OMNIA Podcast

In this episode of the OMNIA Podcast, we recap the 60-Second lectures from the spring of 2019 and highlight two favorites from our archive. You’ll learn about race in the USA from a philosophical perspective, the psychology of why we quit, why truth matters to democracy, and new pedagogies for teaching in the age of climate change. Our dip into the archives features the 2016 60-Second SLAM winning...

In this episode, we talk to Charles Bernstein, inventive poet, writer of libretti, translator, archivist, and, since 2003, a member of Penn's faculty. Bernstein is the Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature and co-director of PennSound. He retired from the Department of English at the end of the spring 2019 semester. In 2019, Bernstein was awarded the Bollingen Prize for A...

Quayshawn Spencer asks a simple question about race with a not-so-simple answer: what kind of thing is it? Spencer, the Robert S. Blank Presidential Associate Professor of Philosophy at Penn, poses the question to undergraduates in his Philosophy of Race course. As a specialist in the philosophies of science, biology, and race, his course examines the very nature and reality of race, beginning wit...

In our new series, OMNIA 101, we talk to faculty members about integral aspects of their research, shedding light on their biggest challenges and their strategies for conquering them. Mark Trodden, Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics, and Masao Sako, Associate Professor and Undergraduate Department Chair, have different approa...

Since 2003, the 60-Second Lecture Series has challenged Arts and Sciences faculty to distill a wealth of knowledge into a one-minute talk. Every Wednesday in September and April sees Penn Arts and Sciences faculty members standing at a podium on College Green and lecturing on topics ranging from human history, to fractions, to fly fishing—all in under a minute. The latest OMNIA podcast recaps the...

In this episode, we explore a potential watershed moment in American politics: the unprecedented number of women running for office in 2018. Dawn Teele, Janice and Julian Bers Assistant Professor of Political Science, researches women and politics, voting rights reform, and candidate recruitment. Right now, she’s studying Emerge, the largest Democratic campaign training program in the United State...

In December 2017, The New York Times revealed the existence of a Pentagon program investigating unidentified flying objects. For many people, the continued existence of such a program on UFOs came as a surprise, though the military has historically been known to conduct such studies. Most notably, the Air Force’s Project Blue Book investigated more than 12,000 claimed UFO sightings between 1952 an...

Taije Silverman is an award-winning poet and faculty member in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of English where she teaches classes on poetry, creative nonfiction, and translation. Before coming to Penn, she taught at the University of Bologna in Italy, where she was a Fulbright Scholar, and at Emory University, where she was the Creative Writing Fellow. She’s also received the Pushcar...

Concerns over lead poisoning were heightened in the U.S. after the contamination of a city water supply in Flint, Michigan. In Philadelphia and southeastern Pennsylvania, rates of lead exposure in children are high—especially in low-income communities. Thanks to a Making a Difference in Diverse Communities grant from Penn Arts and Sciences, a team of researchers and students led by Reto Gieré and...

On May 9th, 2017, President Trump fired then-FBI director James Comey. This decision has intensified the debate of whether the U.S. is in a “constitutional crisis” given the numerous controversies swirling around the Trump administration. Rogers Smith, the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science and a presidential historian and constitutional scholar, offers his take on...

The politics of climate change and the politics of social inequality, such as the right to affordable housing, are usually examined as two separate issues. For Daniel Aldana Cohen, assistant professor of sociology, these two movements intersect when examining efforts to reduce carbon emissions in urban areas. Cohen has conducted research in cities such as São Paulo and New York and argues that to...

This fall, the University of Pennsylvania hosted its very first Penn Honors Diversity(PHD)Symposium. Eight of the university's schools, including Penn Arts and Sciences, invited early and mid-stage undergraduates, particularly those from underrepresented groups, to learn about the value of a Ph. D.-level education. In this episode, we speak to some of the visiting students about their experience,...

In this episode, we explore the fact, fiction, and future of artificial intelligence in the military. Depictions of so-called killer robots in films such as "The Terminator" continue to be a part of serious discussions about autonomous weapons. Should we fear the development of weapons that can make decisions? Or are these fears based more on science fiction than fact? We speak with Mich...

The bill proposing Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was first introduced in the U.S. Congress four days after King’s assassination in 1968. It wasn't voted on until 1979, however, when it fell five votes short of the number needed for passage. After a grassroots campaign led to the largest petition to Congress in U.S. history, and icons like Stevie Wonder raised awareness in popular culture, the bill f...

It was in 1992 when Dorothy Cheney, professor of biology, and Robert Seyfarth, professor of psychology, began their long-term study of free-ranging baboons in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. The wife-and-husband team spent the next decade and a half documenting the behavior, communication, and social cognition of these group-living primates. This work culminated in their highly influential 2007 bo...

Hilary Putnam (1926-2016)is considered to be one of the most influential minds of the 20th Century – making significant contributions to the fields of philosophy, mathematics, and computer science, among others. Putnam received his undergraduate degree from Penn in 1948 and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University in 1985. Putnam was the Cogan University Professor Emeritus...

On Dec. 20, 2005, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District—the trial that set the stage for a national debate on the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design (ID) as an alternative to evolution—was decided. In the lead-up to the trial, Michael Weisberg, professor of philosophy and chair of the philosophy department, and Paul Sniegowski, professor of biology, co-authored a letter on behalf...