The Shame Machine with Cathy O'Neil
The Nocturnists
Emily Silverman
4.8 • 614 Ratings
🗓️ 16 August 2022
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Emily speaks with data scientist and author Cathy O'Neil about her book The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation, which investigates how society exploits the powerful emotion of shame.
The Nocturnists is partnering with VCU Health Continuing Education to offer FREE CME credits for healthcare professionals. Visit ce.vcuhealth.org/nocturnists to claim credit for this episode.
Find show notes, transcript, and more at thenocturnists.com.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Support for the Nocturnist comes from the California Medical Association. |
| 0:04.2 | At the Nocturnist, we are careful to ensure that all stories comply with health care privacy laws. |
| 0:09.1 | Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality. |
| 0:12.5 | All views expressed are those of the person speaking and not their employer. |
| 0:24.5 | You're listening to The Nocturnous Conversations. |
| 0:26.3 | I'm Emily Silverman. |
| 0:34.4 | As you may know, the Nocturnist team has been working on an audio documentary series on the theme of shame and medicine over the last couple of years. |
| 0:40.0 | Throughout the creative process, I've learned so much about the emotion of shame from our two shame experts, Dr. Luna Dolazol, who's a philosopher at the University of Exeter, and Dr. |
| 0:45.2 | Will Bynum, who's a physician based at Duke, who studies shame experiences in medical learners. |
| 0:50.9 | But today's guest helped me understand shame in a totally new way. |
| 0:54.8 | How does it manifest in a larger scale in society? |
| 0:58.2 | Her name is Kathy O'Neill, and she earned her PhD in math from Harvard, and worked as a math professor at Barnard College before switching over to the private sector, working as a quant for the hedge fund D.E. Shaw and a data scientist in the New York startup scene. |
| 1:12.2 | She's a regular contributor to Bloomberg Opinion, and in 2016 wrote the book, |
| 1:16.5 | Weapons of Math Destruction, How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. |
| 1:22.5 | She's the CEO of Orca, an algorithmic auditing company, and a member of the public interest tech lab at the Harvard Kennedy School. |
| 1:30.4 | Her new book, The Shame Machine, who profits in the new age of humiliation, came out in March of 2022. |
| 1:38.3 | This was an awesome conversation in which Kathy and I get into a bit of her personal history with shame related to weight and body type, |
| 1:45.4 | and then talk about some really helpful frameworks for how to think about shame. |
| 1:49.2 | When is shame appropriate? When is it inappropriate? |
| 1:52.1 | How does shame work? And when does shame work? |
| 1:55.2 | When does shame not work? |
| 1:57.4 | How do we recognize and manage that impulse we have inside of ourselves to shame others? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Emily Silverman, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Emily Silverman and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.