Scott Cunningham, "Causal Inference: The Mixtape" (Yale UP, 2021)
Just about everyone knows correlation does not equal causation, and probably that a randomized controlled experiment is the best way to solve that problem, if you can do one. If you’ve been following ...
19 Nov 20211h 6min
Kate Fortmueller, "Below the Stars: How the Labor of Working Actors and Extras Shapes Media Production" (U Texas Press, 2021)
Despite their considerable presence in Hollywood, extras and working actors have received scant attention within film and media studies as significant contributors to the history of the industry. Look...
18 Nov 20211h 11min
Gabriella Lukács, "Invisibility by Design: Women and Labor in Japan's Digital Economy" (Duke UP, 2020)
In the wake of labor market deregulation during the 2000s, online content sharing and social networking platforms were promoted in Japan as new sites of work that were accessible to anyone. Enticed by...
18 Nov 202156min
J. Shapiro and J-A. McNeish, "Our Extractive Age: Expressions of Violence and Resistance" (Routledge, 2021)
Judith Shapiro and John-Andrew McNeish's book Our Extractive Age: Expressions of Violence and Resistance (Routledge, 2021) emphasizes how the spectrum of violence associated with natural resource extr...
16 Nov 202148min
Anne Meng, "Constraining Dictatorship: From Personalized Rule to Institutionalized Regimes" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Why do weak autocrats create strong autocracies? Using game-theoretic logic and an analysis of the post-colonial experience of sub-Saharan Africa, Anne Meng shows that by creating institutions that in...
12 Nov 20211h 19min
Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp, "Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters" (Harvard UP, 2021)
Globalization is possibly the most important economic phenomenon of the past several decades. Opening borders, increasing trade and deepening integration has transformed our economies, our societies a...
4 Nov 202154min
Bernard Scott, "Cybernetics for the Social Sciences" (Brill, 2021)
On this episode, I have the great pleasure of finally getting to talk with one of the “unsung heroes” of cybernetics, whose work has finally begun to receive the critical attention it has long deserve...
3 Nov 20211h 6min
Gero Leson, "Honor Thy Label: Dr. Bronner's Unconventional Journey to a Clean, Green, and Ethical Supply Chain" (Portfolio, 2021)
Supply chains - and, especially, their points of failure - have become a global hot topic, encouraging us all to take a closer look at how goods move around the globe. Dr. Gero Leson has spent the bet...
2 Nov 20211h 8min
