Big Brains

University of Chicago Professor Harold Pollack may be famous for his “financial index card”, but it’s his application of simple solutions to complex issues that’s reshaping how we tackle crime and healthcare. What can be done to reduce the number of people who end up in jail for failing to appear in court? How can we build a healthcare system that works for everyone? With the Crime Lab and Center for Health Administration Studies, Pollack is developing social impacts through science.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Every election year, poll after poll tries to predict where millennials stand politically. But Prof. Cathy Cohen of the University of Chicago says some of our assumptions about what issues matter to young people are all wrong. Cohen’s innovative survey of millennials, GenForward, is a first of its kind. By oversampling young people of color, they investigate differences in responses by race and ethnicity. The data she’s collected gives us a unique window into what millennials are thinking and what they might do in the 2020 election. Subscribe to Big Brains on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and Soundcloud. (Music used in this episode: Baltiby Blue Dot Sessions.) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

All around us in the universe, stars and black holes are smashing into each other with tremendous force. These events are so powerful that they literally ripple the fabric of space-time—and these ripples, called gravitational waves, travel hundreds of millions of light-years across the universe. Prof. Daniel Holz and fellow scientists at LIGO knew that these waves would take us closer to figuring out multiple mysteries about the universe, like its size and age. They were certain that they would be able to build an instrument so sensitive that they could pick up these signals—but not everyone was. In this time-and-space-bending episode of Big Brains, the UChicago cosmologist talks black holes, proving Einstein’s predictions and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Subscribe to Big Brains on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and rate and review the podcast. Music used in this episode: Cat's Eye by Blue Dot Sessions Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The revelation for historian Kathleen Belew came while researching a 1979 anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in Greensboro, North Carolina that turned deadly when five members were murdered by a group of Klansmen and neo-Nazis.  Belew was struck by the reflection of the killers, some of them Vietnam War veterans. “They kept saying, ‘Well I shot communists in Vietnam, why wouldn’t I shoot communists in the United States?’” Belew says. From those comments, Belew’s research has revealed a surprising history of how the Vietnam War created the modern white power movement, a thesis she details in her book, Brining the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. On this episode of Big Brains, Belew shares the previously unknown history of the social movement of the white power movement, from the 1970’s through the Oklahoma City bombing, and explains the tools she uses as an historian to better understand the present.   Subscribe to Big Brains on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and rate and review the podcast. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Seasons Greetings! Big Brains will return in January 2019 with some very exciting guests. Until that time, we encourage you to go back and listen to some of our previous episodes — especially if you missed our first six episodes from Season One this summer. If you're feeling generous this holiday season, we would greatly appreciate your ratings and reviews of the Big Brains podcast on iTunes. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As climate change continues to stir concern and debate around the world, Prof. Michael Greenstone knows the importance of using his research to better explain the connection between the environment, health and global energy. The challenge for he and his colleagues at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) is waiting for others to put that information into action.   “I’m in charge of my research, and I’m not in charge of the world,” Greenstone said of Big Brains. “What we can do as scientists is make sure that the information is being articulated as clearly and in an accessible way as possible. It’s ultimately up to societies to judge what they’re going to do with it.”   Greenstone’s work has already had global impact. He and his EPIC colleagues developed a new pollution index that found air pollution cuts the global life expectancy by nearly two years. The Air Quality Life Index establishes air particulate pollution as the single greatest threat to human health globally.   On this episode of Big Brains, the environmental economist discusses how the global energy challenge is one of society’s most important problems and something he calls “the social cost of carbon”—the most important number you’ve never heard of when it comes to climate change.   Subscribe to Big Brains on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Spotify, and rate and review the podcast. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David Axelrod departed Washington, D.C. because he knew it’d be hard to top his role in helping Barack Obama make history. But when the president’s former senior adviser began the next chapter in his illustrious career, he looked to his alma mater to make an impact. Axelrod, AB’76, founded the non-partisan Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago in 2012. In the years since, Axelrod has helped build upon the University’s tradition of wide-ranging debate by welcoming guests ranging from Senator Bernie Sanders to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. He’s also interviewed hundreds of celebrities and politicians—most recently, President Obama—as host of the “Axe Files” podcast. But as he said on Big Brains, Axelrod takes the most satisfaction in helping inspire UChicago students to get involved in public service and politics. “I go home feeling optimistic every day. These are trying times, and there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about the future,” Axelrod said, “I feel much better about the future having spent all this time with these young people who are skeptical but they’re not cynical, and they believe they have a role to play in the world.” On this episode of Big Brains, Axelrod discusses the 2018 midterms, how seeing JFK at age 5 inspired a career in politics, and how today’s divisive political climate emerged following Obama’s 2008 election. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When Prof. Dana Suskind first began implanting devices called cochlear implants on babies who couldn’t hear, she quickly noticed something about her patients. “The cochlear implant would allow sound to go to a child’s brain, but something else was needed to make those sounds have meaning.” Suskind observed that many of her patients struggled to develop language because their parents didn’t talk to them as much. It was a revelation that inspired her to found the Thirty Million Words Initiative, which aims to narrow that achievement gap. The program has since led to a best-selling book and most recently, a community partnership that will test these innovative ideas on a national scale. On this episode of Big Brains, Suskind discusses her transformation from surgeon to social scientist, how auditing a UChicago class shaped her work, and simple advice for parents and care-givers to teach kids from day one. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Neuroscientist Bobby Kasthuri wants to do the near impossible: map the entire human brain. That means identifying each of the trillions of neural connections that exist inside the mind—a number bigger than the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. His success could mean understanding ourselves unlike ever before. “I want to turn anatomy of the structure of the brain into what we did for the genome,” Kasthuri says. A scientist at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, he believes a map of neurons could tell us everything that makes a human being unique—from an individual’s memories and dreams, to a more intricate understanding of mental illness. On this episode of Big Brains, Kasthuri explains how high-powered microscopes and supercomputers help him study the brains of mice, what makes humans distinct from all other living creatures and why the term “dim bulb” is more accurate than you think.      Subscribe to Big Brains on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and rate and review the podcast. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David Awschalom is one of the world’s leading scientists studying the growing field of quantum engineering, turning what was once in the realm of science fiction into reality—which could offer revolutionary breakthroughs in communications, digital encryption, sensor technology and even medicine. Studying the smallest elements in the universe is challenging on a number of levels, since quantum particles defy the laws of traditional physics. “The behavior of these tiny pieces is unlike anything we see in our world,” Awschalom said. “If I pull a wagon, you know how it’s going to move. But at the atomic world, things don’t work that way. Wagons can go through walls; wagons can be entangled and share information that is hard to separate.” On this episode of Big Brains, Awschalom shares how these unusual rules are leading to new technologies, why government and business are so interested in these breakthroughs, and how he’s helping to train a new generation of quantum engineers. Subscribe to Big Brains on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and rate and review the podcast. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.