With a Side of Knowledge

We typically host scholars, makers, and professionals for informal conversations about their work—formerly over brunch, currently over Zoom.

But for these bonus mini-episodes, we change things up a bit, asking Notre Dame researchers and staff to talk about something that both makes them happy and has no direct connection to what they do at the university.

In other words, if you thought a podcast with a waffle for a logo couldn’t get even more casual, you’d be wrong.

Here, Liz Harter, Notre Dame’s social media manager, shares the genesis of her enduring love for *NSYNC and other early 2000s pop music, and how, in a quirky twist of fate, that proved to be an asset professionally.

And as a bonus on top of a bonus, Liz has curated a Spotify playlist of eight of her must-have pop hits just for us. It includes four *NSYNC tracks for reasons you’ll understand shortly.

LINK

• Spotify Playlist: Liz’s Pop Picks
• Episode Transcript

Before the pandemic, we were the show that invited scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for informal conversations about their work, and we look forward to being that show again one day. But for now, we’re recording remotely to maintain physical distancing.

It’s still a pretty fantastic job.

Jennifer Dasal is curator of modern and contemporary art at the North Carolina Museum of Art. After graduating from the University of California, Davis, she earned an M.A. in art history from Notre Dame and worked as assistant to the curator of Western art at Notre Dame’s Snite Museum. So this episode was something of a homecoming—just without the actual coming back to campus.

Jennifer is the author of the book ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History, published earlier this year by Penguin Books. ArtCurious the book was inspired by ArtCurious the podcast, a show she launched more than four years ago and has written, produced, and hosted ever since.

In this podcast, Jennifer introduced us to several of the fascinating stories she unwinds in the book, ranging from the CIA’s connection to Abstract Expressionism and everything you thought you knew about Norman Rockwell to the mystery of the Mona Lisa’s twin sister. There was also the matter of whether we know who actually created what some in the art world consider the most influential piece of the 20th century—which, oh by the way, happens to be an upside-down urinal.

And as descriptive as that last sentence sounds, talking about visual art in an audio medium isn’t usually so simple. That makes what Jennifer does on episodes of ArtCurious all the more impressive, and why we made sure to ask her about the podcast, as well.

LINKS

• Jennifer’s Book: ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History
• Jennifer’s Podcast: ArtCurious
• Episode Transcript

Before the pandemic, we were the show that invited scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for informal conversations about their work, and we look forward to being that show again one day. But for now, we’re recording remotely to maintain physical distancing.

It’s still a pretty fantastic job.

Kirsten Martin is a faculty member in Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business and a faculty affiliate of the Notre Dame Technology Ethics Center. Recognized nationally for her expertise in privacy, technology, and corporate responsibility, she joined the University this fall and holds the William P. and Hazel B. White Center Chair of Technology Ethics.

Kirsten’s research, including studies of online privacy and the ethics of data aggregation, has been funded by the National Science Foundation, and she serves as the technology and business ethics editor for the Journal of Business Ethics. Earlier this year, Columbia University Press published her co-authored book The Power of AND: Responsible Business Without Trade-Offs.

Kirsten and host Ted Fox started their conversation with what does and does not tend to bother people about their data being gathered through websites and apps—and how most of us don’t realize the extent to which that’s happening. They spent some time on her research on location data in particular.

From there, they talked about things we, as consumers, can do to at least mitigate the spread of our personal data, and why she’s skeptical of any argument from industry that contends governmental regulation would be too costly. They wrapped up with a question inspired by her new book—namely:

When it comes to business, who is a business in business for?

LINKS

• Kirsten’s TEDx Talk: “It’s Not Their Story to Tell: Why Companies Should Respect Privacy Online”
• Kirsten’s Coauthored Book: The Power of AND: Responsible Business Without Trade-Offs
• Episode Transcript

We’re going to go out on a limb and assume that you’ve heard Election Day is next week. It’s kind of hard to miss.

And while we don’t have a new election-themed episode for you, we did release two interviews earlier this year that we thought would be worth combining into one supersized pod now—not only because they’re still timely, but also because the guests have an interesting connection to one another.

So here, we’re starting out with the episode “On Reporting and Politics,” which came out on June 11th and features Robert Costa of The Washington Post and Washington Week. In the course of listening to it, you’ll get a preview of sorts of episode two with author and retired Notre Dame professor Bob Schmuhl, Robert’s mentor, who talked to us “On the Presidency and Possibility” for an episode that was released January 30th.

