Dana Dabbousi ‘20, Omar Obeya '18, MEng '19, Mayce El Mostafa MEng '13, and Mamoun Toukan AF '17, MAP '18 sit down with Slice of MIT to share their experience of launching the podcast UnliMITed, a production of the MIT Arab Alumni Association. In this episode of the Slice of MIT podcast, you'll hear a featured episode of UnliMITed, in which host Omar Obeya talks to Dr. Ayman Ismail MCP '99, PhD '09. Dr. Ismail is the director of the AUC Venture Lab at the American University in Cairo’s School of Business.

Listen to more episodes of the UnliMITed podcast: https://bit.ly/3QOeLDo

Read more, and find the transcript of this episode, on Slice of MIT: https://bit.ly/3BhQujp

Follow the MIT Alumni Association and let us know what you thought of this episode.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/MIT_alumni
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MITAA
Instagram: http://instagram.com/mitalumni

Slice of MIT Podcast Presents: UnliMITed

IT specialist Ravi Patil ‘93, SM ‘95 talks with Slice of MIT about how he came to host and produce a podcast focused human-interest stories from the MIT community.

In this episode of the Slice of MIT podcast, you'll hear a featured episode of the Institrve, in which Ravi speaks with Curtis Blaine, Class of 1967, and you’ll hear how their MIT stories intertwine. 

Listen to more episodes of the Institrve podcast: https://bit.ly/3tyA8iY

Read more, and find the transcript of this episode, on Slice of MIT: https://bit.ly/3Xbl5cs

Follow the MIT Alumni Association and let us know what you thought of this episode.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/MIT_alumni
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MITAA
Instagram: http://instagram.com/mitalumni

Slice of MIT Podcast Presents: Institrve

A conversation with Judith Donath SM '86, PhD '97, whose book The Social Machine was published by MIT Press in May 2014. The book is a chronicle of Donath's projects in social media dating from the late 1980s, long before the term was in vogue. Read more: http://bit.ly/1TjtJwr

Donath also traces the rise of social media to its roots in Usenet groups and discussion boards to the conquests of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Donath explores why these media thrived while others failed, and the book serves as both a guide for researchers studying social media and a cautionary tale for casual users who don’t always question them critically enough. 

Learn more about Judith Donath: http://vivatropolis.org/judith/  
Book homepage: http://vivatropolis.org/SocialMachine/
Podcast transcript: https://bit.ly/2Gz80lL

The Social Machine (Alumni Books Podcast)

Well over 1,000 patent applications are filed each day by tinkerers and corporations, and patent suits among science and tech researchers and firms are reaching unprecedented settlement amounts in the courts. 

In a new book, M. Henry Heines '67 explores the radical changes patent law in the U.S. underwent in 2013 and what today's scientist and engineer, whether tinkering in a garage or leading a startup, needs to know to protect one's intellectual property. Read more: http://bit.ly/1Ow9cWG

Transcript: https://bit.ly/2q1U5O8

First to File: Patents for Today's Scientist and Engineer (Alumni Books Podcast)

Hal Linder '58 paid $4,000 for his bachelor's degree in geology at MIT. In six decades following graduation, Linder got his money's worth, surveying and prospecting on all seven continents, eventually discovering a gold mine in California which produced over 1.2 million ounces.

Linder chronicles his adventures above and below the earth's crust in a new book, Wild Places: The Adventures of an Exploration Geologist. Read more: http://bit.ly/1MuJS2H

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/2JdwmmT

Wild Places (Alumni Books Podcast)

Some scientists say that human beings are more bacteria than human, with bacteria cells found in and on our body outnumbering human cells 10 to 1. Others claim that the bacteria found on each one of us could fill up a half-gallon jug. Others still are unsure how much bacteria we’re covered in, but it’s a lot, and probably more than the average person is comfortable thinking about. 
Thankfully, Mark Smith PhD ’14 isn’t the average person. A microbiologist, Smith came to MIT to study this huge community of bacteria known as the microbiome, focusing specifically on the bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract. Smith worked in the Alm Lab developing computational and experimental methods to engineer to microbiome.  He explains some of his research, “We would find healthy patients and a disease cohort, take stools samples to sequence their microbiome and find signatures that distinguish between them. We find there are a lot of diseases that have distinct microbial compositions. The question is does disease cause the altered microbiome, or does the altered microbiome cause the disease?” 

