Abraham, Yuval. "‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza." Monthly Review (April 5, 2024) ["During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing–just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all. Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes–usually at night while their whole families were present–rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called “Where’s Daddy?” also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences."]
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (BBC: Adam Curtis, 2011) ["A series of films about how humans have been colonized by the machines they have built. Although we don’t realize it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers. It claims that computers have failed to liberate us and instead have distorted and simplified our view of the world around us."]
Alter, Adam. "The Rise of Addictive Technology." Radio West (March 5, 2018) ["Marketing professor Adam Alter begins his new book by noting that Steve Jobs didn’t let his own children use an iPad, a product he invented, because he was worried they’d get addicted to it. That’s what Alter’s book is about: our increasing addiction to technology. These days, we aren’t just hooked on substances, like drugs and alcohol. We’re addicted to video games, social media, porn, email, and lots more. Alter joins us to explore the business and psychology of irresistible technologies."]
Amer, Karim, Emma Briant and Brittany Kaiser. "The Weaponization of Data: Cambridge Analytica, Information Warfare & the 2016 Election of Trump." Democracy Now (January 10, 2020) ["We continue our conversation with the directors of The Great Hack, Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, as well as former Cambridge Analytica employee Brittany Kaiser and propaganda researcher Emma Briant, about Cambridge Analytica’s parent company SCL Group’s history as a defense contractor. “We’re in a state of global information warfare now,” Briant says. “How do we know if our militaries develop technologies and the data that it has gathered on people, for instance, across the Middle East … how do we know when that is turning up in Yemen or when that is being utilized by an authoritarian regime against the human rights of its people or against us? How do we know that it’s not being manipulated by Russia, by Iran, by anybody who’s an enemy, by Saudi Arabia, for example, who SCL were also working with? We have no way of knowing, unless we open up this industry and hold these people properly accountable for what they’re doing.”"]
Anderson, Elle, et al. "Love in the Time of Replika." Hi-Phi Nation (April 25, 2023) ["We explore the lives of people who are in love with their AI chatbots. Replika is a chatbot designed to adapt to the emotional needs of its users. It is a good enough surrogate for human interaction that many people have decided that it can fulfill their romantic needs. The question is whether these kinds of romantic attachments are real, illusory, or good for the people involved. Apps like Replika represent the future of love and sex for a subpopulation of people, so we discuss the ethics of the practice. Host Barry Lam talks to philosophers Ellie Anderson and David Pena-Guzman of the Overthink podcast about what theories of love would say about these kinds of relationships. AI lovers include Alex Stokes and Rosanna Ramos."]
Anderson, Justin. "Who Will Take on the 21st Century Tech and Media Monopolies?" FAIR (April 10, 2018) ["After decades of regulatory neglect, Big Tech is finally coming under the microscope."]
Angwin, Julia and Will Knight. "The AI Hype Machine." Today, Explained (May 22, 2024) ["Big Tech companies have rolled out a new batch of AI-powered products, improving upon what came before. But as Wired's Will Knight and investigative journalist Julia Angwin explain, they’re not even close to living up to the world-changing technology the Big Tech CEOs promised."]
Arnoff, Kate. "Trump Curbs the Circulation of Science." On the Media (May 31, 2019) ["Last weekend, The New York Times reported on a host of aggressive new obstacles placed by Trump administration to stymie the dissemination of federal climate research. One new rule prevents certain agencies from publishing findings after 2040. A second will omit the National Climate Assessment's "worst case scenario" projection. And finally, a panel of climate deniers will oversee and regulate the release of all federally funded climate research. In this interview, Bob speaks with Kate Aronoff, who recently wrote about these regulations for The Guardian. She explains how these alarming new restrictions fit into the Trump administration's larger pattern of limiting public access to the truth about the climate."]
Ashcroft, Richard, David Healy and Emily Jackson. "Brave New World." The Philosophy Forum (March 2, 2019) ["In this age of utopian technologies, we can design mechanical limbs for amputees and chemically engineer happiness for depressives. From the fluoride in our water to genetically modified babies, scientific advances pose complex new ethical questions. We explore the major bioethical issues of our time. Is philosophy braced for this brave new world? Are scientists and engineers morally obliged to design a utopia? Or are things best left to ‘nature’? Speakers: Richard Ashcroft, Professor of Bioethics, Queen Mary University of London; David Healy, Professor of Psychiatry, Bangor University; Emily Jackson, Professor of Law, LSE."]
Bailey, Buckey, Rob Bilot and Joe Kiger. "DuPont vs. the World: Chemical Giant Covered Up Health Risks of Teflon Contamination Across Globe." Democracy Now (January 23, 2018) ["“The Devil We Know,” that looks at how former DuPont employees, residents and lawyers took on the chemical giant to expose the danger of the chemical C8, found in Teflon and countless household products—from stain- and water-resistant apparel to microwave popcorn bags to dental floss. The chemical has now been linked to six diseases, including testicular and kidney cancers. We speak with Bucky Bailey, whose mother worked in the Teflon division of a DuPont plant in West Virginia while she was pregnant with him, and who was born with only one nostril and a deformed eye and has undergone more than 30 surgeries to fix the birth defects; Joe Kiger, lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against DuPont, and a school teacher in Parkersburg, West Virginia, who suffered from liver disease; and Rob Bilott, the attorney that brought DuPont to court."]
Bakker, Karen, "The Sounds of Invisible Worlds." NOEMA (June 20, 2023) ["Like the microscope and the telescope did centuries ago, new technologies to capture and analyze sound are leading to startling discoveries about what the eyes cannot see."]
Barry, Sarah, et al.
"Enzymes." In Our Time (June 1, 2017) ["Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss enzymes, the proteins that control the speed of chemical reactions in living organisms. Without enzymes, these reactions would take place too slowly to keep organisms alive: with their actions as catalysts, changes which might otherwise take millions of years can happen hundreds of times a second. Some enzymes break down large molecules into smaller ones, like the ones in human intestines, while others use small molecules to build up larger, complex ones, such as those that make DNA. Enzymes also help keep cell growth under control, by regulating the time for cells to live and their time to die, and provide a way for cells to communicate with each other."]
Beck, Ulrich and Bruno Latour.
"How To Think About Science (Part 5)." Ideas (February 11, 2015) ["Few people ever apply a name that sticks to an entire social order, but sociologist Ulrich Beck is one of them. In 1986 in Germany he published Risk Society, and the name has become a touchstone in contemporary sociology. Among the attributes of Risk Society is the one he just mentioned: science has become so powerful that it can neither predict nor control its effects. It generates risks too vast to calculate. In the era of nuclear fission, genetic engineering and a changing climate, society itself has become a scientific laboratory. In this episode, Ulrich Beck talks about the place of science in a risk society. Later in the hour you'll hear from another equally influential European thinker, Bruno Latour, the author of We Have Never Been Modern. He will argue that our very future depends on overcoming a false dichotomy between nature and culture."]
Beslile, Brooke.
"AI and the End of Photography." UC Press Blog (March 7, 2024) ["Recent headlines are announcing the end of photography, as AI changes what counts as a photograph or makes it impossible to judge. The New York Times has published
multiple,
interactive articles prompting readers to test whether they can “believe their eyes” by distinguishing between photographs and AI-generated images. Results suggest that most readers are so bad at this task that our performance skews past random: we are good at getting it wrong. The implications of this uncertainty—or overconfidence—extend beyond problems of fakery and tricks of photorealism to raise broader questions about visual mediation in our moment. As AI changes how images are understood to capture and convey whatever they depict, our everyday ways of seeing and knowing through images seems to be in crisis. What does it mean, if I am more likely to identify an AI-generated image of a human face—which was rendered entirely from patterns of data about other images—as a “real person” and more likely to label a photograph of an actual person a “fake”? This is not just about AI but about aesthetic and cultural logics that condition what a “person” looks like and how personhood is pictured in photographs. My recent book,
Depth Effects: Dimensionality from Camera to Computation offers a long view of questions like these, which have become all the more important with the rise of AI."]
Benjamin, Medea and Trevor Timm.
"Drone Summit: Killing and Spying by Remote Control." Law and Disorder (July 9, 2012) ["Earlier this year, human rights advocates, robotics technology experts, lawyers, journalists and activists gathered to bring detailed up to date information about the widespread and rapidly expanding deployment of both lethal and surveillance drones, including drone use in the United States. We hear excerpts of 2 presentations delivered at the drone conference in Washington DC titled Drone Summit: Killing and Spying by Remote Control."]
Benjamin, Ruha. "The Social Dimensions of Science, Technology and Medicine." Northwestern Digital Learning Project #12 (June 5, 2019) [" Dr. Ruha Benjamin, a professor of African-American studies at Princeton University and the author of People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier and the forthcoming Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. She has studied the social dimensions of science, technology, and medicine for just over 15 years and speaks widely on issues of innovation, equity, health, and justice."]
Benyus, Janine. "Biomimicry, an Operating Manual for Earthlings." On Being (March 23, 2023) ["There is a quiet, redemptive story of our time in this conversation — a radical way of approaching the gravest of our problems by attending to how original vitality functions. Biomimicry takes the natural world as mentor and teacher — for, as Janine Benyus puts it, “we are surrounded by geniuses.” Nature solves problems and performs what appear to us as miracles in every second, all around: running on sunlight, fitting form to function, recycling everything, relentlessly “creating conditions conducive to life.” Janine launched this way of seeing and imagining as a field with her 1997 book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Today she teaches and consults with all kinds of projects and organizations, including major corporations, as you’ll hear. Welcome to this unfolding parallel universe in our midst, which might just shift the way you see almost everything about our possible futures."]
---. Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Harper Collins, 2009. ["Repackaged with a new afterword, this "valuable and entertaining" (New York Times Book Review) book explores how scientists are adapting nature's best ideas to solve tough 21st century problems. Biomimicry is rapidly transforming life on earth. Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world. Janine Benyus takes readers into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; harness energy by examining how a leaf converts sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second; and many more examples. Composed of stories of vision and invention, personalities and pipe dreams, Biomimicry is must reading for anyone interested in the shape of our future."]
Berger, John J. Climate Myths: The Campaign Against Climate Science. Berkeley, CA: Northbrae Books, 2013. [Available in the BCTC Library]
Bigger Stronger Faster (USA: Christopher Bell, 2008: 105 mins) ["In America, we define ourselves in the superlative: we are the biggest, strongest, fastest country in the world. Is it any wonder that so many of our heroes are on performance enhancing drugs? Director Christopher Bell explores America’s win-at-all-cost culture by examining how his two brothers became members of the steroid-subculture in an effort to realize their American dream."
Binney, William. "Growing State Surveillance." Democracy Now (April 20, 2012) ["In his first television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA’s massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home after he became a whistleblower. Binney was a key source for investigative journalist James Bamford’s recent exposé in Wired Magazine about how the NSA is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cellphone calls, Google searches and other personal data. Binney served in the NSA for over 30 years, including a time as technical director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could “create an Orwellian state.” Today marks the first time Binney has spoken on national television about NSA surveillance. This interview is part of a 5-part special on state surveillance."]
Black, Julia. "The “Dark Elf” Leading Tech’s Extreme Right." Tech Won't Save Us (October 17, 2024) ["Paris Marx is joined by Julia Black to discuss who Curtis Yarvin is and how his anti-democratic, far-right writings have influenced the politics of Silicon Valley and the wider American extreme right.
Julia Black is a features reporter on The Information’s Weekend Team."]
Blase, Martin. "Missing Microbes." Radio West (April 28, 2014) ["Your body is host to about 100 trillion bacterial cells that form your microbiome, the complex ecosystem of microorganisms on which your life depends. Today, our microbiomes are threatened by a loss of species diversity that could be our undoing. In a new book, Dr. Martin Blaser argues that our obsession with hygiene and overuse of antibiotics has bleached our microbiomes, making them weak and making us more susceptible to dangerous new diseases."]Boehm, Christopher.
Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame. Basic Books, 2012. ["From the age of Darwin to the present day, biologists have been grappling with the origins of our moral sense. Why, if the human instinct to survive and reproduce is "selfish," do people engage in self-sacrifice, and even develop ideas like virtue and shame to justify that altruism? Many theories have been put forth, some emphasizing the role of nepotism, others emphasizing the advantages of reciprocation or group selection effects. But evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Boehm finds existing explanations lacking, and in Moral Origins, he offers an elegant new theory. Tracing the development of altruism and group social control over 6 million years, Boehm argues that our moral sense is a sophisticated defense mechanism that enables individuals to survive and thrive in groups. One of the biggest risks of group living is the possibility of being punished for our misdeeds by those around us. Bullies, thieves, free-riders, and especially psychopaths -- those who make it difficult for others to go about their lives -- are the most likely to suffer this fate. Getting by requires getting along, and this social type of selection, Boehm shows, singles out altruists for survival. This selection pressure has been unique in shaping human nature, and it bred the first stirrings of conscience in the human species. Ultimately, it led to the fully developed sense of virtue and shame that we know today.A groundbreaking exploration of the evolution of human generosity and cooperation, Moral Origins offers profound insight into humanity's moral past -- and how it might shape our moral future."]
Bonneval, Karine, Paco Calvo and Tom Greaves.
