The Academic Minute

Academic Minute

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Today · 2 min
Lori Cook, University of Texas at Dallas - Exploring the Brain’s Lifelong Ability to Improve
What if you could improve your brain health throughout your lifespan? Lori Cook, director of Clinical Research at the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas, says it’s possible. Faculty Bio: Lori Cook, PhD, CCC-SLPDirector of Clinical Research, Center for BrainHealthAdjunct Assistant Professor, School of Behavioral and Brain SciencesUT Dallas Transcript: What if one of the biggest myths about aging is that our brains are destined to decline?Most of us assume that getting older means losing cognitive ground year by year.Our latest research suggests a very different story.My colleagues and I followed nearly 4,000 adults, ranging in age from 19 to 94, over a three-year period. We wanted to know whether brain health could actually improve across adulthood, not just be protected from decline. Participants could engage in online interventions that combine brain strategy training, lifestyle tips, personalized coaching, and ongoing performance tracking using the BrainHealth Index™, a multidimensional metric that tracks three key factors of brain health: clarity of thinking, emotional balance, and a sense of connectedness to people and purpose. Brain health improved across the lifespan. Young adults improved. Older adults improved. Even participants who started with the highest scores continued to make gains over time, suggesting that we have not yet found the upper limit of the brain’s ability to adapt and grow. We also found that people who started with the lowest levels of brain health often improved the most. In other words, poor brain health was not fixed. The brain’s capacity for change remained remarkably strong. But perhaps the most important finding was this: improvement wasn’t passive. The greatest gains occurred among people who consistently engaged in brain-healthy habit-building. The tools provided became vehicles for ongoing growth. Participants who continued practicing these strategies in their everyday life experienced the most meaningful improvements in performance. The takeaway is simple. We have spent decades extending human lifespan. The next frontier is extending brain health span. Our findings suggest that, regardless of age, we have more agency over our brain health than previously imagined. The brain is not defined by decline. It is defined by possibility. Read More: [Center for BrainHealth] - New Nature Scientific Reports Study Challenges the Inevitability of Cognitive Decline and Proves Brain Gain is Possible at Any Age [Nature] - Measuring and increasing the brain health span across adulthood: a public health imperative This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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Friday · 2 min
Stephen Wong, Houston Methodist Research Institute - Obesity's Association with Neurodegeneration
How does obesity in midlife affect your chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease? Stephen Wong, professor of radiology and medicine at the Houston Methodist Research Institute, looks into the links. Faculty Bio: Dr. Wong holds the John S. Dunn Presidential Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Engineering and is a Professor of Radiology and Medicine with Tenure and Chief of Medical Physics at Houston Methodist. He is renowned for his groundbreaking contributions across multiple disciplines, including medical imaging, life sciences, finance, and technology.At Houston Methodist, Wong founded several key centers and labs, including the Division of Shared Resources at Houston Methodist Neal Cancer Center, the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Center for BRAIN, the Advanced Cellular and Tissue Microscopy Core, the Translational Biophotonics Lab, the Center for Modeling Cancer Development, the AI in Innovative Medicine lab, and Systems Medicine and Bioengineering Department. His research has been consistently funded by NIH for three decades. He has published over 500 peer-reviewed scientific papers and five books. He has trained and mentored over 170 Ph.D., MD/Ph.D., and postdocs, with four now holding endowed chairs or distinguished professor positions.Dr. Wong’s research focuses on a systems-based understanding of health and disease to develop cost-effective strategies for disease management and healthcare delivery. The mission of his lab is to engineer medicine and biology, discovering novel drugs and biomarkers and developing advanced diagnostic and therapeutic devices. The research emphasizes improving the detection, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer, neurological disorders, and metabolic diseases. Current projects include understanding and targeting micro- and macroenvironments of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, applying spatial and systems biology methods for drug and biomarker discovery in cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, creating label-free point-of-care molecular diagnosis and interventional devices, and developing novel artificial intelligence applications to transform the triage, diagnosis, treatment of strokes and related disorders. Transcript: Researchers have long recognized midlife obesity as a major modifiable risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. But how does a metabolic disorder that begins outside the brain drive neurodegeneration inside it? Our team set out to find that missing link. What's new is that obesity doesn't just raise Alzheimer's risk generally — it alters specific lipid pathways affecting brain immune cells and neurons, revealing a mechanism we may be able to target. We found that obesity disrupts the balance of phosphatidylethanolamine, or PE, an essential membrane lipid that helps brain cells communicate, respond to stress, and maintain function. Abnormal PE accumulation remodels cell membranes and disrupts communication between metabolic tissues, brain immune cells, and neurons. As PE rises, immune cells become less effective at protecting healthy tissue, while neurons show more stress and produce more Alzheimer's-associated toxic proteins — together accelerating disease progression. This reframes obesity not just as a risk factor, but as a biologically actionable disease modifier — opening the door to earlier detection, metabolism-informed biomarkers, and therapies that target these mechanisms before irreversible brain damage occurs. To uncover this, we integrate a systems medicine approach that allows us to connect metabolic imbalance with specific brain-cell behaviors. Looking ahead, we aim to combine AI and multi-omics to identify drug candidates and accelerate precision therapies that preserve brain health before memory loss begins. Read More: [Houston Methodist] - Tiny cell messengers in obese individuals accelerate Alzheimer’s linked plaque buildup in the brain This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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Thursday · 2 min
Andrew Koepp, New York University - Third-Grade Behavior Could be a Preview of Educational Success
