Little did I know that on my run earlier this week I would run into the reigning box office king! And after recovering from my celebrity encounter I listened to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an engaging conversation with John Newman on new antitrust movement and the current state of the field on the Digital Markets Research Hub https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWssGaJT8Lc

Next was “Japanese Reflections on World War II and the American Occupation” by Edgar Porter and Ran Ying Porter. This is one of the best examples I've seen of how to present firsthand accounts of historical events, with the authors weaving together their incredible interviews from Oita prefecture about the Japanese experience during WWII and the subsequent American occupation with the historical context as it unfolded. What emerges is a far more complicated view not just of WWII and its immediate aftermath and how it was experienced by people living in this corner of Japan, but also of how these experiences still reverberate within some people today - the examples of former soldiers who even seven decades removed from the war still remarking approvingly on children and families killing themselves rather than accept defeat were bone chilling. This is an important historical contribution that should be required reading. Highly recommend. https://www.routledge.com/Japanese-Reflections-on-World-War-II-and-the-American-Occupation/Porter/p/book/9789462989733

Last was “Mobilizing Labour for the Global Coffee Market” by Jan Breman. This is an absolutely devastating takedown of Dutch rule in Indonesia, focusing in on first the Dutch East India Company's and then the Dutch government's management of coffee production on Java. Breman details how a regime that cared only about output with no connection to the laborers that produced it led to horrific working and living conditions that created only hardship for the local population. He also shows how the economic figures often used to put a positive spin on this colonial enterprise are due to the substitution of unaccounted for local production for cheap, likely inferior imports. The book can be a bit repetitive (likely to facilitate academics zeroing in on a particular phenomenon), and the complete absence of any local source material or even more current oral histories is a glaring hole in this volume. While that is almost certainly hard to procure, its absence makes this book great but still in need of more work to provide a truly holistic perspective. Highly recommend https://www.routledge.com/Mobilizing-Labour-for-the-Global-Coffee-Market-Profits-From-an-Unfree-Work-Regime-in-Colonial-Java/Breman/p/book/9781041182962