"Plants." The Forum for Philosophy (April 2019) ["Philosophers have long assumed that plants are inferior to humans and animals: static, inert, and unreflective. But recent scientific advances suggest that we may have underestimated plants. They can process information, solve problems, and communicate. We explore what plants can teach us about intelligence and agency, and ask whether plants think."]
Bould, Mark.
"G: Unfit." Radiolab (July 17, 2019) ["When a law student named Mark Bold came across a Supreme Court decision from the 1920s that allowed for the forced sterilization of people deemed “unfit,” he was shocked to discover that it had never been overturned. His law professors told him the case, Buck v Bell, was nothing to worry about, that the ruling was in a kind of legal limbo and could never be used against people. But he didn’t buy it. In this episode we follow Mark on a journey to one of the darkest consequences of humanity’s attempts to measure the human mind and put people in boxes, following him through history, science fiction and a version of eugenics that’s still very much alive today, and watch as he crusades to restore a dash of moral order to the universe."]
Brea, Jennifer.
"Unrest." Film School (October 7, 2017) ["Jennifer Brea is a Harvard PhD student soon to be engaged to the love of her life when she’s struck down by a mysterious fever that leaves her bedridden. She becomes progressively more ill, eventually losing the ability even to sit in a wheelchair, but doctors tell her it’s “all in her head.” Unable to convey the seriousness and depth of her symptoms to her doctor, Jennifer begins a video diary on her iPhone that eventually becomes the feature documentary film Unrest. Once Jennifer is diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), commonly called chronic fatigue syndrome, she and her new husband, Omar, are left to grapple with how to live in the face of a lifelong illness. Refusing to accept the limitations of bedbound life, Jennifer goes on an inspiring virtual voyage around the world where she finds a hidden community of millions confined to their homes and bedrooms by ME. These patients use the internet, Skype and Facebook to connect to each other — and to offer support and understanding. Many ME patients have experienced uncertainty, confusion and even disbelief from the medical community and society as a whole. After all, it’s easy to ignore a disease when patients are too sick to leave their homes. In Unrest, Jennifer shares her pain and the most intimate moments of her life in order to offer hope and visibility to those who suffer alone in dark, silent rooms. Though Jennifer and Omar may have to accept that they will never live the life they originally dreamed about, together they find resilience, strength, and meaning in their community and each other. Director, subject and activist Jennifer Brea joins us to talk about her journey, illness and her determination to make things better for people living with ME."]
Bridle, James.
"The Intelligence Singing All Around Us." On Being (March 2, 2023) ["You might want to take a walk with this one. It is big and full of brain food and an enlivening opening of imagination to possibilities that are emergent now: the notion of the “broad commonwealth of life” that we are “inextricably entangled with and suffused by”; the paradox that the more accurately you try to measure some things, the more unmeasurable they become; the way words we use all the time have kept our cellular belonging to the natural world alive, even as civilization forgot. The technologist/artist James Bridle brings all of this into interplay with an intriguing, refreshing lens on our lives with technology — and with all that artificial intelligence is and might become. You might not think of intelligence the same way again, or the truth of mythology, or the letters of the alphabet, or what it means to be human. And you will smile next time you access the place where your digital life is stored and realize what it says about us that we named it The Cloud. James Bridle is an artist and technologist and author of the books
Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence and
New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future."]
Brotz, Lucas.
"Jellyfishing for Answers." Future Ecologies 1.8 (October 10, 2018) ["How are human activities changing our oceans, and why do these changes all seem to support a new age of jellyfish? What are these ancient, diverse beings: harbingers of doom, or simply the most well-adapted form of life in the sea? In this episode we go jellyfishing for answers with preeminent jellyfish researchers Dr. Lisa-ann Gershwin and Dr. Lucas Brotz."]
Browne, Simone.
Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Duke University Press, 2015. ["In Dark Matters Simone Browne locates the conditions of blackness as a key site through which surveillance is practiced, narrated, and resisted. She shows how contemporary surveillance technologies and practices are informed by the long history of racial formation and by the methods of policing black life under slavery, such as branding, runaway slave notices, and lantern laws. Placing surveillance studies into conversation with the archive of transatlantic slavery and its afterlife, Browne draws from black feminist theory, sociology, and cultural studies to analyze texts as diverse as the methods of surveilling blackness she discusses: from the design of the eighteenth-century slave ship Brooks, Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, and The Book of Negroes, to contemporary art, literature, biometrics, and post-9/11 airport security practices. Surveillance, Browne asserts, is both a discursive and material practice that reifies boundaries, borders, and bodies around racial lines, so much so that the surveillance of blackness has long been, and continues to be, a social and political norm."]
Brynjolfsson, Erik, et al.
"On the New Era of AI." Open Source (October 19, 2017) ["The “intelligence explosion” foretold 50 years ago, could be here any minute. Artificial intelligence has now survived the “AI winter” — and is back in public conversation. It’s not just a Silicon Valley buzzword or a subject for speculative fiction, but a real possibility on the tech horizon, with real money backing it. As the machines move beyond just beating their masters’s in games like Chess and Go and start honing in on deep learning, neural networking, and “Big Data” sorting, we’re asking the Big Question: where’s this whole thing going?"]
Burton, Robert A. On Being Certain: The Power of Being Right Even When You're Are Not. St. Martin's Press, 2008. ["You recognize when you know something for certain, right? You "know" the sky is blue, or that the traffic light had turned green, or where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001--you know these things, well, because you just do. In On Being Certain, neurologist Robert Burton challenges the notions of how we think about what we know. He shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we "know" something comes from sources beyond our control and knowledge. In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact. Because this "feeling of knowing" seems like confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason. But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain, and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen. Bringing together cutting edge neuroscience, experimental data, and fascinating anecdotes, Robert Burton explores the inconsistent and sometimes paradoxical relationship between our thoughts and what we actually know. Provocative and groundbreaking, On Being Certain, will challenge what you know (or think you know) about the mind, knowledge, and reason."]
Buss, David.
"How Humans Select & Keep Romantic Partners in Short & Long Term." The Huberman Lab (November 29, 2021) ["... Dr. David Buss, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, and one of the founding members of the field of evolutionary psychology. Dr. Buss describes his work on how people select mates for short and long-term relationships, the dynamics of human courtship, and mate value assessment — meaning how people measure up as potential partners. Dr. Huberman and Dr. Buss also discuss the causes of infidelity and differences for infidelity in men and women. Dr. Buss explains how people evaluate and try to alter other people’s mate value as a means to secure and even poach mates. Dr. Huberman and Dr. Buss discuss monogamous and non-monogamous relationships in humans. And they discuss what Dr. Buss calls “the dark triad”— features common in stalkers and narcissists that relate to sexual and psychological violence in relationships. This episode is sure to be of interest to anyone single or in a relationship who seeks to know how people select mates and anyone who is interested in forming and maintaining healthy romantic partnerships." Discusses his two recent books:
When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault and
The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating]
Chayka, Kyle.
"About the Filter World." On the Media (January 31, 2024) ["In Micah Loewinger's introduction to this interview, he shared this personal anecdote: "Before I landed a job at this show, I worked for a few years, on and off, at a couple record stores around New York City. And some of my favorite albums to this day, were recommended to me by my coworkers. Men and women who I consider to be archivists –– not just of old formats like vinyl records, CDs, and cassettes –– but of underappreciated artists and niche genres. A knowledge of music history that can only come from a lifetime of obsessive listening, research, and curation. Nowadays, I pay for Spotify. I try to learn about music off the app and then save it for later listening on Spotify, but sometimes I find myself just letting its recommendation algorithm queue up the next track, and the next. And it definitely works. Spotify has helped me discover great music, but it’s never been as revelatory as a personal recommendation from a friend or an expert at a record store or an independent radio station. This feeling … that I’ve traded convenience for something deeper is what made me want to read Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka, a staff writer at the New Yorker.""]
Collins, Francis.
"National Institutes of Health (NIH)." Lex Fridman #238 (November 5, 2021) [Francis Collins has been appointed/reappointed by the last three presidential administrations, is the direct boss of Anthony Fauci, and oversees medical research in the US. Timestamps of topics discussed: (00:00) –Introduction; (07:44) – Lab-leak theory; (10:51) – Gain-of-function research of viruses; (23:00) – Bioterrorism; (27:30) – Tony Fauci; (37:41) – COVID Vaccines; (43:46) – Joe Rogan; (50:49) – Variants; (55:31) – Rapid at home testing; (59:44) – Animal testing; (1:05:09) – Stepping down as director of the NIH; (1:09:03) – Barack Obama; (1:11:06) – Accelerating Medicines Partnership; (1:21:44) – Faith; (1:27:12) – Fear of death; (1:30:15) – Meaning of life.]
Conis, Elena.
"How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT (Bold Type Books, 2022)." New Books in Medicine (July 13, 2022) ["The story of DDT as you’ve never heard it before: a fresh look at the much-maligned chemical compound as a cautionary tale of how powerful corporations have stoked the flames of science denialism for their own benefit. In the 1940s, DDT helped the Allies win the Second World War by wiping out the insects that caused malaria, with seemingly no ill effects on humans. After the war, it was sprayed willy-nilly across fields, in dairy barns, and even in people's homes. Thirty years later the U.S. would ban the use of DDT—only to reverse the ban in the 1990s when calls arose to bring it back to fight West Nile and malaria. What changed?
How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT (Bold Type Books, 2022) traces the surprising history of DDT’s rapid rise, infamous fall, and controversial revival to reveal to show that we’ve been taking the wrong lesson from DDT’s cautionary tale. Historian Elena Conis uncovers new evidence that it was not the shift in public opinion following the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring that led to the ban but in fact the behind-the-scenes political machinations of Big Business. She makes a compelling case that the real threat was not DDT itself but the prioritization of profits over public health. If we don't change the ways we make decisions about new scientific discoveries and technologies, Conis argues, we’re doomed to keep making the same mistakes and putting people at risk—both by withholding technologies that could help them and by exposing them to dangerous chemicals without their knowledge or consent. In an age when corporations and politicians are shaping our world behind closed doors and deliberately stoking misinformation around public health issues, from pesticides to vaccines to COVID-19 to climate change, we need greater transparency and a new way of communicating about science—as a discipline of discovery that's constantly evolving, rather than a finite and immutable collection of facts—in order to combat the war on facts and protect ourselves and our environment."]
The Consilience Project.
"How Big Tech is Reshaping Governance." The Consilience Project (December 22, 2021) ["Technology companies such as Facebook and Google have become some of the most influential organizations in the modern world. These companies are not ordinary businesses that just happen to operate at massive scale; in fact, they are influencing society in new and profound ways. Large tech companies are taking on some of the powers and responsibilities of institutions such as news media and governments, replacing previous systems and norms with centralized control based on mass data collection and algorithmic curation. Social media companies in particular have privatized the public sphere. If it continues, this trend threatens to break the functioning of democratic self-government."]
---.
"Social Media Enables Undue Influence." The Consilience Project (December 5, 2021) ["Historically, propaganda has often existed alongside a free-thinking population and robust educational institutions. A threshold has been crossed with the emergence of microtargeted computational propaganda delivered through social media. Social media contexts are fundamentally different from broadcast technologies because they function as a public space and therefore afford powerful psychological and social pressures. Coercive communication is not just part of the environment, as it was in the past. Coercive communication now constitutes the environment itself. Without intervention, these technologies will continue to destroy our minds and communities. Their power to sway our psychology is already undermining the legitimacy of voting as an aspect of government. Their algorithms capture economic choice dynamics, directing consumer behavior, as social media companies stand in as a new “invisible hand” shaping the market. These technologies present a clear and present danger. What can be done?"
]
Conti, Paul.
Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic: How Trauma Works and How We Can Heal From It. Sounds True, 2021. ["Imagine, if you will, a disease—one that has only subtle outward symptoms but can hijack your entire body without notice, one that transfers easily between parent and child, one that can last a lifetime if untreated. According to Dr. Paul Conti, this is exactly how society should conceptualize trauma: as an out-of-control epidemic with a potentially fatal prognosis. In Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic, Dr. Conti examines the most recent research, clinical best practices, and dozens of real-life stories to present a deeper and more urgent view of trauma. Not only does Dr. Conti explain how trauma affects the body and mind, he also demonstrates that trauma is transmissible among close family and friends, as well as across generations and within vast demographic groups. With all this in mind, Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic proposes a course of treatment for the seemingly untreatable. Here, Dr. Conti traces a step-by-step series of concrete changes that we can make both as individuals and as a society to alleviate trauma’s effects and prevent further traumatization in the future. You will discover: The different post-trauma syndromes, how they are classified, and their common symptoms. An examination of how for-profit health care systems can inhibit diagnosis and treatment of trauma. How social crises and political turmoil encourage the spread of group trauma. Methods for confronting and managing your fears as they arise in the moment. How trauma disrupts mental processes such as memory, emotional regulation, and logical decision-making. The argument for a renewed humanist social commitment to mental health and wellness It’s only when we understand how a disease spreads and is sustained that we are able to create its ultimate cure. With Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic, Dr. Conti reveals that what we once considered a lifelong, unbeatable mental illness is both treatable and preventable. A Journey Toward Understanding, Active Treatment, and Societal Prevention of Trauma."]