Can self-control in third grade predict your success later in life? Andrew Koepp, assistant professor of applied psychology at New York University, examines whether it can. Faculty Bio: Dr. Koepp is a developmental psychologist who studies how early education settings foster children’s development. Much of his research leverages within-person designs to understand how to support children in applying self-regulation in service of their learning. Together with classroom observations and ecological momentary assessment, he collects high-volume behavioral data from wearable devices to collect intensive observations of children’s everyday behavior and experiences. In addition to observational designs that “zoom in” on daily experiences, he also uses national, longitudinal datasets to “zoom out” and understand contextual influences on children’s development in diverse populations. Across his work, he bridges basic and applied science to create practical knowledge to inform interventions and educational practice to support children’s development. He has obtained funding from the National Science Foundation to support his work and has published in leading journals such as JAMA Pediatrics, Child Development, Developmental Psychology, and Developmental Science.Prior to joining NYU, Andrew completed postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2023, he was awarded a fellowship from the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation. Transcript: Think back to your third-grade classroom. What kind of a student were you? If you’re like most of us, there were times you were attentive and engaged and there were other times when you were restless and distracted. In those moments, my third-grade teacher used to tell us, “I might have just done a cartwheel and you would have missed it.” I believe that if we can understand when and why children have more self-control, we can create more moments of engaged learning in the classroom. In this study, my colleagues and I wanted to test the idea that children’s self-control wears out across the school day. We focused on restlessness and impulsive movement that can be quantified using devices similar to Fitbits. If we found that children were getting more restless towards the end of the school day, that could indicate declining self-control. We used data from a longitudinal study that followed several hundred children into adulthood. We found that in third grade, children tended to lose a bit of their impulse control as the school day dragged on. Those who could keep it together for longer had better math and reading scores when they got to high school and were more likely to have completed college by the time they were 26. So your behavior in third grade can predict how far you will go in school. But the data also suggest that if self-control wears out, then maybe it can also be restored. In our study, children’s self-control appeared to reset by the start of each school day, suggesting restorative impacts of nightly sleep. Similarly, children appeared to recover self-control following higher levels of activity during the lunch period, suggesting benefits of activity, nutrition, and social interaction. In our future work, we hope to investigate daily experiences that might restore children’s self-control to help them make the most of their learning opportunities. Read More: [APA PsycNet] - Keeping it together: Hourly dynamics of children’s behavioral regulation at school in a decades-long cohort study. [PMC PubMed Central] - Keeping It Together: Hourly Dynamics of Children’s Behavioral Regulation at School in a Decades-Long Cohort Study This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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Wednesday · 2 min
Kent Kauffman, Purdue University Fort Wayne - Misunderstandings and Threats to Academic Tenure
Is tenure for professors misunderstood? Kent Kauffman, professor of business law at Purdue University Fort Wayne, says yes. Faculty Bio: Kent Kauffman is Professor of Business Law, and MBA Programs Faculty Liaison, in the Doermer School of Business at Purdue University Fort Wayne. He is the author of “Navigating Choppy Waters: Key Legal Issues Faculty Need to Know,” published by Bloomsbury, which tackles the vital legal dilemmas faculty face in their work as scholars and teachers. Transcript: Tenure has a history that is centuries old. Harvard had a form of it when Massachusetts was a colony, and Thomas Jefferson provided it to faculty at the college he founded, the University of Virginia. Sadly, to many tenure is the gimmick that protects professors from ever getting fired. Not only does tenure not create a job for life, but more faculty don’t have tenure than do by a ratio of over two to one. That does not bode well for academic freedom, tenure’s first purpose. While academic freedom is for all faculty, including part-time instructors, those with tenure are its best defenders.To those who achieve it, tenure creates a vested interest in continued employment. This means tenured faculty have a binding expectation of continued employment, except for what the law categorizes as “just” or “adequate cause.” In fact, the apt comparison to tenured faculty are federal judges, who—like professors—occasionally do things that are politically unpopular but who Article III of the Constitution grants “tenure during good behavior.” Private university faculty have tenure rights from applicable tenure policies, while public university faculty also have the 14th Amendment’s due process clause as a source for tenure protection. But tenure is not a kingly right. There are commonly accepted, “adequate cause” reasons for revoking tenure: serious misconduct; incompetence; and a financial emergency at one’s university. However, the prevailing misimpression about the reasons behind tenure and the failure to understand that tenure benefits more than those who have it, has contributed to a threat to tenure’s existence. Some states have worked to restrict or abolish it. But this year, a Tennessee legislator withdrew his bill to eliminate tenure, at least temporarily, after learning about tenure’s history and purposes. Thomas Jefferson would have cheered. Read More: [Bloosmbury] - Navigating Choppy Waters This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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Tuesday · 2 min
Samantha Pettey, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts - Term Limits Open Doors for Women Candidates
Term limits in politics open doors for more women candidates. Why is this? Samantha Pettey, professor of political science at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, examines the data. Faculty Bio: Samantha Pettey is a Professor of Political Science in the Department of History and Political Science at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. She holds a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, an M.A. from the University of Rhode Island, and a Ph.D from the University of North Texas. At MCLA, she teaches a wide variety of courses in American Politics, some of which include Women and Politics, Campaigns & Elections, and Political Psychology. Her research interests are a blend of gender politics, campaigns and elections, and US institutions both at the state and national levels. Her forthcoming manuscript titled “Run, Women, Run!: Term Limits and Women’s Paths to Power in the States” examines how term limits shape women’s emergence and representation in the states. Transcript: When I recorded an Academic Minute in 2019, women held about 28% of state legislative seats. Today, they hold a third of the seats, and while that progress is meaningful, it’s not parity. In my research, I examined nearly 170,000 state legislative candidates in all 50 states from 1990 through 2022. Given the unique quasi-natural experiment created by term limits, I test many of the book’s hypotheses using difference-in-differences—which compares states with and without term limits before and after they are implemented. I find term limits encourage more women to run, which roughly equates to 4 additional candidates for every 100 women running. Further, at an individual level, term limits increase a woman’s probability of winning and ultimately lead to more women being elected at the state level. For example, in state senates that have term limits, I find 10 additional Republican women winners for every 100 women candidates and 5 additional Democratic women. Leaving the abstract, Massachusetts and California offer a useful comparison. In terms of women’s representation, the Center for American Women in Politics ranks California 4th while Massachusetts ranks 33rd. This is puzzling given the states are similar on many economic and political measures. But California has term limits and women hold nearly half of the seats, while Massachusetts does not have term limits and women make up about 31% of the legislature. This comparison does not mean term limits alone explain the difference, given that one factor rarely does. Instead, my research’s central argument is that term limits matter because they create predictable openings and force turnover in institutions where incumbency has historically favored men. But the broader political environment also matters and when these openings are paired with favorable state environments, more women are ready to take strategic advantage of these openings to run, win, and move through the political pipeline. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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November 2 · 2 min
