MIT Open Aggregated Podcast Feed

MIT Open Aggregated Podcast Feed

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MIT Open Aggregated Podcast Feed episodes

  • Sports Medicine and Orthopedics at MIT Health

    The Sports Medicine and Orthopedics practice at MIT Health provides an array of progressive treatment options for both athletes and non-athletic community members. Dr. Shawn Ferullo, Dr. Angelene Elliott, and Dr. Christian Rose talk about the practice’s approach to comprehensive, coordinated musculoskeletal and orthopedic support for MIT students, employees, retirees and beyond.

    11 min
  • Pediatrics at MIT Health

    MIT Health offers care for even the youngest members of the MIT community. Pediatricians Rosemarie Roqué Gordon and Ed Levy join us to talk about overall pediatric services available at MIT Health – how they work with parents to keep children healthy and thriving, types of appointments offered and more!

    9 min
  • Kids Across the Spectrums: Growing Up Autistic in the Digital Age
    Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Meryl Alper, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University, about her recent book, Kids Across the Spectrums: Growing Up Autistic in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2023). In addition to being a professor, Alper is also an educational researcher who has worked over the past 20 years to make inclusive and accessible learning products with media organizations such as Sesame Workshop, Nickelodeon, and PBS KIDS. Vinsel and Alper talk about disability studies, the nature of Alper’s empirical work, the arc of Alper’s career, including her future projects.
    1 hr 14 min
  • Anna Lora-Wainwright, "Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China" (MIT Press, 2021)
    Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China (MIT Press, 2021) by Dr. Anna Lora-Wainwright digs deep into the paradoxes, ambivalences, and wide range of emotions and strategies people develop to respond to toxicity in everyday life.
    An examination of the daily grind of living with pollution in rural China and of the varying forms of activism that develop in response. Residents of rapidly industrializing rural areas in China live with pollution every day. Villagers drink obviously tainted water and breathe visibly dirty air, afflicted by a variety of ailments—from arthritis to nosebleeds—that they ascribe to the effects of industrial pollution. In Resigned Activism, Anna Lora-Wainwright explores the daily grind of living with pollution in rural China and the varying forms of activism that develop in response. This revised edition offers expanded acknowledgment of the contributions of Lora-Wainwright’s collaborators in China. Lora-Wainwright finds that claims of health or environmental damage are politically sensitive, and that efforts to seek redress are frustrated by limited access to scientific evidence, growing socioeconomic inequalities, and complex local realities. Villagers, feeling powerless, often come to accept pollution as part of the environment; their activism is tempered by their resignation. Drawing on fieldwork done with teams of collaborators, Lora-Wainwright offers three case studies of “resigned activism” in rural China, examining the experiences of villagers who live with the effects of phosphorous mining and fertilizer production, lead and zinc mining, and electronic waste processing. 
    The book also includes extended summaries of the in-depth research carried out by Ajiang Chen and his team in some of China’s “cancer villages,” village-sized clusters of high cancer incidence. These cases make clear the staggering human costs of development and the deeply uneven distribution of costs and benefits that underlie China’s economic power.
    Dr. Elena Sobrino is a lecturer in Anthropology at Tufts University. Her research focuses on the politics of crisis in the American Rust Belt. She is currently teaching classes on science and technology studies, theories and ethnographies of crisis, and global racisms. You can read more about her work at elenasobrino.site.
    47 min
