Well Said: 2017

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers, students and alumni gave us a lot to talk about this year. Each week, we sat down with Carolina’s newsmakers to find out what’s going on around campus and how the University’s experts are impacting the world.

Here are some of our favorite Well Said podcasts of the year:

• In the day’s leading up to the 2017 NCAA Tournament, we caught up with former All-American and starting center of the Tar Heels’ 1993 national championship team Eric Montross to talk about March Madness and Carolina’s road to its seventh national title.
• It turns out popularity may actually be as important as we thought it was in high school. Psychology and neuroscience professor Mitch Prinstein explained how popularity appears to follow us long after our high school days and impacts the way we interpret the world as adults.
• Two-time Carolina alumna and astronaut candidate Zena Cardman called in from the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston in June, just after she was selected as a member of the 2017 astronaut class. She talked about her experience at Carolina and her future as a potential astronaut.
• As the football season kicked-off, concussion researcher and assistant professor of exercise and sports science Johna Register-Mihalik discussed how doctors are treating and managing traumatic brain injuries, and how new rules are trying to keep athletes safer.
• Consumers and investors aren’t always totally rational when it comes to making financial decisions. When emotion seeps into the equation, all bets are off. To find out why our emotions tend to lead us away from making more calculated decisions, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Camelia Kuhnen combines neuroscience, psychologyand economics to better understand how people use their brain to make financial decisions.