I had to shovel the driveway three times today, and while muttering under my breath about the meager contributions of my child “helpers” I listened to talks and books for my #AcadaemicRunPlaylist!

First was a great talk by Justene Hill Edwards on the history and legacy of the Freedman's Bank at the Yale MacMillan Center https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIK2wULyuz8

Next was an intriguing talk by Alireza Javadian Sabet on measuring career adaptability at the Network Science Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ0uxYT_r3U

Next was an interesting talk by Gokul Swamy on efficient interactive learning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6Adb862OyI

Next was "Bushido" by Inazo Nitobe. As a work of philosophy, this is a pretty poor book. Nitobe was an economist, not a historian or philosopher, and as such was demonstrably unqualified to write a book about Japanese culture. Because this book became so influential in the West, however, reading this text is a useful window into Japan's engagement with that part of the world post Meiji restoration. To understand the context of this book, however, requires the reader to know about Japan's stature in the world in the 1880s, its recent acquisition of Hokkaido, its designs on Korea and China, and how Japanese academics latched on to the burgeoning eugenics movement. If you have that background you'll be able to appreciate the book and gain a few nuggets from it, otherwise you're better off reading an explainer of the text rather than the primary source https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12096

Next was "Stochastic Discounted Cash Flow" by Lutz Kruschwitz and Andreas Löffler. This book reviews a particular method for valuing firms, one that prioritizes mathematical elegance and the primacy of financial data over all else. This is still the basis of nearly all valuation today, and from that perspective reading this book is important for those who want to get a handle on the fundamentals. There's quite a bit of math here, and a background in basic accounting principles and corporate finance will be helpful. Reading this also makes clear how brittle the field is - valuation is of course an empirical question, not a mathematic one. While the authors do present plausible theories for why one should incorporate certain information into valuations, there's literally zero validation. For those familiar with the field this is unsurprising, but given the growing power of data in every other field it is incredible that this otherwise data-hungry discipline would forget all of those lessons when it comes to their most important calculation https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-37081-7

Next was "Brainwaves" by Cornelius Borck. This is a fascinating look at the history of the EEG - its technological development, initial scientific uses, and how those uses were deeply enmeshed in cultural and scientific currents. I've seen this technology covered a bit in other books, but the depth here is fantastic, with the "unorthodox" scientific aims of Hans Berger and his extremely suspect methods standing out. What was most interesting to me was how the more widespread use of the EEG radically departed from these initial aims, demonstrating both the inability of inventors to accurately predict how technology will influence the world and the importance of independent validation to further appropriate technology use. Highly recommend https://www.routledge.com/Brainwaves-A-Cultural-History-of-Electroencephalography/Borck/p/book/9780367881498

Last was "Architectures of Inequality" by Rachel Verdin. This book combines a good historical overview of the legal push for gender fairness at work since the 1970s in the UK with in-depth interviews of workers in finance. Verdin also brings in some quantitative data on demographics across the British economy, although there's not much within firms. While there's not any grand revelations here, if you're interested in fairness at work or the finance industry this is a great book to pick up. Highly recommend https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/architectures-of-inequality