Social Science Bites

David Halpern on Nudging
Public Policy
January 2, 2019

David Halpern on Nudging

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James Robinson on Why Nations Fail
Social Science Bites
December 3, 2018

James Robinson on Why Nations Fail

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Nick Adams on Textual Analysis
Public Policy
November 1, 2018

Nick Adams on Textual Analysis

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Andrew Leigh on Randomistas
Public Policy
October 1, 2018

Andrew Leigh on Randomistas

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Diane Reay on Education and Class

Diane Reay on Education and Class

One thing has become clear to sociologist Diane Reay across her research – “It’s primarily working-class children who turn out to be losers in the educational system.” Whether it’s through the worst-funded schools, least-qualified teachers, most-temporary teaching arrangements or narrowest curricula, students from working class backgrounds in the United Kingdom (and the United States) draw the shortest educational straws.

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Mahzarin Banaji on Implicit Bias

Mahzarin Banaji on Implicit Bias

“The brain is an association-seeking machine,” Harvard social psychologist Mahzarin R. Banaji tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast. “It puts things together that repeatedly get paired in our experience. Implicit bias is just another word for capturing what those are when they concern social groups.

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Richard Wilkinson on How Inequality is Bad

Richard Wilkinson on How Inequality is Bad

In this Social Science Bites podcast, social epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson lays out the case that inequality should be fought specifically because it fosters a litany of ill effects.

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Celia Heyes on Cognitive Gadgets

Celia Heyes on Cognitive Gadgets

How did humans diverge so markedly from animals? Apart from physical things like our “physical peculiarities,” as experimental psychologist Celia Heyes puts it, or our fine motor control, there’s something even more fundamentally – and cognitively — different. hear more in our newest Social Science Bites podcast.

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Alison Liebling on Successful Prisons

Alison Liebling on Successful Prisons

In determining what makes a successful prison, where would you place ‘trust’? Alison Liebling, director of the Cambridge University Institute of Criminology’s Prisons Research Centre, would place it at the top spot. As she tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast, she believes what makes a prison good is the existence and the practice of trust.

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David Spiegelhalter on Communicating Statistics

David Spiegelhalter on Communicating Statistics

While they aren’t as unpopular as politicians or journalists, people who work with statistics come in for their share of abuse. “Figures lie and liars figure,” goes one maxim. And don’t forget, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” But some people are the good guys, doing their best to combat the flawed or dishonest use of numbers. One of those good guys is the guest of this Social Science Bites podcast, David Spiegelhalter, professor of the public understanding of risk at Cambridge and current president of the Royal Statistical Society.

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Sander van der Linden on Viral Altruism

Sander van der Linden on Viral Altruism

When online charitable appeals take off, social psychologist Sander van der Linden perks up. He studies ‘viral altruism,’ and in this Social Science Bites podcast he details to host David Edmonds how he studies this phenomenon.

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Melinda Mills on Sociogenomics

Melinda Mills on Sociogenomics

Combining sociology and genetics, Melinda Mills and her collaborators abandon the nature v. nurture controversy for empirical research on family formation, inequality, child-rearing and other real-life concerns. In this Social Science Bites podcast, she discusses this new field of ‘sociogenomics.’

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