Latest Academic podcast Podcast Episodes
The Ethics of COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution, with Laurie Zoloth
Big Brains - February 25, 2021 12:00 - 32 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe coronavirus pandemic has raised countless ethical questions: How do we balance restricting freedoms with protecting others, how do we ethically distribute vaccines, should we force people to get vaccinated—or should we ask healthy people to get infected with COVID-19 in the name of science? ...
The Doomsday Clock’s ‘Historic Wake-Up Call,’ With Rachel Bronson
Big Brains - February 11, 2021 12:00 - 34 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe Doomsday Clock has been set at 100 seconds to midnight—as close to total destruction as we were in 2020. But after a year of increasingly dangerous weather and wildfires, not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic, why didn’t the clock move? Rachel Bronson is the president and CEO of the Bulleti...
Unraveling the Mystery of Life’s Origins on Earth, with Jack Szostak
Big Brains - January 28, 2021 12:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsWhat are the biggest questions in science today: Can we cure cancer, solve the climate crisis, make it to Mars? For Nobel laureate Jack Szostak, the biggest question is still much more fundamental: What is the origin of life? A professor of genetics at Harvard University, Szostak has dedicated...
The Urgent Need to Reinvest in American Research, with Barbara Snyder
Big Brains - January 14, 2021 12:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsOur podcast is all about research. Every episode we investigate what scholars have discovered and why it matters. But we’re going to get meta on this episode and look at what makes this research possible—and the dangers of taking it for granted, especially during crises like the COVID-19 pandemi...
Getting Out Of The Lab With John List
Big Brains - December 22, 2020 17:00 - 27 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsOur team is taking some time off to be with their families for the holidays. But, just in case you have a long flight, car ride, or maybe need something to do in-between Zoom calls, we’re re-sharing one of the most enlightening and engaging conversations we've ever had on this show to get you th...
How Alternate Reality Games Are Changing The Real World with Patrick Jagoda and Kristen Schilt
Big Brains - December 10, 2020 17:00 - 32 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsWhat is the most popular form of media today: Movies? Music? Books? Nope, it’s video games. With 2.5 billion gamers today, games are set to be the type of media that most defines our world. And two scholars at the University of Chicago are re-thinking how to leverage them in a way to address som...
The Science of Empathy, with Peggy Mason
Big Brains - November 25, 2020 17:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsWith so many contentious issues in our deeply polarized world, the real or virtual Thanksgiving dinner table may be a hard place to find a lot of empathy this year. As we take a week off to reconnect with our families, we wanted to re-share this enlightening episode with Professor of Neurobiol...
Big Brains Presents: The "Capitalisn't" Podcast
Big Brains - November 20, 2020 17:00 - 47 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThis week, we’re featuring another University of Chicago Podcast Network show. It’s called Capitalisn’t. Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court has many focusing on question about how the new court will judge cases on social issues like abortion, but we rarely hear enough about th...
What Remains Unanswered After The 2020 Election, with William Howell and Luigi Zingales
Big Brains - November 11, 2020 17:53 - 34 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsIt’s hard to think of a presidential election that has raised as many questions as 2020. What do these results tell us about the views and desires of the American public, what the polls got right and wrong, and how all of this will affect our economy? To find some answers, we turned to two leadi...
When Governments Share Their Secrets—And When They Don't, with Austin Carson
Big Brains - October 29, 2020 11:30 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsWhen should a government choose to reveal a secret—or conceal it? Your knee-jerk reaction may be to say they should never hide anything from the public. But political scientist Austin Carson of the University of Chicago says his research complicates that answer. Carson has spent his career rea...
How We Can Fix a Fractured Supreme Court, with Geoffrey Stone
Big Brains - October 15, 2020 11:30 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe Supreme Court today may be more politicized than any other time in U.S. history. With the expected confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump will have appointed three justices in less than four years, and the American public has come to see the bench as divided by “left” and “...
Correcting History: Native Americans Tell Their Own Stories
Big Brains - October 01, 2020 11:30 - 36 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsSince their inception, natural history museums have struggled with how to represent Native Americans and their culture. People from these communities are often not included in the conversation, and their artifacts can be mishandled. But the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, in partners...
The Future of Voting And The 2020 Election, with Anthony Fowler
Big Brains - September 17, 2020 11:00 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe 2020 presidential election this November is happening amid an unprecedented pandemic. As states scramble to scale up mail-in voting, President Trump claims it will lead to widespread fraud. But what does a leading expert on voting think? Assoc. Prof. Anthony Fowler is a leading University ...
Why The Quantum Internet Could Change Everything, with David Awschalom
Big Brains - September 03, 2020 11:00 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsImagine a new technology that could create unbreakable encryption, supercharge the development of AI, and radically expedite the development of drug treatments for everything from cancer to COVID-19. That technology could be quantum computing and the quantum internet. David Awschalom is a prof...
How Loneliness and Isolation Affect Your Health, with Prof. Linda Waite
Big Brains - August 27, 2020 11:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe quarantine to stem the tide of the coronavirus pandemic has left many people trapped inside, alone. Loneliness and isolation were already a major health crisis in our country before COVID-19, and things have only gotten worse. During this time, we want to revisit a conversation we had with...
