Frontier Academy Book Club

Our coverage of Charles’ Duhigg’s Smarter Faster Better continues—this time from an altitude of 40,000 feet. Commercial airline pilots are the subject of an accumulating stack of human behavior research. So we decided to interview one. Host Ryan Mauter speaks with pilot Katina Malliarakis about her experience up in the air, and how it connects to research on human performance. Pilots manage both the complexities of actual flight and the demands of a varied team, so there’s plenty of opportunity for human error. And even when things go wrong, the black box doesn’t hold all the answers; the learned wisdom of the people who execute flight plans is crucial for improving aviation industry performance and safety. Malliarakis identifies one key to a productive and good life, and it's one that you wouldn't expect: we must care about each other, deeply, every day. It just so happens that Duhigg's research points to the same thing.