ePODstemology

19/04/2022

ePODstemology is about popularising the genuinely new ways of thinking emerging from the pathbreaking research of young scholars. There are few fields that represent this agenda more than machine learning, a branch of computer science and statistics that promises to dramatically accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, crack open hard questions that have bedeviled humanity for decades, and even crack open our minds with whole new ways of understanding our world. In this episode, regular host Dr Mark Fabian from the universities of Tasmania and Cambridge is joined by Dr David Watson, a postdoc at University College London making voluminous contributions to the machine learning literature. Their discussion ranges over what machine learning, why deep neural networks are so hot right now, how they are being applied in areas as diverse as protein folding and x-ray imaging, and their potential to transform society, for both good and ill.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/10465344

ePODstemology is about popularising the genuinely new ways of thinking emerging from the pathbreaking research of young scholars. There are few fields that represent this agenda more than machine learning, a branch of computer science and statisti...

30/03/2022

The biggest change in electoral politics in the last decade is without a doubt the advent of social media. The Cambridge Analytica scandal in Brexit, Russian bots in the EU, the zone that Steve Bannon suggests political parties flood with s**t, it’s all happening on our favourite doom-scrolling apps. How is political science getting to grips with this new and influential phenomenon? Dr Kevin Munger from Pennsylvania State University joins regular ePODstemology host Dr Mark Fabian to discuss. The conversation covers Munger’s seminal model of fake news, the differences between online and offline politics, the technological and psychological mechanisms by which social media influences political behaviour, and the importance of low digital literacy, especially among the elderly, for understanding why toxic forces on social media are so effective. In the 2nd half of the episode we get the inside line on Munger’s forthcoming book, Generation Gap, which analyses the impact of the boomer generation’s outsize demographic heft on politics, policy, culture, economics, and even niche industries like academia.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/10346713

The biggest change in electoral politics in the last decade is without a doubt the advent of social media. The Cambridge Analytica scandal in Brexit, Russian bots in the EU, the zone that Steve Bannon suggests political parties flood with s**t, it...

16/03/2022

What are the big questions in macroeconomics right now? Well there’s the unprecedented assault on Russia’s financial architecture, that’s quite topical. We usually study how to avoid financial crises, not how to start them. How do a tank a central bank? Just a few weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the big news was the return of inflation. After a decade or so of ‘secular stagnation’ and fears of deflation, consumer prices across the world are rocketing up. Is this just a hangover from COVID, or is there more to it? How should we plan our lives around inflation expectations? Wind the clock back a little bit further and macroeconomists were very puzzled by productivity. As Nobel Laureate Bob Solow said: “you can see the impact of computers everywhere except the productivity data”. Why’s that? Is it just really hard to measure productivity in the digital and service sector economy, or it productivity really going to flatlining, with implications in turn for the heart rate of our economies? And finally, if we really wind the clock back all the way to 2008 (just yesterday really), then the big question is how has macroeconomics updated itself in the wake of the biggest loss of confident in the discipline in decades?

Here to answer all these questions is Dr Adam Triggs, a man with a very long signature block. He is director at the Canberra office of AlphaBeta, an economic consulting firm within Accenture Strategy, non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, a visiting fellow at the Crawford School of Public Policy in the Australian National University, a fellow at Macquarie University’s e61 institute, and a columnist for the Canberra times. All these hot shot agencies want Adam’s insights, and he’s giving them away to you for free on ePODstemology. Do tune in.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/10260420

What are the big questions in macroeconomics right now? Well there’s the unprecedented assault on Russia’s financial architecture, that’s quite topical. We usually study how to avoid financial crises, not how to start them. How do a tank a central...

15/03/2022

15/03/2022

How does science, the quintessential secular enterprise, study religion? What can we learn about religion by applying the tools of scientific method, and what can religion teach secularists about how to build thriving societies? In this episode, social psychologist Dr Kitty O'Lone from Cambridge University's Woolf Institute joins ePODstemology host Dr Mark Fabian to discuss these and other questions pertaining to the secular benefits of religious practices. Dr O'Lone discusses her previous work on interfaith dialogue, her new work on religious forgiveness and its role in healing post-conflict societies, and her ambition of studying the similarities and differences between religious and secular fasting practices. The episode also ranges over mindfulness and the two-way learning that has taken place between academics and traditional communities of practice, the vacuum left by the disappearance of priest's from everyday life, whether science really offers 'explanations' for seemingly supernatural phenomena like sleep paralysis, and want the frontiers are in the social psychology of religion. Please tune in.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/10172133

How does science, the quintessential secular enterprise, study religion? What can we learn about religion by applying the tools of scientific method, and what can religion teach secularists about how to build thriving societies? In this episode, s...