Conti, Paul and Andrew Huberman.
"Therapy, Treating Trauma & Other Life Challenges." The Huberman Lab (June 6, 2022) ["Dr. Paul Conti, M.D., is a psychiatrist and expert in treating trauma, personality disorders and psychiatric illnesses and challenges of various kinds. Dr. Conti earned his MD at Stanford and did his residency at Harvard Medical School. He now runs the Pacific Premiere Group—a clinical practice helping people heal and grow from trauma and other life challenges. We discuss trauma: what it is and its far-reaching effects on the mind and body, as well as the best treatment approaches for trauma. We also explore how to choose a therapist and how to get the most out of therapy, as well as how to do self-directed therapy. We discuss the positive and negative effects of antidepressants, ADHD medications, alcohol, cannabis, and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics (e.g., psilocybin and LSD), ketamine and MDMA. This episode is must listen for anyone seeking or already doing therapy, processing trauma, and/or considering psychoactive medication. Both patients and practitioners ought to benefit from the information." Conti is the author of the book
Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic: How Trauma Works and How We Can Heal From It]
Conway, Erik M. and Naomi Oreskes.
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury, 2010. ["The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers. Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly-some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is "not settled" denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. "Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These "experts" supplied it. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, historians of science, roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how ideology and corporate interests, aided by a too-compliant media, have skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era."]
Crawford, Kate.
The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Yale University Press, 2021. ["The hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from natural resources and labor to privacy and freedom. What happens when artificial intelligence saturates political life and depletes the planet? How is AI shaping our understanding of ourselves and our societies? In this book Kate Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fueling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of research, award-winning science, and technology, Crawford reveals how AI is a technology of extraction: from the energy and minerals needed to build and sustain its infrastructure, to the exploited workers behind “automated” services, to the data AI collects from us. Rather than taking a narrow focus on code and algorithms, Crawford offers us a political and a material perspective on what it takes to make artificial intelligence and where it goes wrong. While technical systems present a veneer of objectivity, they are always systems of power. This is an urgent account of what is at stake as technology companies use artificial intelligence to reshape the world."]
"Development in Progress." The Consilience Project (July 16, 2024) ["Our idea of progress needs to mature. If humanity is to survive and thrive into the distant future, we must transform and elevate the very idea of progress into something truly good and worthy of our shared pursuit and aspiration. As we understand more about the universe and find new ways of changing it with our technologies, we must account for the endless ripple of cause-and-effect beyond our immediate goals. We must factor both the upsides and the downsides that will continue to impact reality long after the technologists of today are gone."]
Doctorow, Cory.
"How Big Tech Went to Sh*t." On the Media (September 1, 2023) ["Cory Doctorow, journalist, activist, and the author of Red Team Blue, on his theory surrounding the slow, steady descent of the internet. Brooke asks Cory if the troubles that plague some corners of the internet are specific to Big Digital, rather than the economy at large-- and how our legal systems enabled it all. Cory and Brooke discuss possible solutions to save the world wide web, and how in a sea of the enshittified there's still hope."]
Estes, Jim.
"Kelp Worlds: Trophic Cascadia (Part 1)." Future Ecologies 2.7 (February 13, 2020) ["How did nuclear testing accidentally reshape our understanding of food webs and marine ecology? Why did sea otters bounce back from near-extinction on some parts of the Pacific coast, but are still absent in others? We speak with Dr. Jim Estes (a godfather of the field) about a series of serendipitous events that led to the re-writing of textbook ecology."]
Farrell, Maria and Robin Berjon.
"We Need to Rewild the Internet." NOEMA (April 16, 2024) ["The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists."]
Fodor, James.
"The Muscular System." The Science of Everything #132 (November 9, 2022) ["A journey through the mechanisms of muscles and muscular contraction. I begin by outlining the key structural elements of muscle cells, including the sarcolemma, sarcoplasmic reticulum, the myofibrils and their myofilaments. I then explain the sliding filament mechanism of muscle contraction, and how it is governed by neural signals through the release of calcium. I conclude with a brief overview of the types of muscle contractions, the difference between fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibres, and a short discussion of some metabolic aspects of muscle function, including the role of creatine phosphate."]
Galpin, Andy and Andrew Huberman.
"How to Assess & Improve All Aspects of Your Fitness." Huberman Lab (January 18, 2023) ["In this episode 1 of a 6-part special series, Andy Galpin, PhD, professor of kinesiology at California State University, Fullerton and world expert on exercise science, explains the 9 different types of exercise adaptations that can be used to transform the functional capacities and aesthetics of our body, and benefits each adaptation has for our health. He explains the best evidence-based protocols to optimize your progress in building strength, endurance, muscle growth, flexibility and for optimal recovery, and he provides zero-cost and low-cost tests to assess all aspects of your physical fitness. This episode provides a foundation and tools for establishing a comprehensive assessment of your current fitness level, allowing you to select the ideal fitness programs to implement toward your goals. Subsequent episodes 2-6 in this special series explain goal-directed protocols to reach those goals."]
Gero, Shane, et al.
"Listening to Whales." To the Best of Our Knowledge (August 24, 2024) ["What can we learn from whales – and whales from us? Technology like AI is fueling new scientific breakthroughs in whale communication that can help us better understand the natural world. And, there’s an international effort to give whales a voice by granting them personhood."]
Goodall, Jane.
"What It Means to Be Human." On Being (November 25, 2021) ["Jane Goodall’s early research studying chimpanzees helped shape the self-understanding of our species and recalled modern Western science to the fact that we are a part of nature, not separate from it. In honor of the publication of her 32nd book —
The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times — we’re re-releasing her beautiful conversation with Krista over Zoom from pandemic lockdown. From her decades studying chimpanzees in the Gombe forest to her more recent years attending to human poverty and misunderstanding, the legendary primatologist reflects on the moral and spiritual convictions that have driven her, and what she is teaching and still learning about what it means to be human."]
Gillett, Kyle and Andrew Huberman.
"Optimize Your Hormones." The Huberman Lab (April 13, 2022) ["My guest is Dr. Kyle Gillett, MD, a dual board-certified physician in family medicine and obesity medicine and an expert in optimizing hormone levels to improve overall health and well-being in both men and women. We discuss how to improve hormones using behavioral, nutritional, and exercise-based tools and safely and rationally approach supplementation and hormone therapies. We discuss testosterone and estrogen and how those hormones relate to fertility, mood, aging, relationships, disease pathologies, thyroid hormone, growth hormone, prolactin, dopamine and peptides that impact physical and mental health and vitality across the lifespan. The episode is rich with scientific mechanisms and tools for people to consider."]
Grob, Charles.
"Psychedeliology (HALLUCINOGENS) Part 1." Ologies (July 11, 2024) ["Magic mushrooms, LSD, ayahuasca ceremonies, DMT, ketamine: this episode is a grab bag of trippy facts. Renowned psychiatry professor and psychedelics researcher Dr. Charles Grob of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center sits down to talk about how much LSD is too much LSD, what juices are squirting in the brain when you're tripping out, who should NOT take psychedelics, talking to dead people, serendipitous libraries, late night phone calls, antidepressants and mushrooms, the murky history of psychedelic research, and future paths of study that may help the world. Next week, wall-to-wall listener questions and some tales from your internet dad’s own journey."]
Haidt, Jonathan. "The Economic Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood." Capitalisn't (July 18, 2024) ["In one of this year's bestselling books, "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing An Epidemic of Mental Illness," New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that today's childhoods spent under the influence of smartphones and overprotective parenting has led to the reported explosion in cases of teenage anxiety and depression. He calls this process a "three-act play": the diminishment of trust in our communities, the loss of a play-based childhood, and the arrival of a hyper-connected world. Haidt also believes the problem is solvable. On this episode of Capitalisn't, he joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss parenting, learning, adolescence, and in an age where Congress won't act on regulation, his four proposed solutions to break social media's "collective action trap" on children. But are his solutions feasible? How do we weigh their costs, benefits, limitations, risks, and the roadblocks to their implementation? What are the consequences of an anxious generation for our economy — and what can we really do about it?"]
---. "Escaping the Matrix." Hidden Brain (March 11, 2024) ["A little more than a decade ago, researchers began tracking an alarming trend: a dramatic uptick in anxiety and depression among young Americans. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, like many other researchers, says the increase is related to our use of social media and devices. But he believes it’s also deeper than that — connected to our deepest moral beliefs and how they shape the way we view the world. He says there are simple steps we can take to improve the mental health of kids growing up in the smartphone era." The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt, 2024. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, 2018. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt, 2013. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, by Jonathan Haidt, 2006.]
---. "How Smartphones & Social Media Impact Mental Health & the Realistic Solutions." The Huberman Lab (June 10, 2024) ["In this episode, my guest is Dr. Jonathan Haidt, PhD, professor of social psychology at New York University and bestselling author on how technology and culture impact the psychology and health of kids, teens, and adults. We discuss the dramatic rise of suicide, depression, and anxiety as a result of replacing a play-based childhood with smartphones, social media, and video games. He explains how a screen-filled childhood leads to challenges in psychological development that negatively impact learning, resilience, identity, cooperation, and conflict resolution — all of which are crucial skills for future adult relationships and career success. We also discuss how phones and social media impact boys and girls differently and the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of how smartphones alter basic brain plasticity and function. Dr. Haidt explains his four recommendations for healthier smartphone use in kids, and we discuss how to restore childhood independence and play in the current generation. This is an important topic for everyone, young or old, parents and teachers, students and families, to be aware of in order to understand the potential mental health toll of smartphone use and to apply tools to foster skill-building and reestablish healthy norms for our kids."]
---. "Social Media Messed Up Our Kids. Now It Is Making Us Ungovernable." NOEMA (June 13, 2024) ["In a conversation with Noema editor-in-chief Nathan Gardels, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt discusses the impact of social media on truth in politics, the mental health crisis of today’s youth, and what to do about it."]
Harris, Tristan and Aza Raskin. "Mr. Harris Zooms to Washington." Your Undivided Attention (May 10, 2021) ["Back in January 2020, Tristan Harris went to Washington, D.C. to testify before the U.S. Congress on the harms of social media. A few weeks ago, he returned — virtually — for another hearing, Algorithms and Amplification: How Social Media Platforms’ Design Choices Shape Our Discourse and Our Minds. He testified alongside Dr. Joan Donovan, Research Director at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy and the heads of policy from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The senators’ animated questioning demonstrated a deeper understanding of how these companies’ fundamental business models and design properties fuel hate and misinformation, and many of the lawmakers expressed a desire and willingness to take regulatory action. But there’s still room for a more focused conversation. “It’s not about whether they filter out bad content,” says Tristan, “but really whether the entire business model of capturing human performance is a good way to organize society.” In this episode, a follow-up to last year’s “Mr. Harris Goes to Washington,” Tristan and Aza Raskin debrief about what was different this time, and what work lies ahead to pave the way for effective policy."]
Harris, Tristan and Daniel Schmachtenberger. "The Problem of Social Media." The Joe Rogan Experience #1736 (November 18, 2021) ["Tristan Harris is a former Google design ethicist, co-founder and president of the Center for Humane Technology, and co-host of the Center for Humane Technology’s "Your Undivided Attention" podcast with Aza Raskin. Daniel Schmachtenberger is a founding member of The Consilience Project, aimed at improving public sensemaking and dialogue."]
Harris, Tristan, Frank Luntz and Daniel Schmachtenberger. "The Facebook Files." Your Undivided Attention (September 21, 2021) ["On September 13th, the Wall Street Journal released The Facebook Files, an ongoing investigation of the extent to which Facebook's problems are meticulously known inside the company — all the way up to Mark Zuckerberg. Pollster Frank Luntz invited Tristan Harris along with friend and mentor Daniel Schmachtenberger to discuss the implications in a live webinar. In this bonus episode of Your Undivided Attention, Tristan and Daniel amplify the scope of the public conversation about The Facebook Files beyond the platform, and into its business model, our regulatory structure, and human nature itself."]
Hattar, Samar. "Timing Light, Food, & Exercise for Better Sleep, Energy & Mood." Huberman Lab (October 25, 2021) ["In this episode, Dr. Huberman hosts Dr. Samer Hattar, Chief of the Section on Light and Circadian Rhythms at the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Hattar is a world-renowned expert on how viewing light at particular times adjusts our mood, ability to learn, stress and hormone levels, appetite, and mental health. They discuss how to determine and use your individual light sensitivity to determine the optimal sleep-wake cycle for you. They also discuss how to combine your light viewing and waking time with the timing of your food intake and exercise in order to maximize mental and physical functioning. Dr. Hattar is credited with co-discovering the neurons in the eye that set our circadian clocks and regulate mood and appetite. He explains why even a small shift in daylight savings leads to outsized effects on our biking because of the way that our cells and circadian clocks integrate across many days. And he offers precise tools to rapidly adjust to jetlag, shift work, and reset your clock after a late night of work or socializing. This episode is filled with cutting-edge data on the biological mechanisms of human physiology and practical tools for people of all ages."]
