#AcademicRunPlaylist - 11/18/25

It was mostly a back-to-back zoom meeting day for me, and while taking a breather in between I listened to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a fantastic discussion with David Foster and Lenore Palladino on worker representation on corporate boards on the Power At Work podcast. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-XgwuqSMCk

Next was a great talk by François Gerard on mitigating the consequences of job loss in low-income countries at CEPR - Centre for Economic Policy Research https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kupVO3oxPU

Next was the CU Center for Bioethics and Humanities' conference on research ethics and novel biotechnologies. I particularly liked the talks by Rachel Topazian (ethics of ingestible electroceuticals) and Cresten Mansfeldt (ethics of wastewater surveillance) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7Uz7Sw-n4Y

Next was "Marking Modern Times" by Alexis McCrossen. This book examines how people, companies, and governments used timekeeping technology from the early 1800s to the early 1900s. There is of course a review of local time and how the advent of the railroad forced the creation of time zones, but also fascinating details about the role of jewelers and other professions as official timekeepers through the updating of large public clocks. The role of the federal government in paying private companies to build and display large clocks on their buildings was also incredible. While this technology is something we take for granted now, it's instructive to study the rollout and spotty evolution of a truly foundational technology. Highly recommend https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo14942177.html

Last was "Hearing Happiness" by Jaipreet Virdi. Virdi brilliantly illustrates the fraught history of deafness "cures" throughout the centuries, showing how quack cures seamlessly blended with science, the ableism and techno-solutionism underlying these approaches, and using his own experience as a deaf person to give a personal look at the issues enmeshed with these historical developments. This book pulls triple duty, hitting the economic, scientific, and sociological implications of this history, and Virdi's writing makes this an absolute page-turner. I particularly liked the review of technology hype-driven "cures," as these examples serve as great analogues for technologies today. Highly recommend https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo48885494.html