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PODCAST

BornCurious

Harvard Radcliffe Institute

BornCurious is—like its home—about unbounded curiosity. Coming to you from Harvard Radcliffe Institute, one of the world’s leading centers for interdisciplinary exploration, this podcast brings together scholars, students, artists, and doers. Our conversations traverse current affairs, scientific breakthroughs, cutting-edge research, art making, and storytelling. Join us as we talk with and learn from the many people in our Radcliffe community whose work and lives are shaped by curiosity.

society & culture social sciences

All Episodes

33:13

Substance Use Disorders Among Women: Reasons for...

BornCurious ·

2025/10/30

Rates of substance use disorder are rising among women and adolescent girls. In this episode, the psychiatrist Shelly F. Greenfield, whose research focuses on gender differences in addiction, explains the situation—and what can be done. Through her work, Greenfield helps us see addiction as what it truly is: a treatable health condition.Released on October 30, 2025. Part of this podcast was recorded in early 2025, before the current federal administration, and reflects the situation at that time

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48:13

Jodie Foster: Power, Privacy, and Purpose

BornCurious ·

2025/06/26

On Radcliffe Day 2025, we honored Jodie Foster in recognition of her barrier-breaking six-decade career in front of and behind the camera. In this episode, the newly minted Radcliffe Medalist chats with the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.—a friend and former mentor—and gets deep about her beginnings, her life path, motherhood, and how she’s grown.Released on June 26, 2025. Episode Transcript Guests Jodie Foster is an actor and filmmaker. In her six-decade career, she has won Academy

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60:25

The Importance of Representation in Film

BornCurious ·

2025/06/13

Women have played essential roles in the American film industry since its inception—as actors, writers, directors, producers, and an array of other positions—but they have long been both underrepresented and underrecognized when compared with men. On Radcliffe Day 2025—as part of a program honoring the 2025 Radcliffe Medalist Jodie Foster—industry insiders took part in a panel discussion to consider the evolving nature of women’s representation and recognition in the film and television industries,

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52:21

Storytelling and Grief in Palliative Care

BornCurious ·

2025/05/22

There is a long-held belief in the medical field that doctors should maintain a professional distance from their patients. But it’s only human to be affected by one’s everyday experiences—and for professionals who work with serious illness, these experiences can range from distressing to profound. In this episode, a collaboration with Grief Is a Sneaky Bitch, we discover how the Palliative Story Exchange uses storytelling to center human connection and meaning in this setting.Released on May 22,

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30:00

Gifts of Intergenerational Friendship

BornCurious ·

2025/05/01

When Devi Lockwood, then a Harvard undergraduate, encountered the papers of the poet Cora Brooks in the Schlesinger Library, she couldn’t have known that the discovery would spark an in-person friendship with a woman her grandmother’s age. In this episode, she talks about how that friendship developed—and the lasting gifts it provided—along with archives, activism, and the power of unexpected discoveries.Released on May 1, 2025. Episode Transcript Guest Devi Lockwood is an editor, a journalist,

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22:37

Memory in Poetry

BornCurious ·

2025/04/17

The poetry of Gabeba Baderoon often reaches into memory and the small moments that show the complexity of love. In this episode, Baderoon talks about what spurred her to try the art form, reads from her previous work, and shares how memory plays into her next collection, on which she’s working this year.Released on April 17, 2025. Episode Transcript Guest Gabeba Baderoon is a poet and an associate professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, African studies, and comparative literature at

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44:05

Music and Chaos

BornCurious ·

2025/04/03

A chance encounter with an engineering journal changed the life trajectory of Diana Dabby, who was then working as a concert pianist. Now, Dabby uses electrical engineering to innovate musical works that have variation at their center. In this episode, she talks about her career and approach to various projects.Released on April 3, 2025. Episode Transcript Guest Diana Dabby is a concert pianist, a composer, and an engineer who teaches at Olin College of Engineering, where she is the music program

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90:27

America’s Authoritarian Turn

BornCurious ·

2025/03/20

In his recent—and timely—lecture, Gary Gerstle looks beyond the figure of Donald Trump to inquire into the roots of America’s authoritarian turn. In it, he dissects the events, policies, and resentments that have led to the breakdown of the neoliberal political order, under which the United States has functioned for the past 40 years, and energized the right.Released on March 20, 2025. Episode Transcript Guests Tomiko Brown-Nagin is the dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute, the Daniel P.S. Paul

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63:32

Conversation with Noah Feldman

BornCurious ·

2025/03/06

As part of a pair of programs featuring open dialogue about issues related to the Middle East, Radcliffe Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin sat down with Noah Feldman to discuss his new book, To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2024). Released on March 6, 2025. Episode Transcript Guests Tomiko Brown-Nagin is the dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute, the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, and a professor of history in

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59:54

Conversation with Aslı Ü. Bâli

BornCurious ·

2025/03/06

As part of a pair of programs featuring open dialogue about issues related to the Middle East, Aslı Ü. Bâli participated in a conversation with Asim Ijaz Khwaja about modern Arab and Muslim identities in the context of university, local, and worldwide communities and events.Released on March 6, 2025. Episode Transcript Guests Aslı Ü. Bâli is the Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of Law at Yale Law School and the president of the Middle East Studies Association. Asim Ijaz Khwaja is the Sumitomo-FASID

