Wade Davis makes his living being interesting. He is a cultural anthropologist and ethnobotanist by trade, and holds a position as the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. In August 2020, he wrote an essay that became the most viral piece ever published on Rolling Stone's website (link below). He was first put on the map by his 1986 book on Haitian zombies, "The Serpent and the Rainbow." From there he's developed an incredible career as an author, TV host, and photographer. He's made an inspiring non-traditional path for himself, following what's of greatest interest to him rather than pandering to the academic job market. I find it incredibly inspiring, and in this conversation we get into all the details about what that track as an "entrepreneur of knowledge" has look liked for Wade.Viral essay on the "End of the American Era": https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/ Subscribe at codykommers.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit codykommers.substack.com

Chris Bail is a professor of sociology and public policy at Duke and directs the Polarization Lab. He's done a lot of great research in the last half decade or so on how social media affects political polarization in our society. He's written a great book summarizing this research, called Breaking the Social Media Prism. It's out now, and it's a crucial read for understanding one of the defining topics of our age. In this conversation, Chris and I talk about Chris's experience moving to the Congo as a kid, figuring out how best to make an impact, the role of good mentorship, riding the wave of computational social science, and rethinking the mainstream narrative of what's going on with social media. Subscribe at codykommers.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit codykommers.substack.com

Jeff Hawkins is one of my favorite neuroscientists ever. He does the kind of big, ambitious projects I love to see people going after. The driving question of his research is no less than "How does the neocortex work?" He wants to solve intelligence, and he wants to do it the way the brain does. Jeff is an innovative in mobile computing and is widely known as the founder of Palm and the creator of the Palm Pilot. He saw the big picture in that space before anyone else did, and the smart money says that the same goes for his theory of the brain. I read Jeff's 2004 book, "On Intelligence," and it made a big impact on me. His latest book, "A Thousand Brains: A new theory of intelligence" is out now, and details his latest progress on figuring out how the brain really works. In this conversation, we talk about Jeff's early experience, particularly balancing his success in business with his love for neuroscience, as well as the origin of the ideas he lays out in A Thousand Brains. Our conversation gets a bit heated toward the end. But I think it's a healthy difference of opinion, as I am a great admirer of Jeff and his team's work.Book list: Subscribe at codykommers.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit codykommers.substack.com

Nancy Kanwisher is a much beloved cognitive neuroscientist at MIT. She has published some of the most influential papers in her field (for example, the discovery of the Fusiform Face Area). And it often seems that most other influential findings in cognitive neuroscience which were not made directly by Nancy herself were made by one of her students. In this episode, we talk about Nancy's experiences growing up with a love of science, struggling to get traction in graduate school, deciding between science and journalism, the early days of fMRI, and her approaches to mentorship. She is a brilliant scientist and compelling human, and I'm very excited to share this interview!Book list:Coverage of Nancy on Buzzfeed: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/natashaumer/this-badass-scientist-shaved-off-her-hair-to-teach-studentsThe original FFA paper: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/17/11/4302.full.pdfMore info:codykommers.com/post/57-nancy-kanwisher Subscribe at codykommers.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit codykommers.substack.com

Louis Menand is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of English at Harvard University. He has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1995. He is also my favorite non-fiction writer. His latest book, The Free World, is perfect. His book, The Metaphysical Club, won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for history. They are two of the greatest things I've ever read. In 2016, he won the National Humanities Medal. What else is there to say? Subscribe at codykommers.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit codykommers.substack.com

Brian Christian probably has a better handle of the human aspects of artificial intelligence than any other writer today. He recently published The Alignment Problem, his third book on this theme. His first was The Most Human Human, an exploration of what AI can tell us about what makes us human, and his second was Algorithms to Live By (co-authored with cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths), an exploration of what AI can tell us about how to be better humans. Brian's latest installment explores how humans can make better AI. That is, better not in the algorithmic sense, but in the societal sense. At any rate, I loved talking to him. We have lots of overlapping interests, as my academic training has mostly been in computational cognitive science and my interests mostly skewing towards the more humanistic aspects of it. Brian also has an MFA in poetry. Which I think is super badass.(Part 2 to follow at an undisclosed point in the future...) Subscribe at codykommers.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit codykommers.substack.com

I first became familiar with Pedro's work through his 2015 book, The Master Algorithm. But as it turns out, his existence extends prior to my familiarity with him—which is what the bulk of what we explore in this conversation. Pedro is a professor at the University of Washington and a venerable AI researcher. He has a great quote about how as fields grow, their textbooks become larger. Then, as they mature, the textbooks become smaller again. I don't know if that's true. But it's a nice line, coming from a guy who wrote a book about getting AI down to a single master algorithm. Subscribe at codykommers.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit codykommers.substack.com

Liz is a world-renown science communicator. She is founder and CEO of Liminal, a very exciting project which we get into in this conversation. We also talk about Liz's experience leaving graduate school to pursue a non-academic path, choosing uncertainty over the linear path, what it means to tell good stories about science, creating new webs of meanings throughout life, and the business model of storytelling. Enjoy! Subscribe at codykommers.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit codykommers.substack.com

Ben Moser is the pulitzer prize winning author of the recent biography of Susan Sontag, innovatively entitled "Sontag." This is one of the most fun and wide ranging conversation I'd had on the show. I stewed over whether or not to release the whole two hour conversation. But I loved how so many of the themes that we began early in the conversation—which sounded inconsequential in the moment—came full circle later on. If you want to skip straight to Ben's story, the meat of that begins the around the 30 minute mark. If, instead, you're interested in the full scope of nominal determinism, powerful women, gay men, whether Ben is good looking, whether Cody is good looking, and beginning things before you're good at them, then this conversation will definitely have something to offer. You will also enjoy this conversation if, like me, you want to be like Ben Moser when you grow up. Subscribe at codykommers.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit codykommers.substack.com

Damon Centola is a professor in the Annenberg School for Communication, the School of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Director of the Network Dynamics Group and Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. His latest book is Change: How to Make Big Things Happen. In this episode we talk about Damon's childhood growing up in an intentional community, the influence of his undergraduate curriculum in classics, how Heidegger changed his life, transitioning from philosophy and sociology, getting into network science at the perfect time, and building the academic ideas that became Change.Book list: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-damon-centola-social-change-reading-list/ Subscribe at codykommers.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit codykommers.substack.com