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Living History in Eaton’s Living Room

juch8046 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 00:25:55 +0000

Living History in Eaton’s Living Room juch8046 Thu, 10/15/2026 - 18:25

The Odyssey was originally composed as an oral composition.

Hope Kerrigan

��ñ�� Classics reads Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ aloud in a single day

At 8 a.m. Thursday, the low hum of students heading to their first classes mingled with an unexpected sound in the Eaton Humanities Lobby: the opening lines of a familiar epic.

Classics professor Elspeth Dusinberre began the reading with the poem’s first invocation, drawing the attention of passersby: “Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus.”

The ��ñ��’s Department of Classics set out to read the entirety of Homer’s “Odyssey” aloud in a single day, passing the poem from reader to reader in 10-minute turns from 8 a.m. to a scheduled 9:30 p.m. finish, “or however long it takes,” said Laurialan Reitzammer, associate professor and associate chair of undergraduate studies.

The idea began with a movie. Christopher Nolan’s film “The Odyssey” arrived this summer, and for classicists, Reitzammer said, “it’s kind of like our Super Bowl.” The department wanted to build on that momentum and show people how “fascinating and moving and poignant” the poem is to read, hear and experience.

Top left: Laurialan Reitzammer, associate professor and associate chair of undergraduate studies; Top right: Classics professor Elspeth Dusinberre; Bottom left: David Chu, a classics lecturer; Bottom right: Provost Ann Stevens

The date was no accident. Thursday was part of Odyssey Day, a national celebration. Reitzammer said the Society for Classical Studies encouraged members to host public events in libraries and communities.

Reading aloud also returns the poem to how it was first experienced, Reitzammer said, “the way that people would have experienced the poem, you know, thousands of years ago.”

Dusinberre said that is exactly the point. “The poem was originally composed as an oral composition and so getting to hear it as we are now is very much how people would have experienced it in antiquity,” she said. Audiences then came and went, much like the students crossing the lobby. “I’m sure that people would pop in and out in antiquity also,” she said. “Some people would sit and listen for long stretches.”

The poem’s structure suits that kind of listening, she said. Beyond the 24 books later scholars divided it into, the story appears to have been conceived in chunks, as in “Here’s this story,” or “Here’s that part.” The department’s relay format, with a new voice every 10 minutes, echoes that tradition.

Hearing the poem also changes how it works, said David Chu, a classics lecturer. The repetition and recurring epithets that can look tedious on the page land differently in the ear, and the artistry of figurative language can be lost when read silently.

“Think about it like a song chorus, where it’s the same words, but we jam to that! That’s because it’s connecting with us,” Chu said. He compared it to Shakespeare: Read in high school, the language feels strange and foreign, “and then you go and you see a Shakespeare play, and it’s an entirely different experience.”

Participants reading out loud to students in the ��ñ�� Eaton building.

The reading was free and open to the public, with refreshments provided. Participants signed up for 10-minute slots through an online spreadsheet, and friends could split a slot to read five minutes each. Guests were encouraged by department members to color and name their own “Circe’s Pig,” which hung at the entrance of the Eaton Living Room for passersby to see. Volunteer readers ranged in age from 18 to 87 and included professors, students and Provost Ann Stevens.

Some students looking for a place to study stayed to listen. “The release of the new movie brought some relevance back,” said Quinlen Dow, an undergraduate who was passing through. “The relatable parts of the story do not change with time.”

Kaleb Wiggins, also an undergraduate, put it more simply: “The human condition never changes.”

For Dusinberre, the pull of the poem is its storytelling, “which is really complicated, but also just riveting.” She said she hopes even a 10-minute listener comes away with a sense of “how living, vibrant and applicable it is to us.”

She sees the Nolan film as part of the same tradition. Homer’s story, she said, has been retold for each new audience, and the movie does the same.

The popularity of the department also speaks to the enduring pull of the classics. We have an incredibly engaged group,” said Dusinberre. “Class sizes are large, and the undergraduate Classics Club is vibrant and dynamic.”

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��ñ�� Classics reads Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ aloud in a single day.

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Participants reading portions of The Odyssey in the Eaton Humanities Lobby. From left: Marjorie and Richard McIntosh, distinguished professors emeriti, history and molecular, cellular and developmental biology respectively; Zachary Herz, associate professor, classics; Circe's pigs; Elspeth Dusinberre, professor of distinction, classics.

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A fresh start for Sundance Film Festival, a homecoming for CU filmmaker

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

A fresh start for Sundance Film Festival, a homecoming for CU filmmaker Rachel Sauer Wed, 10/14/2026 - 07:00

Cody DeBos

CU film grad’s debut aiming for Boulder’s first Sundance Film Festival

For more than four decades, independent film’s biggest festival has belonged to Park City, Utah. Starting in 2027, Sundance Film Festival has a new home in Boulder.

The ��ñ�� has spent months getting ready to welcome the festival as official university partner of the Sundance Film Festival, and the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts has been a key partner in campuswide collaborations to welcome Sundance.

For 2024 ��ñ�� graduate Richie Simeone, one of the most important celebrations of filmmaking coming to the Centennial State is personal. His homegrown film and directorial debut Sunnyside, a 2027 Sundance Film Festival submission, has shades of CU evident in every aspect of its making.

Richie Simeone (center, black shirt) is a 2024 ��ñ�� graduate whose homegrown film and directorial debut, Sunnyside, is a 2027 Sundance Film Festival submission.

From Dead Wrong to Sunnyside

The dark comedy murder mystery follows four self-made elitists whose secrets start to unravel after one is murdered, leaving a grungy police officer nearing retirement to investigate people he knows all too well.

But the original idea for Sunnyside traces back to Simeone’s first professional credit, the indie film Dead Wrong, on which he was an associate producer.

“He [Dead Wrong co-writer and executive producer Ken Clark] had this idea of making a movie outside of Hollywood, trying to keep a small budget,” Simeone says.

Simeone and Clark struck up a creative partnership, collaborating on the first draft of Sunnyside when Simeone was a junior at ��ñ��.

“It was more a true crime, kind of gritty story that him and I wrote together. After that, we sat on it for about year while he was finishing up work on Dead Wrong,” he says.

Simeone, again partnering with Clark, would later have a chance to refine the draft. En route to rewriting almost the entire script, he leaned on his improv background in ��ñ��’s Left Right Tim team.

“That first draft really looks nothing like the original script except for the core idea, but I’m really proud of how it turned out,” Simeone says.

‘Florida man’

Originally, Florida wasn’t a creative inspiration for Sunnyside, but rather a financial decision considering its $350,000 budget. Even so, Simeone is the first to admit that location matters immensely when shooting a film.

“Florida was going to be where we filmed, just for budgetary reasons. We had access to some houses and stuff. But then I looked at it and thought, ‘What can I use this for and really transform it?’” Simeone says.

What was at first a constraint quickly became a defining theme of the film.

Simeone shot Sunnyside in Celebration, Florida, the meticulously planned town built by Disney outside Orlando. He used the elegant backdrop to set up a bit of tension, weaving the location’s character into the film wherever he could.

“When making the film, I really wanted to explore these ideas of the Disney World Florida versus the ‘Florida Man’ Florida,” he says.

The contrast is evident both in the visuals and the individual characters.

Richie Simeone (right, blue hat) talks with actor Michael X. Sommers (center) on the set of Simeone's directorial debut, Sunnyside.

“The first thing I did was just take that and insert it into every element of this movie, and I started to find all of these funny little bits that would come out,” he says. “What happens if you take this almost trailer-park Florida guy and have him investigate a Disney World architect and a therapist for the housewives?”

A film built by CU

As Simeone assembled a crew for Sunnyside on a shoestring budget, he turned first to the people he already trusted.

