#AcademicRunPlaylist - 12/10/25

I ended the day with my usual Japan meetings, but earlier I was able to fit in some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a fantastic conversation with Ellora Derenoncourt on the Atlantic slave trade and economic development in Europe on the VoxDev podcast. Derenoncourt uses an ingenious study design to demonstrate the very significant effects of the slave trade, with devastating quantitative precision. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2zukdOQpyo

Next was a great discussion between Ann Lipton and Michael Levin on the shareholder activist work cycle and problematic recent changes to shareholder proposal guidance from the SEC on the Shareholder Primacy podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT13UAh4G8k

Next was an interesting talk by Mosharaf Chowdhury on optimizing large model performance and power consumption at the Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_7Qod7p7kQ

Last was "Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations" by Brian Fagan. This series of lectures is a rousing, fascinating tour through prehistory with an archaeological focus. About half is devoted to non-sapiens hominids and their evolution and dispersion, while about a quarter of the lectures here cover early agriculture, with the remaining sections on civilizations we have a bit more information about. The latest version is from 2013, so some of the research discussed here is a bit dated, particularly around pre-sapiens species and the development of agriculture, but Fagan is clear about the degree to which knowledge about these topics can change. Beyond being a great dive into the topic even if you have some background in it, Fagan is absolutely inspiring in these lectures and leaves you with a greater appreciation for the arc of human history that still underlies our modern world. Highly recommend https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/human-prehistory-and-the-first-civilizations