously Digital
Three guests (Anastasia, Laetitia, and Ana) discussed both how they spend their time and how they manage to bring balance to their lives, taking active steps to avoid being overwhelmed by data; how they stay on the side of data common sense and avoid data malarkey.
Katherine showed herself to be a stellar data storyteller, talking about both the risks space junk presents, why it could easily take us back to the 1950s if it’s not cleared out of the path of satellites, and how to convince primary school children we are not alone in the universe.
Rusi introduced us to Brains at the Bevy, a Brighton University initiative in which academics share their research findings and impact in a local community pub, demanding that they – too – are great data storytellers for the locals in the audience.
And Mark revealed why and how he champions neurodiversity in the workplace – and then owned up to his biggest, personal, data-driven blunder. It’s all about cat food, and Quincy the office cat makes an on-cue appearance, swishing his ginger tail.
Data Malarkey is back with Season Two from 21 June, and do we have a guest for you. One of the world’s leading public intellectuals and best-selling authors. Tune in again soon to learn who it is.
To find out how you ranks as a data storyteller, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes to answer 12 questions, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 02 Mar 2023 | Data Malarkey – Pilot Episode | 00:04:14 | |
Welcome to the pilot episode of Data Malarkey – the podcast about using data smarter.
Data Malarkey is a new, fortnightly podcast hosted by master data storyteller,
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling | |||
| 08 Oct 2024 | How can we unlock human behaviour with neuroscience and behavioural science? With Cristina de Balanzo, PhD, Founder of Walnut Unlimited | 00:48:06 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, we join master data storyteller Sam Knowles, in conversation with Cristina de Balanzo, PhD, Founder and Board Director at Walnut Unlimited, as she delves into the fusion of neuroscience, behavioural science, and strategic insights to unlock human Neuroscience has been a constant drumbeat of Cristina’s career. Before founding Walnut more than a decade ago, she was global head of neuroscience at TNS, following a nine-year stint as a strategic planner with McCann Erickson.
EXTERNAL LINKS
Cristina’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristina-de-balanzo-ph-d-1693694/
Cristina on X – https://twitter.com/crisbalanzo
Cristina’s article on WARC – “The science of laughter: Why humour is serious business” – https://bit.ly/3zoTtK9
ResearchGate profile for Cristina – https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cristina-De-Balanzo
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are. | |||
| 29 Aug 2023 | How can you apply AI and data science to inform business decision-making? With Jean-Baptiste Bouzige, Ekimetrics | 00:44:21 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Jean-Baptiste Bouzige, the CEO of Ekimetrics. The company describes itself as “a pioneering leader in data science and AI-powered solutions for sustainable business performance”. Jean-Baptiste is one of the founders of Ekimetrics, a business he launched in 2006 after starting his career at the ad agency DDB. At DDB he was in charge of developing analytics and modeling methodologies.
Jean-Baptiste is passionate about finding innovative ways to deliver simple insights from complex methods for better decision-making, and Ekimetrics is increasingly focused on helping businesses become sustainable for the long term. He teaches “Data for Marketing” at the HEC business school in Paris on the Executive MBA program. Jean-Baptiste is a graduate of both the École Polytechnique and the École des Mines de Paris, where he specialised in applied mathematics and micro-economics.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 11 April 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Although he spends much of his time managing and building the 400-strong Ekimetrics team of data scientists and engineers, Jean-Baptiste takes most pleasure from writing. His writing focuses on the impact of the data-driven models his team builds to help the company’s clients enhance their business decision-making. “Smarter use of data all starts with well-informed, key business questions,” he tells me.
Jean-Baptiste believes that the most important encounter data scientists and engineers can have with the data sets they’re working with is the very first exploration of raw, unfiltered information. This initial encounter sets the tone for how the data will be used and enables everyone in a business to start speaking the same language. For Jean-Baptiste, the failure to find a common lexicon across different functions is one of the main reasons why data doesn’t solve the problems it can.
Ekimetrics brings together algorithms and data, technology and core business functions with the single-minded goal of securing competitive advantage. The company aims to deliver transformational impact and invests its time here rather than in piecemeal, micro-optimisations. This is particularly important for legacy businesses which are forced to evolve because of societal change, consumer pressure, and legislation; businesses including automotive and consumer goods. Hence Ekimetrics’ current and future focus on sustainability.
The rapid evolution of powerful AI engines which are widely-available at no or low cost – engines such as ChatGPT – excites Jean-Baptiste, provided they’re used at the right time and in the right way. He agrees with Bill Gates that AI is the most important innovation in business in the past 35 years.
We end our conversation talking about Jean-Baptiste’s 2022 interview with his hero, the Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman (link below). He was so impressed with Kahneman’s thoughtful, considered response to his questions, as if considering them for the first time.
EXTERNAL LINKS Ekimetrics website – https://ekimetrics.com Jean-Baptiste’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-baptiste-bouzige-6aaa242/ Jean-Baptiste interviewing Daniel Kahneman – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMLujEsoxoM
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 08 Nov 2023 | How Brexit broke the structure of British politics. With Andrew Cooper | 00:47:58 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks to Andrew Cooper, President and Senior Advisor at Yonder Consulting. A research, data, and insights man through and through, Andrew founded the market research company Populus more than 20 years ago, which helped to reinvent the way polling is done in the wake of the 2015 UK General Election.
Andrew ran research and polling and then strategy and political operations for the Conservative Party, either side of the 1997 Labour landslide for more than three years, and served as director of strategy to David Cameron in the Prime Minister’s Office for almost three years in the coalition government. Thanks to that service, Andrew became Lord Cooper of Windrush and has sat in the House of Lords for almost the last nine years. Today he splits his time between pollsters Populus, his new venture, Yonder, and the House of Lords.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on Friday 26 May 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Two unexpected topics start this discussion: (i) Andrew and Sam’s shared love of ironing (to which Sam adds washing up and mowing the lawn, as activities with a defined endpoint), and (ii) the fact that Andrew now sits as a politically non-affiliated member of the second chamber despite years of working for the Conservative Party. His decision to go independent was thanks to the Tories becoming increasingly hard line – the de facto Brexit Party – in the wake of the 2016 EU Referendum, and “with malice aforethought”.
