#AcademicRunPlaylist - 7/22/25

Author

Ben Waber
July 22, 2025

A selfie of me on a bridge over a large, four lane road with a median separating traffic in the late afternoon on a slightly cloudy day. Seven storey and taller apartment buildings line both sides of the street, with a few large skyscrapers looming about a kilometer down the road. I'm a bald, middle-aged, white man with a red beard flecked with white. I'm wearing glasses with thick black rims and a dark blue New Balance running shirt.

I've pretty much resigned myself to running into the evening due to the heat, but I loved running through various downtown neighborhoods while listening to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First were a pair of talks by Lucia Torres Frasele (menopause impact on health and employment) and Anne Katrine Borgbjerg (genetic predictors of cognitive decline and labor market exit) at the National Bureau of Economic Research https://www.youtube.com/live/cI_JxjWNveU?si=dPjEW1FZJM6Fp_T6&t=18737

Next was the first day of the NBER labor studies conference, with standout talks by Matthew Notowidigdo (labor market returns to permanent residency), Conrad Miller (labor market effects of a criminal record), and Jesse Bruhn (long-run effects of early career experience). Highly recommend the whole day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5mY-bXh8Kg

Last was "The Franklin Stove" by Joyce E. Chaplin. This book uses Benjamin Franklin as a lens into larger scientific, political, social, and entrepreneurial trends around heating and climate. Chaplin masterfully demonstrates how Franklin's entrepreneurial journey - from printing, to climate, to developing his now eponymous stove - was influenced by a huge variety of factors. The little ice age and concerns about climate change and deforestation echo throughout, deeply bound up with Franklin's proto-eugenics philosophizing about the inevitable disappearance Native Americans that he regularly interacted with. The effects of other types of stoves and scientific discoveries, not to mention political changes that altered industrial trajectories, play a major role here as well. This is one of the best examples of biographical-driven technological and scientific histories I've ever read. Highly recommend https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374613808/thefranklinstove/