Prof. Jonathan Gruber, our guest for this episode, likes to tell his students that economics is a fundamentally right-wing science. What he means by that is that classical economics is built on one powerful explanatory insight: that free markets—networks of buyers and sellers, producers and consumers, weighing the trade-offs of different options and making self-interested choices based on supply and demand—do a better job of deciding how to allocate resources than can be achieved by a top-down, command-economy approach. But as Gruber goes on to explain, that principle only holds when all participants have equal access to markets and to information; in the real world, imbalances in that access lead to market failures, inefficient allocations of resources that leave most people worse off than they would otherwise be. That’s why government regulation still has a role in a properly functioning economy. Tune in to hear Prof. Gruber explain why we need “capitalism with gutter guards” to ensure equitable outcomes, especially in sectors of the economy such as healthcare where the ideal markets envisioned by classical economics are particularly unattainable or undesirable. 

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator portal

Prof. Gruber’s faculty page

14.01 Principles of Microeconomics on MIT OpenCourseWare

14.41 Public Finance and Public Policy on MIT OpenCourseWare

Power and Progress (book by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson)

Video version of this interview on YouTube

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Connect with Us

If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! 

Call us @ 617-715-2517

On our site

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Stay Current

Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

Support OCW

If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! 

Credits

Sarah Hansen, host and producer 

Brett Paci, producer  

Dave Lishansky, producer 

Jackson Maher, producer

Show notes by Peter Chipman

Learn about Python, growth mindset, and the uses of rubber ducks in this interview with MIT lecturer Ana Bell. Dr. Bell, who has been programming since she was twelve and now teaches popular introductory courses in computer science, says that coding consists of almost equal parts creativity and logic. The creative part, she explains, gets exercised particularly when you have to come up with an algorithm to solve a given problem, because for any given complex problem there are many possible approaches to tackling it. The logical part comes into play when you sit down to translate that algorithm into an unambiguous sequence of rules in a programming language, and again when you discover that the code you’ve written doesn’t work exactly as you intended it to and you have to set about debugging it. Among the topics the conversation addresses are why everyone–even in the age of generative AI– ought to study at least the basics of programming, why it can be useful to speak to an inanimate object when your coding project is stuck in the debugging stage, and how programming can help you choose your own adventure. 

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator portal

Dr. Bell’s faculty page

6.100 L Introduction to Computer Science and Programming using Python on MIT OpenCourseWare

6.0001 [now 6.100A] Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python on MIT OpenCourseWare

6.0002 [now 6.100B] Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science on MIT OpenCourseWare

Get Programming: Learn to Code with Python (book by Dr. Bell)

Doodle Debug (coloring book by Dr. Bell)

Video version of this interview on YouTube

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Connect with Us

If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! 

Call us @ 617-715-2517

On our site

On Facebook

On X

On Instagram

On LinkedIn

Stay Current

Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

Support OCW

If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! 

Credits

Sarah Hansen, host and producer 

Brett Paci, producer  

Dave Lishansky, producer 

Jackson Maher, producer

Show notes by Peter Chipman

In this the first of two pilot episodes of Chalk Radio with VIDEO, Professor Andrew Lo, who teaches finance at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, knows that many people find financial matters perplexing and scary. Lots of us don’t have a good head for numbers, and besides, how can one get advice and make sound decisions when it’s taboo to discuss one’s finances at all? That’s where a financial advisor is useful–someone who understands the concepts, can crunch the numbers, and has a fiduciary responsibility to look out for your best interests. For many people, hiring a financial advisor might be a financial impossibility, but Prof. Lo and his colleagues are working to develop an AI financial advisor that not only gives ordinary people access to sound financial advice, but acts with real fiduciary responsibility. Large language models can’t do this yet, he says, but the technology is developing fast. Other topics he touches on in this episode include the outsized influence of finance on drug development and global decarbonization and the equally outsized influence of teachers on their students–he names many who changed his own life, from his third-grade teacher in Queens to his professors at college and graduate school.        

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator portal

Professor Lo’s faculty page

15.401 Finance Theory I on MIT OpenCourseWare

15.481x Adaptive Markets: Financial Market Dynamics and Human Behavior on MIT Open Learning Library

15.482x Healthcare Finance on MIT Open Learning Library

Video version of this interview on YouTube

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Connect with Us

If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! 

Call us @ 617-715-2517

On our site

On Facebook

On X

On Instagram

On LinkedIn

Stay Current

Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

Support OCW

If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! 

