Podcast

Former associate director and CASBS legend Robert A. Scott discusses the open-access compendium "Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences," a cross-referenced collection of hundreds of essays by leading scholars. We learn why Bob was uniquely positioned to shepherd the project. We also hear about his history with the Center, what makes interdisciplinary efforts succeed, and why volleyball is more than just volleyball.

How can scholarly researchers and government policymakers advance their collaborative relationships in service of generating evidence-informed outcomes that yield more prosperous, equitable, and inclusive communities? Panelists Jake Bowers (CASBS fellow, 2018-19), Carrie Cihak (2017-18), Dan Hopkins, and Piyush Tantia (2021-22) join IDinsight CEO & 2019-20 CASBS fellow Ruth Levine in this enriching conversation. From a CASBS webcast episode produced in association with the Center's Causal Inference for Social Impact Lab project.

Debra Satz, a 2017-18 CASBS fellow and dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford, moderates a discussion on the prospects for economic theory to contribute to a more equitable, dignified & ethical political economy. The distinguished panel consists of Elizabeth Anderson, Samuel Bowles, Nobel laureate Sir Angus Deaton, and Amy Kapczynski.

Legendary political scientist & two-time CASBS fellow Sidney Tarrow discusses his new book as well as his decades-long exploration of protests, social movements, and contentious politics with 2021-22 CASBS fellow Edward Walker.

NBC News correspondent and 2018-19 CASBS fellow Jacob Ward leads a discussion with Kristian Hammond, CASBS faculty fellow Daniel Ho, and Jennifer Logg on the role social sciences must play in developing safer, more effective, and ethical artificial intelligence technologies.

Don Norman, cognitive scientist, design legend, and 1973-74 CASBS fellow chats with 2021-22 fellow Piyush Tantia. They discus the evolution of behavioral science in contemporary design practice. From an early run-in with B.F. Skinner, to the study of neural networks and cognitive processes, his time at Apple, CASBS, and more.

Authors Roberta Katz, Sarah Ogilvie, Jane Shaw, & Linda Woodhead chat with Kat Tenbarge about their new book "Gen Z Explained" -- the product of a CASBS project -- which explores the values, perceptions, motivations, and habits of the generation that has never known a world without the internet.

Psychology scholar & 2020-21 CASBS fellow Vivian Zayas interviews David O. Sears, a two-time CASBS fellow (1988-89, 1992-93) and distinguished professor of psychology and political science at UCLA. The two discuss political attitudes and biases in the context of immigrant and minority communities, rural America, and social media.

Renowned pedagogical theorist, educator, & 2003-04 CASBS fellow Gloria Ladson-Billings chats with 2020-21 CASBS fellow Nuraan Davids about the history, progress, and challenges of creating more equitable institutions of education.

CASBS research affiliate Henry Farrell and former CASBS fellow Marion Fourcade engage in a roundtable discussion with danah boyd, William Janeway, Charlton McIlwain, and Zeynep Tufekci on creating a moral political economy of high-tech governance.

Allison Stanger (2020-21 CASBS fellow), professor of international politics and economics at Middlebury College, interviews former 1979-80 CASBS fellow and world renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett. He discusses his time at CASBS, his journey through academia, recent works, artificial intelligence, why Darwin’s idea is the best anyone ever had, memes, gods, and, yes, windsurfing at CASBS.

CASBS faculty fellow James Holland Jones interviews former CASBS fellow Richard Wrangham, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University. They discuss the early development of their discipline, primate and human violence, and the value of evolutionary frameworks and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding human behavior.

The American Voices Project is a bold new experiment in understanding the everyday experiences of Americans. Renowned author and journalist James Fallows moderates a conversation with key AVP researchers Corey Fields, David Grusky, and Hazel Markus.

CASBS fellow Jerry Davis (2020-21) interviews legendary scholar-activist Amitai Etzioni, a 1965-66 CASBS fellow, about his influential book “The Active Society,” the fracturing of our shared realm of fact, the necessity of re-encapsulating capitalism, and his project to promote civil dialogues.

KQED Forum's Alexis Madrigal moderates a conversation with Peter Loewen, Adrian Raftery, Prerna Singh, and Rob Willer on the intersections among public health, social and cultural influences, and social and behavioral sciences insights.

Gillian Tett of the Financial Times engages in conversation with Jenna Bednar, Hilary Cottam, and James Manyika on rethinking the fundamental logic of how we define human flourishing and successful societies. All are members of CASBS's Creating a New Moral Political Economy network.

