J. Eric Oliver
J. Eric Oliver is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and host of the Knowing with Eric Oliver podcast. He has published six books, including Fat Politics: The Hidden Sources of America’s Obesity Epidemic, The Paradoxes of Segregation, and Enchanted America: How Intuition and Reason Divide Our Politics. His newest book is How to Know Your Self: The Art and Science of Discovering Who You Really Are.
Eric grew up in Houston, Texas. He got his B.A. from Wesleyan University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to coming to Chicago, he taught at Princeton University, was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at Yale, and was awarded a CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation. He has written on local and suburban politics, how people’s racial environments affect their opinions, why liberals and conservatives choose different baby names, and the sources of populism and conspiracy theories in American politics. At Chicago, he teaches courses on topics ranging from the evolution of consciousness to the impact of myth and symbol in American politics to the politics of AI.
Eric is married to the writer and poet Thea Goodman. They have two children, Martin and Ethan, and a dog Aesop.
851: J. Eric Oliver: How to Know Yourself
This podcast is about leadership first and foremost, applied to sustainability. Most of the time when people hear or read “sustainability,” that concept overrides everything else. They forget or don’t notice else, but here, in this podcast it comes second. If you haven’t developed the social and emotional skills to lead based on intrinsic motivation, if you try to convince, cajole, coerce, or seek compliance, you’ll probably influence people to resist and oppose you and what you’re promoting.
I see Eric’s book, How to Know Your Self (note the two words: “your” and “self”) is a book on self awareness based on an interactive course on self awareness. I’ve never heard an experience leader suggest that lower self awareness helps and I’ve heard plenty say it does.
Since we all pollute and deplete, which hurts people, we know we’re violating our values, which tends to evoke emotions we don’t like. We hide them from ourselves. We lower our self awareness. We could use tools to increase our self awareness.
Eric’s book delivers. We talk about how the book came to be, his course, how it differs from regular classes, and what people get out of it. I hope you listen, read the book, use it to increase your self awareness, and use that increase to lead yourself and others more effectively.