  • Francisco Aboitiz, "A History of Bodies, Brains, and Minds: The Evolution of Life and Consciousness" (MIT Press, 2024)
    Francisco Aboitiz is a professor at the Medical School and the director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Neuroscience at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. A History of Bodies, Brains, and Minds: The Evolution of Life and Consciousness (MIT Press, 2024) tells the story of life and nervous systems. It introduces the conceptual framework and terminology of evolution, gives a great overview of our current knowledge and a thorough discussion of open questions.
    The first part defines two basic concepts: evolution and life. Surprisingly, we learn that the first definition is more straightforward. If you are challenged by some terminology in the later chapters - like phylogeny, ontogeny, or the different types of homology - it is highly recommended to revisit the definitions in the first chapter.
    The story begins in the second part. Chapter 3 introduces multiple theories on how the first cells might have appeared. In the next chapter, these cells start to form more complex, multicellular organisms. Chapter 5 is dedicated to the main characteristics and early history of neurons.
    In the third part, we get acquinted with more complex animals. In chapter 6 with the bilaterians, in chapter 7 and 8 with the vertebrates and their nervous system, in chapter 9 with mammals. Chapter 10 provides a deep dive into the neocortex and its role in cognition.
    The fourth part of the book is about "a singular ape". Chapter 11 describes the history of primates, focusing on Hominins. It goes into details on various aspects like walking, the growth of brains, toolmaking, and social life. Chapter 12 describes the evolution of vocal communication. Chapter 13 discusses how speech has influenced communication and social life. Chapter 14 explores numerous open questions around consciousness. How to define it? When and how did it emerge in evolution? Which animals are conscious and in which ways? After this long history, chapter 15 arrives in the present and the future. What are some current evolutionary trends? How do cultural and technological changes influence our nervous systems?
    In our conversation with Professor Aboitiz, we focused on a few remarkable milestones in this story. For start, he outlined some theories how life might have begun.
    Then a huge jump in time followed: How the first mammals appeared and survived in a world dominated by dinosaurs. Professor Aboitiz elaborated on how the brains of mammals differ from the brains of other vertebrates. He described the cerebral cortex, a new part in the mammalian brain. The role of senses changed significantly: The early mammals had worse vision, but better smell, touch, and audition compared to other vertebrates. Changes in the anatomy of the head and neck supported these more developed senses. The enhanced olfactory system is also related to the hippocampus, where some new skills appeared: advanced spatial orientation and short-term memory.
    The next milestone we discussed in detail is the appearance of language. Professor Aboitiz shared some fascinating facts about the vocal communication of birds and primates. He explained the connection between toolmaking and language. He described the speech loop and the connection between working memory and talking. He proposes that manual gestures and vocal communication have evolved together, and communication has always been multi-modal.
    The last part of our conversation focused on the current and future situation. How culture and technology has changed our nervous system, e.g. how a brain area is particularly involved in reading. Professor Aboitiz also discussed the more recent technological innovations and their effects on society and the environment. He introduced the social projects conducted by the Interdisciplinary Center for Neuroscience. The project RIEN (Robótica Integral Educativa & Neurociencia) facilitates workshops where kids work in teams with rotating roles to build and program robots.
    1 hr 9 min
  • Jae-Min from South Korea: An Open Learner’s Story

