With a Side of Knowledge

We typically invite scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for an informal conversation about their work, and then we turn those brunches into a podcast.

But for these bonus mini-episodes, we change things up a bit, asking Notre Dame researchers to talk about something that both makes them happy and has no direct connection to their academic pursuits.

In other words, if you thought a podcast recorded over brunch couldn’t get even more casual, you’d be wrong.

Here, Richard Jones, Walter H. Annenberg-Edmund P. Joyce Director of Notre Dame’s Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics, and Democracy, and Victoria St. Martin, distinguished visiting journalist with the Gallivan Program and the print publications coordinator with Notre Dame Student Media, join host Ted Fox via Zoom to discuss a musician whose art dared us to love each other for exactly who we are:

Prince.

LINK:

Richard and Victoria’s previous appearance on the podcast: “On Real News and Purple Rain” (ep. 1.4)

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: We invite scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for an informal conversation about their work, and then we turn those brunches into a podcast.

It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

For this, our season 3 finale, we’re turning the virtual interview chair around on Notre Dame alum Robert Costa, national political reporter for The Washington Post and the moderator and managing editor of Washington Week on PBS.

While Robert’s work is the news, he and host Ted Fox talked more about the craft of journalism generally—and political journalism specifically—than everything going on in our country and our world in 2020. We figure you have much better outlets for content like that, such as Robert’s own reporting and that of the journalists from diverse organizations and backgrounds he talks to on Washington Week.

That said, the health disparities magnified by the coronavirus and the recent examples of police brutality are just the latest reminders of how much we need the work and perspectives of African-American journalists in particular. So while it’s not directly related to this episode, we wanted to use this spot to recommend you follow Richard Jones and Victoria St. Martin, formerly of The New York Times and The Washington Post, respectively, and currently shaping the next generation of journalists through their work with students at Notre Dame. We’ve put links to both of their Twitters in the notes below.

And speaking of episode notes, there’s also a video of the late Tim Russert there that you’re going to hear Robert talk about. It’s one of many great stories he shared on pursuing a career as a reporter in the nation’s capital during a time of rapid change in the news industry, a journey that for him has included succeeding the legendary Gwen Ifill at PBS. He also used the provost office at Notre Dame to illustrate how anonymous sourcing works. You know, in case we ever really need to get anything off our chests.

Take good care, and we’ll be talking to you again soon. Because sources close to the podcast tell us there might be some bonus episodes on the way this summer.

LINKS

• Richard Jones’ Twitter: @richard_g_jones
• Victoria St. Martin’s Twitter: @VStMartin
• Robert Costa’s Twitter: @costareports
• Video Excerpts of Tim Russert’s Red Smith Lecture: “When Politicians Meet the Press”
• Full Transcript of Russert Lecture

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: We invite scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for an informal conversation about their work, and then we turn those brunches into a podcast.

It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

An expert on race and technology, Mutale Nkonde is the founding CEO of AI for the People, a nonprofit creative agency. She is currently a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and at Stanford University’s Digital Civil Society Lab. She has also been a fellow at the research institute Data & Society, and her work has been covered by MIT Technology Review, WIRED, and PBS NewsHour, among others.

Mutale and host Ted Fox were supposed to get brunch back in mid-March, when she was scheduled to be a panelist at a conference hosted by the Notre Dame Technology Ethics Center, a new center at the University that supports multi- and interdisciplinary research on questions related to the impact of technology on humanity.

However, like pretty much everything else these last couple of months, that event had to be cancelled. Fortunately, Mutale was still up for doing the podcast remotely, so she and Ted traded waffles for Zoom and had a conversation about artificial intelligence that started out by digging into what AI, machine learning, and deep learning even are. They then talked about the ways this seemingly dispassionate tech can exhibit very real bias—not to mention its implications for privacy and the future of work in the age of COVID-19—as well as her work on Capitol Hill and at Harvard.

As for the three minutes they spent on Netflix’s Tiger King? Even that wound its way back to algorithms.

LINK

• Episode Transcript

We typically invite scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for an informal conversation about their work, and then we turn those brunches into a podcast.

But for these bonus mini-episodes, we change things up a bit, asking Notre Dame researchers to talk about something that both makes them happy and has no direct connection to their academic pursuits.

In other words, if you thought a podcast recorded over brunch couldn’t get even more casual, you’d be wrong.

Here, Meghan Sullivan, professor of philosophy and director of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, joins host Ted Fox via Zoom to discuss a passion she’s had since childhood, one that played a memorable role as she earned tenure:

Building with LEGO.

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: We invite scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for an informal conversation about their work, and then we turn those brunches into a podcast.

It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Last year, Jon Goh earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stanford. While completing a doctoral degree is a monumental accomplishment by any standard, one requiring an awe-inspiring amount of dedication and hard work, it’s not the kind of thing a podcast at a university more than 2,000 miles away would typically hear about.

But then we saw the video.

