Episodes

  • UnDisciplined: In pursuit of a user-friendly healthcare system

    UnDisciplined: In pursuit of a user-friendly healthcare system
    Sep 17 2026
    If you've lived in the United States for a long time, you probably know that when someone tells you a doctor is “out of network,” that’s important, or that having health insurance doesn’t necessarily mean your healthcare is free.But how did you learn all of that? There’s nothing particularly intuitive about it.Now imagine arriving in the United States from a country where healthcare works very differently. You’re given an insurance card, a link to a website and, if you’re lucky, a short orientation on healthcare terminology.This is often not enough in times of crisis, leading Akshata Balghare to investigate how much of the difficulty of navigating this system comes from the system itself… and how much comes from the way we explain it.
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: Silicon Valley's impact on U.S. politics

    UnDisciplined: Silicon Valley's impact on U.S. politics
    Sep 10 2026
    There are a lot of rich and powerful people in Silicon Valley who have said some strange things about democracy.It would be easy to dismiss some of this as tech entrepreneurs doing what tech entrepreneurs have always done: dreaming about moving fast and breaking stuff, and making enormous claims about the future.But the journalist Gil Durán thinks that dismissing all of this as blather would be a mistake.In his new book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, Durán argues that these ideas actually belong to an emerging political ideology — one that has moved from obscure books and blogs into some of the most powerful institutions in the United States.
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: When is throwing something away more environmentally sustainable?

    UnDisciplined: When is throwing something away more environmentally sustainable?
    Aug 28 2026
    We tend to think that using something until it wears out is good for the planet. But what do we do if the thing we’re using up and wearing out is damaging our environment along the way? When does getting rid of something that still works become the more sustainable choice?
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: How do we handle internal propaganda?

    UnDisciplined: How do we handle internal propaganda?
    Aug 21 2026
    We all know politicians, advertisers and social media algorithms are trying to influence what we believe. But what about our own brains? How do we know when our beliefs are helping us, and when we’re instead engaged in a form of inner propaganda? And how can we use this knowledge to our advantage?
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: Surviving a wildfire evacuation

    UnDisciplined: Surviving a wildfire evacuation
    Aug 14 2026
    When wildfire threatens a community, what determines who makes it out safely? Emergency managers, firefighters, and weather all play critical roles, but so do the choices we make before and during an evacuation. After three decades of studying fast-moving fires, University of Utah researcher Tom Cova explains what he has learned about preparation, quick decisions, and why neighbors helping neighbors can save lives.
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: How should we think about cancer?

    UnDisciplined: How should we think about cancer?
    Aug 6 2026
    When we think about cancer, we tend to think about what doctors can do. But what about what patients can do? How much of that is hope? How much of it is science?
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: What can marine microorganisms tell us about the ocean?

    UnDisciplined: What can marine microorganisms tell us about the ocean?
    Jul 9 2026
    The ocean takes up roughly 70% of the planet, but we still don’t know too much about everything that is out there. Most ocean life is very small, and tends to change based on the ocean’s conditions. So even if you took a sample of ocean water right now, there’s really no guarantee that it would resemble a sample taken later.A recent study by Sarah Tucker and her team offers some direction for filling in that gap.
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: The power of noticing

    UnDisciplined: The power of noticing
    Jul 2 2026
    Twenty years ago, Richard Louv helped us begin to think differently about childhood and nature.Now, he's asking a related but perhaps even more provocative question: what happens when we really notice the world around us? What do we experience in terms of attention, awe, loss, and what it means to love a very complex world?
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    26 mins