Although he did a degree in economics at the London School of Economics, Andrew stayed away from the mathematical side of the subject. He only fell into working intensively with data when he started working in political polling. As US President Lyndon B. Johnson is said to have said, “The first rule of politics is that you need to be able to add up”.
Andrew explains his approach to making sense of political (media, and consumer) intentions and choices by building a geodemographic model that brings together: census data, historical polling data, psychological archetypes from the BBC Great Personality Test, and a growing array of other sources. His Clockface model maps attitudes and behaviours on the two critical dimensions of security and diversity. The model explains the often bitter disagreements evident in politics everywhere and reveals “how Brexit broke the structure of British politics”. This reaction to the impact and realities of globalisation has been played out in countries around the world.
The TV programme that best sums up Britain – that appeals to all groups, irrespective of where they fall on the security x diversity axes – no matter whether they voted Remain or Leave in the EU Referendum – is … Love Island. Peep Show and Black Mirror are in Remain heartland, while Mrs Brown’s Boys is slap-bang in the middle of Leave’s core support.
Andrew unpicks the success of Leave’s chief architect, Dominic Cummings, and his “£350m a week to the NHS” trap, contrasting it with Remain’s inability to find a credible alternative number with a positive spin that captured the reality of the benefits of Britain’s membership of the EU.
EXTERNAL LINKS Andrew on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewcooperpopulus/
Yonder Consulting and the Clockface – https://yonderconsulting.com/clockface/
Lord Cooper of Windrush – https://members.parliament.uk/member/4327/contact
To find out how you rank as a data storyteller, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 04 Jun 2024 | Why does marketing need to become more like engineering? With Sorin Patilinet from Mars, aka The Marketing Engineer. | 00:49:10 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, your host Sam Knowles is joined by Sorin Patilinet, Senior Director of Marketing Effectiveness at Mars. Sorin is also known as the Marketing Engineer.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 4 April 2024.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Sorin took an unusual route into marketing and has an unusually scientific approach to making every last marketing dollar count. Trained as a telecommunications engineer at university in his native Romania, Sorin applies the rigour of engineering to the not always substantial world of marketing science. In the dozen-plus years he’s worked at Mars, he’s routinely and rigorously put into practice the theories of the How Brands Grow marketing professor, Byron Sharp.
Liverpool and Anderlecht fan, Sorin, is based in Belgium, Brussels. He’s currently writing a book from the perspective of the marketing practitioner, showing how structured, systems thinking can make the “colouring-in department” label sometimes levelled at marketing a thing of the past.
Marketing has changed out of all recognition compared to where it was when Sorin started his career, from 80% of ad spend on linear TV to 27 creatives on 35 platforms with no reliable or consistent, cross-platform means to control reach or frequency. Amid all this complexity, his evidence-based approach to marketing measurement is a breath of fresh air.
So, too, is the ad testing methodology (Agile Creative Expertise or ACE) that Mars has developed under Sorin’s stewardship, based not on claimed intention but instead rooted in actual consumer behaviour. Eye-tracking, attention, and emotion have been found time and again to trump declarative survey findings. This really works at scale, too, with insights derived from more than 800 creative executions a year.
Sorin’s an enthusiastic sceptic when it comes to AI, but he’s keen to point out that the November 2022 appearance of ChatGPT is just the tip of the iceberg. Mars has been using AI – in the form of machine learning and deep analytics – for years.
An enthusiastic modern-day Stoic and fan on Everyday Stoic, Ryan Holiday, in ten years from now Sorin hopes to be applying the rigour he’s developed for marketing effectiveness to communicating the importance of grand projects such as the European Union or the United Nations to disaffected citizens.
Sorin is a board member of the Attention Council and a guest lecturer at Wharton Business School.
EXTERNAL LINKS Sorin’s blog: “Engineering Marketing” – https://www.sorinp.com Sorin’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/patilinet/
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are. | |||
| 05 Mar 2025 | Trust, AI, and the Future of Human Connection with Cecilia Dones | 00:51:25 | |
In this engaging episode of the Data Malarkey Podcast, Master Data Storyteller and host Sam Knowles welcomes Cecilia Dones, a thought leader in data, AI, and human connection. Ceci explores how technology shapes the way we interact, trust, and build relationships—both online and offline. She shares insights into AI ethics, uncertainty in machine learning, and why trust is the cornerstone of all our digital futures. From her work in AI ethics to her philosophy on leadership and adaptability, Ceci provides fresh perspectives on the best ways to navigate the ever-evolving world of artificial intelligence. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on data, trust, and what it means to be human in the age of AI. What you'll learn in this episode:
Chapters:00:00 - Introduction
About our guest:
Cecilia Dones is a data and analytics practitioner-academic, founder of 3 Standard Deviations, with expertise spanning Fortune 500 companies and academia. She specialises in AI applications, technology's impact on human interactions, and bridging data insights across sectors. Currently, she is completing her doctoral studies on interpersonal trust in digital environments. She holds degrees from NYU Stern and Columbia University. She has taught at top business schools and authors the "Authentic Interactions" newsletter on Substack exploring technology, data, authenticity, and trust.
Resources mentioned:
Join the conversation:
Connect with us:
Rate, review, and follow!Enjoyed the episode? Please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support helps us bring more thought-provoking discussions to you.
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| 04 Jul 2023 | How can smarter use of data mean that the doctor comes to you rather than you having to go to the doctor? With Tim Jobson, consultant gastroenterologist and Medical Director at Predictive Health Intelligence | 00:47:22 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks to Tim Jobson, a consultant gastroenterologist at the Somerset NHS Foundation Trust in South West England. Tim truly is a product of Oxbridge, having studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge for three years and then Medicine at Oxford for a further three. He went on to take a PhD in Medicine from Nottingham University, and he is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.
Tim is an expert in what’s sometimes rather unglamorously known as “internal medicine”, and one of his specialist organs is the liver. Since 2021, he’s been the Medical Director and Chief Investigator of a pioneering, data-driven business called Predictive Health Intelligence which is taking a fresh approach to analysing historical blood test data and identifying patients at risk of liver disease.
As he considers the role that data plays in diagnosis of different chronic and acute medical conditions and diseases, Tim zooms in from the stories patients tell their doctors to the results of specific tests and biopsies. By accumulating relevant evidence, healthcare professionals can identify the relative risk or probability that a particular patient is suffering from a particular disease.
