Over the last three-quarters of a century, global corporations have lost sight of their broader role in society and now are focused almost exclusively on serving their shareholders. That reality has had dire consequences for the workers of the world who are, quite literally, dying for a job, says guest Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Pfeffer says the workplace is the fifth leading cause of death and that as many as 1 million people...
Jul 14, 2018•29 min•Ep. 52
Sarah Billington began her career in civil engineering studying concrete, a remarkable material that has literally shaped the world as we know it. Concrete is one of the most-consumed materials on Earth — second only to water, but this one material alone is also responsible for 6 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. That cold realization and a dispiriting morning meeting spent in a bunkerlike concrete-walled room led Billington to alter her research focus. She now studies how w...
Jul 14, 2018•27 min
Populism can be a powerful force in a democratic society. But according to Anna Grzymala-Busse, a Stanford professor of political science and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, once in power populists often implement authoritarian policies that threaten the very foundations of democracy itself. Grzymala-Busse says that the antidote to authoritarianism is to defend democratic norms, to speak out and to vote. She discusses the issue in this episode of The Futu...
Jun 30, 2018•27 min•Ep. 50
Beginning in the 1980s, medical doctors started treating pain with increasing amounts of opioid medications. That shift was driven in part by an effort by the profession to be more humane to those in serious pain, but also by misinformation and aggressive marketing by the pharmaceutical industry, which wrongly convinced doctors that their drugs were both safe and not addictive. According to Anna Lembke, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, those changes wrought the curre...
Jun 16, 2018•28 min•Ep. 49
From Bitcoin theft to the embarrassing revelations in the Sony Pictures hacking to the recent assault on the U.S. election, the threats of international cyberattack are growing in both number and consequence. As our technology steadily becomes more cloud based, these threats will only grow and could be soon be directed at fundamental institutions we all trust and rely upon, including the electrical grid and our financial systems. Our guest in this episode of The Future of Everything radio show i...
Jun 16, 2018•27 min•Ep. 48
When Stanford’s Martha Crenshaw, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and an expert on terrorism, is asked if she thinks terrorism is evolving, growing more widespread, violent and shocking by the year, she has one response: It’s complicated. She says that many of those trends are true, but they are driven both by the intense motivation of the terrorists and by their ability to broadcast images and messages across the world in a flash. This ability to communica...
Jun 02, 2018•26 min•Ep. 47
It may not be widely known, but before he launched Apple, Steve Jobs lived for a year on a commune. The fact that he became one of the wealthiest capitalists in America, however, should not surprise anyone who knows anything about the antecedents of Silicon Valley, says Stanford’s Fred Turner, professor of communication and history. The truth is that there is a strong countercultural thread running through the fabric of today’s digital world. From “phreaking” scams of the long-distance telephone...
May 19, 2018•25 min•Ep. 46
Can an expectant mother’s exposure to air pollutants or even extreme temperatures impact her unborn child’s earning potential 30 years later? Can paid family leave improve workforce attachment for new mothers? According to Maya Rossin-Slater, economist and an assistant professor of health research and policy at Stanford School of Medicine, the answer to these and other questions is “yes.” She says that research on these topics can provide policy makers with more comprehensive information on the ...
May 19, 2018•27 min•Ep. 45
From Oculus Rift to Samsung VR, the era of virtual reality is right around the corner, if not already upon us. But what are the psychological impacts of VR and what are the best uses of this much-hyped technology — the “killer apps,” as they say? Jeremy Bailenson is a professor of communication at Stanford and author of the new book, Experience on Demand. He has been studying virtual reality and its effects on humans since 1999. Back then, his dream was to create virtual office spaces that might...
May 05, 2018•28 min•Ep. 44
Much has been made of the use of personal data gathered from social media and other channels to target voters during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, but what reasonable expectations should we have in age of ubiquitous and “free” connectivity? That question is the research focus of Stanford’s Michal Kosinski, a professor of organizational behavior in the Graduate School of Business. Kosinski has a doctorate in psychology and applies his interests to study how algorithms leverage our electron...
Apr 21, 2018•29 min•Ep. 42
As the global population approaches 10 billion and the effects of climate change continue to alter familiar agricultural patterns, the world is already witnessing a transformation in how and where it gets its food. Even diets are changing as people move away from traditional animal proteins, like beef and pork, to fish and vegetable sources. Stanford’s Roz Naylor, the director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment, says those shifts could lead to a world that looks a lot different t...
