Human Centered

Pulitzer Prize-winning tech journalist John Markoff chats with 2022-23 CASBS fellow Nathan Matias about often-overlooked public interest questions and concerns regarding the deployment of tech platform algorithms and AI models. Specifically, Matias is a player in filling the two-way knowledge gaps between civil society and tech firms with an eye on governance, safety, accountability, and advancing the science — including the social science — of human-algorithm behavior.
 

Nathan Matias: Cornell University faculty page | CASBS bio | Personal website |

Citizens & Technology Lab

Coalition for Independent Technology Research

Select Matias publications

"Humans and Algorithms Work Together — So Study Them Together" Nature (2023)

"Impact Assessment of Human-Algorithm Feedback Loops" Just Tech, SSRC (2022)

"The Tragedy of the Digital Commons" The Atlantic (2015)

"To Hold Tech Accountable, Look to Public Health" Wired (2023)

Link to more Nathan Matias public writing | Matias on Medium | on LinkedIn |

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Read John Markoff's latest book, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand (Penguin Random House, 2022)
 

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University

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Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel

Recorded before a live audience, Margaret Levi, Alison Gopnik, & Anne-Marie Slaughter discuss a CASBS project, "The Social Science of Caregiving," which is reimagining the philosophical, psychological, biological, political, & economic foundations of care and caregiving. The goal is a coherent empirical and theoretical account or synthesis of care that advances understandings and policy discussions. [The episode notes provide links for further exploration.]

Article on CASBS's project on The Social Science of Caregiving

Web page for the project on The Social Science of Caregiving

Related: Human Centered episode #61, "Developing AI Like Raising Kids" (Alison Gopnik & Ted Chiang)

Alison Gopnik: CASBS bio | UC Berkeley Bio | 

Gopnik article, "Caregiving in Philosophy, Biology & Political Economy" (Dædalus)

Margaret Levi: CASBS bio | CASBS program on Creating a New Moral Political Economy | 

Anne-Marie Slaughter:  New America bio | 

Slaughter articles, "Care is a Relationship" (Dædalus) | "Why Women Still Can't Have it All" (The Atlantic)

Slaughter book, Unfinished Business (Penguin Random House)

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University

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Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel

Pulitzer Prize-winning tech journalist & 2017-18 CASBS fellow John Markoff chats with 2022-23 CASBS fellow Rebecca Slayton on how the field of computing expertise evolved, eventually giving rise to the niche of professionals who protect systems from cyber-attacks. Slayton's forthcoming book explores the governance & risk implications emerging from the fact that cybersecurity experts must establish their authority by paradoxically revealing vulnerabilities and insecurities of that which they seek to protect.

REBECCA SLAYTON

Cornell University faculty page | |  CASBS page | 

Slayton's book Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949-2012 (MIT Press)

Slayton's article "What is the Cyber Offense-Defense Balance?," International Security

Video: Talk on "Shadowing Cybersecurity: Expertise, Transnationalism, and the Politics of Uncertainty" at Stanford Univ.

JOHN MARKOFF

New York Times page

Markoff's latest book, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Steward Brand (Penguin Random House, 2022)

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University
75 Alta Road | Stanford, CA 94305 | 
CASBS: website|Twitter|YouTube|LinkedIn|podcast|latest newsletter|signup|outreach​

View the Fall 2023 CASBS Newsletter
 

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University

Explore CASBS: website | Bluesky | X | YouTube |LinkedIn | podcast | latest newsletter | signup | outreach​

Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel

Two-time CASBS fellow Fred Turner engages CASBS board of directors chair Abby Smith Rumsey before a live audience to discuss her new book "Memory, Edited: Taking Liberties with History." When the erasure or distortion of collective memory through storytelling hijacks fact, truth, and history itself, what kind of information infrastructures can effectively confront those false narratives? Turner and Rumsey explore the tensions between history and storytelling and resulting implications for political beliefs, actions, and our collective sense of reality.

