People I (Mostly) Admire cover logo

123. Walt Hickey Wants to Track Your Eyeballs

50m · People I (Mostly) Admire · 20 Jan 04:00

Journalist Walt Hickey uses data to understand how culture works. He and Steve talk about why China hasn’t produced any hit movies yet and how he got his own avatar in the Madden NFL video game.

  • SOURCE:
    • Walter Hickey, author, journalist, and data expert.
  • RESOURCES:
    • You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything, by Walter Hickey (2023).
    • "France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books," by Aurelien Breeden (The New York Times, 2021).
    • "How I Escaped a Chinese Internment Camp," by Fahmida Azim, Anthony Del Col, and Josh Adams (Business Insider, 2021).
    • "Why You Should Stop Binge-Watching," by Alan Jern (Psychology Today, 2021).
    • "China Wants Soft Power. But Censorship Is Stifling Its Film Industry," by Eduardo Baptista (CNN, 2019).
    • "The Economic Impact of On-Screen Tourism: The Case of The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit," by ShiNa Li, Hengyun Li, Haiyan Song, Christine Lundberg, and Shujie Shen (Tourism Management, 2017).
    • "A Lazy, Out-Of-Shape Amateur Won Two More Super Bowls Than Tony Romo," by Walter Hickey and Jody Avirgan (FiveThirtyEight, 2015).
    • "How Madden Helped a Schlub Like Me Make It Into the NFL," by Walter Hickey (FiveThirtyEight, 2015).
    • "'Kung Fu Panda' Prompts Soul-Searching in China," by Simon Rabinovitch (Reuters, 2008).
    • Numlock News, by Walter Hickey.
  • EXTRAS:
    • "Nate Silver Says We’re Bad at Making Predictions," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2023).
    • "Adding Ten Healthy Years to Your Life," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2023).
    • "David Epstein Knows Something About Almost Everything," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).
    • "Professor Carl Hart Argues All Drugs Should Be Legal — Can He Convince Steve?" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).
    • "Sendhil Mullainathan Thinks Messing Around Is the Best Use of Your Time," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).
    • "Sue Bird: 'You Have to Pay the Superstars,'" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).

The episode 123. Walt Hickey Wants to Track Your Eyeballs from the podcast People I (Mostly) Admire has a duration of 50:45. It was first published 20 Jan 04:00. The cover art and the content belong to their respective owners.

More episodes from People I (Mostly) Admire

130. Is Our Concept of Freedom All Wrong?

The economist Joseph Stiglitz has devoted his life to exposing the limits of markets. He tells Steve about winning an argument with fellow Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, why small governments don’t lead to more freedom, and why he’s not afraid to be an advocate.

  • SOURCE:
    • Joseph Stiglitz, professor at Columbia University and chief economist at the Roosevelt Institute.
  • RESOURCES:
    • The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society, by Joseph Stiglitz (2024).
    • "Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information," by Michael Rothschild and Joseph Stiglitz (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2010).
    • "Hirsh: The Missing Link on Obama's Economic Team," by Michael Hirsh (Newsweek, 2008).
    • Globalization and Its Discontents, by Joseph Stiglitz (2002).
    • Two Lucky People: Memoirs, by Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman (1998).
    • "On Value Maximization and Alternative Objectives of the Firm," by Sanford Grossman and Joseph Stiglitz (The Journal of Finance, 1977).
  • EXTRAS:
    • "Remembering Daniel Kahneman," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).
    • "Ninety-Eight Years of Economic Wisdom," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2023).

129. How to Fix Medical Research

Monica Bertagnolli went from a childhood on a cattle ranch to a career as a surgeon to a top post in the Biden administration. As director of the National Institutes of Health, she’s working to improve the way we find new treatments — despite regulatory constraints and tight budgets.

  • SOURCE:
    • Monica Bertagnolli, director of the National Institutes of Health.
  • RESOURCES:
    • "Steven Levitt and John Donohue Defend a Finding Made Famous by 'Freakonomics'," by Steven Levitt and John Donohue (The Economist, 2024).
    • "Why 'Freakonomics' Failed to Transform Economics," (The Economist, 2024).
    • "Steven D. Levitt (Freakonomics Co-Author and U Chicago Econ Prof) on His Career and Decision to Retire From Academic Economics," by Jon Hartley (The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast, 2024).
    • "Why Autoimmune Disease Is More Common in Women: X Chromosome Holds Clues," by Elie Dolgin (Nature, 2024).
    • "Casgevy and Lyfgenia: Two Gene Therapies Approved for Sickle Cell Disease," by Carrie MacMillan (Yale Medicine News, 2023).
    • "Fact Sheet: President Biden Reignites Cancer Moonshot to End Cancer as We Know It," (2022).
    • "Mini-Antibodies Discovered in Sharks and Camels Could Lead to Drugs for Cancer and Other Diseases," by Mitch Leslie (Science, 2018).
  • EXTRAS:
    • "Who Pays for Multimillion-Dollar Miracle Cures?" by Freakonomics, M.D. (2023).
    • "What’s Stopping Us From Curing Rare Diseases?" by Freakonomics, M.D. (2023).
    • "Abortion and Crime, Revisited (Update)," by Freakonomics Radio (2022).
    • "John Donohue: 'I’m Frequently Called a Treasonous Enemy of the Constitution,'" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).

