Brave New World -- hosted by Vasant Dhar Data Governance Network

How much blame should we put on social media for polarizing our society? Perhaps not as much as we tend to do. Joshua A Tucker joins Vasant Dhar in episode 82 of Brave New World to discuss his studies on the effects of social media -- and the algorithms that run them. 
 
Useful resources:
1. Joshua Tucker at NYU, Twitter and Google Scholar.
2. Online searches to evaluate misinformation can increase its perceived veracity -- Kevin Aslett, Zeve Sanderson, William Godel, Nathaniel Persily, Jonathan Nagler & Joshua A Tucker.
3. Less than you think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook -- Andrew Guess, Jonathan Nagler and Joshua A Tucker.
4. Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing -- Chris Bail.
5. Chris Bail on How to Fight Polarization -- Episode 34 of Brave New World.
6. The Social Media Industrial Complex -- Episode 3 of Brave New World (w Sinan Aral).
7. How Social Media Threatens Society -- Episode 8 of Brave New World (w Jonathan Haidt).
8. Quantifying the Impact of Misinformation and Vaccine-Skeptical Content on Facebook -- Jennifer Nancy Lee Allen, Duncan J Watts, and David Rand.

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Smell is the most underrated of our senses -- and it affects everything. Alex Wiltschko joins Vasant Dhar in episode 81 of Brave New World to discuss the role of smell in our lives -- and in this new digital age.

Useful resources:
1. Alex Wiltschko on LinkedIn, Google Ventures, Google Scholar and Twitter.
2. Osmo.
3. Perfumes: The A-Z Guide -- Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez.
4.  Perfume: The Story of a Murderer -- Patrick Suskind.
5. The Mystery of Smell -- Lydialyle Gibson on Sandeep Robert Datta.
6. A novel multigene family may encode odorant receptors: a molecular basis for odor recognition -- Linda Buck and Richard Axel.
7. Metabolic activity organizes olfactory representations -- Wesley W Qian et al (including Alex  Wiltschko.)
8. Hyperbolic geometry of the olfactory space -- Yuansheng Zhou, Brian H Smith & Tatyana Sharpee.
9. Odor Perception and the Variability in Natural Odor Scenes -- Geraldine A Wright and Mitchell G.A. Thomson.
10. The Biological Sense of Smell -- Christine WJ Chee-Ruiter.
11. Also check out the work of Jim DiCarlo, David Marr and Eero Simoncelli.

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Given what we know of physics and neuroscience, can there be free will? Kevin Mitchell, a neuroscientist himself, joins Vasant Dhar in episode 80 of Brave New World to unpack his argument for the existence of free will.

Useful resources
1. Kevin Mitchell on Amazon, Twitter, Trinity College, Google Scholar, his blog and his homepage.
2. Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will -- Kevin Mitchell.
3. Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are -- Kevin Mitchell.
4. Freedom Evolves -- Daniel Dennett.
5. Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will -- Robert Sapolsky.
6. Free Will -- Sam Harris.
7. Daniel Kahneman on How Noise Hampers Judgement -- Episode 21 of Brave New World.
8. Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment -- Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein.
9. Synthetic Biology -- J Craig Ventor Institute.
10. David Krakauer.
11. David Krakauer on Complexity, Agency, and Information -- Episode 242 of Sean Carroll's Mindscape.
12. Anthony Zador on How our Brains Work — Episode 35 of Brave New World.

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Artificial intelligence is transforming society. And therefore politics. Arthur Spirling joins Vasant Dhar in episode 79 of Brave New World to share his insights from his twin fields of data science and political science.

Useful resources:
1. Arthur Spirling at Princeton, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Scholar and his own website.
2. Why open-source generative AI models are an ethical way forward for science -- Arthur Spirling.
3. James Robinson on What Makes a Successful State -- Episode 19 of Brave New World.
4. The Narrow Corridor — Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson.
5. Why Nations Fail —  Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson.
6. How Social Media Threatens Society -- Episode 8 of Brave New World (w Jonathan Haidt).

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How can we use the insights of behavioral economics to make the world a better place? David Halpern joins Vasant Dhar in episode 78 of Brave New World to share his learnings from running the Behavioral Insight Team for the British government.

Useful resources:
1. David Halpern on Wikipedia and the Behavioural Insights Team.
2. The work of the Behavioral Insights Team.
3. Inside the Nudge Unit -- David Halpern.
4. Social Capital -- David Halpern.
5, The Hidden Wealth of Nations -- David Halpern.
6. The behavioural science of online harm and manipulation, and what to do about it -- Elisabeth Costa and David Halpern.
7. Subsidies vs Nudges: Which Policies Increase Saving the Most? -- Raj Chetty et al

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Her film My Octopus Teacher won an academy award -- and her insights on nature, and her love for it, go far beyond the film. Pippa Ehrlich joins Vasant Dhar in episode 77 of Brave New World to talk about her work and what she has learnt from it.

Useful resources:
1. Pippa Ehrich on Instagram, X, LinkedIn and IMDb..
2. My Octopus Teacher -- Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed.
3. Peter Singer on Animal Liberation -- Episode 74 of Brave New World.
4. Save Our Seas Foundation.
5. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea -- Jules Verne.
6. Using Deliberate Cold Exposure for Health and Performance -- The Huberman Lab Podcast.
7. Wim Hof Method.
8. The Effects of Cold Exposure Training and a Breathing Exercise on the Inflammatory Response in Humans: A Pilot Study -- Jelie Zwaag et al.
9. Dmitry Rinberg on the Mysteries of Smell -- Episode 62 of Brave New World.
10. Anthony Zador on How our Brains Work -- Episode 35 of Brave New World.
11. Deep Rising --  Matthieu Rytz.
12. David Chalmers on the Nature of Reality -- Episode 41 of Brave New World.
13. Sea Change Project.

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