#AcademicRunPlaylist - 1/8/26

Luckily today I had a bit of time to go out for a shorter run to enjoy the scenery and escape doomscrolling while listening to talks and books for my #AcademicRunPlaylist

First was an engaging discussion with Atinuke (Tinu) Adediran on how corporate statements and disclosures constrain racial progress on the Business Scholarship Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KakgDGVDpvo

Next was "Patent Law: An Open-Access Casebook" by Sarah Fackrell, Andres Sawicki, and Sarah Rajec. This is a great casebook on the US patent system, including not only the cases themselves but also analysis of broader issues that those cases illuminate. If you've taken a patent law course or read a book on patent law you'll probably already be familiar with many of these cases (Baffles! Duke physics BEEF! etc.), but for a non-expert such as myself it was still helpful to revisit those cases and strengthen my understanding of the underlying concepts. Even if you aren't a sicko like me who reads this cover to cover, you'll still get a ton out of this (free!) book if you're at all interested in patents. Highly recommend https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5864882

Last was "The Arrogant Ape" by Christine Webb. Webb delivers a compelling interrogation of how scientists study and conceptualize the living world, convincingly demonstrating that our socially reinforced idea of human exceptionalism has warped that pursuit. This book is strongest when Webb builds on her expertise as a primatologist and shows how impoverished scientific studies of animals are, with supposedly "objective" conditions demonstrably creating unnatural data as well as often being morally reprehensible. The sections on bringing in indigenous knowledge and extending moral concerns to all animals are also excellent. Webb's critique of history as anthropocentric, however, misunderstands what historians actually do, and her own attempt at a historical investigation of the rise of human exceptionalism is lacking. That's a relatively minor gripe, however, and the book overall is a must read. Highly recommend https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/717436/the-arrogant-ape-by-christine-webb/