Whether you’re listening to these conversations for the first time or checking them out again, we think you’ll enjoy them just as much as we do.

• Robert Costa Episode Notes and Transcript
• Bob Schmuhl Episode Notes and Transcript

Before the pandemic, we were the show that invited scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for informal conversations about their work, and we look forward to being that show again one day. But for now, we’re recording remotely to maintain physical distancing.

It’s still a pretty fantastic job.

Lisa Fazio is an assistant professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University. She and her team in the Building Knowledge Lab study how children and adults learn new information, true and false, and how to correct errors in people’s knowledge.

Lisa’s research has applications in both the educational environment of the classroom and out in the world, including when it comes to how our brains process the inexhaustible stream of headlines, stories, videos, memes, likes, shares, and whatever else the Internet serves up to us at all hours of the day and night.

Lisa and host Ted Fox framed their conversation around a study she and one of her colleagues at Vanderbilt published in the September 2020 issue of the journal Psychological Science. It’s a paper that builds on previous work by her and many others related to how the number of times we hear a statement repeated impacts whether we think it’s true … even if it’s not.

In addition to implications for how we consume information on social media and elsewhere, this illusory truth effect has a through line to Lisa’s research in education. And as she explains, all of us—no matter our age or our beliefs—must navigate the same internal mechanism that associates repetition with truth.

Whether this inclination serves us well or causes problems depends on the circumstances. But when it is problematic, such as in the case of misinformation, Lisa suggests a counter strategy that befits this, a podcast founded on the idea of brunch. It’s called:

The truth sandwich.

LINKS

• Preprint Version of Psychological Science Paper: “The Effect of Repetition on Truth Judgments Across Development” 
• Episode Transcript

Before the pandemic, we were the show that invited scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for informal conversations about their work, and we look forward to being that show again one day. But for now, we’re recording remotely to maintain physical distancing.

It’s still a pretty fantastic job.

Lauren Wilkinson is the author of the novel American Spy, which was published by Random House in 2019 and subsequently named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review, Time, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, and BuzzFeed, among others. Including it on his summer reading list, former President Barack Obama described it as “a whole lot more than just a spy thriller, wrapping together the ties of family, of love, and of country.”

In addition to penning a critically acclaimed novel, Lauren has taught writing at Columbia University and the Fashion Institute of Technology and was a 2013 Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellow. Her writing has appeared in publications like Granta, The Believer, New York magazine, and The New York Times, and she also writes for television.

During this conversation, Lauren and host Ted Fox talked about some of the big themes in American Spy, including how we understand the term “American,” as well as the seven-year process she went through to write the book. That story involves a surprising connection between her novel and one of those by one of our past guests, Pulitzer-winner Marilynne Robinson.

Lastly, and on a completely unrelated note, at the very end of the interview, you might catch Lauren’s subtle nod to the New York City diner of Seinfeld fame that is Ted’s go-to background on Zoom.

We guess you could say we believe that, if you can’t go to coffee, you bring the iconic TV sitcom coffee shop to you.

LINKS

• Lauren’s novel: American Spy
• Episode transcript
• With a Side of Knowledge episode 2.1 with Marilynne Robinson: “On Writing and Saying Something True”

Before the pandemic, we were the show that invited scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for informal conversations about their work, and we look forward to being that show again one day. But for now, we’re recording remotely to maintain physical distancing.

It’s still a pretty fantastic job.

Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan are the authors of four novels, most recently The Heir Affair, which was published this summer by Grand Central and is the sequel to their bestseller, The Royal We. Much like the two of them, the books are witty and hilarious, following the lives of a fictitious, modern-day British royal family from the perspective of a young American woman who falls in love with the heir to the throne while both are studying at Oxford.

And it’s fitting that Heather—a 1999 Notre Dame grad, by the way—and Jessica should write about royals because they are something akin to internet royalty themselves. They are the creators of Go Fug Yourself, the iconic website that bears witness to “fantastically ugly” celebrity fashion. Their work has also appeared in publications ranging from New York magazine to Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, W magazine, and Glamour.

Heather and Jessica talked to host Ted Fox about their new book and how they work together as a writing team as well as what makes for successful characters and the challenges of writing a sequel. The three made some time at the end to discuss the do’s and don’ts of covering celebrity fashion, too.

As for where they started, Ted had the opportunity to see just how well Heather and Jessica know each other’s writing.

