October 03, 2020

Trust, Information and Metadata

1 hour 10 minutes

This episode includes a number of people who’ve become regulars of late:

Shannon Rich is funny, irreverent, but also at times seriously frustrated, and all that comes out in the hour plus of this discussion.

Jane Bach, one of the world’s well-known songwriters, returns and also has a lot to say.

Dax Westerman, an incredibly thoughtful and articulate software engineer at Vanderbilt, and the man responsible for the name of this podcast, joins us. This was a topic of interest to him, and I have to agree that it was a great idea!

Nicholas (Nick) Lemann, the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism and Dean Emeritus of Columbia University. In addition to his work as an academician at Columbia University, Nick is a staff writer for the New Yorker, a five-time book author, a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Nick was the perfect person to lead the discussion we had on this episode.

If I could summarize this entire podcast in one word, it would be metadata. Specifically, we discuss metadata in the real world, and how we who live in this world should learn to interpret data. These hidden data tell us a bit about what to trust, versus what may be opinion. And we learn that sometimes different generations have outdated beliefs about the source of objective data!

It’s a bit of a heady episode, but boy did I enjoy listening to it again. I hope you find it educational. You’ll hear a few major themes—like trust versus opinion, objective versus subjective, and knowing what to do to stay safe during the pandemic.

Please listen to this one in its entirety. It’s meant for all of us to hear and digest, and it could help you get through this pandemic.

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