#AcademicRunPlaylist - 3/27/25

I got to go out with my youngest on a nice twilight bike ride, and earlier and I was able to get in some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a thought-provoking talk by Pablo Ibáñez Colomo on the prescience of ordoliberalism (aka neo-Brandeisianism) and the challenges to that approach moving forward at the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation (MaCCI) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN1Y1piJgw0

Next was the State of Latino Entrepreneurship summit at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, with a sobering panel on the impact of recent immigration demonization with Julian Castro, Inara S. Tareque, Joe Garcia, and Liz Rebecca Alarcón https://www.youtube.com/live/X4n1bM7k6SU?si=SSRyh7Ny6b7z3n9a&t=2900

Next was a great talk by Nancy L. Rose on the state of the literature on efficiencies in mergers at MaCCI. I would've liked to hear more on the inherently subjective/political nature of market definition, but it's still a good review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSm4qEf9VSQ

Next was a fascinating talk by Giana Eckhardt on the origins of branding in Imperial China on the History of Marketing podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZDseI6ceEY

Next was an excellent talk by Diane Coyle on why economic statistics matter and how the changing nature of the economy makes it necessary to continuously improve our metrics at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2TriI5xw7Q

Next was a compelling talk by Julie Kallini on improving subword tokenization algorithms using deletion mechanisms at the USC Information Sciences Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWyi1_DXvqA

Next was "When Death Becomes Life" by Josh Mezrich. This book is part memoir, part history of 20th century surgical science, part scientific explainer. The memoir portions are the most touching, and the examination of surgical training and practice are illuminating. The historical analyses are interesting but extremely limited, and devolve into hagiography. Particularly egregious is the veneration of the racist, wildly unethical and ultimately unsuccessful first heart transplant surgeon, which is covered more fully in Rob Dunn's book on the topic. Overall, if you skip that part it's an entertaining and informative read https://www.harperacademic.com/book/9780062656216/when-death-becomes-life/

Last was "Against Civility" by Alex Zamalin. This book is a vital, convincing argument that the concept of "civility" in the US only serves to cement current societal structures and hierarchies and that historically only decidedly "uncivil" actions have led to change. This book could stand to be probably twice as long, since while there's a very good history here, the causal links Zamalin posits normally lack anything other than some degree of temporal correlation. It's still quite convincing, but since macro trends aren't explored as quantitatively as I'd like I feel like it's a somewhat limited perspective. Overall, however, this is an extremely important, and unfortunately all the more urgent, perspective that needs to be internalized. Highly recommend https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/645827/against-civility-by-alex-zamalin/