#AcademicRunPlaylist - 7/29/25

It was ridiculously hot today, but I headed out in the early evening and got in a decent run and listened to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a thought-provoking talk by John Darrel Van Horn on statistics considerations for modeling and inference in neuroimaging at the University of Washington eScience Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuccSHg04dQ

Next was a great panel on antitrust in labor markets, with a focus on Türkiye, at the GW Competition & Innovation Lab with Dr. Eda Sahin-Sengul, Mustafa Ayna, Kate Newman, and Nezir Furkan Kıran https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF3EMadizEg

Next was an amazing talk by Russell Poldrack on reproducibility in cognitive neuroscience at the UW eScience Institute. Poldrack combines incisive statistical commentary with devastating analyses and experiments demonstrating the extremely brittle nature of neuroscience results, moving on to suggest approaches to improve the field. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haNjW58rbWM

Next was an incredible talk by Anita Chan on eugenics in Big Tech at the UCSD Design Lab. Chan convincingly demonstrates the connection from the eugenics and anti-immigration movements to today and approaches to resist. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-Sxm3AJmZg

Next was an excellent talk by Caterina Gratton on "precision" in fMRI at the UW eScience Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2TbMfJrwi4

Last was "American Judaism: A History" by Jonathan Sarna. As a disclaimer, I'm an American Jew, so this book was deeply personal for me and I'm definitely biased in my evaluation of it. That being said, this book is a deep, focused work of scholarship on the evolution of Judaism from the colonial period to the early 21st century that provides profound insight on the causes of the modern fault lines of modern American Jewish religious life. Importantly this book assumes no background in Judaism, which for me was annoying but if you're not knowledgeable about Judaism will be extremely helpful.

Despite being raised Jewish in the US I was unaware of why the different flavors of modern American Judaism exist and how my family likely wound up in its current state, but Sarna nicely explains how the Sephardic model was displaced by a Protestant-influenced Ashkenazi model that looks extremely like modern American synagogues, followed by its fragmentation into the current Reconstruction/Reform/Conservative/Orthodox continuum. I was particularly interested in how little Israel figured into American Jewish identity through the 50s, only to become more central due to the concerted political effort of a small group of US Zionists and Israelis. Overall, this is an eye-opening look at one of America’s oldest, most visible religious minorities. Highly recommend https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300190397/american-judaism/