Hold That Thought
228 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 4 years ago - ★★★★ - 12 ratingsHold That Thought brings you research and ideas from Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Throughout the year we select a few topics to explore and then bring together thoughtful commentary on those topics from a variety of experts and sources. Be sure to subscribe!
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Episodes
Stories In Rocks
February 25, 2015 22:39 - 12 minutes - 17.9 MBIn his rock deformation laboratory here at Washington University in St. Louis, Phil Skemer applies huge amounts of heat and pressure to rock samples. Crushing rocks may sound just like fun, but he and his team are seeking answers to fundamental questions about how Earth works. Why does our planet have plate tectonics, when neighbors like Venus do not? To look for clues, Skemer uses - and builds - instruments that replicate the intense conditions found deep in the interior of the Earth.
Memories of Chinese New Year
February 19, 2015 17:54 - 7 minutes - 10.2 MBFor thousands of years, Chinese New Year has been celebrated in the spring to mark the beginning of a new lunar year. Traditions surrounding this festival have varied across time and cultures - here at Washington University in St. Louis, they include the student-run Lunar New Year Festival. To commemorate the occasion this year, Linchei Letty Chen, associate professor of Chinese language and literature, shares personal memories from new year's festivals she experienced growing up in Taiwan.
Physics of the Heart
February 11, 2015 20:07 - 10 minutes - 15.2 MBMentioning the word "physics" brings to mind things like gravity, relativity, mass and volume. Rarely do we think about how these principles affect the inner workings of our own bodies. This week, Jim Miller, professor of physics, medicine, and biomedical engineering at Washington University, talks about the 'physics' of 'physiology' and explains how cardiologists and doctors use physics in their every day work.
The Legal Mind of Thomas Jefferson
February 05, 2015 21:53 - 10 minutes - 14.5 MBBefore becoming the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson was a successful lawyer in Virginia. His legal training influenced the way he thought about government and politics, yet this earlier part of his career has largely been ignored by historians. David Konig, professor of history and law at Washington University in St. Louis, has spent years analyzing the complex legal notes and papers that tell the story of Jefferson's time as an attorney. He is currently ...
The Legal Mind of Thomas Jefferson
February 05, 2015 21:53Before becoming the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson was a successful lawyer in Virginia. His legal training influenced the way he thought about government and politics, yet this earlier part of his career has largely been ignored by historians. David Konig, professor of history and law at Washington University in St. Louis, has spent years analyzing the complex legal notes and papers that tell the story of Jefferson's time as an attorney. He is currently ...
How to Write a Bad Poem
January 29, 2015 22:55 - 9 minutes - 12.9 MBIn 1913, Poetry magazine published Ezra Pound's "A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste." The piece offered would-be poets such memorable advice as "don’t imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music" and "don’t retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose." A hundred years later, acclaimed literary scholar Marjorie Perloff, the recipient of the Washington University's 2014 International Humanities Medal, put her own spin on Pound's famous guidelines. Perloff ...
Theater for Health
January 22, 2015 21:46 - 6 minutes - 9.4 MBAccording to some estimates, just 6 percent of mothers in Peru wash their hands before preparing food. Is it possible that theater could help change this statistic? Art can surely offer personal comfort and emotional healing, but can it influence public health? By helping to develop the Arts for Behavior Change (ABC) program in Lima, Peru, Boston University music professor André de Quadros sought to answer these questions. In his research, teaching, and performances around the world, de Quadr...
Theater for Health
January 22, 2015 21:46According to some estimates, just 6 percent of mothers in Peru wash their hands before preparing food. Is it possible that theater could help change this statistic? Art can surely offer personal comfort and emotional healing, but can it influence public health? By helping to develop the Arts for Behavior Change (ABC) program in Lima, Peru, Boston University music professor André de Quadros sought to answer these questions. In his research, teaching, and performances around the world, de Quadr...