Arun Majumdar guides a discussion on the considerations and challenges of shaping a sustainable political economy with guests Eric Beinhocker, Genevieve Bell, & Kim Stanley Robinson, all members of CASBS's "Creating a New Moral Political Economy" program

Stanford historian & former CASBS fellow Paula Findlen chats with renowned environmental history, philosophy, & ethics scholar - and two-time former CASBS fellow -- Carolyn Merchant, on the 40th anniversary of her revolutionary book “The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution.”

CASBS Director Margaret Levi moderates a conversation exploring the prospects for progress on racial justice in the U.S. with Lawrence D. Bobo, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Claude Steele.

Estelle Freedman moderates a discussion on how institutions can respond productively to challenges and promote individual and community flourishing with panelists Jennifer Freyd, Jennifer Gómez, and Carolyn Warner.

Pulitzer-winning journalist John Markoff moderates a discussion on the effects of digital technologies on memory, cognition, & society w/Byron Reeves, Nilam Ram, Abby Smith Rumsey & Maryanne Wolf.

Luis Fraga moderates a discussion on the vulnerabilities in our political and electoral processes and correctives for them with eminent panelists James Fishkin, Martin Gilens, and Jane Mansbridge.

CASBS Director Margaret Levi moderates a discussion on the causal factors perpetuating racial inequality in the United States with panelists Joshua Cohen, Francis Fukuyama, Glenn Loury, and Alondra Nelson.

New York Times columnist David Brooks moderates a discussion on the history and possible future of social cohesion and depolarization with panelists: Robert Putnam, Danielle Allen, Eric Klinenberg, and Shaylyn Romney Garrett.

CASBS Director Margaret Levi leads a panel discussion on the changing political and economic context for workers in light of the COVID pandemic with former CASBS fellows Tara Behrend, Louis Hyman, Phyllis Moen, and current CASBS research affiliate John Irons.

John Markoff chats with Sandra González-Bailón, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and 2019-20 CASBS fellow, about the influence of social media platforms on news and political activism.

Debra Satz moderates a conversation with Nina Bandelj, Jonathan Jansen, and Caitlin Zaloom on the COVID-induced pressures faced by colleges and universities, and their to struggle to balance their students’ education with public health concerns and financial sustainability.

Paul Brest moderates a conversation with Shona Brown, Colin Mayer, and Margaret O'Mara, on the role of business in society and the evolving relationship between corporations and government, both before and during the COVID pandemic.

The creativity of academic cheaters will amaze you: Mario Biagioli, a UCLA Distinguished Professor of Law and Communication as well as a 2019-20 CASBS fellow, chats with Host John Markoff about the history and recent trends of fraud and gaming in scholarly publishing.

Join Clayborne Carson, Douglas McAdam, and Brenda Stevenson in conversation with Xavier de Souza Briggs as they explore how insights from America’s distant and near past can inform the possibilities for durable, transformational change in our time.

California Supreme Court Justice & CASBS board chair Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar moderates a conversation with former CASBS fellows Christian Davenport and Rachel Kleinfeld, on the topic what polarization is, why it exists, and why it persists.

California Supreme Court Justice & CASBS board chair Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Stanford political scientist & former CASBS fellow Barry Weingast, and CASBS director Margaret Levi use a recent article they coauthored as a jumping off point for a discussion on what we can learn from the U.S. in its political-economic development in the first half of the 20th century that applies to the U.S. and its state capacity today and in the future.

Jennifer Pan, a 2019-20 CASBS fellow, is an associate professor of communication at Stanford University. Host John Markoff chats with her about her recent book “Welfare for Autocrats,” which explores how the Chinese government has reshaped a social assistance program into a tool of surveillance and repression.

Alta Charo, a 2019-20 CASBS fellow, is a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin. Host John Markoff spoke with Charo about the ethics of genome editing in the fields of ecology and human biology.

Shout out to CASBS information manager Jason Gonzales for opening this episode for us!

Historian and 2019-20 CASBS fellow Jefferson Cowie talks with host John Markoff about the inescapable legacy of slavery, the political fracturing of labor, anti-statism, and whether the current structure of federalism can adequately address issues like climate change and pandemics.

Host John Markoff chats with Wendy K. Tam Cho, a 2019-20 CASBS fellow, Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and professor of political science, statistics, mathematics, law, and Asian American studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Cho’s computer modeling produces and analyzes millions of finely tuned district maps. Cho and Markoff discuss the ways in which technology can reshape the process of political redistricting.