    Jae-Min Hong, our guest for this episode, is a hungry learner with wide-ranging curiosity and a distrust of groupthink. A native of South Korea, she has been fluent in English from childhood, which has opened up many educational possibilities for her. Aiming to widen her cultural horizons, she opted to attend high school in New Zealand; a few years later, she transferred from a Korean university to an American one so she could attend in-person classes during the Covid pandemic. With the help of lecture videos from MIT OpenCourseWare, Jae-Min was able to supplement her formal studies and pursue all the subjects that interest her, from chemistry and thermodynamics through data science and financial technology. She’s now back in South Korea, where she’s finishing a degree in economics at Yonsei University. She feels it’s time for her to really focus her attention on a single field and a single goal, a career in investment banking. But if that doesn’t work out, she says, she can always come back to MIT OpenCourseWare and dip once more into the wealth of resources it has to offer.  

    The Open Learners podcast is produced by Alexis Haut.

    Relevant Resources:

    MIT OpenCourseWare

    The OCW Educator portal

    5.60 Thermodynamics & Kinetics on MIT OpenCourseWare

    15.401 Finance Theory I on MIT OpenCourseWare

    18.06 Linear Algebra on MIT OpenCourseWare

    Prof. Gilbert Strang (MIT faculty page)

    RES.18-005 Highlights of Calculus (including “The Big Picture of Calculus”) on MIT OpenCourseWare

    Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

     

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    Credits

    Sarah Hansen, host and producer 

    Brett Paci, producer  

    Dave Lishansky, producer 

    Jackson Maher, producer

    Show notes by Peter Chipman

    30 min
  • Never Too Much AI: Upwork's Andrew Rabinovich
    Andrew Rabinovich began his career in technology working on AI applications for cancer detection. He also spent time at Google, working on early iterations of products like Google Glass. Now at Upwork, as vice president and head of AI and machine learning, Rabinovich and his team are working to enhance the digital labor platform’s capabilities with AI solutions to enable more sophisticated matching of resources to projects.
    On today’s episode, Andrew shares his views on the ways AI could take on more complex projects while using fewer resources. In the way of AI’s rapid progress, however, are slow advancements in hardware. While AI has made huge strides in cognition, he says, hardware struggles to match its capabilities, especially in wearable tech and robotics. Still, Andrew envisions a future with hyper-personalized digital assistants for everyone. Read the episode transcript here.
     Guest bio
    Andrew Rabinovich is vice president and head of AI and machine learning at Upwork. He previously held R&D leadership positions at Google before joining augmented reality company Magic Leap as head of AI in 2015. In 2020, Rabinovich cofounded Headroom, an AI-powered videoconferencing platform that was acquired by Upwork in 2023. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from University of California, San Diego, and has studied machine learning with an emphasis in computer vision and multimodal AI for over 20 years. He has also authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and patents.
    Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper.
    Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn.
    We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
    36 min
  • Reflecting on 50 Years of MIT CISR—and What We’ve Learned
    Stephanie Woerner reads MIT CISR's October 2024 research briefing, which she co-authored with Peter Weill, Chris Foglia, and Dorothea Gray. See the text version and related content at https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2024_1001_MITCISR50Years_WeillWoernerFogliaGray.
    Abstract: This briefing celebrates the 50th anniversary of the MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR). For 50 years MIT CISR has been a trusted partner of senior IT executives—both learning from them and helping them to create more value in their companies. In the past decade MIT CISR has broadened its engagement to top management teams, digital and data leaders, and boards of directors. Weaving together recollections from long-time business and academic colleagues with responses from a ChatGPT query, we describe the five pillars of MIT CISR’s reputation and include seven lessons learned over the years.
    17 min
  • Jackie Wang, "Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun: An Almanac of Extreme Girlhood" (Semiotext(e), 2023)
    Jackie Wang is a poet, scholar, multimedia artist, and Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is the author of the poetry collection The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void (2021), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; the critical essay collection Carceral Capitalism (Semiotext(e), 2018); and the chapbooks The Twitter Hive Mind Is Dreaming (2018) and Tiny Spelunker of the Oneiro-Womb (2016). Her research is on racial capitalism, surveillance technology, and the political economy of prisons and police.
    Alien Daughters Walk into the Sun: An Almanac of Extreme Girlhood (Semiotext(e), 2023) features the early writings of Jackie Wang, drawn from her early zines, indie-lit crit, and prolific early 2000s blog. Compiled as a field guide, travelogue, essay collection, and weather report, Alien Daughters Walk into the Sun traces Jackie Wang’s trajectory from hard femme to Harvard, from dumpster dives and highway bike rides to dropping out of an MFA program, becoming a National Book Award finalist, and writing her trenchant book Carceral Capitalism. Alien Daughters charts the dream-seeking misadventures of an “odd girl” from Florida who emerged from punk houses and early Tumblr to become the powerful writer she is today. Anarchic and beautifully personal, Alien Daughters is a strange intellectual autobiography that demonstrates Wang's singular self-education: an early life lived where every day and every written word began like the Tarot’s Fool, with a leap of faith.
    1 hr 15 min

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Episodes from podcasts from around MIT