Two of my favorite podcasts to inspire me to think differently about understanding our world are TED talks and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society Audio Fishbowl.
The two videos below are talking about similar issues from a different perspective.
Emily Oster is looking at using economic measures to rethink how we understand the spread of AIDS in Africa, including how people respond to epidemic issues.
Nathan Eagle is discussing a very similar issue, exploring different ways to understand epidemiological issues, specifically focusing on cell phone data (CDR) that is collected primarily in Africa.
What both these talks suggest to me is that the need to understand the vast amounts of data we collect is essential. Eagle points out that analyzing CDR begins to show how the self-reporting that we rely on others to supply for research is fragile and often skewed by our own biases and perspectives. The good news is that using these new ubiquitous tools to collect data and building new models to understand the information we are collecting can yield powerful results.In both talks Oster and Eagle are able to flip conventional thinking on its head. Rather than mapping superficial ties, we can begin to understand strength of these ties and, which can lead to modeling of important issues like the spread of H1N1, which could potentially predicted and lead to precision interventions that address a specific location, rather than taking a policy cure from one country and trying to map it onto another.
Big Ideas on TVO has become one of my favorite podcasts to listen to.. well… Big ideas. I took statistics over the summer, and a lot of what we covered dealt with randomness. Unfortunately, I wasn’t familiar with Leonard Modinow before… but I am familiar with many of the points he brings up in his talk about his latest book “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives”
His talk also reminded me of a show WNYC Radio Lab did on randomness. They also seek to understand the role randomness plays in our lives. In fact they used the same example that Leonard mentions about the chance of a 56 game hitting streak happening again in 10,000 baseball scenarios.
Finally, Leonard also mentions a study done with drinkers of Coke and Pepsi, which reminded me of a podcast by Malcolm Gladwell who also talked about the fragility of judgement using the Pepsi Challenge experiment. He also goes on to talk about how the Herman Miller Aron chair became first the most hated chair, and then the most popular selling chair (which reminds me of the Radio Lab episode where they tell the story of an opera that caused a riot, and years later was celebrated as a masterpiece).
“Kitty wigs are exactly what they sound like and cost $50 each. The colors, in case you couldn’t tell, are pink passion, bashful blonde, silver fox, and electric blue.”
“…his Facebook profile whose accompanying graphic read: “Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?” It doesn”t mention that Project Spotlight was an online digital video contest and that “shoot” in that context meant “record.”
“The EFF is raising the alarm regarding provisions injected into a bill to renew federal funding for universities. These new provisions call for institutions of higher learning to filter their internet connections and twist student’s arms over ‘approved’ digital media distribution services.”
“Canada has imposed sweeping restrictions on who can donate organs for transplant — including a ban on gay men who have been sexually active in the past five years”
“Photographer Mark Story took photos of people who were born in the 19th century and are still alive in the 21th Century. My own grandmother comes close to making it. She’ll be 107 in April.”
“Oscar Pistorius, a world-class sprinter, has been denied a shot at participating in the Olympics this year. He’a double-amputee, but he’s not out because of his handicap; he’s disqualified because he’s faster than most sprinters.”
“Social networking site Bebo is rumoured to be linked to a spout of suicides in the small Welsh town of Bridgend. So far seven deaths have been reported to police”
“Radiohead have gone straight into the US Billboard charts at number one with their album ‘In Rainbows’ despite early speculation that their digital giveaway of the album would slow sales.”
Search Engine describes itself as a blog and podcast about the internet. This was, and in some ways still is the most interesting show on this topic. I say was because a couple months ago CBC decided to cancel the radio program. The show continues as an internet only podcast. Still great content. This podcast was early in the life of Search Engine, and early in the 2008 presidential election. This podcast covered an interesting part of politicing, that is controlling the candidates MySpace page.
ReSound is a phenomenal podcast that pulls great sounds from around the world. In this particular episode they explore the idea that we, a humans, tend to believe what we hear on the radio by playing intentionally faux radio pieces.
The concept of cool baffles me, which is why I was drawn to this podcast in the first place. Coll Hunting podcasts are short (less than 10min usually) and always something I would not see otherwise. In this particular podcast they document an installation by David Byrne who transformed a 9,000 square foot abandoned room in Lower Manhattan’s Battery Maritime Building into an instrument for the summer. An antique pump organ controls devices that create sounds using the building’s infrastructure, including heating pipes, metal beams and pillars.
Moth podcasts are taken from their live, onstage, no script, readings. This is one of my favorites thus far. Richie DiSalvo tells a story about money, the mob and a pizza parlor.
If you enjoy TED Talks, you will enjoy PopTech, pretty much the same thing. This amusing podcasts has Benjamin Zander, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra work with a 15 year old cellist, bringing out the boy’s full potential on stage.
I have been following the work of Lessig. After leaving the realm of copyright (founder of Creative Commons) he has refocused his attention in the area of pollitical corruption. This keynote address at the NetRoots Nation conference, sums up a lot of other amazing lectures he has given. This one is long, but is worth the investment.
TAL has been a favorite of mine for a long time. I could have a whole top-ten list just of their shows. During the initial weeks of the finincial crisis TAL put together their own show to make sense of things. TAL brings their experience of crafting beautiful narratives to the topic of money and the economy, which usually doesn’t receive such a treatment.
I feel SF could talk about elephant dung and would craft it in an articulate, and beautiful way. I don’t remember what prompted me to download his podcast in the first place, but I always look forward to the next one. In this podcast Stephen Fry discusses the state of British broadcasting.
At the Taste3 conference, chef Dan Barber tells the story of a small farm in Spain that has found a humane way to produce foie gras. Raising his geese in a natural environment, farmer Eduardo Sousa embodies the kind of food production Barber believes in. (exceprt from TED)
I didn’t think it could get better than This American Life. Than a couple years ago, I stumbled on Radio Lab. RL is the reason radio is not dead. If there is one show I urge anyone to listen to, it’s Radio Lab. In this podcast they explore the power of mass media by looking back at one of the most controversial moments in broadcasting history – Orson Welles’ 1938 radio play about Martians invading New Jersey. “And we ask: Why did it fool people then? And why has it continued to fool people since? From Santiago, Chile to Buffalo, New York to a particularly disastrous evening in Quito, Ecuador.” (excerpt from Radio Lab)
Biologist Richard Dawkins makes a case for “thinking the improbable” by looking at how the human frame of reference limits our understanding of the universe. (excerpt from TED)