The Way You Talk—And What It Says About You, with Prof. Katherine Kinzler
Big Brains - August 13, 2020 11:00 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe way we talk is probably not something most of us spend a lot of time thinking about, but when it comes to communicating, what we’re saying may only be as important as how we say it. That’s what Prof. Katherine Kinzler of the University of Chicago argues in her new book, How You Say It: Wh...
From LSD to Ecstasy, How Psychedelics Are Altering Therapy, with Prof. Harriet de Wit
Big Brains - July 30, 2020 11:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsPeople have been taking psychoactive drugs since the beginning of human history, but there hasn’t been a lot of good scientific study of these substances. One person who has been trying to turn a scientific lens toward them is University of Chicago Professor Harriett de Wit, and what she’s disco...
From LSD to Ecstasy, How Psychedelics Are Altering Therapy, with Prof. Harriet de Wit
Big Brains - July 30, 2020 11:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsPeople have been taking psychoactive drugs since the beginning of human history, but there hasn’t been a lot of good scientific study of these substances. One person who has been trying to turn a scientific lens toward them is University of Chicago Professor Harriett de Wit, and what she’s disco...
How Can We Achieve Real Police Reform?
Big Brains - July 16, 2020 11:00 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsWhat are we going to do about police misconduct? Many are calling for a total defunding of the police, while others are looking for systems to enhance accountability through reform. Many have pointed to civilian oversight agencies, but University of Chicago legal scholar Sharon Fairley says that...
Why We're Obsessed With Conspiracy Theories
Big Brains - July 02, 2020 09:00 - 27 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThere have always been, and probably always will be, conspiracy theories, but we’ve certainty seen a dramatic increase this year. Misinformation around the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic have created page after internet page of conspiracy theories. And the protests following the murder of ...
Black Lives Matter Protests: Hope for the Future?
Big Brains - June 18, 2020 09:00 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsIn the last few weeks, our country has been rocked by nationwide protests following the killing of George Floyd, and many other black people, at the hands of police. To be true to the mission of our show, we’re using our platform to address the underlying and historical racial injustices that ha...
What Historic Pandemics Could Teach Us About Coronavirus, with Ada Palmer
Big Brains - June 08, 2020 09:00 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsWhat happens to the world after a pandemic? Lots of experts have been talking about what we may be able to expect after COVID-19 from the 1918 Spanish flu and The Black Death. But, as any historian will tell, history is often more complicated than people think. Ada Palmer is an associate profe...
A Crisis Management Expert’s Advice on Handling Coronavirus
Big Brains - May 21, 2020 09:00 - 27 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsOur society has always relied on leaders to effectively manage crises. But with the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging society, it’s more important than ever to understand what effective leadership should look like right now. Daniel Diermeier is the former provost of the University of Chicago and the ...
How Students and Schools Can Recover From Coronavirus, with Elaine Allensworth
Big Brains - May 12, 2020 09:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe coronavirus pandemic has taken a toll on our students. As we move into the summer, schools will need to understand the best way to address these issues.To understand what students have lost and how schools can help them recover, there’s no better person to talk to than Elaine Allensworth, th...
Trump, Coronavirus and the Cost of Ineffective Government, With William Howell
Big Brains - April 30, 2020 09:00 - 27 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the most profound challenges in our world. One of the most prominent has been governmental dysfunction. As director for the Center For Effective Government at the , this is an issue close to Prof. William Howell’s work. So far, experts have largely wanted...
How Coronavirus Is Exposing Our Racial Disparities, with Monica Peek
Big Brains - April 21, 2020 09:00 - 17 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsOne of the most tragic aspects of the coronavirus outbreak has been the disproportionate effect COVID-19 has had on communities of color in cities around the country. Assoc. Prof. Monica Peek of the University of Chicago Medicine has dedicated her practice and career to studying racial health ...
Coronavirus Shows Why We Need To Rethink Health Care, with Kate Baicker
Big Brains - April 03, 2020 09:00 - 15 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe coronavirus outbreak has devastated many sectors of our society, and brought many of the issues we were facing before the pandemic to the forefront. This is especially true of health care. Prof. Katherine Baicker is a leading scholar in the economic analysis of health policy and dean of th...
What Rats Can Teach Us About Empathy and Racism, with Peggy Mason
Big Brains - March 10, 2020 09:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsWhy do we feel empathy for some people, but not others? Where does this feeling of empathy come from? These questions have been the focus of one University of Chicago neurobiologist’s career. And to find answers, Prof. Peggy Mason started studying an unlikely creature: rats. It turns out that ...
Why the Coronavirus Could Send China’s Economy Back to the 1980s With Chang-Tai Hsieh
Big Brains - February 25, 2020 10:00 - 18 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe outbreak of the coronavirus in China is a global tragedy. While much of the attention has been on the disease itself, many global experts have been focusing on the economic side-effects. Some economists are even hinting that the effects on China’s economy could be just as disastrous in the l...
Why The Doomsday Clock Is Closer To Apocalypse Than Ever With Rachel Bronson
Big Brains - February 12, 2020 10:00 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsSince its inception following World War II, the Doomsday Clock has measured our time until apocalypse in minutes. This year, for the first time, the clock set our time to midnight in just seconds. Rachel Bronson is the CEO and president of the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists, the organization ...
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