Credits

Sarah Hansen, host and producer 

Brett Paci, producer  

Dave Lishansky, producer 

Jackson Maher, producer

Show notes by Peter Chipman

Sujood Khalid Eldouma recently relocated to the UK for her master’s studies, having previously lived in Egypt after fleeing her native Sudan to escape the devastating civil war in that country. Sujood holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Khartoum, but her ambitions extend far beyond the field she was trained in. She recently graduated from the MIT Emerging Talent certificate program in Computer and Data Science and is pursuing a MicroMasters in statistics and data science through the support of MIT Emerging Talent. In this episode, we hear how Sujood and her classmates at the university in Khartoum used MIT OpenCourseWare lecture videos as the basis of a group learning experience, in which knowledge was shared and lasting friendships were formed. We also hear how Sujood is pursuing her current online studies not just as a means of self-improvement but as part of the groundwork for a much bigger, future project: helping to rebuild Sudan’s educational and scientific infrastructure when peace comes to that country. “I'm not doing it just for myself,” she says. “I'm not doing it just for my family, but in the bigger picture and with a heart filled with hope.”

The Open Learners podcast is produced by Alexis Haut and hosted by Emmanuel Kasigazi and Michael Jordan Pilgreen.

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator portal

MIT Emerging Talent program

MIT MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data Science

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Share Your Open Learning Story

To share your own open learning story with Michael and Emmanuel, send them an email at [email protected].

Connect with Us

If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! 

Call us @ 617-715-2517

On our site

On Facebook

On X

On Instagram

On LinkedIn

Stay Current

Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

Support OCW

If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! 

Credits

Sarah Hansen, host and producer 

Brett Paci, producer  

Dave Lishansky, producer 

Jackson Maher, producer

Show notes by Peter Chipman

They say every crisis also presents an opportunity. Open learner Jerry Vance Anguzu seized one such opportunity in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, when his native country of Uganda went into lockdown. Jerry was stuck at home, unable to earn a living, but that enforced inactivity gave him the chance to pursue new directions in his education. A few years earlier, he had discovered MIT OpenCourseWare and had seen what it had to offer; now he returned to MIT Open Learning resources in earnest, plowing through courses in data science and computer programming; soon thereafter he was accepted into the MIT Emerging Talent certificate program, where he began to develop an interest in entrepreneurship. Now, just a few years later, Jerry has his own startup, Everpesa Technologies, a financial services platform that offers sustainable investment opportunities and financial literacy resources to people in sub-Saharan Africa. Along the way, he has become a self-described “OCW ambassador,” enthusiastically spreading the word to relatives and colleagues about the learning resources that are available online through MIT OpenCourseWare. “You don’t need to pay anything,” Jerry tells them. “You just need to have a bit of time.”

The Open Learners podcast is produced by Alexis Haut and hosted by Emmanuel Kasigazi and Michael Jordan Pilgreen.

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator portal

MIT Emerging Talent program

MIT Jameel World Education Lab

MIT MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data Science

Everpesa website

6.0001 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python on MIT OpenCourseWare

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Share Your Open Learning Story

To share your own open learning story with Michael and Emmanuel, send them an email at [email protected].

Connect with Us

If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! 

Call us @ 617-715-2517

On our site

On Facebook

On X

On Instagram

On LinkedIn

Stay Current

Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

Support OCW

If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! 

Credits

Sarah Hansen, host and producer 

Brett Paci, producer  

Dave Lishansky, producer 

Jackson Maher, producer

Show notes by Peter Chipman

Our guest for this episode, Lotfullah Andishmand, grew up in a village in rural Afghanistan where there was no internet access or electric lights. (He describes having had to navigate by moonlight to get to his uncle’s house for tutoring in chemistry.) In search of educational opportunity, he eventually moved to Kabul, where he discovered MIT OpenCourseWare’s lecture videos while studying electrical engineering at the university. Even there, though, the internet infrastructure was shaky enough that Lotfullah often resorted to downloading the course materials so he could study them at leisure when broadband wasn’t available. He now resides in India and recently graduated from the MIT Emerging Talent certificate program in Computer and Data Science, specifically designed for displaced communities worldwide. As he continues his educational journey in data science and artificial intelligence, he remains deeply mindful of the challenges he encountered as a student in his home country. Recognizing that most of the available online educational resources are in English, a language few Afghans are fluent in, Lotfullah has used his computer skills to create an online learning platform offering educational materials in Persian. Someday, he hopes the platform will expand to include full online courses with direct interaction between instructors and students.

The Open Learners podcast is produced by Alexis Haut and hosted by Emmanuel Kasigazi and Michael Jordan Pilgreen.

