Best OpenCourseWare Podcasts (2024)

1
Robust Science with Prof. Rebecca Saxe 1:01:48

1d ago1:01:48

1:01:48

Our guest for this episode, Professor Rebecca Saxe, is MIT’s Associate Dean of Science. Prof. Saxe is also the principal investigator for her own laboratory, the Saxe Lab, where she deploys powerful technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the relationship between human thought and brain activity. (She originally w…

1
Innovation, Past and Future with Open Learning's Dean Christopher Capozzola 13:19

15d ago13:19

13:19

As MIT’s Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning, Christopher Capozzola’s job is to look forward, identifying new opportunities and facing new challenges in online and digital learning. But he’s also a professor of American history. In that capacity, his job also requires him to study the opportunities and challenges people faced in the past—and, i…

1
What’s Worth Making? with Prof. Hal Abelson 42:49

22d ago42:49

42:49

Professor Hal Abelson has been active in computer science for over half a century—the first computer he worked with, in high school, was the kind where programs were encoded in a pattern of holes punched into a paper tape fed into the machine. When he arrived at MIT as a graduate student in the late 1960s, Abelson became involved in exploring compu…

1
Everything Here Is Sacred (Terrascope Radio Replay) 18:47

29d ago18:47

18:47

In a departure from our usual format, in which we interview an exceptional faculty member to learn about their approach to teaching, this time we’re showcasing an exemplary piece of student work: an exploration of ways in which seemingly everyday places and activities, such as a cornfield, the meeting place of two rivers, or the process of planting…

1
The Power of Experience with Dr. Ari Epstein 19:28

29d ago19:28

19:28

You thought Chalk Radio was a podcast about inspired teaching at MIT? Yes and no! “We don't do a lot of teaching,” says Dr. Ari Epstein, our guest for this week’s episode. Dr. Epstein is associate director of the Terrascope program, a learning community for first-year undergraduates. Each year the program focuses on one particular issue relating to…

1
Economics and Real-World Impact with Dr. Sara Ellison and Prof. Esther Duflo 36:54

1M ago36:54

36:54

In this episode we meet professor and Nobel laureate Esther Duflo and her colleague Dr. Sara Ellison for a discussion about economics: what it is, how it differs from sociology, how it incorporates classic intellectual tools like probability and statistics with newer technologies like machine learning, and how it can itself be a tool for improving …

1
The Lumpy Universe with Prof. David Kaiser 53:26

1M ago53:26

53:26

This conversation with Prof. David Kaiser, who teaches physics and the history of science at MIT, covers a vast timespan, from the beginning of the universe to the present day. Prof. Kaiser explains that inflationary cosmology helps connect our understanding of quantum fluctuations—what he calls the “jitters” that particles undergo at subatomic lev…

1
Reimagining Cities with Prof. David Hsu 10:37

2M ago10:37

10:37

Paradoxically, urban planning professor David Hsu doesn’t consider himself a “city person,” but he has great appreciation and enthusiasm for cities as places where meaningful steps can be taken toward climate mitigation. In this episode, Prof. Hsu explains that urban planners can help move cities to take action to reduce the amount of greenhouse ga…

1
The Kitchen Cloud Chamber with Prof. Anne White 44:19

2M ago44:19

44:19

You don’t need a multibillion-dollar supercollider to detect subatomic particles. In fact, you can build a working cloud chamber—a device capable of revealing the cosmic radiation and radon decay events that go on continuously around us—with just a block of dry ice, some rubbing alcohol, and a few objects you probably already have in your kitchen. …

1
Honoring Your Native Language with Prof. Michel DeGraff 25:49

1y ago25:49

25:49

We first interviewed Professor Michel DeGraff back in season 1; he now returns for another episode, diving deeper into issues of culture and identity. He talks about his childhood in Haiti, where he was punished at school for speaking his own mother tongue, and where he was taught by his teachers and even his parents that Kreyòl was not “a real lan…

1
Sustainability Education Across Learning Environments with Dr. Liz Potter-Nelson and Sarah Meyers 15:13

1y ago15:13

15:13

Many people associate the word “sustainability” with a few specific activities such as composting or recycling. Our guests for this episode, Dr. Liz Potter-Nelson and Sarah Meyers, point out that sustainability is actually much broader, encompassing all the future-oriented practices that promote the continued flourishing of individuals, cultures, a…

1
Teaching Teachers with Dr. Summer Morrill 18:37

1+ y ago18:37

18:37

Nobody comes into this world already knowing how to teach—and most students arrive at undergraduate or graduate programs without any teaching experience at all. For those who are selected to be teaching assistants, the prospect of facing a classroom of students for the first time can be terrifying. To assuage those fears and provide pedagogical ski…

