After some meetings today I visited the newly-renovated Edo-Tokyo Museum, and after marveling at this soba proto-food truck (the vendor would pick up the whole thing on their shoulders and carry it to different locations) I listened to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an intriguing talk by Masao Fukui on firm wage dynamics at NBER https://www.youtube.com/live/eH5iqdgcFAw?si=9LojZssNQd1QkbuI&t=2256

Last was “Humans in Shackles” by Ana Lucia Araujo. Araujo has delivered an essential, boundary-spanning history of the Atlantic slave trade, masterfully integrating historical data from the Americas, Africa, and Europe to provide one of the first truly complete accountings of this stain on human history. The approach taken here is mostly comparative (importantly, North America is considered as but one of a number of regions that are examined) and qualitative, centering the experiences of enslaved people across the centuries and in a wide variety of geographies. There is some quantitative data included to give some more perspective on the prevalence of certain practices, but it's a bit lighter on that kind of analysis than I'd like (to be fair, including that would likely stretch the book past 1000 pages and dilute the focus, so I understand the choice here). As one of the foundational, barbaric institutions of the modern Americas, and given the importance of reckoning with its continuing aftereffects today, this book on slavery demands to be read. Highly recommend https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo229867701.html