Apr 21, 2018•27 min•Ep. 43
It’s been said that sewers were one of the major advances in human history and the Clean Water Act of 1972 was one of the most successful environmental laws ever enacted in this country. Despite it all, America’s current waste treatment infrastructure is aging rapidly and poorly equipped for the needs of the 21st century and beyond. Such is the estimation of Stanford civil and environmental engineer, Craig Criddle, one of today’s leading thinkers about what words "waste treatment" mean...
Apr 07, 2018•28 min•Ep. 41
The bacteria of the human digestive system have been likened to tiny factories that ingest raw materials — food — and processing them into finished products — nutrients — that our bodies can absorb and use. In fact, many of the complex carbohydrates and proteins critical for life cannot be absorbed unless first digested by bacteria. Yes, we may all be stardust, but not, it seems, before we are microbial excrement. Scientists refer to this complex community as the “gut biome,” a stew of hundreds,...
Apr 07, 2018•28 min•Ep. 40
While billions scroll their merry ways through Facebook and Twitter each day, behind the scenes are legions of reviewers scanning photos and video to prevent graphic content from making the newsfeeds of unsuspecting users. Elsewhere, the faceless armies of the gig economy are making movies, building homes, driving Uber and working piecemeal to caption innumerable images for people too busy to do it for themselves. Welcome to the future of crowdsourcing. While the collective actions of those on t...
Mar 24, 2018•30 min•Ep. 39
One of the tradeoffs of modern medicine is that technology that allows physicians to save more lives also drives them closer than ever to the frontlines so they can administer care as quickly as possible. They do so at great personal risk, says Stanford pediatrician Paul Wise. Wise began his career caring for children during Guatemala’s brutal decades-long civil war and recently returned from service during the siege of Mosul, which forced out ISIS but took a tremendous toll on Iraq’s second-lar...
Mar 24, 2018•26 min•Ep. 38
Heart attacks, burns, strokes, disease and just plain-old aging can devastate human tissues. But, emboldened by new understandings about the building blocks of life, engineers are applying their unique skill sets to creating replacement parts for the body. It sounds like magic, says host and bioengineer Russ Altman, but it’s anything but. From synthetic mortars holding the biobricks of life together to new heart muscle, brain matter and skin tissue, bioengineering is on the precipice of a new ag...
Feb 24, 2018•28 min•Ep. 36
As the digital world grows, the sheer amount of video and audio in our lives has become overwhelming. It is easy to shoot and record, but few have the patience to endure the tedium of editing all that content into cogent stories. But, says Maneesh Agrawala, Forest Baskett professor of computer science, all that is about to change. Agrawala is director of the Brown Center for Media Innovation at Stanford and says that advances in software and in artificial intelligence are making the editing of s...
Feb 24, 2018•28 min•Ep. 37
Manu Prakash is a bioengineer, a physicist and an inventor, who has developed a $1.50 foldable microscope and the 20-cent “paperfuge” that are democratizing biosciences in parts of the world where resources are scarce and electricity is nonexistent. Prakash’s passion flows from his deep love and understanding for how physics operates in the microscopic realm, in which bacteria, parasites and viruses thrive. In this episode of The Future of Everything, he joins fellow bioengineer Russ Altman for ...
Feb 10, 2018•29 min•Ep. 35
For years, cancer treatment was confined to three flawed strategies. You could cut it out with a scalpel, you could burn it out with radiation, or you could kill it with chemicals. “Today, we are amid a renaissance in cancer treatment,” says Stanford bioengineer Jennifer Cochran. “We are creating designer proteins and using them to deliver drugs or to harness the immune system to help stop this killer dead in its tracks.” On this episode of The Future of Everything radio show, Cochran and host, ...
Feb 10, 2018•27 min•Ep. 34
From weaponized anthrax to killer strains of bird flu, we often hear only the worst of the worst when it comes to the microbes who share our world. The truth, however, is far from horrific. Bacteria do far more good for us than bad, and most viruses are harmless. In this episode, host Russ Altman, professor of bioengineering, talks to infectious disease expert David Relman about his studies of one very specific microbiome—the mouths of dolphins—which have revealed many types of bacteria previous...
