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.

For our last episode of 2019, we had the chance to welcome a Notre Dame alum back to campus. His name is Chris Beem, and he is the managing director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University.

Chris is the author or co-editor of five books, most recently Democratic Humility: Reinhold Niebuhr, Neuroscience, and America's Political Crisis, which was published by Lexington Books. Currently at work on a book about democratic virtues, he is also a co-host of the McCourtney Institute’s Democracy Works podcast.

His conversation with host Ted Fox did eventually find its way to podcasting, but on the way there they talked about things like the nature of democracy—not to mention human beings themselves—as well as the role of ethics in a democratic society. They also discussed the one thing everyone listening to this episode could do to help make our democracy better.

Chris’ answer to that question provided some good food for thought heading into 2020.

Finally, to close out the episode (and the year), we said a special thank you to our Twitter peeps.

LINKS:

Chris’ Book: Democratic Humility

McCourtney Institute's Podcast: Democracy Works

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.

Shea Serrano is a staff writer for the sports and pop culture website The Ringer and the author of three New York Times bestsellers, including Basketball (And Other Things) and The Rap Year Book. The most recent of the three, Movies (And Other Things), published by Twelve, came out just last month. So as you might imagine, Shea is in pretty high demand at the moment.

And while he didn’t have a visit to Notre Dame planned, that didn’t stop us from jumping at the chance to invite him to come on the show to talk about the new book and things like righting wrongs at the Oscars, Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker, and how kids in ’80s movies always seemed to be riding things.

How this interview came to be is a good story in and of itself, and that’s where Shea and host Ted Fox started their phone conversation, swapping the background noise of brunch for the occasional clicking of a turn signal and other sounds of a man on the move.

LINK

Shea’s new book: Movies (And Other Things)

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.

Stephanie Welch is the director of the documentary A Dangerous Idea: Eugenics, Genetics, and the American Dream. In September, she visited Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center and the nearby Vickers Theatre in Three Oaks, Mich., for screenings and discussion of the film.

In addition to directing, Stephanie was a writer and producer on A Dangerous Idea, which exposes the false claims at the heart of biological determinism—the belief that we are not all created equal, that some groups and individuals are born inherently superior to others and therefore more deserving of fundamental rights. The film goes on to show how popular misunderstanding of both gene science and the concept of genes has been and can be manipulated to advance truly sinister motives.

Stephanie and host Ted Fox talked about the film, the experience of being an independent filmmaker, and the reception to A Dangerous Idea, whose accolades include winning best documentary at the Santa Fe Film Festival and best feature film at the Ogeechee International History Film Festival.

LINK

Film website: A Dangerous Idea: Eugenics, Genetics, and the American Dream

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.

And this episode is unlike any of the first 30 or so that we’ve done. No food was eaten—at least not by either of the humans—and no coffee was consumed. There was no table, and we didn’t even sit down.

No, we traded in the trappings of brunch for a trip to the Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend. Just a four-mile drive from the Notre Dame campus, it is home to a collection of animals and conservation programs that you might not expect to find on 23 acres in northern Indiana.

Potawatomi has been continuously accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) since 1987 and received its most recent five-year accreditation this fall. To put that in perspective, less than 10 percent of wildlife exhibitors licensed by the United States Department of Agriculture meet the more comprehensive AZA standards.

Josh Sisk, the Potawatomi Zoo’s executive director, took host Ted Fox for a walking tour on a drizzly August morning. Their stops included visiting two kings of the jungle, four tiger sisters, and the closest living relative of the giraffe. It was all part of a broader conversation about how the zoo is working to protect endangered and other at-risk species while educating the next generation of conservationists.

LINK

Potawatomi Zoo: potawatomizoo.org

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.

Alberto Cairo is an associate professor and the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the University of Miami’s School of Communication. The former director for infographics and multimedia at Editora Globo, the magazine division of the biggest media group in Brazil, he has been described by Microsoft as having “spent his entire career in the vanguard of visual journalism.”

In September, Alberto visited Notre Dame’s online master’s program in data science and delivered a public lecture as part of the College of Science’s John A. Lynch Lecture Series.  He is the author of three books, including How Charts Lie, which is being published by W.W. Norton & Company literally next week. Well, next week from when we’re releasing this episode. So, just to be safe: The book comes out—or if you’re listening to this in the future, came out—Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019.