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40:10

Black Traditions of Mardi Gras

BornCurious ·

2025/02/20

Every year around this time, New Orleans clads itself in the green, purple, and gold of carnival, which culminates in Mardi Gras. But the celebration is much more than a bacchanalia—it’s a citywide expression of community. In this episode, we speak to a guest intimately familiar with these traditions, especially how they play out in the city’s Black communities.Released on February 20, 2025. Episode transcript Guest Kim Vaz-Deville, a scholar in residence at Dillard University in New Orleans,

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59:47

How to Be a Better Sexual Citizen

BornCurious ·

2024/12/19

What is sex for? This is only one of the questions we must consider to be better sexual citizens. In this episode, we talk to an anthropologist who hopes that thinking through such questions will alleviate the problem of sexual assault in the context of our institutional lives, such as college. And she tells us about her current work, a case study.Released on December 19, 2024. Episode Transcript Guest Jennifer S. Hirsch is a professor of sociomedical sciences at the Columbia University Mailman

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51:18

Honoring Mexico's Disappeared

BornCurious ·

2024/12/12

More than 100,000 people have gone missing in Mexico since the late 1960s—who are they, and why have they gone missing? We talked to two Radcliffe fellows who have devoted their work to telling this history, from an institutional as well as a personal level, as a way to honor the disappeared and empower their families.This episode contains intense subject matter that may be distressing to some listeners. Released on December 12, 2024. Episode Transcript Guests Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, a

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8:54

Minipod: Ayodele Casel on Creativity

BornCurious ·

2024/12/05

As part of our 25th anniversary celebration, members of our community delivered “lightning talks”—seven minutes on a particular topic delivered by an expert in the field. In this mini episode, Ayodele Casel, whose “unquestionable radiance” has been called out by the New York Times, shares her thoughts on creativity.This episode was recorded on September 27, 2024. Released on December 5, 2024. Episode Transcript Guest Ayodele Casel is a tap dancer and choreographer. She was the 2019–2020 Frances B

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10:08

Minipod: Nikolas Bowie on Justice

BornCurious ·

2024/12/05

As part of our 25th anniversary celebration, members of our community delivered “lightning talks”—seven minutes on a particular topic delivered by an expert in the field. In this mini episode, Nikolas Bowie, who is currently working on a book contesting the idea that the Supreme Court should have final say on what our Constitution allows, talks about justice. This episode was recorded on September 27, 2024. Released on December 5, 2024. Episode Transcript Guest Nikolas Bowie is a 2024–2025 Shutzer

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65:06

Who Gets Autism?

BornCurious ·

2024/11/21

Diagnosing autism spectrum disorder can be difficult because there is no medical test—like a blood test—to detect the disorder. Doctors draw on an individual’s developmental history and behavior to make a diagnosis. But some populations receive notably more diagnoses than others. It is not clear how many individuals with autism may be overlooked, which means not all who are affected are equally likely to be treated. We know that four times as many boys as girls are diagnosed with autism. In this

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9:51

Minipod: Durba Mitra on Gender

BornCurious ·

2024/11/15

As part of our 25th anniversary celebration, members of our community delivered “lightning talks”—seven minutes on a particular topic delivered by an expert in the field. In this mini episode, Durba Mitra, whose research sits at the intersection of feminist and queer studies, tackles the topic of gender.This episode was recorded on September 27, 2024. Released on November 15, 2024. Episode Transcript Guest Durba Mitra is the Richard B. Wolf Associate Professor in Studies of Women, Gender, and

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51:25

In Their Own Words—The Diaries of the Schlesinger...

BornCurious ·

2024/10/24

The Schlesinger Library is home to more than 3,000 volumes of personal diaries. In this episode, we talk to Kathryn Allamong Jacob, who recently retired as the Schlesinger’s curator of manuscripts, about her intention to read—and describe—as many of these diaries as she can. Not only are these intimate documents crucial for a fuller portrayal of American women’s experiences, but they also include stories that are amusing, confounding, heartbreaking, infuriating, and inspiring.This episode was

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66:36

Should Universities Voice Opinions?

BornCurious ·

2024/10/10

Since last fall, communities across the country—including our campuses—have questioned the role of universities in public debates. In this panel discussion, cosponsored by Harvard Radcliffe Institute and the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin and three legal scholars consider whether institutions of higher ed should take stances on the issues of the day.This episode was recorded on March 5, 2024. Released on October 10, 2024. Episode Transcript Guests Tomiko

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48:36

What Is the Heliosphere—and What Happened to It 3...

BornCurious ·

2024/09/26

Did you know that our Sun’s wind generates a kind of protective cocoon that shields our solar system from harmful galactic material, such as radiation? So how did iron-60, a rare radioactive isotope created by exploding stars, end up here on Earth? In this episode, the astronomer Merav Opher talks us through her discovery that explains how iron-60 got into Antarctic ice and tiny shells at the bottom of our oceans—and what this may tell us about some of the key historical moments for planet

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41 results

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