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We take it for granted -- but we shouldn't: smell is incredibly powerful and plays a critical role in our lives.
Sandeep Robert Datta joins Vasant Dhar in episode 90 of Brave New World to discuss what neuroscience has taught him about the power of smell.
Useful resources:
1. Sandeep Robert Datta at Harvard, Datta Lab, LinkedIn and Google Scholar.
2. Alex Wiltschko on the Sense of Smell -- Episode 81 of Brave New World.
3. Dmitry Rinberg on the Mysteries of Smell -- Episode 62 of Brave New World.
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There's always risk at the cutting edge of technology. Driverless cars are awesome -- but can we rely on the tech? Missy Cummings joins Vasant Dhar in episode 89 of Brave New World to share her insights on why we need to proceed with caution.
Also check out:
1. Missy Cummings on LinkedIn, Wikipedia, GMU and Google Scholar.
2. California Bans GM's Cruise Robotaxis After Near-Fatal Pedestrian Accident -- Justin Banner.
3. Setbacks and Prospects for Autonomous Vehicles -- Henry Petroski.
4. Joshua Brown, Who Died in Self-Driving Accident, Tested Limits of His Tesla -- Rachel Abrams & Annalyn Kurtz.
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He lifted The Stern School of Business up significantly in the rankings, and is now making NYU a major global player in higher education. Raghu Sundaram joins Vasant Dhar in episode 88 of Brave New World to share his learnings about higher education where so much is changing, and yet, some foundational truths persist.
Useful resources:
1. Raghu Sundaram on LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Google Scholar and NYY Stern.
2. Nandan Nilekani on an Egalitarian Internet — Episode 15 of Brave New World.
3. The Future of Liberal Education — Episode 11 of Brave New World (w Michael S Roth).
4. Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost — Caitlin Zaloom.
5. Caitlin Zaloom on the Explosion of Student Debt -- Episode 37 of Brave New World.
6. Susan Dynarski's papers on education and student debt.
7. Degrees of Return: Estimating Internal Rates of Return for College Majors Using Quantile Regression -- Liang Zhang, Xiangmin Liu and Yitong Hu.
8. Law and Education in Our Modern World — Episode 5 of Brave New World (w John Sexton).
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What does it mean to be geeky -- and how are geeks changing the world? Andrew McAfee joins Vasant Dhar in episode 87 of Brave New World to share his insights on how geeks have created a brave new innovation culture.
Useful resources:
1. Andrew McAfee on Twitter, LinkedIn, Amazon, MIT and his own website.
2. The Geek Way -- Andrew McAfee.
3. The Second Machine Age -- Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee.
4. Elon Musk -- Walter Isaacson.
5. No Rules Rules -- Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer.
6. Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 -- AnnaLee Saxenian.
7. The New Argonauts -- AnnaLee Saxenian.
8. What the Dormouse Said -- John Markoff.
9. John's Markoff's interview of Raj Reddy.
10. The Secret of Our Success -- Joseph Henrich.
11. The Knowledge Machine -- Michael Strevens.
12. When It Comes to Culture, Does Your Company Walk the Talk? -- Donald Sull, Stefano Turconi and Charles Sull.
13. The Paradigm Shifts in Artificial Intelligence -- Vasant Dhar.
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Imagine an America where the government provides a floor for all our needs, from housing to health care to college to an income. Natalie Foster joins Vasant Dhar in episode 86 of Brave New World to argue that such a shift is possible -- and the time to make it is now.
Useful resources:
1. Natalie Foster on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, the Economic Security Project, the Aspen Institute and her own website.
2. The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy -- Natalie Foster.
3. The Economic Security Project.
4. Pulp Fiction and Dirty Dancing.
5. The Narrow Corridor -- Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson.
6. James Robinson on What Makes a Successful State — Episode 19 of Brave New World.
7. Pippa Ehrlich on the Mysteries of the Sea -- Episode 77 of Brave New World.
8. Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better -- Jennifer Pahlka.
9. File your taxes for free -- Internal Revenue Service.
10. Code for America.
11. The FAFSA Fiasco.
12. Caitlin Zaloom on the Explosion of Student Debt — Episode 37 of Brave New World.
13. Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost — Caitlin Zaloom.