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator portal

MIT Emerging Talent program

MIT MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data Science

6.0001 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python on MIT OpenCourseWare

Hooshmand Lab online learning website (in Persian)

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Share Your Open Learning Story

To share your own open learning story with Michael and Emmanuel, send them an email at [email protected].

Connect with Us

If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! 

Call us @ 617-715-2517

On our site

On Facebook

On X

On Instagram

On LinkedIn

Stay Current

Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

Support OCW

If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! 

Credits

Sarah Hansen, host and producer 

Brett Paci, producer  

Dave Lishansky, producer 

Jackson Maher, producer

Show notes by Peter Chipman

When Nader AlEtaywi was in high school in Jordan, he had a passion for finance but his prospects seemed limited. Juggling his studies, minimum-wage jobs, and family crises made it hard to envision a future where he could develop his talents and flourish in his chosen field. Through sheer perseverance he finished high school and entered university, where during the Covid pandemic in late 2020 he discovered the world of educational resources that MIT Open Learning offers. He devoured MIT OpenCourseWare courses in statistics, computer programming, and calculus, and soon realized that he could take steps toward a career in finance by enrolling in a MITx MicroMasters program. The program’s instructional team recognized Nader’s talent, and when he finished the program they offered him a position as a teaching assistant. From there, drawing on the skills he had learned but also on the online community he had become a part of, Nader was able to get jobs in his field, first working for a financial firm in Jordan, and then for companies in the US and Dubai. In this episode, we hear his inspiring story of passion and perseverance.

The Open Learners podcast is produced by Alexis Haut and hosted by Emmanuel Kasigazi and Michael Jordan Pilgreen.

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator portal

MIT MicroMasters Program in Finance

Dr. Egor Matveyev (MIT faculty page)

Prof. Andrew Lo (MIT faculty page)

Courses by Prof. Lo on MIT OpenCourseWare

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Share Your Open Learning Story

To share your own open learning story with Michael and Emmanuel, send them an email at [email protected].

Connect with Us

If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! 

Call us @ 617-715-2517

On our site

On Facebook

On X

On Instagram

On LinkedIn

Stay Current

Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

Support OCW

If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! 

Credits

Sarah Hansen, host and producer 

Brett Paci, producer  

Dave Lishansky, producer 

Jackson Maher, producer

Show notes by Peter Chipman

Jae-Min Hong, our guest for this episode, is a hungry learner with wide-ranging curiosity and a distrust of groupthink. A native of South Korea, she has been fluent in English from childhood, which has opened up many educational possibilities for her. Aiming to widen her cultural horizons, she opted to attend high school in New Zealand; a few years later, she transferred from a Korean university to an American one so she could attend in-person classes during the Covid pandemic. With the help of lecture videos from MIT OpenCourseWare, Jae-Min was able to supplement her formal studies and pursue all the subjects that interest her, from chemistry and thermodynamics through data science and financial technology. She’s now back in South Korea, where she’s finishing a degree in economics at Yonsei University. She feels it’s time for her to really focus her attention on a single field and a single goal, a career in investment banking. But if that doesn’t work out, she says, she can always come back to MIT OpenCourseWare and dip once more into the wealth of resources it has to offer.  

The Open Learners podcast is produced by Alexis Haut.

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator portal

5.60 Thermodynamics & Kinetics on MIT OpenCourseWare

15.401 Finance Theory I on MIT OpenCourseWare

18.06 Linear Algebra on MIT OpenCourseWare

Prof. Gilbert Strang (MIT faculty page)

RES.18-005 Highlights of Calculus (including “The Big Picture of Calculus”) on MIT OpenCourseWare

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Share Your Open Learning Story

To share your own open learning story with Michael and Emmanuel, send them an email at [email protected].

Connect with Us

If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! 

Call us @ 617-715-2517

On our site

On Facebook

On X

On Instagram

On LinkedIn

Stay Current

Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

Support OCW

If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! 

Credits

Sarah Hansen, host and producer 

Brett Paci, producer  

Dave Lishansky, producer 

Jackson Maher, producer

Show notes by Peter Chipman

In this inaugural episode of the Open Learners podcast, hosts Emmanuel Kasigazi and Michael Jordan Pilgreen interview Maria Eduarda Barbosa, a medical student located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Maria tells in her own words how MIT OpenCourseWare changed the trajectory of her life, particularly how she might never have achieved her full potential if one of her teachers had not recognized her abilities and urged her to pursue more challenging studies. Googling “Calculus introductory course,” Maria discovered one of Prof. Gilbert Strang’s videos on MIT OpenCourseWare, and it opened a vision of new horizons for her. She became a near-daily user of MIT OpenCourseWare, and the experience transformed her intellectual life, inspiring her to become passionate about her own education and to share that passion with others around her. Maria describes how the experience has not only awakened her curiosity and self-motivation, but also given her a better attitude about the gaps in her existing knowledge. Now, she says, she doesn’t think, “Oh, I'm lost because I'm stupid”; instead she thinks, “I'm lost because I haven't learned this yet.”