In this Slice of MIT podcast, you’ll learn how fecal transplants work, why they’re effective in combating C. Diff, and what the future of microbiome research looks like. Read more: http://bit.ly/1LCF9KI

Transcript: https://bit.ly/2Gy4Pyw

Music: “Monster Promenade” “The Show Must Be Go” and “Life of Riley”
All songs by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Gross Science: Fecal Transplants and the Microbiome

As a young boy growing up in Prague, Michael Gruenbaum '53 witnessed firsthand the Nazi occupation of Prague before his family was sent to Terezin, a concentration camp. Seventy years after liberation, Gruenbaum penned a memoir of his life at Terezin. Published in 2015, Somewhere There Is Still a Sun recounts Gruenbaum's ordeals in Terezin, along with some of his life after the war. 

"I suddenly feel some sort of strange obligation to live some sort of perfect life," Gruenbaum writes of his emergence from Terezin, "one packed with heroic acts, so incredible I can't even begin to imagine what they might be." Read more: http://bit.ly/1M530PS

Transcript: https://bit.ly/2Gvv5Kb

Somewhere There Is Still a Sun (Alumni Books Podcast)

The MIT community is more diverse than any time in Institute history. And diverse communities require mindful leadership. So, how can leaders be more effective in creating a more inclusive environment? Assistant Professor Renée Richardson Gosline says start by being mindful: recognize the biases that affect us all, and question our own heuristics. Read more: http://bit.ly/goslinepodcast

Professor Gosline is the MIT Sloan Zenon Zannetos 1955 Career Development Assistant Professor of Marketing. Her research studies how we process information about products, information, and each other. And she believes cognitive association and heuristics—decision-making shortcuts provided by the subconscious—are often at the root of bias. 

Transcript: https://bit.ly/2H7FMj4

Music: "Babylon," Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Mindful Leadership

If you're a newly-manufactured or rebooted android, you'll want to pick up a copy of the latest book from Nic Kelman '94, How to Pass as Human: A Guide to Assimilation for Future Androids. The book, however, proves just as entertaining and informative for human readers.

 In his fourth novel, Kelman gives a delightful glimpse of the human world through an android's eyes. Kelman discusses the novel with a fellow human being in this latest MIT Alumni Books Podcast. Read more: http://bit.ly/1NRgN0N

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/2uHHogK

How to Pass as Human (Alumni Books Podcast)

Robert Gordon PhD '67 calls his new book a revised version of his thesis for Professor Robert Solow, "47 years late." The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War upends the typical narrative about the wonders of twenty-first century American innovations.

In this interview, Gordon shares his thoughts on American growth and shares some memories of his MIT years. Read more: http://bit.ly/21bLmTd

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/2Je9zY4

The Rise and Fall of American Growth (Alumni Books Podcast)

Since the publication of Clay Christensen's The Innovators' Dilemma nearly two decades ago, Michael Tushman PhD '76 and his colleague Charles O'Reilly III have studied successful firms, large and small, that didn't exactly fit the new norm of disrutpive innovation. The result of this study is Lead and Disrupt: How to Solve the Innovator's Dilemma. 

In this interview, Tushman discusses his new book, a well-researched corrective for Christensen's formula for success in business. Read more: http://bit.ly/1pNnWHV

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/2uNh5WO

Lead and Disrupt: How to Solve the Innovator's Dilemma (Alumni Books Podcast)

On March 28, 2006, a  group of young men, disguised as movers and armed with phony work orders, arrived on the Caltech’s Pasadena campus. Within a few hours, the crew departed with the college’s two-ton Fleming Canon in tow. Eight days later, the canon reappeared 3,000 miles away, on MIT campus, with a massive MIT class ring on its barrel. 

The movers, it turns out, were MIT students who had just carried out perhaps the longest-distance MIT hack of all time. 

So, How does one borrow a cannon, drive it cross-country, and place it in the middle of a crowded campus, completely undetected? In this episode of the Slice of MIT podcast, we’ll hear from the MIT hackers involved in heist, as we celebrate the prank’s 10-year anniversary. Read more: http://bit.ly/1WuVkQj. 

Transcript: https://bit.ly/2Gws64c

Music:
"Marty's Got a Plan"
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Secrets of the Caltech Cannon Heist

Dean Karlan PhD '02, Professor of Economics at Yale University, discusses his new book, Failing in the Field (Princeton, 2016), an exploration into the most common pitfalls of field research in which both researchers share some of their costly errors in conducting randomized controlled trials in the developing world.

