Chalk Radio
Chalk Radio is an MIT OpenCourseWare podcast about inspired teaching at MIT. We take you behind the scenes of some of the most interesting courses on campus to talk with the professors who make those courses possible.
Our guests open up to us about the passions that drive their cutting-edge research and innovative teaching, sharing stories that are candid, funny, serious, personal, and full of insights. Listening in on these conversations is like being right here with us in person under the MIT dome, talking with your favorite professors.
And because each of our guests shares teaching materials on OCW, it's easy to take a deeper dive into the topics that inspire you. If you're an educator, you can make these teaching materials your own because they're all openly-licensed.
Hosted by Dr. Sarah Hansen from MIT Open Learning.
Chalk Radio episodes are offered under a CC BY-NC-SA license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/).
- Update frequency
- every 15 days
- Average duration
- 21 minutes
- Episodes
- 57
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
Encountering Each Other (Essayist Garnette Cadogan)
Garnette Cadogan is an acclaimed essayist who teaches in MIT’s Urban Studies and Planning program. As befits a teacher who is also a professional creative writer, he conceives of the academic syllabu…
Seeing the Big Picture from Space (Astronaut Jeff Hoffman)
Over the years, Sarah Hansen has interviewed the creator of the “Women of NASA” minifigure series as well as a professor of astronautics and former deputy administrator of NASA. Now, for the first ti…
Making Solid State Chemistry Matter (Prof. Jeffrey Grossman)
First-year students who already plan to major in chemistry don’t require any special bells or whistles to motivate them to study the subject. But introductory chemistry is a required subject for all …
Searching for the Oldest Stars (Prof. Anna Frebel)
For millions of years after the Big Bang, nearly all the matter in the universe was in the form of hydrogen and helium; other elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen only formed later, in nuclear …
Paying it Forward with FinTech (Prof. Gary Gensler)
One might imagine that an expert on financial technology would view human relations through a primarily transactional lens. But Professor Gary Gensler, in teaching his course on financial technology …
The Power of OER with Profs. Mary Rowe and Elizabeth Siler
Many instructors in recent years have turned to open educational resources (OER) so that their students don’t have to pay for an expensive textbook. And that is indeed one of the foremost benefits of…
Thinking Like an Economist with Prof. Jonathan Gruber
Professor Jonathan Gruber wants to train students to think like economists. Economics uses elegant mathematical models to explain how people make decisions and allocate their resources—but all too of…
Learning to Fly with Drs. Philip Greenspun & Tina Srivastava
Can you really learn to fly by sitting in a classroom and attending lectures? Of course not! But the course offered by Philip Greenspun and Tina Srivastava in 16.687 Private Pilot Ground School has p…
Unpacking Misconceptions about Language & Identities with Prof. Michel DeGraff
“We all hold dear certain attitudes about language,” Professor Michel DeGraff says in this episode centered on his course 24.908 Creole Languages and Caribbean Identities. Those attitudes can be posi…
Special Episode: Teaching Remotely During Covid-19 with Prof. Justin Reich
Join us as we talk with Justin Reich, assistant professor in comparative media studies at MIT. Professor Reich runs the Teaching Systems Lab, which was founded with the mission of designing, implemen…
Hands-on, Minds On with Dr. Christopher Terman
You might imagine that fluency is an inherently good thing in teaching. But Dr. Christopher Terman, Senior Lecturer Emeritus at MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab, explains that bre…
Film Is for Everyone with Prof. David Thorburn
What would Shakespeare have made of today’s popular television shows? He might or might not like them, but he wouldn’t dismiss them simply because they’re popular. In this episode, Professor David Th…
Social Impact at Scale, One Project at a Time with Dr. Anjali Sastry
This episode explores a new kind of independent study. MIT has traditionally encouraged its Sloan MBA fellows to engage in international projects with partners around the globe. Our guest, Dr. Anjali…
Making Deep Learning Human with Prof. Gilbert Strang
Mathematics Professor Gilbert Strang is one of MIT’s most revered instructors; his courses, especially the perennially popular linear algebra course 18.06, have received millions of visits on OpenCou…
How Africa Has Been Made to Mean with Prof. Amah Edoh
“How has Africa been made to mean?” For a long time, Africa has been depicted in the arts and media as a place of famine and dysfunction. More recently, the continent has been increasingly portrayed …
Nuclear Gets Personal with Prof. Michael Short
It’s a safe bet that Professor Michael Short’s 22.01 Introduction to Nuclear Engineering and Ionizing Radiation is the only course at MIT where students are encouraged to bring their toenail clipping…
Coming Soon: Chalk Radio from MIT OCW
In each episode of this new podcast, we meet the instructors behind one of MIT’s most interesting courses, from nuclear physics to film appreciation to piloting small aircraft. The instructors open u…