“I was really lucky that I had some good friends in film school and old roommates from CU who I could reach out to for different parts of the production,” he says.

“We brought in so many people from CU, including producers, casting directors, accountants, assistant directors, production assistants, actors and so many more. It’s hard to find a part of this film that didn’t have someone from CU involved in it,” Simeone shares.

The CU influence also appears in the soundtrack, where Simeone collaborated with several local bands to give Sunnyside its signature sound.

“We had so many CU bands as part of this film. The Dirty Turkeys, Curtain Ledger, Showerhouse and Luke Henry also contributed songs. It’s some really, really great bands that have connections to CU,” Simeone says.

For those interested in a behind-the-scenes look at the production, Simeone and his team have also been documenting the effort along the way. Via an Instagram series called Sunnyside Files, they have profiled crew members, bands and actors to showcase their roles in the film.

With post-production finished, Sunnyside is now working through festival submissions.

Asked what he would think if his film was selected for the 2027 Sundance Film Festival in Boulder, Simeone said, “It would be an incredible full-circle moment. Sundance is something every young filmmaker dreams of, and to be part of it in Boulder, where I went to film school, would just be unbelievable.”

In the meantime, Simeone is already developing his next feature, a comedy he plans to shoot in Florida next spring with much of the same team.

Just go do it

Even if Sunnyside isn’t selected, however, Simeone is still thrilled at the prospect of the Festival coming to the city where he studied how to become a filmmaker. He describes the feeling as something like a homecoming.

Get your group of friends and go make something. Write the stories and film the things that you want to tell."

“It’s so cool to see this festival coming to the place where I went to school. It’s going to be so inspiring for a lot of young filmmakers now in the program to be able to attend the festival, meet people, maybe work the festival in some say, and make these connections,” Simeone says.

That access, he says, is incredibly important for current film students and recent graduates hoping for their break in the business.

“At Sundance, you’ll see big filmmakers, but you’ll also see people who are new in the industry, just like you, who are getting a break. Being able to meet those people, ask them questions, maybe join a team, is going to be huge for all the young filmmakers here,” he says.

As for CU film students who have dreams of bringing their own ideas to the big screen, Simeone’s advice comes without much nuance.

“It’s cliché, but it’s just do it. Get your group of friends and go make something. Write the stories and film the things that you want to tell,” he says.

Simeone credits much of his own break to being prepared when the opportunity arrived.

“They say luck is just when preparation meets opportunity, and I think that’s so true. Just being ready is key, because you never know when that moment’s going to come,” he adds.

If Sundance Film Festival’s arrival in Boulder next year does what Simeone hopes, the next break for a CU filmmaker hoping to create their own Sunnyside might be closer than ever.

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CU film grad’s debut aiming for Boulder’s first Sundance Film Festival.

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Top photo: Richie Simeone (second from right, blue hat) on the set of his directorial debut, Sunnyside. (All photos courtesy Taylor Rahn)

Great Horse Flu brought early 1870s America to a near standstill

Kimberly van Mourik — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 18:38:32 +0000

Great Horse Flu brought early 1870s America to a near standstill Kimberly van Mourik Tue, 10/13/2026 - 12:38

Although largely forgotten today, the Great Horse Flu of 1872-1873 had an infection rate of nearly 90%, resulting in wide-ranging effects on North American society, which relied upon horses for agriculture, transportation, commerce and even manufacturing.

Bradley Worrell

New book by ��ñ�� historian Thomas G. Andrews documents the forgotten epidemic that hobbled America and had wide-ranging effects on society

When Americans picture the 1870s, they likely imagine an age defined by railroads, steamships and rapid industrialization. Yet, ��ñ�� historian Thomas G. Andrews argues those familiar images obscure a more important reality: 19th century North America still ran on horsepower.

“Horses were doing essentially all of the things that internal combustion engines do for us today,” says Andrews, who serves as the director of the Center of the American West and whose research focuses on the environmental and social history of the American West. “As someone recently said to me, horses were the forklifts of the 19th century and that’s exactly right.”

��ñ�� history Professor Thomas G. Andrews, whose research focuses on the environmental and social history of the American West, is the author of the new book, The Great Horse Flu: A Forgotten Contagion and the Fate of Reconstruction America, which documents how America’s horse-powered economy was paralyzed by horse influenza.

That dependence upon horses, donkeys and mules explains why a largely forgotten outbreak, which Andrews calls the Great Horse Flu, proved so devastating at the time. The disease, which first appeared in 1872 and did not let up until late 1873, infected as much as 90% of North America’s equine population, hobbling transportation systems, slowing commerce, complicating public safety efforts and contributing to an economic depression in the United States.

The disease and its consequences are the subject of Andrew’s new book, The Great Horse Flu, which places the outbreak at the center of a transformative moment in North American history.

Origin of the outbreak

Andrews acknowledges there is a lot historians and scientists still don’t know about the Great Horse Flu, in part because no physical samples of the virus exist today. However, he says his research does point to the origins of flu, which began in an inland farming area outside of Toronto, Canada.

Why there?

While it’s impossible to say with 100% certainty, Andrews speculates that it had to do with the confluence of settlers introducing improved breeds of livestock from different regions, which brought new influenza variants with them, and the area’s extensive wetlands near Lake Ontario that supported vibrant populations of wild waterfowl, which are known carriers of influenza diversity.

“You had humans, domestic animals and wild birds all interacting in one environment. In retrospect, it’s easy to see how an influenza variant could emerge there,” he says. “What’s much harder to explain is why it happened there instead of somewhere else with similar conditions.”

Because the outbreak occurred in a rural area not near a major sea or lake port, and because there are no reports of major outbreaks from elsewhere in the world during the same period, Andrews says it seems clear that “rather than being imported, this seems to be something that evolved in that place and time.”

While the particular circumstances of the flu’s origins remain a mystery, Andrews says the infection rates in equines strongly suggest this was a novel form of virus.

“Any influenza strain that reaches those kinds of infection rates is either striking a population that has never encountered that type of virus before or one that has never seen that particular variant,” he explains. “Once this novel variant emerged, it easily bypassed the immune defenses horses would normally have.”

Virus spreads across the U.S.

Once the horse flu crossed the border from southern Canada into the United States, it quickly spread to major East Coast population centers such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston and then fanned out to the south and west.

“This outbreak spread so quickly because it was perfectly suited to exploit the economies and societies of North America,” Andrews explains. “Virtually everyone depended on horses, donkeys and mules for transportation. Horses were everywhere. They worked constantly, came into contact with other horses, and often did so in confined spaces like stables, city streets and farmyards.

“Sometimes, the virus traveled with horses being moved by rail or steamship, creating what looked like leapfrog outbreaks,” he adds. “In other cases, there were apparent super-spreader events, such as a traveling circus troupe that crossed from Ontario into New York and was blamed for introducing the disease into several communities.”

Once horse influenza reached a community, it tended to spread like wildfire.

“In places where we have detailed records, the outbreak generally infected at least of 90 percent of horses, donkeys and mules,” Andrews says. “There were reports from Brooklyn claiming that virtually every horse in the city had contracted the disease. Similar infection rates appear in rural areas.”

Andrews estimates the overall mortality rate was somewhere between 1% and 4%, amounting to anywhere between 112,500 and 540,000 horses, in addition to tens or even hundreds of thousands of mules and donkeys. Donkeys seem to have been affected most severely, although the reasons remain unclear, he adds.

“The vast majority of animals recovered,” Andrews says. “However, there is clear evidence of what I would call ‘long flu.’ Some horses remained sick for months. Some never regained their previous strength. There are scattered reports of horses dying more than a year after their initial infection. Those patterns look remarkably similar to what we now see in post-viral syndromes, such as long-COVID.”

