#AcademicRunPlaylist - 11/14/25

I fought through my remaining jet lag to give an evening virtual talk followed by an enjoyable discussion with the folks at COACH A, and earlier I went for a short run and listened to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a compelling talk by Lucy Suchman on the philosophical argument against AI as a foundational technology at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_4-6gVbk4E

Next was the second day of the National Bureau of Economic Research organizational economics conference. I particularly liked the talk by Jason Sockin on the effects of self-reported interview difficulty on job offer acceptance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBEyGjsTfls

Next was an engaging conversation with Roger Levy on the science of language and the implications of LLMs for this field on the Stanford Psychology Podcast https://www.stanfordpsychologypodcast.com/episodes/episode/7baa1b7f/163-roger-levy-the-science-of-language-in-the-era-of-ai

Next was a fascinating talk by Martin Nisser on computational fabrication and assembly in space (!) at the GRASP Lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QbPOgTfCic

Next was "Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science" by Jessica Hernandez. There's a glaring unanswered question that haunts this book: what is science? The term itself obviously has cachet, and Hernandez is trying to leverage that cachet to elevate the status of indigenous ways of knowing. That's understandable, but the lack of deep engagement with this question is an issue.

I appreciated the review of different classes of indigenous knowledge and the examples here. I did find the lack of self-reflection on the conservation track record of indigenous peoples of the Americas, while common today, to be playing into the same tropes that Hernandez decries. The extinction of horses, North American camels and other fauna in the millennia before the arrival of Europeans, almost certainly due to over hunting, should at minimum be acknowledged given the centrality of environmental issues and history in this book. Overall, while there are many persuasive arguments this book makes about how indigenous people are marginalized and discriminated against especially in science, the gaping holes in the analysis leaves this book wanting https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/675699/fresh-banana-leaves-by-jessica-hernandez/

Last was "Getting Me Cheap" by Amanda Freeman and Lisa Dodson. This book provides an incisive, painful dive into how low-wage work locks women in poverty starting from when they are children. By combining rich interviews and discussion groups with macro perspective from other researchers, Freeman and Dodson lay out in devastating detail the different systems and classes of work that construct a nearly insurmountable web that binds low income women into extremely precarious lives, and the profound cruelty of our political "solutions" to these problems. Companies and individuals that exploit this labor, relying on public subsidies in the form of benefits paid to their employees necessary for them to survive on the below-subsistence compensation they receive from employers, come out looking awful. Overall this book presents an irrefutable case for action at political and corporate level to drive real, positive, systemic change to finally break down these constraints. Highly recommend https://thenewpress.org/books/getting-me-cheap/?v=eb65bcceaa5f