Welcome to the latest episode of the “Understand This ...” series, a Penn Today podcast. This podcast series is designed as a journey to understand how to solve problems of the day—and of our time—by uniting minds from different disciplines.

Joining for the conversation in this episode is Jennifer Pinto-Martin, the Viola MacInnes/Independence Professor of Nursing in the School of Nursing, professor of epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine, and executive director of the Center for Public Health Initiatives. In conversation with Pinto-Martin is Bethany Wiggin, an associate professor of German in the School of Arts & Sciences, as well as founding director of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities and the My Climate Story project. Together, they discuss the importance of sharing stories about climate change's impacts on people and places, the push for climate literacy, and how climate anxiety and grief affects children.

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Jump-off points:

4:00: Wiggin explains “environmental humanities” and the interdisciplinary model of teaching and learning around the environment.

10:00: Pinto-Martin and Wiggin begin talking about the Penn Park Farm and its function as a space for “collaborative, place-based projects,” and knowledge of resilient farming techniques. 

11:25: Wiggin talks about the My Climate Story project, which will have “Climate Classrooms” in Philadelphia School District schools that focus on climate literacy and placing climate change's impact on people and places. “A compelling story has great power,” adds Pinto-Martin.

19:00: “Quote Break”

19:50: Pinto-Martin distinguishes between “climate anxiety” and “climate grief.”

23:00: Discussion about the relationship between climate change and public health. 

26:00: Pinto-Martin discusses lessons from the pandemic and how to relate them to climate change. “More and more we learn to be more adaptive,” she says.

Welcome to the fall semester’s first episode of the “Understand This ...” series, a Penn Today podcast. This podcast series is designed as a journey to understand how to solve problems of the day—and of our time—by uniting minds from different disciplines. This episode is both a reflection on what students and educators have experienced in learning during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, plus an examination of how lessons from the pandemic can be applied to a return to in-person classroom settings.

Joining for the conversation is Caroline Watts, senior lecturer in the Graduate School of Education and director of School and Community Engagement at GSE, as well as Philip Gressman, a professor of mathematics in the School of Arts & Sciences. Watts is team leader for GSE’s Project for Progress, addressing West Philadelphia students’ school readiness and teachers’ instructional capacity and mental health needs. Gressman, meanwhile, reshaped the teaching of calculus during the pandemic to fit the needs of students, with a focus on inclusive and equitable teaching. Together, they talk about their experiences as educators during the early days of the pandemic, lessons learned, and how the classroom might look and feel different in the coming months.

6:56: Gressman discusses recognizing the scope of the problem at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, identifying the need for education to adapt, and time spent on adapting a calculus curriculum for remote learning.

13:30: Watts talks about what worked well in the transition to remote learning and what didn’t—plus, new forms of feedback for instructors.

16:18: Watts discusses the ongoing Project for Progress in West and Southwest Philadelphia summer schools, what we gained from the experiences of the past 18 months, and the “joy” of students and teachers being reunited.

21:20: “Quote Break” 27:40: Gressman highlights the need to be accommodating in this extraordinary moment in teaching, as well as what to consider taking out of the classroom when balancing synchronous and asynchronous learning.

31:58: Watts: “A model I’ve learned for life is to be prepared to adapt and be flexible.”

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Welcome to the sixth episode of the “Understand This ...” series, a Penn Today podcast. This podcast series is designed as a journey to understand how to solve problems of the day—and of our time—by uniting minds from different disciplines. This episode explores the legacy of imperialism and the more elusive forms it can take in a modern context. 

Joining for the conversation is Dorothy Kronick, assistant professor of political science in the School of Arts & Sciences, and Alex Chase-Levinson, assistant professor of history in the School of Arts & Sciences. Kronick has an expertise in Latin American politics, and Chase-Levinson focuses his research on modern Britain and Europe. Together, they tease out ways to interpret imperialism today, the legacy of imperial influence, and what new frontiers might be on the horizon. 

5:20: Kronick discusses imperialism in Latin America and begins to define the term. 

6:40: Chase-Levinson describes how the concept of a “nation state” has organized the world.

10:12: Kronick on “economic imperialism” in Latin America. 

12:30: A conversation about the U.S. policy of regime change in Venezuela and its influence on exports and access to financial markets. “I think people might call that ‘imperial’ in that broader definition of exerting undue influence in some way,” says Kronick.

15:40: Comparing the UK and U.S. as global superpowers. 

20:00: Discussion about how “implicated citizens” are simply by being part of an empire.

25:25: A look at the role of imperial powers to help address problems they may have created.

27:00: An examination of the lingering effects of colonial imperialism. “All of this is part of the long-term knock-on effect of empires, and you can’t separate anything that's going on now in parts of the former imperial world from develops that the British are, at least in large part, responsible for ... and that’s true of the Americans as well in a whole lot of ways,” says Chase-Levinson.

27:16: “Quote Break”

33:56: Kronick and Chase-Levinson speculate what modern “new frontiers” could loom on the horizon.