Ross Channing Reed, Missouri University of Science and Technology - Why the Greek Virtue of Sophrosyne Matters for Us Today
What is the Greek virtue of sophrosyne and why is it important today? Ross Channing Reed, assistant teaching professor of philosophy at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, tells us. Faculty Bio: Ross Channing Reed was an early practitioner of philosophical counseling in the United States, applying philosophical concepts in inpatient and outpatient mental health settings in the 1980s and 1990s. He has been in private practice since 1998. He is certified in philosophical counseling by the American Philosophical Practitioners Association. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy with a specialization in existentialism and phenomenology from Loyola University Chicago. His areas of research include existentialism, ethics, philosophical psychology and philosophical counseling, philosophy of religion, addiction and trauma. Dr. Reed is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and conference presentations, as well as The Liberating Art of Philosophy, Mindscapes, and Precarity, Trauma, Addiction, and Love in Philosophical Counseling. He teaches philosophy at Missouri University of Science and Technology. For more information see ORCHID 0009-0007-2140-277X and rosschanningreed.substack.com. Transcript: Texting while driving. Bullying others on social media. Buying into the latest conspiracy theory. Passing off AI generated work as your own.This might seem like a random list of 21st-century vices. But I’d argue they’re all examples of the loss of one particular ancient Greek virtue: sophrosyne. For the Greeks, sophrosyne was an intellectual and moral virtue key to self-knowledge, wisdom, and the good life, representing excellence of character, moderation, and self-control. Sophrosyne was connected to phronesis—practical wisdom. Sophrosyne stood in marked contrast with hubris—excessive pride, dangerous overconfidence, and lack of self-insight. As a philosopher and philosophical counselor, my research centers on the intersection of virtue and happiness. I’ve noticed a pronounced connection between sophrosyne and happiness. Evidence indicates that sophrosyne is a requirement for human flourishing.Sophrosyne is not inborn but must be learned through sustained guidance and individual initiative. Aristotle, for example, maintains that you develop sophrosyne like you would learn to play a sport or a musical instrument.The loss of sophrosyne has led to an increase in incivility, a diminished attention span and ability to focus, and is associated with screen addiction, rejection of science, the rise of extreme beliefs, political polarization, the loss of trust in people and institutions, and the global decline of democracy.There are a number of factors, I’d argue, that have led to the loss of sophrosyne, including a decrease in funding for education, greater economic inequality, and the decline of mentoring relationships. Today, mentors have largely been replaced by celebrities and hero culture, with the rich and famous held up as examples worthy of emulation.Temperance, moderation, self-control, discernment – qualities such as these add up to a timeless excellence of character that cannot be faked. Research shows that becoming such a person requires guidance, practice and consistency. Read More: [Psychology Today] - Ross Channing Reed [The Philosophical Salon] - About Ross Reed [The Conversation] - Ross Channing Reed [Bloomsbury] - Precarity, Trauma, Addiction, and Love in Philosophical Counseling This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 30 · 2 min
Nicolas Decat, Paris Brain Institute - Dreaming While Awake
Do you have to sleep to dream? Nicolas Decat, PhD student in cognitive science at the Paris Brain Institute, examines this question. Faculty Bio: I am a PhD student in the DreamTeam of the Paris Brain Insitute. My research takes the wake-to-sleep transition as a playground to understand how our mental life evolves across vigilance states. I like the idea of using big data and data-driven methods to uncover latent structures that are not captured by traditional methods. Transcript: What crosses your mind when we fall asleep? It’s a strange question to ask ourselves, but think about it: how do you go from an ordinary thought to a dream? When we set out to explore this, we found something intriguing. You can dream before falling asleep, and plan your day ahead after drifting off.We recorded the brain activity of 103 people as they napped in the lab. As they drifted off, we interrupted them and asked a simple question: what was going through your mind just before the alarm? We collected hundreds of reports and, rather than deciding for ourselves what counted as a thought or a dream, we let a machine learning algorithm sort these experiences into groups, based on dimensions the participants scored, for instance how bizarre it was. Four groups emerged: fragments of memory, thoughts about the surroundings, dreamlike imagery, and deliberate reflection.And here is the surprise: all four appeared everywhere from wakefulness to sleep. One participant, wide awake, reported ants climbing on them with crossword puzzles in the background. Another, deeply asleep, simply said: I was thinking about work.When we looked closer at their brain activity, we found a brain signature for each kind, and it was the same whether the person was awake or asleep. The brain can generate the same kind of experience no matter which state we are in.And you, how do you fall asleep? This episode comes with a link to an online study, Drifting Minds, that lets you discover your own sleep-onset profile and compare yourself with 5,000 people worldwide. Take part!And tonight, as you close your eyes, you will once again pass through that strange corridor. Pay attention to that moment and what’s going through your mind just before you drift off… You might be surprised. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 29 · 2 min
Yuri Nakagawa, University of Toyoma - Breastfeeding and Better Sleep at One Year
