The Institute of Applied Metatheory (IAM) is revolutionizing how we tackle global challenges by applying integrative metatheories—holistic frameworks that unify knowledge across disciplines. In this episode, Robb Smith and Josh Leonard reflect on IAM’s 2024 accomplishments and share an inspiring vision for 2025, highlighting leadership, collaboration, and storytelling as keys to driving transformational change.
SALT for Climate: Redefining Urgency and Transformation in Climate Leadership
Josh Leonard, Lisa Gibson and Gail HochachkaJosh Leonard sits down with Gail Hochachka and Lisa Gibson, leaders of the SALT for Climate initiative, to explore their pioneering approach to climate action. They discuss the often-overlooked psychological and social dimensions of climate work, share insights from their work on collective sensemaking and leadership training, and explain why a focus on human dynamics may be the missing piece in our response to the climate crisis.
Introducing the Cultural Complexity Index
Brendan Graham Dempsey, Robb Smith and Josh LeonardThe Institute of Applied Metatheory recently chose to organize, fund and incubate a significant new Applied Metatheory Initiative called the Cultural Complexity Index, which we see as holding the potential to act as a high-leverage project for long-term social emancipation.
How America Got Here: A 50 Year Journey to Polarization
Robb Smith and Josh LeonardRobb Smith and Josh Leonard look at the deep structures — in the form of actual events, policies and decisions between 1970 and 2024 — that radically shifted America from one form of system “regime” and associated equilibrium, that of relative national coherence in the early 1970s, into a new, radically- and qualitatively-different regime and equilibrium of extreme polarized decoherence of 2024.
Transforming Law Enforcement: Integral Policing Roundtable
Chris Orrey, Ryan Johansen, Gestur Palmason and Josh LeonardJosh Leonard hosts three leading experts in the field of integral policing to explore how applying big-picture, integrative frameworks could help address the complex challenges facing modern law enforcement.
IAM: Organizing Big Pictures For The Transformation Age
Robb Smith and Josh LeonardJosh Leonard and Robb Smith discuss the founding and evolution of the Institute of Applied Metatheory (IAM). They explore the urgent need for an organization that networks and supports scholar-practitioners in applying integrative metatheory to complex 21st-century challenges. The conversation reflects on the integral movement’s stages and challenges, societal shifts necessitating IAM’s emergence, and the four foundational hypotheses underpinning its work.