We focus on metabolic syndrome – the cluster of conditions that result from the excess of modern life: cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and hypertension. When we take in more fruit sugar – fructose – than we need, our liver store this as fat. This was fine as recently as 10,000 years ago, before agricultural, industrial, and consumer revolutions, when our ancestors lived a life of feast and famine. But when fatty, salty, sugary foods – particularly those laden with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) – are so readily available, piled high and sold cheap in supermarkets, this sets us up for metabolic syndrome. Something that at least a third of the Western world suffers from today.
One major and silent killer in this cluster of conditions is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. As the clinical lead in a partnership with his local National Health Service Trust and healthcare IT experts, Tim and his colleagues at Predictive Health Intelligence have developed and are rolling-out a case-finding search engine (HepatoSIGHT) which uses the results from historical blood tests taken over a patient’s life to predict whether – without them knowing it – they are suffering from this silent killer.
The annual toll of this disease is eye-watering: it costs £7-13bn a year, causes 30,000 premature deaths, and robs the UK population of more than 100,000 years of healthy life each year. We discuss how HepatoSIGHT could dramatically reduce these numbers and how the same, super-smart approach to using existing health data could help identify other, costly, silent killers, too.
EXTERNAL LINKS Predictive Health Intelligence – https://predictivehealthintelligence.co.uk Tim Jobson’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-jobson-0043934b/ PHI on Twitter – https://twitter.com/phi_comms
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes to answer 12 questions, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are. | |||
| 19 Feb 2025 | From CERN to Ad Regulation: How AI & Data Science Are Changing Advertising | Adam Davidson | 00:48:03 | |
Check out our Data Storytelling scorecard: https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com In this episode of the podcast, Master Data Storyteller Sam Knowles sits down with Adam Davidson, Head of Data Science at the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Adam shares his fascinating journey from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, where he contributed to the search for the Higgs boson, to leading data-driven efforts in advertising regulation. 💡 What You'll Learn in This Episode:
If you've ever wondered how AI is shaping the future of digital advertising and how regulators are keeping up, this episode is for you! 🎧 Listen now and discover how AI, data science, and machine learning are transforming the ad industry! Episode Chapters & Timestamps00:00 - Introduction: Meet Adam Davidson Guest Bio: Adam DavidsonAdam Davidson is the Head of Data Science at the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), where he leads efforts to monitor and regulate digital advertising using AI and machine learning. His career started in particle physics at CERN, where he was involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson. Adam later transitioned to data science roles at Qubit and The Economist, before joining the ASA in 2021. Now, he’s using data and AI to bring accountability to online advertising, leading a seven-strong team of data scientists at the ASA who are ensuring that brands comply with regulations, legislation, and ethical marketing standards. 🔗 Follow Adam Davidson on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-davison-a5624815/ 🔗 The Advertising Standards Authority https://www.asa.org.uk
Key Takeaways & Quotes from This Episode🧠 On Data Storytelling: 🤖 On AI in Advertising Regulation: ⚖️ On Ethical Advertising: 🚀 On the Future of AI & Automation:
Resources & Links🔗 Adam on BBC2’s Horizon, “The Hunt for the Higgs Boson” – www.dailymotion.com/video/x621wqk 🔗 Profile on Adam in Marketing | Beat – https://www.marketing-beat.co.uk/2024/04/11/asa-harnessing-ai-technology/ 🔗 “Using AI to monitor the promotion of prescription-only medicines” by Adam Davison, ASA blog, 09.11.23 – https://www.asa.org.uk/news/using-ai-to-monitor-the-promotion-of-prescription-only-medicines.html 🔗 “Our Active Ad Monitoring system” by Adam Davison, ASA blog, 14.07.23 – https://www.asa.org.uk/news/our-active-ad-monitoring-system.html 🔗 “How data science is changing ad regulation” by Adam Davison, ASA blog, 17.11.22 – https://www.asa.org.uk/news/how-data-science-is-changing-ad-regulation.html
Support & Connect💬 Enjoyed this episode? Let us know! Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. 🎙 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts (https://bit.ly/3YIh7I7), Spotify (https://bit.ly/3JafOfg), and our YouTube channel https://youtube.com/@datamalarkey
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| 07 May 2024 | How can we best communicate risk in our uncertain, post-truth world? With Sir David Spiegelhalter, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at the University of Cambridge | 00:53:42 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, your host Sam Knowles is joined by one of the world’s finest data storytellers, David Spiegelhalter, the statistician and public communicator of his generation. Although he claims to have been retired for five years, the Emeritus Professor of Statistics from Cambridge University is working harder than ever.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 6 March 2024.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
If anyone can be said to have had “a good pandemic”, it was David. “At least I had something to do!” he quips, sharing how he quickly set up a studio at home and gave countless interviews about what the data meant and what we should do as a result.
While he believes that the Chief Scientific and Medical Officers of the U.K. National Health Service usually presented complex information simply and straightforwardly to a willing and receptive public – hungry for evidence of what they might choose to do and why – Government ministers (to the very top) and their Special Advisors (SPADs) had little clue.
Nothing gets David more irritated than wilful misuse of data, and several times during our lively discussion he vents considerable fury at peddlers of misinformation, under COVID and otherwise. We talk a lot about communicating risk (relative and absolute), particularly under uncertainty, with uncertainty the theme of David’s imminent new book, The Art of Uncertainty (to be published by Penguin in September 2024).
Away from the stats lab, we learn how David applied his data-driven smarts to winning the inaugural (and to-date only) Loop World Championship; Loop is pool played on an elliptical table with only one pocket at one of the foci of the ellipse. He also took an evidence-based approach to qualifying for the second round of Winter Wipeout, recorded a dozen years and more ago in Argentina, where David adopted the persona of Professor Risk.
In addition to uncertainty, we also focus on trustworthiness. For David, those using data and statistics to communicate need to earn and constantly re-earn a reputation for being trustworthy. And just as no-one laughs at a comedian who says “I’m funny” at the start of his set, no-one trusts a person using data to communicate complex topics who says “Just trust me!”. Being seen as trustworthy is a consequence of being honest, competent, and reliable.
