Stanford Radio

Modern day fashion says a lot about who we are and the image we project. Join Stanford Law Professor Richard Thompson Ford for this episode for a discussion about his new book, Dress Codes, and the history of fashion and its social and political implications. Originally aired on SiriusXM on March 13, 2021.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: E141 | Julie Owono: How local voices will shape the global internet An expert in international law and digital content explains why she thinks the future of the worldwide internet is very much in local hands. Julie Owono is a lawyer, executive director of Internet Sans Frontières and a fellow at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. She wants the world to know that the internet is the not the same for every person, everywhere. Born in Cameroon, and having grown up in Russia, she understands firsthand that every nation sets and maintains its own content standards. Owono has dedicated her career to establishing and securing basic digital rights, but also to developing standards by which social media giants—like Facebook, Google and Twitter—can distinguish hate speech from free speech. In many ways, Owono says, the global internet is a local endeavor. Owono tells Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast and host Russ Altman that this

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: E141 | Dan Jurafsky: How AI is changing our understanding of language A linguist and computer scientist explores how AI is expanding from capturing individual words and sentences to modeling the social nature of language. Words are a window into human psychology, society, and culture, says Stanford linguist and computer scientist Dan Jurafsky. The words we choose reveal what we think, how we feel and even what our biases are. And, more and more, computers are being trained to comprehend those words, a fact easily apparent in voice-recognition apps like Siri, Alexa and Cortana. Jurafsky says that his field, known as natural language processing (NLP), is now in the midst of a shift from simply trying to understanding the literal meaning of words to digging into the human emotions and the social meanings behind those words. In the social sciences, our great digital dialog is being analyzed to tell us who we are. And, by looking at the language of the past, language a

Stanford alum Carlos Watson, entrepreneur, Emmy-winning journalist and TV host, and co-founder and CEO of Ozy, a media company that's ahead of its time. Carlos Watson has an insatiable appetite for learning and talks about life growing up, entrepreneurial success and building a media brand focused on the new and the next. Originally aired on SiriusXM on March 6, 2021.

Sociologist Matt Snipp talks about how he teaches about race and racism in America, providing tips for other educators. Originally aired on SiriusXM on February 27, 2021.

Why are some schools open for in-person learning while others aren’t? Stanford Law Professor Bill Koski talks about the challenges to re-opening schools, from legal issues to infrastructure problems, and who (or what) is to blame for those that remain shuttered to students. Originally aired on SiriusXM on February 27, 2021.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: E139 | Riitta Katila: How diversity drives innovation An expert in entrepreneurship argues that greater diversity is the key to corporate creativity. When Riitta Katila looks at old photos or movies about the space program of the 1960s, she sees one common thread among the people depicted there — homogeneity. The engineers and technicians who first put humans on the moon were, almost without exception, white and male. While society has come a long way in the decades since, Katila, who is an expert in technology strategy and organizational learning, says there’s still a long way to go. She notes that companies need innovation not only to reach the top, but to stay there. And now more than ever, innovative companies should be hiring, promoting, and listening to a broader range of voices. The good news is that innovation can be taught. It’s like a recipe, says Katila, who encourages entrepreneurs — even those who have already built successful companies — to seek o

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: E138 | David Miller: How light could transform computing An expert in photonics explains the remarkable potential of using light instead of electricity in computation. As the silicon chip embarks upon its second half-century of dominance in computing and communications, the field is confronting fundamental boundaries that threaten to halt that progress in its tracks. The transistor cannot get much better or smaller and the copper wires that connect them cannot carry much more data than they do now. But, says electrical engineer David Miller, an alternative technology that uses light instead of electricity has the potential to transmit vastly more data than present technologies. It’s known as photonics. “A silicon chip these days looks like six Manhattan grids stacked atop one another,” Miller says of the challenge facing today’s technology. Photonics holds the promise of more powerful computing by beaming tiny packets of photons through light-bearing conduits t

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: E137 | Jin Hyung Lee: How can we systematically cure brain diseases? Lee uses artificial intelligence to determine what healthy and diseased brain circuits look like in order to better diagnose Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other brain disorders. In recent decades, medical and biological science have advanced by leaps and bounds using technologies that allow us to peer into the brain in myriad new and insightful ways — MRI, CT, PET, EEG, etc. However, Stanford electrical engineer Jin Hyung Lee says, we are still missing critical insights that could lead to a cure for currently incurable brain diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, epilepsy and others. Even in diagnosis, we still rely on “diagnosis of exclusion,” where tests are used to exclude other conditions that are relatively easy to identify, such as a tumor. However, there is still no way, for instance, to directly test why one’s memory is failing or why motor functions decline and lead to tremors. Lee’s

Christopher Thomas, a former advisor to the World Bank, makes the case for international cooperation in education. Originally aired on SiriusXM on January 30, 2021.