Faith and Protest in Ferguson
January 14, 2015 22:23 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBFive months after the death of Michael Brown, the community of Ferguson, Missouri, continues to work toward healing and define common goals - in many cases, with the help of religious leaders and institutions. Laurie Maffly-Kipp, professor of religion and politics at Washington University in St. Louis, reflects on the role of faith and church leadership in social and political movements, both in Ferguson and throughout American history.
From the Cutting Room: Predicting Eclipses
December 23, 2014 19:17 - 3 minutes - 5.35 MBDr. Michael Friedlander, professor emeritus of physics at Washington University in St. Louis, describes how using historical writings to calculate when future eclipses will take place has revealed new questions about the earth's rotation which scientists are still puzzling over.
Digging into Archaeoastronomy
December 18, 2014 17:01 - 22 minutes - 30.8 MBThe Winter Solstice is on December 21 and marks the shortest day of the year, which was once a very important day to many cultures. In fact, there are thousands of structures across the globe, including the impressive Stonehenge, built by our early ancestors to predict the equinoxes and solstices. So why did they make all this effort? Michael Friedlander, a professor emeritus of physics, and John Kelly, a senior lecturer in archaeology, both at Washington University in St. Louis, introduce us...
Anarchism and Dissent in Medieval Islam
December 11, 2014 21:57 - 9 minutes - 13.2 MBHayrettin Yücesoy, professor of Islamic and Arabic studies at Washington University in St. Louis, takes us back to the political and theological debates of 9th-century Baghdad. Scholars later claimed that in the medieval Islamic world, religion and politics fit neatly together. However, as Yücesoy explains, the historical reality was much more complicated. Religious scholars, political leaders, and even elite anarchists all had competing ideas about the relationship between Muslim faith and p...
Does Religion Always Cause Political Intolerance?
December 04, 2014 22:19 - 9 minutes - 13.6 MBShould fringe groups, even offensive groups like the Ku Klux Klan, be allowed to have a voice in American politics? Since the 1950s, social scientists have recognized that very religious people are more likely to answer "no" to this type of question. In other words, religion and political intolerance often go hand-in-hand. But why is this the case? Political scientist James Gibson discusses the intersections between faith and intolerance and explains why, though these ideas can often connect,...
Food and Protest
November 25, 2014 21:34 - 4 minutes - 6.67 MBFollowing the recent grand jury decision to not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the August shooting death of Michael Brown, protests and vandalism erupted in Ferguson and nearby St. Louis, Missouri. Rafia Zafar, professor of English, African and African-American Studies, and American Culture Studies, has written about protests in the civil rights movement and how, surprisingly, food and the sharing of meals played a symbolic role in that struggle. For activists such as Anne Moody, t...
Way Beyond the Blue
November 20, 2014 23:07 - 10 minutes - 14.8 MBGuided by a passionate belief that the arts are for everyone, music professor André de Quadros has conducted research in over 40 countries and, closer to his home base in Boston, for the past two years has been teaching classes in two Massachusetts prisons. De Quadros, who will conduct a special performance of the Washington University Choirs as part of the Distinguished Visiting Scholar Program, walks us through his experiences in prison education and shares his conviction that all humans ar...
Being 'Post - Protestant'
November 06, 2014 22:44 - 10 minutes - 14.1 MBThe results from the 2014 midterm elections are in, and Republicans stole the show. On the national scene, the GOP gained 15 seats in the House of Representatives and took control of the Senate for the first time since 2006. As predicted, conservative Christian voters played a significant role in these outcomes. Yet despite the recent focus on the political power of Evangelicals, the influence of liberal Protestantism may be more present in American culture and politics than you think. Histor...
The Witches' Hammer: Magic and Law in early modern Europe
October 29, 2014 14:38 - 29 minutes - 40.7 MBIn 1487, when the witch trials were just starting to take root in Europe, a Dominican priest published the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Witches' Hammer, a treatise on the prosecution of witches in a court of law. This text would be used over the next three centuries as the authority on prosecuting witches, laying out the rules for the trial, torture, and why women in particular were so susceptible to witchcraft. By the end of the witch craze in the 1720s, an estimated 80,000 had been tried and...
