Hold That Thought

Curiosity. Obsessions. Serial. Hermaphroditic snails. The “shape” of a radio show. When you sit down with Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, creators and cohosts of the innovative, hugely popular podcast Radiolab, you never know where the conversation will lead. As millions of listeners know, Abumrad and Krulwich regularly blur the boundaries between storytelling, science, and philosophy in their sound-rich show, which airs on more than 450 NPR stations around the country. Hold That Thought’s Claire Navarro and Rebecca King were thrilled to meet and interview both Abumrad and Krulwich earlier this year, when the duo visited Washington University in St. Louis as the culmination of a week-long celebration of curiosity and the liberal arts.

While Shakespeare wrote his plays, English theater itself was changing. The first actual theaters like the Globe were built, so companies could perform in places built soley for performance rather than marketplaces, pubs, or inns. Instead of religious and morality plays, writers brought politics, race, and class issues to the stage for the first time in London, which made authorities wary. Musa Gurnis, an associate professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, explains what early modern theater was like for London-theater goers and how the theater gave English society a way to think about itself in a new way.

Almost 500 years after William Shakespeare lived and wrote, students are still studying his work, and actors are performing his plays to packed theaters around the world. What keeps us coming back to his texts? Why has Shakespeare's work lived on when so many other great writers have been abandoned? As a sneak peak of the series to come, all of the participants of "Summer with the Bard" share their answers and perspectives on this tricky question.

After talking with Shakespeare Festival St. Louis about their current production of Antony and Cleopatra, I decided to meet up with Roman historian Karen Acton at Washington University in St. Louis to get a sense of the real people behind the legend. Together, we look back at Plutarch's The Life of Antony, which William Shakespeare used to write his play, and the texts that survive about the lovers from their contemporaries, rivals, and ancient Roman writers.

Shakespeare is not just in the theater and the classroom anymore. In St. Louis at least, you can find performances of the Bard's work in Forest Park and in the streets of your own neighborhood, thanks to the efforts of Shakespeare Festival St. Louis. Bruce Longworth, the organization's associate artistic director, and Mike Donahue, the director of this year's Shakespeare in the Park performance, come together to talk about the Shakespeare Festival's many projects and to share their insights into this year's mainstage production: Antony and Cleopatra.

As managing director of the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Emre Toker has encountered many innovative ideas for products and businesses - some of which succeed, most of which do not. In addition to running the Skandalaris Center, Toker himself has founded or co-founded five companies. Here, he discusses his own experiences as an investor and entrepreneur and explains some of the common pitfalls that keep innovators from bringing their ideas to life.

As director of the Institute for Public Health at Washington University, William Powderly believes that in order to be innovative and find useful solutions to global health challenges, effective partnerships are key. But how do these partnerships form, and what types of partnerships are most effective? To continue our collaboration with the graduate student group ProSPER, graduate student Kuan-lin Huang interviews Powderly about the importance of working with teams both around the world and across academic disciplines.

Barak Cohen has some words of wisdom for the future biologists of the world: "If you’re doing this to get rich, you’re going to be disappointed. If you’re doing this to get famous, you’re going to be doubly disappointed. The reason to do a PhD in biology is because you’re fascinated by biology." As Cohen and graduate students like Shelina Ramnarine know, being a professional scientist is typically not glamorous. It involves hard work and stress - often over funding. To continue our Where's My Jetpack? series, Ramnarine questions whether an increasingly competitive lifestyle is a barrier to innovation. In this week's episode, she and Cohen discuss how the internet, changes in governmental funding, and a lack of diversity among scientists all affect scientific progress.

Psychology graduate student Lameese Eldesouky has noticed a trend in research. In some cases, scientists in fields like genetics or biology have an easier time getting funding than researchers who study topics that are less easy to put into numbers, like relationships. In this episode, Eldesouky interviews professor Sarah Gehlert about her thoughts and experiences bridging the divide between the social sciences and the life or physical sciences. Gehlert, who has led cross-disciplinary research efforts into topics like racial disparities in health, discusses how in order to to make true progress, we need to start thinking about innovation in new ways. The Where's My Jetpack? series is produced in collaboration with ProSPER, a graduate student group promoting science policy, education, and research.

Ever wonder why innovations in areas like health care and energy always seem just over the horizon, instead of already here? You're not alone. At Washington University in St. Louis, graduate students wrestling with this question created the "Where's My Jetpack?" speaker series to shed light on barriers to innovation. Rebecca Lowdon, cofounder of the graduate student group ProSPER, and Kimberly Curtis, assistant dean for graduate student affairs, discuss the creation of ProSPER, the "Where's My Jetpack?" series, and the importance of graduate student leadership. ProSPER promotes science policy, literacy, and advocacy through career development, education, and community outreach. In the coming weeks on Hold That Thought, ProSPER members will interview WashU faculty about barriers to innovation.

Throughout our series "Into the Earth," we've heard how Earth science topics cross between different disciplines like geology, physics, and chemistry. This has been true for postdoctoral research associate Steven Chemtob, whose recent research looks closely at a type of rock called banded iron formations. These rocks were created some 2.5 billion years ago, before there was oxygen in Earth's atmosphere and oceans. To understand how rocks like these formed, researchers like Chemtob have to approach the ancient formations from a variety of fields.

Michael Wysession, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences and contributor to the Next Generation Science Standards, continues his commentary from last week's podcast about science education. When the NGSS were released in 2013, state governments reacted to lessons about climate change in varying - and sometimes surprising - ways. In the second of two episodes featuring Wysession, he discusses the intersection of politics, education, and what scientists understand about Earth's climate.

Ever wonder why some subjects are taught in high school while others are not, or why students spend so much time memorizing facts? According to geophysicist Michael Wysession, science curricula in the US are based on standards that are more than 120 years old, and being stuck in the past has had serious consequences. Wysession, the Earth and space science writing team leader for the Next Generation Science Standards, believes in a new approach to science education.

Aubreya Adams, a postdoctoral researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, describes the Cameroon Volcanic Line as "one of the most interesting features in Africa that most people have never heard of." These volcanoes are something of a mystery, even to geologists - nobody knows exactly how they were created. However, Adams' research is shedding light on the puzzle. Here she discusses her findings and shares some of the process behind seismology fieldwork.

Deep under the ocean, enormous tectonic plates push against one another and spread apart. Shawn Wei, a doctoral student and McDonnell Scholar at Washington University in St. Louis, wants to understand what's really going on down there. Deep in the Pacific Ocean, how do rock, magma, and water interact? To find out, Wei analyzed data collected at the famous Lau Basin, one of the most geologically active places on Earth - and his results surprised all the experts. Here, Shawn describes his discovery, his methods, and how science isn't always like what you seen in the movies.