1
Communication is the Whole Game with Paige Bright & Prof. Haynes Miller 19:24

1+ y ago19:24

19:24

In this episode we meet Haynes Miller, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, who in his 35+ years of active teaching at MIT has done much to shape the institute’s math curriculum. Prof. Miller’s special focus is algebraic topology, but his teaching has encompassed a wide range of other topics from differential equations to number theory, and he has a …

1
Opening Computer Science to Everyone with Chancellor Eric Grimson 16:42

1+ y ago16:42

16:42

Eric Grimson is MIT’s chancellor for academic advancement and interim vice president for Open Learning; he’s also a longstanding professor of computer science and medical engineering. In this episode, Prof. Grimson shares his thoughts on in-person and online education. We learn that he rehearses each lecture one, two, or even three times before com…

1
Seeing Green with Drs. Sandland and Chazot 17:48

1+ y ago17:48

17:48

MIT has long been an innovator in online education. For even longer—for its whole history, in fact—it has championed hands-on learning. These two emphases may seem incompatible, but the MICRO initiative draws on both in an effort to increase diversity within the field of materials science. Dr. Jessica Sandland and Dr. Cécile Chazot, our guests for …

1
Well-being is the Goal with Prof. Frank Schilbach 16:50

1+ y ago16:50

16:50

Do you always make the best possible choices, even when you’re stressed or short on sleep? The ideally rational person (“Homo economicus”) assumed by conventional economics always acts in ways that are materially advantageous to them. But Associate Professor Frank Schilbach seeks in his research and teaching to explore the ways in which Homo econom…

1
The Greatest Existential Threat with Prof. Robert Redwine and Dr. Jim Walsh 15:51

1+ y ago15:51

15:51

To most people, especially those who are too young to remember the Cold War, the possibility of nuclear Armageddon may seem so remote as not to be worth contemplating. But Prof. Bob Redwine and Jim Walsh, two of the instructors behind MIT’s Nuclear Weapons Education Project (NWEP), warn that it may not be so unlikely after all, and that failure to …

1
Visualizing Calculus with Professor Gigliola Staffilani 13:38

2y ago13:38

13:38

Professor Gigliola Staffilani, who teaches in MIT’s Department of Mathematics, was closely involved in designing and teaching the introductory-level 18.01 Calculus I course series now found on the MIT Open Learning Library. She’s also been involved in teaching calculus to students on campus. To help students become proficient in a notoriously intim…

1
Finding Expertise Everywhere with Prof. M. Amah Edoh 18:44

2y ago18:44

18:44

Though there’s widespread consensus that the slavery and colonization that characterize the history of European relations with Africa represent a legacy of grave injustice, there is much less agreement on how to redress that injustice. Professor M. Amah Edoh, who teaches in MIT’s Department of Anthropology, designed the course 21A.S01 Reparations f…

1
AI Literacy for All with Prof. Cynthia Breazeal 21:04

2y ago21:04

21:04

When humans interact, they don’t just pass information from one to the other; there’s always some relational element, with the participants responding to each other’s emotional cues. Professor Cynthia Breazeal, MIT’s new Dean of Digital Learning, believes it’s possible to design this element into human-computer interactions as well. She foresees a …

1
Making Ethical Decisions in Software Design with Prof. Daniel Jackson & Serena Booth 21:36

2+ y ago21:36

21:36

In the previous episode we learned about a project undertaken as part of the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) initiative at MIT’s Schwartzman College of Computing. In this episode we hear about another SERC project, from Prof. Daniel Jackson and graduate teaching assistant Serena Booth, who have partnered to incorporate ethic…

1
The Human Element in Machine Learning with Prof. Catherine D’Ignazio, Prof. Jacob Andreas & Harini Suresh 16:03

2+ y ago16:03

16:03

When computer science was in its infancy, programmers quickly realized that though computers are astonishingly powerful tools, the results they achieve are only as good as the data you feed into them. (This principle was quickly formalized as GIGO: “Garbage In, Garbage Out.”) What was true in the era of the UNIVAC has proved still to be true in the…

1
When There Isn't A Simple Answer with Prof. Dennis McLaughlin 15:08

2+ y ago15:08

15:08

Most of the students in Professor Dennis McLaughlin’s course 1.74 Land, Water, Food, and Climate come to it with established opinions on some very controversial topics: whether GMOs are safe, whether climate change is real (and really human-induced), whether organic agriculture is preferable to conventional agriculture, and whether it’s better for …

