Introducing The Unlearn Project

The Unlearn Project is about changing common sense. The way the world works has changed. Things you thought you knew like automation will make our work easier, music is something to listen to, large companies can’t innovate, or data is the new oil are no longer true. Hosts Sandra Peter and Kai Riem…

Why the unlearn project, and computers

We set out to unlearn old wisdoms and discover new ones, starting with computers. When the world changes, we also need to change our common sense. And as it turns out we live in a time when lots of things change, and many of them have to do with technology. Computing is now everywhere. But it didn’…

Why automation makes your job harder: unlearn automation

We discuss why it’s no longer true that automation and AI will make all our jobs easier. While automation might reduce the amount of work available to humans and leads to job losses, at least the remaining work will be of higher quality. This common wisdom has always underpinned the idea of automat…

Why music is no longer just for listening: unlearn music

We discuss how the way we engage with music is fundamentally changing - from something we just listen to, to something we create with. On platforms like TikTok, music is becoming a material for creation, for self-expression, for storytelling. And this very real shift in what people do with music, h…

Extra: a music deep dive

In this extra episode, we take a deep dive into the history of the music industry. We go down rabbit holes that take us from Victorian England to Sydney harbour in the 70s and then on to the hip hop culture of New York in the 80s. We trace the music industry as it resisted and adapted to the rise o…

Coming soon… unlearn retirement

Coming soon… we look at retiring retirement. We talk with a leading mental health researcher, an economist, a former Prime Minister, Nobel Prize winners, a linguist, and an octogenarian human computer. Stay tuned in 2022 for more episodes of The Unlearn Project, our podcast about changing common s…

Why you should never retire: unlearn retirement

We discuss why collecting that gold watch and retiring at 65 might not be the best thing and why it’s time to change the retirement narrative. A lot has changed since Otto von Bismark invented retirement in 1883: we live much longer, more and more of us do knowledge work, and the latest research s…