From the Nominator

In an era of misinformation and “fake news,” the general public no longer knows who to trust. At the same time, academic experts are still regarded among the most credible of information sources. At this moment in time, The University of Chicago saw an opportunity to share faculty insights directly with a broad audience through a medium that facilitates deep, longform engagement—podcasting. Through contextual storytelling and dialogue, the Big Brains podcast features world-renowned scholars, officials, and thinkers whose research and expertise are defining critical issues including COVID-19, climate change, and social justice.

Big Brains—with its creators and host working as staff at the university—tells the stories behind pioneering research and pivotal breakthroughs through interviews enhanced with audio clips and scoring. The goal of the Big Brains podcast is to raise awareness of the university’s impact in critical fields, including quantum, COVID-19 research, economics, and the social sciences. In doing so, the podcast supports an overarching communications goal: To increase the visibility of faculty research and its impact, thus enhancing the eminence of the university.

By reimagining the podcast in FY20, we saw Big Brains’ popularity grow exponentially. The podcast increased its total episode downloads by 163%, with “listen-through” rates of more than 80%. We saw similar increases in website traffic to Big Brains, with unique page views increasing 98% year over year. Based on this data, we know that our knowledge-seeker audience was not only finding Big Brains, but also engaging deeply with it.

From the Judges

The show has goals and it is doing a great job with social influence and making content relevant to current news. The production quality is excellent, and both reach and impact have grown exponentially over the past year.