Hill, Matthew. "How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks." Huberman Lab (July 8, 2024) ["In this episode, my guest is Dr. Matthew Hill, Ph.D., a professor of cell biology and anatomy at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary and an expert on the biology of cannabis. We discuss how cannabis affects the brain to produce its psychoactive effects (feeling “high”), including altered time perception, focus, memory, appetite, and stress. We discuss how THC vs. cannabidiol (CBD) affects the brain, the effects of different routes of cannabis administration (e.g., smoking, vaping, edibles), high-potency THC, and whether cannabis is addictive. We discuss if there is a link between cannabis use and the development of psychosis, anxiety, bipolar depression, or schizophrenia. We discuss whether CBD has clinical benefits in regulating stress, promoting sleep, and treating certain diseases. We also discuss if there are real and consistent differences in the biological effects of different cannabis strains, if cannabis impacts hormones, and the uses of cannabis for the management of pain, stress, Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and nausea. Listeners of this episode will get an up-to-date understanding of what is currently known about how cannabis affects the brain and body, including both its potential benefits and risks."]
Huberman, Andrew. "ADHD & How Anyone Can Improve Their Focus." Huberman Lab (September 13, 2021) ["In this episode, Dr. Huberman discusses ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder): what it is, the common myths, and the biology and psychology of ADHD. He discusses both behavioral and pharmacologic treatments for ADHD and brain-machine interface tools. Dr. Huberman also discusses behavioral training protocols that can improve focus in people with ADHD and those without ADHD and for people of different ages. He discusses the role of dopamine in coordinating ‘default-mode’ and ‘task-related’ neural networks, attentional “blinks” (lapses of attention) and how to overcome them, and the role of actual blinks in time perception and attention. Finally, Dr. Huberman reviews some of the prescription and over-the-counter compounds for increasing focus, such as Adderall, Ritalin, Modafinil and Armodafinil, the racetams, Alpha-GPC and phosphatidylserine and the role of diet for managing ADHD (and the controversies of diet for ADHD). The role of cell phones/technology in ADHD and ADHD-like challenges with focus are also discussed. Throughout, both basic science and clinical scenarios, as well as applicable tools and resources, are covered."]
---. "Controlling Your Dopamine for Motivation, Focus, and Satisfaction." Huberman Lab (September 27, 2021) ["This episode serves as a sort of “Dopamine Masterclass.” Dr. Huberman discusses the immensely powerful chemical that we all make in our brain and body: dopamine. He describes what it does and the neural circuits involved. He explains dopamine peaks and baselines and the cell biology of dopamine depletion. Dr. Huberman includes 14 tools for how to control your dopamine release for the sake of motivation, focus, avoiding and combating addiction and depression. He explains why dopamine stacking with chemicals and behaviors inevitably leads to states of underwhelm and poor performance. He explains how to achieve sustained increases in baseline dopamine, compounds that injure and protect dopamine neurons, including caffeine, from specific sources. Dr. Huberman describes non-prescription supplements for increasing dopamine—both their benefits and risks—and the synergy of pro-dopamine supplements with those that increase acetylcholine." Huberman recommends two books: Anna Lembke's Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence and Daniel Z. Lieberman's and Michael Long's The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and Will Determine the Fate of the Human.] Race]
---. "Developing a Rational Approach to Supplementation for Health & Performance." Huberman Lab (January 9, 2023) ["In this episode, I explain how to design a supplementation protocol to support maximum mental and physical health and performance depending on your specific needs, nutrition, lifestyle and finances. When most people hear about “supplements,” they think they are vitamin supplements, but there are many compounds that are powerful and sold over-the-counter that can enhance our health in performance and that can’t be obtained from foods. First, I discuss “foundational” supplements to support overall health, including water and fat-soluble vitamins, minerals, digestive enzymes, adaptogens, and prebiotics/probiotics. Then I explain how to use single-ingredient supplements to enhance specific aspects of your physiology, such as aiding sleep, cognitive enhancement, and focus supporting healthy hormone levels (e.g., testosterone, estrogen and growth hormone, thyroid). Finally, I explain when it makes sense to add supplements to your lifestyle and discuss how best to use supplements, including how to determine dosage, sourcing, continuous schedules and cycling, and how to layer different supplements most effectively. This episode will explain how to design the safest, most biologically effective, cost-effective supplementation protocol to meet your particular goals and support your overall health, including vitality and longevity."]
---. "Effects of Fasting & Time-Restricted Eating on Fat Loss and Health." Huberman Lab (October 11, 2021) ["In this episode, Dr. Huberman discusses the science and practice of fasting, also called time-restricted feeding. He reviews the data on how limiting food intake to specific portions of every 24-hour cycle (or fasting longer) impacts weight loss, fat loss specifically, liver health, mental focus, muscle, longevity and more. Dr. Huberman explains how “fasted” is contextual and relates to blood glucose levels and their downstream effects, and how the depth of fasting can be adjusted with behaviors such as different types of exercise or with glucose disposal agents. He also discusses the optimal fasting protocol: and both the absolute (non-negotiable) and variable (contextual) features of a fasting/time-restricted-feeding protocol that will allow you to get the most benefits. He also discusses what does and does not break a fast, the effects of fasting on hormones like testosterone and cortisol, and fertility. Dr. Huberman also reviews how different feeding windows of 8 or 10 or 4 hours differentially impact the effects of fasting and why the classic 8 hour feeding window came to be but also might be ideal. He discusses mechanisms and offers tools to discern the optimal fasting duration and timing for you."]
---. "Erasing Fears & Trauma Based on the Modern Neuroscience of Fear." Huberman Lab (December 6, 2021) ["In this episode, Dr. Huberman discusses fear and trauma, including the neural circuits involved in the “threat reflex” and how specific experiences and memories activate that system. He also discusses how our body is involved in trauma and fear. First, Dr. Huberman describes the logic of fear mechanisms and how “top-down” processing–meaning connections from the parts of the brain that assign meaning to our feelings, are involved in fear and erasing fears and traumas. Then he discusses what successful fear and trauma treatment must include and considers various treatments for whether they meet that standard, such as EMDR, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Ketamine, other drug-assisted therapies, and more. Dr. Huberman also reviews new data on how 5 minutes per day of deliberate, self-imposed stress can erase fear and depression. And he reviews the role that social connection plays in erasing or maintaining fears by activating specific molecular pathways in the brain and body. Finally, he reviews supplementation with over-the-counter compounds for their effects on anxiety and fear and when to take them, if at all."]
---. "Healthy Eating & Eating Disorders – Anorexia, Bulimia, Binging." Huberman Lab (September 6, 2021) ["In this episode, Dr. Huberman discusses what drives hunger and satiety and the role our brain, stomach, fat and hormones play in regulating hunger and turning off the desire to eat more. He also addresses how protein is assimilated better early in the day than it is later in the day and why those using intermittent fasting might want to shift their feeding window to earlier in the day. Then he delves into the topic of disorders of eating: Anorexia Nervosa, where people starve themselves and Bulimia Nervosa, where people binge and purge their food. Dr. Huberman discusses some common myths about Anorexia, such as the role of media images increasing the rates of Anorexia and the myth of the “perfectionist” anorexic. He also reviews the symptoms and the brain and chemical systems disrupted in this condition. He explains how anorexics become hyperaware of the fat content of foods and develop reflexive habits of fat-hyperawareness. Then Dr. Huberman discusses the most effective treatments ranging from family-based models to those that target the habitual nature of low-fat/calorie food choices. He also discusses new, more experimental clinical trials on MDMA, Psilocybin and Ibogaine for Anorexia and both their promise and risks. Dr. Huberman reviews the latest work on binge eating disorder and brain stimulation, drug treatments and thyroid disruption in Bulimia and why the treatments for Bulimia are so similar to those for ADHD. Finally, he discusses “cheat days,” body dysmorphia and the growing list of novel forms of eating disorders from start to finish. As always, science and science-based tools are discussed."]
---. "How to Enhance Your Gut Microbiome for Brain & Overall Health." The Huberman Lab #61 (February 28, 2022) ["In this episode, I discuss the profound effect the gut has on the nervous system. I cover the structure and function of the gut-brain axis and the role of the gut microbiome in the brain and overall health. I describe how the gut controls hunger or satiety by affecting neurons in our brain. I also contrast the many pathways by which the gut influences the brain: direct vs. indirect pathways, chemical vs. mechanical, and fast vs. slow signaling. Additionally, I discuss what defines a healthy microbiome and how your lifestyle impacts the gut microbiome, including the effects of stress, fasting, antibiotics, pets, environment, prebiotics and probiotics. I address how different foods shape the gut microbiome, in particular, the emerging data that fermented foods can increase the diversity of healthy gut microbiota. Throughout the episode, I explain peer-reviewed and textbook findings that reveal the critical role of the gut microbiome in supporting mental and physical health and I outline simple tools that anyone can use in order to enhance their gut microbiome health."]
---. "How to Prevent & Treat Colds & Flu." The Huberman Lab (January 8, 2024) ["In this episode, I explain the biology of the common cold and flu (influenza) and how the immune system combats these infections. I describe behavior, nutrition and supplementation-based tools supported by peer-reviewed research to enhance immune system function and better combat colds and flu. I also dispel common myths about how the cold and flu are transmitted and when you and those around you are contagious.
I explain if common preventatives and treatments such as vitamin C, zinc, vitamin D and echinacea work. I also highlight other compounds known to reduce contracting and duration of colds and flu. I discuss how to use exercise and sauna to bolster the immune response. This episode will help listeners understand how to reduce the chances of catching a cold or flu and help people recover more quickly from and prevent the spread of colds and flu."]
---. "How to Stop Headaches Using Science-Based Approaches." Huberman Lab (February 6, 2023) ["In this episode, I discuss the causes and treatments of different types of headaches, including tension headaches, migraines, sinus and cluster headaches, as well as menstrual and other hormone-based headaches. I describe how to distinguish between the different headache types and how to select the right treatment, including prescription-based and non-prescription-based treatments, behavioral and nutrition-based approaches. I also explain the evidence and mechanisms supporting the use of omega-3 fatty acids, high dose creatine, peppermint oil, turmeric, acupuncture and more. Additionally, I touch on traumatic brain injury, the causes of photophobia, aura, and the link between spicy foods and thunderclap headaches."]
---. "How Your Brain Works and Changes." The Huberman Lab #1 (January 4, 2021) ["... an introduction to how the nervous system works to create sensations, perceptions, emotions, thoughts and behaviors, as well as how we can change our nervous system— a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity. The information sets the stage for all Huberman Lab Podcast episodes that follow by covering neurons, synapses, brain chemicals and the rhythms that control our ability to focus, learn and sleep… and more."]
---. "Ido Portal: The Science & Practice of Movement." The Huberman Lab #77 (June 20, 2022) ["My guest is Ido Portal, the world’s foremost expert on human movement. Ido has spent a lifetime studying, combining and evolving elements from an enormous range of martial arts, dance genres, athletic endeavors, and science, to develop a unified theory and practice of movement called “The Ido Portal Method.” Here we discuss all things movement, including the role of the nervous system, reflexive versus deliberate movement patterns, and the link between emotions and awareness in movement. We also discuss learning and neuroplasticity, the mind-body connection and how movement itself can be leveraged toward expanding other types of skills- cognitive, creative and otherwise. As one of the most sought out teachers of movement alive today, the knowledge Ido shares in this conversation can benefit everyone—children, adults, athletes, dancers, clinicians and trainers and the everyday person."]
---. "Master Your Sleep & Be More Alert When Awake." The Huberman Lab #2 (January 11, 2021) ["Today’s episode provides a host of information on what makes us sleepy, sleep soundly, and feel awake and alert. It covers a broad range of tools for anyone wishing to improve their sleep and wakeful state. The science and logic for each tool are described."]
---. "Nutrients For Brain Health & Performance." The Huberman Lab #42 (October 18, 2021) ["In this episode, Dr. Huberman describes science-supported nutrients for brain and performance (cognition) and general nervous system health. He describes ten tools for this purpose, including specific amounts and sources for Omega-3 fatty acids, which make up the “structural fat” of neurons (nerve cells) and allow them to function across our lifespan. He also reviews data on creatine, phosphatidylserine, anthocyanins, choline, glutamine and how they each impact brain function in healthy people seeking to reinforce and improve their cognition and in those combatting cognitive decline. Dr. Huberman describes both food-based and supplement-based sources for these compounds and their effective dose ranges based on peer-reviewed literature. Then he reviews the three factors: gut-brain signaling, perceived taste, and learned associations that combine with the metabolic and blood-sugar-elevating effects of food to determine what foods we seek and prefer. Amazingly, it’s not just about what tastes good to us. Next, Dr. Huberman explores how we can leverage the neural circuits of learned food preference toward seeking and enjoying the right foods for brain health and performance. He also reviews new data on non-caloric sweeteners and why consuming them with glucose-elevating foods can be detrimental, in some cases rapidly leading to insulin dysregulation. This episode covers more than ten actionable tools for those seeking to improve and/or maintain brain function. It explains modern neuroscience underlying our sense of taste, our food-seeking preferences, and brain metabolism."]
