OMNIA Podcast

In 1346, bubonic plague began to spread through northern Africa and Eurasia. In seven years, it had become the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, killing between 75 and 200 million people. In this episode, we hear from a specialist in medieval literature about the bubonic plague and how artists like Boccaccio and Chaucer documented the horror of the Black Death but also the joy found i...

In Mary Shelley’s novel, The Last Man , the protagonist—one of the few survivors of a plague—searches for meaning in a world of loss, concluding that, “there is but one solution to the intricate riddle of life; to improve ourselves, and contribute to the happiness of others.” In 2022, as COVID-19 lingers on, the climate threat looms larger, and war returns to Europe, there seems to be no answer to...

This is an episode about big things. Big like the ocean, which, thanks to its size, absorbs about 30% of all CO2 emissions. Big like the scale of our Earth’s 4.6 billion history, and big like our responsibility to future generations. Can an understanding of and appreciation for the size of our world and the scope of its history, from the beginning of time to dinosaurs to humans, help us take actio...

This episode addresses early concerns in the public sphere, the media, and even the scientific community, surrounding high-energy particle collision experiments at particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider. These concerns culminated in lawsuits accusing researchers of conducting experiments that could cause the creation of mini black holes or even spell the end of the world. We speak wi...

The phrase “better things for better living through chemistry” began life in 1935 as a DuPont advertising slogan–an enthusiastic expression of optimism about science, and its potential to solve virtually any human problem. It’s clear that without chemistry, the world would be a very different place. So why, out of all the sciences, is chemistry so little understood, and so often held in low regard...

New medications, treatments, and implants that affect our brains have helped thousands overcome ADD, ended seizures, and even show promise for restoring memory lost to brain trauma. But these enhancements have implications for individuals and society. How far can we go? Who gets the enhancements? In this episode, we'll hear from a psychology professor about what’s being done and what we can learn...

If you were writing a book about the history of science denial, the chapter on Darwin would have to be one of the longest. But why? You can argue that we see evolution all the time – it is, after all, why we’re worrying today about the emergence of new variants of COVID-19. Does it boil down to a divide between religion and science that just can’t be bridged? And what’s at risk when what science t...

This episode is about the science of how people talk. We'll get into some of the nitty gritty science, like prosody and intonational variation, but we're really interested in why people resist changes to language. Why did France try to ban "le weekend," and why do some people, like, get so, like, upset when people use the word "like"? An expert in sociolinguistics talks about what our speech says...

On this season of the Omnia podcast, we talk to scientists and other scholars about scientific ideas that cause big reactions. We’ll look at stories of science getting knocked around, and standing back up again, in a world full of polarization, politics, misrepresentation, and simple misunderstanding. Welcome to In These Times: Fear and Loathing and Science.   One of the more unexpected side effec...

In Episode 1: Facts vs. Feelings, Mark Trodden commented that most of what we would call modern cosmology is a very recent vintage, including many discoveries from just the past few decades. In this bonus segment, Professor Trodden discusses what this recent research has to say about the Big Bang, gravitational waves, and the expanding universe. Mark Trodden is the  Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg P...

In our final episode, we're continuing the conversation about how institutions can perpetuate racial inequalities and the work that remains. We talk to a graduate student whose family has been touched by Penn and slavery across generations, a philosopher who weighs the past and future when it comes to the case for reparations, and a political scientist whose focus on community and repair is not ne...

This season, we’ve spoken to experts about how institutions have perpetuated racial hierarchies. Higher education is no exception. In our final two episodes, we’re talking to students and faculty about the work that comes next. This episode features an undergraduate student whose research with the Penn and Slavery Project reveals truths about the relationship between higher education and the perpe...

When Covid-19 delivered a disproportionate blow to communities of color, environmental hazards like air pollution, that are all too frequently present in these communities, was one of the contributing factors cited by experts. The idea that race is a factor in determining who has access to resources that allow a community to thrive is not so much news as it is a part of the American story. Today,...

During the worldwide protests that followed the death of George Floyd, demonstrators mobilized to challenge the representations of history presented by some of the monuments and memorials that occupy our public squares. In this episode we hear from an anthropologist, a sociologist, and an art historian, who reflect on why there has been such a focus on these symbols in this moment, how they shape...

Racism and discrimination are more than individual problems—they are part of institutions that have far-reaching impact. In this episode we hear from a professor of sociology, education, and Africana Studies who delves into discusses discrimination in higher education and explores how modern racial attitudes shape and are shaped by the places in which people live. We also drop in on a conversation...

As we worked on our third episode, the news broke about the shooting in Atlanta that left eight people dead, including six women of Asian descent. This tragic event comes after more than a year of rising violence against members of Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander communities. In this special episode, we talk to Josephine Park, Professor and Undergraduate Chair of English and Director o...

The enslavement of Black people was supported by a legal system that including everything from laws preventing legal marriage to those restricting movement and access to education. When slavery was abolished, this system did not go away. Instead, it evolved to include Jim Crow laws and 20th centuries policies including redlining and urban renewal. In this episode, we speak to two historians and an...

Last fall we launched our podcast, “In These Times” with an examination of COVID-19 and its far-reaching impacts. We spoke with students and faculty who shared their personal experiences with the epidemic, along with perspectives drawn from history, science, politics and beyond.  A recurring theme of our first season was the crisis within the COVID crisis: how racial inequality was playing out in...

On Wednesday, January 6, 2021, as legislators counted and confirmed the votes in the Electoral College, rioters breached the Capitol building, forcing an evacuation of the House floor, including Vice President Pence. The events unfolded amidst President Trump having urged his supporters to fight against the ceremonial counting of the votes. The rioters, who could be heard calling police officers "...

The worldwide scale and scope of discontinuity, loss, and uncertainty has made the year of the pandemic like no other in recent memory. How are we processing this moment, and how do we move forward? In this episode, we talk to three students, who share how the COVID crisis has reshaped their undergraduate experience at Penn and their visions for the future. We also hear from a professor of English...

COVID-19 wasn’t the only health crisis of 2020. In June, the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association declared that police violence, particularly against Black and brown communities, is a public health crisis that demands attention and action. Widespread protests drew attention this summer, but where do we go from there? In this episode, a lawyer and doctoral candida...

With rates of diagnoses and death disproportionately affecting racial minorities and low-income workers, experts in this episode address how COVID-19 has further exposed already dire health outcome inequalities. We begin with a political scientist discussing how governmental policy drives health inequality, especially during times of crisis. Then, a Ph. D. student in history and sociology of scien...

The coronavirus pandemic does not exist in a vacuum. We look at other urgent issues of our time, and examine how they affect and are affected by COVID-19. We start this episode—as most things seem to now—with the partisan polarization in the U.S., asking a political science professor if people really are seeing everything in red or blue. Then a historian and legal scholar tells how we got to this...

Details from the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 or the quarantines during the bubonic plague sound familiar today. In our second episode, we talk to historians about how past societies dealt with disease, and what happened when a new understanding of germs revolutionized our approach but led us to overlook the larger picture of health. A legal historian explains why the U.S. pandemic repose was sta...

“In these times” has been a handy turn of phrase in 2020, with varying adjectives used to modify it. Challenging. Unique. Strange. What started as a useful shorthand for the COVID-19 pandemic and the surreal nature of stay-at-home orders became used describe world-wide protests and calls for racial justice. This fall, the OMNIA podcast goes beyond the shorthand, using COVID-19 as a platform for a...