David introduces Sam and the audience to the skill of “pre-bunking”, and several times warns against building data-driven narratives that push emotional levers or buttons. Data storytellers should present the evidence simply and fairly and then allow the audience to draw their own conclusions. “Treat them as if they’re intelligent, but also as if they don’t know anything.”
EXTERNAL LINKS Cambridge University personal profile page https://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~david/ David on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Spiegelhalter
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 31 Jan 2024 | How can a beginner’s mind and a collaborative approach make you win at the team sport of “insight”? With Mark Montgomery, Novartis’ Head of Integrated Insights | 00:35:41 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Mark Montgomery, Vice President and International Head of Integrated Insights at Novartis, a role he’s held for the past three years. Mark has a rich and varied career in pharma, having served as the Global Head of Commercial Analytics and Insights at GSK before joining Novartis, following a seven-year spell at AstraZeneca in digital, data, and strategic planning. Before working in pharma, Mark spent a decade in creative, content strategy, and brand management in three different agencies.
Mark holds both a Batchelor’s in marketing and an MBA in organizational leadership from the Southern New Hampshire University. Indeed, his resumé more than hints at a love of life-long learning, with recent qualifications in AI and behavioural economics from Yale School of Management, the Chicago Booth School of Business, and Kellogg Executive Education. He’s also been a guest lecturer at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania for the past decade.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 28 November 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Mark describes his job at Novartis as “the best job in the world” – particularly for someone as driven as he is by curiosity to find things out and answer challenging questions. He brings together Novartis’ data science practice, some of the smartest market researchers he’s ever worked with, and a crack team of business analysts. As their work is focused on strategic decision-making to change both attitudes and behaviour, this is often overlaid by the learnings of behavioural science.
Mark’s rich and resonant definition of insight is a “meaningful, intuitive understanding of a person or thing that compels action or brings about change”. Insight, for Mark, answers the questions “What?”, “Why?”, and “What to do?” Among Mark’s favourite tools for moving from data to insight and insight to action are the Root Cause Analysis (those famous Five Whys) and Design Thinking.
More than once, Mark says that insight is a “team sport” requiring a collaborative approach to foster success, one that requires us to bring a beginner’s mind and park our biases and prejudices at the door. In a memorable analogy, Mark compares building a cross-functional team to solve genuine business problems with insight to rugby, that most inclusive and ‘c’ catholic of games that finds a role for everyone, no matter their shape, size, or speed.
Mark is in the enthusiast camp when it comes to AI, pointing out the irony that human cognition – rather than technology, data processing speed, or computer power – is now the rate limiter on problem solving. Our role is to ask smarter questions and organise data better for AI to use. With scientific progress set to double every seven years thanks to AI – a seven-fold acceleration in just a couple of decades – Mark gives us a tantalising glimpse of the future of personalised medicine.
EXTERNAL LINKS Novartis – https://www.novartis.com Mark’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdmontgomery01/
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 12 Sep 2023 | On the Curse of Knowledge, the opportunities and risks of AI, and why data scientists need to speak the same language as business. A look back on Season Two of Data Malarkey – the podcast about using data smarter | 00:57:49 | |
After our second set of six great guests, it’s a wrap for Season Two of Data Malarkey – the podcast about using data smarter. Your host, master data storyteller Sam Knowles, picks out common themes and chooses his highlights from a lively series of conversations – recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, between March and May 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University
Tim Jobson, Consultant in Internal Medicine at Somerset Foundation NHS Trust and Medical Director of Predictive Health Intelligence
Sam Michelson, Founder & CEO of Five Bocks – Intelligent Digital Reputation
Elizabeth Press, Creator & Owner of the D3M Labs (Data-Driven Decision-Making) blog
Stijn Gimbrère, MD of Media Futures Market
Jean-Baptiste Bouzige, Founder & CEO of Ekimetrics
Steve Pinker gives a brilliant explanation of the Curse of Knowledge – the difficulty in imagining what it’s like not to know something that you know – from its origins in experimental psychology. Digital reputation management expert, Sam Michelson, shows how dangerous the Curse can be in business.
One of the main challenges for using data smarter is that ‘data people’ speak a different language – and are motivated and remunerated for different reasons – from others in a business or organisation. D3M Labs blogger, Elizabeth Press, details the consequences of failing to address this.
AI is changing how many organisations work, and Ekimetrics’ Founder & CEO, Jean-Baptiste Bouzige, is already applying AI tools among his 400-strong army of data scientists. Pinker is more sceptical – about how it works and whether it will solve the world’s biggest, thorniest problems.
Using data smarter accelerates performance in every sector, and in this season – and this season wrap-up episode – we also hear from health software pioneer, Tim Jobson, and Stijn Gimbrère, a man on a mission to clean-up the often murky and fraudulent online advertising market.
Data Malarkey is back with Season Three from 27 September, and there’s a glittering array of guests from an increasingly diverse set of professions. We’ll be hearing from women and men at the top of their game from the worlds of screenwriting, diversity and inclusion, and forensic science; from market research, digital marketing, and AI. Their common approaches to using data smarter have lessons for us all.
To find out how you rank as a data storyteller, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes to answer 12 questions, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 09 Apr 2024 | The data planets align. The more guests we welcome to Data Malarkey – and the more different their jobs and categories – the more we’re able to join the dots between how those who use data smarter do so. A look back on Season Four of Data Malarkey | 00:53:14 | |
After our fourth collection of six great guests, it’s a wrap for Season Four of Data Malarkey – the podcast about using data smarter. Your host, master data storyteller Dr Sam Knowles, picks out common themes and chooses his highlights from a lively series of conversations – recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, between July and December 2023.
Thanks as ever to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
In Season Four, our guests included:
Tracey Brown, director of the charity, Sense About Science.
Mark Montgomery, Vice President and International Head of Integrated Insights at Novartis.
John McFall, military and civvy street logistics expert, and the founder of Supply Chain Wise.
Kieran Maguire, leading football finance academic from the University of Liverpool’s Management School, and co-host of The Price of Football podcast.
Ian Makgill, founder of Spend Network, a database keeping tabs on the worlds’ Governments’ $13tn spend.
And Mike Bell, data visualiser extraordinaire, who uses the iconography of the London Underground to tell the stories of bands, albums, films, and political careers at his eponymous business, Mike Bell Maps.
