The Padverb Podcast with KMO Padverb

Ben Blatt is a former staff writer for Slate and the Harvard Lampoon. Ben is a numbers guy who has taken his fun approach to data journalism to topics such as Seinfeld, map-making, the Beatles, and Jeopardy.


This conversation centers around Ben's book "Nabokov's Favorite Word is Mauve" (2017). It's a book about what we can learn about writing and authors based not on what they say, or what impressions we get from reading their books, but on something that results from applying rigorous data analysis to their actual texts. Specifically, KMO and Ben discuss:



00:25 – Moneyball and its influence on Ben
02:12 – The attraction of baseball for analytical people
04:25 – Ben's interest in numbers and writing
06:40 – Patterns, correlations, and writing advice
10:00 – -LY adverbs
12:00 – British vs American English
14:40 – Bloke, blimey and the Harry Potter Effect
16:00 – Loud vs quiet verbs
19:08 – Pronoun and characters stats
20:00 – Comparing authors' noise levels
23:00 – Gender differences in literature
27:50 – Professionals and amateurs: the statistical differences
30:25 – Reading fan fiction
32:50 – Restraining style choices to foster creativity
34:50 – Revising one's novels
36:00 – Fame and success affecting one's writing style
38:00 – Data tools
40:15 – Vonnegut
42:10 – The validity of "write what you know"
43:10 – Digital Humanities and Franco Moretti's "Atlas of the European Novel"
47:15 – Ben's advice for aspiring writers
50:15 – Creating writing and progress in AI
52:05 – Ben's next project




Ben (The Guest):



Twitter: @BenBlatt




KMO (The Host):



Twitter: @Kayemmo
en.padverb.com/kmo




Padverb:



The Padverb Telegram Channel:
t.me/padverbpodcast

George Zarkadakis is the author of both fiction and non-fiction books, who describes himself as a science communicator, an artificial intelligence engineer, a futurist, and a digital innovation professional. His most recent book is called "Cyber Republic: Reinventing Democracy in the Age of Intelligent Machines" (MIT Press, 2021).


In this conversation, KMO and George discuss:


06:05 – Why democracy needs to be reinvented
06:50 – Incorporating technologies into democracies
18:10 – Animal labor's role in creating inequality and its implications
25:40 – The psychological dimension and transforming spectators into actors
32:40 – Financial time machine
37:30 – Running out of units of measurement
41:30 – Obviating the need for trust with the blockchain
46:00 – Precarious creative gigs and AI's progress with artistic tools
57:20 – Blockchain technology in search of problems to solve
65:05 – The current web's dysfunctional nature
01:07:50 – George's book




George (The Guest):



Twitter: @zarkadakis
georgezarkadakis.com




KMO (The Host):



Twitter: @Kayemmo
en.padverb.com/kmo




Padverb:



The Padverb Telegram Channel:
t.me/padverbpodcast

Francis Nimmo is a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research specialty is understanding the structure and evolution of rocky and icy planets.


KMO and Francis discuss:


02:30 – The importance of the James Webb and other telescopes
03:40 – NASA probes, the AI connection, and technical challenges
08:30 – The possibility of finding life and the radiation factor
09:45 – Europa and Enceladus
10:42 – Breaking molecules at fly-by speeds
11:50 – Technology limitations and ambiguity in our search for life
14:40 – The question of independent emergence of life
16:05 – Subsurface oceans
18:40 – Moons
23:25 – Saturn's rings
26:05 – The Kuiper belt and beyond
28:00 – Autonomy and hibernation
29:25 – Gas giants vs ice giants
31:25 – Pluto
35:50 – Mission re-assignment
40:10 – Canned apes and getting to Mars
42:30 – Sci-Fi future we were promised
44:15 – Venus
49:40 – Mercury
53:45 – Comets
56:05 – The Earth
57:40 – Deep Time




Francis (The Guest):



websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/~fnimmo/
Francis Nimmo @ Wikipedia




KMO (The Host):



Twitter: @Kayemmo
en.padverb.com/kmo




Padverb:



The Padverb Telegram Channel:
t.me/padverbpodcast

Lauren Aguirre is an award-winning science journalist who has produced documentaries, short-form video series, podcasts, interactive games and blogs for the PBS series "Nova." She has covered everything from asteroids to human origins to art restoration, but is particularly fascinated by the brain. "The Memory Thief" is Lauren's first book.


