How collaboration arrises and why it fails

How collaboration arrises and why it fails

Prof. Dr. Paul F.M.J. Verschure

Episodes 120
Avg. Duration 1h 1m
Activity Dormant
Since Mar 2026
Latest Episode May 2026

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Hourly
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Episodic
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About This Podcast

Both the triumphs of humanity and its most evil deeds have resulted from collaboration. In a time where humanity is required to aspire to the former and minimize the latter, the question arises of how collaboration arises and why it fails. Surprisingly, this phenomenon, so central to who we are, is not well understood. Hence, a collaborative effort is required to understand collaboration in its full biological, psychological, sociological, cultural, and economic complexity and to translate this understanding into operational impact. This series of podcasts is one step toward achieving these complementary goals. The Collaboration Podcast presents interviews with people who are central orchestrators of collaboration in various domains including business, government, science, art, health, sustainability, and the military. The discussions were conducted by Prof. Dr. Paul F.M.J. Verschure and members of the Program Advisory Committee of the Ernst Strungmann Forum on Collaboration (https://www.esforum.de/forums/ESF32_Collaboration.html) during 2021 and had the goal to sketch a map of opportunities, challenges, and obstacles in human collaboration. The forum took place in May 2022, and now we would like to share this series of interviews with a broader audience. The full report of the Forum will be published in 2023 by MIT Press. The podcast was produced by the Convergent Science Network (https://www.convergentsciencenetwork.org/). Context: The stability of social systems depends critically on realizing sustainable methods of “collaboration,” yet how and by which means collaboration is achieved is not clearly understood; neither are the conditions or processes that lead to its breakdown or failure. Collaboration can be understood as cooperation between agents toward mutually constructed goals. Part of the reason for our lack of understanding is that the phenomenon of collaboration is, by nature, a highly multidisciplinary problem, and effective research into its complexities has been difficult to achieve across the broad range of scientific and technical disciplines involved. The need for a fundamental understanding of collaboration, however, has become increasingly important. Not only does humankind demand answers as it attempts to address critical challenges at multiple scales (e.g., climate change, migration, enhanced automation, social and economic inequality), but ever-increasing technological and economic means of interconnecting people and societies are disrupting long-established, familiar patterns of how we interact. Radical technological changes that are ongoing have the potential to reshape collaboration in ways that are currently hard to predict or influence (e.g., by altering configurations in interaction, information creation, and modes of communication). On one hand, such changes could disrupt hitherto stable forms of collaboration by affecting critical communication channels and traditional roles, as can be observed in the rapidly changing patterns in governance, commerce, and social interaction. Conversely, technology could lead to the emergence of novel, successful forms of collaboration that deviate from traditional “hierarchical” architectures. Evidence of this can be seen in areas as diverse as highly automated manufacturing plants, the open science movement, collaborative software repositories, user-centered services, and the sharing of economy-based modes of organization. Without a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms, processes, and boundary conditions of collaboration, it is not possible to evaluate or predict which of these possible scenarios are sustainable or even plausible. The Forum “How Collaboration Arises and Why it Fails” (May 8–13, 2022, Location: Frankfurt am Main, Germany) Chairs: Andreas Roepstorff and Paul Verschure Program Advisory Committee: Jenna Bednar, Julia R. Lupp, Bhavani R. Rao , Andreas Roepstorff, Ferdinand von Siemens, and Paul Verschure

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Recent Episodes

S2025E1 Jonathan Whitlock on markerless motion capture and posterior parietal cortex

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How do you track what an animal's brain is doing when the animal itself is moving through space in complex ways? Neuroscientist Jonathan Whitlock from NTNU Trondheim describes the technical odyssey…

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S2025E3 Zoltan Molnar on subplate neurons and cortical development

May 05, 2026 1h 10m Transcript

What happens to the temporary scaffolding cells that help build the brain during development, and could their remnants explain cognitive disorders? Neuroscientist Zoltan Molnar from the University of…

S2022E1 Ernst Numann on rule of law and judicial collaboration

Mar 30, 2026 1h 6m Transcript

How do adversarial lawyers, disagreeing judges, and competing branches of government collaborate to produce justice? Ernst Numann, recently retired Vice President of the Dutch Supreme Court, reveals…

S2021E24 Swami Shantamritananda Puri on spiritual collaboration and humanitarian work