Do babies fed breast milk sleep better? Yuri Nakagawa, public health researcher at the University of Toyama, compares the data with formula fed babies. Faculty Bio: Yuri Nakagawa-Miyazaki, M.D., D.D.S., is a plastic surgery resident and public health researcher at the University of Toyama, Japan. Her research focuses on maternal and child health, pediatric sleep, breastfeeding, and population-based epidemiology using nationwide birth cohort data. Transcript: Our study analyzed data from more than 82,000 mother-child pairs participating in the Japan Environment and Children’s Study, one of the world’s largest nationwide birth cohort studies. We examined whether infant feeding during the first six months of life was associated with sleep duration at one year of age. We found that children who received breast milk—including those who were fed both breast milk and formula—were less likely to experience short sleep at one year of age than children who were exclusively formula-fed.Our study cannot determine exactly why this association exists. Breast milk contains biologically active components, such as melatonin and tryptophan, that may help regulate infant sleep. It is also possible that other factors, including the gut microbiome. Importantly, our findings also provide reassuring news for families who use both breast milk and formula. Mixed feeding was also associated with a lower likelihood of short sleep compared with exclusive formula feeding.We hope these findings will help parents make informed feeding decisions without unnecessary guilt or pressure, while encouraging further research into the biological factors that support healthy infant sleep. Read More: [Nature] - Breastfeeding and children’s sleep duration at 1 year of age: A nationwide birth cohort - The Japan Environment and Children’s Study [CP24] - Breastfeeding or formula? Japanese researcher was ‘really surprised’ by results of this study [University of Toyoma] - Breast Milk, Best Sleep: Nationwide Japanese Study Finds This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 28 · 2 min
Janna Helfrich, Yale School of Medicine - What Happens to Your Brain Under Anesthesia? It's Not Quite Sleep, Not Quite a Coma
What happens to your brain under anesthesia? Janna Helfrich, assistant professor at the Department of Anesthesiology at Yale University, says it’s not quite what we expected. Faculty Bio: Janna D. Helfrich is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Anesthesiology at Yale University. She has completed her residency training in anesthesiology at the University Medical Center Tuebingen, Germany. In addition to her clinical training, she did a postdoc in neuroscience at the University of California at Berkeley, USA. In her research, she studies the neurophysiological underpinnings of physiological, artificial, and pathophysiological forms of unconsciousness, such as sleep, anesthesia, or coma, and their impact on higher cognition. Dr. Helfrich uses a variety of methods to study the brain, including scalp and intracranial EEG in humans as well as cross-species approaches. She is deeply dedicated to teaching anesthesiologists and advancing their understanding of EEG, thereby enhancing the safety and efficacy of anesthetic practices through education and research. Transcript: Every year, millions of people undergo surgery under general anesthesia. The drugs work — patients become unresponsive, have no memory, and feel no pain. But despite decades of use, we still don’t fully understand what anesthesia actually does to the brain. Is it like sleep? Is it like a coma? Or something else entirely?Working with teams at UC Berkeley, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the University of Oslo in Norway, we recorded electrical brain activity from the scalp — using a technique called electroencephalography, or EEG — in patients under propofol anesthesia, healthy volunteers during sleep, and patients in a coma in the intensive care unit. We then created detailed “fingerprints” of brain activity across dozens of frequency ranges and time points, and compared them to each other.What we found was striking. The anesthetized brain isn’t simply one thing — it borrows features from multiple states at once. Its slow, low-frequency activity most closely resembles a coma. The characteristic alpha waves — generated by deep brain circuits about ten times per second — look like the sleep spindles seen in deep sleep. And perhaps most surprisingly, certain high-frequency patterns actually mirror rapid eye movement sleep, the stage in which vivid dreams occur.In other words, general anesthesia is a mosaic of brain states — part coma, part sleep, with its own unique signatures on top.Why does this matter? The monitors clinicians use today to track anesthesia depth only capture a narrow slice of brain activity, often distilling it down to a single index number. Our findings suggest that simply isn’t enough to appreciate the full complexity of what the brain is doing under anesthesia.More importantly, our results point toward a potential path for making anesthesia healthier. By steering the brain toward a more sleep-like state — and away from a deeper, coma-like one — through tailored drug combinations or modified anesthetic protocols, we may be able to reduce some of anesthesia’s side effects, including postoperative memory problems and delirium.The brain under anesthesia has been a black box for far too long — and opening it up may be one of the most important steps we can take toward making surgery safer for everyone. Read More: [Frontiers for Young Minds] - What Is Anesthesia? [Quanta Magazine] - Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Hold Clues to Persistent Mysteries [The Science Breaker] - Awake or dreaming: how brain ‘noise’ tells the difference [Wall Street Journal] - Your Brain on Anesthesia: Could Be More Like a Coma Than You Think [Hartford Courant] - CT researchers studied the impact of anesthesia on human brains. Here’s what they found This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 27 · 2 min
Joanna Fong-Isariyawongse, University of Pittsburgh - Cannabis and Sleep: The Quiet Trap
Many people use cannabis as a sleep aid, but can it be dangerous? Joanna Fong-Isariyawongse, associate professor of neurology at the University of Pittsburgh, examines the risks. Faculty Bio: Dr. Joanna Fong-Isariyawongse is an Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Pittsburgh, specializing in Sleep Medicine and Epilepsy. She is a nationally recognized advocate for sleep health and brain health, working to turn scientific evidence into actionable public policy. Her efforts focus on issues like later school start times for adolescents, adoption of permanent standard time, and improved care and education for people living with epilepsy.Clinically, Dr. Fong-Isariyawongse provides expert care for individuals with epilepsy, including those undergoing surgical evaluation for drug-resistant seizures. She also sees patients with a wide range of sleep concerns, helping individuals improve sleep quality to enhance cognitive function, emotional resilience, and overall performance. In addition, she leads critical care continuous EEG services across eight UPMC hospitals, ensuring timely neurological monitoring for patients in intensive care. Her commitment to patient-centered care has earned her UPMC’s Excellence in Patient Experience Award and recognition as a Pittsburgh Magazine Best Doctor since 2019.She serves on national advocacy and health policy committees for the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), where she helps shape legislation and healthcare priorities at both state and federal levels. She is a board member of the Pennsylvania Neurological Society, a physician advisory board member for the Epilepsy Association of Western and Central Pennsylvania, and a professional advisory board member for the Epilepsy Foundation of Eastern Pennsylvania.Dedicated to public education, Dr. Fong-Isariyawongse speaks widely on the science of sleep and its role in learning, mood, seizure control, athletic performance, and public safety. Her outreach spans school districts, athletic teams, first responders, and public transportation workers. She also serves as a neurology consultant to the Pittsburgh Steelers.Whether in the clinic, the classroom, or the Capitol, Dr. Fong-Isariyawongse is committed to building a healthier, more well-rested future for all. Transcript: Picture a 15-year-old girl staring at the ceiling past midnight. Her bus comes in six hours. Melatonin didn’t work, so tonight she tries a cannabis gummy a friend recommended. Twenty minutes later, she’s asleep.Now picture a 34-year-old veteran, jolted awake by nightmares for months. The VA sleep clinic has a six-month waitlist. The dispensary is six blocks away.Both will tell you cannabis works. And that’s exactly the problem.As a sleep neurologist, I see patients whose sleep has