In this conversation, Lauren and KMO discuss:



02:03 – Lauren's memory incident
06:42 – Waking up and not knowing where you are
08:28 – Retrograde and anterograde amnesia
13:10 – The fentanyl connection
20:53 – Experimental brain surgery
24:18 – Amnesia sufferers' self-worth
29:13 – Faking anterograde amnesia
31:18 – Science communication
33:38 – Disappointment in science
34:53 – The Memory Thief's target audience
36:28 – Multilayer narratives
39:13 – Our shared experience of forgetting
43:08 – Remembering our remembering of events
44:38 – The trauma connection
47:35 – Optogenetics
49:08 – The scientific process and the pursuit of truth



Lauren Aguirre (The Guest):



laurenaguirre.com
@lsaguirre




KMO (The Host):



Twitter: @Kayemmo
en.padverb.com/kmo




Padverb:



The Padverb Telegram Channel:
t.me/padverbpodcast

Carla Diana is a designer, author, and educator who explores the impact of future technologies through hands-on experiments in product design and tangible interaction. Her latest book, "My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human," published by Harvard Business Review Press, came out in March 2021. Carla and KMO discuss: 02:20 – Carla's book's title 02:30 – What 4D design is 04:40 – Robot friends 13:05 – What a robot is 21:10 – What "entities" are 28:55 – Robots' association with labor 33:28 – Robots interacting with the environment 37:15 – Robots, faces, and shared attention 44:45 – Whether humanoid robots a good idea at all 48:50 – Science fiction affecting robot design and key concepts from Carla Carla (The Guest): carladiana.com KMO (The Host): Twitter: @Kayemmo en.padverb.com/kmo Padverb: The Padverb Telegram Channel: t.me/padverbpodcast Featured quote “Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked generation after generation; give them 3000 calories a day and a few amenities, a little time off, and a strong jolt of fear, and you could work them at almost anything. Give them some ameliorative drugs and you had a working class, reified and coglike.” ― Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312

Michael J. Spivey is a professor of cognitive science at the University of California Merced. He earned his BA in Psychology at the University of California Santa Cruz and his PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester. After 12 years as a psychology professor at Cornell University, Michael moved to UC Merced to help build a department of cognitive and information sciences. He has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters on the embodiment of cognition and interactions between language, vision, memory, syntax, semantics, and motor movement. His most recent book, published in 2020, is "Who You Are: The Science of Connectedness." (MIT Press)



In this conversation, KMO and Michael discuss:



03:20 – The book's title and table of contents; externalism and egregore
07:30 – The role of the prefrontal cortex in our conception of self
11:30 – Non-scientific view of interactions between brain parts
12:50 – Mental representations of the world and the tricks they can play on us
15:35 – Letting go of oneself
17:25 – The value of familiar environments
18:45 – The futility of widely used time-management tricks
19:40 – Extending our mind past our skin
25:20 – The skipped question of emergent group intentions and desires
26:15 – Connecting to other bodies and life forms; emergence, again
28:25 – Murmurations and being in charge of a flock
28:45 – Boundaries between objects
35:20 – Perceiving objects as extensions of ourselves
37:02 – Virtual reality and tracking the direction of gaze
43:15 – AI and dogs
44:55 – Computer-generated imagery; deep fakes and their antidotes
49:35 – Extending your sense of self to the planetary scale
53:55 – Apocalyptic predictions, prepping, and the future of civilization
55:47 – Going beyond our planet and contacting life elsewhere
58:20 – Anti-natalism, suffering, and feeling one with the universe
1:02:28 – Michael's closing points; practical advice in the book




Michael (The Guest):



Michael's page at ucmerced.edu
Who You Are at MIT Press




KMO (The Host):



Twitter: @Kayemmo
en.padverb.com/kmo




Padverb:



The Padverb Telegram Channel:
t.me/padverbpodcast