With a Side of Knowledge

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.

Jonathan Eig is the author of five books, including biographies of Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, and most recently, Muhammad Ali. All three of them were New York Times bestsellers, and Ken Burns—yes, that Ken Burns—has described Jonathan as a “master storyteller.”

He and host Ted Fox met up at a diner called Stella’s, one of Jonathan’s favorite spots in Chicago, to talk about Ali: A Life, which Jonathan published with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2017. In addition to winning the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, the book was named biography of the year by the British newspaper The Times, one of the 10 best non-fiction books of the year by The Wall Street Journal, and one of The New York Times’ notable books of the year. It was also a finalist for an NAACP Image Award and received a whole host of other honors too numerous to list. If nothing else, just know that Joyce Carol Oates—yes, that Joyce Carol Oates—called it “an epic of a biography.”

Jonathan and Ted covered both Ali the boxer and Ali the icon, discussing everything from his trash-talking and what made him such a great fighter to his relationship with the Nation of Islam and what he’s meant in and to the broader culture since bursting onto the scene in the 1960s. They also spent some time on the process of researching and writing the book, including the painful parts, as well as what Jonathan asked Muhammad Ali when he finally got the chance.

LINK:

Jonathan’s Biography of Muhammad Ali: Ali: A Life

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.

Kerry Hannon is a leading authority and strategist on career transitions, entrepreneurship, personal finance, and retirement. The author of 13 books—and soon to be 14—she is currently an expert columnist and regular contributor to The New York Times, MarketWatch, and Forbes.

Kerry visited campus earlier this month as a guest of Notre Dame’s Inspired Leadership Initiative, a program that offers accomplished individuals who have completed traditional careers a one-year experience designed to further their impact on society and the world.

Here, she and host Ted Fox discussed how to think about work at different ages and stages of a career, from people who are just starting out to those 50 and over. The latter were the focus of her 13th book, Never Too Old to Get Rich: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Starting a Business Mid-Life, which was published by Wiley in 2019 and was a No. 1 bestseller on Amazon.

They also talked about both the rising success of female entrepreneurs and the particular challenges women in the workforce still encounter as well as what a lot of us get wrong when it comes to money and loved ones.

One takeaway there: Don’t cheat in those family games of Monopoly.

LINKS:

• Episode Transcript
• Kerry’s latest book: Never Too Old to Get Rich: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Starting a Business Mid-Life

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.

This past November, Prathm Juneja was named to the American Rhodes Scholar Class of 2020, becoming the 20th Rhodes Scholar in Notre Dame history.

He talked with host Ted Fox in December—a few weeks after the Rhodes announcement and a week or so before he graduated. Graduating in December isn’t especially common at Notre Dame, and in Prathm’s case, it was because he completed the five-year Reilly Dual Degree Program in Arts and Letters and Engineering in four-and-a-half years. A political science and computer science major, he was also a member of the University’s Glynn Family Honors Program and a College of Arts and Letters Dean’s Fellow.

Shreya Kumar, a faculty member in Notre Dame’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering who wrote one of Prathm’s Rhodes recommendation letters, described him this way:

“I have worked with many students who build impressive solutions to common problems, but I have hardly met anyone more dedicated than Prathm to fairness, accessibility and transparency in democracy. He will do great things for this world.”

With an introduction like that, Prathm has every reason to be proud. Yet the way he talks about himself is self-effacing and humble, whether he’s recounting the moment he found out he was a Rhodes Scholar, the research behind his senior thesis on voter registration, or the lesson he learned from his parents.

As you’ll hear, we couldn’t even get him to brag about receiving a congratulatory phone call from a candidate for president.

LINKS

Notre Dame News Story: Notre Dame’s Prathm Juneja named Rhodes Scholar

Some Fun With Probability (listen to the episode first): Math Guy: The Birthday Problem

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.

Bob Schmuhl, now a professor emeritus at Notre Dame, joined the university’s faculty in 1980. He was the founding director of Notre Dame’s Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics, and Democracy and was later named the inaugural Walter H. Annenberg-Edmund P. Joyce Professor of American Studies and Journalism. His areas of expertise include the modern American presidency and the relationship between American politics and the media.

Bob is the author or editor of some 15 books, the most recent of which prompted the conversation here. In The Glory and the Burden: The American Presidency from FDR to Trump, published in 2019 by the University of Notre Dame Press, he examines the institution that is the presidency rather than focusing on the individual occupants of the White House.

He and host Ted Fox discussed potential reforms to how Americans elect the president, including the idea of regional primaries, as well as the path to the present state of our politics and the sense of possibility Bob believes the presidency should represent.