And here, Alberto and host Ted Fox talk all about it, from the five different categories of lies charts can tell us to why calling the book How Charts Lie is a provocation, an invitation to think about how we read and misread them—not a rejection of their usefulness and importance.

Because one thing becomes clear when talking to Alberto: He likes charts. So much so that he’s devoted an entire book to helping us get better at how we use them.

LINKS

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

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.

John McGreevy is the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at Notre Dame and served as dean of the University’s College of Arts and Letters from 2008–2018. Specializing in modern political and religious history, he is the author of three books and has received major fellowships from the Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, among others.

John joined host Ted Fox to talk about the most recent of those three books, American Jesuits and the World: How an Embattled Religious Order Made Modern Catholicism Global, which was published by Princeton University Press.

American Jesuits and the World focuses on the period after the nation’s founding, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when John says the Jesuits were viewed, often disparagingly, as “the most Catholic of all Catholics.” It was against this backdrop that they authored an American story with just as many layers as you would expect.

LINK

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

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.

Like us, Adela Mizrachi works in communications at a university, but that’s not the reason we asked her to come on the show. At least not the main one.

See, Adela is also the founder of something called Podcast Brunch Club, which interested us because … well, for the exact reason you’d expect. So we, a podcast that records over brunch, invited her out to brunch, to talk about Podcast Brunch Club, the Podcast Brunch Club podcast, and trends in podcasting as a whole.

Did we mention podcasts? Or brunch?

And fun story: Since we recorded this interview, one of our very own listeners, Joseph Caudle, has started a Podcast Brunch Club chapter right here in South Bend. There are currently more than 60 such chapters around the world.

LINKS

Podcast Brunch Club website: podcastbrunchclub.com
Forbes Q&A with Adela: Is The Podcast Club The New Book Club?

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.

Mike Chapple is academic director of Notre Dame’s Master of Science in Business Analytics program and an associate teaching professor of IT, analytics, and operations at the University’s Mendoza College of Business. In addition to business analytics, his areas of expertise include cybersecurity, cloud computing, IT compliance, and data privacy.

Prior to joining the Mendoza faculty, Mike served for six years as senior director for IT service delivery at Notre Dame. He came to the University in 2005 from the Brand Institute, a Miami-based marketing consultancy, where he was executive vice president and chief information officer. A Notre Dame alum, he also spent four years in the information security research group at the National Security Agency and served as an active-duty intelligence officer in the United States Air Force.

He and host Ted Fox got together this summer to talk about cryptocurrency, including one called Libra, which was announced this June by a group led by Facebook. Since we talked with Mike, the proposal for Libra has garnered increased scrutiny from governmental regulators around the world—on top of what was some healthy skepticism to begin with. But in the course of our conversation with him, he noted that while he’s unsure whether Facebook will be successful in developing a mainstream cryptocurrency, he expects some group will be in the not-too-distant future.

For that reason—not to mention the layperson’s guide to cryptocurrency, blockchain, and Bitcoin that he shared—this discussion is as topical as ever, as are his thoughts on how to address broader issues related to data security and privacy.

Hint: Social Security Numbers are a 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.

Ann Little is a professor of history at Colorado State University who specializes in the history of women, gender, and sexuality, with a focus on early North America. She is the author of two books, most recently The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright. Published by Yale University Press, it won the 2018 Albert B. Corey Prize, awarded jointly by the American Historical Association and the Canadian Historical Association for the best book dealing with the history of Canadian-American relations or the history of both countries.

Born in 1696 in New England, Esther Wheelwright was captured by Wabanaki Indians when she was seven and raised by them until age 12, when she was enrolled in a French-Canadian Catholic convent. Wheelwright would eventually become the only foreign-born mother superior in the convent’s history.

Ann and host Ted Fox talked about the circumstances that would’ve given rise to an experience like Wheelwright’s, how the convent helped her carve the space to author a life that was truly unique, and why her relative anonymity today belies her prominence in colonial America.

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 our season 3 premiere, we talked with author Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, an associate professor of English at Notre Dame and the winner of the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the largest peer-juried prize for novels and short stories in the United States.

Azareen was recognized for her second novel, Call Me Zebra, published last year by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The book also won the John Gardner Fiction Book Award and was named a Best Book by a number of media outlets, including Entertainment Weekly and Harper’s Bazaar. Azareen was previously the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and honored as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” in 2015.

Host Ted Fox started out by asking her to read from Call Me Zebra, after which they talked about the book, the complicated journey of its unforgettable protagonist, and whether there’s any such thing as original writing.