ABBY SMITH RUMSEY

CASBS website bio | Personal website | Talk at Long Now Foundation in partnership with CASBS 

MIT Press web page for Memory, Edited: Taking Liberties with History

CASBS Q&A with Rumsey (2022)

FRED TURNER

Stanford University profile | Fred Turner's books |  on Google Scholar |

"Machine Politics: The Rise of the Internet and a New Age of Authoritarianism," Harper's Magazine (2019)

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University

Explore CASBS: website | Bluesky | X | YouTube |LinkedIn | podcast | latest newsletter | signup | outreach​

Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel

Renowned sociologist Michèle Lamont (CASBS fellow, 2002-03) discusses her new book, Seeing Others, with former CASBS director Woody Powell. The book assembles decades of Lamont’s scholarship, engaging some of contemporary society’s most elemental challenges and advancing key building blocks toward a shared human experience marked by greater inclusion, belonging, dignity, empathy, and equality.

MICHÈLE LAMONT:

Harvard University faculty page | Harvard sociology page

Personal website | Simon & Schuster page for Seeing Others

The Successful Societies project, which held its first convening at CASBS in 2003

WALTER "WOODY" POWELL

Stanford University faculty page | CASBS page 

Personal website | PACS page

Announcement of Powell as CASBS director

CASBS summer institute on Organizations and Their Effectiveness (2016-present)
 

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University

Explore CASBS: website | Bluesky | X | YouTube |LinkedIn | podcast | latest newsletter | signup | outreach​

Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel

Fully understanding and regulating our complex information ecosystems will require creating new cultures and modes of collaborating, new organizational frameworks and, yes, working with generative AI models in service of aggregating actionable scientific knowledge. Angela Aristidou (CASBS fellow, 2022-23) navigates the crucial questions and challenges with Phil Howard (CASBS fellow, 2008-09), a renowned scholar of tech innovation and public policy as well as co-founder and chair of the new International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE).

PHIL HOWARD:

University of Oxford page | Wikipedia page |  Personal website |

INTERNATIONAL PANEL ON THE INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT:

Website | Oxford article on IPIE | New York Times article on IPIE |

ANGELA ARISTIDOU

UCL School of Management page |  CASBS page | UCL article on AA | on ResearchGate |

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences(CASBS)at Stanford University
75 Alta Road | Stanford, CA 94305 |
CASBS: website|Twitter|YouTube|LinkedIn|podcast|latest newsletter|signup|outreach​

Follow the CASBS webcast series,Social Science for a World in Crisis
 

NOV. 16, 2023 Event: 2023 Sage-CASBS Award Lecture | Elizabeth Anderson & Alondra Nelson
Meet the 2023-24 CASBS class
Announcing a new fellowship partnership
CASBS Program Curates Issue of Dædalus
Previous podcast episode: The Memory Science Disruptor
 

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University

Explore CASBS: website | Bluesky | X | YouTube |LinkedIn | podcast | latest newsletter | signup | outreach​

Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel

Dan Simon, a 2022-23 CASBS fellow and USC law professor, joins in conversation with Elizabeth Loftus, a 1978-79 CASBS fellow and Distinguished Professor at UC Irvine. Loftus is known in the public sphere through her decades-long study of memory – specifically, its malleability and fallibility – as well as her application of findings as an expert witness or consultant in hundreds of legal cases. Loftus's book "Eyewitness Testimony," completed at the Center, charted the course of her career that followed and serves as this episode's launching point.

