Stanford Radio

Rising temperatures and rainfall from climate change will have a surprising effect on human health, says biologist Erin Mordecai, an expert in diseases borne by mosquitoes, ticks and other living creatures. Such conditions are perfect breeding grounds for parasites that will bring deadly diseases to the U.S. and other places once thought out of reach. Hope may rest in mathematical models to guide smarter environmental policies, as Mordecai tells host Russ Altman on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast.

Alex and Evelyn chat with Sol Messing, Research Associate Professor at New York University with the Center for Social Media and Politics, about what to make of the open source info Twitter provided on its ranking algorithm. They also chat about the blue tick debacle, concerns about YouTube's treatment of political videos in India, and Midjourney's pretty not-okay approach to content moderation.

Alex and Evelyn discuss why the Congressional hearing with TikTok's CEO was bad news for the app, AOC's opposition to a ban, and why the First Amendment hurdles to getting the ban enacted remain high. They also discuss India's continued crackdown on online speech and Twitter's continued acquiescence; whether the long-anticipated deepfake apocalypse is finally here (spoiler: no); Utah's "think of the children" social media law being signed into law; and Twitter's helpful move to give you more information about who not to pay attention to on the platform.

Alex returns and he and Evelyn discuss: the rapidly escalating TikTok situation, and what the possible endgame is; the return of Donald Trump to Facebook and YouTube, just as he calls for people to protest and take the country back on Truth Social; more of the same over on Twitter and a few small updates in the Legal Corner.

When we’re sick, the time between onset and diagnosis is critical, sometimes life-saving. It turns out the human immune system is pretty good at knowing what’s making us sick. In fact, it’s telling us all the time, but only now is science tuning in to what nature has to say, explains Purvesh Khatri. The immune system is a “perfect diagnostic,” he tells host Russ Altman in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast.

SIO's Riana Pfefferkorn joins Evelyn this week to talk warrants for abortion related data and California laws post-Dobbs looking at ways to protect sensitive information; why the FTC asking Twitter for information about its privacy practices is totally unsurprising; an anti-Jawboning bill on the Hill; this week's TikTok tick tock; and a Utah "think of the children" social media bill.

When one has a medical procedure in America, it is often an algorithm that figures out how much of the cost will be reimbursed. That leads to a lot of unfairness, worse health outcomes for many and a group of insurers who learn to game the system, says guest Sherri Rose, a statistician and health policy researcher who studies the causes of such inequities. Rose is using artificial intelligence to root out these bad incentives and to bring greater equity and better care to the American health system, as she tells host Russ Altman on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast.

Alex and Evelyn discuss the snowballing TikTok bans (won't someone remember the First Amendment!); their new "screen time limit"; Twitter's "new" violent speech policy; Meta's response to the Oversight Board's recommendations on its X-Check program; FTC's blog post on AI hype; post-Dobbs data requests and content demands on tech platforms; and Google's "civil rights audit."

With the advent of wearable devices and omnipresent monitoring of heart, lungs, blood and more, scientists can now gather unprecedented amounts of personal medical data. Just ask guest Michael Snyder, referred to as “medicine’s most-measured man.” He is the author of Genomics and Personalized Medicine: What Everyone Needs to Know and has collected billions of bytes of his own biodata. Snyder says that all this data can lead to earlier diagnosis than ever before, often before symptoms appear, as he tells host Russ Altman on this episode of Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything podcast.

Alex and Evelyn chat about Meta's latest report on information operations; TikTok's announcement of a researcher API; the last two weeks in Twitterland; Meta's announcement of paid verification and participation in "Take It Down", a new platform run by NCMEC for people to get sexually explicit images of under 18-year-olds removed; Europe's DSA is coming; Susan Wojcicki is going; and a New York online hate speech law is on hold.

Evelyn speaks with Moderated Content's Supreme Court correspondent Daphne Keller again to discuss the oral arguments in Twitter v. Taamneh, and the big elephant that was missing from the courtroom.

While many users remain blissfully unaware, a battle is raging for the future of the internet. On the one hand are the large phone and cable companies who want to promote their services and to charge more for video and other data. On the other are people, like guest Barbara van Schewick, a lawyer, who champions a more democratic approach known as net neutrality. Net neutrality guarantees unfettered access for all and makes sure that we get to choose what we do online, van Schewick tells host Russ Altman on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast.

Evelyn speaks with Moderated Content's Supreme Court correspondent Daphne Keller, director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, to discuss their quick takes on the Supreme Court oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google.

Beatriz Magaloni is a lawyer and a professor of political science who studies the challenges at the intersection of governance, poverty, and police violence in Latin America. On this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast, Magaloni tells host Russ Altman that the solution to these challenges begins with studying the root causes as explained by people living in the communities that are most impacted.

Alex and Evelyn discuss the House Oversight Committee hearing last week about, supposedly, Hunter Biden's laptop. and why Alex was name-checked; Twitter's restriction in Turkey in the aftermath of the disaster; what to make of journalism finding bias in AI tools used to detect sexual suggestiveness; a China-linked deepfake information operation; The Balloon and geopolitics; and oh btw Donald Trump has his Facebook account back.

Guest Nicholas Bloom has studied telecommuting for 20 years. Prior to the pandemic, he says, just five percent of days were “worked from home,” but the number is now closer to one in three. It looks like the hybrid workplace is here to stay. What was once thought to be a boon to employee morale has also helped companies slash real estate budgets. But, it’s not all sunshine and roses, as Bloom tells host Russ Altman on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast.

A little over a year ago, Evelyn interviewed Josh Parecki, Zoom's Head of Trust & Safety and Associate General Counsel, and Josh Kallmer, Zoom's Head of Global Public Policy and Government Relations, about how Zoom thought about content moderation. And since then, they've been doing some rethinking. So Evelyn asked them back to talk about what's changed in the way they think about trust and safety, the change in regulatory landscape even in the last year, and the difficult problems that pop up for every communications platform.

Alex and Evelyn discuss updates to the story about the BBC documentary take-downs in India; the latest Twitter Files on the Hamilton 68 bot dashboard; TIkTok's charm offensive and ... Oracle's (?!?) role; Apple's expansion of censorship for China to Hong Kong; and the Financial Times' admirable admission that it wants nothing to do with content moderation.

On this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast, guest Mac Schwager talks safety in multi-robot systems, like those controlling the autonomous vehicles that will soon fill our future. Some engineers are helping robots communicate better among themselves while others are working on “emotionally aware” algorithms able to pick up on subtle cues in how others are driving to help robots make better on-the-road decisions. Never fear, Schwager says, the future is in good hands. “Autonomous cars will reach a level of safety that surpasses that of human drivers, but it may take a little while,” he tells host Russ Altman on this episode of The Future of Everything podcast.

Evelyn sits down with Nate Persily, Professor at Stanford Law School, and Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, to discuss Meta's decision that it is reinstating former President Trump's accounts. Nate is pragmatic, Alex is cynical, and Evelyn is a naive little formalist about it all. Here's their quick takes.