Impacts on everyday life

Horses and other equines might most commonly be associated with agriculture and ranching in the 1870s, but in truth they fulfilled many other vital functions, Andrews says. As a result, horse flu impacted most areas of transportation, commerce and industry.

“The outbreak was so disruptive because it was highly infectious, horses were essential to so many aspects of everyday life and people responded by removing their sick animals from service,” Andrews says.

They were used extensively on farms to work fields and transport crops. Even on farms where horses did not get sick, Andrews says farmers were often reluctant to transport their produce into cities for risk of exposing their horses to the contagion, slowing commerce.

In cities, streetcar companies reduced transportation services. Meanwhile, commerce slowed to a crawl, as horses were used to haul freight and move canal boats. Horses were also used heavily for coal mining, logging operations and some aspects of manufacturing.

“While cotton presses were often steam-powered, horses were essential for moving materials within warehouses and industrial facilities,” Andrews says. The combined effect of so many horses out of commission, he says, was that “production slowed, goods moved more slowly and trade networks became constrained.”

Typically, the onset of horse flu reduced conditions in impacted areas to a crawl for a week or two, but Andrews says it often took several more weeks for things to begin to return to normal.

Flu and a great fire

The Great Horse Flu also played a role in the disastrous Great Boston Fire of November 1872, which destroyed 776 buildings across 65 acres and caused estimated property damage of between $66 million and $73 million.

For reasons that remain unclear, the Great Horse Flu originated outside of Toronto, Canada, and then quickly spread to major U.S. East Coast population centers before fanning out to the south and west. According to Andrews, horse flu contributed to the Great Boston Fire of November 1872 and it played a part in the Panic of 1873, which resulted in a years-long depression.

“Horse flu was an important contributor to the fire, but the relationship is more complicated than people often assume,” Andrews says. “The simple version of the story is that horses pulled fire engines, the horses got sick and therefore the fire spread. There’s some truth to that, but it’s not the entire explanation.”

It was precisely because of horse flu that the transport of most commercial goods had ground to a halt in the city, causing highly flammable materials such as cotton, leather, oil and paper to accumulate in warehouses in the downtown area, Andrews says. He says the Boston Fire Department recognized the problem at the time and had developed a contingency plan, which involved having dozens of volunteers pull fire engines using ropes.

“Over short distances, humans could move the equipment almost as quickly as horses. The problem arose over longer distances,” Andrews says. “As fire alarms increased and fire engines had to travel from farther away, people simply could not match the stamina of horses.”

The horse flu outbreak also made it difficult to deliver coal needed to power the engines and prevented many residents from saving their property because there were too few healthy horses available to move their belongings, he adds. What’s more, he says downtown Boston at the time did not have enough modern fire hydrants or upgraded water pipes.

“The horse flu absolutely contributed to the disaster, but it interacted with many other factors,” Andrews says.

He adds that horse flu, combined with the Great Boston Fire and the Great Panic of 1873, led to a years-long economic depression.

“When the horses became sick, everything became slower, more expensive and less efficient. Those effects spread throughout the economy,” he says. “The Panic of 1873 was the trigger (for the depression), but the horse flu outbreak imposed economic costs for roughly a year. When you add together its effects across different regions and industries, the consequences became significant.”

Lessons learned and forgotten

Andrews says that the Great Horse Flu ultimately seems to have petered out after 1873 as it moved farther south, into Mexico, Cuba and Central America. Still, in the years immediately following, Americans continued to reflect on the impact the contagion had on the country, often relating it to timely breakdowns in transportation, commerce and industry, he says.

“Unlike the 1918 flu pandemic, which many historians argue faded quickly from public memory, the Great Horse Flu continued appearing in public discussion into the 20th century,” Andrews says. “I think that’s because the experience was so unusual; it turned life upside down.”

Still, in time, memories of the contagion faded.

Andrews believes some of that is due to the way history is taught. He notes the late 19th century is usually remembered as the age of railroads, factories and steam power. Horses receive comparatively little attention despite remaining essential to daily life. He says another factor is that relatively few people realize horses can contract influenza.

“Finally, the outbreak was diffuse. It was disruptive, but it didn’t have the catastrophic mortality we often associate with events that become central to collective memory,” Andrews says. “The goal of the book is to show that this seemingly forgotten event actually had profound consequences.”

Why it matters today

For Andrews, the story of the Great Horse Flu is more than an exercise in historical recovery. It’s a reminder of how dependent societies can become on a single piece of infrastructure—and how vulnerable they can become when something goes wrong.

Researching his book during and after the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced that lesson.

“It (horse flu) reminds us that influenza remains a remarkably adaptable and powerful disease,” Andrews says. “We need to recognize that diseases moving between humans and animals will continue to pose serious challenges. The history of disease isn’t simply a story of scientific triumph. It’s also a story of ongoing adaption and vulnerability.”

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New book by ��ñ�� historian Thomas G. Andrews documents the forgotten epidemic that hobbled America and had wide-ranging effects on society.

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��ñ�� alum directs the choir dementia can’t silence

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

��ñ�� alum directs the choir dementia can’t silence Rachel Sauer Tue, 10/13/2026 - 07:00

Cody DeBos

Under Jacqueline McCurdy’s direction, Second Verse Choir makes beautiful music where speech science meets the singing voice

Rehearsals for the Second Verse Choir in Denver are punctuated by binders of large-print lyrics and volunteers interspersed among the singers. When Jacqueline McCurdy raises her hands, people who sometimes struggle to find words in conversation open their mouths and find them in song.

McCurdy is the choral director for Second Verse, an ensemble for people living with dementia and memory loss that recently began a new session. The background she brings to her role is rare, including a doctorate in musical arts and a master’s degree in speech, language and hearing sciences from the ��ñ��.

More important is her science-backed understanding of what happens inside the human brain and vocal cords when music is made.

Jacqueline McCurdy is a ��ñ�� speech, language and hearing sciences alumna who directs the Second Verse Choir. (Photo: Second Verse Choir)

Overcoming and rediscovering

McCurdy’s path to the directing podium of Second Verse Choir didn’t start in the sciences.

“Being a speech-language pathologist is a career change for me,” she says. “Prior to pursuing the degree, I was a classically trained singer.”

McCurdy holds a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Iowa. Her on-stage career as a professional performer includes stints in opera, musical theater, orchestra solos and caroling.

However, a vocal injury while pursuing her doctorate would send her in a new direction. Wanting to better understand the mechanics of the voice, she earned a Certificate in Vocology from the National Center for Voice and Speech.

When the pandemic arrived, it introduced yet another speed bump, limiting opportunities for both teaching and performing.

“A colleague in the Opera Colorado chorus suggested I try speech-language pathology,” she recalls. “I started my leveling classes at Metropolitan State University and eventually moved to the graduate program at ��ñ��.”

At ��ñ��, McCurdy found herself embracing the combination of science and music she’d been circling for years.

“I do miss singing and making music the way I had dreamed, but I have loved turning to this field. No regrets,” she says.

During her studies, she encountered research on music as a route to unlocking language centers in the brain. The story unfolded from there.

“As I had been interested in the junction of where music and speech-language pathology meet, I actually suggested starting an aphasia choir at the speech clinic at ��ñ�� as a student,” she says.

As she prepared to bring that idea to her supervisor, she spotted an opening at Second Verse Choir, applied and was hired.

A different kind of rehearsal

A traditional choral director walking into a Second Verse Choir rehearsal might find the environment disorienting. The expectations are different here, but intentionally so.

The participants range widely in both experience and ability, from lifelong singers who read music fluently to those who simply enjoy singing along to their favorite melodies. McCurdy directs voices that have changed with age and strives to meet each singer where they are.

