Synopsis
Hold That Thought brings you research and ideas from Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Throughout the year we select a few topics to explore and then bring together thoughtful commentary on those topics from a variety of experts and sources. Be sure to subscribe!
Episodes
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Agriculture as Industry
14/05/2014 Duration: 10minProfessor Glenn Stone provides a brief history of industrial agriculture in the U.S., from the first era of hyper-industrialization shortly after World War II to the use of antibiotics in today's factory farms. Listen in to find out how the ongoing debates over food production got started and consider why these debates continue to be so important. Stone writes about food, farming, and biotechnology on his blog, fieldquestions. "Agriculture as Industry" first aired in fall 2012 as part of Hold That Thought's Farms/Food series.
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Last House Standing
07/05/2014 Duration: 14minFor the month of May, Hold That Thought is diving into the archives to bring you some favorite past episodes. "Last House Standing" was first aired in April 2013 as part of our Cities series. Between 1950 and 2000, some 60% of the built environment in St. Louis's Old North neighborhood was demolished, and the majority of its residents left the area. Abandoned buildings have fallen into disrepair, but should they remain standing? If the last houses on a block are torn down, leaving empty, litter-filled lots, how can we expect these neighborhoods to repopulate and rebuild? Michael Allen, director of the Preservation Research Office in St. Louis, describes the ambiguous role of historic preservation in neighborhoods like Old North, and challenges us to see declining urban landscapes both for what they are and what they might become.
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Chinese Writing and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms
30/04/2014 Duration: 10minNearly 500 years ago, the Chinese novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was first published. Readers across the country and continent began experiencing this epic, historic tale, which is still one of the most popular novels in China today. But in many cases, these readers would not have been able to have a conversation. They could read the same book, but they could not speak the same language. Robert Hegel, professor of East Asian language and cultures, describes how the existence of a common written language in China has affected Chinese literature across time.
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What's the Point?
23/04/2014 Duration: 10minThe gesture of pointing is something we all do without much thought. We point at ourselves, at other people, at objects, or in the general direction of where we want to go - it's a seemingly straightforward communication tool that even small children use on a regular basis. Yet sometimes the act of pointing is not so simple. As Richard Meier, chair of the linguistics department at the University of Texas - Austin, explains, this is especially true for some children with an autism spectrum disorder. In this week's podcast, Meier introduces us to the complicated relationship between words and gestures in American Sign Language, and explains how this line of research has shed light on one aspect of autism.
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Language Seen, Not Heard
16/04/2014 Duration: 10minFor people who have grown up being able to hear, it's easy to equate language with speech - the audible conversations that make up so much of human day-to-day communication. However, for some 70 million people around the world, these types of conversations happen in silence. Stephanie Berk, a postdoctoral research associate in linguistics and neurology, studies the linguistics of sign language and has worked with children who - because parents were at first unaware of their child's deafness - began learning their first language later in life. In collaboration with the Washington University School of Medicine, she is now beginning to look into the human brain to see what American Sign Language (ASL) can reveal about how humans learn and process any language, whether spoken or seen.
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Behind the Mask, pt2: The Evolution of a Genre
09/04/2014 Duration: 17minLast week, we defined the superhero. However, superheroes have evolved greatly over the last seventy years. The Adam West Batman of the 1960s now only vaguely resembles Christian Bale's Batman of The Dark Knight, to say nothing of the rise of the anti-hero in Alan Moore's classic, Watchmen. How do we reconcile these heroes and their many iterations? Dr. Peter Coogan, the founder of the Institute for Comics Studies and lecturer within American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, returns to trace the evolution of the superhero genre. He explains how superheroes are both a reflection and product of America's shifting modern mythology.
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Behind the Mask, pt1: Superheroes and Supervillains
02/04/2014 Duration: 14minIt's hard to recall a movie season in recent memory that hasn't been marked with at least one superhero blockbuster, so we're taking a closer look at these stories and heroes. In the first episode of this two part series, we consider what makes someone a superhero. Is it simply a question of superpowers? According to Dr. Peter Coogan, the founder of the Institute for Comics Studies and lecturer within American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, that's certainly part of the equation. He will layout the criteria caped crusaders must meet and the hallmarks of the wider superhero genre.
