#AcademicRunPlaylist - 5/19/25

This guy surprised me on my short run (luckily not poisonous but this northern watersnake was quite large), and while keeping a close eye out on the rest of my excursion I also listened to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a fascinating conversation with Trang (Mae) Nguyen on the connection between past company towns and modern factory towns on the Business Scholarship Podcast. I particularly liked the global emphasis, especially as these towns are proliferating overseas. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3bWswx8chU

Next was an intriguing talk by Godefroy de Boiscuillé on how contradictory EU digital regulations are inhibiting the development of a unified digital economy at the Amsterdam Law & Technology Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUbhkM0-nJM

Next was an excellent talk by Tamara Broderick on data robustness checks for model development at UW. The method presented here to assess sensitivity to data removal is compelling, and comes with impressive theoretical and empirical results. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldbqv8x7oT8

Next was "Where We Meet the World: The Story of the Senses" by Ashley Ward. This is an incredible tour of not just the biology and mechanics of human senses, but extends into interesting sensing modalities in many organisms to provide an excellent introductory foray into how living things represent and understand the world. I found the chapter on smell especially interesting, mostly because we understand so little about it and what we do sets it significantly apart from other sensing modalities. As a personal aside, I also got a clue from this book to help finally diagnose a family member with a taste-related disability! Highly recommend https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ashley-ward/where-we-meet-the-world/9781541600867/

Last was "The Deep History of Ourselves" by Joseph LeDoux. The second half of this book is essentially a good introduction to neuroscience and an at times compelling examination of the nature of consciousness. LeDoux seems unaware of the necessity of questioning what he defines as the null hypothesis, leading to ludicrous statements like "scientists must not assume animal consciousness without definitive proof." To be fair, most people make this mistake. The entire first half of this book, though, is almost completely unrelated, and is frankly a poor attempt by a non-expert to review evolutionary history. If you skip that the book itself is limited but could be worth reading if you're interested in these topics https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/553910/the-deep-history-of-ourselves-by-joseph-ledoux/