In this episode of Danger Mouth, hosts Darrell Mann, Mike Conroy, and Shana Finnegan sit down with Dr. Gopichand (Gopi) Katragadda, a man who might just be one of the last true polymaths on the planet. From his high-octane career as the CTO of the Tata Group and Managing Director at GE’s Jack Welch Research Center to his current ventures in AI and theater, Gopi shares a masterclass on balancing the rigor of engineering with the fluidity of the arts.

A delicious appetiser not to be missed!

This episode of Danger Mouth centres on a conversation with Olly Hawes, a portfolio artist, actor and writer whose work probes the limits of human connection and the points where society strains. It moves easily between the physical and the reflective, from Ollie’s account of being accidentally stabbed on stage during a production of Julius Caesar to a broader examination of craft, activism and the place of AI in artistic practice.

At the core is a simple rule he lives by and teaches his children: look after yourself and look after other people. From that starting point the discussion opens out.

Ollie describes the turning point that followed a near fatal incident in Edinburgh, an event that reshaped his life, led to marriage and fixed his commitment to storytelling. The group explores his instinct for working across opposites, arguing that tension rather than coherence often produces the most interesting art and the most effective solutions in business.

They also examine the encroachment of AI into creative work. Ollie reflects on using a large language model to help secure Arts Council funding, while questioning what may be lost if technology begins to erode the presence and immediacy that give live performance its force.

Running through it all is the practical reality of making a life in the arts. Money is uncertain, purpose is not. Ollie speaks plainly about the pressure to remain creatively alive, not just for himself but for the people who come after.

It is a conversation that holds together injury and humour, principle and improvisation. At its centre is a working artist who has come close to the edge and decided to keep going, with intent.

This is an episode of the Danger Mouth podcast, hosted by Darrell Mann, Mike Conroy, and Shauna, featuring Swedish guest Per Lindstedt, co-author of The Value Model.

The Value Model defines value as a ratio — satisfaction of customer needs divided by use of customer resources. Per breaks this into 6 strategic levers: three to increase satisfaction (solve an undiscovered problem, improve performance, enhance feelings/experience) and three to reduce resource consumption (time, money, effort). The iPhone is used throughout as the prime example of a product with a sky-high ratio — and the App Store as an accidental masterstroke that Jobs initially resisted.

The conversation broadens into organisational innovation and S-curves: why companies near the peak of one S-curve become complacent, why very few (perhaps 10% in Europe) survive the jump to the next, and whether it's sometimes healthier to simply let companies die. Nokia's inability to abandon its Symbian OS is the cautionary tale; a Chinese manufacturer pivoting from bread-makers to LEDs in eight weeks is the counter-example.

The final third focuses on Per's AI tool (built using Lovable), which takes messy requirement specifications and sorts them into five information domains — customers, needs, functions, solutions, and processes — flagging what's actually a customer need versus a disguised technical solution. This is positioned as a scalable version of the consultancy work Per spent decades doing manually.