3 ALUMNI PODCASTS WORTH A LISTEN MAKING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SMARTER park blocks 1 “You’re Wrong About,” hosted by Sarah Marshall ’10 MFA ’12 MA ’13, is a bi-weekly podcast dedicated to taking a fresh look at people, events and phenomena—from Tonya Harding to the McDonald’s hot coffee case—that have been “miscast in the public imagination.” Since it began in 2018, it’s received rave reviews from publications including The New Yorker and Time Magazine. Variety named it (and the next podcast in this list) as one of the 20 best podcasts of 2021. Listen at: yourewrongabout.com 2 “Between the Covers,” hosted by David Naimon MFA ’19 and brought to you by Portland-based publishers Tin House, offers in-depth conversations with fiction, nonfiction and poetry writers about their newest works. Naimon interviews both heavy hitters and debut novelists in these often two-hour-plus long talks. In addition to being named to Variety’s list, “Between the Covers” also made The Guardian’s 10 Best Book Podcasts list and Book Riot’s 15 Outstanding Podcasts for Book Lovers. Listen at: tinhouse.com/podcasts 3 “Kick Ass Oregon History,” hosted by Doug Kenck-Crispin ’09 MA ’16, offers short, punchy (and sometimes NSFW) anecdotes from Oregon history, from the story of the roughly 9,000 “balloon bombs” Japan sent aloft toward the West coast for six months between 1944 and 1945 to the unusual history behind why The Dalles has a paucity of salad bars. Spoiler alert: it involves a 1984 food-poisoning plot by followers of Baghwan Shree Rajneesh to incapacitate the city’s voters. Listen at: orhistory.com —SCHOLLE McFARLAND AN INFANT’S BRAIN is able to gradually learn and adapt, often more easily than an adult brain. For example, research shows that before adolescence, children are able to pick up languages much faster than adults. Portland State’s Christof Teuscher, engineering and computer science faculty, uses this same analogy to describe new artificial intelligence (AI) technology he helped develop. Current systems suffer from what’s known as catastrophic forgetting. When an existing system is programmed to learn something new, it forgets what it had already learned, forcing the system to essentially start from scratch. “What we developed as a breakthrough in AI technology is a novel type of device and approach to build systems that can be completely changed and reconfigured on the fly for different applications. We can, for example, create neurons on synapses on demand, as the system needs to learn new things,”Teuscher said. “This opens up avenues for AI technology that continuously learns, grows as needed, and gradually improves, something that current AI systems simply can’t do.” —KATY SWORDFISK LEFT: Students soaked up a whole lot of llama love during midterm stress relief activities in Smith Ballroom. CENTER: Our ever-exuberant women’s volleyball team celebrated after a come-from-behind win over top-ranked Weber State. RIGHT: The Simon Benson House was illuminated with projected art for the Winter Lights Festival. Here are some of our favorite PSU Instagram photos from the past few months. Tag us with #portlandstate, #portlandstatealumni, or #proudviks. INSTAWORTHY PSU PINKEYES, ADOBE STOCK 10 // PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE
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