Ep 105: Nicholas Christakis on The Impacts of Machines on Human Groups episode artwork

EPISODE · May 14, 2026 · 1H 8M

Ep 105: Nicholas Christakis on The Impacts of Machines on Human Groups

from Brave New World -- hosted by Vasant Dhar

Your networks shape you more than you know. Nicholas Christakis joins Vasant Dhar to reveal how machines inserted into human groups quietly rewire the way people cooperate, coordinate, and trust — and why a little artificial noise might be exactly what we need. Useful Resources: 1. Nicholas Christakis2. Human Nature Lab3. The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years - Nicholas Christakis and  James H Fowler4. Widowhood Effect5. The Effect of Widowhood on Mortality by the Causes of Death of Both Spouses- Felix Elwert and Nicholas Christakis6. Locally Noisy Autonomous Agents Improve Global Human Coordination in Network Experiments - Hirokazu Shirado and Nicholas Christakis7. ETH Global Lecture, Social Artificial Intelligence8. Graph Colouring9. Vulnerable robots positively shape human conversational dynamics in a human–robot team - Margaret L. Traeger,  Sarah Strohkorb Sebo, Malte Jung and Nicholas Christakis 10. Hirokazu Shirado11. Chicken, The Game12. Emergence and collapse of reciprocity in semiautomatic driving coordination experiments with humans - Shunichi Kasahara, Hirokazu Shirado and Nicholas Christakis13. Traffic Patterns in Seattle and Hyderabad: Immediate and Mediate Transactions - Paul G. Hiebert 14. Brian Scassellati15. Iyad Rahwan16. Machine Behaviour - Iyad Rahwan17. A Randomised Controlled Trial of Social Network Targeting to Maximise Population Behaviour Change - David A Kim, Alison R Hwong, Derek Stafford, D Alex Hughes, A James O'Malley, Nicholas Christakis, James H Fowler18. Induction of social contagion for diverse outcomes in structured experiments in isolated villages - Edoardo M. Airoldi, Nicholas Christakis 19. Algorithms for seeding social networks can enhance the adoption of a public health intervention in urban India - Marcus Alexander, Laura Forastiere, Swati Gupta, Nicholas Christakis20. Friendship paradox21. Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society - Nicholas Christakis22. Friendship and Natural Selection - James H Fowler and Nicholas Christakis23. Kin Selection24. Social Network Biology and Human Chemosignaling25. For The Love Of Science Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free! Order Vasant Dhar's new book, Thinking With Machines  

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Ep 105: Nicholas Christakis on The Impacts of Machines on Human Groups

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This episode was published on May 14, 2026.

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