Social Science Bites

Diane Reay on Education and Class
Impact
September 4, 2018

Diane Reay on Education and Class

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Mahzarin Banaji on Implicit Bias
Social Science Bites
August 2, 2018

Mahzarin Banaji on Implicit Bias

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Richard Wilkinson on How Inequality is Bad
Social Science Bites
July 3, 2018

Richard Wilkinson on How Inequality is Bad

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Celia Heyes on Cognitive Gadgets
Social Science Bites
June 1, 2018

Celia Heyes on Cognitive Gadgets

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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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Jo Boaler on Fear of Mathematics

Jo Boaler on Fear of Mathematics

There’s a lot of myths that get in the way of learning maths, says Stanford University’s Jo Boaler, and her research not only topples conventional wisdom but gives solid ways of allowing everyone to harness their inherent ability to excel at mathematics.

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Bev Skeggs on Social Media Siloing

Bev Skeggs on Social Media Siloing

“Most people,” explains Goldsmiths sociologist Bev Skeggs in this Social Science Space podcast, “think they’re using Facebook to communicate with friends. Basically they’re using it to reveal how much they can be sold for, now and in the future, and how much their friends can be sold for.”

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Sabina Alkire on Measuring Poverty

Sabina Alkire on Measuring Poverty

Economist Sabina Alkire has spent her career looking at all the things beyond just a lack of money that make us poor. In this Social Science Bites podcast, the director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative explains the need for a consistent and reputable means of measuring poverty over time.

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Tom Chatfield on Critical Thinking and Bias

Tom Chatfield on Critical Thinking and Bias

Philosopher Tom Chatfield’s media presence – which is substantial – is often directly linked to his writings on technology. But his new book is on critical thinking, and while that involves humanity’s oldest computer, the brain, Chatfield explains in this Social Science Bites podcast that new digital realities interact with old human biases.

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