Conversations With Coleman | Members Exclusive

My guest today is Matt Taibbi. Matt is a writer, journalist, and podcaster. He's a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and co-host of the "Useful Idiots" Podcast. He won the National Magazine Award in 2008 and is the author of many books, including The Great Derangement, Griftopia, and Hate Inc. In this episode, Matt and I talk about the Substack revolution, the paternalism in public health messaging, why Trump won in 2016, and the perception that people like Matt and myself are right-wing. We also discuss censorship from big tech, book bans in public schools, whether COVID-19 leaked from a lab, and much more.

In this special episode, I had the privilege of answering some interesting questions from you, my supporting members.I'll be doing another Members only Q&A soon. Please feel free to send in your questions via mail.You will be able to find more details on my website under the 'Contact' section.Stay tuned, for more updates!

My guest today is Renee DiResta. Renee is the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She led a multi-year investigation into the IRA, brushes fake news factory, and she's advised Congress. She's also an ideas contributor at Wired and The Atlantic. In this episode, we talk about the difference between misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. We talk about public health messaging, hashtags, and trending topics and the effect they can have on the real world, the increasing power of influencers and independent content creators like myself. We also discuss censorship and algorithms on big tech platforms like Twitter and Facebook and how Wikipedia can act as a source of accurate knowledge. We go to speak about how one should do research on topics one cares about in a context where one can't always trust mainstream sources, how to avoid audience capture as a content creator, and whether math is racist. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. 

My guest today is Rob Reich. Rob is a political science and philosophy professor at Stanford University. He is the Director of Stanford's McCoy Centre for Ethics and Society and Associate Director of Stanford's Institute for Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence. Rob is also the author of "Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better", and the co-author of "System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot", "Digital Technology and Democratic Theory", "Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values" and many more.We talk about the culture of Silicon Valley, the problem with optimization, the externalities caused by Big Tech, and the problem of censorship by Big Tech. We also go on to discuss artificial intelligence, the famous "Experience Machine" thought experiment, and much more. 

My guest today is Emily Oster. Emily is a Professor of Economics at Brown University and the author of "Expecting Better", "Crib Sheet" and "The Family Firm". She has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard and prior to teaching at Brown, she was on the faculty at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. This episode is all about children and families. We discuss the surprising truth about whether women can drink caffeine and alcohol during pregnancy, the difference between randomized trials and observational studies, the problems with nutrition research, and the concept of a natural experiment. We also talk about overly cautious public health messaging, how the principles of business management can apply to managing a family, the rising complexity of having a family in the modern age, the arms race of extracurricular activities, and how much parents should push their kids to do things they don't like. We go on to discuss the difference between public, private and charter schools, why certain charter school networks have been so successful, what to feed your kids and the degree to which our adult tastes are shaped by the foods we eat as children, the overdiagnosis of ADHD and the prescription of Adderall to children. Finally, we talk about the effect of social media on children, the harmful effects of school closures during COVID, and how to raise happy kids.​​​​​​​