institute for advanced study

In this episode of Neuroversity, Jessica Kidwell interviews Emily Barth Isler, a former child actress and writer for YA short stories and plays as well as a sustainable beauty journalist.   Emily also has OCD and synesthesia.  In this first of a two episode conversation, Emily and Jessica discuss Emily's award-winning debut novel Aftermath which explores themes of loss, mental health, gun control and neurodiversity.  They also discuss the inclusion of neurodivergent characters in media, Emily's journey of writing the novel, and her experience talking to kids affected by the book.
Key moments:

00:10:03 Starting conversations on trauma.
00:16:29 Parents cannot protect kids from news.
00:21:04 The character Lucy as a neurodivergent archetype.
00:24:01 How diversity benefits all audiences.

More about Emily Barth Isler:
A writer, Middle Grade Fiction Author, and sustainability/beauty journalist, Emily is a former child actress who has performed all over the world in theatre, film, and TV.  She spent several years in New York writing episodic television for the web with Emmy-award winning PhoebeTV, and a lifetime writing YA short stories and plays. 

Emily holds a B.A. in Film Studies from Wesleyan University, where she took all the creative writing classes she could find, including one which was taught by none other than Lemony Snicket himself! Her debut novel, AfterMath, came out in September 2021, and her work as a Beauty Editor/Writer can be seen online in many publications. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

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We typically invite scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for an informal conversation about their work, and then we turn those brunches into a podcast.

But for these bonus mini-episodes, we change things up a bit, asking Notre Dame researchers to talk about something that both makes them happy and has no direct connection to their academic pursuits.

In other words, if you thought a podcast recorded over brunch couldn’t get even more casual, you’d be wrong.

Here, Meghan Sullivan, professor of philosophy and director of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, joins host Ted Fox via Zoom to discuss a passion she’s had since childhood, one that played a memorable role as she earned tenure:

Building with LEGO.

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.

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.

Dan Hinshaw is a professor emeritus of surgery at the University of Michigan and a consultant in palliative medicine at the University of Michigan Geriatrics Center. The author or coauthor of some 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals and publications, he spent the fall 2018 semester in residence at Notre Dame’s Institute for Advanced Study. Here Dan discusses the project he undertook there, examining how thoughtful engagement with the reality that none of us will live forever has the potential to help us find meaning in our own lives as well as transform the way we see each other, the aging process, and the delivery of healthcare. And did we mention he's really good with metaphors?

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.

Lisa Mueller is an assistant professor of political science at Macalester College who is spending the 2018–19 academic year as a residential fellow at Notre Dame’s Institute for Advanced Study. Several months after Cambridge University Press published her book Political Protest in Contemporary Africa, she talked to host Ted Fox about what protests in different parts of the world—including the U.S.—have in common, and what makes protests in sub-Saharan Africa different. They also discussed how social scientists go about studying something as dynamic as a protest as well as her current project, which aims to answer whether the degree of cohesiveness among the protesters within a movement has any impact on their ultimate effectiveness.