Quantified Self Podcast

gary isaac wolf

SELF KNOWLEDGE THROUGH NUMBERS. Gary Wolf and colleagues from the Personal Science Research Group discuss how to make your own discoveries using your own data. thequantifiedself.substack.com

Episodes

  1. 13h ago

    Epistemic Agency

    In this casually recorded podcast from the Personal Science Research Group, we start with an introduction from Steven Jonas on the essays of Michel de Montaigne, and then move on to a discussion of our upcoming paper about “epistemic agency” as a missing dimension in research on citizen science for health. Joining me: Sara Riggare, Uppsala University; Steven Jonas; Thomas Blomseth Christiansen, cofounder of TOTTI Labs; and Jakob Eg Larsen, Technical University of Denmark. A few highlights Steven Jonas: “By limiting the scope of conveying experience, the power to resonate with people is actually much stronger and wider than if you strove to make your observations apply universally.” Sara Riggare: “Epistemic agency is the capacity of an individual to act as a producer of knowledge, rather than only a source of data — to pose questions, gather and interpret evidence, reach conclusions, and be recognized by others as a credible knower.” Jakob Eg Larsen: “We are not talking about people just using these kinds of devices for tracking physical activity, or your step counts. It’s papers where the individual is asking his own question and doing his or her own analysis of the data.” Thomas Blomseth Christiansen: “Epistemic agency has been an emergent phenomenon. People have just been doing it. It’s not something that was a top-down mandate or an explicit policy.” For more on personal science and the Quantified Self community, visit the Personal Science Research Group, the QS Show & Tell archive. Also, you can now pre-order the Quantified Self: Learning to Observe. Although the official release date is Oct. 6, pre-orders are super-important for convincing booksellers that this topic matters, so if you think you will want to own a copy, please help us spread the message by ordering early. Get full access to Quantified Self at thequantifiedself.substack.com/subscribe

    Epistemic Agency

  2. Jul 23

    How to Teach Personal Science — with Sara Riggare, Thomas Blomseth Christiansen, and Martijn de Groot

    Quantified Self Podcast is about the practice of personal science — using your own data to answer your own questions. In this Quantified Self podcast three university educators who've spent years teaching people how to use their own data to explore their own questions join me, Gary Wolf, for an unrehearsed, half-hour conversation about what it actually takes to teach personal science. Guests: Sara Riggare, Uppsala University; Thomas Blomseth Christiansen, cofounder of TOTTI Labs; and Martijn de Groot, managing director of Health Innovation Labs at Radboud University Medical Center. A few highlights: Sara, on what she's actually giving students and patients: "My role is to give them permission. For the community people, permission to think for themselves; in the university course, permission to think of themselves." Martijn, on the "essence" of personal science: "You make structured observations, and the data that represents those observations shows something to yourself that is valuable for you — not necessarily for the rest of the world." Thomas, walking through how a vague interest becomes a manageable project: "My area of interest could be my pollen allergies. Within that area, a question could be, 'What are the dynamics of my sneezes during pollen season?' And in there, there's a phenomenon, which is sneezes." Nine tips for teaching personal science: Start with concrete examples, not theory. Give students explicit permission to ask "small" questions. Workshop each student's question before tracking starts. Keep the tracking period short — even just a few days. Use freshly collected data, not existing historical or wearable data. Cap written reports at a page to a page and a half. Build in a peer show-and-tell where students explain their project out loud. Address the epistemological differences between personal science and biomedicine, public health, and other group-oriented research. Be permissive about the tools students use to turn data into an artifact — pen and paper included. For more on personal science and the Quantified Self community, including the newsletter this episode came from, subscribe to Quantified Self on Substack. MORE LINKS PSRG (Personal Science Research Group) Sara Riggare Thomas Blomseth Christiansen / TOTTI Labs Martijn de Groot QS Show & Tell archive The book Get full access to Quantified Self at thequantifiedself.substack.com/subscribe

  • 2 Episodes

About

SELF KNOWLEDGE THROUGH NUMBERS. Gary Wolf and colleagues from the Personal Science Research Group discuss how to make your own discoveries using your own data. thequantifiedself.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    gary isaac wolf
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    2
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Gary Wolf
  • Show Website
    Quantified Self Podcast