The Short Version

The longer version A common thread linking Kendra’s work on the history of milk and her exploration of the environmental hazards caused by cleaning products is that, on some level, we want it both ways. Paraphrasing here: We hold nature up as the ideal of purity while at the same time being kind of skeeved out by the inherent messiness of it. We want our milk fresh — but not, like, straight-from-t...

The longer version Cold case analysis is difficult, complicated work, and even explaining what it entails comes with its own set of challenges. Investigators often have to dig through old stores of evidence that may be damaged, incomplete or badly disorganized. Plus, the cases that get a second look tend to be serious crimes involving real harm and graphic evidence that can be disturbing to handle...

The longer version: During our conversation with Kevin, there was a question that kept bugging us. Assuming that it would require extraordinarily advanced technology to travel the enormous distances between stars, why would beings with technology that advanced seemingly keep getting busted by random humans looking up at the sky? Kevin was quick to note that the answer to that question isn’t knowab...

The Long(er) Version: Part of our conversation covered practical ways that AI-enabled technologies could support healthy aging in a variety of contexts — from preventing falls and providing companionship to facilitating difficult conversations surrounding end-of-life decisions. Host: For anyone who's hearing this who might be skeptical about AI and might feel uncomfortable about the idea of it bei...

The Longer Version: In addition to capital punishment, Jim Acker has extensively studied wrongful convictions — that is, those moments when our justice system fails the accused in the worst imaginable way. It’s a phenomenon inseparable from the death penalty debate because it represents a nightmare scenario: a life wrongfully taken as punishment for a crime the person did not commit. These issues...

The Longer Version Over the last few weeks, the news cycle has once again been boiling with AI anxiety after revelations that lots of OpenAI agents teamed up on a hacking spree and warnings from a former Anthropic researcher that AI could “kill us all” within the decade. That was before Anthropic released a report suggesting someone in a military lab may have been trying to use its AI to try to bu...

The Longer Version: In part of our interview that didn’t make the final edit, we spoke to Prabha in greater depth about a word that comes up a lot when talking about AI: reasoning . It’s a word with very human connotations. We talk about behaving reasonably and reaching reasonable conclusions. But what does it mean when we’re talking about machines? His answer was closely related to his argument a...

The Longer Version:  One of the most interesting gambling debates happening in New York right now is not about casinos (New York  has long since legalized and licensed them ), or mobile sports betting ( also now legal , with some limits, since 2022).  It’s about online prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, which let users buy and sell so-called “event contracts” on things t...

The longer version: In our interview, Sarah spoke about the role that social media platforms can play in making their spaces safer for users. Some of these options can be controlled by changing app settings, but Sarah argues that safety should be the default.  SD: There are ways for users to change app settings that can make them safer to use. But platforms don't always make these choices easy to...

The longer version:  In this episode, Danny recounts his experience as an expert witness in a murder trial evaluating two competing sets of crime scene photographs of blood stains. What the photos showed (or didn’t) was a potentially significant detail in the case.  More important for this conversation is the context: The photographs were originally shot on 35mm film and therefore theoretically be...

The longer version: There were so many interesting threads to this conversation that we couldn't include in the final edit, including Erica's take on whether folks in the 19th century knew William Mumler might be a grifter (yes) — and whether that really matters (maybe not). Why do you think spirit photography took off? Were people not aware that technological trickery was being used? EF: It actua...

The longer version:  Sustainability conversations aren't just about high-minded principles of environmental stewardship. At their core, they are conversations about the mundane, largely unseen building systems that make our climate-controlled lives comfortable every day.. They’re also about policy choices and the political will to make important changes. UAlbany’s Central Plant, for example, provi...

The longer version:  In this week’s episode, Arun discussed how DNA nanostructures can be used for biotech as well as data storage. We asked about other applications being explored in the broader field of nanotechnology. As it turns out, materials science is fertile territory. There’s also growing interest in developing DNA barcodes. ARC:  Imagine a store where vegetables, produce or other plant o...

