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Quick Studies

Learn, Stanford style, without going back to class. Presenting Quick Studies, a monthly collection of articles, videos and podcasts curated exclusively for you.

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Where Time Flows Uphill
For one remote tribe, time is not linear. This revelation, according to Stanford psychology professor Lera Boroditsky, PhD '01, has profound implications for our own assumptions about the nature of time.
Read the New Scientist article  »



 

 

58 Commencement Speeches, Analyzed
"Stay young. Stay foolish." Daniel Newark, '03, MA '11, dug up 58 Stanford commencement speeches from 1893 to 2009, documenting changes along the way. Learn what he found about memorable—and not so memorable—last words to graduates.
Read the STANFORD magazine article  »

Eat What Ails You, and Other Heretical Ideas
Should people with life-threatening allergies eat small amounts of the offending food? Can we lengthen cancer patients' lives by keeping some of the cancer cells alive? Stanford pediatrics professor Dr. Kari Nadeau and colleagues tackled these and other thorny issues at a recent Stanford conference.
Read the Forbes article  »

Watch

TEDxStanford Highlights video
Get a 3-minute taste of what Stanford luminaries presented at the first-ever TEDxStanford conference, from a self-made instrument demo by music professor Mark Applebaum to the latest advances in early cancer detection.
Watch the Stanford University YouTube video  » (3 min.)


Cory Booker's 2012 Commencement Address video
Newark's second-term mayor Cory Booker, '91, MA '92, took a break from the day-to-day task of bringing about momentous urban transformation to remind the Class of 2012 to be courageous and join the "conspiracy of love."
Watch Booker's Commencement address on Stanford YouTube  » (43 min.)

Poverty, Inequality and Morality video
At the last Reunion Homecoming, sociology professor David Grusky delivered a thought-provoking lecture on poverty and inequality and the threats that these issue pose to the American ideal of a free country.
Watch the Stanford University YouTube video » (45 min.)

Listen

Of Ice and Algae audio
Think there's nothing more than a watery desert beneath the Arctic ice pack? Think again, says Stanford environmental earth systems professor Kevin Arrigo, whose recent expedition into the Chukchi Sea between Russia and Alaska revealed a massive algae bloom spanning at least 60 miles.
Listen to the NPR podcast  » (3.5 min.)

Professor Jennifer Wolf Deconstructs The Hunger Games audio
A tightly-wound, lightening-paced dystopian novel fueled by a teenage female protagonist who takes unflinching aim at the society in which she lived." That's how Education Lecturer Jennifer Wolf, MAT '91, PhD '95, describes The Hunger Games in this Q&A; introduction to the Book Salon discussion.
Listen to the Book Salon audio introduction  » (11 min.)

A Cynical Tale of Philanthropy, and Other Stories of Giving audio
When KZSU's State of the Human radio show producer Rachel Hamburg, '10, MA '10, catered a fundraiser, she was struck by the enticements used to get people to donate to charity. Her tale leads into three other stories about how and why we give.
Listen to the Stanford Storytelling Project podcast  » (61 min.)