Jan 27, 2018•28 min•Ep. 33
As a founding member and former chair of the Department of Bioengineering, possibly no one has enjoyed a better purview on the recent remarkable advances in biotechnology than Stanford's Russ Altman. From genome editing to synthetic biology to cloning, the ethical challenges of the field are almost as great as the therapeutic upsides, and advances often outpace our ability to contend with the ethical aftermath. Listen in as host Russ Altman and policy expert and bioengineer Megan Palmer, of the ...
Nov 11, 2017•29 min•Ep. 31
The vast distances and extreme conditions of outer space make the prospects for remote control of exploratory vehicles extremely challenging, if not impossible. Stanford professor of aeronautics and astronautics, Marco Pavone, says the solution is to apply what we’ve learned about autonomous vehicles here on Earth to the mysterious reaches of space. From vehicles that hop to swarms of robots to Gecko-inspired grippers, Pavone and host Russ Altman explore how autonomy is shaping the future of spa...
Oct 28, 2017•28 min•Ep. 29
On the eve of the 200th anniversary of the first publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, medical doctor and bioengineer Russ Altman and Stanford anesthesiologist Audrey Shafer reflect on the enduring relevance of the book many call the first science fiction novel. From artificial intelligence to stem cells, climate change to organ transplantation, Frankenstein’s monster seems more relevant than ever before as a mirror on the moral and ethical implications of modern science and its creations....
Oct 28, 2017•28 min•Ep. 30
Living in quake-prone California, Russ Altman is no stranger to the impending threat of natural disaster, but watching a devastating hurricane season in full force, he's wondered whether there’s anything society can do to better prepare for — or even lessen— the impact of severe storms. Geophysicist and engineer Jenny Suckale says that, while there is much we do not know about the future, there are ways we can work with — and not against — nature to defend ourselves from disaster. All it takes, ...
Oct 21, 2017•26 min•Ep. 27
As a bioengineer, Russ Altman has long marveled at intersection of biology and engineering that is modern robotics. Recently, he found himself wondering: what’s the next big thing in this intriguing field? Mechanical engineer Allison Okamura says that robots that incorporate the sense of touch — either to understand the world around them or to provide better feedback to humans — are stretching boundaries in a variety of areas, including in operating rooms and disaster zones. Connect With Us: Epi...
Oct 21, 2017•30 min•Ep. 28
If you’ve ever flown coast to coast or around the world, perhaps you wonder, as “Future of Everything” host Russ Altman did recently, whether engineers know how to design small drones for purposes like delivering goods and/or performing services in urban airspaces. But as Stanford mechanical engineer David Lentink explains, the physics of flight change unfavorably when aircraft get small. That's why his lab studies nature’s aviators: small birds, including some migratory species that weigh less ...
Oct 07, 2017•27 min•Ep. 24
From his perch at Stanford, nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley, Russ Altman wonders whether the silicon-based electronics of which we Earthlings are so proud have the right stuff to help us explore the extreme environments of space? Not really, says Debbie Senesky. She works at the intersection of aerospace and electrical engineering to develop new semiconductor materials that can survive the heat of Venus, where the surface temperatures are enough to melt lead. Learn more about her research...
Oct 07, 2017•27 min•Ep. 26
In the Future of Everything radio show, Stanford’s Russ Altman and Euan Ashley discuss wearable technology, data and the extraordinary challenges when diagnoses elude physicians and their patients. Ashley is a professor of medicine (cardiovascular) and by courtesy, of pathology at the Stanford University Medical Center. Listen to more episodes of the Future of Everything with host, bioengineering professor Russ Altman. Connect With Us: Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything We...
Sep 09, 2017•28 min•Ep. 25
In the Future of Everything radio show, Kwabena Boahen discusses the evolution of computers and how the next big step forward will be to design chips that behave more like the human brain. Boahen is a professor of bioengineering and electrical engineering, exploring in his lab how these chips can interface with drones or with the human brain. “It's really early days,” he says. Connect With Us: Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything Website Connect with Russ >>> Thread...
Aug 26, 2017•28 min•Ep. 23
Getting lost seems to be a thing of the past, thanks to the ubiquity of Global Positioning System. Our phones and devices simply tell us where to go — and how long it will take to get there. But what are the risks? In the Future of Everything radio show, aeronautics and astronautics professor Per Enge discusses the accuracy of the system, how to keep the signals safe, and how systems will continue to improve. Listen to more episodes of the Future of Everything with host, bioengineering professor...
Aug 26, 2017•28 min•Ep. 22
