James Fowler

Science magazine has dubbed James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis, the co-authors of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, the "dynamic duo." Connected is the winner of a “Books for a Better Life Award” and has been translated into nearly twenty languages. It was named an Editor's Choice by the New York Times Book Review, and was featured in Wired, Oprah's Reading Guide, Business Week's Best Books of the Year, GOOD's 15 Books You Must Read, and featured as a cover story in the New York Times Magazine.

In Connected, the authors explain why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, Connected overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm - that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more. It will change the way we think about every aspect of our lives. These startling revelations of how much we truly influence one another are revealed in the studies of Drs. Fowler and Christakis, which have repeatedly made front page news nationwide.

Harvard PhD and professor at the University of California, San Diego, Dr. James Fowler's research interests and expertise include social networks, behavioral economics, evolutionary game theory, political participation, the evolution of cooperation, and the genetic basis of political behavior. A new kind of political scientist, Dr. Fowler melds the social with the biological, pushing the boundaries of his field to discover, for example, that smoking, obesity, and happiness spread within social networks, and that genes affect voting behavior.

Dr. Fowler was named “most original thinker” of the year by The McLaughlin Group, and his research on genopolitics (the study of the genetic basis of political behavior) with Chris Dawes has been featured in New York Times Magazine's “Year in Ideas,” and his research on social networks with Nicholas Christakis has been featured twice in Time's “Year in Medicine,” and in Harvard Business Review's “Breakthrough Business Ideas.”

Dr. Fowler has published over 40 articles in a wide range of multidisciplinary and social science journals,including Nature, Science, New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal, Journal of Politics,American Political Science Review, American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the American Journal of Political Science.

His research has been covered in more than 2000 media outlets worldwide, including CBS Evening News,NBC Nightly News, Good Morning America, Today, PBS Newshour, and The Colbert Report, and it has appeared on the front pages of The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today.

Sample Speech Topic:

The Power of Social Networks: It is customary to think about fashions in things like clothes or music as spreading in a social network. But all kinds of things, many of them quite unexpected, flow through social networks, and this process obeys certain rules. Dr. Fowler reveals the dynamics of social networks and presents compelling evidence for our profound influence on one another's tastes, health, wealth,happiness, beliefs, even weight, as he explains how social networks shape our lives. Based on his bestselling book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, he describes the results of groundbreaking research that unlocks a revolutionary new understanding of the sway that we have over one another through our connections. He outlines the fundamental rules governing the formation and operation of social networks and describes the myriad ways that they help to shape who we are and what we do.