# Challenger Cities EP91: Expanding Your Luck Surface Area with Matt Ballantine

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/challenger-cities-6959558/challenger-cities-ep91-expanding-your-luck-surface-area-with-matt-ballantine.md
Podcast: [Challenger Cities](https://stenobird.com/podcast/challenger-cities-6959558)
Published: 2026-07-02T19:59:08+00:00
Episode link: https://rss.com/podcasts/challengercitytoronto/2960340
Audio file: https://content.rss.com/episodes/278784/2960340/challengercitytoronto/2026_07_02_19_54_05_0e5f39c9-803b-4743-9b90-8ce3b76ea306.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/challenger-cities-6959558/episodes/challenger-cities-ep91-expanding-your-luck-surface-area-with-matt-ballantine
Duration seconds: 2851

## Resource

In this spirit of being the world's most eclectic podcast about cities and places, this episode is a bit random. Which is good, because it's with Matt Ballantine and he's written a book, called Random with Nick Drage. Some might say 120 short stories that can be shuffled into any order isn't actually a book, but I read it as one, and it's excellent. Plus many of the stories are about cities, places and people in them. In a world where we spend so much time filtering out opportunities for luck, serendipity or just the unplanned ... this is a conversation that is very important for dragging people that feel everything can be perfectly zoned or planned, back into the real world.

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## Transcript

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