My name is Paul Constant.

I am a writer here at Civic Ventures and I occasionally host Pitch Fork Economics and I'm also in my spare time a co-founder of a website called

the Seattle Review of Books which provides news reviews and interviews for the

Seattle literary scene. From time to time, I pop into your feed

with a recommendation of a book

that I think you might find interesting.

Usually, I like to focus on books

that I think demonstrate economics in action in the real world that sort of help illustrate what we talk about here on this podcast.

We are always very interested in exploring the central economic question of who gets what and why.

And that's where Kathy O'Neill's book Weapons of Math Destruction comes in, subtitled

how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy.

O'Neill's a data scientist who has a lot of opinions and facts about the way we're letting

algorithms guide our lives.

Algorithms are insinuating themselves into every aspect of our lives, from social media to banking

to real estate.

Algorithms sort kids into schools and decide whether or not you can get that credit card

that you applied for.

And they tell us where we can live and which of our friends we can see online.

And so while it's easy to think of algorithms as a dispassionate and impartial referee, like a robot, the thing is that they are

programmed by humans and they are shaped by humans, and so they are just as susceptible to human

bias as you and I are. So that means all the human problems that just as

as susceptible to human bias as you and I are. So that means all the human problems that we carry within us,

...