“I have to be flexible and adapt to the vocal ability to each participant and place them where they have comfort,” she says.

Volunteers who are singers themselves sit among the participants throughout rehearsals and performances to offer support. Lyric sheets ensure no one is left reliant on a memory that isn’t what it once was.

Jacqueline McCurdy (front row center) with members of the Second Verse Choir. (Photo: Second Verse Choir)

The culture McCurdy nurtures is one where imperfection is both expected and accepted.

“The focus is less on singing for perfection as it is just to sing the songs for enjoyment,” she says.

Her approach is greatly influenced by her clinical training as a speech-language pathologist.

“I merge therapeutic practices of speech-language pathology into rehearsals by using errorless learning, repetition and patient-led sessions,” McCurdy explains. “I begin rehearsals by having the choir tell me what they would like to work on before I jump into my agenda.”

From there, each song is revisited at every rehearsal, giving participants a chance to engage with the music over-and-over.

Discussions about lyrical meaning, emotional subtext and storytelling are also woven into the music-making to help participants engage on a deeper level. But the most important rule, McCurdy says, is to keep things positive and have fun.

Unlocking the power of music

Scientists have long wondered why music reaches people with memory challenges when language cannot.

McCurdy has seen it happen firsthand.

“One of the participants in Second Verse Choir commented on how sometimes she has trouble expressing herself, but with singing a song it comes out easy,” she says.

Research has confirmed that certain mental capacities are resistant to cognitive decline. Musical memory and response to music are among them, even in the late stages of dementia.

“In the world of memory loss and dementia, research has found that certain activities are resistant to decline, like enjoyment of music and musical preferences,” she says. “Singing can also have deeper benefits like improving behavior, mood and cognitive function (including verbal processing and recall of past events).”

Familiarity is another important element of her work with Second Verse. For the choir’s first concert, she made sure that even if a song wasn’t a favorite, it was at least known.

The result was easy to hear.

“I noticed a stark difference with a song in a medley that was much less familiar for the choir, taking them longer to learn and develop ease of singing. When the song was familiar, the notes came quicker, as did the rhythm and harmony,” she says.

More than singing

Of course, the mission of Second Verse Choir is about much more than the music itself. McCurdy has watched participants arrive guarded and leave transformed after the 15-week session.

“The course of this disease will not be altered by pharmacological intervention. Music, especially singing in a choir, can be an adjunct in treatment to improve mood and bring joy and it reduces loss of identity by improving the way participants see themselves and improving the way they relate to other people,” she says.

Community-building also has become a secondary benefit. As participants gather to rehearse and sing together, they build relationships with others who can relate to the difficulties of living with memory loss.

“I have watched participants grow from not really interacting with others to developing strong relationships with the other members, which has turned the group into a wonderful community,” McCurdy says.

For those who haven’t yet experienced what music can do, McCurdy has a prescription.

“Participating in making music can have a protective effect on cognitive decline—so learn to play an instrument, play in a band, orchestra, or sing in choir,” she says. “And do it as long as you can.”

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Under Jacqueline McCurdy’s direction, Second Verse Choir makes beautiful music where speech science meets the singing voice.

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Top photo: Jacqueline McCurdy (left) directs the Second Verse Choir. (Photo: Second Verse Choir)

Scholar explores the intersection of household labor and sexual desire

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Scholar explores the intersection of household labor and sexual desire Rachel Sauer Mon, 10/12/2026 - 07:00

Megan Clancy

In recently published research, ��ñ�� graduate student Alexandra Liepmann finds that unequal division of household labor can lead to lower sexual desire in women

Alexandra Liepmann, a clinical graduate student in ��ñ�� Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, has spent the better part of her academic career studying human sexuality and the psychology behind romantic relationships. In her recent paper, “Division of Household Labor and Sexual Desire: The Role of Gender and Benevolent Sexism,” Liepmann looks at the connection between these two areas by exploring how the unequal division of household labor can lead to lower sexual desire in women.

“There’s a lot of research on factors related to lower sexual desire, and those have really focused on hormones. You hear a lot about biology and testosterone, and then you also hear about personal factors like stress or being in an unsatisfying relationship contributing to low sexual desire,” says Liepmann. “It became clear that one of the areas that has been neglected in previous research has been the kinds of micro cultures in relationships that are really influenced by societal norms and expectations, like gender roles.”

Alexandra Liepmann is a clinical graduate student in ��ñ�� Department of Psychology and Neuroscience.

Liepmann began her studies in psychology as an undergrad at the University of Ottawa, Canada, becoming instantly hooked on her area of research after taking Psychology of Intimate Relationships and working in the school’s sexuality research lab. She then went on to earn her master’s in social psychology at York University, Canada, studying romantic relationships and sexuality under the supervision of one of her current collaborators and co-authors, Amy Muise.

“I loved the research, but I felt like there was a piece that was missing. Specifically, the ability to implement the research findings that I was seeing and talk to people about challenges in their relationship and their sex life,” says Liepmann. “So, after my master’s, I started looking at clinical psychology programs.”

Liepmann was drawn to ��ñ�� by the presence of her now supervisors, Chelsea Kilimnik, who studies sexuality through the lens of sexual trauma and how that’s related to sexual outcomes, and Mark Whisman, who explores relationship functioning in couples. She felt it was the perfect fit, having such strong guidance in the two areas she wanted to combine. She was also excited by Boulder’s scientist practitioner model in clinical psychology, which would allow her to explore her focus areas.

Sexual desire and the division of household labor

This combination of people and process opened the door for Liepmann’s current research. From a young age, she was always intrigued by relationships and how people come together to form romantic connections and attachments. In this most recent paper, she uses this lifelong fascination, combined with her sexuality studies, to explore how the functioning of a relationship, when it comes to household labor, can affect sexual desire.

“We know that women often report lower sexual desire in long-term relationships when they’re with men. And we also know that in woman-man relationships, women tend to be taking on more of the household labor,” says Liepmann. “Oftentimes, these women are working full-time jobs and they’re still responsible for all the household labor when they come home. Previous research has started exploring the heteronormativity theory of low sexual desire, which suggests that structural gender inequities that ascribe men and women different roles in mixed-gender relationships may contribute to women reporting low sexual desire.”

But Liepmann and her co-authors, Muise and Emily J. Cross, decided to take a very specific look at this issue. They turned their research to look at the division of household duties and the role of women’s own gender role beliefs, assessing benevolent sexism – the view that prescribes traditional gender roles and praises women who adhere to the role of the caregiver and homemaker.

“We found that when women endorsed less of these views, so what we think of as more egalitarian gender roles and were doing more of the household work than their partner, they were reporting the lowest level of sexual desire,” Liepmann says. “But when they were splitting the chores equally, they were actually reporting the highest level of sexual desire.”

"Couples should be having honest and open conversations about division of household chores and be aware that this has implications elsewhere in the relationship,” says ��ñ�� researcher Alexandra Liepmann. (Photo: Vitaly Gariev/Unsplash)

The team conducted their research in two studies, recruiting participants through online platforms and performing thorough screening of the couples and their living situations. In the first study, they had 163 couples that participated in a baseline survey and three weeks of being observed. In the second, they replicated their work with 617 individuals who were in relationships. With this group, the team assessed the division of household labor using 59 questions, getting extremely granular with what went into running a household.

“We measured what people typically think of, like cleaning and cooking, but then we also measured tasks that people don’t often think about, like childcare development, like encouraging your child and asking them how their day was, as well as social planning, like planning date nights and social gatherings,” says Liepmann. “We definitely got into the nitty gritty, and we had a lot of women commenting after our study, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize how much I was doing.’”