36:00: Levinson and Kronick talk about the “precarious stature of democracy” in the world today. 

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Welcome to the fifth episode of “Understand This ...,” a Penn Today podcast. This podcast series is designed as a journey to understand how to solve problems of the day—and of our time—by uniting minds from different disciplines. In this episode, we explore the value of improving cross-cultural communication skills.

Joining for the conversation is Mauro Guillén, professor of international management at the Wharton School and former director of the Lauder Institute, and Tomoko Takami, director of Penn’s Japanese Language Program in the School of Arts & Sciences. Together, they discuss the role of language in building empathy, how soft skills prepare students for a more automated workforce, and how cross-cultural understanding can improve business negotiations.

5:28: Guillén discusses the basis of the Lauder Institute, which combines an MBA in Wharton with an MA in International Studies. “The program is all about helping students become better at managing, in their daily lives, all the layers of culture and foreign language,” he says.

8:00: Defining cross-cultural communication. “Soft skills, communication skills, critical thinking, empathy,” are among the elements, says Takami. She further explains the changes in language education in recent years.

13:00: Guillén discusses team-based working as a trend in organizations, and the need for cross-cultural understanding in those teams for collaboration. “What I want to emphasize is when it comes to understanding the role of language … it’s not [about] just the language, how to communicate and say ‘Thank you’ and give directions, but language in context.”

18:00: Takami provides an example of translation for business.

22:00: Takami explains “high-context” communication.

26:20: Quote break.

29:15: Guillén discusses the “big difference” it makes by learning even one additional foreign language. “Each language, each culture you understand, I think makes you more effective and sensitive to cultural evaluations, even if it’s a different culture.” Learning a language is, moreover, a “humbling experience … that’s really important.”

35:00: The function of immersion in language learning and cultural knowledge acquisition.

39:00: The distinction between language training and education.

44:20: Guillén discusses the continued value of social skills in the workforce.

Download the full podcast on Apple Music. Also available on other streaming and podcast services.

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Welcome to the fourth episode of “Understand This ...,” a Penn Today podcast. Designed as a journey to understand how to solve problems of the day—and of our time—by uniting minds from different disciplines, this episode explores the use of data to understand poverty, particularly in the unique moment of the COVID-19 pandemic. This podcast is in tandem with Penn Today’s "The role of data in a world reshaped by COVID-19” feature.

Here, Regina Smalls Baker, assistant professor of sociology in the School of Arts & Sciences, and Amy Castro Baker, assistant professor in the School of Social Policy & Practice and director of the new Center for Guaranteed Income Research, talk about the use of data to inform recent economic relief bills, data gaps in assessing who is experiencing poverty, and the feasibility of solutions like universal basic income in alleviating poverty. 

7:40: The state of poverty in the U.S.

11:20: Housing’s role in developing wealth and perpetuating poverty.

22:00: “You can’t resist and deconstruct what you can’t see,” says Castro Baker, explaining gaps in what big data shows about poverty.

26:00: Smalls Baker discusses the changing economic experience of the middle class, especially during an economic recession and pandemic.

41:00: How cash transfers like the one from this spring’s CARES Act affects the motivation of people to look for work. “People want to work,” Castro Baker explains.

49:30: What gives them hope about the future in this moment. 

Download the full podcast on Apple Music. 

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Welcome to the third episode of “Understand This ...,” a Penn Today podcast. With the onset of a global pandemic comes the inevitable questions surrounding death: How do I talk about it? How can I prepare? How do I mourn? What is a ‘good’ death? And while not all of these questions can be answered, they are worth discussing. 

Joining in this edition of the podcast, which brings together different disciplines in the University to tackle shared problems, is Chaplain James Browning, director of pastoral care at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and Jolyon Thomas, assistant professor of religious studies in the School of Arts & Sciences. Together, they explore the delayed grief the pandemic has brought, traditions of mourning, and an unpacking of what a dignified death may, or may not, look like. 

4:35: Browning discusses navigating death with people in the hospital. 

8:55: Thomas talks about the unique moment of being surrounded by the “capriciousness” of death.

12:10: Browning recalls the collective mourning of the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy and the concept of “storing up grief” during the pandemic.

15:50: Thomas explores the idea of selective mourning. “We run a risk as soon as we put things into a national frame, because these are things that don’t respect national boundaries; a pandemic doesn’t respect national boundaries,” he says. “… We have a duty to think about the much broader global community.”

18:50: Thomas places death in the context of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, describing how those instances of mass death have been memorialized.

22:40: Browning remembers an instance of allowing a patient to die on their own terms.

25:30: Quote break: a reading of Walt Whitman’s “Burial” verses from “Leaves of Grass.”

26:30: Thomas describes the Buddhist tradition of dealing with death. 

31:00: Browning explains meeting people where they are with their beliefs, as a chaplain.

42:40: Browning emphasizes using the word “death” plainly and asking people about what they need. “It’s like the elephant in the room,” he says.

51:00: Thomas talks about planning for death and recognizing mortality without being morbid.

This episode is available for download through Apple Music.

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