quietly unraveled after months or years of cannabis use. Here’s what’s happening inside the brain when the lights go out.THC does help people fall asleep faster, at first. But the body adapts quickly, so the same dose does less, and people need more. And falling asleep faster is not the same as sleeping well. Brain recordings show that chronic cannabis users spend more time awake at night and get less restful sleep, REM sleep, the stage where the brain processes emotion, locks in learning, and rebuilds resilience is especially disruptedThen comes the trap. When people try to stop, withdrawal hits: rebound insomnia, vivid disturbing dreams, anxiety, irritability. The symptoms that drove a person to cannabis come roaring back, often worse. So they return to it, and the cycle continues. For teenagers, whose brains are still under construction, and for veterans with PTSD, the stakes are highest.But there is good news: Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia outperforms every sleep aid, including cannabis. It treats the root cause of insomnia, and research shows it can both improve sleep and redice cannabis use.Sleep is the foundation of memory, mood, and judgment. Everyone lying awake tonight deserves a real solution, not a trap. Read More: [The Conversation] - Using cannabis for sleep isn’t harmless – a neurologist explains how it can trap people in a cycle of dependency This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 26 · 2 min
Kitty Lui, University of California San Diego - Poor Sleep Tied to Alzheimer’s Risk in Older Women
Poor sleep is tied to Alzheimer’s risk in older women. Kitty Lui, doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of California San Diego, discusses these findings. Faculty Bio: Kitty is a doctoral student at the San Diego State University / UC San Diego Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology (Neuropsychology track). She is particularly interested in understanding why women are at elevated risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Her doctoral research has focused primarily on the sex-specific impacts of sleep disturbances on Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers, in hopes that this work could inform intervention and prevention for the disease for each sex. Transcripts: We recently published a study that found sleep complaints may be an important Alzheimer’s disease risk factor in older women with a higher genetic predisposition to the disease. The findings suggest that women with a higher genetic risk for Alzheimer’s who reported poorer sleep also showed greater memory difficulties and more Alzheimer’s-related brain changes.We examined 69 women aged 65 years and older participating in the Women Inflammation Tau Study, an ongoing project at UC San Diego focused on aging and Alzheimer’s disease risk. Participants completed questionnaires about their sleep quality, underwent memory testing and received brain scans that measured tau, a protein that accumulates abnormally in Alzheimer’s disease.We found that poorer self-reported sleep was associated with worse visual memory performance and greater tau accumulation in brain regions affected early in Alzheimer’s disease — but only among women with higher genetic risk. Women with lower genetic risk did not show the same relationship between sleep complaints, memory and tau buildup. The results add to growing evidence that sleep disturbances and Alzheimer’s disease may reinforce one another over time. Previous studies have suggested that disrupted sleep can contribute to the buildup of abnormal tau proteins, while Alzheimer’s-related brain changes may also interfere with healthy sleep patterns. Because women account for nearly two-thirds of Alzheimer’s cases and frequently report poorer sleep quality than men, sleep may represent an important and potentially modifiable risk factor in older women.Self-reported sleep assessments are inexpensive and easy to administer, raising the possibility that sleep complaints could help identify people who may benefit from closer monitoring or early intervention. Improving sleep could become a target for future Alzheimer’s prevention strategies, particularly for women at elevated genetic risk. Overall, it might be important to take sleep complaints seriously for older women as it may be relevant to their brain health. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 23 · 2 min
Jenny Whilde, University of Florida - How One Bottle of Water Can Reveal the Secrets of an Entire Ecosystem
One bottle of water can reveal the secrets of an entire ecosystem. Jenny Whilde, adjunct research scientist at the University of Florida, explains how. Faculty Bio: Dr. Jenny Whilde holds a PhD in Animal Behavior, focusing on social group dynamics in zoo-housed animals, including elephants and orangutans. She has many years of experience in scientific writing, editing, and proofreading across a broad range of disciplines including cancer research, marine biology, and behavioral ecology and has contributed significantly to scientific publications, successful grant applications, and mainstream media articles. Transcript: Ireland is a land of storytellers, and it’s not just the people. The rivers, too, have stories to tell. In fact, a single water sample can be used to identify every living thing that has been in the area, including wildlife, humans, and even the pathogens that impact them.The key that unlocks this information is environmental DNA, or eDNA for short. This is DNA that any living organism has shed into its surroundings. It can come from skin cells, pollen, waste matter, even a cough or a sneeze. eDNA that is filtered from a water sample provides a snapshot of exactly what is living in and around the water. Typically, researchers use an approach called metabarcoding to decode eDNA. This is a powerful method if you are looking for a particular set of species, but it finds only what it is designed to find and ignores everything else.Our research team used a different technique, called long-read shotgun metagenomic DNA sequencing. This technique sequences all of the collected DNA from every species, from viruses to vertebrates and everything in between. Our team, led by Professor David Duffy, took water samples from different locations along the Avoca River, in Co. Wicklow, starting near its mountain source right through to where the river runs into the sea.The DNA we filtered from the water samples came from: the obvious, like ducks, sheep, and humans; the more elusive, like leatherback turtles and octopi at the river mouth, and from microscopic invertebrates and even viruses.We could identify the genetic origins of some species, and also found evidence of wastewater pollution. Within 24 hours, it is now possible to obtain a readout of all the eDNA in a water sample from any location, unlocking the secrets of an entire ecosystem. Read More: [The Conversation] - Fishing for DNA – how a cup of river water can reveal secrets about human health, pollution and biodiversity [Oxford Academic] - Long-read nanopore shotgun metagenomic DNA sequencing for river biodiversity, wildlife, pollution, and environmental health monitoring This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 22 · 2 min
Walter Mswaka, Rollins College - The Evolving Role of Cooperatives in Ethiopia's Coffee Industry