Shout-out to Drina Adams, finance associate on the CASBS staff, for opening the episode for us!

Susan Holmes, a Stanford professor of statistics and 2017-18 CASBS fellow, chats with host John Markoff about her applied work on the human microbiome, the difficulty with P-Values, the power of heterogeneous data, and her research on Claude Shannon - widely known as the father of information theory and himself a CASBS fellow in 1957-58.

Economist and 2019-20 CASBS Fellow Brian Arthur chats with John about the evolution of technology, the application of complexity theory in economics, and society’s struggle with distributive economics in an age of increasing productivity.

Host John Markoff chats with artist and AI ethics advocate Şerife (Sherry) Wong about “Fluxus Landscape,” her interactive map - created in partnership with CASBS - of private and public organizations engaged in work on the ethics and governance of artificial intelligence.

Robert Frank, professor of economics at Cornell University and CASBS fellow 1992-93, sat down with host John Markoff to discuss his latest book “Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work”.

Anthropologist and former CASBS fellow Noelle Stout teaches and researches at Apple University. Host John Markoff speaks with Stout about her 2019 book Dispossessed: How Predatory Bureaucracy Foreclosed on the American Middle Class, partially written at CASBS during her 2016-17 fellowship year, as well as her current work integrating social science into technologies like artificial intelligence.

Jennifer Freyd, a CASBS fellow in 1989-90 & 2018-19, is a professor of psychology at the Univ. of Oregon and a renowned expert on interpersonal and institutional trauma caused by sexual violence and discrimination. Host John Markoff speaks with Dr. Freyd about her career of groundbreaking research, from developing betrayal trauma theory to current work supporting institutional courage.

Dan Kelly, 2018-19 CASBS Fellow, is an associate professor of philosophy at Purdue University who focuses on the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, moral theory, and evolution. Dan chats with host John Markoff talk about implicit and algorithmic bias, social norms and morality, and ethics in technology.

Former New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse visited CASBS to share insights from his 30 years of reporting with fellows and members of CASBS’s Creating a New Moral Political Economy project. While at the Center, Greenhouse also sat down with host John Markoff and guest host Paul Saffo to discuss his new book, Beaten Down, Worked up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor (2019).

Host John Markoff speaks with 2018-19 CASBS fellow Cara Wong, a political scientist based at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, about the relationship between place and politics, and the ways in which place is represented in the minds of individuals.

Host John Markoff spoke with 2017-18 CASBS fellow Arati Prabhakar, former director of DARPA, NIST, and now Founder and CEO of Actuate Innovation. They discussed the state of R&D in the US, Silicon Valley, data privacy, autonomous weapons, and more.

John Markoff spoke with 2018-19 CASBS Fellow Kirsten Wysen about her work as a public policy analyst for King County, WA - which includes Seattle - and its “Communities of Opportunity” program. They discussed structural racism and debt in poor communities, and their relation to health.

John Markoff sat down with Nate Persily, a 2017-18 CASBS fellow and the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. They discussed the challenge of ethically using social media data in both social science and politics, election security and law, and whether democracy can survive the internet.

2018-19 CASBS fellow and USC associate professor of communication Mike Ananny chats with host John Markoff about the intersection of journalism, technology, and media regulation.

Patricia Banks, a 2018-19 CASBS fellow and sociologist at Mount Holyoke College, discusses African American representation in the art world, the interplay of patronage and cultural identity, and the concept of diversity capital.

2018-19 CASBS fellow and political scientist Kim Williams sat down to discuss Black Lives Matter, social movements, the census, and the contentious political landscape of the last decade.

Is the concept of artificial intelligence really that modern? John Markoff sat down with 2018-19 CASBS fellow and historian Adrienne Mayor to discuss Ancient Greek notions of robots and manufactured life.

2018-19 CASBS fellow Elizabeth Lonsdorf, a primatologist at Franklin and Marshall College, discusses the state of wild chimpanzee research and the question of whether chimps have a concept of death.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves, former president of Estonia and 2018-19 CASBS fellow, discusses recent technological attacks on democracies around the world, and how we can address them.

Jerry Jacobs, a 2018-19 CASBS fellow and University of Pennsylvania sociologist, discusses labor dynamics with regard to automation, job replacement, and historical statistics.

Jacob Ward, a 2018-19 CASBS fellow and a technology and science correspondent for NBC News, discusses techno-utopianism and its relation with Silicon Valley.

Political scientist Margaret Levi has served as CASBS director since 2014. She discusses the need to explore the morals which underlie our economic systems.