Big Brains
Episodes
Why We Need To Invest In Parents During A Child's Earliest Years, With Dana Suskind
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Troubling Rise Of Antibiotic-resistant Superbugs, With Christopher Murray
14 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For nearly a decade, public health experts have been warning that bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics. In 2014, the World Health Organizati...
Is Scientific Progress Slowing? with James Evans
31 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Could We Vaccinate Against Opioid Addiction? With Sandra Comer And Marco Pravetoni
17 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Man Who Fought To Sanction Putin And Russian Oligarchs, with Bill Browder
02 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As Vladimir Putin continues his invasion of Ukraine, Western nations have come together in unprecedented fashion to condemn his actions, in the form o...
Why Big Ideas Fail To Scale—And How To Fix It With John List
17 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Solving problems like poverty, education inequality or discrimination require policy interventions that can scale, but they rarely do. Why do some sca...
Could Personalizing Laws Make Society More Just? With Omri Ben-Shahar
03 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Big data has created a world of personalization. We have personalized medicine, personalized education, personalized advertising. Now, one University ...
How To Stick To Your Resolutions, With Ayelet Fishbach
20 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 res...
The Overlooked History Of Black Cinema, With Jacqueline Stewart
06 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Prof. Jacqueline Stewart’s career has examined the histories of overlooked Black filmmakers and Black audiences. Last year, the University of Chicag...
Engineering A Cure For Cancer With Melody Swartz & Jeffrey Hubbell
23 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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. Thin...
Confronting Gun Violence With Data, With Jens Ludwig
09 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There’s something strange happening with violent crime in America. Incidents are reaching levels they haven’t hit in decades, and nobody seems to ...
Best Of: Why Talking to Strangers Will Make You Happier With Nicholas Epley
02 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Unlocking The Secrets Of Black Holes, With Andrea Ghez
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 unc...
Do Your Genes Determine Your Success In Life? With Kathryn Paige Harden
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Experts say we’re living through a renaissance in genetics research. The Human Genome project has explained our most fundamental genetics, CRISPR ge...
How The UN Aims To Save Humanity, With Chris Williams And Luis Bettencourt
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 Unit...
Combating Our Global Water Crisis Using AI, with Junhong Chen
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Revolutionizing Technology at the Nanoscale, with Paul Alivisatos
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes, the biggest discoveries have to do with the smallest things. In this case, we’re talking nano. Specifically, nanocrystals. World-renowned...
The Science Behind Forming Better Habits, With Katy Milkman
09 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 re...
The Secret Nazi Past and Billionaire Future of U.S. Space Innovation with Jordan Bimm
19 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Most people think they know humanity’s history of space exploration, from Sputnik to NASA to our recent shift toward privatized space travel. But wh...
How a Genetic Breakthrough Could Address Global Hunger
05 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
By 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 h...
Introducing: Entitled
29 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The 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-...
The Deadly Flaw In Our Judgment, With Cass Sunstein
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Many 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 h...
A Scientist’s Beef With The Meat Industry, With Impossible Foods’ Pat Brown
01 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Even 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 p...
A Surprising Economic Solution To Climate Change With Michael Greenstone
17 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When 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 ou...
Solving The Biggest Mysteries Of Our Universe, With Dan Hooper
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why 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 Ho...
Why You’re Likely Paying An Unfair Share of Property Taxes, with Christopher Berry
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When’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...
Taking Aliens Seriously, with Avi Loeb
06 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The possibility of alien life has captivated the human imagination for decades and has been at the center of some of our most popular fictional storie...
The ‘Five Horsemen of the Techpocalypse’ with Kara Swisher
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The so-called “Big Tech” industry has dramatically improved our daily lives, but at what cost? Few people have gotten a closer look at these compa...
Fighting Poverty And Pandemics, with Nobel Economist Michael Kremer
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The solutions to global poverty can appear obvious, even if they’re difficult to implement. But, as University of Chicago economist Michael Kremer h...
Why Life After Incarceration Is Just Another Prison, with Reuben Jonathan Miller
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For the more than 20 million people with a felony record, incarceration doesn’t end at the prison gate. They enter what University of Chicago schola...
Anthony Fauci On What We Need To Get Over COVID-19
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Anthony 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 even...
