Big Brains

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, especially the rise in cremation after the tragedies of Sept. 11. According to one funeral director, there have been more changes in the death industry in the last ten years than the last hundred. And those changes reveal all sorts of societal and cultural shifts in response to climate change, COVID-19 and the personalization of everything, including DIY funerals and green burials. Dawdy also produced a documentary, "I Like Dirt.", during her research with director Daniel Zox. Much of the audio used in this episode comes from that documentary. You can find out more about "I Like Dirt." Directed by Daniel Zox and Shannon Lee Dawdy, Zox Films, 2020 at http://ilikedirtfilm.com and find Dawdy's book at https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691210643/american-afterlives

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 America can—and should—improve societal support for parents during the early childhood period. Through her work as director of the Pediatric Cochlear Implant Program and co-director of the Thirty Million Words Initiative, Suskind has observed why the first three years of a child's life are the most crucial for their brain development. She argues that investing in early childhood by supporting parents—notably, paid parental and family leave—is not only beneficial for them, but it's also beneficial for our economy and society.

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 people worldwide. The study also found that superbugs might have played a role in five million more deaths worldwide. Murray explains what's causing this troubling trend—and how we can combat it.

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 Knowledge Lab at UChicago, which is trying to reimagine the scientific process by providing better pathways for new scientific ideas to be shared with others. He explains how we can get back to advancing science again.

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 Center for Medication Development for Substance Use Disorders. The vaccine is currently in the first phase of clinical trials, being led by Prof. Sandra Comer of Columbia University, who directs the university’s Opioid Laboratory. Together, Pravetoni and Comer hope to provide a new pathway toward recovery from opioid addiction.

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 responsible for the creation of this act: Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and a University of Chicago alum. We think it’s worth re-airing that interview in the current context to get a deeper understanding of the sanctions against Russia, Putin’s regime and how a few brave people forged a pathway to hit him where he he’s weakest.

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 Lyft. Through his experience, he's observed a thing or two about what not to do. In his new book, The Voltage Effect: How To Make Good Ideas Great And Great Ideas Scale, List lays out five key factors that people should consider when thinking through any idea, policy or product. He explains how shifting from policy-based evidence to evidence-based policy can solve some of the world’s more pressing issues.

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: If one size fits all doesn’t work for shoes, why should it work for speed limits?

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 Motivation. She is one of the leading experts on the research behind what keeps us motivated to complete our goals.

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 Museum of Motion Pictures. On this episode, Stewart explores the history of Black cinema and explains how preservation and archiving are not neutral acts, but contribute to how we contextualize and understand Black history.