Evangelical vs. Ecumenical: The Protestant Two-Party System
October 23, 2014 21:41 - 12 minutes - 16.9 MBGoing back to colonial times, liberal and conservative Protestants in the US have had conflicting views over both theology and politics. Yet according to intellectual historian David Hollinger, the role of liberalized, ecumenical Protestantism in American history has too often been overshadowed by more conservative versions of the faith. How did evangelicals come to dominate the cultural capital of Christianity? Hollinger, whose most recent book is After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Lib...
The Mormon Citizen
October 16, 2014 21:43 - 11 minutes - 25.3 MBThroughout much of the 19th century, Mormons were in direct conflict with the US government. Less than a century later, Mormons were often viewed as ideal citizens. Laurie Maffly-Kipp, who is currently writing a book about the history and current status of Mormonism, gives us a glimpse into this unique example of the how religion and politics have intertwined throughout American history.
God, Oil, and Pipeline Politics
October 09, 2014 19:49 - 13 minutes - 30.2 MBIn the mid-1960s, construction began on the Great Canadian Oil Sands project in Fort McMurray, Alberta. In part, this massive undertaking was the result of a friendship – that of J. Howard Pew, president of what is now Sunoco, and Ernest Manning, a Canadian politician. Pew and Manning’s relationship grew out of their shared evangelical faith, and as Darren Dochuk reveals, this type of religious ‘soft diplomacy’ is a fascinating, and often overlooked, facet of both politics and economics. Doch...
In Birth Control We Trust
October 02, 2014 20:37 - 12 minutes - 27.6 MBLong before Hobby Lobby's stance on birth control filled the news earlier this year, beliefs about sex and religion have intertwined with American politics. R. Marie Griffith, a feminist historian of American religion and director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, takes us back to the 1920s, when a dramatic episode involving Margaret Sanger and the Catholic Church brought the morality of birth control into the public eye. As Griffith reveals, these historical debates ar...
For the Sake of All
September 18, 2014 20:35 - 10 minutes - 24.6 MBThe recent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, has brought the nation's attention to racial and social inequality in the St. Louis region. As principal investigator of For the Sake of All, a multi-disciplinary project in collaboration with St. Louis University on the health and well-being of African Americans in St. Louis, Jason Purnell has researched how factors like education and access to healthy foods affect St. Louisans. Purnell describes the project, explains why differences between zip codes...
When Does Victimization Count?
September 11, 2014 21:07 - 11 minutes - 26.3 MBAs the St. Louis community continues to grapple with the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, Rebecca Wanzo pauses to reflect on Michael Brown and the role of victimization in American culture and politics. Wanzo serves as associate professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and as associate director of the Center for the Humanities. Her book The Suffering Will Not be Televised: African American Women and Sentimental Political Storytelling addresses questions about how and why stories ...
Notes From No Man's Land
August 21, 2014 22:30 - 12 minutes - 29.1 MBHere in St. Louis and across the country, it has been difficult over the last two weeks to pay attention to anything other than the ongoing events in Ferguson, Missouri. The death of teenager Michael Brown and subsequent turmoil in Ferguson have sparked a nationwide conversation on race relations and inequality - a topic that Hold That Thought confronted throughout our series American Identities last fall. Over the next few weeks, we will be re-posting some of these episodes, as well as talki...
The Politician and the Poet
July 23, 2014 20:00 - 16 minutes - 36.9 MBThis episode features two experts: Derek Hirst, professor of history, and Steven Zwicker, professor of English, from Washington University in St. Louis. For decades now, the scholars have been researching Andrew Marvell, a 17th century English politician and poet. Marvell presents a challenge because the details of his life are relatively unknown, but what survives are his political texts, his poems, and the works his contemporaries wrote about him. Professors Hirst and Zwicker explain how th...