15/03/2022

Artist, feminist economist and activist Cassie Thornton joins ePODstemology host Mark Fabian to discuss her recent project The Hologram, a social technology for creating peer to peer care networks and unlearning capitalism. Inspired by the community health clinics of post-GFC Greece, The Hologram seeks to cultivate our capacity for caring about others in a collective, non-reciprocal, and holistic fashion. The project illustrates how the steady professionalisation, individualisation, and commercialisation of care, medical or otherwise, has eroded our sense of belonging in community, our ability to give care generously and ask for it guiltlessly, and our capacity to conceptualise our personal journeys as bound up with others. Through social technologies like The Hologram – free, amateur, and collective – Cassie explores how we can remember and relearn how to be a cooperative species and move together against the financialisation of everything.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/10058913

Artist, feminist economist and activist Cassie Thornton joins ePODstemology host Mark Fabian to discuss her recent project The Hologram, a social technology for creating peer to peer care networks and unlearning capitalism. Inspired by the communi...

15/03/2022

Long before Donald Trump referred to Mexican migrants as 'bad hombres', migration was a perennially hot topic in economic and social policy. Some of the endlessly debated question in this space include: do migrants hurt the labour market prospects of locals by taking away jobs and depressing wages? Or do they instead create more opportunities by bringing capital and spurring economic activity? Is there a difference in effects between skilled and unskilled migrants? What about refugees? Do temporary visa schemes for seasonal labour solves more problems than they create? What about a points-based migration system like the way they have in Australia? Here to answer all these questions and more, including what we can learn about migration from observing the pacific, is Dr Ryan Edwards from the Australian National University. Ryan is deputy director of the development policy centre, and was formerly a postdoc at Stanford and Dartmouth. This is a million-mile a minute episode that will answer your questions and then some.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/9666644

Long before Donald Trump referred to Mexican migrants as 'bad hombres', migration was a perennially hot topic in economic and social policy. Some of the endlessly debated question in this space include: do migrants hurt the labour market prospects...

15/03/2022

The ePODstemology Christmas Special! Popular guest, Bayesian Bae, and all round great person Rachel Meager from the LSE returns to ePODstemology to sit in the host's chair and interview regular host Mark Fabian from Cambridge University. The topic is all things wellbeing. The philosophy of it, the psychology of it, the economics and public policy of it. Why does wellbeing scholarship need to be interdisciplinary? How do we even measure it? What even is wellbeing? Fabian delivers hot takes faster than the New York Times pitchbot, from the importance of self-actualisation to the role of expectations, with sidebars into why tennis ain't what it used to be and why economics is the best social science. It's a festive episode but also an enlightening one. So pop on a Santa hat, sit down with some cocoa, and join the conversation.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/9772629

The ePODstemology Christmas Special! Popular guest, Bayesian Bae, and all round great person Rachel Meager from the LSE returns to ePODstemology to sit in the host's chair and interview regular host Mark Fabian from Cambridge University. The topic...

15/03/2022

Believed dead and buried after World War 2, the far right has risen like a zombie from the ashes of deindustrialising towns to once again plague the polities of the trans-Atlantic region. The electoral success of Trump and Brexit made the ‘elites’ pay attention, but it’s only recently that we’ve come to understand enough about what happened in 2016 to give a thorough accounting. Here to help us understand the nature, causes, and consequences of the far right is Dr Diane Bolet, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Durham University and Research Fellow in Political Science at the University of Zurich. Drawing on qualitative studies of French and Spanish former coal mining communities and quantitative evidence from studies of community pub closures in the UK, Diane mounts a compelling thesis about the roots of the far right lying in the disintegration of social and cultural cohesion more so than economic decay or prejudicial racism. It's a fresh take straight from the knowledge frontier to your ear drums.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/9586475

Believed dead and buried after World War 2, the far right has risen like a zombie from the ashes of deindustrialising towns to once again plague the polities of the trans-Atlantic region. The electoral success of Trump and Brexit made the ‘elites’...

15/03/2022

Infrastructure is the skeleton upon which the economy is built. Energy, water, sewerage and other utilities provide the fuel and take away the waste; roads, bridges, railways, ports, and broadband cables facilitate the movement of goods that is the essence of commerce; and town halls, leisure centres, parks are the sites on which the public sphere is manifested. So why don't we talk more about this critical aspect of our world? Even more pertinently, why don't we talk about how it is governed? Infrastructure touches of everyone's lives in some way, so perhaps we should have people more heavily involved in its design, implementation, and management. Or is that too unwieldy? Too idealistic? Perhaps it would be better to leave the infrastructure domain to technical analysts able to manage all its complexities for the common good. In this episode, ePODstemology host Dr Mark Fabian from Cambridge University is joined by Dr Rehema Msulwa, also from Cambridge, who helps us navigate the dynamic terrain of infrastructure policy, with an especial focus on how we can involve local voices to improve outcomes.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/9586531

Infrastructure is the skeleton upon which the economy is built. Energy, water, sewerage and other utilities provide the fuel and take away the waste; roads, bridges, railways, ports, and broadband cables facilitate the movement of goods that is th...

