Latest Universityofchicago Podcast Episodes
The Troubling Rise Of Antibiotic-resistant Superbugs, With Christopher Murray
Big Brains - April 14, 2022 12:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsFor nearly a decade, public health experts have been warning that bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics. In 2014, the World Health Organization even said the post-antibiotic era is near. Despite these warnings, the problem has only worsened: Antibiotic-resistant superbugs like MRSA are r...
Is Scientific Progress Slowing? with James Evans
Big Brains - March 31, 2022 12:00 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThere are far more scientists in today’s world, and they’re publishing research papers at a much faster pace. However, all of this growth hasn’t translated to more scientific progress. As University of Chicago Professor James Evans argues, scientists are overloaded by the flood of research papers...
Could We Vaccinate Against Opioid Addiction? With Sandra Comer And Marco Pravetoni
Big Brains - March 17, 2022 12:00 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe United States recently hit a grim milestone: More than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses between May 2020 and April 2021. The majority of those deaths were due to synthetic opioids, which have become more widely available in recent years. While medical interventions exist, the rise ...
The Man Who Fought To Sanction Putin And Russian Oligarchs, with Bill Browder
Big Brains - March 02, 2022 12:29 - 31 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsAs Vladimir Putin continues his invasion of Ukraine, Western nations have come together in unprecedented fashion to condemn his actions, in the form of economic sanctions against Putin and his Russian oligarchs. But how were these sanctions implemented so quickly, and what was the international l...
Why Big Ideas Fail To Scale—And How To Fix It With John List
Big Brains - February 17, 2022 07:00 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsSolving problems like poverty, education inequality or discrimination require policy interventions that can scale, but they rarely do. Why do some scale, while others have little success? It's not luck, it's not skill, it's actually a scientific method—at least, that's how Prof. John List describ...
Could Personalizing Laws Make Society More Just? With Omri Ben-Shahar
Big Brains - February 03, 2022 07:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsBig data has created a world of personalization. We have personalized medicine, personalized education, personalized advertising. Now, one University of Chicago Law School scholar is asking: Why not personalized law? In his new book, Personalized Law: Different Rules For Different People, Prof. ...
How To Stick To Your Resolutions, With Ayelet Fishbach
Big Brains - January 20, 2022 09:00 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsEvery year many of us set New Year’s resolutions, and almost none of us actually follow through on them. In a year when fulfilling our goals and resolutions feels more pressing than ever while our motivation may be at its lowest; let’s do what we do best: Turn to the research to get some concrete...
The Overlooked History Of Black Cinema, With Jacqueline Stewart
Big Brains - January 06, 2022 07:00 - 31 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsProf. Jacqueline Stewart’s career has examined the histories of overlooked Black filmmakers and Black audiences. Last year, the University of Chicago film scholar Stewart won a prestigious MacArthur fellowship for “illuminating the contributions that overlooked Black filmmakers and communities of...
Engineering A Cure For Cancer With Melody Swartz & Jeffrey Hubbell
Big Brains - December 23, 2021 07:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe race to cure cancer has been running a long time, but two University of Chicago scientists are working to bring it closer to the finish line. Thinking like engineers rather than doctors, Profs. Jeffery Hubbell and Melody Swartz of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering are bringing new ...
Confronting Gun Violence With Data, With Jens Ludwig
Big Brains - December 09, 2021 12:31 - 39 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThere’s something strange happening with violent crime in America. Incidents are reaching levels they haven’t hit in decades, and nobody seems to know why. But, to go even deeper, what causes violent crime to happen at all—and what can be done to help prevent it? Prof. Jens Ludwig is an economis...
Best Of: Why Talking to Strangers Will Make You Happier With Nicholas Epley
Big Brains - December 02, 2021 13:15 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsIf you could have any superpower, what would it be? Most people say they’d want to read minds. But Prof. Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business says you already have that power: You just need to use it. We took some time off to enjoy the holiday and our families. An...
Unlocking The Secrets Of Black Holes, With Andrea Ghez
Big Brains - November 18, 2021 07:00 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsIf you know anything about black holes, it may come as a surprise to learn that there’s actually one lurking at the center of our galaxy. It was uncovered by UCLA astrophysicist Andrea Ghez, and in 2020 she won a Nobel Prize for this discovery. But how do you go about finding something that emits...
Do Your Genes Determine Your Success In Life? With Kathryn Paige Harden
Big Brains - November 04, 2021 07:00 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsExperts say we’re living through a renaissance in genetics research. The Human Genome project has explained our most fundamental genetics, CRISPR gene editing can be used to shape genetic code, and companies like 23 & Me can trace your ancestry from a single saliva swab. But all this new genetic ...
How The UN Aims To Save Humanity, With Chris Williams And Luis Bettencourt
Big Brains - October 21, 2021 11:49 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsIt feels like our world has never faced so many crisis all at the same time, and trying to solve them at once seems impossible. But, in 2015, the United Nations came together to develop a list of 17 Sustainable Development Goals, a blueprint for addressing all of humanity’s problems—from poverty ...
Combating Our Global Water Crisis Using AI, with Junhong Chen
Big Brains - October 07, 2021 11:05 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThere are a lot of problems in our world today, but if our water systems aren’t working, everything else takes a backseat. From a lack of freshwater to droughts on the West Coast to contaminants like PFAS and lead in many of our homes, our water systems are in trouble. But one scientist sees a so...