Egalitarian beliefs vs. benevolent sexism in gender roles

Through these studies, Liepmann and her co-authors found that women who held egalitarian beliefs when it came to gender roles had lower sexual desire when taking on more of the household labor. Women who held beliefs more in line with benevolent sexism, however, did not show this decline.

“Sexual functioning and relationship functioning are very highly correlated,” says Liepmann. “So, these are important issues, not just for sex, but also for the broader relationship. Couples should be having honest and open conversations about division of household chores and be aware that this has implications elsewhere in the relationship.”

As for the next steps of the research, Liepmann is looking at how these findings can be used to assist couples in having the kinds of conversations that help them align on issues of household labor in order to strengthen the relationship overall.

“Right now, my collaborators and I are working on assessing how couples are having conversations about division of chores and aiming to do an intervention study to see if intentionally assigning each member of the couple chores can make it more equitable,” she says. “I think this is a newer area of research and we need a lot more work in this area because there are so many important implications. The fact that this article is getting so much media attention, I think really demonstrates that people are resonating with this. I’m really excited about what’s going to come from here.”

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In recently published research, ��ñ�� graduate student Alexandra Liepmann finds that unequal division of household labor can lead to lower sexual desire in women.

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Remembering the summit that almost ended the Cold War

Kylie Clarke — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:16:27 +0000

Remembering the summit that almost ended the Cold War Kylie Clarke Thu, 10/08/2026 - 11:16

Expectations at the outset of the Reykjavik summit were modest. However, Reagan and Gorbachev each made major proposals for reducing nuclear weapons during the talks, which ultimately collapsed over disagreements over the U.S. SDI missile-defense system. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Bradley Worrell

Forty years after President Reagan and Soviet Premier Gorbachev met in Reykjavik, Iceland, ��ñ�� historian Tom Zeiler sees the meeting as both a missed opportunity and an early step toward meaningful arms control

By all accounts, expectations were low in October 1986, when President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland, for informal discussions on stalled nuclear weapons negotiations.

At the time, the East and West were locked in a Cold War, and relations between Washington and Moscow remained frosty, says ��ñ�� Department of History Professor Tom Zeiler, whose expertise is in U.S. diplomatic relations.

Just a few years earlier, the Soviet Union’s military buildup, aggressive foreign policies and invasion of Afghanistan sparked alarm in the West. The U.S. countered with its own military buildup, support for anti-communist movements globally and aggressive rhetoric from the president, with Reagan referring to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”

Tom Zeiler, ��ñ�� history professor whose expertise is in U.S. diplomatic relations, sees the Reykjavik summit as both a missed opportunity for meaningful arms control negotiations and an important turning point in Cold War relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

“Many historians see the early Reagan years as a third major reignition of Cold War tensions,” Zeiler says.

Still, the idea that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were headed for nuclear confrontation leading up to the Reykjavik summit, as popularized in advertisements for the new movie The Brink of War, seems a bit overblown, Zeiler says.

“I think that’s an exaggeration,” he says. “The fear surrounding Ronald Reagan’s (hardline rhetoric) hadn’t completely passed, but the real fear that the Cold War had restarted peaked around 1983, about three years prior to the summit.”

It was in 1983 that the Cold War nearly turned hot, resulting from failed communications between the two sides during the NATO military drill Able Archer. The U.S. failed to sufficiently inform their Soviet counterparts they were conducting nuclear exercises with their European allies, Zeiler says, leading the Soviets to ready their own arsenal for launch, believing war might be imminent. He calls that incident perhaps the greatest risk of a nuclear exchange after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

By 1986, however, circumstances were changing.

In the Soviet Union, several old-guard bureaucrats had died in rapid succession, clearing the way for a younger, energetic Gorbachev. More than just a change in personalities, Zeiler says Gorbachev represented a different approach to relations with the West. “The gerontocracy was ending,” he says.

Arriving in chilly Iceland

Gorbachev and Reagan arrived in Iceland with differing priorities.

“For Gorbachev, the goal was probably simpler,” Zeiler says. “He wanted some form of disarmament and strategic parity. He needed to stop the arms race to focus on domestic priorities. His basic message was: ‘Whether it’s 10%, 50% or 75%, let’s move toward disarmament.’”

Reagan arrived in Iceland with his own convictions. Although widely viewed as a hardline anti-communist, Zeiler says the president saw nuclear weapons as evil and a threat to humanity.

Despite coming from opposite political systems, Zeiler says Reagan and Gorbachev shared important similarities. Both were effective communicators, both understood the power of political opinion and both were willing to think beyond traditional diplomatic limits.

As the negotiations progressed over two days (Oct. 11-12), both leaders began making proposals that surprised even their own advisors.

“They both, for lack of a better term, escalated in their negotiations,” Zeiler says. “It became: ‘I can outdo you. You’re serious about a 50 percent reduction? Well, are you serious about wiping out everything?’”

At one point, Zeiler says both sides entertained the possibility of eliminating all nuclear weapons.

He says the scope of the conversations was not fully understood at the time. Later declassified documents revealed just how close the two leaders came to potentially transformative agreements, he adds.

Forty years ago this month, President Ronald Reagan (left) welcomed Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to Hofdi House outside of Reykjavik, Iceland, for two days of intensive arms control negotiations. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Divided over ‘Star Wars’

Yet one issue repeatedly blocked progress: Reagan’s commitment to the missile-defense system known as Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

Its defenders envisioned a technology that could intercept nuclear missiles before they reached American soil. Critics mocked the proposal as unrealistic science fiction, earning it the nickname “Star Wars” after the popular movie.

Zeiler says that, with the passage of time, historians have come to understand the depth of Reagan’s commitment to the program.

“Historians didn’t know it then, but looking back at Reagan now, he deeply, deeply held that this (SDI) was the key to life on Earth by making nuclear weapons obsolete,” he says. “He sincerely thought SDI offered a way out of the nuclear dilemma.”

Zeiler says that belief distinguished Reagan from many of the hawks within his own administration.

“Unlike hardline advisors such as Paul Nitze or Richard Perle, Reagan wasn’t focused solely on strategic advantage,” he says. “He believed, at a fundamental level, that SDI could protect humanity from nuclear war.”

For Gorbachev, however, SDI presented an entirely different problem. Zeiler says the Soviet leader feared that if the United States developed an effective missile shield, it would gain a decisive military advantage, rendering Soviet nuclear weapons irrelevant and upsetting decades of strategic balance.

“Why should I trust that this system is really intended for peace simply because you say so?” Zeiler says, describing the Soviet leader’s perspective. Gorbachev was willing to let the United States continue to develop the technology in a laboratory setting but drew the line at actual deployment of the technology, he says.

Ultimately, negotiations collapsed over the issue, which Zeiler says today is all the more ironic because SDI was nowhere near ready for deployment in 1986 or the years immediately following.

Zeiler says the disappointment following two days of intensive negotiations was tangible. He says Reagan was visibly frustrated and Gorbachev appeared stunned and discouraged. Around the world, observers wondered whether the two leaders had squandered a unique opportunity.

“It did seem at the time like, ‘Wow, this was a big deal’—and then they walked away,” Zeiler recalls. “They had a chance to end things and they gave up.”

Laying new groundwork

However, in retrospect, Zeiler says the summit was not an abject failure. He says it transformed the nature of future U.S.-Soviet negotiations, with both sides recognizing that substantial reductions in nuclear weapons were possible. Zeiler says the discussions that started in Iceland created momentum that continued long after the summit ended.

Within a year, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons. Additional agreements followed.

