University of Washington Associate Professor Wendy Barrington will be the featured speaker at the university’s 38th annual New Student Convocation. Barrington has joint appointments in the Department of Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing in the School of Nursing and the departments of Epidemiology and of Health Systems and Population Health in the School of Public Health.
UW Notebook visits with the producer of “Crossing North,” a podcast by the Scandinavian Studies Department, and notes other podcasts on campus and an appearance by David Montgomery on the podcast “Undark.”
Joe Janes of the UW Information School presents a timely installment of his Documents that Changed the World podcast series, about the most infamous tax form of all — IRS Form 1040.
Eight decades ago to the day, the Faculty Senate met for the first time at the University of Washington.
Here’s a quick look at some gift-worthy books and music created by UW talents in the last year or so — and a reminder of some perennial favorites.
Forty years ago this month, Planet Earth said hello to the cosmos with the launch of the two Voyager probes that used gravity to swing from world to world on a grand tour of the solar system. Each bore a two-sided, 12-inch, gold-plated copper “Golden Record” of sights and sounds from Earth and its people — and a stylus to help play the record. Documents that Changed the World: Listen: Voyager’s “Golden Record,” 1977 About 20 billion kilometers (about…
A popular podcast by Joe Janes of the UW Information School is now a book. “Documents that Changed the Way We Live” is being published this month by Rowman & Littlefield.
Timing is everything, they say. In the latest episode of his Documents that Changed the World podcast series, Joe Janes of the UW Information School explores how an overload of critical information helped trigger the stock market crash of 1929, and thus the Great Depression. “This is a story about fortunes lost, lives ruined, a world plunged into a decade of depression, the end of an era,” Janes says in the podcast. “And, a story of infrastructure. And like any…
Joe Janes’ latest Documents that Changed the World podcast is about Sir Ronald Fisher, the man who set the mark of “statistical significance” for ages afterward at 5 percent, no more no less.
Joe Janes of the Information School turns the attention of his Documents that Changed the World podcst to Noah Webster and his famous, 70,000-word “American Dictionary of the English language” published in 1828.
With the Florida presidential primary a day away, Joe Janes is recalling the time of butterfly ballots and “hanging chads” — the presidential election of 2000 — in the latest installment of his podcast series, Documents that Changed the World. In the podcasts, Janes, a professor in the UW Information School, explores the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents, both famous and less known. “This one has been on my list for a long time,” Janes said. “But…
The latest installment of Information School professor Joe Janes’ podcast series Documents that Changed the World discusses 168 powerful words condemning slavery that were excised from the Declaration of Independence at the last minute.
A glance at a kitchen bookshelf gave UW Information School professor Joe Janes the idea for the latest installment of his Documents that Changed the World podcast — about the famous Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, more popularly known as the Fannie Farmer Cookbook.
The U.S. Senate voted to set Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November on Dec. 9, 1941, two days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. You’d think they would have had more important things to talk about. Not Nov. 26, as George Washington had it or the last Thursday in the month as Lincoln had it, but November’s fourth Thursday — as Franklin Delano Roosevelt had it. FDR’s 1939 turkey-themed presidential proclamation making this so, and its back story,…
The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., is many things to many people. To Joe Janes of the Information School, the son of a World War II veteran and creator of the Documents that Changed the World podcast series, the memorial, the discussions it sparked and the hearts it helps heal — “the totality of the wall” he says – together comprise an important document.
Alfred Nobel is remembered for the annual prizes given in his name. But were it not for his confused but effective will, we might remember him as the inventor of dynamite, who grew rich inventing and developing lethal explosives.
A scale of simple numbers — the Richter Scale — unnerves us when we think about earthquakes, as Pacific Northwest residents have been prone to do lately. But who was Richter, and how did it all come about? Joe Janes takes a look for an installment of his Documents that Changed the World podcast series.
As shadows lengthened and day turned to night on Saturday, Oct. 22, in the year 4004 BCE, God created the universe. Or, perhaps not. Still, that’s the time and date for creation determined, after long and painstaking research, by Irish scholar and church leader James Ussher, author of the 17th century chronology, Annals of the World.
In the latest installment of his Documents that Changed the World podcast series, Joe Janes looks back more than 4,000 years at the Exaltation of Inanna, and what might be the first-ever claim of authorship.
The famous World War II-era poster of Rosie the Riveter is less a document that changed the world than the other way around — an image the world adopted and filled with meaning. But such turnabout is fair play in the ongoing Documents that Changed the World podcast series by UW Information School Professor Joe Janes.
Sometimes a document can be devastating — can ruin lives and change history — even if it doesn’t really exist.
Information School Professor Joe Janes takes a look at “The Star Spangled Banner” for his Documents that Changed the World series.
Joe Janes explores the rules of “an ancient and sometimes dangerous game, now generally regarded as the most popular sport in the world.”
Undergraduates working with University of Washington Information School Professor Joe Janes looked to American and European history for their own installments of Janes’ podcast series, Documents that Changed the World.
Recent headlines sadly explain why Joe Janes chose the latest installment in his Documents that Changed the World podcast series — he’s writing about airline flight data recorders, or “black boxes.”
Three little words fittingly kick off the latest installment of Joe Janes’ Documents that Changed the World podcast series: “Are you crazy?”
Joe Janes of the UW Information School discusses the famous book and its origin as part of his ongoing podcast series, “Documents that Changed the World.”
He only came to get the iconic footage through a series of coincidences and later regretted what he had done. It was the last film Abraham Zapruder would ever shoot.
The latest installment of Information School Professor Joe Janes’ podcast series takes a look at the 2,200-year-old Rosetta Stone.
When does a gathering become a riot? According to the United Kingdom’s Riot Act of 1714, it’s when local authorities say so.
The latest installment in the popular podcast series by Joe Janes of the UW Information School is about the famous physicist being persuaded to warn FDR of a growing atomic threat from Germany.
With students huddled over spring quarter finals campuswide, the latest podcast in the Documents that Changed the World series seems particularly timely: It’s about intelligence testing.
Joe Janes of the UW Information School reached back two centuries to pre-revolutionary France for the latest installment of his podcast series, “Documents that Changed the World.”