EXTRA: Remembering Daniel Kahneman

Nobel laureate, bestselling author, and groundbreaking psychologist Daniel Kahneman died in March. In 2021 he talked with Steve Levitt — his friend and former business partner — about his book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment (cowritten with Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein) and much more.

  • SOURCES:
    • Daniel Kahneman, professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University.
  • RESOURCES:
    • Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, by Olivier Sibony, Daniel Kahneman, and Cass R. Sunstein (2021).
    • Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman (2011).
  • EXTRAS:
    • "What’s the Secret to Making a Great Prediction?" by No Stupid Questions (2021).
    • "The Men Who Started a Thinking Revolution," by Freakonomics Radio (2017).
    • "How to Be Less Terrible at Predicting the Future," by Freakonomics Radio (2016).

128. Are Our Tools Becoming Part of Us?

Google researcher Blaise Agüera y Arcas spends his work days developing artificial intelligence models and his free time conducting surveys for fun. He tells Steve how he designed an algorithm for the U.S. Navy at 14, how he discovered the truth about printing-press pioneer Johannes Gutenberg, and when A.I. first blew his mind.

  • SOURCE:
    • Blaise Agüera y Arcas, fellow at Google Research.
  • RESOURCES:
    • Who Are We Now?, by Blaise Agüera y Arcas (2023).
    • "Artificial General Intelligence Is Already Here," by Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Peter Norvig (Noema Magazine, 2023).
    • "Transformer: A Novel Neural Network Architecture for Language Understanding," by Jakob Uszkoreit (Google Research Blog, 2017).
    • "Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data," by H. Brendan McMahan, Eider Moore, Daniel Ramage, Seth Hampson, and Blaise Agüera y Arcas (arXiv, 2016).
    • "How PhotoSynth Can Connect the World's Images," by Blaise Agüera y Arcas (TED Talk, 2007).
    • "Has History Been Too Generous to Gutenberg?" by Dinitia Smith (The New York Times, 2001).
  • EXTRAS:
    • "'My God, This Is a Transformative Power,'" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2023).
    • "How to Think About A.I.," series by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
    • "Satya Nadella’s Intelligence Is Not Artificial," by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
    • "Yul Kwon (Part 2): 'Hey, Do You Have Any Bright Ideas?'" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).
    • "Yul Kwon: 'Don’t Try to Change Yourself All at Once,'" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).

127. Rajiv Shah Never Wastes a Crisis

After Haiti’s devastating earthquake, Rajiv Shah headed the largest humanitarian effort in U.S. history. As chief economist of the Gates Foundation he tried to immunize almost a billion children. He tells Steve why it’s important to take big gambles, follow the data, and own up to your mistakes.

  • SOURCE:
    • Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation.
  • RESOURCES:
    • Big Bets: How Large-Scale Change Really Happens, by Rajiv Shah (2023).
    • "The Root of Haiti’s Misery: Reparations to Enslavers," by Catherine Porter, Constant Méheut, Matt Apuzzo, and Selam Gebrekidan (The New York Times, 2022).
    • "Testing Is Our Way Out," by Paul Romer and Rajiv Shah (The Wall Street Journal, 2020).
    • "How to Get Millions of People to Take Coronavirus Tests and Stay Home if They're Positive," by Steven Levitt, Paul Romer, and Jeff Severts (USA Today, 2020).
    • "Haiti In Ruins: A Look Back At The 2010 Earthquake," by The Picture Show (2020).
    • "Vaccine for a Global Childhood Illness Passes Last Big Hurdle," (The New York Times, 1997).
  • EXTRAS:
    • "Dambisa Moyo Says Foreign Aid Can’t Solve Problems, but Maybe Corporations Can," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).
    • "Moncef Slaoui: 'It’s Unfortunate That It Takes a Crisis for This to Happen,'" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2020).
Every Podcast » People I (Mostly) Admire » 123. Walt Hickey Wants to Track Your Eyeballs