Read more about Failing in the Field: http://bit.ly/2iZUIpT

Failing in the Field: Alumni Books Podcast

Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed more than 1,800 new MIT graduates on Friday, June 9, and shared a message of humanity deeply connected to his Apple experience. 

Speaking at the 2017 MIT Commencement, Cook described his relationship with Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple; described a meeting with Pope Francis; and called on the new graduates to focus the exciting power of technology on improving the world.

“Thanks to discoveries made right here, billions of people are leading healthier, more productive, more fulfilling lives," Cook said. "And if we are ever going to solve some of the hardest problems still facing the world today — everything from cancer, to climate change, to educational inequality — then technology will help us to do it.”

Read more about Tim Cook's Commencement address: http://bit.ly/2sjDKFc
Learn more about MIT's Commencement history: https://slice.mit.edu/2017/06/08/a-brief-history-of-mit-commencement-speakers/

Transcript: https://bit.ly/2H5CBse

Apple CEO Tim Cook at MIT Commencement

Rob Wesson '66, Scientist Emeritus with the USGS Geologic Hazards Science Center, discusses his book Darwin's First Theory, published in April 2017 by Pegasus Books. Read more: http://bit.ly/2wEHn9I. 

Episode transcript: https://bit.ly/2GxFCAv.

Darwin's First Theory (Alumni Books Podcast)

Andrew Bunnie Huang '97, MNG '97, PhD '02 talks about The Hardware Hacker: Adventures in Making and Breaking Hardware, published in March 2017 by No Starch Press.

Episode transcript: https://bit.ly/2JbhTI5.

The Hardware Hacker (Alumni Books Podcast)

Steven Lubar '76, Professor of American Studies at Brown University, discusses his new book, Inside the Lost Museum: Curating Past and Present, published in August 2017 by Harvard University Press.

Episode transcript: https://bit.ly/2H4DQrq.

Inside the Lost Museum (Alumni Books Podcast)

David N. Schwartz PhD '80 discusses his new book, The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and Times of Enrico Fermi, Father of the Nuclear Age.

Episode transcript: https://bit.ly/2IrxLon.

The Last Man Who Knew Everything (Alumni Books Podcast)

Hemant Taneja '97, MNG '99, SM '99 discusses his new book, Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future, published in spring 2018.

Episode transcript: http://bit.ly/2JHHN6d

Unscaled (Alumni Books Podcast)

Hear the advice from three speakers at the MIT Women's unConference-Suzanne Frey, a 2006 graduate of the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA Program; Catherine Crawford, a mechanical engineering graduate from the Class of 1991, and Bel Pesce a double major in engineering and computer science and management from the Class of 2010.

Episode transcript: https://bit.ly/2EBYqPS

Advice from the Women's unConference

Former United States Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz HM ’11 addressed a sold-out MIT audience in Washington, DC and discussed his thoughts on the United States’ role in climate research, nuclear security, and technology innovation. Read more on the Slice of MIT blog: http://bit.ly/2u5wSwz.

Moniz is the Cecil and Ida Green Professor Emeritus of Physics and Engineering Systems at MIT, and he was awarded honorary membership in the MIT Alumni Association in 2011. He  delivered his talk at the historic Cosmos Club during a Spring Lecture and Luncheon event jointly organized by the MIT Alumni Association’s Cardinal and Grey Society, Emma Rogers Society, and Katherine Dexter McCormick Society. 

Episode transcript: http://bit.ly/2tXIZM4

Professor Emeritus Ernie Moniz on Climate Change and Nuclear Security

Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner MCP '06, PhD '13, Assistant Professor of Politics & Global Studies at the University of Virginia, talks about her new book, Claiming the State: Active Citizenship and Social Welfare in Rural India, published in August 2018 by Cambridge University Press.

Episode transcript: https://bit.ly/2RJg9Kh

Claiming the State (Alumni Books Podcast)

Asked what one book all MIT alumni should read this year, Nancy Hopkins, Amgen Inc. Professor of Biology Emerita at MIT, selected The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist by Ben Barres '76, published this fall by MIT Press. In this Q&A, Prof. Hopkins shares insights on Barres's career, advocacy, and legacy. Join the book club and the conversation on this book at alum.mit.edu/learn.