The coffee industry is vital to Ethiopia, but how is it evolving? Walter Mswaka, associate professor of social entrepreneurship at Rollins College, examines the role of cooperatives. Faculty Bio: Walter Mswaka, PhD, is Associate Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. His areas of specialization include: Social Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurial Finance; Business Strategy; and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).Professor Mswaka is an academic and social enterprise practitioner with over 20 years of experience working with social enterprises in various socio-economic contexts around the world. This includes providing practical hands-on support and technical advice to individuals and organizations involved in social enterprise in the UK, Brazil, Nepal, Ethiopia and Zambia, contributing to public understanding of social enterprise and community resilience through research and publications in peer reviewed journals. Transcript: Ethiopia is the largest coffee producer in Africa with over 10 million people involved in the production of coffee. Ethiopian coffee is valued globally and is a vital crop to the Ethiopian people, given the large percentage of households that depend on coffee production and sales.The coffee-marketing cooperatives of Ethiopia represent the very essence of the coffee business in that country, contributing to economic development by increasing incomes and employability, improving living conditions and stimulating grassroots economic activities. However, despite their importance, the cooperatives face challenges of resilience and sustainability. My research has shed new light on how they operate and deliver value, and how they are affected by national, internal and external stakeholders and institutional rules. We examined the operations of three small coffee-marketing cooperatives in southwest Ethiopia, with a focus on their internal governance challenges that include structure, communication and interactions with middlemen. We employed a multiple-case study approach involving face-to-face focus-group interviews with the management committees of the cooperatives--separately from the members, so that we could actually see what’s going on.We looked at five themes that influence operations: structures of governance, incorporating board management identity and make-up; selection of management committee members; the role of board and management committee members; the relationship between board/management committee and members; and board understanding of financial sustainability and influence of external stakeholders.Our findings illustrate that Ethiopian cooperatives are embedded in the communities they serve and provide a platform for members to benefit financially. While current literature suggests that the cooperatives have democratic governance models, closer scrutiny reveals that these organizations have complex governance structures. This suggests the need to understand better cooperative operating environments and the various external influences obtruding governance operations.Our findings have had an impact on both increasing coffee production and increasing the number of women involved in the cooperatives. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 21 · 2 min
Andrew Gu, University of Missouri - Turning DNA into Rewritable Digital Memory
Our DNA may hold the key to storing our digital data. Andrew Gu, professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at the University of Missouri, determines how. Faculty Bio: Andrew Gu leads a research lab at the University of Missouri’s College of Engineering that brings together biology, engineering and nanotechnology. His long‑term goal is to understand how life works at the molecular level and to create new tools that help doctors diagnose and treat diseases in a more personalized way. Transcript: When we look at the digital world, one thing is clear: we’re running out of room to store everything we create. For years, I’ve been fascinated by an idea that sounds like science fiction but comes straight from biology. What if we stored our data in DNA — the same molecule that carries the instructions for life?DNA is remarkable. It’s tiny, stable and incredibly dense. In theory, you could pack all the world’s information into something the size of a shoebox. And unlike today’s massive data centers, DNA doesn’t need much energy to keep it safe.But there’s been one big problem. Once you write information into synthetic DNA, it stays there. No changes. No updates. For a modern storage system, that’s a deal breaker.My team and I wanted to fix that. We asked a simple question:Can DNA behave more like the hard drives we use every day — something you can erase and rewrite?And now, we’ve taken a major step toward that future. We developed a method that lets us remove data from DNA and write new data back in. Over and over again.That’s something researchers haven’t been able to do before. And it opens the door to real, everyday DNA based storage — not just long-term archiving.Of course, writing the data is only half the job. You also need a way to read it. So, we’re building a small electronic device that uses a nanoscale sensor.As the DNA passes through it, we capture tiny electrical signals and translate them into digital files. Someday, I hope this whole system will shrink down to the size of a USB drive.To me, DNA storage isn’t just a scientific challenge. It’s a way to build a cleaner, more efficient future for our information hungry world. Read More: [Show Me Mizzou] - Mizzou researchers are developing a rewritable DNA hard drive This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 20 · 2 min
Deepa Das Acevedo, Emory University School of Law - What Is Faculty Tenure and Why Is It So Controversial?
Why is faculty tenure so controversial? Deepa Das Acevedo, associate professor of law at the Emory University School of Law, explores this question. Faculty Bio: Deepa Das Acevedo is a legal anthropologist and Associate Professor at Emory University School of Law. Since 2020, she has been studying faculty tenure as an employment protection, blending legal doctrine with qualitative and quantitative social science. Her 2025 monograph, The War on Tenure, was named one of Forbes’ Top 10 Books in Higher Education, and her commentary has appeared in InsideHigherEd, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and TIME’s Made by History, among others. Transcript: You might have heard of professors having “tenure” and wondered what exactly that is or why anyone cares.Tenure is a type of employment contract that applies to around 20-to-30% of all full-time faculty in the United States. Whereas the average American employee can be fired “at-will” – for good reason, bad reason, or no reason at all – tenured faculty, like all employees who hold “just cause “contracts, can only be fired for cause. In other words, tenure provides a level of job security that’s pretty unusual even if it’s not unique.Partly because of this heightened security, tenure triggers strong concerns about how it might affect faculty behavior. Critics both inside and outside the academy worry that tenure makes faculty lazy, prone to unethical (or even illegal) behavior, and more likely to become ideological renegades. The thinking is: why wouldn’t you do these things if you could get away with them while keeping your job? However, my research suggests that tenure doesn’t have these incentive-distorting effects. I built a national dataset of all individual tenured-faculty-terminations across institution, discipline, and region (within the United States) that happened between 2000 and 2021. It turns out that professors maintain fairly consistent levels of productivity before and after they win tenure, that (at least during the study period) they didn’t often lose their jobs because of their ideological views, and – finally – that there is no reason to think that winning tenure encourages professional or interpersonal misconduct. All this means that tenure isn’t encouraging bad behavior or getting in the way of good behavior as its critics understandably (but wrongly) argue. Read More: [The Chronicle of Higher Education] - Is Any Professor Safe From Being Fired Anymore? [Inside Higher Ed] - Fighting Back Against ‘The War on Tenure’ [Time] - What Academic Tenure Is Really About [Cambridge University Press] - The War on Tenure This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 19 · 2 min
Julia Khrebtan-Horhager, Colorado State University - AI in Higher Education: A Friend or a Foe?
