Hello, everyone, and welcome to talk nerdy. Today is Monday, March 9th, 2026, and I'm the host of the show, Dr. Kara Santa Maria. And as always, before we dive into this

week's episode, I want to thank those of you who make talk nerdy possible. Remember, this show

is and will always be 100% free to download, and the way that we keep it going and pay for all

the things that we have to pay for is by relying on the support of

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Mary Neva, David Compton, Brian Holden, Gabbo J, O'Rica Hagman, Pascuali Jalati, and Joe Wilkinson.

Thank you all so much. All right, let's get into it. This week I had a fascinating chat, and gosh, I just learned an awful lot. I had the

opportunity to speak with Dr. Robert J. Sampson. He's a sociologist and criminologist and

the Woodford-L. and Anne A. Flowers University professor at Harvard University, also the founding director or a founding

director of the Boston Area Research Initiative and an affiliated research professor at the American

Bar Foundation. But prior to that, he taught at the University of Chicago and the University

of Illinois. He's won countless awards and held a lot of really esteemed

positions. And he, a lot of his research stemmed from the project on human development in

Chicago neighborhoods. And we're going to talk about that at length because a lot of it informs

his most recent book, which is called Marked by Time,

how social change has transformed crime and the life trajectories of young Americans.

So without any further ado, here he is Dr. Robert J. Sampson.

Well, Rob, thank you so much for joining me today.

Pleasure to be here. So when your book came across my desk, I've been doing this podcast now for

12 years, I think. And so I'm at a stage now where even though sometimes I hear about things and I seek things

...