Explain This!

In the beginning, the universe contained nothing more than hydrogen and helium. But how did we get from there to the universe we know now—one filled with a vast array of complex stars, planets, and galaxies? And how do these celestial bodies form, and from what? These questions form the basis of research done by Catherine Espaillat, a Boston University College of Arts & Scien

Have you ever stopped to wonder how many alcoholic beverage ads you encounter in a day—on the bus or on TV, at the movies or a sports stadium? What about how many alcohol products—like the much-discussed Dunkin’ Spiked drinks—are styled to look like their nonalcoholic counterparts? How about how much less you’d drink if you weren’t constantly bombarded with all those al

Does Boston Spanish have its own accent and dialect? In the second episode of The Brink podcast Explain This! coproducer Sophie Yarin chats with Daniel Erker, a Boston University College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of linguistics and Spanish, about linguistic variation—the phenomenon of language evolution. As a sociolinguist, Erker’s scholarship looks at how huma

In our debut episode, The Brink’s science writer Jessica Colarossi sits down with Steve Ramirez (CAS’10), a BU College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences, to discuss his lab’s research on how the brain records and stores memories. Ramirez’s team relies on a biological technique called optogenetics that lets them view memories as p