As deaths from COVID-19 surge to the half million mark, health law expert and Stanford Professor Michelle Mello joins Pam and Joe to discuss the many challenges facing the new Biden administration in getting control of the pandemic in the U.S. Originally aired on SiriusXM on January 30, 2021.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman Episode 135 | Mark Schnitzer: How to better understand the brain Midway through the 12-year, $5 billion nationwide “Brain Initiative,” a brain scientist explains how technology is producing profound insights into how the brain works—or doesn’t. Stanford’s Mark Schnitzer says several of the more exciting recent advances in his field of applied physics have come through developing new imaging technologies that peer into the brain as never before. What’s more, Schnitzer says the insights gained have put the world closer to solving long-vexing brain diseases, like Parkinson’s and others, where the circuitry of the brain seems to be malfunctioning. Schnitzer says that these new imaging methods are helping medical science discern the specific functions of various cells that make up the brain’s complex communications systems. No longer is the brain seen as a monolith of neurons, but instead as a complex organ made up of numerous cell types, each with its own role to play

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: E135 | Mutale Nkonde: How to get more truth from social media A sociologist and former journalist warns that the artificial intelligence behind much of today’s social media is inherently biased, but it’s not too late to do something about it. The old maxim holds that a lie spreads much faster than a truth, but it has taken the global reach and lightning speed of social media to lay it bare before the world. One problem of the age of misinformation, says sociologist and former journalist Mutale Nkonde, a fellow at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS), is that the artificial intelligence algorithms used to profile users and disseminate information to them, whether truthful or not, are inherently biased against minority groups, because they are underrepresented in the historical data upon which the algorithms are based. Now, Nkonde and others like her are holding social media’s feet to the fire, so to speak, to get them to root out bias from

President Trump lost the November, 2020 election but has refused to concede, instead stoking the flames of anger in his supporters by spreading false claims of a stolen election. In this episode, voting law expert Nate Persily joins Pam and Joe to discuss the 2020 election—and why it is considered by experts and government officials alike to have been fair and free of fraud. Originally aired on SiriusXM on January 16, 2021.

After the siege of the Capitol building on January 6, Americans have been left stunned by the breach of security and concerned about new threats from hate groups and the angry mob. National security law expert Shirin Sinnar joins Pam and Joe to discuss critical legal questions about homegrown terrorism—and those accountable for the insurrection. Originally aired on SiriusXM on January 16, 2021.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: E134 | Karen Liu: How robots perceive the physical world A specialist in computer animation expounds upon her rapidly evolving specialty, known as physics-based simulation, and how it is helping robots become more physically aware of the world around them. Stanford’s Karen Liu is a computer scientist who works in robotics. She hopes that someday machines might take on caregiving roles, like helping medical patients get dressed and undressed each day. That quest has provided her a special insight into just what a monumental challenge such seemingly simple tasks are. After all, she points out, it takes a human child several years to learn to dress themselves — imagine what it takes to teach a robot to help a person who is frail or physically compromised? Liu is among a growing coterie of scientists who are promoting “physics-based simulations” that are speeding up the learning process for robots. That is, rather than building actual robots and refining them as they

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: E133 | Jef Caers: How better mineral exploration makes better batteries A geoscientist explains why the use of artificial intelligence in the exploration of rare metals could be the key to America’s environmental and energy future. It has been said that batteries hold the key to a sustainable future. But so-called “clean energy” does not come without environmental costs. For instance, says Stanford geoscientist Jef Caers, the batteries in a single Tesla contain some 4.5 kilograms — about 10 pounds — of cobalt, in addition to plenty of lithium and nickel, too. With some 300 million cars in the U.S. right now, a full transition to electric vehicles would be impossible without new resources. But, finding new deposits and getting them safely out of the ground is an expensive and environmentally fraught proposition. Half of all cobalt reserves and most of current production come from just one unregulated country, Congo. To close the gap using environmentally and lab

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: Evan Reed: How to discover a magic material Want to build a better battery, a stronger airplane, or a faster computer? A materials science expert says your success starts in the atomic structure of the materials you choose. Evan Reed and a team of scientists recently identified a promising solid material that could replace highly flammable liquid electrolytes in lithium-ion batteries. The trick? Reed didn’t discover the material the old-fashioned way, using trial and error to narrow down a list of candidates. Instead, he used computers to do the legwork for him. He says that until recent advances in computer science, the seemingly never-ending search for new materials was more like a quest for unicorns. Breakthrough materials must possess that rarest of combinations: precise physical characteristics with few if any downsides. It's exacting and time-consuming work, Reed says, but computers are accelerating the pace of discovery. He now believes the future of mate

How can students, parents, and teachers use peacemaking, a framework used by indigenous communities, to resolve conflicts at school and home? Originally aired on SiriusXM on December 5, 2020.

Tristan Harris, President, Center for Humane Technology and Stanford alum on developing a framework for how technology can ethically realign social media to reverse its negative impacts on humanity. Ethical challenges and opportunities for creating a radically reimagined 21st century digital infrastructure. Originally aired on SiriusXM on November 28, 2020.