1
Learning about Life through Laboratory Chemistry with Drs. John Dolhun & Sarah Hewett 16:54

2+ y ago16:54

16:54

Students in MIT’s course 5.310 Laboratory Chemistry have a state-of-the art lab to work in, with energy-saving hibernating fume hoods and a new spectrometer that achieves mind-blowingly precise measurements—not parts per million or parts per billion, but parts per trillion! And the students do spend much of their time in that new lab. But Dr. John …

1
Re-engineering Education with VP for Open Learning Sanjay Sarma 12:20

2+ y ago12:20

12:20

Sanjay Sarma is not only a professor of mechanical engineering; he’s also Vice President for Open Learning at MIT, where he oversees innovative efforts to reimagine education, and he is coauthor (with Luke Yoquinto) of the recent book Grasp, which explores the nature of learning. In this episode, Professor Sarma discusses the differences between no…

1
Sketching a Picture of the Mind with Prof. Nancy Kanwisher 18:31

2+ y ago18:31

18:31

Nancy Kanwisher, founding member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, describes the effort to understand the mind as “the grandest scientific quest of all time,” partly because it seeks to answer fundamental questions that all people ponder from time to time: What is knowled…

1
Prof. Edoh Wants to Know What You Think 2:03

2+ y ago2:03

2:03

Contemporary Movements for Justice is an MIT course in which scholars and activists speak about pursuing justice for European colonialism in Africa and its contemporary legacies. Do you have ideas that could help shape these discussions? If so, please participate in this new OCW opportunity. Watch course lectures online at the same time as MIT stud…

1
Building Our Muscle for Democracy (Prof. Ceasar McDowell) 31:05

3y ago31:05

31:05

The classic New England town meeting, with voters gathered in a large hall to decide issues directly, is often cited as the purest form of American democracy. But historically, those town meetings gave a voice only to certain classes of people. In this episode we meet Ceasar McDowell, Professor of the Practice of Community Development at MIT and ne…

1
In Climate Conversations, Empathy is Everything (Brandon Leshchinskiy) 21:19

3y ago21:19

21:19

In our previous episode we met Professor Dava Newman, cofounder of the nonprofit group EarthDNA. Today’s guest is Brandon Leshchinskiy, a graduate student in Technology and Policy at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, who has helped Prof. Newman create the EarthDNA Ambassadors program, training young people in communication, negotiatio…

1
Visualizing the Future of Spaceship Earth (Prof. Dava Newman) 15:00

3+ y ago15:00

15:00

Professor Dava Newman is an aerospace engineer whose career has largely focused on developing improved space suits for eventual interplanetary travel. But in recent years she has turned her sights back toward Earth, using the vast amounts of data collected by satellites in near space to inform and motivate the public for the fight against catastrop…

1
Encountering Each Other (Essayist Garnette Cadogan) 22:47

3+ y ago22:47

22:47

Garnette Cadogan is an acclaimed essayist who teaches in MIT’s Urban Studies and Planning program. As befits a teacher who is also a professional creative writer, he conceives of the academic syllabus as a matrix of interconnected and recurring themes and leitmotifs, not as a schematic outline of self-contained units. In this episode, he describes …

1
Seeing the Big Picture from Space (Astronaut Jeff Hoffman) 19:40

3+ y ago19:40

19:40

Over the years, Sarah Hansen has interviewed the creator of the “Women of NASA” minifigure series as well as a professor of astronautics and former deputy administrator of NASA. Now, for the first time, she interviews an actual astronaut, Jeff Hoffman, who teaches aerospace engineering and systems engineering at MIT. In this episode, Prof. Hoffman …

1
Making Solid State Chemistry Matter (Prof. Jeffrey Grossman) 11:55

3+ y ago11:55

11:55

First-year students who already plan to major in chemistry don’t require any special bells or whistles to motivate them to study the subject. But introductory chemistry is a required subject for all students at MIT, regardless of their intended major, and materials scientist Jeffrey Grossman has found that for many students in his course 3.091 Intr…

1
Searching for the Oldest Stars (Prof. Anna Frebel) 15:29

3+ y ago15:29

15:29

For millions of years after the Big Bang, nearly all the matter in the universe was in the form of hydrogen and helium; other elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen only formed later, in nuclear reactions inside stars. To learn what the universe looked like back then, MIT astrophysicist Anna Frebel studies the oldest stars we can find—13 billio…

1
Paying it Forward with FinTech (Prof. Gary Gensler) 16:01

3+ y ago16:01

16:01

One might imagine that an expert on financial technology would view human relations through a primarily transactional lens. But Professor Gary Gensler, in teaching his course on financial technology (or “FinTech”) at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, tries to base his interactions with his students on a different model. Feeling indebted to the olde…