Should AI be a friend or foe in higher education? Julia Khrebtan-Horhager, professor of communication studies at Colorado State University, considers this question from a teaching perspective. Faculty Bio: Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager is Professor of Communication at Colorado State University and Director of Education Abroad programs in Europe. She is the recipient of three International Communication Association Top Paper Awards and the CSU College of Liberal Arts Best Teacher Award.Her research focuses on intercultural communication, political science, international relations, global conflict, and media studies.She is the author of two books, Communicating the Other across Cultures and Migrant World Making, and has published widely in leading academic journals and edited volumes.She is multilingual and works across academic and public-facing contexts in Europe and the United States. Transcript: Scriveners. We no longer remember who they were, because of the printing press. We barely remember typewriters, because of computers. And now… artificial intelligence.This is not just another technological shift. It is a rupture.Emerging research shows that AI generates knowledge at unprecedented speed and scale. It also brings risks: misinformation, confirmation bias, hallucinations, social isolation, and surveillance.Among students, we already see deskilling. Writing without assistance – an essay, a letter, even an argument – is becoming less common.From an intercultural perspective, AI is not neutral. It learns from datasets shaped by unequal histories, power structures, and global representation gaps, and reproduces them.In classroom experiments, students ask AI to describe global conflicts or demographic groups, then compare outputs with lived narratives. The results are striking: AI “knowledge” often becomes stereotype, simplification, or erasure. AI does not merely reflect the world: it reshapes it. Yet, there is another side.AI can expand creativity, accelerate discovery, refine language, and deliver answers in seconds. What once took hours or weeks is now instant. It generates ideas, translates languages, and structures thought.Knowledge is no longer only accessed: it is produced in real time. This may be the most technologically empowered generation we have seen.So, is AI a dark knight or a savior? A friend or a foe?It is both. And neither.It is inevitable.We cannot stop it, but we can decide how to engage it. The task is not to fear or embrace blindly, but to guide, question, and train it.Because the real question is not whether AI will change the world: it already is.It is whether we will master it, or be mastered by it.So… we must learn to train our AI dragons. Read More: [University of Michigan Press] - Communicating the Other across Cultures This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 16 · 2 min
Khachatur Manukyan, University of Notre Dame - How Benjamin Franklin Made Money Harder to Fake
With money, trust is key. So how did Benjamin Franklin stop counterfeiters when paper money was so easy to fake? Khachatur Manukyan, research associate professor at the University of Notre Dame, looks into the past to find out. Faculty Bio: Khachatur Manukyan is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Nuclear Science Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame. His research combines materials science, chemistry, and advanced characterization techniques to study energy materials, nuclear materials, and historical artifacts. His recent work has used modern analytical methods to investigate the materials and manufacturing technologies behind coins and paper money, revealing previously unknown details. Transcript: As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, many people are reflecting on the ideas and individuals that shaped the nation. Less attention is paid to one practical challenge faced by the American colonies: creating money that people could trust.In the eighteenth century, shortages of gold and silver coins forced colonial governments to rely on paper currency to support trade, public projects, and economic growth. Unlike coins, however, paper bills could be copied, altered, and counterfeited.Recent scientific analysis of hundreds of surviving colonial paper money notes reveals that Benjamin Franklin approached this challenge as both a printer and an inventor. Long before modern security threads, holograms, or microprinting, he developed a collection of material-based security features designed to make paper money more difficult to imitate.Using advanced scientific methods, researchers examined the inks, fibers, fillers, and printing techniques used in eighteenth-century currency. The study showed that Franklin incorporated colored fibers into paper, used specialized carbon-based pigments, added translucent mineral particles, created distinctive watermarks, and produced detailed impressions directly from natural leaves. These features created notes that were difficult for counterfeiters to reproduce.Many of these details are nearly invisible to the naked eye, yet they become clear through modern scientific analysis. The findings reveal that Franklin understood a principle that remains central to currency design today: trust can be engineered directly into a material’s physical structure.By helping people distinguish genuine notes from counterfeits, these innovations strengthened confidence in a financial system that supported a growing colonial economy.Three centuries later, the challenge remains the same. Whether protecting colonial banknotes or modern currency, the goal is to create something valuable that is also difficult to fake. Read More: [The Conversation] - We analyzed paper money printed by Ben Franklin to uncover his anti‑counterfeiting techniques and materials innovations [PNAS] - Multiscale analysis of Benjamin Franklin’s innovations in American paper money This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 15 · 2 min
Etya Amsalem, Penn State University - The Workers Behind the Throne
Why do some bumblebee larvae become queens while others do not? Etya Amsalem, associate professor of entomology at Penn State University, looks for the answer. Faculty Bio: Etya Amsalem is an Associate Professor of Entomology at Penn State University. She earned her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Zoology from Tel Aviv University, Israel, and completed postdoctoral training at Penn State University and the University of Haifa, focusing on chemical communication, insect genomics, and bee health. Her research examines the evolution and mechanisms of social behavior in insects, integrating approaches from chemical ecology, evolutionary biology, functional genomics, behavior, and physiology. Transcript: When we think about a bee colony, we often imagine a queen ruling her kingdom. But in some social insects, the colony functions less like a monarchy and more like a self-organizing society. A defining feature of social insects is the division of labor between females. Queens and workers often share the same DNA, yet develop into individuals with very different roles. Queens are large, long-lived, and reproductive, whereas workers are smaller and typically nonreproductive. But what determines which larvae become queens? My colleagues and I investigated this question in bumblebees, seasonal social insects that are also vital pollinators. A single queen starts a colony in the spring and produces hundreds of workers that rear her offspring. Later in the season, workers begin laying their own eggs, while the colony starts producing new queens. To understand