#AcademicRunPlaylist - 4/9/25

It was a sunny but chilly day, and before some afternoon calls I was able to go out on a nice run while listening to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an interesting talk by Apoorv Gupta on how age impacts mobile payment adoption at the Workshop on Entrepreneurial Finance and Innovation (WEFI) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxOgRenRdFU

Next was a fantastic discussion between friends of the playlist Ann Lipton and Michael Levin on the arc of the Twitter securities lawsuit against its new owner and a compelling idea on investors knowingly opting into bad corporate governance on the Shareholder Primacy podcast. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N79sLSz26gI

Next was a thought-provoking talk by Katja Kisseleva-Scherenberger on the effects of taking informal startup funding from family at WEFI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQeaaOki69g

Next was a great talk by Cyan DeVeaux on how avatar representation in VR shapes user psychological experience at BayCHI https://www.youtube.com/live/NY3biJWk5m4?si=6DQb9dmxucdYy4fW&t=1487

Last was an amazing talk by Jennifer Kao on the commercial and usage effects of better patient representation in clinical trials at WEFI. Kao presents an elegant natural experiment to show how a federal government policy (remember when we had expert-informed, deliberate policy?) change encouraged more elderly participation in clinical trials with extremely positive results. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYw_kXrMlzo

Next was "The Black Box" by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. If you've read other African American studies books, or any of Gates' other books, the first 80% of this book will mostly be review. It's still a good overview of Black literary and cultural history, but not too much that's new. Then you get to the conclusion chapter. Wow. Gates methodically dissects modern revisionist falsehoods about history, exposing how a small group of slaveholders and their descendants engaged in a systematic effort to rewrite US history post Reconstruction. He then moves to current efforts to censor texts that critically evaluate these histories. Highly recommend https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/678843/the-black-box-by-henry-louis-gates-jr/

Next was "Right Kind of Wrong" by Amy Edmondson. This book covers a lot of fundamental social psychology research and a number of compelling cases to demonstrate the different types and effects of failure. There's not a lot of new data here, and while the mostly case-based approach makes for good storytelling I feel like one could probably get the core of this book from one of the HBR pieces Edmondson has written. If you want a wide variety of examples to draw from to bring to a discussion around the importance of failing effectively, though, this book will serve you well https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Right-Kind-of-Wrong/Amy-C-Edmondson/9781982195069

Last was "The Price for Their Pound of Flesh" by Daina Ramey Berry. This book is not an easy read, deeply engaging with the darkest period of US history and the development of economies and a society built on human commodification across the lifespan. Following that lifespan, starting at pregnancy and ending in the corpse trade that persisted into the late 1800s, Berry combines chilling accounts with macro analyses to demonstrate the depths of these practices. This is an essential American history. Highly recommend https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/538529/the-price-for-their-pound-of-flesh-by-daina-ramey-berry/