Others' Ideas that Resonate

Here are lists of articles, podcasts, videos, etc. that I intend to continuously update as I come across well-explained, powerful ideas that relate directly to my field(s) of interest. For the most part, these resources are more conversational than technical, and are meant to inspire as well as inform. Also see my list of recommended nonfiction books, which spans a larger range of topics.

Environmental Health

Articles:

• Assessing the health burden from air pollution – Science perspective, 2024
• StoryMap: “Air Pollution and Health: The Global Impacts of Fossil Fuels” – State of Global Air, 2023
• Engaging Socially Vulnerable Communities and Communicating About Climate Change – NASEM, 2023
• Leveraging Air Quality Research Advancements to Assess and Address Exposure Inequities – Goldman, 2023. Environmental Health Perspectives
• Are “safe” exposure levels really “safe”? – Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, 2023
• Western lawmakers spot opening in smoke crisis – Axios, 2023
• A conversation on air pollution in the United States – Nature Geoscience, 2023
• Naming civic health in environmental justice discourse: The Jackson water crisis – Nwanaji-Enwerem & Casey, 2022. The Lancet Regional Health - Americas
• No Time to Waste: How Harvard Chan School researchers are taking action on climate change and fighting for a healthier, more equitable planet 2021
• Flipping the Climate Debate from Costs to Benefits – Anenberg, 2021. Environmental Health News
• Tackling Air Pollution and Climate Justice Together – Moses & Roy, 2021. Environmental Defense Fund
• Closing the Data Gap: A Cost-Effective Way to Improve [Global] Air Quality – Hasenkopf, 2021. World Economic Forum
• Air Pollution Diminishes Future Generations’ Economic Opportunities – Voorheis, 2021. US Census
• Using Feedback to Improve Accountability in Global Environmental Health and Engineering – Thomas & Brown, 2020. Environmental Science & Technology perspective
• Is AI revolutionizing environmental health? Simply Statistics – Peng, 2019. In general, this blog has a lot of cool posts for data scientists and educators.

Videos:

• Environmental Health Disparities - An Overview (Harvard Chan NIEHS Center for Environmental Health) – Mendonça, 2021
• ClimateBits: Unhealthy Air – 2019.
• What is Environmental Health? – YouTube, NYU School of Global Public Health, 2019

Podcasts:

• Agents of Change in Environmental Justice – podcast featuring emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia who are reimagining solutions for a just and healthy planet
• This is Your Brain on Pollution – Freakonomics podcast, 2021
• Using Data Science to Study Air Pollution’s Effect on Covid-19 (Women in Data Science podcast) – Dominici & Nethery, 2020
• Atmospheric Tales – podcast discussing global environmental health, 2020 onwards
• Decolonizing Air Pollution Science – deSouza, 2020 / MIT Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) Radio (overall archive). Stories and reflections on the interplay of science and technology with community development and planning.

Feature-length / series:

• How air pollution impacts our brains, 2024
• NASEM Climate Crossroads Summit 2023 (video playlist)
• NASEM Workshop on Communities, Climate Change, and Health Equity – Lessons Learned in Addressing Inequities in Heat-Related Climate Change Impacts (2023)
• HSPH Climate, Health, & Equity Symposium 2023
• Health Effects Institute (HEI) Science on the 7th – series discussing current critical topics in air quality and global health
• Clearing the Air: Why Now Is the Time to Tackle Global Air Pollution – HSPH + WHO + CNN, 2021
• Taking the Temperature: Your Health, Our Climate, and What We Can Do About It – Mazumder, 2021. Harvard Science in the News series.
• The Story of Plastic (2019). Documentary examining issues and opportunities throughout the lifecycle of plastic.
• Dark Waters (2019). Dramatic recreation of Rob Bilott’s case against the chemical manufacturing company DuPont after they contaminated a town with unregulated chemicals. For more information on the environmental health science occurring behind the scenes, check out the C8 Science Panel website.
• Collaborative on Health and the Environment: Climate Change and Health, 2019. Collection of videos, focusing on the topics of extreme heat, air pollution, extreme weather events, and infectious diseases.
• The Crowd & the Cloud – Abdalati, 2017. Video series discussing citizen science used in environmental health applications.