14. The Submerged State -- Suzanne Mettler.
15. Why We Sleep -- Matthew Walker.
16. Andrew Yang on the New Politics America Needs — Episode 27 of Brave New World.
17. Albert Wenger on the World After Capital — Episode 29 of Brave New World.
18. Paul Sheard Demystifies Money -- Episode 73 of Brave New World.
19. Capital in the Twenty-First Century -- Thomas Piketty.
20. The Political Economy of Education, Financial Literacy, and the Racial Wealth Gap -- Darrick Hamilton and William Darity Jr.
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Does life exist outside our planet? Are we alone in the universe? Seth Shostak joins Vasant Dhar in episode 85 of Brave New World to describe his search for the answers.
Useful resources:
1. Seth Shostak at The Seti Institute, Wikipedia, TED, Amazon and his own website.
2. Life in the Universe -- Jeffrey Bennett, Seth Shostak, Nicholas Schneider and Meredith MacGregor.
3. Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life -- Seth Shostak.
4. Confessions of an Alien Hunter -- Seth Shostak.
5. The Copernican Revolution -- Thomas Kuhn.
6. Peter Ward on Life on Earth -- Episode 76 of Brave New World.
7. Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe -- Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee.
8. The Drake Equation.
9. The Gaia Hypothesis.
10. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth -- James Lovelock.
11. Kevin Mitchell Makes a Case for Free Will -- Episode 80 of Brave New World.
12. The Kessler Syndrome.
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He came to America as a ten-year old, and became invested in both the country and its world of finance. Vlad Barbalat joins Vasant Dhar in episode 84 of Brave New World to discuss his life and learnings.
Useful resources:
1. Vlad Barbalat on LinkedIn and Liberty Mutual Investments.
2. The Story Of My Experiments With Truth -- MK Gandhi.
3. The Coddling of the American Mind -- Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.
4. The Future of Liberal Education -- Episode 11 of Brave New World (w Michael S Roth).
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He has been a driver of change at Transport for London, which has shown the way to the rest of the world. Shashi Verma joins Vasant Dhar in Episode 83 of Brave New World to share his learnings on urban transport -- and the governance structures that lead to the best results.
Useful resources:
1. Shashi Verma on LinkedIn and Centre for London.
2. Albert Wenger on the World After Capital — Episode 29 of Brave New World.
3. Estimating the Social Benefit of Constructing an Underground Railway in London -- CD Foster and ME Beesley.
4. A History of London Transport -- TV Barker and Michael Robbins.
5. The Subterranean Railway -- Christian Wolmar.
6. Evaluating Urban Transport Improvements -- Anthony J Venables.
7. Agglomeration, Productivity and Transport Investment -- Daniel J Graham.
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How much blame should we put on social media for polarizing our society? Perhaps not as much as we tend to do. Joshua A Tucker joins Vasant Dhar in episode 82 of Brave New World to discuss his studies on the effects of social media -- and the algorithms that run them. Useful resources:
1. Joshua Tucker at NYU, Twitter and Google Scholar.
2. Online searches to evaluate misinformation can increase its perceived veracity -- Kevin Aslett, Zeve Sanderson, William Godel, Nathaniel Persily, Jonathan Nagler & Joshua A Tucker.
3. Less than you think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook -- Andrew Guess, Jonathan Nagler and Joshua A Tucker.
4. Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing -- Chris Bail.
5. Chris Bail on How to Fight Polarization -- Episode 34 of Brave New World.
6. The Social Media Industrial Complex -- Episode 3 of Brave New World (w Sinan Aral).
7. How Social Media Threatens Society -- Episode 8 of Brave New World (w Jonathan Haidt).
8. Quantifying the Impact of Misinformation and Vaccine-Skeptical Content on Facebook -- Jennifer Nancy Lee Allen, Duncan J Watts, and David Rand.
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Smell is the most underrated of our senses -- and it affects everything. Alex Wiltschko joins Vasant Dhar in episode 81 of Brave New World to discuss the role of smell in our lives -- and in this new digital age.
Useful resources:
1. Alex Wiltschko on LinkedIn, Google Ventures, Google Scholar and Twitter.
2. Osmo.
3. Perfumes: The A-Z Guide -- Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez.
4. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer -- Patrick Suskind.
5. The Mystery of Smell -- Lydialyle Gibson on Sandeep Robert Datta.
6. A novel multigene family may encode odorant receptors: a molecular basis for odor recognition -- Linda Buck and Richard Axel.