Data Malarkey will have its usual, between-season break for a couple of weeks. We’ll be back with Season Five on 8 May 2024, and there’s another glittering array of guests from an increasingly diverse set of professions. We’ll be hearing from women and men at the top of their game from the worlds of statistics, risk management, consumer goods, academic publishing, financial analysis, and autism research. Their common approaches to using data smarter have lessons for us all. And we start with the blockbuster guest, Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, a man who had perhaps the best pandemic of any data storyteller in the public domain.
To find out how you rank as a data storyteller, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes to answer 12 questions, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are. | |||
| 20 Jun 2023 | How can we avoid the Curse of Knowledge? With Steven Pinker, Harvard professor of psychology | 00:49:10 | |
To kick-off the second season of Data Malarkey, Sam Knowles talks to one of the all-time greats of academic psychology – Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. An experimental psychologist interested in all aspects of language, mind, and human nature, Steve is one of the most important public intellectuals – and best-selling authors – of the past 30 years. He came to global attention with his 1994 book, The Language Instinct, and followed that three years later with How The Mind Works.
In the 2000s, Steve’s interests – and popular-science best sellers – have flexed and grown to cover nature and nurture, human progress, violence (or otherwise) in society, and most recently, rationality. Many listeners will be familiar with The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and – most recently – Rationality. A less well-known but important work is Steve’s 2014 book The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, and what it has to say about the Curse of Knowledge.
Garlanded by media, national and international associations, and academic institutions around the world, Steve is generally agreed to be one of the world’s leading thinkers and most influential writers. He is that rarest of creatures – a serious, practicing academic who writes with great clarity for both his peers and an intelligent lay audience.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Steve spends his time reading, teaching, and writing – totally immersing himself when it comes to books. And when he’s not doing that, he’s walking, hiking, cycling, travelling and talking with his wife, the novelist and philosopher, Rebecca Goldstein. He also has a passion – and a real skill – for photography, a passion developed from his early-career research in visual cognition and his love of visual aesthetics.
This episode covers so much in just 45 minutes, from why the world is rather less violent than the news cycle might suggest to the replicability crisis in psychology; from our faulty belief that a sample will be representative of a population, to underpowered psychological research using too few experimental subjects. More than once, Steve refers to Amos Tversky’s 1971 paper in Psychological Bulletin, “Belief in the law of small numbers”. As Steve points out: “He did warn us. We should have listened!” For those unfamiliar with this seminal, overlooked paper – here it is.
And while we’re very much in the wheelhouse of an academic psychologist at the height of his profession, at all times Steve avoids the Curse of Knowledge, which he defines as “the difficulty in imagining what it’s like for some else not to know something that you know”. As the Curse of Knowledge is a repeated target of Sam’s in his data storytelling training, host and guest wig out about the Curse, which Steve also characterises as a lack of Theory of Mind.
Steve’s home page – https://stevenpinker.com Photos by Steven Pinker – http://stevepinker.com The Harvard Department of Psychology page for Steve – https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/steven-pinker
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes to answer 12 questions, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 15 Apr 2025 | AI as an Intern, Not a Genius: Julie Holmes on Automation, Ethics & Human Impact | 00:49:00 | |
In this energising episode of the Data Malarkey Podcast, Master Data Storyteller Sam Knowles speaks with Julie Holmes, entrepreneur, inventor, and AI advisor. Julie shares her insights into how businesses can make AI work with their people – not instead of them. She dives into creative automation, ethical AI, and the dangers of dabbling without direction. From her practical UPGRADE Framework to her “intern not genius” approach to creating effective prompts for LLMs, Julie delivers a candid, actionable masterclass on the human side of AI. What You'll Learn:
Resources Mentioned:
Rate, Review, and Follow!If you found this episode valuable, please rate and review on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, and don’t forget to follow and subscribe for a new episode every fortnight!
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| 06 Dec 2023 | How can you use data to make a business runner better, faster, with less friction? With Alexis Kingsbury, AirManual | 00:50:30 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by serial entrepreneur, business simplifier, and podcaster, Alexis Kingsbury. Alexis is the co-founder of AirManual, a company that helps businesses document their processes, onboarding, and training so that employees can take on new responsibilities and deliver high quality work more quickly and efficiently.
Indeed, on Alexis’ LinkedIn profile, he says that he saves “thousands of hours of time for business leaders each year, reducing stress, and unlocking business growth”. He’s been business savvy since before he became a teenager, and founded his first business while studying Management Science at university. From the ‘using data smarter’ mindset, making better – business-focused – use of data is precisely what Alexis does to empower all sorts of organisations to grow faster, with less pain, while at the same time avoiding the common mistakes everyone seems to make.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 9 August 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
As a pioneer of working out what works in business processes – and then using validated, road-tested checklists to accelerate, simplify, and automate them – Alexis tells us that he is now able to spend most of his time working on the business and less and less actually in the business. And, in a classic case of no “cobblers’ children’s shoes”, he’s applied this approach to his own companies.
Business leaders – particularly founder-entrepreneurs – who he works with often find themselves stuck working in rather than on the business, over-relied-upon, and stressed out. But even a simple intervention with AirManual can save a leader 15 hours a week. This removes bottlenecks to growth and at the same time drives down stress, in this way enabling leaders to lead – AND secure – a more meaningful life/work balance.
Alexis is a big champion of taking time out – real time out, not just working next to a pool for two weeks – and offers all his globally-distributed team 40 (yes, forty) days holiday per year. He also puts measures in place to ensure that his team don’t under-take their holiday allocation – and fortunately means not nearly as draconian as Sam suggests (fining them a day’s pay for every day’s holiday not taken!).
To make a business run more efficiently, Alexis advises identifying the data that matter, summarising these in a regularly-updated dashboard, and the whole team discussing them at regular, at-least weekly meetings. This includes taking a weekly pulse of employee happiness. He also has a daily, ten-minute huddle for his global team. “Just because we are remote, it doesn’t have to feel like that,” he observes.
Alexis is excited and terrified by AI in equal measure, but more importantly his businesses have started to use it – for instance ChatGPT – and his team is guiding clients through smart use of AI to accelerate laborious, repetitive processes.