Meanwhile, other developments on the world stage would outpace traditional U.S.-Soviet diplomacy. Three years after the Iceland summit, the Berlin Wall fell, leading to a reunification of East and West Germany in 1990. Within five years, the Soviet Union itself dissolved.

Those developments have fueled an enduring debate among historians: Who deserves credit for ending the Cold War?

“Was it Ronald Reagan? Was it Gorbachev? Was it a combination?” Zeiler asks rhetorically. His answer is that both leaders played essential roles.

Gorbachev, in Zeiler’s view, may deserve special recognition because he challenged the very system he led and paid a political price for doing so. However, Reagan’s contributions were also important.

“I think Reagan set the table and made it possible for Gorbachev to do the work,” Zeiler says.

He says the Reykjavik summit also demonstrated something broader about diplomacy: the importance of personal relationships. Historians often focus on ideology and geopolitics, but Zeiler argues that leaders themselves matter. From Roosevelt and Churchill to Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, personal chemistry has often influenced world events.

“They’re human beings,” Zeiler says of politicians. “Some of them just say, ‘I get that guy.’”

He says that dynamic appears to have existed between Reagan and Gorbachev. Despite major disagreements, the two leaders developed a mutual respect for one another. In 1988, Reagan visited Moscow for his fourth and final summit with Gorbachev, where he publicly distanced himself from his earlier description of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”

1986 as a turning point

Looking back on the October 1986 Reykjavik summit, Zeiler sees it as both a missed opportunity and as an important turning point.

For decades following the end of World War II, the Cold War had been defined by confrontation and suspicion. Zeiler says the Reykjavik summit revealed something new: two adversaries exploring how to move beyond it.

When some people today describe the Reykjavik summit as a moment when the world stood on the brink of war, Zeiler disagrees. “It was the opposite,” he says.

The Reykjavik summit alone did not end the Cold War, but Zeiler says it might have been the moment when leaders from both sides finally began to imagine that it could end.

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Scientists consider an AI-driven approach to generating disaster alerts

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Scientists consider an AI-driven approach to generating disaster alerts Rachel Sauer Thu, 10/08/2026 - 07:00

Tiffany Plate

Researchers at ��ñ��’s Institute of Behavioral Science and the Natural Hazards Center are finding new ways to personalize alerts that could help people take more timely action in disaster scenarios

Wildfires. Tornadoes. Hurricanes. Floods. The increased frequency of natural hazards and disasters cropping up all over the world is staggering—as is the potential loss of human life.

To limit casualties amid these disasters, emergency management organizations use a variety of methods to communicate warnings and evacuation alerts. Whether or not people comply with them is another story.

“We know that many individuals don’t really pay attention to disaster alerts until it's too late to take any kind of action,” says Amir Behzadan, professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering and fellow in the Institute of Behavioral Science’s Natural Hazards Center. “We're trying to bridge this gap by ensuring that disaster warnings translate into timely action, particularly among communities, individuals and population groups that may have greater barriers to accessing, processing and responding to this type of risk information.”

��ñ�� scholars Amir Behzadan (left) and Mary Angelica Painter (right) collaborated on research employing generative AI to explore a new approach to getting people to respond more quickly to disaster alerts.

In a new study, funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Behzadan, Mary Angelica Painter (a research associate at the Natural Hazards Center) and a team of ��ñ�� graduate students employed generative AI to explore a new approach to getting people to take action more quickly.

Leveraging Google’s large language model (LLM), Gemini, the team generated and distributed more personalized alerts—which included reminders about pets, dependents and medications—to sample groups to determine how well they would be received and how they might motivate recipients to take action. Their findings were published in September in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.

Getting personal

Study participants were first asked a series of questions about their sociodemographic factors (i.e., gender, age, education level, language preference and prior disaster experience). Knowing these factors was key to understanding how people from different walks of life might perceive alerts.

Participants were then asked about personal traits that might impact their needs in a disaster scenario (e.g., whether or not they lived close to family, if they had dependent family members and/or pets, if they used medication and what type of home they lived in). The participants’ ZIP codes were also requested so the messages could be tailored to the types of disasters they would be most likely to experience, given their geographical location.

Their responses were then fed into the LLM, along with examples of the tone the messages should mimic. “The role of AI here was to focus on those personal traits and then try to cater the content and style of the message to the participants that possess those traits,” says Behzadan.

One portion of participants was given the AI-created messages, while another portion was given standard, human-written messages with no personalization.

After reviewing the message, participants were asked to rate it on six different metrics—clarity, trust, relevance, influence, confidence and certainty—that are common parameters known to influence a person’s behavior and decision-making intentions in disaster scenarios.

How AI could level the playing field

The results showed the clearest discrepancy between sociodemographic groups in relation to the standard alerts: women, people with lower education levels and older adults all rated the human-crafted alerts with higher trust and confidence than their counterparts (men, people with higher education levels and younger adults).

Infographic: Amir Behzadan

But that did not hold true among the AI alerts. “Across gender, age and education, what you noticed was that as soon as we introduced AI personalization, those differences tended to diminish,” Behzadan says.

The study also explored how the type of disaster might influence people (e.g., whether a tornado warning might be taken more seriously than a flood warning). “We found that the type of hazard is not that relevant to how people perceive the quality of the alert,” Behzadan says.

While it does seem as though the personalized alerts could engender more trust and inspire more action among all sociodemographic groups, Behzadan’s team does not recommend abandoning the use of conventional messaging formats.

“We're thinking that these two should work together to augment each other,” Behzadan says, adding that future personalized alerts could target specific subgroups within the population that are more likely to trust the customized messages.

Along those lines, Behzadan has already secured additional funding from the Natural Hazards Center and ��ñ��’s Research and Innovation Office (RIO) to pursue work on the potential to use AI to translate disaster alerts into American Sign Language (ASL) for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing individuals.

Given that ASL is a completely different language than English, many people in the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing population would have difficulty reading and understanding disaster alerts transmitted in plain written English (and some may not be able to read it at all), Behzadan says, adding, “And if they can't understand it, they can't act upon it!”

The trust issue

Any broad use of AI is bound to face complications, especially when human lives are at stake.

For this study, the use of AI was not disclosed to participants so the team could gather more realistic reactions to the messaging. “We knew from past research that some people may think that AI-generated content is less legitimate and may have bypassed human agency,” says Behzadan, adding that disclosing the AI use most likely would have skewed people’s perceptions.

But in practice, FEMA and/or state and local disaster agencies would most likely be required to disclose their AI use. So, while personalized alerts could inspire more trust in the short term, the use of AI may inadvertently lead to longer-term distrust of generated alerts, Behzadan says.

Another hurdle in deploying more personalized disaster messaging? The personal information required from recipients.

“There's always a trade-off between privacy and accuracy,” Behzadan says. “If you want a highly accurate AI or technology output that genuinely reflects your specific situation, needs or expectations, you generally have to provide it with some additional context and personal information. Then, the real question is: How much personal information are you willing to give up in exchange for greater accuracy and personalization?”

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��ñ�� poet kills her darlings ... and publishes them anyway

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

��ñ�� poet kills her darlings ... and publishes them anyway Rachel Sauer Tue, 10/06/2026 - 07:00

Hope Kerrigan

Program for Writing and Rhetoric Professor Jen Stewart wrestles with faith, motherhood, myth and the moon in poetry collection Darling Heresies

Jen Grace Stewart killed her darlings—and turned them into Darling Heresies, her new book of poetry.

It’s common advice in creative writing, the idea “to get rid of the stuff that you’re really attached to when it’s not serving you,” Stewart explains.

Jen Stewart is an assistant teaching professor in the ��ñ�� Program for Writing and Rhetoric.

Combined with “heresies”—a nod to her evolving systems of belief—the phrase captures what she describes as “ways of believing that are not orthodox, that are not appropriate, that you hold dear, even if they're not the best thing for you.”

