S5E3: From Cashew Nuts to Counterfactuals

In this episode of SERious Epidemiology, Matt and Hailey welcome guest Dr. Peter Tennant to discuss chapters 2 and 3 of Causal Inference: What If. After learning about Peter’s late ‑discovered love of cashew nuts despite past nut allergies, we shift to a discussion about observational studies and randomized trials. Like the textbook, we start talking about why randomized trials are a helpful framing tool to talk about the identifiability assumptions for causal inference. We then introduce concepts such as marginal and conditional effects, exchangeability, positivity, and consistency. We start to dive into the subtle distinctions in some of these concepts: confounding vs. lack of exchangeability due to random error, the underappreciated practical importance of positivity, and how consistency relates to well‑defined interventions.

You can listen to S5E3: From Cashew Nuts to Counterfactuals online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

S5E3: From Cashew Nuts to Counterfactuals is an episode from SERious EPI by Sue Bevan - Society for Epidemiologic Research.

This episode is 55:33 long.

This episode was published on Mar 15, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from SERious EPI when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.