The Knowledge Archives

The Knowledge Archives

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The Knowledge Archives episodes

  • #59 A New Lens on Happiness - Joel McGuire | Happier Lives Institute

    Joel McGuire is a research analyst at the Happier Lives Institute. The Happier Lives Institute is a think tank studying how to measure and increase happiness. Today, Joel discusses their new research on which evidence is best suited to measure happiness. And how charities can use that to help others.   

    To learn more about the Happier Lives Institute, visit https://happierlivesinstitute.org

    To read the Happier Lives Institute's research, visit: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mY4pZSwvFCDsjorJX 

    Timeline:

    00:00 Introduction
    03:00 Traditional measures of wellbeing
    08:55 What is subjective-wellbeing?
    10:58 How charities decide where to spend money
    15:38 The Happier Lives Institute's Research
    22:05 Next Steps from this Research  

    P.S. Some fancy words Joel used:

    - Subjective wellbeing: How happy someone sees themself as.  
    - Charity Navigator: A charity rankings site that tries to audit the most transparent charities with low costs. More details: https://charitynavigator.org.  
    - GiveWell: A charitable organisation trying to find the most thoroughly-proven opportunities to do good. More details: https://givewell.org.
    - Consumption: how many goods and services a household uses.
    - Deworming: a type of health treatment to remove parasitic worms from someone's body.
    - Cash transfers: a type of charitable intervention where donors directly send money to recipients, usually without any conditions on its use.
    - DALY: Disability adjusted life year. A unit of health that measures how long someone is alive, adjusted for their quality of life. Ex: A year of being alive while blind has a smaller value in DALYs than a year with sight.
    - Strongminds: a charity that trains ordinary people in Africa to lead psychotherapy groups for others in their community. More details: https://strongminds.org.
    - Cataract surgery: a healthcare treatment that requires relatively inexpensive equipment and can prevent blindness. 

    29 min
  • #58 The Global War Against Antibiotic Resistance - Christine Aardal | Norwegian Institute of Public Health

    Dr. Christine Aardal is a Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Dr. Aardal studies antimicrobial resistance, which is when the drugs we use to treat bacterial infections become ineffective. Today, she specifically explains how these drugs are developed and the economics of why antimicrobial research is underfunded.

    To learn more about the Dr. Aardal's work, please see her profile

    Timeline:

    00:00 Introduction
    02:23 What is antimicrobial resistance?
    05:50 Why it's dangerous
    08:15 How antibiotics are made
    12:53 Costs of making antibiotics
    15:20 Who pays for antibiotics
    22:44 Issues with antibiotic funding
    29:26 Solutions in antibiotic funding
    34:09 What's next in the industry

    P.S. Some fancy words Dr. Aardal used:

    - Schistosomiasis: A disease caused by parasitic worms in many developing countries. It is the second most deadly parasitic disease after malaria.
    - Antibiotics: Medical compounds that specifically kill bacteria.
    - Antimicrobials: Medical compounds that kill microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, parasites, etc.
    - Antimicrobial resistance: When some microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, viruses, etc. develop protection against our antimicrobial drugs.  
    - Antibiotic resistance: When bacteria specifically develop protection against our antibiotic drugs.
    - Clinical trials: experiments done to test whether medicines work in humans.
    - Monopoly time period: A guarantee for a company that it is the only one that can make a certain product for a certain number of years. This makes sure the company does not face competition in selling its product.
    - Dry Wells: A metaphor for pharmaceutical drugs developed that turn out to not be promising, like drilling a well for water in an area where the land turns out dry.
    - Microbe: another word for microorganisms
    - Pathogen: Microorganisms that cause humans harm
    - Health technology assessments: studies run by governments in some countries to decide which healthcare technologies to fund.  
    - Out of pocket: Paying with one's own money (vs. having governments or insurers pay for a cost instead of an individual).
    - Public goods: goods/services where many people can benefit without blocking others from accessing the goods/services. And where it's difficult to control who accesses the goods/services. Ex: education
    - CARB-X: A coalition of governments and nonprofits funding research on antibiotics. More details: https://carb-x.org
    - GARDP: Global Antiobiotic Research and Development Partnership. An organisation funding antibiotic research and ensuring antibiotics are available to those in low and middle-income countries. More details: https://gardp.org/
    - Pull incentive: Yearly funding that governments give to pharmaceutical companies so the companies keep researching new antimicrobials every year.
    - Bacteriophages: Viruses that attack specific species of bacteria.

