With a Side of Knowledge

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: A university campus is a destination for all kinds of interesting people, so why not invite some of these folks out to brunch, where we’ll have an informal conversation about their work, and then we’ll turn those brunches into a podcast?

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

Brian Fremeau is the creator of the eponymously named Fremeau Efficiency Index, or FEI, a college football rating system based on opponent-adjusted possession efficiency. (Don’t worry—we start out by unpacking what that means.) Since diving into the world of football analytics back in the early 2000s, Brian has contributed work to Football Outsiders, Blue & Gold Illustrated, The Athletic, espn.com, and ESPN The Magazine.

In this episode, our season two finale, Brian breaks down things like how we can more precisely measure a college football team’s strength of schedule, the nature of the red zone, and what, technically, constitutes garbage time. He and host Ted Fox also happen to be old friends, and if you like sports, math and statistics, and/or simply hearing someone thoughtfully dig into widely held assumptions, we think you’ll enjoy listening to Brian just as much as Ted always has.

LINKS

• Brian’s College Football Website: bcftoys.com
• Episode Transcript

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: A university campus is a destination for all kinds of interesting people, so why not invite some of these folks out to brunch, where we’ll have an informal conversation about their work, and then we’ll turn those brunches into a podcast?

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

Clare Kim is a doctoral candidate in the Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. She spent the 2018–19 academic year in residence at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study as a graduate student fellow and, when she and host Ted Fox talked, was nearing completion of her dissertation.

Clare’s work traces the trajectory of mathematical thinking—and just as importantly, our mainstream thinking about mathematics—in the United States over the last 100-plus years. Although her dissertation is structured chronologically, she refers to her research as a cultural analysis and history, one that uncovers a surprising degree of back and forth between math, as a discipline, and more humanistic pursuits, something that continues to this day. While she’s at it, she also tells a pretty good story about a lawsuit involving origami.

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: A university campus is a destination for all kinds of interesting people, so why not invite some of these folks out to brunch, where we’ll have an informal conversation about their work, and then we’ll turn those brunches into a podcast?

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

Ten years ago, the world was introduced to Kickstarter, the crowdfunding platform that, in the company’s own words, “helps artists, musicians, filmmakers, designers, and other creators find the resources and support they need to make their ideas a reality.” Kickstarter was founded by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler, and it was Charles who recently visited Notre Dame as part of the Mendoza College of Business’s Ten Years Hence Speaker Series.

In addition to making him feel awkward by reading back one of his tweets, host Ted Fox asked Charles about the founding of Kickstarter and his experience there as head of design. They then covered how designing the site’s rewards system was and was not like a scene from The Social Network, his influences as a designer, and whether or not he considers himself a “disruptor.” Charles also talked about his memory of watching the first two Kickstarters to hit a million dollars—and a much smaller campaign whose final product brought him to tears 30,000 feet in the air. 

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: A university campus is a destination for all kinds of interesting people, so why not invite some of these folks out to brunch, where we’ll have an informal conversation about their work, and then we’ll turn those brunches into a podcast?

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

A contributing editor at Vanity Fair, Bethany McLean was previously a reporter at Fortune, where, in 2000, she received a tip suggesting she look into energy-trading giant Enron. Her subsequent investigative work would lead to a coauthored bestseller that became the definitive account of one of the largest business scandals of our time. She has also coauthored a bestselling book about the financial crisis and written two mini-books published by Columbia Global Reports.

Bethany and host Ted Fox started their conversation with her experience covering the Enron story and other instances of, in her words, “business gone wrong” before moving onto the new podcast she’s developing, our disrupted media environment and the appeal of audio content within it, and that time she wrote a celebrity profile for the cover of Vanity Fair.

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: A university campus is a destination for all kinds of interesting people, so why not invite some of these folks out to brunch, where we’ll have an informal conversation about their work, and then we’ll turn those brunches into a podcast?

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

For this special bonus episode, host Ted Fox changed things up a bit. Rather than interviewing someone on the Notre Dame campus, he made the two-hour drive to Purdue University, where he talked with Luciano Castillo, Purdue’s Kenninger Professor of Renewable Energy and Power Systems.