Stewart, an assistant teaching professor in the ��ñ�� Program for Writing and Rhetoric, recently released Darling Heresies as a “sister” to her debut, Madonna, Complex and in it wrestles with concepts of faith, motherhood and myth. The timing of the book’s release was planned to coincide with the beginning of the fall semester, which Stewart says feels like a great time to release work.

“There's so much phenomenal energy at the beginning of an academic year,” she says. “To me, it's better than New Year's.”

Capturing the heart of the moon

The journey into Darling Heresies begins at the cover, which features an illustration of a woman with her head replaced by the moon, a visual anchor further strengthened by the collection’s dedication to Endymion—the handsome figure from Greek myth who captured the heart of the moon.

“I really liked the idea that the Endymion figure is someone who witnesses the moon, who loves the moon, who sees her,” Stewart says.

Darling Heresies “represents a four- or five-year span of time that covered early motherhood, moving away from my faith tradition and going through a divorce,” she says. Stewart and early readers describe the throughline of the collection as “an argument with patriarchy,” challenging restrictive roles placed on women in marriage, motherhood, faith and landscape.

Jen Stewart explores faith, motherhood and myth in her poetry collection Darling Heresies.

“If my first book was a faith journey narrative with a particular arc, this is just the continuing of the journey,” Stewart says in comparing Darling Heresies to Madonna, Complex. “It's a little less certain about things. There's a lot more doubt in it.”

That doubt hasn't slowed Stewart down. If anything, it's pushed her toward balance — a discipline she practices even while keeping an extremely busy teaching schedule.

With Darling Heresies newly in print, Stewart is teaching a 4-4 course load in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric. “During the school year, it's difficult for me to get myself to the mental space that's open enough to receive poetry work—teaching and writing have to live in different spaces for me,” she says. She allows space for poetry to find her by spending time in art museums and nature, keeping analog journals, jotting notes-app entries and circulating drafts through an editing group's email chain.

Stewart credits her colleagues and students as major sources of inspiration. “My department is very collegial, very supportive,” she says. “There are a lot of us pursuing creative work who, even though that's not part of our job description... we're doing, we're teaching, we're writing poems.”

Offering advice for aspiring poets, Stewart says, “Poetry is a weird, niche space in the world, despite being ignored by most mainstream media. It's tiny, but it's also wide.” She encourages students to reframe how they think about poetry, emphasizing its communal aspect: “I want them to see poetry as less a precious artistic thing and more a communicative act that will connect them to other people—to listen and to be listened to.”

And even with a newly published book, Stewart is already considering what’s next. She hopes to explore fragmented essays, drawing inspiration from writers such as Maggie Nelson and Heather Christle. Her biggest upcoming project, though, is channeling creative energy into building class curricula and course readings. “I used to feel like poetry was being shut away,” she says, “and it's only been in the last five years or so that I've been able to say, no, class development is creative work too.”

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Program for Writing and Rhetoric Professor Jen Stewart wrestles with faith, motherhood, myth and the moon in poetry collection Darling Heresies.

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Researchers are riding shotgun for science

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Researchers are riding shotgun for science Rachel Sauer Mon, 10/05/2026 - 07:00

Cody DeBos

��ñ�� study shows how a car ride gives scientists new windows into neighborhood health

Many community research interviews last 15 to 30 minutes, taking place either in an interview room or on foot with the researcher and participant walking side-by-side.

As a woman named Mary drove two researchers though her Minneapolis suburb, a few interview questions turned into an hour-long guided tour of her life.

They drove past her current home and two houses where she grew up, the local plant shop where she works, George Floyd Square and a shopping district. There, her voice changed as she recalled the civil unrest and pandemic of 2020 and showed them the shuttered storefronts that remain.

Geography PhD student Mallory Sagehorn (left) and Assistant Professor Jessica Finlay collaborated with University of Minnesota graduate student Grace Savard on research studying how driving interviews might position scientists to learn about people's lives.

That moment is one of dozens captured in a new study co-authored by Mallory Sagehorn, a doctoral student in the ��ñ�� Department of Geography, alongside lead author Grace Savard and ��ñ�� Assistant Professor Jessica Finlay.

Published in SSM – Qualitative Research in Health, their research asks a simple but underexplored question about neighborhood research: How might a driving interview position you to learn about someone's life?

Meeting people how they move

“A lot of what we care about in neighborhood and health research is how people actually interact with the people and places around them—and that’s really hard to get at when someone’s just sitting across from you describing it after the fact,” Sagehorn says.

Conversations conducted while walking with a participant through their neighborhood have given researchers a way to study how people interact with their surroundings. These “go-along” interviews allow for organic interactions that don’t rely on memory alone.

“When you’re moving through the same spaces you’re talking about, participants notice things in real time they might never have thought to mention otherwise,” she adds.

However, in America, walking isn’t how most people move through the world. Whether it’s a car, a bike, a bus or a scooter, reliance on wheeled transportation is the norm for the majority.

Sagehorn and her colleagues wanted to know if conducting go -along interviews—not by walking, but by meeting people how they move—would be more effective.

“It really depends on matching the mode of mobility to how people actually move through a given community,” the researchers say. “If you’re working in a walkable neighborhood, walking interviews make sense. If people primarily get around by car, a ride-along is going to give you more authentic, comfortable data.”

Finlay, who leads a broader research program on how neighborhoods shape health and cognitive aging, says one participant even asked to conduct their interview by skateboard.

“The value of this method is that it flexes to whatever is most comfortable and authentic for our interviewees,” Finlay notes.

A private room on wheels

Of nine participants who chose a car-based interview for the study, their reasons for doing so varied. Many lived in car-dependent suburbs, while others had mobility limitations or didn’t feel safe walking their own streets.

“Part of why we do mobile interviews at all is to observe how people actually interact with their environment, and the bubble changes the nature of that interaction by making it, at times, more indirect,” says researcher Mallory Sagehorn.

The researchers anticipated driving interviews would differ from walking, but they didn’t expect just how much the car itself would reshape the conversation.

“A car-based interview feels like being invited into a private, personal space that moves—almost like stepping into a room of someone’s house,” Savard says.

That intimacy led to what the researchers would dub the “bubble effect.”

“We had folks drive us down streets they said they’d never walk down, simply because being in a car gave them a sense of security and access they wouldn’t otherwise have,” says Savard.

They found that when placing people inside their own vehicle, the bubble it creates allowed them to engage more deeply both on an environmental level and a personal one. It also matters for accessibility. Interviewing in the car lets researchers work around outside factors like mobility limitations, bad weather and physical barriers.

Still, those benefits come at a cost.

Savard says you might not get to experience a participant’s daily routine the same way you might on foot. They may stop for a casual chat with a neighbor when walking but won’t roll down the window when driving with a researcher.

The team acknowledges the limitations of driving interviews, but as science isn’t a zero-sum game, they’re still excited about the methodology.

“There is data you just can’t get from inside a car. But that’s also why we see walking and driving as complements rather than competitors,” Sagehorn says.

Who sits where?

Seating position also mattered a great deal in the team’s study, perhaps to an unexpected degree. Participants were always positioned in the driver’s seat or front passenger seat, while researchers split roles between conversation in the opposite front seat or note-taking in the back.

“It was important that they felt like they were the one guiding us through their community, setting the pace, the speed and the direction we traveled in,” Sagehorn says.

A car-based interview feels like being invited into a private, personal space that moves—almost like stepping into a room of someone’s house.”

The psychology of seat positions during interviews has been explored in other studies, and it’s been shown that being side-by-side can put participants at ease. In the car, it goes a step further. They can focus on the road and their surroundings rather than forcing eye contact, leaving the mind free to engage.

