This guy was absolutely exhausted after his evening class, and before attempting to orchestrate incredible feats of canine athleticism I listened to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an important discussion with Abhinav Gupta on how community trauma alters organizational risk-taking on Sekou Bermiss's Lit Review podcast. I love how Gupta and co use pro sports data (in this case, going for it on fourth down in American football) to examine fundamental management questions. I also enjoyed Sekou pleading with Gupta to collect field data at a Seahawks game - maybe he can do it next year after the Pats clap them in the Super Bowl! 😁 Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiKc-ZuvvXc

Next was a star-studded panel on the impact of recent antitrust enforcement actions on big tech at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School with Jason Furman, John Haigh, Gene Kimmelman, Nancy L. Rose, Jonathan Sallet, Mike Walker, and Tom Wheeler. This discussion was more frank and insightful than the vast majority of conversations on the topic, probing the limits of what antitrust alone can achieve and digging into recent cases. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3IUwwNdpSc

Next was "Another America" by James Ciment. This is an illuminating work of scholarship, detailing the extremely unique history of Liberia from its initial founding by former slaves and the American Colonization Society to the end of the Americo regime. This history is typically ignored in US history books after the mention of the ACS and its failure to deport massive numbers of Black people, but here Ciment shows how the Liberian state developed and navigated a dangerous international arena though WW1, when it started to enjoy a modicum of prosperity. It's a tragic story, however, with Liberia pushed around by the great powers of the day and frequently having to appeal to the US for assistance and the post-ACS rulers putting in place an apartheid regime to exclude the native population from power. The highly corrupt commercial deals with US industry, with the agreement with Firestone in particular standing out, presage the structure of recent transactions across the Continent. Highly recommend https://bookshop.org/p/books/another-america-the-story-of-liberia-and-the-former-slaves-who-ruled-it-james-ciment/

Last was "The Making of Modern Eating" by Claudia Kreklau. While the subtitle suggests that German innovations in eating and cooking during the 19th century diffused to other parts of the world, that diffusion isn't covered in this book. Rather it's a deep dive into German foodways and the nascent commercialization of food preparation and industrialization. The chapter on industrialization was especially compelling, providing fascinating/disturbing details on how this unregulated industry developed https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/KreklauMaking