Castillo is leading a consortium of some 30 scientists, researchers, and engineers—including two from Notre Dame—that has proposed an extensive energy- and water-producing industrial corridor along the United States-Mexico border. That proposal was the subject of his and Fox’s conversation over breakfast sandwiches in the cafe at the Purdue Research Park.

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: A university campus is a destination for all kinds of interesting people, so why not invite some of these folks out to brunch, where we’ll have an informal conversation about their work, and then we’ll turn those brunches into a podcast?

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

Rachel Kyte is chief executive officer of Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), special representative of the UN secretary-general for Sustainable Energy for All, and co-chair of UN-Energy. Rachel visited Notre Dame in March to deliver the keynote address at ND Energy’s second annual research symposium.

Host Ted Fox started out by asking her about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and they went on to talk about the global movement for affordable, clean energy in the context of both developing countries and the United States. And while they were at it, Rachel shared an outstanding podcast recommendation.

Also, their conversation was recorded as a live show with an audience, so for this episode, anyway, we’re trading the clink of cutlery for a round of applause—which we can assure you was all for her.

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: A university campus is a destination for all kinds of interesting people, so why not invite some of these folks out to brunch, where we’ll have an informal conversation about their work, and then we’ll turn those brunches into a podcast?

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

This is the second of two episodes we recorded while in Brooklyn for On Air Fest 2019. And here, we ventured beyond the festival to meet up with literary agent Jessica Sinsheimer, who made time to chat with us before heading out to another jam-packed day in the capital of the publishing world.

Jessica is an associate at the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency, which means she’s an outstanding person to talk to whether you’re looking for a book recommendation or want to ask: What is a literary agent, exactly? She and host Ted Fox also covered everything from her fortuitous freshman-year roommate assignment to the professional experiences that led her to create the Manuscript Wishlist website and the Manuscript Academy, two popular tools that connect writers, agents, and editors with the goal of increasing both transparency and access in the publishing industry. 

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: A university campus is a destination for all kinds of interesting people, so why not invite some of these folks out to brunch, where we’ll have an informal conversation about their work, and then we’ll turn those brunches into a podcast?

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

With apologies to Jack Kerouac, this is the first of two “on the road” episodes we recorded in Brooklyn, New York, while attending On Air Fest 2019. It features two of our favorite podcasters, Elah Feder and Annie Minoff, who co-host and produce Undiscovered, the podcast from WNYC’s iconic radio show Science Friday.

Through the hums and hisses of a Brooklyn coffee shop, Elah and Annie talked with host Ted Fox about how they look for stories that haven’t been told, the importance of good communication between the scientific community and the rest of us, and the paleontologist at the center of one of their most memorable episodes—who also might be the one person you’d want at your side in the event of the zombie apocalypse.

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: A university campus is a destination for all kinds of interesting people, so why not invite some of these folks out to brunch, where we’ll have an informal conversation about their work, and then we’ll turn those brunches into a podcast?

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

The author of some two dozen novels under both his own name and an alliterative pseudonym, John Banville is best known for his book The Sea, which won the 2005 Man Booker Prize. His work has also been recognized with the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature, and the Franz Kafka Prize, among numerous other honors. He and host Ted Fox sat down to brunch last November during John’s time as a short-term visitor at Notre Dame’s Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies. Their conversation started with a reading from The Sea, and they then talked about everything from the writing process and what makes a hero to the bet John’s accountant placed on him when he was a longshot to win the Booker Prize. Along the way, he just happened to share what he believes to be the greatest invention in the history of humankind.

The idea behind this show is pretty simple: A university campus is a destination for all kinds of interesting people, so why not invite some of these folks out to brunch, where we’ll have an informal conversation about their work, and then we’ll turn those brunches into a podcast?

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

Agustín Fuentes is the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Professor of Anthropology and chair of the Department of Anthropology at Notre Dame. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and authored or edited 20 books as well as a three-volume encyclopedia. He and host Ted Fox focused in large part on one of his most recent books, The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional, published by Dutton Books in 2017. Covering millions of years of human history in a 33-minute brunch, Fuentes unpacked myths about the differences between men and women, about what race is and isn’t, and about whether we’re inherently violent creatures—all the while showing why he says humans’ incredible capacity for creativity is the defining element in our evolutionary journey.