The Ethics of COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution, with Laurie Zoloth
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The coronavirus pandemic has raised countless ethical questions: How do we balance restricting freedoms with protecting others, how do we ethically di...
The Doomsday Clock’s ‘Historic Wake-Up Call,’ With Rachel Bronson
11 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Doomsday Clock has been set at 100 seconds to midnight—as close to total destruction as we were in 2020. But after a year of increasingly danger...
Unraveling the Mystery of Life’s Origins on Earth, with Jack Szostak
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What are the biggest questions in science today: Can we cure cancer, solve the climate crisis, make it to Mars? For Nobel laureate Jack Szostak, the ...
The Urgent Need to Reinvest in American Research, with Barbara Snyder
14 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our podcast is all about research. Every episode we investigate what scholars have discovered and why it matters. But we’re going to get meta on thi...
Getting Out Of The Lab With John List
22 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Our team is taking some time off to be with their families for the holidays. But, just in case you have a long flight, car ride, or maybe need somethi...
How Alternate Reality Games Are Changing The Real World with Patrick Jagoda and Kristen Schilt
10 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What is the most popular form of media today: Movies? Music? Books? Nope, it’s video games. With 2.5 billion gamers today, games are set to be the t...
The Science of Empathy, with Peggy Mason
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With so many contentious issues in our deeply polarized world, the real or virtual Thanksgiving dinner table may be a hard place to find a lot of empa...
Big Brains Presents: The "Capitalisn't" Podcast
20 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we’re featuring another University of Chicago Podcast Network show. It’s called Capitalisn’t. Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the...
What Remains Unanswered After The 2020 Election, with William Howell and Luigi Zingales
11 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It’s hard to think of a presidential election that has raised as many questions as 2020. What do these results tell us about the views and desires o...
When Governments Share Their Secrets—And When They Don't, with Austin Carson
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When should a government choose to reveal a secret—or conceal it? Your knee-jerk reaction may be to say they should never hide anything from the pub...
How We Can Fix a Fractured Supreme Court, with Geoffrey Stone
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Supreme Court today may be more politicized than any other time in U.S. history. With the expected confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Presid...
Correcting History: Native Americans Tell Their Own Stories
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Since their inception, natural history museums have struggled with how to represent Native Americans and their culture. People from these communities ...
The Future of Voting And The 2020 Election, with Anthony Fowler
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The 2020 presidential election this November is happening amid an unprecedented pandemic. As states scramble to scale up mail-in voting, President Tru...
Why The Quantum Internet Could Change Everything, with David Awschalom
03 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine a new technology that could create unbreakable encryption, supercharge the development of AI, and radically expedite the development of drug t...
How Loneliness and Isolation Affect Your Health, with Prof. Linda Waite
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The quarantine to stem the tide of the coronavirus pandemic has left many people trapped inside, alone. Loneliness and isolation were already a major ...
The Way You Talk—And What It Says About You, with Prof. Katherine Kinzler
13 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The way we talk is probably not something most of us spend a lot of time thinking about, but when it comes to communicating, what we’re saying may o...
From LSD to Ecstasy, How Psychedelics Are Altering Therapy, with Prof. Harriet de Wit
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
People have been taking psychoactive drugs since the beginning of human history, but there hasn’t been a lot of good scientific study of these subst...
How Can We Achieve Real Police Reform?
16 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What are we going to do about police misconduct? Many are calling for a total defunding of the police, while others are looking for systems to enhance...
Why We're Obsessed With Conspiracy Theories
02 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There have always been, and probably always will be, conspiracy theories, but we’ve certainty seen a dramatic increase this year. Misinformation ar...
Black Lives Matter Protests: Hope for the Future?
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the last few weeks, our country has been rocked by nationwide protests following the killing of George Floyd, and many other black people, at the h...
What Historic Pandemics Could Teach Us About Coronavirus, with Ada Palmer
08 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What happens to the world after a pandemic? Lots of experts have been talking about what we may be able to expect after COVID-19 from the 1918 Spanish...
A Crisis Management Expert’s Advice on Handling Coronavirus
21 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Our society has always relied on leaders to effectively manage crises. But with the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging society, it’s more important than eve...
