Statistical graphing was born in the seventeenth century as a scientific tool, but it quickly escaped all disciplinary bounds. Today graphics are ubiquitous in daily life. In their just-published A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication (Harvard UP, 2021), Michael Friendly and Howard Wainer detail the history of graphs and tables, how they h ... Show More
Yesterday
David Blumenthal and James A. Morone, "Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science" (Yale UP, 2026)
For nearly a century, every Democratic president—and many Republicans—entered office promising to restructure America’s health care system. Barack Obama finally broke through but, in the process, opened a tumultuous decade in which battles over health care dominated American poli ... Show More
1h 7m
Apr 20
Adrian Woolfson, "On the Future of Species: Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence" (MIT Press, 2026)
Imagine a future where we grow houses rather than build them. Where smartphones are alive, clothing has opinions and all human knowledge fits into a speck of DNA. A world where disease is a thing of the past and the human lifespan is dramatically extended.To achieve this, says Ad ... Show More
54m 30s
Oct 2022
Edward Chancellor, "The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2022)
Edward Chancellor's just published history of interest rates could not be better timed. As the world adjusts to rising rates after decades of falling ones, Chancellor's historical and sometimes polemical account of rates kept too low for too long seems all too prescient. Chancell ... Show More
45m 57s
Mar 2023
How corporations got all your data
Sean Illing speaks with Matthew Jones, historian of science and technology, and co-author (with data scientist Chris Wiggins) of the new book How Data Happened. They discuss the surprisingly long history of data from the 18th century to today, in service of explaining how we woun ... Show More
52m 50s
Mar 2023
How Data Happened: Professors Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones on the History of Data
<p>Chris Wiggins and Matthew Jones, authors of the new book <em>How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms</em>, join Patrick to discuss the history of data, why enumerating things isn't a neutral act, and the ethics of building a world on the fo ... Show More
59m 16s
Apr 2020
What If We Lived 50 Years Into the Future? - Guest: Steven Kotler
Mark Twain once said...Well, Mark Twain said a lot of things but in this particular context, his "it's difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future" is as apropos as it is yogi Berra-ish. But these days, futurism is not only harder than it's probably ever been, bu ... Show More
54m 54s
Dec 2020
What If You Never Aged? - with Jamie Metzl
What If you could live forever? Since the days of Ponce De Leon and the search for the Fountain of Youth, human beings have pursued longer lives, doing whatever they could to cheat time and extend their lives. Now, with genetic engineering/CRSPR technology etc. this is no longer ... Show More
45m 57s