---. "Optimize & Control Your Brain Chemistry to Improve Health & Performance." The Huberman Lab (July 11, 2022) ["In this episode, I explain the biological roles of the four major neuromodulators—dopamine, epinephrine (aka adrenaline), serotonin, and acetylcholine—and describe how these neuromodulators impact a wide variety of mental states and behaviors, including focus, creativity, motivation, drive, learning, alertness, mood, relationships, and feelings of well-being. Then, with that foundational understanding in mind, I describe a potent toolkit of science-supported behavioral, nutrition, and supplementation tools that can be used to increase baseline levels of individual neuromodulators and that can be modified for specific goals. This episode summarizes low-or-no-cost, actionable, science-based tools that can benefit anyone in order to enhance their levels of brain chemicals and improve mental health, physical health, and performance."]
---. "The Science of Creativity & How to Enhance Creative Innovation." The Huberman Lab (December 19, 2022) ["MB: An understanding of creativity from a neuroscientist. The base line definition and explanation of creativity is excellent, the explanation of how we all are essentially creative is helpful (use it or lose it, but even more, you need to cultivate it), the functionality of our brain and the centers which control and modulate our creative impulses is enlightening, also ways to increase your creativity and hindrances to your potential creativity (some which literally kill it). At the bottom of the page there are links to more resources. "In this episode, I explain how the brain engages in creative thinking and, based on that mechanistic understanding, the tools to improve one’s ability to think creatively and innovate in any area. I discuss how convergent and divergent thinking are essential for generating creative ideas and provide three types of meditation tools (open monitoring meditation, focused attention meditation & non-sleep deep rest; NSDR), which improve our ability to engage in these creative thinking patterns in specific and powerful ways. I also discuss how dopamine and mood contribute to the creative process and describe behavioral, nutritional and supplementation-based approaches for increasing dopamine to engage in creative thought and implementation. I explain how movement and storytelling (narrative) approaches can generate novel creative ideas and how substances like alcohol, cannabis, and psilocybin impact our creative ability. Excitingly, creativity is a skill that can be cultivated and enhanced; this episode outlines many tools to help anyone access creativity and apply."]
---. "The Science of Love, Desire, and Attachment." The Huberman Lab (February 14, 2022) ["In this episode, I discuss the psychology and biology of desire, love and attachment. I explain how childhood attachment types are thought to inform adult attachment styles to romantic partners, and I describe some of the major theories of human mate selection, relationships and infidelity. Additionally, I explore the neurobiology and proposed subconscious processing underlying desire, love and attachment, including the roles of empathy and “positive delusion”. I outline how self-awareness can shift one’s relationship attachment style towards securely bonded partnerships. Finally, I describe specific tools and supplements that have been researched to increase libido and sex drive. Throughout the episode, I explain the science and key mechanisms underlying romantic love and outline tools for those seeking to find a strong, healthy relationship, or for those wanting to strengthen an existing relationship."]
---. "The Science & Health Benefits of Deliberate Heat Exposure." The Huberman Lab (April 25, 2022) ["I describe the mechanisms by which deliberate heat exposure impacts body temperature, metabolism, heart health, hormone production, exercise recovery, cognition, mood, and longevity. I detail specific protocols for deliberate heat exposure, including exposure times, temperature ranges to consider, time of day, and delivery mechanisms (sauna vs. hot bath vs. open air heat, etc.) in order to achieve different specific outcomes, including dramatic growth hormone releases, or reduction in cortisol levels. I also discuss the ability of locally applied heat to heal or otherwise improve various bodily tissues and new data on how local application of heat may induce the conversion of metabolically sluggish white fat to metabolically robust beige fat."]
---. "Science of Social Bonding in Family, Friendship & Romantic Love." The Huberman Lab (December 20, 2021) ["In this episode, Dr. Huberman discusses the science of social bonding- the process by which we form attachments. He explains the neural and hormonal basis for “social homeostasis” (our drive for a given amount of socializing), which reveals why we get lonely, why we seek out connection with others and how power dynamics (hierarchies) shape those connections. Dr. Huberman also discusses the neurochemical basis of introversion and extroversion, of trust and how shared experiences that promote similar physiological states in two or more individuals lead to more rapid bonding. He also discusses how food and oxytocin play key roles in social bonding. This episode covers quality peer-reviewed science and practical tools for anyone seeking to find, build or end relationships."]
---. "Toolkit for Sleep." The Huberman Lab Podcast Neural Network (September 2021)
---. "Understanding and Conquering Depression." The Huberman Lab #34 (August 23, 2021) ["This episode, I explain what major depression is at the biological and psychological level and the various treatments that peer-reviewed studies have revealed can help prevent and treat depression. I explain the three major chemical systems that are altered in depression: norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine. I discuss genetic predispositions to depression and how stress, thyroid hormone and cortisol play a role in many forms of depression. I also discuss inflammation as a common feature of many depression symptoms. I review 8 specific science-supported protocols for treating and avoiding depression, including EPA fatty acids (which have been shown to rival certain prescription treatments), how exercise protects against depression, studies of creatine, adjusting dopamine balance and more. I also discuss the results of ongoing clinical trials for ketamine and psilocybin for depression, how these compounds work and finally, I review how ketogenic diets can help in certain cases of depression, especially treatment-resistant major depression."]
"Understanding and Controlling Aggression." The Huberman Lab (May 9, 2022) ["This episode I describe the neural mechanisms that activate and control aggressive states and beahviors and the role of hormones—estrogen and testosterone—in mediating violent and and/or competive aggression. I also describe tools that can be used to modulate the factors that have been shown to ‘prime’ an individual for aggression, including sunlight, estrogen sensitivity, competition within social settings, and overall stress levels, and the hormone cortisol. I discuss how substances such as caffeine and alcohol can impact impulsive behaviors, and how nutrition and supplementation can be used to regulate mood and aggression."]
---. "Using Light (Sunlight, Blue Light & Red Light) to Optimize Health." The Huberman Lab (April 18, 2022) ["I describe the mechanisms by which different wavelengths of light impact the cells, tissues and organs of the human body, and how specifically timed light exposure of specific wavelengths can be used to improve sleep, enhance alertness, modulate hormone levels, and improve mood. I also explain the use of ultraviolet and infrared phototherapies to relieve pain increase testosterone and estrogen levels; improve skin health, appearance and wound healing; and how red light can be used to offset age-related vision loss and provide neuroprotection. Throughout the episode, I describe the mechanisms of light-based therapies and actionable tools that people can use positively impact mental and physical health."]
---. "Using Play to Rewire & Improve Your Brain." The Huberman Lab (March 20, 2022) ["In this episode, I discuss the transformative nature of play—how it changes our feelings, thoughts and actions and indeed, how it can rewire our brain to function better in all contexts. I explain the role of play in childhood, as well as adulthood in skill and social development and describe key characteristics of the mind and body during play. Additionally, I explore how play allows the brain to test contingencies in different roles/environments. Throughout, I discuss the underlying neurobiology of play. I also describe how low-stakes play, and tinkering can broaden and shape your future capabilities. Finally, I discuss how our childhood ‘personal play identity’ informs our adult personality. Throughout the episode, I use the science of play to outline recommendations for using play as a means to enhance neuroplasticity and explore novel situations, regardless of age."]
---. "Using Your Nervous System to Enhance Your Immune System." The Huberman Lab #44 (November 1, 2021) ["This episode teaches you a lot about the immune system, immune-brain interactions and offers 12 potential tools for enhancing immune system function. I discuss how our immune system works and science-supported tools we can use to enhance our immune system. I discuss the innate and adaptive immune systems and our various microbiomes-- not just in our gut but also in our nose, eyes and mouth and how to keep them healthy. And I review how specific patterns of breathing and foods maintain a healthy mucosal barrier that is crucial for fighting infections. I discuss how certain neurochemicals called catecholamines enhance our immune system function and how to use specific breathing protocols, types and timing of heat and cold exposure, and, if appropriate, supplementation to activate catecholamines. I also discuss the role and use of serotonin for the sake of accessing the specific types of sleep for recovering from illness, and I discuss how to increase glymphatic "washout" of brain debris during sleep. I also review fever, the vagus nerve and the use of atypical yet highly effective compounds for rhinitis (nasal inflammation)."]
Huberman, Andrew and Matthew Johnson. "Psychedelic Medicine." Huberman Lab (September 20, 2021) ["In this episode, Dr. Huberman discusses medical research on psychedelic compounds with Dr. Matthew Johnson, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. They discuss the biology and medical clinical-trial uses of psilocybin, MDMA, ayahuasca, DMT, and LSD. Dr. Johnson teaches us what the clinical trials in his lab reveal about the potential these compounds hold for the treatment of depression, addiction, trauma, eating disorders, ADHD, and other disorders of the mind. Dr. Johnson describes a typical psychedelic experiment in his laboratory, start to finish, including the conditions for optimal clinical outcomes. And he explains some of the potential hazards and common misconceptions and pitfalls related to psychedelic medicine. Dr. Johnson explains flashbacks, the heightened risks of certain people and age groups using psychedelics, and the evolving legal and pharmaceutical industry landscape surrounding psychedelics. Dr. Johnson also describes how the scientific study of psychedelics is likely to set the trajectory of psychiatric medicine in the years to come. Dr. Johnson is among a small handful of researchers who have pioneered the clinical study of these powerful compounds. He has unprecedented insight into how they can be woven into other psychiatric treatments, changing one’s sense of self and reality."]
Huberman, Andrew and David Spiegel. "Using Hypnosis to Enhance Mental & Physical Health & Performance." Huberman Lab (February 21, 2022) ["... Dr. David Spiegel MD, Associate Chair of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Director of the Center on Stress and Health and Director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Spiegel has more than 40 years of clinical and research experience with hypnosis, stress physiology, and psychotherapy. In this episode, we examine the role of clinical hypnosis for the treatment of trauma, chronic pain, anxiety and more. Dr. Spiegel explains how to determine your level of ‘hypnotizability’ and provides case studies of incredible successes with hypnosis to treat a variety of ailments. We also discuss how breathing, vision and directed mental focus can modulate internal states and enhance performance. Additionally, we discuss how the adoption of self-hypnosis techniques can reduce stress and enhance sleep in anyone. Dr. Spiegel teaches us how hypnosis works at the neural circuit level to enhance cognitive flexibility. Throughout the episode, Dr. Spiegel summarizes key clinical trials and peer-reviewed findings and resources to work with a trained clinical professional or to do guided self-hypnosis."]
Huberman, Andrew and Kay Tye. "The Biology of Social Interactions and Emotions." Huberman Lab (February 5, 2024) ["In this episode, my guest is Dr. Kay Tye, PhD, Professor of Systems Neurobiology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. We discuss the neural circuit basis of social interactions and loneliness. We also discuss how animals and people establish themselves in a group hierarchy by rank and how the brain responds to dominance and subordination. Much of our discussion relates to how social media impacts our sense of social connectedness or lack thereof. The topics covered in this episode are directly relevant to anyone interested in the neuroscience of mental health, work-life balance, abundance versus scarcity mindset, and interpersonal dynamics."]
Jasechko, Scott, et al. "Rapid groundwater decline and some cases of recovery in aquifers globally." Nature (January 2024) ["Groundwater resources are vital to ecosystems and livelihoods. Excessive groundwater withdrawals can cause groundwater levels to decline, resulting in seawater intrusion, land subsidence, streamflow depletion and wells running dry. However, the global pace and prevalence of local groundwater declines are poorly constrained, because in situ groundwater levels have not been synthesized at the global scale. Here we analyse in situ groundwater-level trends for 170,000 monitoring wells and 1,693 aquifer systems in countries that encompass approximately 75% of global groundwater withdrawals. We show that rapid groundwater-level declines (>0.5 m year−1) are widespread in the twenty-first century, especially in dry regions with extensive croplands. Critically, we also show that groundwater-level declines have accelerated over the past four decades in 30% of the world’s regional aquifers. This widespread acceleration in groundwater-level deepening highlights an urgent need for more effective measures to address groundwater depletion. Our analysis also reveals specific cases in which depletion trends have reversed following policy changes, managed aquifer recharge and surface-water diversions, demonstrating the potential for depleted aquifer systems to recover."]
Kafer, Gary.
"There is No A.I." Jump Cut #62 (Winter 2023 - 2024) [Review of Kate Crawford, The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021: "The first chapter, “Earth,” examines the mineral mining practices that underpin the construction of computational systems. In chapter two, “Labor,” Crawford examines the forms of workplace surveillance that enervate data systems—including digital pieceworkers, Amazon warehouses, and assembly lines—all of which subject the body to temporal management.
"Data” is the subject of the third chapter, which tracks how datasets are built from harvesting personal information and transformed into pattern recognition models. Chapter four, “Classification,” focuses on how that data is used to construct taxonomies of social differences like race and gender within machine learning systems. Next, Crawford turns to “Affect,” recounting the history of scientific attempts to create universal mappings of facial expressions that now subtend the development of emotion detection systems by tech industries. The final chapter turns to the “State” to explore how the private AI industry is taking an active role in reshaping government activities, including policing and warfare.
Crawford’s atlas concludes with a discussion of “Power” and the possibility for justice, which is followed by a brief coda exploring the role of “Space” as the ultimate frontier of AI’s imperial project."]
Karlawish, Jason and Aaron Kesselheim.