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The Foreign Language Question
26/03/2014 Duration: 08minWhat do the history of physics, the international women's movement, microfinance, the modern philosophical novel, and the fight against the spread of AIDS in Africa all have in common? According to Joe Loewenstein, professor of English and director of the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities, in order to study any of these topics and countless others, students are well-advised to begin the slow and rewarding process of mastering a foreign language. The important question becomes, which languages open which doors of opportunity? The audio for this podcast was originally recorded as part of a video project promoting foreign language study in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
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The Music Of Conversation
19/03/2014 Duration: 12minWhether or not you can play the drums or keep your body in rhythm out on the dance floor, if you're reading this sentence, you're participating in the unheard music of language. In his research at Washington University in St. Louis, linguist Brett Hyde, assistant professor of philosophy, delves into the rhythms behind every conversation. By studying the accent patterns of languages around the world, Hyde's goal is to discover the underlying principles that organize these patterns. Feel free to clap along as you hear about the connections between music, poetry, and the distinct beats of every sentence ever spoken.
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Jane Eyre and the Art of Translation
12/03/2014 Duration: 11minWhen you think of the novel Jane Eyre, you might think of its author, Charlotte Brontë, or perhaps certain elements of the plot, like Jane's time at Lowood School or her tumultuous relationship with Mr. Rochester. However, in a recent project, Lynne Tatlock is exploring how the original novel is only the beginning of the Jane Eyre story. Like many other 19th century texts, this novel was repeatedly translated into other languages and adapted into new works. Tatlock, a professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and chair of the Comparative Literature program at Washington University in St. Louis, seeks to uncover the German portion of that international journey. In addition to sharing thoughts on this new line of research, Tatlock discusses 19th century German romance novels in translation and reveals some of the challenges and insights that she has personally encountered as a translator.
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Venus, Deconstructed
05/03/2014 Duration: 16minToday, we're going back to 18th century Florence, Italy to tell the story of one museum, La Specola, and its infamous exhibit of gruesome wax anatomical models. At the time of its founding in 1771, the new Archduke Peter Leopold found himself confronting the deep-rooted legacy of his famous predecessors--the Medici. La Specola quickly became the crux of a larger movement within Tuscany, and the museum and its wax inhabitants helped set the course for a new Enlightenment era. Rebecca Messbarger, a professor of Italian and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, is our guide, and she explains how one figure, the Venus, became the central to this new regime of the human body.
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Youth Poets Take the Stage
24/02/2014 Duration: 10minHigh-school students sometimes have a bad reputation when it comes to language and literacy. Teenagers may be well versed in YouTube and social media, but these outlets are more known for shortened words and poor grammar than articulate speech and writing. However, Korina Jocson, assistant professor of education at Washington University in St. Louis, sees a much different picture. As a researcher and teacher, Jocson has observed and analyzed the ways that students use the beauty and power of poetry to make sense of their experiences, to comment on culture and politics, and to create multimedia art and storytelling. The question now becomes, how can educators bring the energy of a slam poetry competition back into the classroom?
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The ABCs of Reading and Writing
19/02/2014 Duration: 10minWhat can parents and teachers do to help young children become successful readers and writers? In what ways does a 2-year-old begin to understand the differences between written words and pictures? Rebecca Treiman, the Burke and Elizabeth High Baker Professor of Child Developmental Psychology, shares recent research that explores how children around the globe take their first steps toward reading and writing. Treiman heads the Reading and Language Lab at Washington University in St. Louis.