EXTERNAL LINKS The AirManual homepage – https://www.airmanual.co Alexis’ LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexkingsbury/ The Business Leader’s Guide to Using AI and ChatGPT – https://discover.airmanual.co/resources/ai-and-chatgpt The De-Stress Your Business podcast, hosted by Alexis and his business partner, Paddy Mann – https://www.airmanual.co/podcasts/de-stress-your-business
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 05 Feb 2025 | How can we build an AI future which respects ethics and data privacy? With Professor Sylvie Delacroix, Centre for Data Futures, King’s College London | 00:53:13 | |
In this thought-provoking episode of the Data Malarkey Podcast, master data storyteller Sam Knowles sits down with Sylvie Delacroix, the inaugural Jeff Price Chair in Digital Law in the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London. Sylvie shares her insights into data ethics, the vulnerabilities we face in a data-driven world, and the transformative potential of generative AI. She also introduces the Centre for Data Futures, her initiative to build participatory data infrastructure that empowers individuals and communities. This is a conversation about ethics, identity, and the future of AI that you won’t want to miss.
What you'll learn in this episode:
Chapters:
About our guest: Resources mentioned:
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| 22 Nov 2023 | How can you use data to provide a first-class customer experience? With Shai Reichert, Experience Design Studio (XDS) | 00:34:24 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Shai Reichert, Co-Founder of XDS – a US-based business also known as the Experience Design Studio. Shai has almost 20 years’ experience working in web development, user and customer experience. He has held senior roles on both the client side (for Comcast and Rosetta) as well as in digital marketing agencies. Shai spent six years in charge of all things technological at the specialist healthcare agency the W2O Group – now known as Real Chemistry.
Half-a-dozen years ago now, Shai co-founded XDS, where he focuses on the technology and operations necessary to build a positive and robust customer experience for its clients, which are mostly active in healthcare. XDS offers a heady mix of consulting, design thinking, engineering, marketing, and analytics. The company aims to enhance the customer – or patient – experience ‘beyond the pill’ for pharma and healthcare companies.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 19 April 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
As a sports fan – to play, to watch, and to encourage his sometimes reluctant kids to take part – Shai spends a fair amount of his time outside of the office with his head deep in sport. That includes in the data surrounding sport – particularly his favourite, baseball – though he baulks at the real-time application of the Moneyball principles. Particularly if that means taking off a pitcher when he’s only pitched a few balls because the next three at-bat have a great record over him. That’s a bit much.
Shai’s agency, XDS, makes extensive use of data to understand how its clients are performing in their digital marketing channels, learning from data how they could improve performance, and monitoring it for evidence of impact. XDS helps clients enhance analytics, web traffic, search engine optimisation, paid ads – all different components of digital marketing spend.
The company was founded pre-pandemic, but on principles and ways of working – it turns out – that were perfectly suited for a locked-down world. XDS associates are spread across the US and, even when team members travel overseas, Shai observes that “they never miss a beat”. He goes on: “COVID accelerated a lot of things we were doing – on Slack, Teams and so on – and actually created a huge number of opportunities for us and our clients.”
Shai is lukewarm about the potential of mass-availability AI such as ChatGPT to transform marketing, but XDS finds it helpful in suggesting and elaborating copy and content strategy ideas. That said, Shai knows from experience that many businesses are not doing many of the seven critical website tactics he blogged about back in 2016, let alone embracing ChatGPT.
EXTERNAL LINKS The XDS homepage – https://madebyxds.com Shai’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaireichert/ The evergreen, always-relevant post Shai first shared on LinkedIn on 4 January … 2016: “Forget 2016 ‘Digital Trends’ – Here are 7 Website Tactics You Should Focus on Right Now” – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/forget-2016-digital-trends-here-6-website-tactics-you-shai-reichert/ Shai on Twitter – https://twitter.com/thesreichert
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 27 Mar 2024 | What happens when you mash-up the history of bands, films, and politics with the iconography of the London Underground? With Mike Bell of Mike Bell Maps | 00:42:48 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Mike Bell, the first data visualiser to feature in almost 30 episodes of the podcast. Mike is the Founder and Owner of a thriving new business called Mike Bell Maps which describes itself as “Tube maps of bands and other stuff”.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 13 December 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Mike’s had a long career in creating and running tours for bands, a blend of logistical and strategic planning to the power of Excel. “I see tours in Excel!” he told me when we first met. He moved from arena and stadium tours for bands to production of live events for corporates, staging major conferences and exhibitions right around the world.
A combination of the first COVID lockdown – not a good couple of years for anyone in the live entertainment and production business – and a diagnosis of Parkinson’s some years ago convinced Mike he had to “use it or lose it” when it came to his highly creative, data-driven brain. He started out by trying to represent the career of one of his favourite bands, The Fall, using the iconography, lines, and stations on the London Underground.
Once he’d got The Fall right – to the satisfaction of the brand’s vocal and perhaps a little pedantic fanbase online – Mike’s applied his unique and beautiful way of visualising the world of band line-ups and album contributors to many different spheres. These include films and film genres and even – in perhaps my favourite example – disgraced former Prime Minister Johnson’s political career, with a special line for all those lockdown-breaking parties.
Mike’s encouragement to keep mentally active from his neurologist has paid dividends. Though diagnosed several years ago, his “using it” strategy means he’s not yet been medicated for Parkinson’s. A tale almost as extraordinary as the beautiful manifestations of how he thinks that he now sells, both online and from a new shop in my hometown of Lewes, East Sussex.
Towards the end of our discussion, Mike gives one of the most lyrical and elegiac descriptions of his stock-in-trade, the humble spreadsheet. Once asked to describe them to his grandmother, he said: “They’re like boxes floating in the air that you can connect, tied together with data strings, that allow you to magically make things make sense.” Beautiful!
EXTERNAL LINKS Mike Bell Maps – https://mikebellmaps.com Mike’s experiential design business – https://www.freelancevisuals.co.uk 10,000 poems – Mike’s project to take him to 85, writing a poem a day – https://mikebellpoems.com
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 20 Nov 2024 | How can we improve product and brand design with data? With Bill Wallsgrove, Head of Ideas at Brandad | 00:43:17 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, master data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Bill Wallsgrove, Head of Ideas at Brighton-based communications and design agency, Brandad.
