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People from Hartlepool UK are known colloquially as ‘monkey hangers’ – a moniker that stems from the Napoleonic Wars of the 1800s. But this story is about a larrikin mascot in a monkey suit making mayor and breaking records…

Shawn and Mark bring these disparate (but related) stories together to illustrate some business points around seizing the day, fact being stranger than fiction, and judging books by their covers.

Australian champion swimmer Kieren Perkins barely qualified for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and only just made the final for the 1500 metre event. Shawn and Mark discuss how extraordinary ‘turn-arounds’, under promising and over delivering, and reduced expectations of self can sometimes lead to world class moments.

Michigan University researchers sought to understand the ‘stickiness’ of stories – does factual or emotionally charged information provided ‘after the fact’ change how a story is told or re-told? Shawn and Mark discuss how a ‘better story’ might usurp an prevailing story (sometimes regardless of the truth).

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that …

Bird watcher and engineer Eiji Nakatsu sped up and made Japan’s bullet trains quieter by studying the kingfisher’s beak.

Shawn and Mark stick their noses into how a business might use this story to encourage innovation through biomimicry.