We think of language as a way to express what we think, but language can actually shape how we think. An estimated 7,000 distinct languages are spoken around the world, and many of them are unstudied or undescribed. It is estimated that there are already over 500 extinct languages. The loss of a language is no less worrisome than the loss of a species. In the first of two episodes, our hosts talk to the cognitive psychologist Asifa Majid about linguistic diversity and why we must preserve it.

This episode was recorded on June 2, 2023.

Published on November 8, 2023.

Episode Transcript

Asifa Majid is a professor of cognitive science at the University of Oxford who studies the relationship among language, culture, and mind. At Radcliffe, she worked on a book that will synthesize her wide-ranging empirical work to elucidate which aspects of cognition are fundamentally shared and which are language- or culture-specific.

Asifa Majid: Fellowship Biography

Asifa Majid: Radcliffe Fellow’s Presentation

Ivelisse Estrada is your cohost and the editorial lead at Harvard Radcliffe Institute (HRI), where she edits Radcliffe Magazine.

Alan Catello Grazioso is the executive producer of BornCurious and the senior multimedia manager at HRI.

Jeff Hayash is a freelance sound engineer and recordist.

Marcus Knoke is a multimedia intern at HRI, a Harvard College student, and the general manager of Harvard Radio Broadcasting.

Heather Min is your cohost and the senior manager of digital strategy at HRI.

Anna Soong is the production assistant at HRI.

In a wide-ranging conversation, the cultural critic and essayist Tressie McMillan Cottom and the legal scholar and Radcliffe Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin explore such topics as what it means to exist as a Black woman in the world, why Cottom keeps her grandmother in mind when writing her essays, and pop culture’s relationship to the aesthetics of power. The conversation was part of the Kim and Judy Davis Dean’s Lecture Series at Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

This episode was recorded on March 30, 2023.

Published on November 3, 2023.

Episode Transcript

Tressie McMillan Cottom is a New York Times columnist, a 2020 MacArthur Fellow, a sociologist, a public thinker, and a professor with the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Tomiko Brown-Nagin is dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute, the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, and a professor of history in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Tressie McMillan Cottom: Personal Website

Tressie McMillan Cottom on TikTok

Tomiko Brown-Nagin: Leadership Biography

Ivelisse Estrada is your cohost and the editorial lead at Harvard Radcliffe Institute (HRI), where she edits Radcliffe Magazine.

Alan Catello Grazioso is the executive producer of BornCurious and the senior multimedia manager at HRI.

Marcus Knoke is a multimedia intern at HRI, a Harvard College student, and the general manager of Harvard Radio Broadcasting.

Heather Min is your cohost and the senior manager of digital strategy at HRI.

Anna Soong is the production assistant at HRI.

Special thanks to Kevin Grady and Max Doyle from Radcliffe's event streaming team for their invaluable contributions to recording this podcast episode.

What do bodily injuries tell us about borders, violence, and our society? In this episode, Omar Dewachi and Ieva Jusionyte talk about the role of ethnography in answering that question. Both are anthropologists who conduct site-specific work in areas of conflict.

This episode was recorded on April 20, 2023.

Released on October 26, 2023.

Episode Transcript

Omar Dewachi examines the effects of war on medicine and public health in the Middle East. He is a medical doctor, holds a master’s in public health, and earned a doctoral degree in anthropology. Dewachi is an associate professor of medical anthropology at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Ieva Jusionyte has focused her work on political issues at national borders, most recently that of the United States and Mexico. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of legal and medical anthropology, and she has trained as a paramedic and EMT. She is the Watson Family University Associate Professor of International Security and Anthropology at Brown University.

Omar Dewachi: Fellowship Biography

Omar Dewachi: Radcliffe Fellow’s Presentation

Ieva Jusionyte: Fellowship Biography

Radcliffe Magazine: Following the Guns South

Ieva Jusionyte: Radcliffe Fellow’s Presentation

Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border

Ivelisse Estrada is your cohost and the editorial lead at Harvard Radcliffe Institute (HRI), where she edits Radcliffe Magazine.

Alan Catello Grazioso is the executive producer of BornCurious and the senior multimedia manager at HRI.

Jeff Hayash is a freelance sound engineer and recordist.

Marcus Knoke is a multimedia intern at HRI, a Harvard College student, and the general manager of Harvard Radio Broadcasting.

Heather Min is your cohost and the senior manager of digital strategy at HRI.

Anna Soong is the production assistant at HRI.