In it, a DeLorean—the ’80s car made iconic by the movie Back to the Future—accelerated, turned, drifted, and literally burned rubber through a highly complicated race course … and it did it all by itself.

Right away, we knew we had to try to talk to Jon, the guy who had shared the video and whose research at the Stanford Dynamic Design Lab was integral to building this incredible car, particularly the piece that programmed it to expertly wind its way through the course that only the most advanced drift racers would dare tackle.

Several Twitter direct messages later, there he and host Ted Fox were chatting over Zoom about everything that went into turning a standard DeLorean into this DeLorean as well as the future of autonomous vehicles and why on Earth you’d do all of this in the first place.

You know, beyond the fact that it’s just super cool.

LINK

See the DeLorean in Action: Story and Video From Stanford

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: We invite scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for an informal conversation about their work, and then we turn those brunches into a podcast.

It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Jenni Heissel is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School. Her research at the intersection of economics, public policy, and psychology has been covered by The Atlantic, The New York Times, NPR, the Brookings Evidence Speaks series, and a number of other outlets. She just received a large grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study the Department of Defense’s parental support policies.

A 2007 graduate of Notre Dame, Jenni holds a master of public policy degree from Duke and a Ph.D. in human development and social policy from Northwestern. Her interdisciplinary expertise has driven her to pursue some really interesting and highly applicable research not only in the area of parenting but also education, including on in-person versus online instruction and what impact, if any, school start times have on students’ academic performance.

In addition, she and host Ted Fox discussed a paper she has forthcoming in The Journal of Human Resources focused on how the siblings of teen moms are affected by the arrival of the baby, a dynamic that hasn’t been closely studied to this point.

As you would expect these days, the conversation was a virtual one, and that was thanks to Jenni’s husband seeing a tweet we sent looking for guests, and then her taking the time to reach out.

We’re thrilled that she did.

We typically invite scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for an informal conversation about their work, and then we turn those brunches into a podcast.

But for these bonus mini-episodes, we change things up a bit, asking Notre Dame researchers to talk about something that both makes them happy and has no direct connection to their academic pursuits.

In other words, if you thought a podcast recorded over brunch couldn’t get even more casual, you’d be wrong.

Here, Kasey Buckles, Brian and Jeannelle Brady Associate Professor of Economics at Notre Dame, joins host Ted Fox via Zoom to discuss the greatest baseball team in the history of the universe:

The Boston Red Sox.

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: We invite scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for an informal conversation about their work, and then we turn those brunches into a podcast.

It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Cara Ocobock is an assistant professor of anthropology at Notre Dame. A biological anthropologist, she is the director of the Human Energetics Laboratory and explores the physiological and behavioral mechanisms necessary to cope with and adapt to extreme climate and physical activity. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Foundation, and the American-Scandinavian Foundation.

Last fall was Cara’s first semester at Notre Dame, and we didn’t wait long before asking her to do one of our Research Uncorked live shows at Ironhand Wine Bar in South Bend. She and host Ted Fox got together again in March to record this episode, starting with the work that’s taken her to the Arctic Circle to study the characteristics of a population whose experience in the extreme cold could hold valuable lessons for all of us.

It also may involve Santa Claus’s hometown.

From there, Cara and Ted talked about potential insights into the adaptations of a past cold-climate population, the Neanderthals, before changing gears to discuss her research at the intersection of anthropology and sports, which has grown out of a challenging personal journey as a powerlifter.

Yes, she really is as cool as she sounds.

We typically invite scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for an informal conversation about their work, and then we turn those brunches into a podcast.

But for these bonus mini-episodes, we’re changing things up a bit, asking Notre Dame researchers to talk about something that both makes them happy and has no direct connection to their academic pursuits.

In other words, if you thought a podcast recorded over brunch couldn’t get even more casual, you’d be wrong.

Here, Katie O’Reilly, a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Stream and Wetland Ecology Lab at Notre Dame, joins host Ted Fox to discuss a subject near and dear to both of them:

Midwest pizza.

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: We invite scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for an informal conversation about their work, and then we turn those brunches into a podcast.

It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Lizzie Peabody and Justin O’Neill are the host and producer, respectively, of Sidedoor, a podcast from the Smithsonian Institution. Justin also happens to be a Notre Dame alum. But that’s not the reason we invited them to come on this show. In fact, we didn’t even know about Justin’s ND connection when we asked.

No, we reached out to them because we listened to and loved their episode titled “The Worst Video Game Ever?” and immediately decided these were podcasters we had to talk to if we could. Lizzie and Justin were kind enough to take us up on the offer, and thanks to the magic of Zoom, host Ted Fox got to ask them himself why Atari’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was such an epic fail of a video game.

They also talked about Sidedoor’s field trip episode—which offers a great reminder that when we say “the Smithsonian,” we’re not just talking about one museum—as well as the surprising history of the spacesuits that allowed Neil Armstrong to take that “one giant leap for mankind.”

Lizzie and Justin even turned the questions on Ted at one point. Here’s to hoping he did our anteater friend at the Potawatomi Zoo proud.