Courting the Muse
July 16, 2014 16:39 - 12 minutes - 28.2 MBOskar Kokoschka, an Austrian expressionist painter and playwright in early 20th century Vienna, had a torrid affair with a woman--his muse--named Alma Mahler. When it ended, Oskar was devastated, feeling that he couldn't live or work without her. So, he did what any man would do: he had a life-size doll likeness of Alma made, which he continued to live with to inspire his work. Henry Schvey, a director, playwright, and professor of drama and comparative literature at Washington University in ...
Family Histories
July 09, 2014 18:37 - 13 minutes - 31.6 MBToday, we consider the memoir. How do authors write about their own histories as well as family and loved ones who might very well read their book? Does time change the way we right about these stories and personal tragedies? Kathleen Finneran, a writer in residence at Washington University in St. Louis, talks about her memoir, The Tender Land: A Family Love Story, which focuses on her family and how their lives are altered by the suicide of her younger brother, Sean. She considers how writin...
Pranking Emily Dickinson
July 02, 2014 17:35 - 14 minutes - 32.2 MBSo far, we've considered how authors and historians portray lived-lives in their creative or academic works, but what about creative works from the past? Can they too be "reinterpreted" in the present? Poet Paul Legault, co-founder of the small press Telephone Books and a writer in residence at Washington University in St. Louis, tackled questions such as these with his 2012 book, The Emily Dickinson Reader: An English-to-English Translation of Emily Dickinson's Complete Poems. He'll discuss ...
Untethered Histories
June 25, 2014 18:27 - 15 minutes - 34.9 MBHistorical fiction is an ongoing balance between fact and fiction, but what if the story takes place outside of reality? What if much of the story takes place in a dream? How do you keep readers rooted in time and history? Author Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, a Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, addresses questions such as these in her award-winning novel Madeleine is Sleeping. She explains how her favorite historical novels never feel "historical," and together we exami...
A Mirror World
June 18, 2014 15:47 - 13 minutes - 18.9 MBHistory and fiction are sort of antonyms, so how do historical fiction writers bring fact and fiction together? How closely must historical fiction mirror recorded history? Author Marshall Klimasewiski, Senior Writer-in-Residence at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses the precarious balance writers of historical fiction must strike even when creating alternate histories. He also talks about two stories from his collection Tyrants and a novel-in-progress following Salomon August Andr...
Brave Genius
June 11, 2014 15:09 - 13 minutes - 30.9 MBIn the spring of 1940, then-unknown writer Albert Camus and budding biologist Jaques Monod quietly joined the French Resistance as they watched their beloved Paris fall to the Nazis. Decades later, after stumbling across a few lines in a biography, Sean B. Carroll, an evolutionary biologist, author, and alumnus of Washington University in St. Louis, set out to prove that these two great minds were also friends. Rooting through French archives and talking to people at the heart of the French R...
Please Burn After Reading
June 04, 2014 17:49 - 12 minutes - 29.1 MBIn 1957, Ghana declared its independence from colonial rule, and a new leader named Kwame Nkrumah rose to take the helm. Jean Allman, professor of history and director of the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, has been studying the surprising networks that formed around Nkrumah, and in her research, she's discovered documents never meant for her eyes. She raises questions about the morality of the archival process and reveals how the NSA may change the future of ...
Chinese Writing and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms
April 30, 2014 20:04 - 10 minutes - 24.5 MBNearly 500 years ago, the Chinese novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was first published. Readers across the country and continent began experiencing this epic, historic tale, which is still one of the most popular novels in China today. But in many cases, these readers would not have been able to have a conversation. They could read the same book, but they could not speak the same language. Robert Hegel, professor of East Asian language and cultures, describes how the existence of a commo...
What's the Point?
April 23, 2014 18:26 - 10 minutes - 25.1 MBThe gesture of pointing is something we all do without much thought. We point at ourselves, at other people, at objects, or in the general direction of where we want to go - it's a seemingly straightforward communication tool that even small children use on a regular basis. Yet sometimes the act of pointing is not so simple. As Richard Meier, chair of the linguistics department at the University of Texas - Austin, explains, this is especially true for some children with an autism spectrum dis...
