ePODstemology

Believed dead and buried after World War 2, the far right has risen like a zombie from the ashes of deindustrialising towns to once again plague the polities of the trans-Atlantic region. The electoral success of Trump and Brexit made the ‘elites’ pay attention, but it’s only recently that we’ve come to understand enough about what happened in 2016 to give a thorough accounting. Here to help us un...

Infrastructure is the skeleton upon which the economy is built. Energy, water, sewerage and other utilities provide the fuel and take away the waste; roads, bridges, railways, ports, and broadband cables facilitate the movement of goods that is the essence of commerce; and town halls, leisure centres, parks are the sites on which the public sphere is manifested. So why don't we talk more abou...

What is the difference between merely 'statistical' discrimination and prejudice? How can we disentangle these things in social sciences research, and should we? How can researchers get away from a focus on the individual in discrimination research to better understand how institutions, culture, and macro-history cause both statistical and prejudicial discrimination? What can economists...

Whether it's build back better, levelling up, or the climate transition, industrial policy is back in the news. Everyone wants to restructure their economies for geopolitical, equality, green, or good old fashion efficiency reasons, but how to do it? Nathan Lane from Oxford University joins host Mark Fabian from Cambridge University to discuss. Industrial policy has a mixed history, having be...

What can social scientists learn from biology? A great deal, according to guest Reuben Finigan of the London School of Economics. The burgeoning field of sociobiology provides mind-blowing insights into sociological phenomena like cooperation, common pool resource management, corruption and rent seeking behaviour, how market actors try to deceive regulators, and the efficient provision of public g...

'Creative destruction' is an inevitable and desirable part of ongoing economic activity, but it does have losers. In particular, the employees of firms that go bust and obsolete industries that disappear. In normal times, these workers will find employment elsewhere or in emerging industries, especially if they are able to retrain easily. But in times of industrial transition, when there...

This episode is all about statistics in social science. It's one for all the new armchair epidemiologists out there, especially if COVID has got you thinking about how we can make "evidence-based policy". Statistics cheerleader Rachel Meager, who is Assistant Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Politics Science, joins host Mark Fabian of Cambridge University...

What are the potentials and pitfalls of the new data economy and associated efforts at data governance? Tech entrepreneur, digital marketer, and academic researcher Sam Gilbert joins ePODstemology host Dr Mark Fabian of Cambridge University to discuss how we can achieve "Good Data". Sam explains the commercial, scientific, and social value of data, clarifies some common misunderstandings...

The psychological science of happiness, well-being, and meaning in life has progressed rapidly in recent decades but it's insights are only just starting to penetrate the public discourse. Here to help is Frank Martela, a psychologist from Aalto University in Finland, the world's happiest country according to the World Happiness Report. Frank and host Mark Fabian from Cambridge Universit...

An exceedingly thoughtful mystery guest takes us on a tour of how notions of femininity and motherhood are changing culturally, politically, symbolically, and psychically. We discuss the history of the masculine and feminine archetypes, especially in mythological representations, and recent efforts at their revival by figures like Jordan Peterson. While there is value in salvaging what we can from...

Taxes and transfer payments are perhaps the most fundamental element of public policy, yet we rarely hear about these issues outside of banal political point scoring. Robert Breunig joins ePODstemology for a deep dive into the past, present, and future of tax and transfer policymaking. We discuss the basic economic and political logic of taxes and transfers, the lessons of the 20th century, and wh...

In the contemporary culture wars there's a crop of commentators who insist that 'science' is on their side.  They're talking about falsification, replication, quantitative methods, and randomised-control trials - the buzzwords of positivism - and they insist that what their opponents say is invalid because it doesn't meet positivism's standards for what counts as &apo...

The 'Asian Miracle' has seen several nations develop from dirt farming to the technological frontier in half a century. Among them is China, whose rise has lifted nearly a billion people out of poverty and reshaped the global economic and political order. Professor Shiro Armstrong of the ANU joins ePODstemology host Dr Mark Fabian to explain the secret sauce of East Asia's developme...

Why do millennials and boomers hate each other so much? Is it about intergenerational fairness, or is it actually an Oedipal thing? And why are they called zillenials? Is it because they're zooming, or because they're zealous? Sonia Arakkal of Think Forward joins ePODstemology to help us figure it all out. We explore the colourful cast of recent generations, discuss their psycho-social,...