Bill has more than 30 years’ experience working in business strategy, brand creation, and communications development. He trained at the London College of Printing and cut his teeth at the legendary design agency, Coley Porter Bell. Bill’s worked in 3D design and packaging design. He is also the man responsible for the creation of the McCoy’s brand of crisps.
Throughout his career, Bill has been keen to share the tools of his trade with succeeding generations, both through academic and industry bodies. These include the Design Council and the University of Brighton, where today he is an honorary lecturer in the school of Art and Media.
Through his wittily-named consultancy, Brandad, Bill today brings his decades of experience to a wide range of businesses and third-sector organisations, with a particular focus on start-ups in his adopted home city of Brighton, the start-up capital of Europe. Indeed, it was one of his start-up clients that named his business for him.
But Bill’s expertise is just as relevant to centuries-old institutions, as evidenced by his data-driven development and activation for the rugby football club, the Barbarians.
Bill’s approach to data-driven design is well captured by his son’s description of his role as “a fashion designer for businesses”. And though he’s into his fourth decade of advising brands on how to stand for something meaningful in their consumers’ lives – and trading as Brandad – his tools and techniques couldn’t be more contemporary.
An early adopter of AI – and particularly Midjourney for “30-second mood boards that might have taken days or weeks before”, provided the prompts are right – Bill advocates the use of artificial intelligence. “It makes the research process more effective,” he says, “it makes our jobs more focused.”
EXTERNAL LINKS
The Brandad homepage – https://brandad.co.uk
Bill’s LinkedIn profile (and Bill is quite prolific on the platform) – https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-wallsgrove1/
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 11 Apr 2023 | How can we clean up space junk and make space sustainable? With GNOSIS chair Katherine Courtney | 00:38:11 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks to Katherine Courtney, Chair of the Steering Board of GNOSIS, the Global Network on Sustainability In Space. Katherine has had a significant career in business, public life, and public service. After a decade in telecoms and communication, Katherine had a series of high profile civil service jobs – at the Home Office and Departments of Work & Pensions and Business, Innovation, & Skills. In 2016, she became Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 28 February 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Having been “in the right place at the right time” to become head of the UK Space Agency in 2016, the final frontier has remained a passion, driver, and employer ever since. From being a STEM (Science Technology Engineering & Mathematics) ambassador in U.K. primary schools, encouraging tweenagers to nurture their passion for space exploration, to heading the Global Network for Sustainability in Space, Katherine very definitely looks up – above the atmosphere and into the great beyond.
The GNOSIS Network brings together industry and academic experts to tackle the leading challenges facing the “man-made night sky” circling our planet, where the number of satellites has mushroomed five-fold to more than 10,000 in just 20 years. Space is becoming more congested, contested, and commercialised, just as the skies within the atmosphere did post-World War II with the explosion of international air travel.
In addition to thousands of satellites, there are also 130 million pieces of uncontrollable debris orbiting Earth, 29,000 of which are sized between an orange and a double-decker bus, all travelling at almost 18,000 mph. From these brief notes, it’s clear that Katherine sees a critical role for data in storytelling – provided the numbers, which she claims to find hard to recall, are put in context.
Katherine tells a fabulous story of work she did while Director of Customer Insight at the U.K. Government’s Department of Work & Pensions. She transformed her 600-strong team of rear-view-mirror-gazing number crunchers into an army of predictive analytics experts. By blending qualitative and quantitative data – as Professor Rusi Jaspal was discussing in the previous episode – and adopting techniques of consumer market research including customer journey mapping and personae development, she massively upped the DWP’s insights game. This work enabled senior colleagues to walk in their customers shoes, to inhabit the lives of benefit claimants.
For Katherine – a dual U.K. / U.S. national – the worst misuse of data in living memory was POTUS45’s refusal to accept the results of the November 2020 election, encouraging and fomenting his supporters to storm the Capitol. And while she’s optimistic that U.S. democratic structures were able to withstand this wilful riding roughshod over what the numbers were saying, it was a salutary moment in the country’s history.
EXTERNAL LINKS Katherine’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kcourtneybis/ Katherine on Twitter – https://twitter.com/kcourtneybis GNOSIS – the Global Network for Sustainability In Space – https://gnosisnetwork.org. Delightfully, gnosis is the Ancient Greek for knowledge GNOSIS on Twitter - https://twitter.com/GNOSIS_Space
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 25 Apr 2023 | How can brands find suitable environments where they can advertise successfully? With DoubleVerify’s Laetitia Zinetti | 00:38:09 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks to Laetitia Zinetti, Regional Vice President for Southern Europe of software company DoubleVerify. The company is on a mission to build a better advertising industry, helping brands to improve the effectiveness of their online ad spend, giving them clarity and confidence in their digital investment.
Sam first met and worked with Laetitia more than a decade ago when she arrived at Ebiquity – the independent media investment analysis business – to run the Paris office. In almost 13 years with the company, she rose to be Ebiquity’s MD for Europe. Before that, Laetitia held senior media, marketing, and communications roles in two global transport businesses, first for the Australian national airline, Qantas, and then for the Nissan Motor Corporation.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on 7 March 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Laetitia describes herself as a typical multi-tasking woman in business, juggling her career, partner, and children, meaning that she always has a “to do” list on the go. Delightfully, on Laetitia’s list, there’s always a blank box, a box that often gets filled but – while it remains blank – promises opportunity and possibility.
In running DoubleVerify in markets across Southern Europe, the stuff of Laetitia’s data life are billions of impressions generated by online ads, tracked and captured by pixels on these ads. The pixels are invisible to users and are used assess who (or what – as still too often, it can often be bots rather than real humans) sees the ads, the context and environments in which the ads are served. A key focus for DoubleVerify is the concept of brand suitability. This goes several steps beyond the now-outdated concept of keywords and blacklists. Suitability is assessed by rigorous and complex semantic analysis of the context alongside which ads are served, and DoubleVerify employs more than 40 expert linguists to assess and advise on suitability.
Time and again during our discussion, Laetitia emphasises the importance of combining artificial or augmented intelligence with irreplaceable human intelligence as the key to cleaning up the digital ad business; of helping brands secure better and ultimately optimal business performance through ever-better marketing investment. This AI x HI combo is best evidenced in DoubleVerify’s quarterly business reviews it creates for its clients: no more than 20 slides, and a human/empathetic narrative supported by genuine, data-driven insights.
