#AcademicRunPlaylist - 4/18/25

The kids had off today, which made it a great day to go down to Rhode Island and enjoy the sights. On the drive I was also able to listen to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an intriguing talk by Andrew Rhodes on modeling tradeoffs in digital ecosystems for data regulation at the Toulouse School of Economics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly9eP1amrRA

Next was a fascinating talk by Joyce Chaplin on the development and diffusion of the Franklin Stove at Brown University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3VIKgF2AIU

Next was a great talk by Andrew Rouditchenko on integrating visual features into speech models at the MIT Embodied Intelligence seminar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdaCOqHm2K8

Next was an engaging conversation with Jessica Erickson on the state of small-business litigation on the Business Scholarship Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlxvBM08Y6k

Next was an interesting talk by Saurabh Bhati on smaller, stronger, and duration-scalable audio classifiers at the MIT Embodied Intelligence seminar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTzSmV6C9tc

Next was "Shopping All the Way to the Woods" by Rachel Gross. This book is an incredible century-spanning examination of the origins, development, and present of the outdoor goods industry. From the late 19th century burgeoning fascination of the elite with the outdoors to the boom in surplus WW2 goods to the emergence of a modern, science-infused industry, Gross demonstrates how a confluence of factors led to the present, with an unsurprising level of racism throughout. As a personal aside I loved the section on Grace Hudowalski, who I corresponded with when I became a 46er! Highly recommend https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300270082/shopping-all-the-way-to-the-woods/

Last was "Offshore" by Brooke Harrington, who Harrington takes us deep into the offshore wealth industry, combining a fantastic ethnographic examination (with a shoutout to my thesis reader John Van Maanen!) with macro data on offshore wealth havens to paint a damning picture of a global welfare-reducing complex. Harrington clearly contrasts the current system with capitalism and open markets, arguing convincingly that the current structure is designed to eliminate risk for the ultra wealthy while externalizing their costs to the rest of society. I found the sections detailing developments in Panama, the Cook Islands, and other wealth havens particularly illuminating. Highly recommend https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324064947