The Open Learners podcast is produced by Alexis Haut.

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator portal

Prof. Andrew Lo (MIT faculty page)

15.401 Finance Theory I on MIT OpenCourseWare

Prof. Gilbert Strang (MIT faculty page)

RES.18-005 Highlights of Calculus (including “The Big Picture of Calculus”) on MIT OpenCourseWare

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Share Your Open Learning Story

To share your own open learning story with Michael and Emmanuel, send them an email at [email protected].

Connect with Us

If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! 

Call us @ 617-715-2517

On our site

On Facebook

On X

On Instagram

On LinkedIn

Stay Current

Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

Support OCW

If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! 

Credits

Sarah Hansen, host and producer 

Brett Paci, producer  

Dave Lishansky, producer 

Jackson Maher, producer

Show notes by Peter Chipman

Emmanuel Kasigazi is a data scientist from Kampala, Uganda. Michael Jordan Pilgreen is a financial technology engineer from Memphis, Tennessee. Kasigazi and Pilgreen know firsthand how transformative open learning can be: Pilgreen’s discovery of the free educational materials at MIT OpenCourseWare helped him develop new technical skills and eventually led to a new career in a field he is passionate about, while Kasigazi has enjoyed MIT OpenCourseWare’s wealth of lecture videos on YouTube for years, not only to learn within his field but also to immerse himself in the deep questions of psychology and philosophy. In this episode we hear from Kasigazi and Pilgreen about how open learning changed their lives and how they became friends and colleagues despite living on opposite sides of the world. We also hear of their new project, in which they’ll be teaming up to host an upcoming special season of Chalk Radio. Unlike the typical Chalk Radio season, which focuses on the supply side of open learning, featuring interviews with inspired educators at MIT, this special “Open Learners” podcast season will focus on candid conversations with open learners from all over the world. This special season is coming Fall 2024. Don’t miss it! 

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator Portal

Emmanuel Kasigazi - Open Learning Story

Michael Jordan Pilgreen - Open Learning Story

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Share Your Open Learning Story

To share your own open learning story with Michael and Emmanuel, send them an email at [email protected].

Connect with Us

If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! 

Call us @ 617-715-2517

On our site

On Facebook

On X

On Instagram

On LinkedIn

Stay Current

Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

Support OCW

If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! 

Credits

Sarah Hansen, host and producer 

Brett Paci, producer  

Dave Lishansky, producer 

Jackson Maher, producer

Show notes by Peter Chipman

This episode features a wide-ranging conversation about poetry: what it is, where it comes from, and why it matters. Our guest, poet (and poetry professor) Joshua Bennett, talks about the early experiences that pushed him toward poetry and about the people who shaped and inspired his creative approach as a writer. Many of these people are fellow poets, others are his own grandparents, parents, and teachers, but Prof. Bennett has also found inspiration in less expected figures; over the course of the interview, he name-checks the singers Yolanda Adams and Marvin Gaye, the biologists Charles Henry Turner and Ernest Everett Just, the astronaut Mae Jemison, and various characters from the TV series Star Trek: the Next Generation. Other topics Prof. Bennett addresses include the relation between poetry and generative AI (his own work is among the vast body of text that has been fed as training data into large language models), education as liberation, and the concept of social poetics. Eventually, the interview blossoms into a heartfelt meditation on human experience: childhood, aging, parenthood, identity, and the ways poetry enhances our humanity by capturing the magic of being alive.

Relevant Resources:

MIT OpenCourseWare

The OCW Educator Portal

Joshua Bennett’s faculty page

Joshua Bennett (Poetry Foundation)

Aracelis Girmay, from The Black Maria 

June Jordan, “The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America”

Charles Henry Turner (Wikipedia)

Ernest Everett Just (Wikipedia)

Mae Jemison (Wikipedia)

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions

Connect with Us

If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! 

Call us @ 617-715-2517

On our site

On Facebook

On X

On Instagram

On LinkedIn

Stay Current

Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. 

Support OCW

If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! 

Credits

Sarah Hansen, host and producer 

Brett Paci, producer  

Dave Lishansky, producer 

Jackson Maher, producer

Show notes by Peter Chipman