Episode transcript: https://bit.ly/2EfsF0x

MIT Alumni Book Club: The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist (Selected by Prof. Nancy Hopkins)

Lucile Jones PhD '81 discusses her new book The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us (and What We Can Do About Them), published in April 2018. Jones is the founder of the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society and a Research Associate at the Seismological Laboratory of Caltech.

Episode transcript: https://bit.ly/2H6y38z

The Big Ones (Alumni Books Podcast)

According to novelist/essayist and theoretical physicist Alan Lightman, unstructured time that allows our minds to roam freely can lead to more creativity. “We need a new mental attitude,” he advocates—one “that values our inner reflection, values stillness, values privacy, values personal reflection—that honors the inner self.”

Lightman—who is a professor of the practice of the humanities as well as a senior lecturer in physics at MIT—shared these and other thoughts on creativity with an audience of MIT alumni in late 2018. He delivered his lecture at MIT’s Endicott House during a holiday luncheon event jointly organized by the MIT Alumni Association’s Cardinal and Gray Society and Emma Rogers Society. 

Read more on the Slice of MIT blog: bit.ly/2TTn3MX
Read the transcript: https://bit.ly/2UuF2gT

Photo: Jack Mohr ’50

In Praise of Wasting Time with MIT Professor Alan Lightman

Omar Al-Midani SM ’98 and his company have a way to drastically decrease mercury contamination to wastewater. 

Listen to this Slice of MIT podcast to hear Al-Midani talk about why his business model makes sense, of sometimes losing money. 

Read more on Slice of MIT: https://bit.ly/2ZiWwwx
Read a transcript of the podcast: https://bit.ly/2VVyci7

Healthy Teeth, Healthy Planet

Ingredion's recently retired CEO, Ilene Gordon ’75, SM ’76, sat down for an interview with the MIT Alumni Association during a spring 2019 visit to campus. In this episode of the Slice of MIT podcast, you'll hear her thoughts on the importance of having a plan B (and C), how doing laundry in London helped her career, and what she wishes more mentees would ask her.

Read more, and find the transcript of this episode, on Slice of MIT: http://bit.ly/2Z70WsW

Ilene Gordon ’75, SM ’76 on Being a Fortune 500 CEO

Andrew Rader PhD '09, SpaceX mission manager, discusses his book Beyond the Known: How Exploration Created the Modern World and Will Take Us to the Stars, published in 2019 by Scribner, a book Kirkus calls "an astute—and highly flattering—view of human aspirations."

Read more, and find the transcript of this episode, on Slice of MIT: https://bit.ly/2KEVjtI

Beyond the Known (Alumni Books Podcast)

MIT professor Alan Guth ’69, PhD ’72 pioneered the theory of cosmic inflation: a period of rapid expansion that occurred a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. And he also supports the idea that our universe is just one of many in a much larger multiverse.

“What we call the Big Bang Theory is really just a theory of the aftermath of some kind of a bang,” Guth says. “And inflation is a possible answer to what propelled this expansion. It's based on the idea that gravity itself can, under some circumstances, act as a repulsive force instead of an attractive force.”

Read the transcript to the lecture on the Slice of MIT blog:
https://alum.mit.edu/slice/podcast-inflationary-cosmology-our-universe-part-multiverse

Inflationary Cosmology—Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse with Professor Alan Guth ’69, PhD ’72

Julia Yoo ‘10, MBA ‘14 shares her experience of hosting the podcast, MIT Catalysts, a production of the MIT Alumni Club of Northern California. In this episode of the Slice of MIT podcast, you'll hear Yoo's interview with John Whaley ‘99, MEng ‘99, founder of the tech company UnifyID—along with her advice for other MIT alumni clubs that might want to start their own podcast.

Read more, and find the transcript of this episode, on Slice of MIT: https://bit.ly/2XqAauq

Slice of MIT Podcast Presents: MIT Catalysts

Hosted by the MIT Alumni Association, the Slice of MIT podcast offers a taste of Institute life—amazing discoveries, fascinating alumni, interesting research—for alumni and listeners interested in MIT. 

A production of the MIT Alumni Association  | An office of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts [http://apple.co/1FNoeDl] and visit Slice of MIT [http://alum.mit.edu/slice] for more MIT news and stories.

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