1
The Power of OER with Profs. Mary Rowe and Elizabeth Siler 17:48

4y ago17:48

17:48

Many instructors in recent years have turned to open educational resources (OER) so that their students don’t have to pay for an expensive textbook. And that is indeed one of the foremost benefits of OER. But Professor Elizabeth Siler, who teaches at Worcester State University, has found that using OER offers advantages to instructors too: doing so…

1
Thinking Like an Economist with Prof. Jonathan Gruber 10:21

4y ago10:21

10:21

Professor Jonathan Gruber wants to train students to think like economists. Economics uses elegant mathematical models to explain how people make decisions and allocate their resources—but all too often those models are taught in ways that remain disconnected from students’ own experience. In this episode, Professor Gruber shares his thoughts on br…

1
Learning to Fly with Drs. Philip Greenspun & Tina Srivastava 16:30

4y ago16:30

16:30

Can you really learn to fly by sitting in a classroom and attending lectures? Of course not! But the course offered by Philip Greenspun and Tina Srivastava in 16.687 Private Pilot Ground School has proven surprisingly popular as a means of learning the basic principles one needs to know before getting into the cockpit of a small aircraft. Originall…

1
Unpacking Misconceptions about Language & Identities with Prof. Michel DeGraff 11:42

4y ago11:42

11:42

“We all hold dear certain attitudes about language,” Professor Michel DeGraff says in this episode centered on his course 24.908 Creole Languages and Caribbean Identities. Those attitudes can be positive for ourselves and for others, DeGraff says, but they can also have negative effects. His goal is to make linguistics accessible to a broader audie…

1
Special Episode: Teaching Remotely During Covid-19 with Prof. Justin Reich 17:29

4y ago17:29

17:29

Join us as we talk with Justin Reich, assistant professor in comparative media studies at MIT. Professor Reich runs the Teaching Systems Lab, which was founded with the mission of designing, implementing, and researching the future of teacher learning. With the emergence of the current coronavirus pandemic, Prof. Reich has been turning his attentio…

1
Hands-on, Minds On with Dr. Christopher Terman 17:13

4y ago17:13

17:13

You might imagine that fluency is an inherently good thing in teaching. But Dr. Christopher Terman, Senior Lecturer Emeritus at MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab, explains that breaks in the flow of the classroom can actually make the learning experience more memorable. This is just one of the insights Dr. Terman has gained in tw…

1
Film Is for Everyone with Prof. David Thorburn 16:37

4y ago16:37

16:37

What would Shakespeare have made of today’s popular television shows? He might or might not like them, but he wouldn’t dismiss them simply because they’re popular. In this episode, Professor David Thorburn, who has spent his career challenging conventional assumptions about what kinds of works have artistic merit, speaks eloquently about why popula…

1
Social Impact at Scale, One Project at a Time with Dr. Anjali Sastry 10:53

4y ago10:53

10:53

This episode explores a new kind of independent study. MIT has traditionally encouraged its Sloan MBA fellows to engage in international projects with partners around the globe. Our guest, Dr. Anjali Sastry, has led over 100 groups of MBA fellows in these projects. But she recently changed the structure of the class so that instead of signing on to…

1
Making Deep Learning Human with Prof. Gilbert Strang 10:47

4+ y ago10:47

10:47

Mathematics Professor Gilbert Strang is one of MIT’s most revered instructors; his courses, especially the perennially popular linear algebra course 18.06, have received millions of visits on OpenCourseWare, and his lecture videos have won him a devoted following on YouTube as well. (A sample YouTube comment on one of his lectures: “This is not lec…

1
How Africa Has Been Made to Mean with Prof. Amah Edoh 27:16

4+ y ago27:16

27:16

“How has Africa been made to mean?” For a long time, Africa has been depicted in the arts and media as a place of famine and dysfunction. More recently, the continent has been increasingly portrayed as the next frontier for business and artistic innovation. In this episode, we talk with MIT Professor of African Studies M. Amah Edoh about how Africa…

1
Nuclear Gets Personal with Prof. Michael Short 24:36

4+ y ago24:36

24:36

It’s a safe bet that Professor Michael Short’s 22.01 Introduction to Nuclear Engineering and Ionizing Radiation is the only course at MIT where students are encouraged to bring their toenail clippings to class. In this episode, Professor Short discusses one of the core principles of his teaching philosophy: the importance of making abstract concept…

1
Coming Soon: Chalk Radio from MIT OCW 1:30

4+ y ago1:30

1:30

In each episode of this new podcast, we meet the instructors behind one of MIT’s most interesting courses, from nuclear physics to film appreciation to piloting small aircraft. The instructors open up to us about the passions that drive their cutting-edge research and innovative teaching, sharing stories that are candid, funny, serious, personal⁠, …

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