The longer version:  On his syllabus for a course called Realism and Climate Fiction, Mike Hill includes two texts that don’t — on their face —seem like obvious choices for a class exploring the emergence of cli-fi as a literary genre. One is Cormac McCarthy’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road and the other is Robinson Crusoe , the 1719 novel about a shipwrecked sailor, which not only pre...

The longer version:  If you’ve heard Havidán Rodríguez speak publicly, odds are you’ve heard him say the phrase, “it’s always a great day to be a Great Dane.” It’s his thing. But there’s another phrase he says a lot, often in connection with the story of how college transformed his life. “And this ,” he emphasizes as he concludes the anecdote, “is the power of higher education.” The point of telli...

The longer version:  If you’ve found your way to a podcast inspired partly by Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show and haven’t yet seen it, be sure to check it out so you can understand the full context of our conversation with José. And if you also missed the controversy swirling around the performance, Rolling Stone is a good place to start unpacking that. The Conversation also had a good explai...

The longer version:  We couldn’t interview the director of UAlbany’s Career Center without asking him for his top tips on how to approach career exploration — or re-exploration if you find yourself at a crossroads. Here’s Noah’s list of must-dos: Understand the flexibility and breadth of options that your major creates . What transferable skills does it develop? What careers have alumni pursued wi...

  The longer version  Annalisa’s lab is working to understand how the brain processes spatial awareness — both to inform medical advances for dementia research and to advance technologies seeking to mimic the efficiency of the human brain. Here’s a look into how her team uses mouse models to answer these questions. AS : Genetically, mice are surprisingly similar to humans. In our studies, we allow...

The longer version:  The title of Bryan Early and Togzhan Kassenova ’s forthcoming book on the financing and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is evocative: Banks and The Bomb. The bomb. As in, the atomic bomb. But wait… Is that something we’re still worried about? Is the spread of nuclear weapons still the biggest threat to global peace and security in 2026? Certainly, it’s been in the...

The longer version:  Lately, Cecilia Levy ’s contributions to LUX-ZEPLIN’s hunt for direct evidence of dark matter come in the form of computational physics — that is, the extraordinarily complex analysis of the data coming out of the dark matter detector. (As a postdoc, Levy also contributed to its assembly and commissioning.) Cecilia's data analysis work begs a more fundamental question: How wou...

The longer version  Beyond her research on emergency management and technology, DeeDee also works on enhancing climate resiliency in coastal regions.  In 2023, DeeDee was selected by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to  serve as Ocean Decade Champion, which led her to attend the 2024 IOC/UNESCO Ocean Decade Conference in Barcelona. The summit spotlighted research that integrates natural, soci...

The longer version:  Michael Christakis has led UAlbany’s Division for Student Affairs and Enrollment as vice president for 11 years. But he’s been part of the unit for going on 27, and he started in the same way many people do — through Residential Life.  Mike was a graduate hall director at Alumni Quad, which, when it comes to creating a sense of belonging —the topic of this week’s episode — may...

Our conversation with Robert Rosenswig was prompted by an article he published last year in the Journal of Economic Issues , “ Ancient Tally Sticks Explain the Nature of Modern Government Money .” The journal prioritizes “contributions that examine the political economy of food, healthcare, energy, telecommunications, transportation, education, or recreation provisioning.”  One of the fascinating...

The longer version:  Max Turner is among many UAlbany faculty members whose work blends artificial intelligence tools with other scientific disciplines — in his case, fly neurobiology focused on understanding how vision works in the brain.  Max was among more than two-dozen AI-focused faculty members recruited to UAlbany with the help of new state funding several years ago as part of the largest c...

The longer version:  For many people drawn to careers in atmospheric science, their curiosity is kindled by a formative weather event during their youth — a blizzard or flood that leaves such an impression that they spend their adult lives chasing the mysteries in the clouds and wind. But for Kara, it was as much about the math. “I knew I liked math. I knew I liked science. And I thought, ‘Meteoro...