"A Disease of Humanity: The Problem of Alzheimer's." Open Source (June 24, 2021) ["Alzheimer’s disease, the hushed nightmare version of old age, is on the wrong side of medical news again. The headline shocker this month was that the watchdog Food and Drug Administration had approved an anti-Alzheimer’s drug from the pharma giant Biogen. The treatment called aducanumab has no record of success and a first-round price-tag per patient of $55,000 per year. Our keynote guest Aaron Kesselheim has the inside story of the FDA’s retreat from regulation. Then Jason Karlawish will join us from the front line of Alzheimer’s treatment. The riddle this hour is what makes the last stage of human life so demanding and so difficult." Jason Karlawish's new book is
The Problem of Alzheimer's: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It."]
Keltner, Dacher. "The Thrilling New Science of Awe." On Being (February 2, 2023) ["One of the most fascinating developments of our time is that human qualities we have understood in terms of virtue — experiences we’ve called spiritual — are now being taken seriously by science as intelligence — as elements of human wholeness. Dacher Keltner and his Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley have been pivotal in this emergence. From the earliest years of his career, he investigated how emotions are coded in the muscles of our faces, and how they serve as “moral sensory systems.” He was called on as Emojis evolved; he consulted on Pete Docter’s groundbreaking movie Inside Out. All of this, as Dacher sees it now, led him deeper and deeper into investigating the primary experience of awe in human life — moments when we have a sense of wonder, an experience of mystery, that transcends our understanding. These, it turns out, are as common in human life globally as they are measurably health-giving and immunity-boosting. They bring us together with others, again and again. They bring our nervous system and heartbeat and breath into sync — and even into sync with other bodies around us. Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and founding director of the Greater Good Science Center. He hosts the podcast The Science of Happiness. His latest book is Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life."]
Kolk, Bessel van der. "Trauma, the Body, and 2021." On Being (November 11, 2021) ["When Krista interviewed the psychiatrist and trauma specialist Bessel van der Kolk for the first time, his book The Body Keeps the Score was about to be published. She described him then as “an innovator in treating the effects of overwhelming experiences on people and society.” She catches up with him in 2021 — as we are living through one vast overwhelming experience after the other. And The Body Keeps the Score is now one of the most widely read books in the pandemic world. His perspective is utterly unique and very practically helpful — on what’s been happening in our bodies and our brains, and how that relationship can become severed and restored." Bessel van der Kolk is the founder and medical director of the Trauma Research Foundation in Brookline, Massachusetts. He’s also a professor of psychiatry at Boston University Medical School. His books include Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on the Mind, Body, and Society and The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.]
Kourtney, Janet and Martin Carrier, et al. Science and the Production of Ignorance: When the Quest for Knowledge is Thwarted. MIT Press, 2020. ["An introduction to the new area of ignorance studies that examines how science produces ignorance—both actively and passively, intentionally and unintentionally.
We may think of science as our foremost producer of knowledge, but for the past decade, science has also been studied as an important source of ignorance. The historian of science Robert Proctor has coined the term agnotology to refer to the study of ignorance, and much of the ignorance studied in this new area is produced by science. Whether an active or passive construct, intended or unintended, this ignorance is, in Proctor's words, “made, maintained, and manipulated” by science. This volume examines forms of scientific ignorance and their consequences. A dialogue between Proctor and Peter Galison offers historical context, presenting the concerns and motivations of pioneers in the field. Essays by leading historians and philosophers of science examine the active construction of ignorance by biased design and interpretation of experiments and empirical studies, as seen in the “false advertising” by climate change deniers; the “virtuous” construction of ignorance—for example, by curtailing research on race- and gender-related cognitive differences; and ignorance as the unintended by-product of choices made in the research process, when rules, incentives, and methods encourage an emphasis on the beneficial and commercial effects of industrial chemicals, and when certain concepts and even certain groups' interests are inaccessible in a given conceptual framework."]
Latour, Bruno. Facing Gaia: Eight Lecture on the New Climatic Regime. Polity Press, 2017. ["The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of nature have been continually developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name 'Gaia' for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on 'natural religion,' Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime."]
Lesage, Julia. "The Last Word: AI Musings." Jump Cut #62 (Winter 2023 - 2024) ["Since many of my friends say they know nothing about AI, I am taking this editorial space to reflect on how I began to study AI. Early in 2023, Gary Kafer sent in a review of Kate Crawford’s The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. [Please read Kafer’s piece alongside mine.] It led me to read Crawford’s book, which amplified my concerns about the damage caused by massive digital data gathering. I’d been thinking about AI since the year before when in November, 2022, ChatGPT was released, grew rapidly in its user base, drew many critics, and the nation saw a massive subsequent venture-capital investment in this kind of AI. On a personal level, I saw how ChatGPT suddenly reshaped the work life of many writers and teachers around me, and the strikes in Hollywood made it clear that as a media professional I had to learn more about AI."]
Like Stories of Old.
"The Problem of Other Minds – How Cinema Explores Consciousness." (Posted on Youtube: May 31, 2018) ["How have films engaged the problem of other minds? In this video essay, I discuss cinematic explorations into consciousness in the context of the cognitive revolution that has challenged many of the basic assumptions about what was for a long time believed to be a uniquely human trait." Uses Frans de Waal's book
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?:
"Hailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition--in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos--to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we've underestimated their abilities for too long. Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame? Fascinating, entertaining, and deeply informed, de Waal's landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal--and human--intelligence."]
Lyon, Gabrielle.
"How to Exercise & Eat for Optimal Health & Longevity." The Huberman Lab (June 24, 2024) ["In this episode, my guest is Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, D.O., a board-certified physician who did her clinical and research training at Washington University in geriatrics and nutrition. She is also an expert in how diet and exercise impact muscle and whole-body health and longevity. Dr. Lyon is a bestselling author and public educator. We discuss how healthy skeletal muscle promotes longevity, brain health, disease prevention, ideal body composition, and the health of other organs and bodily systems. She makes specific nutritional recommendations for optimal health: what to eat, how much to eat, the timing of meals, the essential need for adequate quality protein (including animal and plant-based options), supplementation, and how our dietary requirements change with age. She explains why specific types of resistance training are essential to build and maintain muscle and overall metabolic health. She also describes how to include resistance training as part of your exercise regimen — regardless of age or sex. She also provides specific mindset tools to encourage sustained adherence to healthy eating and exercise practices. Women and men of all ages will benefit from Dr. Lyon’s practical, evidence-based protocols to improve muscle and whole-body appearance, function, and health."]
Margulis, Lynn.
"Symbiosis is Everything." Against Everyone (November 19, 2019) ["This is the most important episode of AEWCH for me. In it I talk with my friend and intellectual mentor, biologist and geoscientist
Lynn Margulis. This is, I believe, the last recorded discussion with Lynn before her death from a stroke on November 22, 2011. Lynn was a profound intellect, and, I believe, the most important thinker in the last 50 years. With
James Lovelock, she developed the Gaia theory - that organisms interact with the non-living aspects of the Earth to regulate Earth systems like cloud cover, oceanic salinity, atmospheric gas abundance, and more. She also proved and popularized the notion that organelles in nucleated cells are symbioses of bacterial mergers. Along with her son
Dorion Sagan (from her marriage to
Carl Sagan), she developed a new theory of evolution, symbiogenesis, which boldly asserts, and with ample evidence, that new species arise out of symbiotic mergers with bacteria, not through random genetic mutation-meets-natural selection. The episode is a wide-ranging exploration of Lynn's work and thought; ... I've started this episode off with my essay, As Above, So Below, which I wrote in the days after her death. The essay appears in the book
Lynn Margulis: The Life And Legacy Of A Scientific Rebel. Feel free to skip past the intro if you're familiar with her work, or to listen to it as a primer afterward, to get your bearings in the dizzying array of names and scientific concepts on the episode. "]
Marx, Paris.
"Data Vampires: Fighting for Control." Tech Won't Save Us (October 28, 2024) ["Tech billionaires are embracing extreme right-wing politics. It’s not just to enhance their power, but to try to realize a harmful vision for humanity’s future that could see humans merging with machines and possibly even living in computer simulations. Will we allow them to put our collective resources behind their science fiction dreams, or fight for a better future and a different kind of technology to go along with it?"]
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"Data Vampires: Sacrificing for AI." Tech Won't Save Us (October 21, 2024) ["Sam Altman is clear: he’s ready to sacrifice anything for his AI fantasies. But are we? We dig into why generative AI has such extreme energy demands and how major tech companies are trying to rewrite climate accounting rules to cover how much their emissions are rising. AI isn’t just churning out visual slop; it’s also being used to transform how our society works and further reduce people’s power over their lives. It’s a disaster any way you look at it. This is episode 3 of Data Vampires, a special four-part series from Tech Won’t Save Us."]
McNamee, Roger.
"Roger McNamee on his quest to stop Facebook." Berkeley Talks (July 30, 2021) ["In episode 120 of Berkeley Talks, longtime venture capitalist Roger McNamee discusses how he, an early investor in Facebook and former adviser to Mark Zuckerberg, came to realize the damage caused by the social media giant and others like it, and how he’s committed to try to stop them. McNamee, author of the New York Times bestseller
Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe (2019) spoke with Henry Brady, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy, in February 2021."]
Means, Casey.
"Transform Your Health by Improving Metabolism, Hormone & Blood Sugar Regulation." Huberman Lab (May 6, 2024) ["In this episode, my guest is Dr. Casey Means, MD, a physician trained at Stanford University School of Medicine, an expert on metabolic health and the author of the book, Good Energy. We discuss how to leverage nutrition, exercise and environmental factors to enhance your metabolic health by improving mitochondrial function, hormone and blood sugar regulation. We also explore how fasting, deliberate cold exposure and spending time in nature can impact metabolic health, how to control food cravings and how to assess your metabolic health using blood testing, continuous glucose monitors and other tools. Metabolic dysfunction is a leading cause of chronic disease, obesity and reduced lifespan around the world. Conversely, improving your mitochondrial and metabolic health can positively affect your health span and longevity. Listeners of this episode will learn low- and zero-cost tools to improve their metabolic health, physical and mental well-being, body composition and target the root cause of various common diseases."]
Michaels, David.
Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. Oxford University Press, 2008. ["Doubt is our product," a cigarette executive once observed, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy." In this eye-opening expose, David Michaels reveals how the tobacco industry's duplicitous tactics spawned a multimillion dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards. Product defense consultants, he argues, have increasingly skewed the scientific literature, manufactured and magnified scientific uncertainty, and influenced policy decisions to the advantage of polluters and the manufacturers of dangerous products. To keep the public confused about the hazards posed by global warming, second-hand smoke, asbestos, lead, plastics, and many other toxic materials, industry executives have hired unscrupulous scientists and lobbyists to dispute scientific evidence about health risks. In doing so, they have not only delayed action on specific hazards, but they have constructed barriers to make it harder for lawmakers, government agencies, and courts to respond to future threats. The Orwellian strategy of dismissing research conducted by the scientific community as "junk science" and elevating science conducted by product defense specialists to "sound science" status also creates confusion about the very nature of scientific inquiry and undermines the public's confidence in science's ability to address public health and environmental concerns Such reckless practices have long existed, but Michaels argues that the Bush administration deepened the dysfunction by virtually handing over regulatory agencies to the very corporate powers whose products and behavior they are charged with overseeing. In Doubt Is Their Product Michaels proves, beyond a doubt, that our regulatory system has been broken. He offers concrete, workable suggestions for how it can be restored by taking the politics out of science and ensuring that concern for public safety, rather than private profits, guides our regulatory policy. Named one of the best Sci-Tech books of 2008 by Library Journal!"]
Patrick, Rhonda.
"Intestinal Permeability: the Bacterial link to Aging, Brain Barrier Dysfunction & Metabolic Disorder." Found My Fitness (May 30, 2022) ["The intestinal barrier serves as a gatekeeper to the human body. The loss of the health and integrity of this barrier influences multiple aspects of human health – including cardiometabolic function, neurological health, behavior, and more – in surprising and unexpected ways. One of these ways involves lipopolysaccharide, or LPS, a bacterial product that arises in the intestine, and its interaction with far distal tissues and organs via the induction of immune mediators. Dr. Rhonda Patrick was the keynote speaker for the Metabolic Health Summit, held May 5 – 8, 2022, in Santa Barbara, California. Her presentation described the role that intestinal permeability and bacterial products play in aging, inflammation, and chronic disease."]
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"Micronutrients for Health & Longevity." The Huberman Lab (May 2, 2022) ["My guest is Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D. She earned her doctoral degree in biomedical science from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and has become one of the leading public health educators on the brain and general health, aging, cancer, and nutrition. We discuss the four major categories of micronutrients that regulate cellular and organ stress and antioxidants, inflammation, hormone regulation, immune system, and longevity. Dr. Patrick provides actionable protocols for obtaining key micronutrients from food and/or supplement-based sources. Additionally, Dr. Patrick outlines protocols for deliberate cold and deliberate heat exposure to benefit metabolism, cardiorespiratory fitness, mental health, and lifespan. "]
Pells, Rachael.