ELIZABETH LOFTUS

UC Irvine faculty page
Wikipedia page
TED Talk (2013), "How reliable is your memory?"
Nobel Prize Summit (2023), "The misinformation effect"
The New Yorker (2021), "How Elizabeth Loftus Changed the Meaning of Memory"
 

DAN SIMON

USC Gould School of Law faculty page
CASBS bio
"In Doubt: The Psychology of the Criminal Justice Process" (Harvard Univ. Press, 2012)


Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences(CASBS)at Stanford University
CASBS: website|Twitter|YouTube|LinkedIn|podcast|latest newsletter|signup|outreach​
Follow the CASBS webcast series, Social Science for a World in Crisis

 

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University

Explore CASBS: website | Bluesky | X | YouTube |LinkedIn | podcast | latest newsletter | signup | outreach​

Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel

While you're listening to this episode, 2016-17 CASBS fellow Jonathan Jansen likely will write another few thousand words. As a scholar of education & leader of education institutions, Jansen is South Africa's most towering figure. To call him prolific is a gross understatement. He writes a steady stream of books & more books. As a public intellectual he writes a separate steady stream of columns & essays. And he's written a family memoir too. We bring 2022-23 CASBS fellow Zimitri Erasmus, a social anthropologist who is working on a book on writing praxis, in conversation with Jansen to unlock some secrets & insights into his most powerful & liberating weapon for engaging the world – writing.

JONATHAN JANSEN
on Google Scholar
Jansen website

Mentioned in the episode
Corrupted: A Study of Chronic Dysfunction in South African Universities (2023)
Song for Sarah: Lessons from my Mother (2017)

Jansen and CASBS
"Loving and Blacking" (symposium, 2017)
"Higher Ed at the Crossroads" (webcast, 2020)

ZIMITRI ERASMUS
CASBS page
on Google Scholar
at University of Witswatersrand


Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences(CASBS) at Stanford University
CASBS: website|Twitter|YouTube|LinkedIn|podcast|latest newsletter|signup|outreach​
Follow the CASBS webcast series, Social Science for a World in Crisis
 

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University

Explore CASBS: website | Bluesky | X | YouTube |LinkedIn | podcast | latest newsletter | signup | outreach​

Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel

What are the most effective collective actions that social protest movements can or should undertake in the context of deep societal conflict and polarization? CASBS fellows Eran Halperin (2022-23) & Robb Willer (2012-13, 2020-21) compare their cross-national research findings and explore Halperin's real-time applied work with the dramatic, ongoing protests in Israel.

ERAN HALPERIN links:

Psychology of Intergroup Conflict and Reconciliation Lab (PCIL)

Halperin on Google Scholar

aChord: Social Psychology for Social Change


ROBB WILLER links:

Willer's Stanford faculty page

Willer's personal web page

Polarization and Social Change Lab

Willer on Google Scholar

Article in JPSP, "The Activist's Dilemma" (2020)



Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University
CASBS:website|Twitter|YouTube|LinkedIn|podcast|latest newsletter|signup|outreach​
Follow the CASBS webcast series,Social Science for a World in Crisis
 

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University

Explore CASBS: website | Bluesky | X | YouTube |LinkedIn | podcast | latest newsletter | signup | outreach​

Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel

Drawing upon a career of scholarship extending from studies of labor, citizenship, and the state in Africa to explorations of global empire, colonialism, and globalization, three-time CASBS fellow Frederick Cooper – in conversation with 2022-23 fellows Jean Beaman and Martin Williams – gives a master class on how critical and relational thinking serve historical inquiries that advance our understandings. 

Frederick Cooper, CASBS fellow 1990-91, 1995-96, 2002-03
NYU faculty page
Wikipedia page
 

Fred Cooper books

Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference: Historical Perspectives (2018)

Citizenship Between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945-1960 (2014)

Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (2010)

Cooper Books in CASBS's Ralph W. Tyler Collection:
Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (2005)

Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (1996)

Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America (1993)

Fred Cooper article referenced in the episode

"What is the Concept of Globalization Good for? An African Historian's Perspective" (2001)

Jean Beaman faculty page

Martin Williams faculty page

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University

CASBS:website|Twitter|YouTube|LinkedIn|podcast|latest newsletter|signup|outreach​

Follow the CASBS webcast series,Social Science for a World in Crisis
 

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University

Explore CASBS: website | Bluesky | X | YouTube |LinkedIn | podcast | latest newsletter | signup | outreach​

Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel