The new season of Sagecast, the podcast of Pomona College, recently launched with the theme “What’s Next?” Each episode features a conversation between a Pomona professor and an alumnus or alumna who shares their field of interest and expertise. The episodes include conversations among:
- A film and television production company president and a media studies professor about what’s next in the entertainment world.
- A survivor of California’s worst wildfire disaster and a professor of environmental analysis about what it’s like to see your entire community go up in smoke and how it has led him to study fire suppression.
- A pioneering video game designer and a computer science professor about how he turned a degree in English, with emphasis in playwriting, into an Emmy-award-winning, video game Hall of Fame career.
- The founding director of the U.S. Digital Service and an economics professor about the future of artificial intelligence.
- An astrophysicist and a professor of physics and astronomy about new discoveries challenging our understanding of galaxy formation.
“What’s Next in Film and Television”
with Aditya Sood ’97 and Prof. Ryan Engley
Aditya Sood has been involved in making major films such as The Martian, Deadpool and Murder on the Orient Express. Now the president of production company Lord Miller, he says he looks for stories that are “a little bit familiar and a little bit new.” Add a character or perspective he hasn’t seen before, and the result may be commercially successful entertainment. He shares what he’s learned in Hollywood with Ryan Engley, assistant professor of media studies.
Spotify: What’s Next in Film and Television
“What’s Next in Wildfire Management”
with Nate Dailey ’23 and Prof. Char Miller
Nate Dailey applied to Pomona College while he was living in a converted school bus after his hometown of Paradise, California, was ravaged by the deadliest wildfire in California history. Since losing his family’s home, he’s gone on to study wildfire hazard planning and develop computer models to detect overgrown areas at risk of burning out of control. He talks with Char Miller, W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History and author of Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression.
Spotify: What’s Next in Wildfire Management
“What’s Next in Video Game Design”
with Don Daglow ’74 and Prof. Joe Osborn
Don Daglow’s superstar career as a video game designer and programmer got its start on an early 1970s mainframe computer at Pomona College. He’s credited with developing some of the first role-playing and world-building computer games and was honored with a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award in 2008. In a conversation with Joe Osborn, assistant professor of computer science, he shares about his time at Pomona as an English major and details how it helped inspire his work at the forefront of the digital revolution.
Spotify: What’s Next in Video Game Design
“What’s Next in Artificial Intelligence”
with Mikey Dickerson ’01 and Prof. Gary Smith
When the Healthcare.gov website—vital to the rollout of Obamacare—experienced major technical problems when it launched in 2013, a small team including Google engineer Mikey Dickerson pulled off a rescue. This effort landed Dickerson and his colleagues on the cover of Time magazine. He went on to become the founding director of the U.S. Digital Service in 2014, tasked with improving technology across the federal government. Now a consultant and occasional professor of practice at Pomona, Dickerson discusses the future of artificial intelligence with Gary Smith, Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics.
Spotify: What’s Next in Artificial Intelligence
“What’s Next in Our Understanding of the Universe”
with Erica Nelson ’08 and Prof. Philip Choi
When Erica Nelson looked at images released by NASA from the James Webb Space Telescope, she noticed something odd—giant galaxies that should not, according to our current understanding of the universe, be that massive. She talks with Philip Choi, associate professor of physics and astronomy—who was her advisor when she was a student at Pomona—about new research that landed her on CBS’s 60 Minutes and NPR’s Science Friday and could upend our understanding of galaxy formation.