"Genomics: How Genome Sequencing Will Change Healthcare (Random House, 2022)." New Books in Medicine (July 15, 2022) ["Genome sequencing is one of the most exciting scientific breakthroughs of the past thirty years. But what precisely does it involve and how is it developing? In Genomics: How Genome Sequencing Will Change Healthcare (Random House, 2022), Rachael Pells explains the science behind genomics. She analyses its practical applications in medical diagnosis and the treatment of conditions that range from cancer to severe allergic reactions to cystic fibrosis. She considers its potential to help with advances in agriculture and environmental science. She explores the ethics of genetic modification and the dangers involved when humans 'play God'. And she addresses the fundamental question: to what extent will future advances transform human longevity and the quality of life."]
Perlroth, Nicole.
"Cybersecurity and the Weapons of Cyberwar." Lex Fridman Podcast #266 (February 20, 2022) [Nicole Pelroth is the author of
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race: "Zero day: a software bug that allows a hacker to break into your devices and move around undetected. One of the most coveted tools in a spy's arsenal, a zero day has the power to silently spy on your iPhone, dismantle the safety controls at a chemical plant, alter an election, and shut down the electric grid (just ask Ukraine). For decades, under cover of classification levels and non-disclosure agreements, the United States government became the world's dominant hoarder of zero days. U.S. government agents paid top dollar-first thousands, and later millions of dollars- to hackers willing to sell their lock-picking code and their silence. Then the United States lost control of its hoard and the market. Now those zero days are in the hands of hostile nations and mercenaries who do not care if your vote goes missing, your clean water is contaminated, or our nuclear plants melt down. Filled with spies, hackers, arms dealers, and a few unsung heroes, written like a thriller and a reference, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is an astonishing feat of journalism. Based on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, The New York Times reporter Nicole Perlroth lifts the curtain on a market in shadow, revealing the urgent threat faced by us all if we cannot bring the global cyber arms race to heel."]
Pfau, Daniel.
"Neuroendocrinology (Sex & Gender)." Ologies (June 15, 2020) ["How many genders are there? How do you know if you’re queer? Is sexual orientation biological, and if so, how? The amazing Michigan State University neuroscientist and endocrinology researcher Dr. Daniel Pfau joins to share their path in academia finding the perfect research, understanding their own genderqueer identity, what animals in nature exhibit queer behavior, how hormones influence the brain, how important it was for them to find community and why the gender binary isn’t a good fit for a lot of people. They are just charming and kind and wonderful and this episode will help you understand just how many ways there are to be human. Also: smitten meadow mice, Gender Unicorns and Alie as a lion. "]
Popova, Maria and Sandra Steingraber.
"Silent Spring, 60 Years Later." Open Source (December 1, 2022) ["How’s to rescue the Earth from us people? Rachel Carson’s way – 60 years ago – was to write a book, and call it Silent Spring. She’d been a shy but defiant biologist in government service. Her book had science behind it, and the rhythm of poetry all through it: one woman’s outcry—as she herself was dying of cancer—against pesticides, most notoriously DDT, what she called “the chemical barrage” being “hurled against the fabric of life.” She was hurling her prose at not just DDT but Dupont, Monsanto, the big business of agriculture, and the slick ad slogan: “better living through chemistry.” Silent Spring became a historic bestseller and a rallying cry for the twentieth century. It’s an unmet challenge for the twenty-first. A troubled world is tuning in on Rachel Carson again, for lots of good reasons, and so are we. She was a hard scientist of the environment who could speak bluntly—about her masterpiece Silent Spring, for example: she called it the “poison book,” or sometimes “Man Against the Earth.” She was a common-sense crusader who won sweeping victories. She wrote high-flying prose about oceans before she’d seen one, and about the love of her life, as time was running out. Her opening chapters of Silent Spring can sound today, it is said, like “God calling the world into being” back in Creation time."]
Proctor, Robert.
"Agnotology (Ignorance)." Ologies (July 8, 2020) ["Yes, there is an -ology for that. Dr. Robert Proctor is a Stanford professor of the History of Science and co-edited the book “Agnotology: The Making & Unmaking of Ignorance,” having coined the word 30 years ago. We chat about everything from the true evils of tobacco marketing, to the sugar lobby, to racial injustice, horse vision, the psychology of the Flat Earther movement, which countries have the highest rates of climate denial, empathy, how to navigate difficult conversations and why it's critical to dismantle the systems of willful ignorance, starting locally."]
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"NAZI Science and Ideology." Lex Fridman Podcast (March 6, 2022) [
Michael Benton: This should actually be titled "Science and Ideology" as it is a wide-ranging discussion, and the NAZI application of science is only an initial jumping off point. Very important as we see mindless rejection "and" acceptance of science become the polarized standards of society going into and coming out of the COVID pandemic. I know a lot of people that will go nuts if I say we shouldn't just say "accept the science" (even knowing full well that I am pro-science), I believe we need to ask questions about practices & consequences and think like scientists realizing that science changes over time. "Robert Proctor is a historian of science at Stanford University"]
Procter, Robert N. and Londa Schiebinger, eds.
Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance. Stanford University Press, 2008. ["What don't we know, and why don't we know it? What keeps ignorance alive, or allows it to be used as a political instrument? Agnotology—the study of ignorance—provides a new theoretical perspective to broaden traditional questions about "how we know" to ask: Why don't we know what we don't know? The essays assembled in Agnotology show that ignorance is often more than just an absence of knowledge; it can also be the outcome of cultural and political struggles. Ignorance has a history and a political geography, but there are also things people don't want you to know ("Doubt is our product" is the tobacco industry slogan). Individual chapters treat examples from the realms of global climate change, military secrecy, female orgasm, environmental denialism, Native American paleontology, theoretical archaeology, racial ignorance, and more. The goal of this volume is to better understand how and why various forms of knowing do not come to be, or have disappeared, or have become invisible."]
Ravanna, MV.
"Nuclear Won’t Meet Tech’s Energy Demands." Tech Won't Save Us #252 (November 28, 2024) ["Paris Marx is joined by MV Ramana to discuss the tech industry’s push to have nuclear energy power its data centers and why the reality of nuclear power isn’t as great as its promoters often make it seem. MV Ramana is a Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Nuclear Is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change."]
Rhodes, Richard and E.O. Wilson.
"Darwin's Successor: E.O. Wilson, scientist and humanist." Open Source (November 18, 2021) ["The grand master of bug biology E.O. Wilson has always had a way of seeing the big picture in his microscopic science. Looking at a wall-size projection of the astronauts’ moon view of Earth rising, “the blue marble,” Ed Wilson wants us to see that the film of life wrapped around our globe, the biosphere, is as thin as a razor’s edge. But here’s the real point, he says: take the human beings out of that layer of life and it’s safe forever. Take the ants out, and it’s doomed. Ed Wilson, in his 90s, speaks with lively and rare authority about the predicament of life on earth – but he’s not in despair: the bad things humans do to their habitat, they could stop doing, if they realized how our species depends on a million other species now in mortal danger. The biologist and writer E. for Edward, O. for Osborne, Wilson is the giant in our midst this radio hour. He’s the man who learned to talk to ants in their own language of smells, or pheromones. We’re speaking with him, and about him with the decorated science historian Richard Rhodes, best known for his definitive account of
The Making of The Atomic Bomb. Richard Rhodes has written a new biography and appreciation of E.O. Wilson and his life in nature." Rhode's biography is
Scientist: E.O. Wilson - A Life in Nature.]
Rushkoff, Douglas.
"Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires." Author Events (August 26, 2022) ["Acclaimed for their intersectional explorations of cyberculture, religion, currency, and politics, Douglas Rushkoff’s 20 bestselling books include Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Present Shock, and Media Virus. He also is the host of the Team Human podcast, writes a column for Medium, and created the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. A professor of media theory and digital economics at City University of New York, Queens College, he was selected as one of the world’s 10 most influential intellectuals by MIT, was the first winner of the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, is a recipient of the Marshall McLuhan Award, and has received many other accolades. In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff reveals the flawed mindset that has led out-of-touch tech titans to prepare for a societal catastrophe they could simply avert through practical measures."]
Santiago-Blay, Jorge Alberto.
"Down the Redbud Rabbit Hole." In Defense of Plants #413 (March 19, 2023) ["When it comes to plants, there are more unknowns than knowns, even for very familiar species. You never know where even seemingly simple questions can lead you. Such was the case for Dr. Jorge Alberto Santiago-Blay when he decided to ask a question about the beloved redbud tree (Cercis canadensis). What followed was multiple years of collaborative research projects aimed at understanding the life history of this species in more detail."]
Schaake, Marietje.
"Can Democracy Coexist with Big Tech." Capitalisn't (September 26, 2024) ["International technology policy expert, Stanford University academic, and former European parliamentarian Marietje Schaake writes in her new book that a “Tech Coup” is happening in democratic societies and fast approaching the point of no return. Both Big Tech and smaller companies are participating in it, through the provision of spyware, microchips, facial recognition, and other technologies that erode privacy, speech, and other human rights. These technologies shift power to the tech companies at the expense of the public and democratic institutions, Schaake writes. Schaake joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss proposals for reversing this shift of power and maintaining the balance between innovation and regulation in the digital age. If a "tech coup" is really underway, how did we get here? And if so, how can we safeguard democracy and individual rights in an era of algorithmic governance and surveillance capitalism? Marietje Schaake’s new book, “The Tech Coup: Saving Democracy From Silicon Valley."]
Schiffer, Zoë.
"Inside the Meltdown at Twitter 2.0." On the Media (November 18, 2022) ["Elon Musk's first weeks as CEO of Twitter have been marked by unrest at the company. Half the company and around 80 percent of the contract workforce was laid off. On Wednesday, November 16, Musk sent a company-wide email with an ultimatum that employees either had to commit to an "extremely hardcore" work environment that would require "working long hours at high intensity" or leave the company. On Thursday, Twitter locked down all of its buildings and denied badge access to all employees until Monday while the company figures out who still works there. Despite Musk's attempt to find new ways to "pay the bills," the instability has caused major advertisers to pause their ads on the platform, which spells trouble for a company that relies on advertisements for 90 percent of its revenue. The mass exodus of employees from one of the world's most significant social media sites had users taking to Twitter on Thursday night predicting the imminent demise of a once-beloved platform and reminiscing about the good times they'd had on the site. Zoë Schiffer, the managing editor of Platformer, was one of the reporters breaking this news day by day. She speaks of Twitter's code freeze, the fear that employees will sabotage the company, and the irony of Elon Musk's claims to free speech absolutism as he fires employees for criticizing his management." Also, Avi Asher-Shapiro,
"Musk and the International Reach of Twitter."]
Schmalzer, Sigrid and Charles Schwarz.
"Science Against the People." Darts and Letters #68 (November 14, 2022) ["Today, right-wingers attack science and liberals defend it. Science good, anti-science Republicans bad–that’s the prevailing narrative, especially so during the March for Science in 2017. However, it’s not so simple. Perhaps science should be defended from reactionary attacks, but not uncritically defended as inherently good. That’s the message of Science for the People,a radical movement of scientists and educators who argue that science has always served capitalism, patriarchy, and empire. So, science doesn’t need to be simply defended–it needs to change. We examine the group’s Vietnam-era origins, with the story of one of its founders, physicist Charles Schwartz. Schwartz’ work initially supported the US war effort, but he became a thorn in the side of the military and scientific establishment for over two decades. However, in the 1980s Science for the People went dormant. Since the mid-2010s, it’s back. We then speak to a current member, and also the historian who brought them back together. Sigrid Schmalzer is co-editor of a collection of the group’s writing, entitled Science for the People: Documents from America’s Movement of Radical Scientists, 1969-1989. We cover how the group came back together, how this incarnation is different, and how they traverse the complicated politics between pro-science liberals and anti-science reactionaries."]
Sheldrake, Merlin.
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures. Random House, 2020. ["A mind-bending journey into the hidden world of fungi that will change your understanding of life on earth. "A dazzling, vibrant, vision-changing book . . . I ended it wonderstruck at the fungal world--the secrets of which modern science is only now beginning to fathom."--Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland. When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave. In Entangled Life, the brilliant young biologist Merlin Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. Sheldrake's vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the "Wood Wide Web," to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.
Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life's processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms--and our relationships with them--are changing our understanding of how life works."]
Sheldrake, Merlin and Barney Steel.
"Mycelial Landscapes." Emergence (February 12, 2024) ["Mycologist and writer Merlin Sheldrake joins Marshmallow Laser Feast creative director Barney Steel and Emergence Magazine founder Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee in conversation about the mycelial webs that infiltrate and sustain the landscapes we inhabit. Tracing these underground networks, they explore how fungi challenge our traditional conceptions of individuality, intelligence, and life itself."]
Shipman, Pat.
