Hold That Thought

Ever wonder why some hits feel good when the bat connects with the pitch, while others leave your hands ringing? Or exactly how a pitcher throws a ball that seems to curve just as the batter swings? Physicist Dr. Kasey Wagoner says, like most things in our universe, it all comes back to physics. Just in time for MLB playoff season, he talks about the forces involved in different pitches and how the "sweet spot" of the bat works.

High in the rugged mountains of Nepal, communities in the valley of Nubri are confronting rapid changes. In recent years, the majority of school-age children from Nubri leave their villages to be educated in boarding schools or monasteries outside the valley. What opportunities do these children have once they finish school, and what happens to these ethnically Tibetan communities if the children never come home? Geoff Childs, an anthropologist from Washington University in St. Louis, has been working in Nubri for decades. Here, he explains a complicated story of outmigration and cultural change.

Modern debates over energy and natural gas often center on environmental issues and global warming. Yet in places like Bolivia, where many citizens still use firewood as their main energy source, the conversation can sound much different. There, the desire for convenience and progress often overrides environmental concerns, and in some cases, also the rights and safety of indigenous people. Anthropologist Bret Gustafson is working on a book about gas and power in Bolivia. Here, he discusses the complicated relationship between energy, politics, the environment, and indigenous rights.

Tobacco has been a global industry for more than a century. But in the era of corporate social responsibility, how do tobacco companies justify their push to sell even more cigarettes around the world? Trade agreements like the currently proposed Trans Pacific Partnership make it easier for tobacco corporations to flood markets in low- and middle-income countries, where 80% of the world's billion tobacco users live. Peter Benson, an anthropologist from Washington University in St. Louis and author of Tobacco Capitalism, weighs in.

In the United States, a woman's monthly period is rarely more than a slight inconvenience. In places like the Tigray region of Ethiopia, however, the story is much different. There, many girls face adolescence without information and without basic materials like sanitary pads or tampons. Confused and embarrassed, menstruating young women often stay home from school. With the help of Dr. Lewis Wall from Washington University in St. Louis, one Ethiopian woman is attempting to create a local, sustainable solution to this problem. You can find out more about their efforts at www.dignityperiod.org.

Most authors have a "signature moment," a theme or scene that reoccurs in their work as if they're exploring it from every angle, and Robert Wiltenburg believes that the quintessential Shakespearean theme is mercy. Wiltenburg, the former dean of University College and an adjunct associate professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, takes us through Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, and romances to show how mercy evolves in each genre, highlighting great triumphs--and disasters--along the way.

Shakespeare wrote a number of strong and memorable female characters like Kate in The Taming of the Shrew and Cleopatra of Antony and Cleopatra, but would it be fair to call him a feminist? Not really, says our guest Jami Ake, assistant dean and senior lecturer in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. She explains why questions of gender and power were prominent in early modern England society and theater and examines the range of roles women take on in Shakespeare's plays.

By now it's clear that Shakespeare drew inspiration from a variety of sources. Robert Henke, a professor of drama and comparative literature at Washington University in St. Louis, studies the Bard in the European context and particularly his Italian sources and influences. He reveals the fingerprints of the famous Italian theater troupe, the Commedia dell'Arte, in Shakespeare's comedies and discusses the Italian plays and novellas at the heart of Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew.

The early modern English theater scene of was fairly small and highly competitive. Playwrights like Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Edmund Spenser were friends, but also rivals. They collaborated, imitated, and satirized each other equally as they jostled for success. Joe Loewenstein, a professor of English and director of the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities and the Humanities Digital Workshop at Washington University in St. Louis, returns to share stories about these relationships and discusses the fluid nature of authorship in theater at the time.

In 1592, the writer and critic Robert Greene accused the budding playwright William Shakespeare of plagiarism, and this stung the Bard deeply. Joe Loewenstein, professor of English and director of the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities and the Digital Humanities Workshop, shares Shakespeares initial response to the critique and explains how, even decades later, the Bard was still responding to Greene--though not in the way you might expect. He also discusses the culture of imitation and plagiarism in the late 16th- and early 17th-centuries.

Curiosity. Obsessions. Serial. Hermaphroditic snails. The “shape” of a radio show. When you sit down with Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, creators and cohosts of the innovative, hugely popular podcast Radiolab, you never know where the conversation will lead. As millions of listeners know, Abumrad and Krulwich regularly blur the boundaries between storytelling, science, and philosophy in their sound-rich show, which airs on more than 450 NPR stations around the country. Hold That Thought’s Claire Navarro and Rebecca King were thrilled to meet and interview both Abumrad and Krulwich earlier this year, when the duo visited Washington University in St. Louis as the culmination of a week-long celebration of curiosity and the liberal arts.

