Gregory Zuckerman is a special writer at the Wall Street Journal and the author of five books, including his most recent, The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution.  Greg joined the Journal in 1996 and writes about big financial trades, firms, and personalities.  He’s a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb award, the highest honor in business journalism, and his work has included breaking the stories of the discord between Bill Gross and PIMCO, the London Whale trade, subprime mortgage collapse, and meltdown of hedge fund Amaranth in 2007. Our conversation starts with Greg’s path to journalism, touches on the aftermath of his book The Greatest Trade Ever about John Paulson and the subprime meltdown. We then turn to his recent tome on Jim Simons and Renaissance, including the formation and evolution of the Medallion fund, precarious moments in its history, the human element of a quant shop, differences between Renaissance and other quant competitors, leadership, impacting the world with vast wealth, and why Renaissance has been so special. Learn More Read the Transcript Subscribe to the Capital Allocators Blog or Monthly Mailing List Don't Subscribe, but Let Us Know Who You Are Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides Review past episodes of the Podcast

Dr. Sarel Vorster is a practicing neuro surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, where he performs procedures on the brain and spinal cord. Sarel has a cross-disciplinary interest in the effect of stress and risk on cognition and decision-making.  He attended Yale to study for an MBA at the ripe age of 50 to pursue that interest. Our conversation covers the process of conducting surgery, offering an thorough example in a high stakes field. We discuss communicating with patients, making the decision to operate, preparing, using checklists, assessing outcomes, managing risk in a life or death situation, managing a team, improving skills, coping with stress, and seeing similarities between surgery and finance. Learn More Read the Transcript Subscribe to the Capital Allocators Blog or Monthly Mailing List Don't Subscribe, but Let Us Know Who You Are Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides Review past episodes of the Podcast