15/03/2022

What is the difference between merely 'statistical' discrimination and prejudice? How can we disentangle these things in social sciences research, and should we? How can researchers get away from a focus on the individual in discrimination research to better understand how institutions, culture, and macro-history cause both statistical and prejudicial discrimination? What can economists learn from sociology and cultural psychology about discrimination, and vice versa? Ben Harrell from the LGBT policy lab at Vanderbilt University joins ePODstemology host Mark Fabian from Cambridge University to Enlighten us.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/9441782

What is the difference between merely 'statistical' discrimination and prejudice? How can we disentangle these things in social sciences research, and should we? How can researchers get away from a focus on the individual in discrimination researc...

15/03/2022

Whether it's build back better, levelling up, or the climate transition, industrial policy is back in the news. Everyone wants to restructure their economies for geopolitical, equality, green, or good old fashion efficiency reasons, but how to do it? Nathan Lane from Oxford University joins host Mark Fabian from Cambridge University to discuss. Industrial policy has a mixed history, having been both the darling and the black sheep of the economics profession in less than 100 years, embroiled in some of the most high profile adventures and misadventures of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and gone from the centre to the periphery of development economics. If you've ever wanted to understand this complex policy domain and understand how economists think about it today, now's your chance - tune in!

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/9378959

Whether it's build back better, levelling up, or the climate transition, industrial policy is back in the news. Everyone wants to restructure their economies for geopolitical, equality, green, or good old fashion efficiency reasons, but how to do ...

15/03/2022

What can social scientists learn from biology? A great deal, according to guest Reuben Finigan of the London School of Economics. The burgeoning field of sociobiology provides mind-blowing insights into sociological phenomena like cooperation, common pool resource management, corruption and rent seeking behaviour, how market actors try to deceive regulators, and the efficient provision of public goods. Many of these insights are derived from applying models from the biological sciences, typically using evolutionary game theory, to questions in the social and behavioural sciences. Tune and find out how much we can learn from bees, ants, zebras, wolves, monkeys, flowers, fungus, and genes about how we should design institutions and regulations for the common good.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/9205981

What can social scientists learn from biology? A great deal, according to guest Reuben Finigan of the London School of Economics. The burgeoning field of sociobiology provides mind-blowing insights into sociological phenomena like cooperation, com...

15/03/2022

'Creative destruction' is an inevitable and desirable part of ongoing economic activity, but it does have losers. In particular, the employees of firms that go bust and obsolete industries that disappear. In normal times, these workers will find employment elsewhere or in emerging industries, especially if they are able to retrain easily. But in times of industrial transition, when there are wide ranging structural transformations in the economy, the sheer volume of creative destruction can see many workers fall through the cracks. Such a transition is required if we are to respond meaningfully to the threat of climate change, but how can we deal with the losers of this transition? Fergus Green, Lecturer in Political Theory and Public Policy at University College London (UCL) helps to explain the ethics, political, and economic dimensions of this question. He also gives his thoughts on the green new deal and the kind of transition assistance that could help us to tackle climate change and avoid social misery.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/9122240

'Creative destruction' is an inevitable and desirable part of ongoing economic activity, but it does have losers. In particular, the employees of firms that go bust and obsolete industries that disappear. In normal times, these workers will find e...

15/03/2022

This episode is all about statistics in social science. It's one for all the new armchair epidemiologists out there, especially if COVID has got you thinking about how we can make "evidence-based policy". Statistics cheerleader Rachel Meager, who is Assistant Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Politics Science, joins host Mark Fabian of Cambridge University to answer all your questions. Should you be a Bayesianism Bae or a frequentism fan? Should all social science follow economics in its fixation with causal inference, or are there other important question we ought to focus our statistical skills on? What's a randomised-control trial and why do they matter for microfinance in Africa? You want knowledge and ePODstemology is gonna give to ya.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/8944721

This episode is all about statistics in social science. It's one for all the new armchair epidemiologists out there, especially if COVID has got you thinking about how we can make "evidence-based policy". Statistics cheerleader Rachel Meager, who ...

15/03/2022

What are the potentials and pitfalls of the new data economy and associated efforts at data governance? Tech entrepreneur, digital marketer, and academic researcher Sam Gilbert joins ePODstemology host Dr Mark Fabian of Cambridge University to discuss how we can achieve "Good Data". Sam explains the commercial, scientific, and social value of data, clarifies some common misunderstandings of how data is generated and used, and analyses the many political complexities around data regulation. If you've ever been pessimistic about the data economy, big tech, or "surveillance capitalism", this episode might just change your mind.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/8898534

What are the potentials and pitfalls of the new data economy and associated efforts at data governance? Tech entrepreneur, digital marketer, and academic researcher Sam Gilbert joins ePODstemology host Dr Mark Fabian of Cambridge University to dis...