With her feet more than firmly under the table, those in digital marketing should keep their eyes on the European conference agenda, where Laetitia will be sharing new research and thought leadership content commissioned by DoubleVerify, during the course of the year. The best place to find out where she’ll be speaking? Laetitia’s LinkedIn profile.
EXTERNAL LINKS Laetitia’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/laetitiazinetti/
Announcement of Laetitia’s appointment on MR Web - https://www.mrweb.com/drno/news34747.htm
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes to answer 12 questions, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 05 Nov 2024 | How can we protect our privacy in the era of Big Tech? With Alice Wallbank, expert data privacy lawyer, Shoosmiths | 00:41:52 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, master data storyteller Sam Knowles is joined by Alice Wallbank, a professional support lawyer for the law firm Shoosmiths, whose clients include Mercedes-Benz, Octopus Ventures, and Travelodge. The company also specialises in working for businesses in both the property and banking sector.
The Financial Times has garlanded Shoosmiths as “one of Europe’s most innovative law firms”, and Alice’s pioneering role at the company – focused on privacy, data, and increasingly AI – is symptomatic of a business in the vanguard of a profession catching up with the broadest implications of technology.
At the start of this year, Alice co-hosted an excellent ‘data insights’ conference – naturally hybrid, both in the room and online – which featured a keynote from Austrian activist and lawyer, Max Schrems. Schrems is famous for his successful campaigns against Facebook (and Meta) for their violations of European data privacy laws.
Before joining Shoosmiths, Alice spent six years as the principal legal counsel for the cyber and information security division of the leading technology business, QinetiQ.
Alice is a passionate advocate of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), describing it “as a good thing for data privacy – without a shadow of a doubt”. Although first introduced in 2016 and in place since 2018, it has its origins in a 1995 directive, designed to protect the rights and freedoms of individuals from Big Tech. Alice believes this showed “remarkable foresight”.
One of the very few people in the UK, Europe, and the world to have read all 90,000 words of the EU’s AI Act, artificial intelligence gives Alice that fabled reaction to trench warfare of “a combination of boredom and terror”. There are huge potential upsides – such as radiography diagnostics – and massive downsides from a system that is “at heart a self-limiting black box” dealing in “biases in, biases out”.
And in a Data Malarkey exclusive, Alice is our first guest in more than 40 episodes … to sing. She dons her white stilettos, dances round her handbag, and turns the clock back to 1984 for a tuneful rendition of Rockwell’s dancefloor smash, Somebody’s Watching Me – for Alice, an insightful foreshadowing of data privacy issues 40 years into the future.
EXTERNAL LINKS
Shoosmiths home page – https://www.shoosmiths.com
Alice’s profile on the Shoosmiths’ site – https://www.shoosmiths.com/people/cvdetails/alice-wallbank
Alice’s article on Ashley Madison – https://www.grip.globalrelay.com/could-the-ashley-madison-data-breach-happen-today/
Another blog from Alice, this time on the environmental credentials of GDPR.
The EU AI Act – all 90,000 words of it – here
Rockwell’s Somebody’s Watching Me from 1984 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YvAYIJSSZY
To find out what kind of data storyteller you are, complete our data storytelling scorecard at https://data-storytelling.scoreapp.com. It takes just two minutes, and we’ll send you your own personalised scorecard which tells you what kind of data storyteller you are.
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| 24 Oct 2023 | “Better than CSI”. How can you use contradictory and incomplete data to solve cold murder cases? With Professor Angela Gallop, CBE | 00:46:25 | |
In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles meets Professor Angela Gallop, CBE, the forensic scientists’ forensic scientist. Over the past four decades, the teams she’s led have solved some of the most complex, difficult, and intransigent cold cases in British criminal history: Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common, Roberto Calvi under Blackfriars Bridge, and Damilola Taylor in Peckham. And perhaps most notoriously of all, Stephen Lawrence, stabbed by a gang of racist thugs on the streets of Eltham.
The details of how Angela and her teams cracked these cases – often bringing pioneering new techniques into play – are recorded in (ahem!) forensic detail in all manner of media. They’re in Angela’s 2019 book When the Dogs Don’t Bark, her 2022 book How to Solve a Crime, and in any number of TV documentaries and specials. Most recently, this included the three-part ITV1 series, Cold Case Forensics, in February of this year. Not to mention Angela’s appearance on the legend that is BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs last November. Links below.
Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on Friday 15 September 2023.
Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.
Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.
Voice over by Samantha Boffin.
Angela tells us how her interest in solving crime was perhaps first kindled by the lurid stories in the now-defunct British tabloid Sunday newspaper, The News of the World, and her love of science was enflamed by an inspirational, sixth-form biology teacher at school “just in the nick of time”. This passion for working things out combined with an intense sense of natural justice saw forensic science take over her life after she joined the Home Office Forensic Science Service in 1974.
As her skills developed and as she founded and scaled some of the country’s first and most successful private forensic science businesses, Angela became an international expert in blood and other bodily fluids – who they could and couldn’t have come from, and the patterns they make and leave behind at crime scenes.
Forensics cover so many different areas in “offences against the person” – bodily fluids, of course, but also weapons, clothing – textiles, fibres, and fragments – toxicology, drugs, footwear, documents, and firearms. Increasingly, criminals leave digital traces of their activity, but the biggest single development in Angela’s long and stellar career has been the rise to prominence of DNA evidence.
In perhaps the most memorable, moving, and intricate part of our discussion, Angela details how – after repeated examination and failures to identify the killers – she and her team unpicked the evidence that led to prosecution in the Stephen Lawrence case.
Angela also maintains that real forensics is much more subtle, time-consuming, interesting, and collegiate than the CSI TV drama series are ever able to portray.
EXTERNAL LINKS Angela’s books https://www.waterstones.com/author/professor-angela-gallop/4009171
A ‘Long Read’ on Angela’s career, from The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/mar/24/queen-of-crime-solving-angela-gallop-forensic-science
Angela on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs from 4 November 2022 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001dmpl
2023 ITV1 series Cold Case Forensics covering how Angela and her team cracked the Rachel Nickell, Lynette White, and Stephen Lawrence cases https://www.itv.com/watch/cold-case-forensics/10a1535/10a1535a0002
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