Our Oldest Companions: The Story of the First Dogs. Belknap Press, 2023. ["Dogs and humans have been inseparable for more than 40,000 years. The relationship has proved to be a pivotal development in our evolutionary history. The same is also true for our canine friends; our connection with them has had much to do with their essential nature and survival. How and why did humans and dogs find their futures together, and how have these close companions (literally) shaped each other? Award-winning anthropologist Pat Shipman finds answers in prehistory and the present day. In Our Oldest Companions, Shipman untangles the genetic and archaeological evidence of the first dogs. She follows the trail of the wolf-dog, neither prehistoric wolf nor modern dog, whose bones offer tantalizing clues about the earliest stages of domestication. She considers the enigma of the dingo, not quite domesticated yet not entirely wild, who has lived intimately with humans for thousands of years while actively resisting control or training. Shipman tells how scientists are shedding new light on the origins of the unique relationship between our two species, revealing how deep bonds formed between humans and canines as our guardians, playmates, shepherds, and hunters. Along the journey together, dogs have changed physically, behaviorally, and emotionally, as humans too have been transformed. Dogs’ labor dramatically expanded the range of human capability, altering our diets and habitats and contributing to our very survival. Shipman proves that we cannot understand our own history as a species without recognizing the central role that dogs have played in it."]
Sinclair, David.
"The Science of Keeping the Brain Healthy." Lifespan (February 16, 2022) ["Dr. David Sinclair and co-host Matthew LaPlante dissect the topic of brain aging. They explore evidence suggesting that the brain ages more slowly than other parts of the body and highlight how cognitive function is impacted by aging. Different interventions aimed at preserving brain health are also discussed, including a plant-based diet, exercise, metformin, NAD boosters, and sufficient sleep."]
Sinha, Bappa.
"ChatGPT: The promise, hype & concerns." Monthly Review (February 12, 2023) ["It has produced poetry, Shakespeare-like prose, software code and medical prescriptions. Teachers and educators have expressed alarm over the use of ChatGPT by students to complete assignments. News articles have excitedly announced that it has passed law, medical and MBA exams (though passing an MBA exam can hardly be taken as a sign of intelligence). Abstracts written by ChatGPT for medical research journals have fooled scientists into believing humans wrote them. Tons of articles have appeared announcing the impending demise of a whole range of professionals, from journalists, writers, and content creators to lawyers, teachers, software programmers and doctors. Companies such as Google and Baidu have felt threatened by ChatGPT and rushed to announce their own AI-powered chatbots."]
Strick, James E.
"Wilhelm Reich, Biologist (Harvard University 2015)." New Books Network (October 6, 2015) ["The author of the line above - who scrawled it in his private diary in the midst of a series of experiments in which he thought he was creating structures that were some kind of transitional stage between the living and nonliving - had quite a life. A "midwife to the sexual revolution of the 1960s" who was famed for his work on the science of orgasm, was widely maligned as a charlatan and pseudoscientist, did extensive work on the science of cancer, had his books and instruments publicly burned by the US government, and died in prison: it's hard not to find Wilhelm Reich fascinating. In his new book,
James E. Strick reminds us that Reich was also a diligent and accomplished laboratory scientist whose work has potentially important implications for the modern biosciences.
Wilhelm Reich, Biologist (Harvard University Press, 2015) takes readers into the making of this modern scientist, from his early relationships with Freud and dialectical materialism, to his work on the orgasm as a kind of "electrophysiological discharge," to his research into potential treatments for cancer. The book concludes by considering why understanding Reich's scientific work matters for us today, including a brief introduction to some recent experimental work related to Reich's research. It is an absorbing story that's also a pleasure to read, and pays careful attention to Reich's scientific work while still translating it in clear terms for non-specialist readers."]
Tarnoff, Ben.
Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future. Verso, 2022. ["Why is the internet so broken, and what could ever possibly fix it? In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet is broken, he argues, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda because it is profitable to do so. But the internet wasn't always like this—it had to be remade for the purposes of profit maximization, through a years-long process of privatization that turned a small research network into a powerhouse of global capitalism. Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and which set in motion the crises that consume it today. The solution to those crises is straightforward: deprivatize the internet. Deprivatization aims at creating an internet where people, and not profit, rule. It calls for shrinking the space of the market and diminishing the power of the profit motive. It calls for abolishing the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and the other giants that dominate our digital lives and developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control. To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone’s behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It's time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now."]
Taylor, Steven.
"What Is a Pandemic?" The Psychology of Pandemics: Preparing for the Next Global Outbreak of Infectious Disease. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019: excerpt of pages 1 - 10. [Book description: "Pandemics are large-scale epidemics that spread throughout world. Virologists predict that the next pandemic could occur in the coming years, probably from some form of influenza, with potentially devastating consequences. Vaccinations, if available, and behavioral methods are vital for stemming the spread of infection. However, remarkably little attention has been devoted to the psychological factors that influence the spread of pandemic infection and the associated emotional distress and social disruption. Psychological factors are important for many reasons. They play a role in nonadherence to vaccination and hygiene programs, and play an important role in how people cope with the threat of infection and associated losses. Psychological factors are important for understanding and managing societal problems associated with pandemics, such as the spreading of excessive fear, stigmatization, and xenophobia that occur when people are threatened with infection. This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the psychology of pandemics. It describes the psychological reactions to pandemics, including maladaptive behaviors, emotions, and defensive reactions, and reviews the psychological vulnerability factors that contribute to the spreading of disease and distress. It also considers empirically supported methods for addressing these problems, and outlines the implications for public health planning."]
Tolentino, Jia.
"On Children, Meaning, Media, and Psychedelics." The Ezra Klein Show (September 3, 2024) ["I feel that there’s something important missing in our debate over screen time and kids — and even screen time and adults. In the realm of kids and teenagers, there’s so much focus on what studies show or don’t show: How does screen time affect school grades and behavior? Does it carry an increased risk of anxiety or depression? And while the debate over those questions rages on, a feeling has kept nagging me. What if the problem with screen time isn’t something we can measure? In June, Jia Tolentino published a great piece in The New Yorker about the blockbuster children’s YouTube channel CoComelon, which seemed as if it was wrestling with the same question. So I invited her on the show, and our conversation ended up going places I never expected. Among other things, we talk about how the decision to have kids relates to doing psychedelics, what kinds of pleasure to seek if you want a good life and how much the debate over screen time and kids might just be adults projecting our own discomfort with our own screen time."]
Tyson, Neil deGrasse.
"The Universe Is Under No Obligation To Make Sense To Us." To the Best of Our Knowledge (August 19, 2017) ["
If you want a quick hit of cosmic wonder, Neil deGrasse Tyson is the go-to guy. How many other astrophysicists can bring down the house on late night TV? His day job is running the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, but his mission is blowing the public’s mind with science. Speaking with Steve Paulson in 2017, Tyson makes the case for why constantly searching for answers doesn't have to dispel our sense of awe and wonder faced with the seemingly unknowable universe."]
Valis, Karin.
"Divine Embeddings: From the creation dance of Lord Shiva to the multidimensional vector space of word embeddings." Mercurial Minutes (June 26, 2023) ["Language, in any form, is a divine tool, a bridge between the tangible and the ineffable. Not a territory, yet powerful enough to change us to the core, trigger emotional storms or religious experiences. From the creation dance of Lord Shiva, threading the Garland of Letters that constitute the universe, to the multidimensional vector space of word embeddings, the divine essence of language unravels. The dance continues, inside the boney rigs of A100 industrial-grade GPUs, into realms we are just beginning to imagine."]
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"On Magic and Artificial Intelligence." The Secret History of Western Esotericism (November 8, 2023) ["We are delighted to speak with Karin Valis, machine-learning engineer and esoteric explorer, on the vast subject of how the fields of artificial intelligence and magic overlap, intertwine, and inform each other. We discuss:The uncanny oracular effects and synchronistic weirdnesses exhibited by large language models,
Conversations with ChatGPT considered as invocation, AI as the fulfilment of the dream of the homonculus (with the attendant ethical problems which arise), AI as the fulfilment of esoteric alphanumeric cosmologies (and maybe, like the Sepher Yetsirah, this isn’t so esoteric after all; maybe it’s just science)."]
West, Stephen.
"The Frankfurt School - Walter Benjamin, Part 2 - Distraction." Philosophize This! (April 1, 2021) ["..one of the main things that concerned him was this relationship between technological innovations and the sensory experience and subjectivity of people. You change the technology that surrounds them you change the person. That’s what we’re going to talk about today...so when he’s giving examples he’s going to be referencing things like film and radio and TV, probably all three things that are on their way OUT in our modern world. But the way he thought these affected the individual subject and the political subject can be just as easily applied to different technologies things like the internet, smartphones or self driving cars. When you consider the fact that new technology is introduced faster than it ever has been...and how much influence this technology has in mediating our entire relationship with reality to the point you can almost think of us as cybernetic...maybe the work of Walter Benjamin has never been more relevant than right now. "]
Wheeler, Tom.
Techlash: Who Makes the Rules in the Digital Gilded Age? Rowman & Littlefield, 2023. ["Hailed by Ken Burns as one of the foremost “explainers” of technology and its effect throughout history, Tom Wheeler now turns his gaze to the public impact of entrepreneurial innovation. In Techlash, he connects the experiences of the late 19th century’s industrial Gilded Age with its echoes in the 21st century digital Gilded Age. In both cases, technology innovation and the great wealth that it created ran up against the public interest and the rights of others. As with the industrial revolution and the Gilded Age that it created, new digital technology has changed commerce and culture, creating great wealth in the process, all while being essentially unsupervised. Warning that today is not the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” some envision, Wheeler calls for a new era of public interest oversight that leaves behind industrial era regulatory ideas to embrace a new process of agile, supervised and enforced code setting that protects consumers and competition while encouraging continued innovation. Wheeler combines insights from his experience at the highest echelons of business and government to create a compelling portrait of the need to balance entrepreneurial innovation with the public good."]
Williams, Adrienne, Milagros Miceli, and Timnit Gebru.
"The Exploited Labor Behind Artificial Intelligence." NOEMA (October 13, 2024) ["Tech companies that have branded themselves “AI first” depend on heavily surveilled gig workers like data labelers, delivery drivers and content moderators. Startups are even hiring people to
impersonate AI systems like chatbots, due to the pressure by venture capitalists to incorporate so-called AI into their products. In fact, London-based venture capital firm MMC Ventures surveyed 2,830 AI startups in the EU and found that
40% of them didn’t use AI in a meaningful way. Far from the sophisticated, sentient machines portrayed in media and pop culture, so-called AI systems are fueled by
millions of underpaid workers around the world, performing repetitive tasks under precarious labor conditions. And unlike the “AI researchers” paid six-figure salaries in Silicon Valley corporations, these exploited workers are often recruited out of impoverished populations and paid as little as
$1.46/hour after tax. Yet despite this, labor exploitation is not central to the discourse surrounding the ethical development and deployment of AI systems. In this article, we give examples of the labor exploitation driving so-called AI systems and argue that supporting transnational worker organizing efforts should be a priority in discussions pertaining to AI ethics."]
Wolf, Kathleen.
"The Impact of urban trees on human health and wellbeing." Tree Lady Talks 5.23 (November 29, 20240 ["
Dr. Kathleen Wolf, a research social scientist, discusses the profound impact of urban trees on human health and well-being. She shares her journey from biologist to researcher, emphasizing the importance of nature in urban settings. The conversation explores various themes, including the health benefits of living near trees, the significance of tree canopy for neonatal care, and the role of nature in child development. Dr. Wolf highlights the correlation between tree cover and improved mental health, social connections, and even lower crime rates, while expressing frustration over the lack of action taken by authorities despite the compelling research. In this conversation, Kathy shares her extensive experience in research translation and the importance of integrating nature into urban environments. She discusses the optimism surrounding the uptake of research in policy and community practices, emphasizing the role of forest bathing and experiential learning in reconnecting individuals with nature. The conversation also highlights the significant benefits of green spaces in educational settings and the economic advantages of urban tree canopies, ultimately calling for a more profound integration of nature in our daily lives and policies. This conversation explores the multifaceted benefits of urban forests and nature in various settings, particularly focusing on their impact on community health, urban planning, and the integration of nature into healthcare. The discussion highlights personal anecdotes, research findings, and the importance of young scientists in advancing this field. It also touches on innovative approaches like virtual reality to enhance nature experiences for those unable to access the outdoors."]
Yin, Leon.
"The Digital Divide." On the Media (October 27, 2022) ["An investigation by nonprofit newsroom
The Markup found that four internet providers disproportionately offered lower-income and least-White neighborhoods slow internet service for the same price as speedy connections they offered in other areas. According to Leon Yin, Investigative Data Journalist at The Markup, homes in historically redlined areas were offered internet speeds so slow, the FCC doesn’t consider it to be broadband. This week, guest host Micah Loewinger asks Yin how he trawled through more than 800,000 internet service offers with his team to arrive at his findings, and what's at stake."]
Zhao, Ben and Heather Zheng.
"Fighting Back Against AI Piracy." Hidden Brain (August 8, 2024) ["If you’ve spent any time playing with modern AI image generators, it can seem like an almost magical experience; but the truth is these programs are more like a magic trick than magic. Without the human-generated art of hundreds of thousands of people, these programs wouldn’t work. But those artists are not getting compensated, in fact many of them are being put out of business by the very programs their work helped create. Now, two computer scientists from the University of Chicago, Ben Zhao and Heather Zheng, are fighting back. They’ve developed two programs, called Glaze and Nightshade, which create a type of “poison pill” to help protect against generative AI tools like Midjourney and DALL-E, helping artists protect their copyrighted, original work. Their work may also revolutionize all of our relationships to these systems."]
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