7. Metabolic activity organizes olfactory representations -- Wesley W Qian et al (including Alex Wiltschko.)
8. Hyperbolic geometry of the olfactory space -- Yuansheng Zhou, Brian H Smith & Tatyana Sharpee.
9. Odor Perception and the Variability in Natural Odor Scenes -- Geraldine A Wright and Mitchell G.A. Thomson.
10. The Biological Sense of Smell -- Christine WJ Chee-Ruiter.
11. Also check out the work of Jim DiCarlo, David Marr and Eero Simoncelli.
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Given what we know of physics and neuroscience, can there be free will? Kevin Mitchell, a neuroscientist himself, joins Vasant Dhar in episode 80 of Brave New World to unpack his argument for the existence of free will.
Useful resources
1. Kevin Mitchell on Amazon, Twitter, Trinity College, Google Scholar, his blog and his homepage.
2. Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will -- Kevin Mitchell.
3. Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are -- Kevin Mitchell.
4. Freedom Evolves -- Daniel Dennett.
5. Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will -- Robert Sapolsky.
6. Free Will -- Sam Harris.
7. Daniel Kahneman on How Noise Hampers Judgement -- Episode 21 of Brave New World.
8. Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment -- Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein.
9. Synthetic Biology -- J Craig Ventor Institute.
10. David Krakauer.
11. David Krakauer on Complexity, Agency, and Information -- Episode 242 of Sean Carroll's Mindscape.
12. Anthony Zador on How our Brains Work — Episode 35 of Brave New World.
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Artificial intelligence is transforming society. And therefore politics. Arthur Spirling joins Vasant Dhar in episode 79 of Brave New World to share his insights from his twin fields of data science and political science.
Useful resources:
1. Arthur Spirling at Princeton, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Scholar and his own website.
2. Why open-source generative AI models are an ethical way forward for science -- Arthur Spirling.
3. James Robinson on What Makes a Successful State -- Episode 19 of Brave New World.
4. The Narrow Corridor — Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson.
5. Why Nations Fail — Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson.
6. How Social Media Threatens Society -- Episode 8 of Brave New World (w Jonathan Haidt).
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How can we use the insights of behavioral economics to make the world a better place? David Halpern joins Vasant Dhar in episode 78 of Brave New World to share his learnings from running the Behavioral Insight Team for the British government.
Useful resources:
1. David Halpern on Wikipedia and the Behavioural Insights Team.
2. The work of the Behavioral Insights Team.
3. Inside the Nudge Unit -- David Halpern.
4. Social Capital -- David Halpern.
5, The Hidden Wealth of Nations -- David Halpern.
6. The behavioural science of online harm and manipulation, and what to do about it -- Elisabeth Costa and David Halpern.
7. Subsidies vs Nudges: Which Policies Increase Saving the Most? -- Raj Chetty et al
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Her film My Octopus Teacher won an academy award -- and her insights on nature, and her love for it, go far beyond the film. Pippa Ehrlich joins Vasant Dhar in episode 77 of Brave New World to talk about her work and what she has learnt from it.
Useful resources:
1. Pippa Ehrich on Instagram, X, LinkedIn and IMDb..
2. My Octopus Teacher -- Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed.
3. Peter Singer on Animal Liberation -- Episode 74 of Brave New World.
4. Save Our Seas Foundation.
5. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea -- Jules Verne.
6. Using Deliberate Cold Exposure for Health and Performance -- The Huberman Lab Podcast.
7. Wim Hof Method.
8. The Effects of Cold Exposure Training and a Breathing Exercise on the Inflammatory Response in Humans: A Pilot Study -- Jelie Zwaag et al.
9. Dmitry Rinberg on the Mysteries of Smell -- Episode 62 of Brave New World.
10. Anthony Zador on How our Brains Work -- Episode 35 of Brave New World.
11. Deep Rising -- Matthieu Rytz.
12. David Chalmers on the Nature of Reality -- Episode 41 of Brave New World.
13. Sea Change Project.
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Life on earth is a crazy accident. We have no idea how it arose or whether it will survive. Peter Ward joins Vasant Dhar in episode 76 of Brave New World to chat about the origins of our planet, the many extinctions and resurgences of life, and the future of our species.
Useful resources: 1. Peter Ward on Wikipedia, University of Washington and Amazon.
2. Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe -- Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee.
