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Featured Podcast EpisodesThe Other Web

Anne Reilly - The Ideasphere Hypothesis

January 12, 2025

Anne Riley has been on a lifelong quest to understand how humans logically fit into life's panorama. Her book, The Human Idea, introduces some interesting concepts that try to refine Dawkins' "memes" and Harari's "fictions" - we invited her to explore these ideas and try to poke some holes in them. Enjoy!

Rhonda Parker Taylor - What is a bestselling author and how can you become one?

December 20, 2024

Welcome to the otherweb. Our guest today is Rhonda Parker Taylor - a bestselling author, who agreed to talk to us about what it takes to become a bestselling author. Rhonda Parker Taylor is an American writer, entrepreneur, and academic researcher. You can find her bestselling book, Crossroads, here: https://www.amazon.com/Crossroads-Rhonda-Parker-Taylor/dp/1958729531 or wherever books are sold.

David Griffiths - How to Stand Out On Social Media

December 14, 2024

Our guest today is David Griffiths - a name that resonates with over 1.5 million followers across social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. In his first 13 years as a content creator, David gathered only 100 followers. Then, suddenly he figured it out. Now you have a chance to figure it out, too.

Josh Brandau - AI as a Newsroom Assistant

November 11, 2024

Josh Brandau is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nota, a technology company focused on AI products for Media. Formerly, Josh was the CMO and CRO of the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune, and CEO of Brand Day Media. He believes that storytelling is the greatest thing to bind us together, and that this transformational moment in technology can be harnessed to serve the public good.

Victor Kumar - Mind and Morality

November 4, 2024

Victor Kumar is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the interdisciplinary Mind and Morality Lab at Boston University. He works at the intersection of ethics and psychology. His book, A Better Ape, draws on the latest research in the biological and social sciences to explain the key role that morality has played in human evolution.

Charles Key - Stolen Government

October 28, 2024

Charles Key is a former Republican member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, representing District 90 from 2006 to 2012. He served as an Assistant Majority Floor Leader. He also served as a Representative from 1986 to 1999. His recent book, Stolen Government, outlines the ways in which legislative rulemaking often prevents elected representatives from representing the people who voted them into power.

Michael Kasumovic - Is Technology Changing Us?

October 22, 2024

Michael Kasumovic is an associate professor of evolutionary biology at UNSW Sydney. His research explores the intersection of humanity and technology, with the goal of understanding how technology affects how humans perceive themselves and how that affects their behaviour. His fascination with technology has led him to create Arludo, a digital education company. Through Arludo, he is focused on empowering teachers to provide students with access to real science and real data at scale. By allowing students to practice scientific thinking in intuitive and engaging ways, Michael’s goal is to improve students’ critical and analytical thinking while helping prepare them to live and work in a world obsessed with data. Arludo is used by teachers in over 800 schools across Australia where students have helped collect over 10 million data points for science.

David Pinsof - The Evolution of Bullsh$t

October 14, 2024

Dr. Pinsof is an evolutionary social scientist at UCLA studying political attitudes, status hierarchies, and social signaling. He is one of the co-creators of the popular party game Cards Against Humanity and director of The Pulse of the Nation public opinion poll. His work has been cited in the New York Times, Business Insider, and Upworthy. He deconstructs bullshit on his blog, Everything Is Bullsh$t.

Prof. Gloria Mark - Social Computing

October 7, 2024

Gloria Mark is Chancellor’s Professor Emerita at the University of California, Irvine, and has spent ten years as a visiting senior researcher at Microsoft Research. For over two decades she has researched the impact of digital media on people's lives, studying how using our devices affect our multitasking, distractions, mood and behavior. She has been a Fulbright Scholar and was inducted into the ACM SIGCHI Academy, recognizing leaders in the field of HCI. She has appeared on The Ezra Klein show, NPR’s Hidden Brain, Sanjay Gupta’s CNN Chasing Life, CBS Sunday Morning, Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert, among many others. Her recent book Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity was named by The Globe and Mail as the #1 Best Business and Management book of 2023, and chosen as the Season 20 selection of the Next Big Idea Book Club.

Isaac Saul - Can Neutral Language Bridge the Left-Right Divide?

August 19, 2024

Isaac Saul is a politics reporter and the founder of Tangle, an independent, nonpartisan news outlet that covers the big issues of the day by highlighting different perspectives across the political spectrum. Before Tangle, Isaac helped build A Plus, a solutions journalism media outlet, alongside actor and entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher. In 2016, Yahoo News named him one of the 16 people whose writing shaped the 2016 election, and in 2020, Forbes Magazine called him one of the 1,000 “upstart entrepreneurs redefining the American dream.”

Valerie Fridland - Finding The Good In Bad English

August 13, 2024

Valerie Fridland is a professor of linguistics at University of Nevada, Reno and the author of Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good and Bad English. She also writes a monthly blog for Psychology Today, is a regular guest writer for the popular Grammar Girl podcast and has a lecture series, Language and Society, available with The Great Courses.

Kelly McBride - Ethics And Controversies in Journalism

August 6, 2024

Kelly McBride is a journalist and an ethicist. She works with newsrooms everywhere on their ethical standards. She is a Senior Vice President at The Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank; she is the chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership and she is the public editor at NPR.

Zuckerman vs Zuckerberg

July 14, 2024

Ethan Zuckerman is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a scholar of digital media. He and his team work to understand the contemporary digital world and build social media systems that are focused on communities, not on profits. Ethan is currently suing Meta (i.e. Facebook) in a landmark case that might (and likely should) change our interpretation of section 230. Please tune in to hear the details of the case and the various ways it could change the social media landscape. It's fascinating!

Prof. Jeff Jarvis - Rewriting Media's Business Model (Yet Again)

May 24, 2024

Jeff Jarvis is a journalism professor at the City College in New York (CUNY), the author of six books, and the cohost of the successful podcast "This week in Google and AI". Jeff spent many years teaching entrepreneurial journalism - and God knows journalism could use some entrepreneurial spirit, right about now. Please check out Jeff's books, The Gutenberg Parenthesis and Magazine, both from Bloomsbury (discount codes here: gutenbergparenthesis.com).

Donald Robertson - Where Philosophy Meets Psychology

June 22, 2024

Our guest today is Donald Robertson - Donald is a cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist and author of several books, including How to Think Like a Roman Emperor and, more recently, Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor. He is one of the founders of the Modern Stoicism nonprofit organization and the founder and president of the Plato's Academy Centre in Athens, Greece. He was born in Scotland but now lives in Montreal, Canada. His upcoming book, How to Think Like Socrates, will be released later this year, and can be preordered on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or anywhere else books are generally sold.

Rick Edmonds - Analyzing the Financial Decline of Legacy Media

July 8, 2024

Rick Edmonds is the media business analyst for the Poynter Institute, a school and study center for working journalists. He has been doing research and writing for 25 years on the financial decline of legacy media, newspapers particularly, and the rise of new media alternatives. His reporting and commentary appear regularly on the Poynter Online site. He has spoken to conference groups in the U.S.A. and in Paris, Norway, Madrid, Vienna and Chile.

Jonathan Green - How To Make ChatGPT and Other Tools Useful (Right Now)

July 5, 2024

Welcome to the Otherweb. Our guest today is Jonathan Green - a bestselling author of hundreds of books, a celebrity ghostwriter, and an expert in using artificial intelligence tools to their utmost capacity. This is the best conversation I've had on the practical implications of ChatGPT and how regular people can augment their own capabilities by using these tools as a shortcut.

55m