#AcademicRunPlaylist - 5/7/25

Author

Ben Waber
May 07, 2025

A selfie of me in front of a paved path through a forest on a bright, sunny day. On the right of the path is a bit of grass, a newly planted tree, and a black, old-fashioned street lamp that comes to a curl at the top, with the lantern hanging from the curl. I'm a bald, middle-aged, white man with a red beard flecked with white. I'm wearing black sunglasses and a dark blue running shirt.

I had to take the car to the shop, but at least while they were fixing it up I got to go on a run and listen to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a fascinating talk by John Pendry on the physics behind metamaterials at the Blavatnik School of Government. This is an accessible talk, and Pendry explains the theoretical foundations and intuition for the development of metamaterials, invisibility cloaks (!), and more. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dPFmvfXQCI

Next was an amazing conversation between Ann Lipton and Michael Levin on the legality of Elon Musk's notoriously wrong/false projections about TSLA's business on the Shareholder Primacy podcast. Highly recommend https://youtu.be/ceJwzPc2RQ0?si=cZFkpQNXxGFS7bX4

Last was "The Age of Revolution" by Eric Hobsbawm. I was hoping this book would focus mostly on the industrial revolution, and while the early and later chapters do hone in on that topic most of the book is a play-by-play of European history from ~1789 to ~1848. You can also tell that this was written in the 60s - lots of problematic statements/phrasing. If you can get over that this book gives useful insight into the period that's hard to find elsewhere. Highly recommend https://files.libcom.org/files/Eric%20Hobsbawm%20-%20Age%20Of%20Revolution%201789%20-1848.pdf