#AcademicRunPlaylist - 9/15/25

I had a bit of a crazy day, but I still managed to go for a nice run and listen to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an incredible talk by Moira Dillon on interrogating human spatial and social cognition at the Kempner Institute at Harvard University. Using ingenious studies with infants, children, and adults across cultures Dillon masterfully characterizes how we think about space and social agents. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcgOj1wZVkg

Next was an intriguing talk by Arvind Narayanan on why chatbot systems will likely get worse over time at the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DX8hce5Xzk

Next was an interesting talk by Bridget Smart introducing Separable Markov models for sequence generation at the Network Science Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h7DojHOYdU

Next was "Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition" by Robert Proctor. This book is part industry history, part science and technology studies analysis, and part public health tome. Most of the industry history is focused on the post WW2 period (I really wanted more on the early history of the industry), and often focuses on marketing campaign strategies. Proctor traces the fascinating history of scientific knowledge about tobacco's harmful effects (weirdly led my Nazi scientists), then pivots to the academic collusion with tobacco firms to muddy the scientific and political waters. He names and shames here, and a number of academic institutions (particularly Stanford) come out looking atrocious. There is voluminous information here on the public health implications of smoking, and while the statistics here aren't often well contextualized if this is of interest to you there's more than enough to chew on here. Highly recommend https://www.ucpress.edu/books/golden-holocaust/epub-pdf

Last was "The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy" by Pietra Rivoli. Reading this book in 2025 is like going into a time machine. The latest version was written in 2014, and while there are a few updates the optimism about free trade's continued inevitability is jarring. What's more interesting is how prescient some of the problems that are brought up are. Regardless, the history and analysis of the global textile supply chain is still worth the price of admission, and the sections on the trade in used clothing is absolutely can't miss. Highly recommend https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Travels+of+a+T-Shirt+in+the+Global+Economy%3A+An+Economist+Examines+the+Markets%2C+Power%2C+and+Politics+of+World+Trade.+New+Preface+and+Epilogue+with+Updates+on+Economic+Issues+and+Main+Characters%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9781118950142