The Origin Of Data Science & Elections / Novelist Ayad Akhtar (Terry Gross, Fresh Air podcast)

Harvard historian and 'New Yorker' writer Jill Lepore tells the story of the Simulmatics Corporation. Founded in 1959, it used a so-called "people machine," a computer program it claimed could predict the impact of political messages or advertising pitches. Her book is 'If Then.'

TV critic David Bianculli reviews Ryan Murphy's new Netflix series 'Ratched,' an origin story of the notorious nurse from 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.'

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar talks about his new novel, 'Homeland Elegies,' which explores the experiences of a Muslim man who, like Akhtar, grows up in Wisconsin, the son of Pakistani immigrants.
Interview:
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/17/914060421/best-of-the-origin-of-data-science-elections-novelist-ayad-akhtar