Sola Mahfouz is a quantum computing researcher at Tufts University Quantum Information Group. She joins host Krys Boyd to discuss her life in Afghanistan under the Taliban and her daring escape to the U.S. for a more fulfilling life.
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Want to strengthen your brain? Learn another language
Viorica Marian is a professor of psychology at Northwestern University. She explains why she believes we all have the capacity to be multilingual and how that affects the ways we perceive the world.
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The real beneficiaries of affirmative action
Writer Bertrand Cooper makes the case that race-conscious admissions by universities frequently benefit students who are already from elite backgrounds and that it’s time to also consider socioeconomic status.
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What Holocaust education misses
Dara Horn joins host Krys Boyd to discuss why focusing on the atrocities of WWII hasn’t stopped growing antisemitism today – and to offer ways we need to expand education about Jewish life to combat it.
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The science, culture, and history of periods
Anthropology professor Kate Clancy joins Krys Boyd to discuss the science of periods, reproductive health, and the ways we hide this simple fact of nature from daily life.
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How learning a new skill helps you appreciate mastery
New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik joins us to discuss what it takes to master a skill and to explain why the real benefit comes not in becoming a virtuoso but, rather, in just forcing your brain to try something hard.
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What if we didn’t think of time as money
Jenny Odell talks about why she believes our clock-watching is tied to for-profit goals and not the reality of nature and offers ways to slow down and take in the beauty of the true rhythms of life.
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It’s hard finding after-school care for your kids
Vox reporter Rachel Cohen joins us to discuss the crisis working parents face as they try to bridge the gap between the end of the school day and the end of the workday.
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When you suspend students, they might not come back
Reporter Tara García Mathewson discusses how suspensions for missing class have resulted in higher dropout rates, lower college attendance, even involvement with the criminal justice system.
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A teacher on what it really takes to educate children
Educator Phillip Done talks about the how-tos of teaching, from extracting the best of a child academically to navigating the administrative minutia that comes with the job.
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Why the Taliban sees girls’ education as a threat
Onaba Payab is a former advisor to the first lady of Afghanistan. She joins host Krys Boyd to discuss how the U.S. and the international community can support women’s rights and education in Afghanistan today.
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The boy who survived a men’s prison
Ian Manuel joins us to discuss his crime, his quest for forgiveness, and why, he believes, we should not judge an entire life based on one’s worst day.
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