    41 min
  • #57 A Bronze Age Mystery: When Nomads Conquered Europe - Volker Heyd | University of Helsinki

    Dr. Volker Heyd is a Professor of Achaeology at the University of Helsinki in Finland. He studies past cultures in the bronze age using tools from genetics, archaelogy, and anthropology. In this interview, we talk about the Yamnaya people of Eurasia and the complexity of understanding how they spead across two contintents!  

    To learn more about the Dr. Heyd's work, see here

    Timeline:

    00:00 Introduction
    03:09 Who are the Yamnaya people?
    05:38 Why did the Yamnaya spread?
    08:20 Geography of the Yamnaya's Lands
    10:00 Cousins of the Yamnaya
    11:48 A Cultural Mystery
    15:41 Using Biology in Archaelogy
    19:36 Challenges in Archaeology
    24:07 What's next in the field  

    P.S. Some fancy words Dr. Heyd used:
    - Prehistoric: time period before written history
    - Genes: Instructions in the human body for particular outcomes (ex: how to create eye colour)
    - Genepool: all the genes that are found in a population of people
    - Final centuries of the 4th millennium BC: 4700-5000 BCE
    - Eurasian steppe: a geographic region stretching from China to Hungary that is mostly flat grassland.
    - Yamnaya people: a culture of nomadic people that lived on the Eurasian Steppe over 6500 years ago.
    - Corded Ware people: a culture related to the Yamnaya that expanded into Europe over 4500 years ago
    - Kurgans: monuments used on Yamnaya burial sites (like gravestones)
    - Bronze age: the time period where humans first created metal tools
    - Stone age: the time period where humans first created stone tools
    - Ecozone: a geographical region with similar ecosystems
    - Admixture: when several individuals from isolated populations move between each other, mixing the genes of both populations.
    - Material culture: A description of a society based on the materials and objects it has. Just like a society's musical culture, for example.
    - Megalith: a large stone that forms part of a structure (like a burial site)
    - Radiocarbon dating: A method to find the age of organic matter that measures the amount of a radioactive version of carbon present in a sample. Details here
    - Old wood effect: an issue with radiocarbon dating used to find the age of samples of wood. Since wood grows in rings and the inner layers may be centuries older than the outer layers. Details here
    - Reservoir effect: an issue with radiocarbon dating where samples of different ages are mixed together, such as when a living organism in the ocean absorbs older silt from the seabed. Details here

    30 min
  • #56 Mindfulness: A Journey Throughout Time - Michaela Pascoe | Victoria University

    Dr. Michaela Pascoe is a Senior Research Fellow of Health and Sport at Victoria University in Australia. She studies the health benefits of wellness practices like meditation. In this interview, we talk about the science behind meditation, how to meditate consistently, and the long history of this practice!  

    To learn more about the Dr. Pascoe's work, please visit https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michaela-Pascoe 

    Timeline:

    00:00 Introduction
    03:01 Meditation and Lockdowns
    05:01 The Science Behind Meditation
    10:09 How Scientists Study Meditation
    13:16 How to Meditate Consistently
    15:37 History of Meditation
    17:32 Indigenous Cultures and Wellness Practices
    20:17 Resources on Meditation  

    22 min
  • #55 An Inventor's Tale: The History of Electricity - Kerry Vaughan | Leverage Research

    Kerry Vaughan is a Program Manager of Early Science at Leverage Research. He studies the history of how we developed electricity. Specifically, he analyses what makes some scientific inventions succeed and others fail.  

    To learn more about his work, please visit: https://leverageresearch.org. Or see his research paper here: https://leverageresearch.org/research-voltas-electrophorus 

    Timeline:

    00:00 Introduction
    02:37 Overview of Electricity's History
    05:38 What's a Leyden Jar?
    07:31 Importance of Leyden Jars
    08:51 Electrician Culture
    11:24 Science & Having Fun
    14:30 Benjamin Franklin + Electricity
    19:29 Alessandra Volta + Electrophorus
    24:55 Scientific Discoveries + Public Attention
    27:22 Electricity and Business
    29:25 Math is the foundation
    33:29 Asking good questions
    38:26 Getting information sources
    40:40 What's next for Kerry  