How Students and Schools Can Recover From Coronavirus, with Elaine Allensworth
12 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The coronavirus pandemic has taken a toll on our students. As we move into the summer, schools will need to understand the best way to address these i...
Trump, Coronavirus and the Cost of Ineffective Government, With William Howell
30 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the most profound challenges in our world. One of the most prominent has been governmental dysfunction. As dire...
How Coronavirus Is Exposing Our Racial Disparities, with Monica Peek
21 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most tragic aspects of the coronavirus outbreak has been the disproportionate effect COVID-19 has had on communities of color in cities ar...
Coronavirus Shows Why We Need To Rethink Health Care, with Kate Baicker
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The coronavirus outbreak has devastated many sectors of our society, and brought many of the issues we were facing before the pandemic to the forefro...
What Rats Can Teach Us About Empathy and Racism, with Peggy Mason
10 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we feel empathy for some people, but not others? Where does this feeling of empathy come from? These questions have been the focus of one Unive...
Why the Coronavirus Could Send China’s Economy Back to the 1980s With Chang-Tai Hsieh
25 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The outbreak of the coronavirus in China is a global tragedy. While much of the attention has been on the disease itself, many global experts have bee...
Why The Doomsday Clock Is Closer To Apocalypse Than Ever With Rachel Bronson
12 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Since its inception following World War II, the Doomsday Clock has measured our time until apocalypse in minutes. This year, for the first time, the...
Vladimir Putin’s Number One Enemy With Bill Browder
27 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
University of Chicago alumnus Bill Browder’s story sounds like the plot of a Hollywood thriller—except it’s all true. He just wanted to be a bus...
How Google and Facebook Are Ruining Capitalism, with Luigi Zingales
13 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales often says that only an immigrant like himself can really appreciate American capitalism. In his native...
How Quantum Technology Could Change Our Future With David Awschalom
30 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In October of 2019, Google announced their supercomputer had reached quantum supremacy. With that announcement, and as we take a short break for the h...
The Myths Of Millennial Voters With Cathy Cohen
16 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Every election year, poll after poll tries to predict where millennials stand politically. As we head into 2020, we'd like to replay this episode with...
Why Some Nations Prosper and Others Fail, with James Robinson
02 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a simple question to ask, but seems impossible to answer: What causes one nation to succeed and another to fail? What exactly are the origins o...
The Hunt for Alien Life and Exoplanets, with David Charbonneau
18 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Since the beginning of human history, we’ve looked up at the stars and wondered: Are we alone? No other generation has been able to find an answer,...
Why Chasing The Good Life Is Holding Us Back With Lauren Berlant
04 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For most Americans, the driving force in their personal and public life is a desire to attain the “good life”. But what if our attachment to that ...
Saving Our Cities By Studying A Million Neighborhoods With Luis Bettencourt
23 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the last decade, there has been a mass migration of people into urban areas across the globe. This rapid urbanization has been increasingly unsus...
Why Talking to Strangers Will Make You Happier With Nicholas Epley
07 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 Chica...
Leading Presidential Scholar Analyzes Trump Impeachment
27 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been a historic week, with news that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has officially opened an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. There...
The Politics of Archaeology In Iraq With Christopher Woods
23 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The looting of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad became one of the defining moments of the second Iraq War. Christopher Woods, the director of th...
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg On Polarization, Discrimination and Her Favorite Dissent
09 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
One of the incredible perks of making a podcast at a place like the University of Chicago is the opportunity to feature some of the incredible guests ...
Why Your Social Life is a Matter of Life and Death with Linda Waite
26 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Is it possible that having lunch with your friends is just as important in keeping you alive as exercising? That’s what University of Chicago profes...
Revolutionizing Economics By Studying People In The Real World With John List
12 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve played Candy Crush, flown on United Airlines, or taken an Uber or Lyft, you’ve been in one of Prof. John List’s experiments without...
The Unknown History Of The White Power Movement With Kathleen Belew
29 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We're taking a summer break during July, but we'll be back in August with new episodes telling the stories of leading research with some of the world'...
The Missing Link In Evolution with Neil Shubin
15 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin spent six years in the Arctic searching for a fossil that could be a missing link between sea and land animals. Shu...
Guest Show - No Jargon
01 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We're taking a summer break during July, but we'll be back in August with new episodes telling the stories of leading research with some of the world'...
