Subscribe to Elucidations: Note: episode 155 was recorded in October of 2025. Last episode, we talked about free speech, and this time, we sit down with Rebecca Lowe (Mercatus Center) to discuss the related but slightly different topic of speaking freely. Click here to download Episode 155 of Elucidations. Speaking freely: the thing you feel entitled to do when a superior says to you: “you may speak freely....
Subscribe to Elucidations: Note: this was recorded in November of 2022. Full transcript here. In the latest episode of Elucidations, Greg Salmieri (University of Texas) joins us once again, this time to discuss freedom of speech. Click here to download Episode 154 of Elucidations. Free speech talk has been in the air, on the internet, for the past decade....
Subscribe to Elucidations: Note: this episode was recorded in March of 2025. Full transcript here. In the latest episode of Elucidations, Sam Enright (Progress Ireland, The Fitzwilliam) instructs us in the delicate art of learning forever. Click here to download Episode 153 of Elucidations. If you’re one of those people who responds well to formal education, chances are you’ve spent 10-20 years of your life as a student....
Subscribe to Elucidations: Note: this episode was recorded in March of 2024. This time around, Matt talks to Luca Gattoni-Celli about why it’s so expensive to buy a house. Click here to download episode 152 of Elucidations. In the 80s, people from all sorts of socioeconomic backgrounds were able to afford apartments and houses in places like New York City, San Francisco, or London....
Subscribe to Elucidations: Note: this episode was recorded in August of 2022. Full transcript here. In the latest Elucidation, Matt talks to Witold Więcek about the difficulties that come up for researchers who would like to draw upon statistics. Click here to download episode 151 of Elucidations. Lots of academic fields need to draw heavily on statistics, whether it’s economics, psychology, sociologym, linguistics, computer science, or data science....
Subscribe to Elucidations: Note: this episode was recorded in April of 2023. Full transcript here. In this episode, Matt sits down with Shruti Rajagopalan (Mercatus Center) to talk about what the future holds for India. Click here to download episode 150 of Elucidations. We often have a tendency to think of the current economic and geopolitical situation as simply the way things are....
Subscribe to Elucidations: In this episode, we are joined by Lainie Ross (University of Rochester Medical Center) and (once again!) Christos Lazaridis (UChicago Medicine), this time to talk about the different ways of defining death. Click here to download episode 149 of Elucidations. In our previous episode with Christos, we talked about death and the vexed history of attempts to define it....
Subscribe to Elucidations: In this episode, Matt sits down with Christos Lazaridis (University of Chicago Medicine) to chat about what brain death is and whether brain death should count as death, period. Click here to donwload episode 148 of Elucidations. Modern life support technology really hit its stride in the 1960s, allowing doctors to buy themselves more time to save their patients by connecting them to machines that could assist with breathing, blood oxygenation and/or heart pumping....
Subscribe to Elucidations: In this episode, Matt talks to Gabriella Gonzalez about how basic concepts from the branch of math known as abstract algebra can help us simplify our computer programs and organize our thoughts. Click here to download episode 147 of Elucidations. Algebra. That thing they make us do in school. What was that again?...
Subscribe to Elucidations: In this episode, Matt sits down with Gaurav Vankataraman (Trisk Bio) to talk about how human memory is physically realized. Click here to download episode 146 of Elucidations. Where do your memories live? In the brain, right? They’re, like, imprinted there somehow? We often think of memories as analogous with recordings, like when you do an audio recording and the air vibrations get translated into an electrical signal which reorients the magnetic particles on some tape....