how the same DNA produces both workers and queens, we manipulated juvenile hormone levels in workers and larvae and tracked the movement the labeled hormone. Juvenile hormone regulates reproduction and development across insects, but it was unclear who controls caste development and how these signals reach larvae. Workers treated with juvenile hormone produced larger offspring and more queens. In contrast, treating larvae directly did not produce queens and often caused workers to eliminate them. We also found that larvae respond only during a brief developmental window. Most importantly, we discovered that workers transfer juvenile hormone to larvae during feeding, providing direct evidence that workers regulate queen development through hormone transfer. These findings reveal a bottom-up rather than top-down system. As workers mature, their hormone levels rise, increasing the amount transferred to larvae. Collectively, these interactions determine which larvae become the next generation of queens, showing that the colony’s future is shaped not by the queen alone, but by the workers themselves. Read More: [ScienceDirect] - The making of a queen: Hormonal regulation of female caste in the social bee Bombus impatiens This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 14 · 2 min
Matt Simoneau, University of Wisconsin-Stout - From Norway to Wisconsin, Children Want to be Social Media Influencers When They Grow Up
Being an influencer has become a popular career goal for young people. Matt Simoneau, professor of career and technical education at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, explores why. Faculty Bio: Dr. Matt Simoneau is a professor of Career and Technical Education at the University of Wisconsin–Stout. His research explores how young people develop career aspirations, with a particular focus on the influence of social media, career education, and vocational pathways. He collaborates with researchers in the United States and Norway to study how students imagine their futures and how schools can better support career development. His work has been featured in The Conversation and has been presented at national and international education conferences. Transcript: When a second grader in Norway drew a YouTube logo instead of writing down a career, my colleagues and I asked why. The child simply replied, “Because YouTubers are famous and make lots of money.”We expected that answer to be unique. It wasn’t.When we asked second graders in Wisconsin the same question, many gave remarkably similar responses. They also wanted to become YouTubers or social media influencers.Since 2021, my colleagues and I have been studying how children and teenagers in the United States and Norway imagine their futures.What we found surprised us.More than 60 percent of the middle and high school students we surveyed said social media influenced their career aspirations. For many young people, TikTok, YouTube and Instagram have become powerful sources of career information, second only to family members, teachers and friends.Social media isn’t always a negative influence. Some students told us they discovered careers like marine biology, filmmaking or engineering through videos they watched online.The challenge is that schools often rely on career assessments and planning programs developed before social media transformed how young people learn about work. Many students described these activities as repetitive or disconnected from the careers they were actually considering.One student even called a required career survey a “waste of time” because it recommended becoming a truck driver after she had already been accepted into nursing school.Young people are clearly thinking about their futures. But increasingly, those futures are being shaped not only in classrooms and counseling offices, but also through the content they scroll past every day.Understanding where students get their career ideas may be just as important as helping them decide where those ideas should lead. Read More: [The Conversation] - From Norway to Wisconsin, children want to be social media influencers when they grow up This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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October 13 · 2 min
Claire Strom, Rollins College - History of Hunger
How has our society’s view of hunger and response to it changed over time? Claire Strom, professor of history at Rollins College, explores the history. Faculty Bio: An agricultural historian, Claire Strom is a history professor and the Rapetti-Trunzo Chair of History at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. Her areas of specialization include: Agricultural history; the American South; and the progressive era. She is co-author of the 2024 book Empty Plates: A History of Hunger Relief covering a worldwide review of hunger relief over the centuries until the 1960s, then delving deeper into U.S. domestic hunger relief and the national food bank movement through to present day. Strom earned her PhD from Iowa State University. For more than a decade, she served as editor of the Journal of Agricultural History. Her Professional Organizations include: Southern Association of Women’s Historians Southern Historical Association Agricultural History Society. Among her Awards and Honors: The Gladys Baker Lifetime Achievement Award, Agricultural History Society, 2021. Transcript: A deep dive into the history of hunger reveals that the lack of adequate food is ubiquitous in human history. No society has existed without hungry people. Methods of addressing hunger are equally old and have varied greatly over time. In England, during the reign of Elizabeth I, relief became a governmental responsibility with little sympathy for the able-bodied poor. This notion migrated from England to Colonial America, where some communities paid families to take in paupers, even auctioning them off to the lowest bidder. The Enlightenment and social Darwinism of the 18th and 19th centuries heightened beliefs that poverty was a moral failing, leading to the incarceration of many paupers in workhouses. The intense poverty and hunger of the Great Depression muted condemnation of the poor and increased governmental social programs. The years after World War II continued this expansion of governments’ involvement in their citizens’ welfare, with the development of the idea of universal human rights, in which food figured significantly. In the US, this culminated in reforms of the Great Society, including the Food Stamp Act of 1964.In 1967 businessman John Van Hengel opened the first food bank, relying on surplus food from fields and packing sheds. Food banks spread throughout North America and the world in the subsequent decades. And, by the 1980s, with the retreat of government from social justice, food banks and their corporate donors became increasingly important in combating hunger. Second Harvest, renamed Feeding America, has surveyed hunger in the United States since 1993, offering longitudinal data. The agency’s studies show that the problem of hunger is worsening, not improving. Such findings leave many food bank employees conflicted, stating that they recognize the need to feed the hungry but hope that government and corporate interests would devote more attention and resources to ending poverty itself. Read More: [Rollins] - Strom Publishes Book on History of Hunger Relief [Rollins] - Strom Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from the Agricultural History Society This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org
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