    P.S. Some fancy words Kerry used:
    - Maxwell: James Maxwell was a Scottish mathematician in the 1800s. He contributed to the math describing electricity.  
    - Gilbert: William Gilbert was an English physicist in the 1500s. He contributed to early theories of magnetism.  
    - Lodestone: A mineral that is a naturally-occurring magnet.
    - Capacitor: a device that separates negative and positive charges to create electricity
    - Leyden Jar: An early capacitor. More here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=O3HQR2H5v04
    - Alessandro Volta: An Italian physicist from the 1700s who created early versions of batteries, as well as a special capacitor called the electrophorus.
    - Electrophorus: A capacitor created by Alessandra Volta to show a mysterious property of capacitors called 'repeated sparks'. More here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaTfwVPKfI8
    - Repeated sparks: An effect where an electrophorus is charged once, but seems to create 'shocks' multiple times. It is difficult to understand where the electricity to create these 'shocks' comes from.  
    - Natural Philosopher / Electrician: Natural philosophers are the precursor to modern scientists. Electricians are natural philosophers who study electricity.  
    - Ørsted: Hans Christian Ørsted was a Danish physicist who first showed the connection between electricity and magnetism.  
    - Benjamin Franklin: A famous natural philosopher in the 1700s who studied electricity.  
    - Ground: a path where electrical charge can return to neutral (often by travelling into the Earth or 'ground').  
    - Musschenbroek: Pieter van Musschenbroek was a Dutch scientist who invented the Leyden jar in the 1700s.  
    - Deepmind Go: An artificial intelligence algorithm that beat human-level performance at Go, one of the most complex games ever.  
    - Bell Labs: A department that started under the telecommunications company, Bell, in the 1900s. It made many advances in early electronics and telecommunications.
    - Shannon: Claude Shannon was an American mathematician and electrical engineer who founded the field of Information Theory in the 1900s.  
    - Information Theory: the science of how we measure, store, and communicate information digitally.  
    - The Enlightenment: a philosophical world view in the 1600s and 1700s. It focused on human capacity for reasoning and supported the development of modern science.
    - Effective Altruism: a philosophical world view in modern times that supports the use of rational thinking to do good in the world.  
    - Primary sources: historical sources of information written by eyewitnesses of the topics they discuss at their time.  
    - Secondary sources: historical sources of information not written by eyewitnesses who directly observed the events.  
    - Artificial General Intelligence: A man-made creation that can perform any intellectual task as well as a human.

    47 min
  • #54 Saving Banks from Failure… with Math - Christian Diem | Complexity Science Hub Vienna

    Christian Diem is a PhD Candidate at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, Austria. His work studies risk modelling in the financial sector. Specifically, he models how banks do business with each other to minimise the risk of banks failing.  

    To learn more about his work, please visit https://www.csh.ac.at/researcher/christian-diem/ 

    Timeline:

    00:00 Introduction
    01:03 Christian's background
    02:33 Complexity science and network science
    03:46 Historical examples of banking risks
    07:25 Importance of quantifiable evidence
    10:24 Correlated financial risks
    12:45 Predictions and economic modelling
    13:42 How bank risks are analysed
    16:27 Risky interactions between banks
    18:48 Optimisation goals in modelling
    19:55 How does one bank measure risk?
    21:24 How does a sector measure risk?
    24:56 Challenges with modelling risk
    26:02 What mathematicians really do
    28:38 What's next in this field

    32 min
  • #53 Economic Modelling During COVID-19 - Maria del Rio-Chanona | Complexity Science Hub Vienna

    Dr. Maria del Rio-Chanona is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, Austria. Her work studies data-driven modelling in economics. Specifically, she has modelled how the UK's industries react to the shock of COVID-19 and how this influences the UK economy as a whole.  


    To learn more about Ms. del Rio-Chanona's work, please visit https://mariadelriochanona.info/

    30 min
  • #52 Tracking the Spread of the Persian Empire - Rhyne King

    Dr. Rhyne King is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the New York University in the US. His work studies the history of the Achaemenid (or Persian) Empire using archaeological remains. Specifically, he has studied the economic system and taxation of the Persian Empire.  


    To learn more about the Dr. King's work on the Persian Empire, please visit https://oi.uchicago.edu/persepolis-ancient-iran

    28 min
  • #51 Archaeological Science: Precisely Probing the Past

    Dr. Moujan Matin is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Toronto in Canada. Her work studies the history of ceramic-making in the Islamic world. Specifically, she uses scientific techniques to analyse how this crafting process improved over time.  


    To learn more about her work, please visit her Google Scholar profile

    25 min
  • #50 Uncovering Hidden Gems: Silver Mining in Colonial Peru - Sarah Kennedy | The Knowledge Archives

    Sarah Kennedy is a PhD. Candidate in Archaeology at the University of Pittsburgh in the US. Her work focuses on the history of colonial Peru under Spanish rule. Specifically, she studies the history of indigenous workers at silver mines during this time period.  


    To learn more about her work, please visit: https://sarah-kennedy.wixsite.com/sarahkennedy. You can also visit some resources she mentioned:
    - http://pares.culturaydeporte.gob.es/pares/en/inicio.html. Online catalogue of the Seville General Archives of the Indies. 

    32 min

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