LINK

Bob’s latest book: The Glory and the Burden: The American Presidency from FDR to Trump

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.

Janne Matláry is a professor of international politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Defence University College. A specialist in European foreign and defense policy as well as international security, she was Norway’s deputy foreign minister from 1997–2000, the first Catholic woman to hold a high government post in Norway since the Protestant Reformation. She has also served on the board of trustees of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights and is a life member of the Pontifical Academy of Science.

Janne was in residence at Notre Dame’s Institute for Advanced Study as a director’s fellow for several weeks this past fall. She and host Ted Fox began their conversation drawing on one of her most recent books—Hard Power in Hard Times: Can Europe Act Strategically?, published in 2018 by Palgrave Macmillan—with Janne providing a general sense of the model on which the European Union has been built.

From there, they talked about the differences between modern and postmodern states, the external and internal challenges facing European democracies today, and the U.S.-EU relationship, particularly with respect to NATO.

It’s the end of the year, and we’re counting down our Top 5 most-played episodes of 2019, which spanned parts of our second and (in-progress) third seasons.

Starting Monday, Dec. 16, and continuing each day through Friday, we’ll be putting one of our most popular episodes of the past 12 months back into your feed for your listening pleasure.

Maybe you missed it the first time around. Maybe you just want to hear it again and don’t feel like searching through your app. Or maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Nah, I’m good” before clicking delete.

You too, dad?

Anyway, this is it: No. 1, “On Cryptocurrency, Facebook’s Libra, and Data Security,” featuring Mike Chapple of Notre Dame and originally released August 29th.

Enjoy.

It’s the end of the year, and we’re counting down our Top 5 most-played episodes of 2019, which spanned parts of our second and (in-progress) third seasons.

Starting Monday, Dec. 16, and continuing each day through Friday, we’ll be putting one of our most popular episodes of the past 12 months back into your feed for your listening pleasure.

Maybe you missed it the first time around. Maybe you just want to hear it again and don’t feel like searching through your app. Or maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Nah, I’m good” before clicking delete.

Whatever, mom. Dad’s still listening.

Anyway, this is No. 2, “On Math, Origami, and How No Discipline is an Island,” featuring Clare Kim and originally released May 16th. At the time we recorded, Clare was a doctoral candidate at MIT; she is now a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis.

Enjoy.

It’s the end of the year, and we’re counting down our Top 5 most-played episodes of 2019, which spanned parts of our second and (in-progress) third seasons.

Starting Monday, Dec. 16, and continuing each day through Friday, we’ll be putting one of our most popular episodes of the past 12 months back into your feed for your listening pleasure.

Maybe you missed it the first time around. Maybe you just want to hear it again and don’t feel like searching through your app. Or maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Nah, I’m good” before clicking delete.

Mom, seriously. That hurts our feelings.

Anyway, this is No. 3, “On Enron, Business, and Cover Stories,” featuring Bethany McLean of Vanity Fair and originally released April 18th.

Enjoy.

LINKS

Bethany’s Book on Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Bethany’s Podcast: Making a Killing

It’s the end of the year, and we’re counting down our Top 5 most-played episodes of 2019, which spanned parts of our second and (in-progress) third seasons.

Starting Monday, Dec. 16, and continuing each day through Friday, we’ll be putting one of our most popular episodes of the past 12 months back into your feed for your listening pleasure.

Maybe you missed it the first time around. Maybe you just want to hear it again and don’t feel like searching through your app. Or maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Nah, I’m good” before clicking delete.

We’re looking at you, mom.

Anyway, this is No. 4, “On American Jesuits, Catholicism, and Higher Education” featuring John McGreevy of Notre Dame and originally released September 26th.

Enjoy.

LINK

John’s Book: American Jesuits and the World: How an Embattled Religious Order Made Modern Catholicism Global

It’s the end of the year, and we’re counting down our Top 5 most-played episodes of 2019, which spanned parts of our second and (in-progress) third seasons.

Starting Monday, Dec. 16, and continuing each day through Friday, we’ll be putting one of our most popular episodes of the past 12 months back into your feed for your listening pleasure.

Maybe you missed it the first time around. Maybe you just want to hear it again and don’t feel like searching through your app. Or maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Nah, I’m good” before clicking delete.

Whatever. Our moms are still listening.

Anyway, this is No. 5, “On ‘How Charts Lie’ and Increasing Graphicacy,” featuring Alberto Cairo of the University of Miami and originally released October 10th.

Enjoy.

LINKS

Alberto’s Book: How Charts Lie
Alberto’s Piece from Scientific American: Graphics That Seem Clear Can Easily Be Misread