Revolutionizing Technology at the Nanoscale, with Paul Alivisatos
Big Brains - September 23, 2021 07:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsSometimes, the biggest discoveries have to do with the smallest things. In this case, we’re talking nano. Specifically, nanocrystals. World-renowned chemist Paul Alivisatos has changed the field of nanoscience with these tiny crystals, but he’s also found ways to use them to create incredible new...
The Science Behind Forming Better Habits, With Katy Milkman
Big Brains - September 09, 2021 07:00 - 27 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsWhy is it so hard for us to form good habits—and so easy to form bad ones? Most people turn to the self-help section to find answers, but this is really a question for behavior science. Katy Milkman is a professor at The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and co-directs...
The Secret Nazi Past and Billionaire Future of U.S. Space Innovation with Jordan Bimm
Big Brains - August 19, 2021 11:34 - 27 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsMost people think they know humanity’s history of space exploration, from Sputnik to NASA to our recent shift toward privatized space travel. But what if there was a lost history of our origins with space science that would make us rethink the whole narrative? Jordan Bimm is a postdoctoral res...
How a Genetic Breakthrough Could Address Global Hunger
Big Brains - August 05, 2021 12:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsBy 2050 humanity is going to have to produce 50% more food in order to feed a growing population. That’s a lot, especially given that we currently have trouble feeding the current global population, and that food production is already responsible for about a third of the greenhouse gases that ca...
Introducing: Entitled
Big Brains - July 29, 2021 12:07 - 41 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe University of Chicago Podcast Network is excited to announce the launch of a new show, it’s called "Entitled" and it’s about human rights. Co-hosted by lawyers and UChicago Law School Professors, Claudia Flores and Tom Ginsburg, Entitled explores the stories around why rights matter and what...
The Deadly Flaw In Our Judgment, With Cass Sunstein
Big Brains - July 15, 2021 11:53 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsMany of the most important moments in our lives rely on the judgment of others. We expect doctors to diagnose our illnesses correctly, and judges to hand out rulings fairly. But there’s a massive flaw in human judgment that we’re just beginning to understand, and it’s called “noise.” In a new ...
A Scientist’s Beef With The Meat Industry, With Impossible Foods’ Pat Brown
Big Brains - July 01, 2021 12:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsEven if you’ve never eaten an Impossible Burger, you’ve probably heard of them. But you may not know the science and story behind those meatless products. Pat Brown is a University of Chicago alum, the founder and CEO of Impossible Foods, and a scientist at Stanford University. He says the mea...
A Surprising Economic Solution To Climate Change With Michael Greenstone
Big Brains - June 17, 2021 12:00 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsWhen was the last time you heard a positive story about climate change, a story about someone with a new idea or innovative solution to help reduce our carbon footprint? This is that story. Michael Greenstone is a Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, Director of the Energy Poli...
Solving The Biggest Mysteries Of Our Universe, With Dan Hooper
Big Brains - June 03, 2021 12:00 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsWhy does our universe work the way it does? What are its laws? How did it start with the Big Bang‚ and how will it end? Scientists like Prof. Dan Hooper from the University of Chicago use something called the Standard Model of Physics to explain our universe, but there’s one big problem: The m...
Why You’re Likely Paying An Unfair Share of Property Taxes, with Christopher Berry
Big Brains - May 20, 2021 10:30 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsWhen’s the last time you thought about property taxes? We mostly accept them as a part of society, and assume that they’re being calculated fairly. But a leading University of Chicago scholar says that assumption is wrong. A breakthrough study from Prof. Christopher Berry has shown that, on av...
Taking Aliens Seriously, with Avi Loeb
Big Brains - May 06, 2021 10:00 - 32 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe possibility of alien life has captivated the human imagination for decades and has been at the center of some of our most popular fictional stories. But one scientist has made a controversial claim that aliens are no long a fiction but a reality. Avi Loeb is a theoretical physicist and for...
The ‘Five Horsemen of the Techpocalypse’ with Kara Swisher
Big Brains - April 22, 2021 11:31 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe so-called “Big Tech” industry has dramatically improved our daily lives, but at what cost? Few people have gotten a closer look at these companies than Kara Swisher, writer for The New York Times and podcast host—and she says we need to wrestle more with that question. Recently she shared ...
Fighting Poverty And Pandemics, with Nobel Economist Michael Kremer
Big Brains - April 08, 2021 11:51 - 31 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsThe solutions to global poverty can appear obvious, even if they’re difficult to implement. But, as University of Chicago economist Michael Kremer has discovered, interventions that may seem like common sense can actually be wrong. In 2019, Kremer won a Nobel Prize for his work studying ways t...
Why Life After Incarceration Is Just Another Prison, with Reuben Jonathan Miller
Big Brains - March 25, 2021 11:00 - 36 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsFor the more than 20 million people with a felony record, incarceration doesn’t end at the prison gate. They enter what University of Chicago scholar Reuben Jonathan Miller calls the “afterlife” of mass incarceration. Miller, an assistant professor at the Crown Family School of Social Work, Po...
Anthony Fauci On What We Need To Get Over COVID-19
Big Brains - March 08, 2021 12:00 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 358 ratingsAnthony Fauci has spent the past year trying to curb the worst health crisis the world has seen in a century. In a recent University of Chicago event, Fauci reflected on how the COVID-19 pandemic has been a “painful learning experience” for he and other health officials. On this episode of th...
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