15/03/2022

The psychological science of happiness, well-being, and meaning in life has progressed rapidly in recent decades but it's insights are only just starting to pe*****te the public discourse. Here to help is Frank Martela, a psychologist from Aalto University in Finland, the world's happiest country according to the World Happiness Report. Frank and host Mark Fabian from Cambridge University take you on a tour of the major theories of well-being in psychology, offer practical advice on how to secure meaning and wellbeing in your life, and discuss the prospects of applying insights from psychological science in public policy and organizational design. Straight from the cutting edge of science to your eardrums, only on ePODstemology.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/8767942

The psychological science of happiness, well-being, and meaning in life has progressed rapidly in recent decades but it's insights are only just starting to pe*****te the public discourse. Here to help is Frank Martela, a psychologist from Aalto U...

15/03/2022

An exceedingly thoughtful mystery guest takes us on a tour of how notions of femininity and motherhood are changing culturally, politically, symbolically, and psychically. We discuss the history of the masculine and feminine archetypes, especially in mythological representations, and recent efforts at their revival by figures like Jordan Peterson. While there is value in salvaging what we can from these, it seems undeniable that contemporary gender politics, much like the broader existential vacuum in which we find ourselves, is a function of these classic maps of meaning being substantially played out. What will replace them? We explore some answers in recent representations of "bad" women and the "heroine's journey", an amalgam of the hero's journey and virgin's journey that are omnipresent in myths and fairy-tales.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/8616557

An exceedingly thoughtful mystery guest takes us on a tour of how notions of femininity and motherhood are changing culturally, politically, symbolically, and psychically. We discuss the history of the masculine and feminine archetypes, especially...

15/03/2022

Taxes and transfer payments are perhaps the most fundamental element of public policy, yet we rarely hear about these issues outside of banal political point scoring. Robert Breunig joins ePODstemology for a deep dive into the past, present, and future of tax and transfer policymaking. We discuss the basic economic and political logic of taxes and transfers, the lessons of the 20th century, and what to expect from contemporary efforts to combat tax avoidance by multinational firms and individuals, runaway inequality, and iniquitous retirement systems.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/8570587

Taxes and transfer payments are perhaps the most fundamental element of public policy, yet we rarely hear about these issues outside of banal political point scoring. Robert Breunig joins ePODstemology for a deep dive into the past, present, and f...

15/03/2022

In the contemporary culture wars there's a crop of commentators who insist that 'science' is on their side. They're talking about falsification, replication, quantitative methods, and randomised-control trials - the buzzwords of positivism - and they insist that what their opponents say is invalid because it doesn't meet positivism's standards for what counts as 'knowledge'. Sensing an opportunity for ePODstemology to discuss epistemology, we invited Rod Graham of Old Dominion University to the show. Rod is high school biology teacher turned sociology professor who teaches research methods and works on interdisciplinary, multi-method research projects. He is also one of twitter's most thoughtful and genuine commentators on the culture wars. Rod helps us to understand positivism, interpretivism, critical theory, and why we're going to need all three to 'know' much at all in social science.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/8419855

In the contemporary culture wars there's a crop of commentators who insist that 'science' is on their side. They're talking about falsification, replication, quantitative methods, and randomised-control trials - the buzzwords of positivism - and ...

15/03/2022

The 'Asian Miracle' has seen several nations develop from dirt farming to the technological frontier in half a century. Among them is China, whose rise has lifted nearly a billion people out of poverty and reshaped the global economic and political order. Professor Shiro Armstrong of the ANU joins ePODstemology host Dr Mark Fabian to explain the secret sauce of East Asia's development, especially its clever trade strategies and the political economy of escaping the middle income trap. Will the Chinese Communist Party's reluctant to seed control to democracy and the market hinder its escape velocity? Tune in to find out.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/8386573

The 'Asian Miracle' has seen several nations develop from dirt farming to the technological frontier in half a century. Among them is China, whose rise has lifted nearly a billion people out of poverty and reshaped the global economic and politica...

15/03/2022

Why do millennials and boomers hate each other so much? Is it about intergenerational fairness, or is it actually an Oedipal thing? And why are they called zillenials? Is it because they're zooming, or because they're zealous? Sonia Arakkal of Think Forward joins ePODstemology to help us figure it all out. We explore the colourful cast of recent generations, discuss their psycho-social, economic, and historical origins, and analyse how to renew the intergenerational contract for a new century.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/8378044

Why do millennials and boomers hate each other so much? Is it about intergenerational fairness, or is it actually an Oedipal thing? And why are they called zillenials? Is it because they're zooming, or because they're zealous? Sonia Arakkal of Thi...

15/03/2022

15/03/2022

15/03/2022