#AcademicRunPlaylist - 9/12/25

I set a blazing pace today, and while running across a few towns I listened to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an interesting talk by Tairan He on scalable sim-to-real learning for humanoid robots at the GRASP. He has great perspective on what actually drives performance in robotic systems Lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRpx2hkap98

Next was a fantastic set of talks at the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics by Keren Ladin (Normothermic Regional Perfusion ethics), Louise King (ethical considerations in uterus transplantation), and Douglas W. Hanto (ethics of brand-dead donors as experimental xenograft recipients). Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8oPjw36RtI

Next was an important slate of talks at HMS Bioethics by Rashi Jhunjhunwala (global surgery priorities), Barnabas Alayande (impact of outmigration on surgical advancements in the Global South), and Brian D. Earp (ethics of child genital modification). Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtDjM6YyXVw

Next was "Consumers' Imperium" by Kristin Hoganson. Many Americans (myself included) take for granted our embrace of products and cuisines from many parts of the world, but prior to the Civil War this was not the case. Hoganson shows in this fascinating history how a combination of technological/commercial changes (steamship travel, telegraphy, department stores, mass manufacturing, etc.) and new cultural norms and organizations drove an increasingly rabid uptake of foreign (or at least purportedly foreign) goods. The Travel Clubs described here were particularly incredible. Highly recommend https://uncpress.org/9780807857939/consumers-imperium/

Next was "The Great Transformation" by Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian. Westad and Jian provide a blow-by-blow account of the evolution of Chinese leadership and political strategy through the postwar decades, focusing on the 50s-80s. They examine this period through an individual lens, following different players and their decisions. Unfortunately there's essentially no macro perspective - broad sweeping statements are mixed in, almost never with quantitative support, and even these statements are quickly abandoned to dive back into palace intrigue. This is still an interesting history, but for those looking to learn about the efficacy of different policies, how the mechanisms of the state evolved, and other concrete perspective will be best served elsewhere https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300267082/the-great-transformation/

Last was "Sex is a Spectrum" by Agustin Fuentes. This book methodically works through the biology, and eventually the bio-cultural nature of, sex. Fuentes first looks across the animal kingdom and our evolutionary past, then dives into human complexity. By including research from a wide variety of fields - anthropology, genetics, physiology, sociology, and more - this book demonstrates how the cultural binary that has been imposed on sex is profoundly unscientific and how that approach has created statistical artifacts to reinforce this view. Fuentes doesn't shy away from challenges that this complexity brings to the modern world, instead advocating for embracing this complexity and rethinking how we have embedded sex in social systems. Highly recommend https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691249414/sex-is-a-spectrum