For 25 years, Lisa I. Iezzoni’s research has focused on improving the lived experiences, healthcare quality, and health equity of adults with disability, particularly mobility disability. It’s only recently, though, that research she conducted revealed the depths of medical inequity for people with disabilities. In this conversation, our hosts ask Iezzoni about her life’s work—and the difficulties in making healthcare more accessible.

This episode was recorded on November 16, 2022.

Released on September 21, 2023.

Episode Transcript

Lisa I. Iezzoni is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, based at the Health Policy Research Center and the Mongan Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Lisa I. Iezzoni: Fellowship Biography

Lisa I. Iezzoni: Radcliffe Fellow’s Presentation

These Doctors Admit They Don’t Want Patients with Disabilities, (New York Times, 10/19/22)

Ivelisse Estrada is your cohost and the editorial lead at Harvard Radcliffe Institute (HRI), where she edits Radcliffe Magazine.

Alan Catello Grazioso is the executive producer of BornCurious and the senior multimedia manager at HRI.

Jeff Hayash is a freelance sound engineer and recordist.

Marcus Knoke is a multimedia intern at HRI, a Harvard College student, and the general manager of Harvard Radio Broadcasting.

Heather Min is your cohost and the senior manager of digital strategy at HRI.

Anna Soong is the production assistant at HRI.

Cartoons have evolved since their Sunday-edition comic strip days. With the popularity of graphic novels on the rise, visual storytelling is becoming ever more sophisticated. In this episode, our hosts talk with the cartoonist Ebony Flowers about her journey, motivation, and process as she marries drawing with the written word.

This episode was recorded on June 22, 2023.

Released on September 21, 2023.

Episode Transcript

Ebony Flowers is a cartoonist and ethnographer who earned a PhD in curriculum and instruction. Her most recent book, Hot Comb (Drawn and Quarterly, 2019), is a collection of stories about Black women’s hair, and her creative fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Paris Review. She is currently editing her second book, tentatively titled Baltimore Brownfield (Drawn and Quarterly, forthcoming). As a Radcliffe fellow, Flowers worked on a multimodal graphic novel that will be read through both sight and touch.

Ebony Flowers: Fellowship Biography

Ebony Flowers: Personal Website

Hot Comb

Paris Review: My Lil Sister Lena

Ivelisse Estrada is your cohost and the editorial lead at Harvard Radcliffe Institute (HRI), where she edits Radcliffe Magazine.

Alan Catello Grazioso is the executive producer of BornCurious and the senior multimedia manager at HRI.

Jeff Hayash is a freelance sound engineer and recordist.

Marcus Knoke is a multimedia intern at HRI, a Harvard College student, and the general manager of Harvard Radio Broadcasting.

Heather Min is your cohost and the senior manager of digital strategy at HRI.

Anna Soong is the production assistant at HRI.

Special thanks to Cabin 3 Media for their invaluable contributions to the editing of this podcast episode.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug overdose deaths have risen fivefold in the past two decades. What’s driving this crisis, and what can be done to alleviate it? Our hosts discuss the issue with Liz Chiarello, a sociologist who is finishing a book about how the dual US crises of pain and overdoses have transformed law enforcement and healthcare.

This episode was recorded on June 30, 2023.

Released on September 21, 2023.

Episode Transcript

Liz Chiarello, an associate professor of sociology at Saint Louis University, is a medical sociologist and sociolegal scholar whose research lies at the intersection of healthcare and law. During her fellowship year, Chiarello worked on a book about the US overdose and pain crises, using the overdose crisis as a case study in how medical providers make decisions about opioid provision—and in how these decisions affect patient care.

Liz Chiarello: Full Biography

Liz Chiarello: Radcliffe Fellow’s Presentation

Radcliffe Magazine: This Is Your Country on Drugs

Radcliffe Story: Eclipsed by Virus, Addiction Still Shadows the Land

Ivelisse Estrada is your cohost and the editorial lead at Harvard Radcliffe Institute (HRI), where she edits Radcliffe Magazine.

Alan Catello Grazioso is the executive producer of BornCurious and the senior multimedia manager at HRI.

Jeff Hayash is a freelance sound engineer and recordist.

Marcus Knoke is a multimedia intern at HRI, a Harvard College student, and the general manager of Harvard Radio Broadcasting.

Heather Min is your cohost and the senior manager of digital strategy at HRI.

Anna Soong is the production assistant at HRI.

Special thanks to Cabin 3 Media for their invaluable contributions to the editing of this podcast episode.