Episodes

  • UnDisciplined: How A.I. is remaking the university experience

    UnDisciplined: How A.I. is remaking the university experience
    May 14 2026
    There is no denying it: A.I. has changed higher education, and teachers are trying to catch up — to figure out how to live in this new world, and how to make learning meaningful.Stephen Aguilar studies how emerging technologies shape teaching, learning, and motivation. He’s also co-leading work at the USC center for generative A.I. and society, which just released a new report examining how students and teachers are actually using artificial intelligence in real classrooms.
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: What Animals Know About Us

    UnDisciplined: What Animals Know About Us
    May 7 2026
    Scott Simon has spent a lifetime telling other people’s stories on national public radio. But every now and then, along the way, he’s found reasons to tell the stories of the animals with whom we share this world, and he’s collected those stories, and more, in his latest book.
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: Why we ‘reward’ motivated employees with more work

    UnDisciplined: Why we ‘reward’ motivated employees with more work
    Apr 30 2026
    In workplaces everywhere, the most engaged employees often become the go-to for extra work. It feels logical, but management scholar Sangah Bae believes that instinct might be backfiring — a lot. Her recent work shows that intrinsically motivated workers are disproportionately assigned additional tasks, often at a cost to their performance, satisfaction, and long-term retention. The reason isn’t just that they’re capable—it’s that managers assume they’ll actually enjoy the extra work.
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: The Joy of Polymathy

    UnDisciplined: The Joy of Polymathy
    Apr 25 2026
    A geologist, a planetary scientist, a NASA mission leader, and an expert on team-building walk into a bar. The bartender says, “hey, Lindy, are you drinking alone today?” In this episode, we talk about what it takes to be a polymath, and why it can be such a joy.
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: The Future of Meat Is Clean, Climate-friendly, and Moral

    UnDisciplined: The Future of Meat Is Clean, Climate-friendly, and Moral
    Apr 16 2026
    For decades, the case against industrial animal farming has been framed as a moral one—and it hasn’t slowed consumption. As countries grow wealthier, meat consumption rises right along with them. But according to Bruce Friedrich, a different kind of change is now underway. From plant-based meat to cultivated proteins, a technological shift may be emerging—one that could make animal farming obsolete, not because people changed their minds, but because the system changed around them.
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: Return to the Moon

    UnDisciplined: Return to the Moon
    Apr 9 2026
    Jani Radebaugh, a planetary scientist at Brigham Young University, has spent her career studying the landscapes of other worlds — and for decades, that work has depended on images and data sent back by robotic missions. Now, as humans re-enter deep space, she’s asking a different question: What changes when we see these worlds with our own eyes?
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: The Climatologist and the Dendrochronologist

    UnDisciplined: The Climatologist and the Dendrochronologist
    Apr 2 2026
    This winter’s snow drought may leave a mark that lasts for centuries. Justin DeRose, a dendrochronologist and assistant professor of silviculture and applied forest ecology at Utah State University, says trees across the West are already recording the story of climate in their rings — wet years, dry years, fire years, and sometimes years so harsh they leave almost no growth at all. And as drought years begin stacking up closer and closer together, those forests may be telling us something important about how fast the West is changing.
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    26 mins
  • UnDisciplined: What does climate migration really look like?

    UnDisciplined: What does climate migration really look like?
    Mar 26 2026
    For years, many people have assumed that climate change will send massive waves of “climate refugees” across borders around the world. But Jan Freihardt, a political scientist at ETH Zurich, says the reality is far more complicated. Studying communities along the Jamuna River in Bangladesh—where floods and erosion regularly destroy homes and farmland—Freihardt has followed families trying to decide whether to stay, move a little, or start over somewhere else. Distant migration is the option of last resort — and often not an option at all.
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    26 mins