Language Seen, Not Heard
April 16, 2014 16:21 - 10 minutes - 24.6 MBFor people who have grown up being able to hear, it's easy to equate language with speech - the audible conversations that make up so much of human day-to-day communication. However, for some 70 million people around the world, these types of conversations happen in silence. Stephanie Berk, a postdoctoral research associate in linguistics and neurology, studies the linguistics of sign language and has worked with children who - because parents were at first unaware of their child's deafness -...
Behind the Mask, pt2: The Evolution of a Genre
April 09, 2014 18:07 - 17 minutes - 39.4 MBLast week, we defined the superhero. However, superheroes have evolved greatly over the last seventy years. The Adam West Batman of the 1960s now only vaguely resembles Christian Bale's Batman of The Dark Knight, to say nothing of the rise of the anti-hero in Alan Moore's classic, Watchmen. How do we reconcile these heroes and their many iterations? Dr. Peter Coogan, the founder of the Institute for Comics Studies and lecturer within American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Lo...
Behind the Mask, pt1: Superheroes and Supervillains
April 02, 2014 19:02 - 14 minutes - 34 MBIt's hard to recall a movie season in recent memory that hasn't been marked with at least one superhero blockbuster, so we're taking a closer look at these stories and heroes. In the first episode of this two part series, we consider what makes someone a superhero. Is it simply a question of superpowers? According to Dr. Peter Coogan, the founder of the Institute for Comics Studies and lecturer within American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, that's certainly part of the...
The Foreign Language Question
March 26, 2014 18:00 - 8 minutes - 19.9 MBWhat do the history of physics, the international women's movement, microfinance, the modern philosophical novel, and the fight against the spread of AIDS in Africa all have in common? According to Joe Loewenstein, professor of English and director of the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities, in order to study any of these topics and countless others, students are well-advised to begin the slow and rewarding process of mastering a foreign language. The important question becomes, which...
The Music Of Conversation
March 19, 2014 19:20 - 12 minutes - 28.7 MBWhether or not you can play the drums or keep your body in rhythm out on the dance floor, if you're reading this sentence, you're participating in the unheard music of language. In his research at Washington University in St. Louis, linguist Brett Hyde, assistant professor of philosophy, delves into the rhythms behind every conversation. By studying the accent patterns of languages around the world, Hyde's goal is to discover the underlying principles that organize these patterns. Feel free t...
Jane Eyre and the Art of Translation
March 12, 2014 19:46 - 11 minutes - 26.8 MBWhen you think of the novel Jane Eyre, you might think of its author, Charlotte Brontë, or perhaps certain elements of the plot, like Jane's time at Lowood School or her tumultuous relationship with Mr. Rochester. However, in a recent project, Lynne Tatlock is exploring how the original novel is only the beginning of the Jane Eyre story. Like many other 19th century texts, this novel was repeatedly translated into other languages and adapted into new works. Tatlock, a professor of Germanic La...
Venus, Deconstructed
March 05, 2014 19:56Today, we're going back to 18th century Florence, Italy to tell the story of one museum, La Specola, and its infamous exhibit of gruesome wax anatomical models. At the time of its founding in 1771, the new Archduke Peter Leopold found himself confronting the deep-rooted legacy of his famous predecessors--the Medici. La Specola quickly became the crux of a larger movement within Tuscany, and the museum and its wax inhabitants helped set the course for a new Enlightenment era. Rebecca Messbarge...
Venus, Deconstructed
March 05, 2014 19:56 - 16 minutes - 38.9 MBToday, we're going back to 18th century Florence, Italy to tell the story of one museum, La Specola, and its infamous exhibit of gruesome wax anatomical models. At the time of its founding in 1771, the new Archduke Peter Leopold found himself confronting the deep-rooted legacy of his famous predecessors--the Medici. La Specola quickly became the crux of a larger movement within Tuscany, and the museum and its wax inhabitants helped set the course for a new Enlightenment era. Rebecca Messbarge...