“That can take a lot of the intimidation out of the conversation and make people more comfortable opening up,” Sagehorn says.

Seating arrangements aside, even the clutter of a car can become a storytelling device to an observant researcher.

Whether it’s a scooter in the back seat or flyers for community events tucked into a visor, these artifacts give researchers a glimpse into a participant’s way of life in a way other interview modalities can’t capture.

“People carry pieces of their lives around in their cars, and that becomes a window into their routines, interests and how they move through the world that a walking interview just wouldn’t show us,” says Sagehorn.

Whose voice gets heard

For Sagehorn, Savard and Finlay, the implications of meeting participants at their preferred method of transportation for go-along interviews are important to remember.

The methodology allows people to take part in neighborhood research who otherwise couldn’t if walking was the only option.

“If there is one thing we hope policymakers take away from this work, it’s the importance of centering participants and their lived experiences and that driving mobile methods are really about expanding who gets to participate in research in the first place,” Sagehorn says. “Methodology is not neutral, and the format you choose can determine whose voice actually gets heard.”

That idea continues to shape the team’s outlook.

“Ultimately, we think the biggest takeaway is that if we want policy that actually reflects people’s realities, we need research methods that get us out into those realities,” they say.

As studies on equality and accessibility pave the way for a better life for everyone, go-along interviews on wheels are one more tool researchers can use to gather the most realistic data.

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��ñ�� study shows how a car ride gives scientists new windows into neighborhood health.

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How timing shapes one of the hardest conversations in medicine

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

How timing shapes one of the hardest conversations in medicine Rachel Sauer Thu, 10/01/2026 - 07:00

Cody DeBos

New research shows that a different kind of breast cancer awareness starts with better communication

A newly diagnosed breast cancer patient sits across from her surgeon to discuss her course of treatment. Moments after the surgeon starts laying out the options, she cuts in to say, “I want both breasts off.”

Surgical guidelines actively discourage this treatment for early-stage, one-sided breast cancer patients with no family history or genetic mutations related to breast cancer. In these cases, removing a healthy breast doesn’t improve survival odds and can raise complication risks.

But it’s also, unmistakably, what this patient wants.

Chase Raymond (left), a ��ñ�� associate professor of linguistics and a member of the clinical faculty in Family Medicine at CU Anschutz, and Virginia Teas Gill (right), professor of sociology emerita at Illinois State University, collaborated on research studying how surgeons and breast cancer patients communicate.

In that moment, the surgeon faces a dilemma. Follow the evidence and risk overriding the patient’s autonomy or honor her request and allow her to forego the treatment option backed by decades of medical research: lumpectomy plus radiation therapy.

This tension plays out in exam rooms around the world every day for breast cancer patients in need of life-saving care. It is also at the center of new research from Chase Raymond, a ��ñ�� associate professor of linguistics and a member of the clinical faculty in Family Medicine at CU Anschutz, and Virginia Teas Gill, professor of sociology emerita at Illinois State University.

October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, is a fitting time to examine that push-and-pull through a new lens.

“Our approach is to look at real recordings of actual consultations, with prior consent, of course, and then we can see what surgeons and patients are really doing,” Raymond says.

In studying the moment-by-moment mechanics of how doctors and patients reach treatment decisions, their paper sparks valuable discussions about patient advocacy and how providers can navigate the balancing act between competing mandates.

A black box, finally opened

Raymond and Gill’s approach relies on Conversation Analysis (CA), a tool used for uncovering the interactional structures that underpin every ordinary conversation.

“This is language and social life—the interactional mechanics that we use to get the activities of everyday life accomplished with one another,” Raymond says.

Gill was drawn to breast cancer surgical consultations for this study because of a historical trend concerning that patient population.

“Historically, breast cancer patients did not have a say in how they were treated. Really, through the 1970s in the United States, this was a decision that was made by physicians,” she says.

For years, radical mastectomy (removal of the breast[s], chest muscles and nearby lymph nodes) was standard treatment even for small tumors.

Today, researchers understand more about what factors influence a patient’s long-term outcomes and which treatment modalities represent the best chance for remission. Treatment options have expanded, giving patients many more choices for their care, including the option to have less-extensive surgery. However, many early-stage patients are now expressing a desire to have both breasts removed.

Yet, what happens between patient and provider in the exam room has largely remained a mystery.

“What goes on when the surgeon and patient talk to each other has been kind of a black box,” Gill says.

“The challenge at issue is, how can patient preferences be balanced with best practice guidelines in this setting?” asks researcher Virginia Teas Gill. (Photo: Unsplash)

She and Raymond wanted to open it.

“We want to understand this process of how surgical treatment options are presented and negotiated, and Conversation Analysis gives us the tools to do that,” Gill adds.

Two mandates

The challenge for physicians isn’t simply whether to make a recommendation for a particular course of treatment. Gill and Raymond note that doing so is often medically necessary.

“The challenge at issue is, how can patient preferences be balanced with best practice guidelines in this setting?” Gill says.

In cases where surgeons and patients may have different perspectives, “both sides are looking for the right thing to do, but figuring out what exactly that is doesn’t happen in an instant. The surgeon and the patient are going to take turns back and forth to ultimately arrive at a decision,” Raymond says. “The sequencing and the ordering of the parts of this conversation are incredibly important.”

‘OK, then you need to hear me out’

In one consultation Raymond and Gill studied, a surgeon walks this tightrope on the record. When the patient asks for both breasts to be removed before being presented with complete information about her options, the surgeon neither grants nor denies the request.

She instead asks the patient to wait and hear the full picture first, including the survival and recurrence statistics associated with all her options.

Gill and Raymond use this example to illustrate how this surgeon works to help the patient make not just her own decision, but a decision that is informed by medical evidence.

“Before granting the request, the surgeon asks the patient to first listen to information that she might not know,” Gill adds.

The duo likens the interaction between patient and provider to stocking a metaphorical pond.

They note that every patient enters the room with “their life experience, their preferences, their values, what they’ve heard from other people and all kinds of media sources.”

Physicians have their own pond filled with information, and the two don’t always fully overlap.

Before a final decision is made, Gill says, the surgeon’s job is to close this information gap. In this case, that means presenting clinical trial data on survival and recurrence, so that the patient has access to the information in their pond. It also means giving the patient an opportunity to ask for more information and express her concerns to complete the surgeon’s picture of what matters to the patient.

That’s why understanding these conversations is so important. There’s a lot at stake, and everyone is trying to achieve the best outcome."

Raymond says, “The patient is thereby reassured that the decision is hers, and will remain hers, but some additional information will be shared before that final decision is made.”

Working both ways

Patients, Gill says, can use the same strategy in reverse, asking to hear more information before accepting a surgeon’s recommendation, or before any medical decision is made.

Raymond notes that physicians are given a limited window of time to convey a tremendous amount of information, with patient satisfaction and complication risks on the line. But no outcome feels good if a patient goes through with a treatment they later regret or leaves the office without understanding all their options.

“That’s why understanding these conversations is so important. There’s a lot at stake, and everyone is trying to achieve the best outcome,” Raymond says.

Conversation Analysis is one way researchers can peek behind the curtain and identify patterns that can help both sides communicate more effectively.

The researchers believe the observations made in their study are important for negotiations beyond the surgical consult room, too.

“This is a dynamic that happens in a lot of contexts. It’s a balancing act that plays out in many different settings, both in and out of medicine,” Gill says.

In the exam room or elsewhere, timing matters. If information can be given before final decisions are made, these priorities don’t have to be in competition. For Gill and Raymond, the study is also a reminder that how patients and doctors talk to each other still matters.

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