Podcast
Human Centered features conversations about projects and research undertaken by CASBS fellows and affiliates whose work engages central themes of concern to the Center. The podcast also features audio versions of events from CASBS's online webcast series, Social Science for a World in Crisis, as well as interviews with renowned fellows from CASBS history.
CASBS brings together deep thinkers to address wicked problems and significant societal challenges. It empowers them to challenge boundaries and assumptions in order to advance our understanding of the full range of human beliefs, behaviors, interactions, and institutions. As a leading incubator of human-centered knowledge, CASBS is a place that is, well…human centered.
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Producer: Mike Gaetani
Co-producer, audio engineer, and editor: Joe Monzel
Episodes
Episode 76
The Humanity of Connective Labor
October 15, 2024
Are jobs requiring high levels of human interaction worth preserving in the age of automation? Can we design machines to achieve something profound – the mutual recognition that occurs when human beings truly "see" each other? CASBS faculty fellow Mitchell Stevens explores these questions with Allison Pugh, author of the 2024 book The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World. Pugh launched work on the book as a 2016-17 CASBS fellow.
Episode 75
Organized Civic Benevolence and Nationhood
August 2, 2024
Santi Furnari (CASBS fellow, 2023-24) engages renowned political sociologist and 2015-16 fellow Elisabeth Clemens on the role of private civic volunteer organizations in co-constructing national identity and state capacity as well as serving as tools of governance, solidarity, and inclusion for much of American history. In what form does civic benevolence and philanthropy operate in the contemporary landscape? The conversation draws from the multi-award-winning book Civic Gifts: Voluntarism and the Making of the American Nation-State, much of which Clemens wrote at CASBS.
Episode 74
Exposing Sources and Impacts of Election Disinformation Campaigns
July 8, 2024
Renowned tech journalist John Markoff (CASBS fellow, 2017-18) chats with 2023-24 CASBS fellow Young Mie Kim on her groundbreaking efforts to identify how shadowy groups use algorithms and targeted disinformation campaigns during presidential election cycles; measure their real-world distorting effects on voter mobilization or suppression; and illuminate our understanding of resulting political inequalities and their implications for American democracy.
Episode 73
The Gold Standard of Economic Historians
May 31, 2024
Stefan Link, a 2023-24 CASBS fellow, chats with Barry Eichengreen, a 1996-97 CASBS fellow world renowned for his expertise at the nexus of international economics and economic history. They discuss some of Eichengreen's most prominent works — including The European Economy Since 1945, which emerged from his CASBS experience, and Golden Fetters, his most cited book — interrogating their durability and applicability to contemporary industrial, financial, and monetary policy challenges and governance.
Episode 72
A Scholar's Commitment to Workers' Economic Justice
April 30, 2024
Labor historian & 2023-24 CASBS fellow Gabriel Winant in conversation with 2018-19 CASBS fellow Ruth Milkman, among the nation's most renowned sociologists of labor. In addition to interrogating divisions within and segmentation across labor markets in recent decades, Milkman also has remained attuned to the complexity of the overall working class experience, essential for illuminating ways in which workers can unite and organize.
Episode 71
Bridging Adaptive Algorithms and the Public Good
March 25, 2024
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.
Episode 69
The Shadow of Cybersecurity Expertise
January 17, 2024
Pulitzer Prize-winning tech journalist and 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 and 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.
Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani
Co-producer, audio engineer, and editor: Joe Monzel
CASBS thanks 2017-18 fellow and renowned journalist John Markoff, co-founder of Human Centered and its inaugural host (episodes 1-25, 29, 32). John occasionally returns as a guest host.
Episode 70
A Social Science of Caregiving
February 26, 2024
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. Read an article about the project. Episode co-producer: Zachary Ugolnik.