3. A New History of Life -- Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink.
4. The Medea Hypothesis -- Peter Ward.
5. The Flooded Earth -- Peter Ward.
6. Roy Chapman Andrews on Amazon.
7. Jason and the Golden Fleece -- Apollonius of Rhodes.
8. Hercules, My Shipmate -- Robert Graves.
9. The Gaia Hypothesis.
10. SETI Institute.
11. Rare Earth Hypothesis.
12. The Drake Equation.
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He's been a successful entrepreneur and investor, and is highly regarded for his sharp understanding of India. Mohit Satyanand joins Vasant Dhar in episode 75 of Brave New World to share his inspiring story -- and to offer a word of caution.
Useful resources
1. Mohit Satyanand on Twitter, Instagram and IMDb.
2. Gimme Mo — Mohit Satyanand’s newsletter.
3. Salaam Baalak Trust.
4. Aswath Damodaran on Investing -- Episode 33 of Brave New World.
5. James Robinson on What Makes a Successful State -- Episode 19 of Brave New World.
6. The Narrow Corridor: How Nations Struggle for Liberty — Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson.
7. Law and Education in Our Modern World — Episode 5 of Brave New World (w John Sexton).
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Why should only human beings be worthy of moral consideration? Would we still eat animals if we had a sense of their mass-produced suffering? Peter Singer joins Vasant Dhar in episode 74 of Brave New World to discuss his influential work as a philosopher.
Useful resources:
1. Peter Singer at Britannica, Wikipedia, Princeton, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon and his own website.
2. Animal Liberation Now -- Peter Singer.
3. Animal Machines -- Ruth Harrison.
4. My Octopus Teacher -- Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed.
5. Seven Up! -- Paul Almond.
6. Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development.
7. A Theory of Justice -- John Rawls.
8. Everything is Illuminated -- Liev Schreiber.
9. Nudge -- Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.
10. The Life You Can Save.
11. Maneka Gandhi on Animal Rights -- Episode 44 of Brave New World.
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What is money? How is it created? What is the relationship of governments, central banks, and commercial banks to money? Paul Sheard joins Vasant Dhar in episode 73 of Brave New World to cut through the fog.
Useful resources:
1. Understanding QE in the New World -- Episode 10 of Brave New World (w Paul Sheard).
2. The Power of Money -- Paul Sheard.
3. David Yermack on The Crypto Revolution -- Episode 30 of Brave New World.
4. Monetary Economics -- Wynne Godley and Marc Lavoie.
5. The Deficit Myth -- Stephanie Kelton.
6. Inflation: Causes and Consequences -- Milton Friedman.
7. James Robinson on What Makes a Successful State — Episode 19 of Brave New World.
8. Sapiens -- Yuval Noah Harari.
9. Leviathan -- Thomas Hobbes.
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Digital Public Infrastructure sounds like a huge step forward for the world -- till you think about how it empowers the state to oppress the people. Ajay Shah joins Vasant Dhar in episode 72 of Brave New World to warn that we are not being wary enough of state coercion when we think of this incredible technology.
Useful resources:
1. Ajay Shah on Twitter and Substack.
2. In Service of the Republic: The Art and Science of Economic Policy -- Vijay Kelkar and Ajay Shah.
3. Everything is Everything -- Ajay Shah's YouTube show, co-hosted by Amit Varma.
4. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen with Ajay Shah: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.
5. Imagining India -- Nandan Nilekani.
6. Nandan Nilekani on an Egalitarian Internet -- Episode 15 of Brave New World.
7. Albert Wenger on the World After Capital -- Episode 29 of Brave New World.
8. James Robinson on What Makes a Successful State — Episode 19 of Brave New World.
9. The Narrow Corridor — Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson.
10. Is the Singularity Near? -- Episode 2 of Everything is Everything.
11. 1984 -- George Orwell.
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David Sontag joins Vasant Dhar on episode 70 of Brave New World to highlight where and how AI is creating a major transformation in healthcare. We could create a brave new world of individualized and holistic healthcare, where the machine really cares about us and tells us what to do based on knowledge and data.
Useful resources
1. David Sontag on Twitter, LinkedIn, MIT and Google Scholar.
2. Heuristic Methods for Imposing Structure on Ill-Structured Problems -- Harry E Pople Jr.
3. Harry E Pople on ResearchGate.
4. Human and Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare — Episode 4 of Brave New World (w Eric Topol).
5. Waiting for Doctor AI -- Episode 9 of Brave New World (w Regina Barzilay).
6. UpToDate.
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