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PODCAST

Big Brains

University of Chicago Podcast Network

Big Brains explores the groundbreaking research and discoveries that are changing our world. In each episode, we talk to leading experts and unpack their work in straightforward terms. Interesting conversations that cover a gamut of topics from how music affects our brains to what happens after we die.

science

All Episodes

00:29:22

Why Countries Choose War Over Peace, With Chris Blattman

Big Brains ·

2022/05/26

War is costly, deadly and destructive. So, why do we do it? In his new book Why We Fight: The Roots of War and The Paths to Peace, Prof. Chris Blattman of the University of Chicago lays out the five main reasons why countries go to war—and why building peace is actually a lot easier than we may think. Blattman is an economist and political scientist who studies global conflict, crime and poverty. As a seasoned peacebuilder, he has worked in a number of countries to help mitigate conflict between

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00:26:27

How Death In America Is Changing With Shannon Lee Dawdy

Big Brains ·

2022/05/12

What does our relationship with the dead tell us about the living? Anthropologists learn about ancient cultures by studying their burial sites, but could we do the same with contemporary America? Those are the questions that University of Chicago anthropologist and historian Shannon Lee Dawdy set out to answer in her new book, American Afterlives: Reinventing Death In The Twenty-first Century. What she uncovered was a discreet revolution happening around American death rituals and practices,

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00:25:59

Why We Need To Invest In Parents During A Child's...

Big Brains ·

2022/04/28

The United States is an outlier when it comes to parents. Compared to similar countries, the U.S. has the largest happiness gap between the 63 million parents and the child-free. This statistic is not shocking when you consider how other societies support parents with things like paid parental leave and high-quality child care. In her new book, Parent Nation: Unlocking Every Child's Potential, Fulfilling Society's Promise, Prof. Dana Suskind of the University of Chicago makes the case for how

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00:23:35

The Troubling Rise Of Antibiotic-resistant Superbugs,...

Big Brains ·

2022/04/14

For 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 rising—and faster than expected. University of Washington Professor Christopher Murray co-authored a 2019 study in The Lancet, which found that antibiotic-resistant infections directly killed over a million

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00:29:22

Is Scientific Progress Slowing? with James Evans

Big Brains ·

2022/03/31

There 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 they have to read, which is causing them to cite the same few papers over and over again. This dilemma is leaving newly published papers with less of a chance to disrupt existing work. Evans directs the

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00:24:02

Could We Vaccinate Against Opioid Addiction? With...

Big Brains ·

2022/03/17

The 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 of opioid addiction has been difficult to prevent, let alone cure. Now, there could be a new promising solution: a vaccine, developed by Prof. Marco Pravetoni of the University of Washington, who leads the

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00:31:16

The Man Who Fought To Sanction Putin And Russian...

Big Brains ·

2022/03/02

As 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 legal infrastructure than enabled us to target the oligarch’s assets in the west? A major tool western nations have used to enact sanctions is called the Magnitsky Act. Two years ago, we interviewed the man

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00:28:00

Why Big Ideas Fail To Scale—And How To Fix It With...

Big Brains ·

2022/02/17

Solving 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 describes it. A world-renowned economist at the University of Chicago, List has helped scale some big policies and technologies as a former White House chief economist and the chief economist for both Uber and

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00:26:30

Could Personalizing Laws Make Society More Just? With...

Big Brains ·

2022/02/03

Big 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. Omri Ben-Shahar lays out the case for why our idea of equality under the law actually leads to unequal outcomes, and why we should use data and algorithms to tailor our laws to individual people. As he says:

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00:28:36

How To Stick To Your Resolutions, With Ayelet Fishbach

Big Brains ·

2022/01/20

Every 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 answers on how to follow through. Ayelet Fishbach is a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the author of a new book, Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from The Science of

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00:31:24

The Overlooked History Of Black Cinema, With...

Big Brains ·

2022/01/06

Prof. 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 spectators have made to cinema’s development as an art form.” Stewart also serves as the host of Silent Sunday Nights on Turner Classic Movies and is chief artistic and programming officer at the Academy

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00:26:16

Engineering A Cure For Cancer With Melody Swartz &...

Big Brains ·

2021/12/23

The 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 approaches to the field of immunotherapy—and helping us rethink cancer research. Swartz has even developed what she calls a cancer ‘vaccine’—a way to train the immune system to recognize cancer cells as

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00:39:21

Confronting Gun Violence With Data, With Jens Ludwig

Big Brains ·

2021/12/09

There’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 economist and urban policy expert at the University of Chicago and the Pritzker Director of the Crime Lab, which partners with policymakers in major cities across the country to help reduce gun violence and reduce

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00:25:26

Best Of: Why Talking to Strangers Will Make You...

Big Brains ·

2021/12/02

If 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. And, like many of you here in the vaccine phase of the pandemic, we really cherished speaking to and connecting with people in person again. Which reminded us of an episode we did years ago about a simple but

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00:28:57

Unlocking The Secrets Of Black Holes, With Andrea Ghez

Big Brains ·

2021/11/18

If 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 no light? How do you see the unseeable? In this episode, Ghez explains how she proved this supermassive black hole was hiding in the Milky Way and answers all our pressing questions like, including: Are we

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00:29:53

Do Your Genes Determine Your Success In Life? With...

Big Brains ·

2021/11/04

Experts 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 information has people asking: How much do genetics determine our outcomes in life? We all understand that our genes determine our height, hair and eye color, but what about intelligence, educational

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00:25:29

How The UN Aims To Save Humanity, With Chris Williams...

Big Brains ·

2021/10/21

It 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 to climate change to peace and justice. And, amazingly, every UN nation signed it. So, how is it going? On this episode, we talk with Chris Williams, the director of UN Habitat; and Prof. Luis Bettencourt,

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00:25:08

Combating Our Global Water Crisis Using AI, with...

Big Brains ·

2021/10/07

There 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 solution to our making our water system sustainable by using artificial intelligence and machine learning. Junhong Chen is a professor of molecular engineering at the University of Chicago and the lead water

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00:26:55

Revolutionizing Technology at the Nanoscale, with...

Big Brains ·

2021/09/23

Sometimes, 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 technologies in healthcare, energy, and electronic devices. As if that weren’t enough, Paul Alivisatos is also an eminent leader in academia. He was the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost at the

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00:27:17

The Science Behind Forming Better Habits, With Katy...

Big Brains ·

2021/09/09

Why 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 Behavior Change For Good Initiative with Angela Duckworth. Her best-selling book, How To Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be, explores that best research—from

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210 results

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