Youth Poets Take the Stage
February 24, 2014 22:41 - 10 minutes - 24.7 MBHigh-school students sometimes have a bad reputation when it comes to language and literacy. Teenagers may be well versed in YouTube and social media, but these outlets are more known for shortened words and poor grammar than articulate speech and writing. However, Korina Jocson, assistant professor of education at Washington University in St. Louis, sees a much different picture. As a researcher and teacher, Jocson has observed and analyzed the ways that students use the beauty and power of...
The ABCs of Reading and Writing
February 19, 2014 19:08 - 10 minutes - 23 MBWhat can parents and teachers do to help young children become successful readers and writers? In what ways does a 2-year-old begin to understand the differences between written words and pictures? Rebecca Treiman, the Burke and Elizabeth High Baker Professor of Child Developmental Psychology, shares recent research that explores how children around the globe take their first steps toward reading and writing. Treiman heads the Reading and Language Lab at Washington University in St. Louis.
You Are How You Sound
February 12, 2014 18:43 - 12 minutes - 28.8 MBImagine that you're walking down the street and hear someone speaking with a British accent. What assumptions might you make about that person based on his or her voice? Would you come to the same conclusion if that person had a heavy southern drawl or sounded like he or she spoke Spanish as a first language? John Baugh, the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, continues his discussion of linguistic profiling and describes how he hopes his r...
Linguistic Insights
February 05, 2014 19:10 - 11 minutes - 26.5 MBTo kick off our newest topic, On Language, John Baugh, the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, shares two stories of personal linguistic epiphanies. Baugh researches linguistic profiling, or the ways in which people react to and treat one another based on speech. His initial interest in this line of work began when he himself encountered linguistic profiling earlier in his career. Baugh shares that experience, as well as a childhood incid...
The Search for Dark Matter
January 29, 2014 22:15 - 12 minutes - 27.6 MBAs we learned last week in Discovering Dark Matter, since the 1930s scientists have been seeking answers about unseen mass in the universe. We know that the gravitation of dark matter has an enormous effect on galaxies, and we also know that it may be made up of weakly interacting particles. But how do researchers search for something that's invisible? James Buckley, professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis, has spent part of his career hunting for neutralinos, a yet-undisco...
Discovering Dark Matter
January 21, 2014 19:57 - 10 minutes - 23.1 MBBack in the early 1930s, astronomer Fritz Zwicky discovered a problem. Zwicky studied galaxy clusters, which can contain hundreds to thousands of galaxies loosely bound together by gravity. While examining one such cluster, he realized that the visible material within the galaxies did not have enough mass to hold the cluster together. As a result, he inferred that some dark, unseen matter must exist. Decades later, Ramanath Cowsik theorized about the source of this extra gravitational force. ...
Beautifully Bright Black Holes
January 15, 2014 19:17 - 9 minutes - 20.7 MBBlack holes - pools of gravity so powerful that even light can't escape them - remain some of the most mysterious objects in the universe. Yet, though black holes themselves are invisible, the matter around them is not. In fall 2014, Henric Krawczynski, professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis, will use an instrument called X-Calibur to study two "beautifully bright" black holes visible from Earth's northern hemisphere. By measuring the polarization of X-rays emitted from ma...
Into the Heart of Mathematics
January 08, 2014 20:29 - 13 minutes - 31.8 MBAs a society, we are pretty conflicted about mathematics. On one hand, we recognize that math has allowed us to achieve some amazing things, including space travel and much of our technology. Yet, math gets a bad rap in popular culture. In movies and tv shows, we're more likely to see kids complaining about or struggling with algebra or calculus than enjoying it. But what's so scary about math? For those of us who might have shied away from it in the past, John E. McCarthy, the Spencer T. Oli...