While Shakespeare wrote his plays, English theater itself was changing. The first actual theaters like the Globe were built, so companies could perform in places built soley for performance rather than marketplaces, pubs, or inns. Instead of religious and morality plays, writers brought politics, race, and class issues to the stage for the first time in London, which made authorities wary. Musa Gurnis, an associate professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, explains what early modern theater was like for London-theater goers and how the theater gave English society a way to think about itself in a new way.

Almost 500 years after William Shakespeare lived and wrote, students are still studying his work, and actors are performing his plays to packed theaters around the world. What keeps us coming back to his texts? Why has Shakespeare's work lived on when so many other great writers have been abandoned? As a sneak peak of the series to come, all of the participants of "Summer with the Bard" share their answers and perspectives on this tricky question.

After talking with Shakespeare Festival St. Louis about their current production of Antony and Cleopatra, I decided to meet up with Roman historian Karen Acton at Washington University in St. Louis to get a sense of the real people behind the legend. Together, we look back at Plutarch's The Life of Antony, which William Shakespeare used to write his play, and the texts that survive about the lovers from their contemporaries, rivals, and ancient Roman writers.

Shakespeare is not just in the theater and the classroom anymore. In St. Louis at least, you can find performances of the Bard's work in Forest Park and in the streets of your own neighborhood, thanks to the efforts of Shakespeare Festival St. Louis. Bruce Longworth, the organization's associate artistic director, and Mike Donahue, the director of this year's Shakespeare in the Park performance, come together to talk about the Shakespeare Festival's many projects and to share their insights into this year's mainstage production: Antony and Cleopatra.

As managing director of the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Emre Toker has encountered many innovative ideas for products and businesses - some of which succeed, most of which do not. In addition to running the Skandalaris Center, Toker himself has founded or co-founded five companies. Here, he discusses his own experiences as an investor and entrepreneur and explains some of the common pitfalls that keep innovators from bringing their ideas to life.

As director of the Institute for Public Health at Washington University, William Powderly believes that in order to be innovative and find useful solutions to global health challenges, effective partnerships are key. But how do these partnerships form, and what types of partnerships are most effective? To continue our collaboration with the graduate student group ProSPER, graduate student Kuan-lin Huang interviews Powderly about the importance of working with teams both around the world and across academic disciplines.

Barak Cohen has some words of wisdom for the future biologists of the world: "If you’re doing this to get rich, you’re going to be disappointed. If you’re doing this to get famous, you’re going to be doubly disappointed. The reason to do a PhD in biology is because you’re fascinated by biology." As Cohen and graduate students like Shelina Ramnarine know, being a professional scientist is typically not glamorous. It involves hard work and stress - often over funding. To continue our Where's My Jetpack? series, Ramnarine questions whether an increasingly competitive lifestyle is a barrier to innovation. In this week's episode, she and Cohen discuss how the internet, changes in governmental funding, and a lack of diversity among scientists all affect scientific progress.

Psychology graduate student Lameese Eldesouky has noticed a trend in research. In some cases, scientists in fields like genetics or biology have an easier time getting funding than researchers who study topics that are less easy to put into numbers, like relationships. In this episode, Eldesouky interviews professor Sarah Gehlert about her thoughts and experiences bridging the divide between the social sciences and the life or physical sciences. Gehlert, who has led cross-disciplinary research efforts into topics like racial disparities in health, discusses how in order to to make true progress, we need to start thinking about innovation in new ways. The Where's My Jetpack? series is produced in collaboration with ProSPER, a graduate student group promoting science policy, education, and research.

Ever wonder why innovations in areas like health care and energy always seem just over the horizon, instead of already here? You're not alone. At Washington University in St. Louis, graduate students wrestling with this question created the "Where's My Jetpack?" speaker series to shed light on barriers to innovation. Rebecca Lowdon, cofounder of the graduate student group ProSPER, and Kimberly Curtis, assistant dean for graduate student affairs, discuss the creation of ProSPER, the "Where's My Jetpack?" series, and the importance of graduate student leadership. ProSPER promotes science policy, literacy, and advocacy through career development, education, and community outreach. In the coming weeks on Hold That Thought, ProSPER members will interview WashU faculty about barriers to innovation.