LINKS

• Heather and Jessica’s two royal novels: The Royal We and The Heir Affair
• Heather and Jessica’s website: gofugyourself.com
• Episode Transcript

Before the pandemic, we were the show that invited scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for informal conversations about their work, and we look forward to being that show again one day. But for now, we’re recording remotely to maintain physical distancing.

It’s still a pretty fantastic job.

Alyssa Bereznak is a staff writer for theringer.com. She covers tech and culture, with a focus on media, celebrity, and how the internet is changing our lives. All these interests came together in a podcast she recently hosted and reported for The Ringer about a trivia app for your smartphone that aimed to do nothing less than change the future of television.

As you’d probably guess, it didn’t quite get there. Alyssa’s podcast, “Boom/Bust: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia,” tells that story while delving into the workings of our attention economy across eight compelling and insightful episodes.

She and host Ted Fox started their conversation with HQ Trivia, its meteoric rise to daily must-watch status for millions of people, and what was on the other side of that peak. That then led to them discussing the experience of making a podcast during the pandemic and other elements of our current media and internet landscape, including what happens at The Ringer when one of the biggest musicians in the world announces out of nowhere she has a new album coming that day at midnight.

And we promise you, Alyssa’s tweet-length review of Taylor Swift’s folklore is not one to be missed.

LINKS

• Alyssa’s Podcast: “Boom/Bust: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia”
• Alyssa’s Writing for The Ringer
• Episode Transcript

Before the pandemic, we were the show that invited scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for informal conversations about their work, and we look forward to being that show again one day. But for now, we’re recording remotely to maintain physical distancing.

It’s still a pretty fantastic job.

Deb Amlen is the head writer and senior editor of “Wordplay,” the crossword column of The New York Times, where she’ll teach you how to be a better solver while also making you laugh. She’s particularly well-suited to this work.

The author of the humor book It's Not PMS, It's You!, Deb got her start in crosswords making puzzles for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers. She’s also been a senior columnist for Yahoo! Tech, where she wrote the humor column “Buzzology,” and was on the original constructing team that made crosswords for The Onion’s A.V. Club.

We connected for this episode because Deb was gracious enough to take some time for host Ted Fox, one of those ill-fated souls who loves solving—or more accurately, attempting to solve—The New York Times crossword puzzle most days of the week. Their conversation wound its way from puzzles as a form of creative expression and even a metaphor for handling the challenges of life to more practical matters like how crosswords are constructed and strategies for getting better at them. And on that getting better note, let us just say:

Beware the rebus.

LINKS

• The New York Times “Wordplay” Section
• Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory (Facebook Group)
• Episode Transcript

Before the pandemic, we were the show that invited scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for informal conversations about their work, and we look forward to being that show again one day. But for now, we’re recording remotely to maintain physical distancing.

It's still a pretty fantastic job.

If you’ve listened to any of our first 50 or so episodes, you may have heard host Ted Fox say at the end that “With a Side of Knowledge is a production of the Office of the Provost” here at Notre Dame. You also may have wondered:

What exactly is a provost? If so, it’s your lucky day.

The provost is the University’s chief academic officer. And we’ve chosen this episode, our season four premiere, to tell you that because you’re about to hear from Notre Dame’s new provost, Marie Lynn Miranda.

Marie Lynn succeeded Tom Burish on July 1, but she spent the several months before her official start date getting to know her new university and helping Notre Dame navigate the myriad challenges presented by the coronavirus.

Like so many here and elsewhere, a lot of Marie Lynn’s time these days continues to be devoted to how to best meet these challenges. But as she noted in the course of our conversation, she doesn’t want the demands of the moment to keep Notre Dame from also attending to its broader mission as a university.

We thought about this interview in much the same way, wanting to give you a chance to get to know Marie Lynn Miranda the award-winning teacher, the founder of the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative, and most definitely the person, in addition to the chief academic officer at Notre Dame.

That meant talking to her about not only what she could take from being provost at Rice University during Hurricane Harvey and apply to leading during a pandemic, but also about why she loves her dogs so much. We covered her ongoing and active research in public health—including an Indiana COVID-19 registry you can find linked below—as well as the time she quoted A League of Their Own to her son’s Little League team. We also discussed institutional diversity and inclusion … and how she still trades emails with Coach K at Duke.

As for her Notre Dame story, that actually started some 60 years ago.

LINKS

• Research Study: Indiana COVID-19 Registry
• Episode Transcript