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You Are How You Sound
12/02/2014 Duration: 12minImagine that you're walking down the street and hear someone speaking with a British accent. What assumptions might you make about that person based on his or her voice? Would you come to the same conclusion if that person had a heavy southern drawl or sounded like he or she spoke Spanish as a first language? John Baugh, the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, continues his discussion of linguistic profiling and describes how he hopes his research will lead to policies that increase Americans' acceptance of linguistic diversity. To hear Baugh's personal story about how first became interested in this line of research, be sure to listen to Linguistic Insights, the first episode in our ongoing series about language.
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Linguistic Insights
05/02/2014 Duration: 11minTo kick off our newest topic, On Language, John Baugh, the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, shares two stories of personal linguistic epiphanies. Baugh researches linguistic profiling, or the ways in which people react to and treat one another based on speech. His initial interest in this line of work began when he himself encountered linguistic profiling earlier in his career. Baugh shares that experience, as well as a childhood incident in which he first realized that accents can carry as much meaning as words. Baugh will also be featured next week on Hold That Thought, when we'll hear more about specific research projects and the types of policies that he believes would help Americans accept linguistic diversity.
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The Search for Dark Matter
29/01/2014 Duration: 12minAs we learned last week in Discovering Dark Matter, since the 1930s scientists have been seeking answers about unseen mass in the universe. We know that the gravitation of dark matter has an enormous effect on galaxies, and we also know that it may be made up of weakly interacting particles. But how do researchers search for something that's invisible? James Buckley, professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis, has spent part of his career hunting for neutralinos, a yet-undiscovered type of particle that may hold the answer to the dark-matter mystery. Buckley describes the evidence for the existence of neutralinos, the methods he uses to seek them out, and how he first became interested in the "dark and violent" side of the universe.
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Discovering Dark Matter
21/01/2014 Duration: 10minBack in the early 1930s, astronomer Fritz Zwicky discovered a problem. Zwicky studied galaxy clusters, which can contain hundreds to thousands of galaxies loosely bound together by gravity. While examining one such cluster, he realized that the visible material within the galaxies did not have enough mass to hold the cluster together. As a result, he inferred that some dark, unseen matter must exist. Decades later, Ramanath Cowsik theorized about the source of this extra gravitational force. Cowsik, who now directs the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, describes the history of dark matter and shares how his discovery changed the way scientists think about this invisible force in the universe.
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Beautifully Bright Black Holes
15/01/2014 Duration: 09minBlack holes - pools of gravity so powerful that even light can't escape them - remain some of the most mysterious objects in the universe. Yet, though black holes themselves are invisible, the matter around them is not. In fall 2014, Henric Krawczynski, professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis, will use an instrument called X-Calibur to study two "beautifully bright" black holes visible from Earth's northern hemisphere. By measuring the polarization of X-rays emitted from material near the black holes, X-Calibur will help Krawczynski and his colleagues investigate questions that have perplexed scientists since Albert Einstein first proposed his Theory of General Relativity.
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Into the Heart of Mathematics
08/01/2014 Duration: 13minAs a society, we are pretty conflicted about mathematics. On one hand, we recognize that math has allowed us to achieve some amazing things, including space travel and much of our technology. Yet, math gets a bad rap in popular culture. In movies and tv shows, we're more likely to see kids complaining about or struggling with algebra or calculus than enjoying it. But what's so scary about math? For those of us who might have shied away from it in the past, John E. McCarthy, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Mathematics at Washington University, breaks math down to its most fundamental essence and explains how both pure and applied mathematics are only another way to examine and understand our world.
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Uncovering Numismatics
18/12/2013 Duration: 11minWilliam Bubelis, assistant professor of classics at Washington University in St. Louis, introduces us to the exciting field of numismatics. What is numismatics? Well, we had the same question. Essentially, numismatics focuses on coins and currency. Professor Bubelis explains how coins can reveal unique and important information about the ancient cultures from which they came. He also explores the origins of counterfeiting and considers objects people might not normally consider as currency. There is also a short accompanying video on our website, which will be released on 12/19/13. Visit: https://thought.artsci.wustl.edu/podcasts/uncovering-numismatic