Trump and the Changing Power of the Presidency with William Howell
17 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If you want to better understand how Trump has forever changed the American presidency, the history of impeachment, or how to fix the dysfunction in o...
How the Loss of Community Threatens Society With Raghuram Rajan
03 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
UChicago economist Raghuram Rajan became infamous for predicting the 2008 financial collapse three years before it happened. Rajan says that there a...
The Science of Conspiracy Theories And Political Polarization With Eric Oliver
20 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The “birthers”, “Pizzagate”, anti-vaxxers. Since the election of Donald Trump, it’s seemed that belief in conspiracy theories is on the rise...
A Modern Medical Miracle with Drs. Valluvan Jeevanandam and Talia Baker
06 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Doctor Valluvan Jeevanandam says that transplantation is a “spiritual journey.” One person’s tragic loss leads to the another’s second chance ...
An Archaeological Riddle In The Sahara With Paul Sereno
15 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When dinosaur hunter and paleontologist Paul Sereno discovered an ancient mass gravesite in the sands of the Sahara, he knew he had to excavate and sa...
Tiny Creatures, Big Discoveries With Nipam Patel
01 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Since the late 1800s, if you were serious about studying biology you went to the Marine Biological Laboratory. The discoveries made there have led to ...
The Hidden Dangers of Artificial Intelligence with Ben Zhao
18 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The development of artificial intelligence has begun to feel inevitable and promising. But University of Chicago computer scientist, Ben Zhao, has spe...
Lessons From Our Country’s Largest School Closing with Eve L. Ewing
04 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In her book Ghosts In The Schoolyard, University of Chicago scholar Eve Ewing asks a central question about the 2013 mass closings of Chicago Public...
Simple Solutions To Address Social Issues with Harold Pollack
18 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
University of Chicago Professor Harold Pollack may be famous for his “financial index card”, but it’s his application of simple solutions to com...
What We’re Getting Wrong About Millennials With Cathy Cohen
04 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Every election year, poll after poll tries to predict where millennials stand politically. But Prof. Cathy Cohen of the University of Chicago says so...
What Ripples in Space-Time Tell Us About the Universe with Daniel Holz
21 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 litera...
Vietnam and the Rise of the White Power Movement with Kathleen Belew
07 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The revelation for historian Kathleen Belew came while researching a 1979 anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in Greensboro, North Carolina that turned deadly whe...
Big Brains: Back in 2019
23 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 s...
Climate Change’s Human Cost With Michael Greenstone
10 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As climate change continues to stir concern and debate around the world, Prof. Michael Greenstone knows the importance of using his research to better...
David Axelrod on Why ‘Democracy is Messy’ and the Future of Politics
26 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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’...
How Talk Builds Babies’ Brains with Dana Suskind
12 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When Prof. Dana Suskind first began implanting devices called cochlear implants on babies who couldn’t hear, she quickly noticed something about her...
What Makes Us Uniquely Human with Neuroscientist Bobby Kasthuri
29 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Neuroscientist Bobby Kasthuri wants to do the near impossible: map the entire human brain. That means identifying each of the trillions of neural conn...
From Sci-Fi to Reality, Quantum Technology with David Awschalom
15 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 sc...
Future of Higher Education and College Access with Robert J. Zimmer
01 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As president of the University of Chicago, Robert J. Zimmer has a unique view to the challenges and opportunities facing higher education, and one of ...
The Hidden Abuse of U.S. Immigration with Claudia Flores
17 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
UChicago Law professor Claudia Flores has spent a career advocating for human rights of vulnerable populations around the world, from East Timor to Me...
SCOTUS Nears Unimaginable Era with Geoffrey Stone
05 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
UChicago Law professor Geoffrey Stone has an intimate knowledge of the Supreme Court. From his time as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice William J...
Special University of Chicago Convocation Podcast featuring Valerie Jarrett and Marianne Bertrand
12 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A special Convocation edition podcast from the UChicago Podcast Network, featuring the full speeches given by Class Day speaker Valerie Jarrett, disti...
Special University of Chicago Convocation Podcast with Student Speaker Andrea Popova
12 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A special Convocation edition podcast from the UChicago Podcast Network, featuring an interview with student speaker Andrea Popova, followed by the co...