Mar 30, 2026 1h 16m Transcript

From a hut on the Arabian Sea to building a 1,500-bed hospital and 100,000 houses for the underserved , Swami Shantamritananda Puri's journey through monastic life, disaster relief, and humanitarian…

S2021E23 Heidi Keller on cross-cultural psychology and child development

Mar 30, 2026 1h 4m Transcript

What if everything we think we know about collaboration is based on only 5% of the world's population? Developmental psychologist Heidi Keller challenges Western assumptions about teamwork,…

S2021E22 Connie Hedegaard on climate policy and EU politics

Mar 30, 2026 1h 2m Transcript

How do you push 27 EU member states toward a single climate target when every country has different interests? Former EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard reveals the invisible mechanics of…

S2021E21 Jonatas Manzolli on music and mathematics and algorithmic composition

Mar 30, 2026 1h 14m Transcript

Can mathematics compose music? Can robots create art that is genuinely good for people? Brazilian mathematician and composer Jonatas Manzolli explores the collision between understanding and…

S2021E20 Sijbrand de Jong on CERN and particle physics

Mar 30, 2026 1h 4m Transcript

What does it take to make a thousand full professors, each king of their own empire, work together as equals? Sijbrand de Jong, former president of the CERN Council, reveals how the world's largest…

S2021E19 Margaret Levi on institutional design and communities of fate

Mar 30, 2026 1h 8m Transcript

Why do some people sacrifice their income, freedom, or even their lives for strangers who can never repay them? Political scientist Margaret Levi unpacks the concept of "communities of fate" and…

S2021E18 Rafael Malpica-Padilla on religious collaboration and Lutheran Church

Mar 30, 2026 1h 8m Transcript

What happens when a global religious organization operating in 90 countries tries to practice genuine collaboration instead of top-down mission work? Rafael Malpica-Padilla, executive director of the…

S2021E17 Nandita Chaudhary on family dynamics and cultural psychology

Mar 30, 2026 59m Transcript

What can Indian family dynamics teach us about collaboration at every scale? Developmental psychologist Nandita Chaudhary reveals why affection, trust, and empathic leadership are the invisible…

S2021E16 Edward Slingerland on religion and collaboration and alcohol and society

Mar 30, 2026 1h 11m Transcript

Why did ancient civilizations bury 20% of their GDP in tombs and turn half their grain into beer? Edward Slingerland, scholar of Chinese philosophy and cognitive science of religion, argues that…

S2021E15 Annie Sparrow on global health and public health

Mar 30, 2026 1h 12m Transcript

On an island in eastern Congo, 200,000 people live with a life expectancy of 26 years and half a dozen doctors. Pediatrician and public health scholar Annie Sparrow works in places like this, and in…

S2021E14 Meg Jones on United Nations and international collaboration

Mar 30, 2026 59m Transcript

From Doctors Without Borders to the United Nations to Fairtrade International , what does a career spent inside the world's largest collaborative institutions reveal about why global cooperation…

S2021E13 Rob van der Laarse on european collaboration and cultural heritage

Mar 30, 2026 1h 26m Transcript

Europe's greatest collaborative achievement , transforming a war-devastated continent into one of the world's richest regions , is now at risk because cooperation has replaced genuine collaboration.…

S2021E12 Deepa Narayan on power and love and global development

Mar 30, 2026 1h Transcript

What if the missing ingredient in every failed development project, broken institution, and dysfunctional team is not better rules but love? Deepa Narayan, who spent 35 years working on global…

S2021E11 Larry Kramer on philanthropy and Hewlett Foundation

Mar 30, 2026 59m Transcript

A foundation giving away $600 million a year still cannot solve climate change alone. Larry Kramer, president of the Hewlett Foundation, explains why philanthropy's greatest challenge is not funding…

S2021E10 Naina Agrawal-Hardin on sunrise movement and climate activism

Mar 30, 2026 1h 18m Transcript

How does a decentralized youth movement with 500 local hubs coordinate climate action at the national level without losing its grassroots soul? Naina Agrawal-Hardin, organizer with the Sunrise…

S2021E9 Robert Axelrod on game theory and prisoner's dilemma

Mar 30, 2026 1h 2m Transcript

What do cancer cells, cyber warfare, and the prisoner's dilemma have in common? They all reveal how collaboration really works , and why it breaks down. Listen to political scientist Robert Axelrod…

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How collaboration arrises and why it fails has published 120 episodes since March 2026, covering topics in Business, Science.

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