Dan Simon on the Intersection of Law and Psychology

04/24/20 • 25 min

While writing his dissertation, Dan Simon began to wonder how judges make decisions not from a legal, sociological, or economic perspective but rather from a psychological one. Today, the USC law professor has built a career investigating how factors of the mind—such as memory, false confessions, and the framing of interviews—influence rulings in the criminal justice system.

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Middle East Scholar Jamsheed Choksy Retraces the Roots of the Western Belief in Good and Evil

Much of Western culture and religious beliefs are grounded in a bifurcated notion of an epic power struggle between dueling forces, often defined as “good” and “evil.” This underlying premise influences how we parent, how we practice faith, how we choose vocations, and how we vote. In this episode Jamsheed Choksy, chair of the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, provides surprising historical context for how the West’s construction of these binary elements evolved—from Islam.

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Math Professor Ken Ono Is Connecting Swimming, Ramanujan, and Hollywood

He got a call to consult on the Hollywood film The Man Who Knew Infinity, starring Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel. The director was so impressed with his knowledge of the life and work of Indian math prodigy Ramanujan that he invited him on set. By the time the credits rolled, he was an associate producer on the movie. But Ono’s own life would make a fascinating big-screen story: a high school dropout pushes away from an intellectually gifted family and his father’s academic legacy, only to be given a chance at college and advanced studies in the very field he avoided for so long.