Data Science / Statistics

Articles:

• Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn’t have a coherent understanding of the world – MIT News, 2024
• AI for Public and Planetary Health – Skenazy & Khalid, 2024. Climate Change AI blog
• Big data in Earth science: Emerging practice and promise – Science review, 2024
• Democratizing the future of AI R&D: NSF to launch National AI Research Resource pilot (2024)
• What Should Data Science Education Do with Large Language Models? – Tu et al, 2024. Harvard Data Science Review
• NASA and IBM Openly Release Geospatial AI Foundation Model for NASA Earth Observation Data (2023)
• Strengthening [global] public health systems through artificial intelligence – HSPH, 2023
• Harvard Graduate Transforms High School Math Curriculum: Skew The Script, a nonprofit organization, provides free, socially-relevant math + statistics lessons to high school teachers across the country – Harvard Data Science Initiative, 2023
• Apple Women’s Health Study advances understanding of menstrual cycles and health (2023) –Example of thoughtful data collection generating insights that are highly relevant for both clinicians and policy makers.
• Is there a role for statistics in artificial intelligence? – Friedrich et al, 2021
• What are the Most Important Statistical Ideas of the Past 50 Years? – Gelman & Vehtari, 2021. Journal of the America Statistical Association review
• Artificial Intelligence’s Promise & Peril (2021) – Harvard School of Public Health
• Twitter thread: best data visualizations (2021)
• What Are the Values of Data, Data Science, or Data Scientists? – Meng, 2021. Harvard Data Science Review editorial piece.
• Statistics Monitors the Environment and Statistics Informs Health Policy – ASA Statistical Significance Series
• The ASCCR Frame for Learning Essential Collaboration Skills – Vance & Smith, 2019. Journal of Statistics Education
• Career of Gertrude M. Cox – NC State Library

Podcasts:

• Mental Health Challenges: How Can Data Science Help? – Harvard Data Science Review Podcast, 2021
• Casual Inference podcast by Ellie Murray and Lucy D’Agostino McGowan, specifically this episode featuring Roger Peng: “Why Everyone is Excited About Causal Inference These Days” (2020)

Feature-length / series:

• Shaping the Future of AI – National Academies; one insightful discussion can be found in the “Navigating Ethical Dilemmas” section in this article.
• Stop Explaining Black Box Machine Learning Models for High Stakes Decisions and Use Interpretable Models Instead (Harvard Data Science Initiative Bias^2 seminar) – Rudin, 2021

Career / Miscellaneous

Articles:

• Challenging the Neutrality Myth in Climate Science and Activism – van Eck, Messling, & Hayhoe, 2024. npj Climate Action comment
• Is the Brain Relevant to Climate Change? – Harvard Salata Institute for Climate & Sustainability, 2024
• The Human Implications of AI with Brian Christian – NASEM, 2024
• Time to support Indigenous science – Wall Kimmerer & Artelle, 2024. Science editorial
• To speed scientific progress, understand how science policy works – Clancy et al, 2023. Nature perspective
• How are you saving the world? – Parast, 2023
• All the evidence-based advice we found on how to be more successful in any job – Todd (80,000 Hours), 2023
• Field-Specific Ability Beliefs as an Explanation for Gender Differences in Academics’ Career Trajectories: Evidence From Public Profiles on ORCID.org – Hannak et al, 2023
• Increasing Women’s Representation in STEM Fields – Gray, 2023
• Which food is better for the planet? – Washington Post Climate Lab (2023). Interactive visualizations comparing different food types over various environmental dimensions.
• Moving from interdisciplinary to convergent research across geoscience and social sciences: challenges and strategies – Finn et al, 2022. Environmental Research Letters perspective
• A list of the most high-impact, evidence-based organizations fighting climate change – Samuel, 2022. Vox
• Rethinking international development strategy—and hearing echoes of global challenges in the United States – Harvard Kennedy School faculty, 2022
• Impostors Anonymous – Witten, 2022. Helpful thoughts on impostor syndrome in academia / high-achievement communities.
• My experience with imposter syndrome—and how to (partly) overcome it – Rodriguez (80,000 Hours), 2022
• Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half – Sparkman, Geiger, & Weber, 2022.
• In academia, we need two types of researchers: divers and surfers – Pandya, 2022
• Putting Mental Health in America on the Map – Geraghty (ESRI), 2022
• How Public Health Took Part in Its Own Downfall – The Atlantic, 2021
• Finding Your Science Policy Path, 2020
• Effective Altruism: An Update to Our Thinking On Climate Change – Ackva, 2020
• Five Ways To Prioritize Better – Bye, 2020

Videos:

• 200 Years in 4 Minutes – Rosling, 2017. Global relationships between lifespan and income over time, across countries. Note: there are many videos of Rosling presenting other cool data visualizations

Podcasts:

• Degrees of Freedom – Hasenkopf, 2020. Exploring many different ways that scientists can have positive impact through their careers.
• AAAS STPF [Sci on the Fly](https://www.aaaspolicyfellowships.org/blog. A variety of science and policy topics, written by scientists working in the federal government.

Feature-length / series:

• Harvard School of Public Health YouTube Channel
• Science x Policy Crossroads: Pathways toward Health Policy – ten people’s stories illustrating different careers at the intersection of science and policy, put together by the National Science Policy Network
• AAAS Voices: Countering Science Misinformation (2021)