On March 7, 2022, The front page of the New York Times ran a graphic photograph that summed up the tragic cost of Russia’s war on innocent Ukrainian civilians. It was a photograph of a mother, her two children, and a church volunteer crumpled to the ground. They were the victims of a Russian mortar attack on civilians as they attempted to flee over the Irpin River to Kyiv. The photo, which was was taken by the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario, sent shock-waves throughout the...
Nov 16, 2022•26 min•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast Russia’s war on Ukraine has turned a lot of assumptions about the fundamental nature and trajectory of how wars are fought, on its head. For one thing, Ukraine’s strong defense has upended conventional wisdom about big powers being able to violate at will the sovereignty of little powers. Technology, in particular, drones, has also leveled the playing field in unique ways. The emergence of cryptocurrency, both as a means to fund the war and the relief efforts, raises all kinds of interesting que...
Sep 22, 2022•45 min•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast Do you want to be a writer but suffer from writer’s block? I know I often do! Well, my guest today may have the perfect solution for us — the world’s first AI-powered writing and publishing platform — that she says will help you put words 3x faster on the page, and transform the future of writing, publishing, and connecting. The AI platform is the brainchild of tech entrepreneur, startup founder, and former beauty queen, Iman Oubou. Oubou is the author of a new book just released called, “The Gl...
Jul 27, 2022•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast This past April, the FBI disclosed an astonishing fact about the breach of the blockchain behind the popular “play to earn” game Axie Infinity a few weeks earlier. The FBI said the hackers who stole $615 million dollars in cryptocurrency were, in fact, from the group “Lazarus” which has direct ties to the government of North Korea. To add insult to injury, the brazen attack took place just weeks after President Joe Biden had released an Executive Order, authorizing a whole-of federal government ...
Jul 07, 2022•53 min•Ep 27•Transcript available on Metacast With Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine — resulting in what’s become the first war to be largely televised and video-recorded — Ukraine has become Ground Zero for how technology is reshaping history’s narratives and the story of politics, war and conflict. I have two great guests to talk about how technology is shaping human history and how it will be told. Bryan Cunningham and Alex Deane are co-hosts of a wonderful new podcast called, “Hidden History, Happy Hour”, available on YouTube and ...
Jun 01, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s no secret that Russia has become the world’s playground for ransomware groups —- and that America is target #1. The threat of ransomware attacks on U.S. businesses and critical infrastructure recently took an ominous turn when a prominent Russian ransomware group named Conti — threatened to attack any nation or organization retaliating against Moscow for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Now, a groundbreaking new report titled Ransomware: A Technology Pandemic on the Brink, from New York-...
May 23, 2022•40 min•Ep 25•Transcript available on Metacast “Accountants with guns” — These are the special agents of the Criminal Investigation division of the Internal Revenue Service. There’s 2,000 of them. And they have not only plenty of firepower, but they’re also armed with the sole mandate across the US Government to investigate violations of federal tax laws and related crimes. For more than a century, CI special agents have worked quietly across 21 field offices and 11 foreign countries, on investigations of massive scale and complexity, seizin...
May 05, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to the final episode of Season 1 of Techtopia! I thought it would be appropriate to end the year as we began it, talking about Covid-19 and its pernicious impact on our lives, psyche, and the healthcare system at large. Hard as it may seem to imagine, we’re now entering year three of COVID-19 with a new variant, Omicron, upending lives globally. Two great guests join me in this episode to discuss our year in health or lack thereof and looking ahead to 2022. They are Dr. Robert Pearl and ...
Dec 30, 2021•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jeffrey Epstein never faced the consequences for allegedly trafficking dozens of girls, some as young as age 14, and engaging in sex acts with them. He committed suicide in jail 35 days after he was arrested, avoiding a trial and potentially, half a century in prison for his evil actions. Now, however, more than two years later, at the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, Epstein’s former lover, and alleged enabler, Ghislaine Maxwell is on trial for aiding and abetting Epstein i...
Dec 16, 2021•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast The world is engaged in a new form of war — this one centered around the technology called artificial intelligence — which, put simply — is the science and art of making machines more human. But at what cost? The race to dominate in Artificial Intelligence, also known as the global AI arms race has deep implications for how our society evolves in the decades to come and raises many troubling questions about privacy, civil liberties, and inherent biases transferred from human to machine and back ...
Dec 02, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has been on the forefront of some of the biggest technological innovations in history. At the same time, the so-called, defense industrial complex — that is, DoD, in cahoots with the big legacy defense contractors or the so-called “Beltway Bandits” — have also built some of the most expensive, bloated, and bungled technologies known to man. But now, increasingly, the Department of Defense is turning to lean, agile, and innovative software companies to build o...
Sep 22, 2021•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast As we approach the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, the frenetic U..S. pullout of Afghanistan under dangerous conditions has reopened the wounds of those strikes and once again raises the specter of al Qaeda and ISIS taking root in Afghan soil — posing new global threats to American security and those of our allies for decades to come. Joining me now to talk about the deepening crisis of the Afghanistan crisis and its ramifications is my dear friend, Michael Hurley wh...
Sep 10, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast As the situation in Afghanistan deteriorates with shocking speed, tens of thousands of Americans and Afghan citizens — who’ve worked closely with Americans over the past two decades, are confronting perilous conditions as they try to reach the Kabul airport and leave the country. Major news organizations are trying to extract both U.S. and fellow Afghan journalists even as these reporters put their lives on the line and continue to report from the field for as long as they can under dangerous co...
Aug 25, 2021•30 min•Ep 18•Transcript available on Metacast The world’s wireless systems are going through a major technology transformation through fifth-generation cellular networks — known as 5G for short. In addition to lightning-speed downloads for your smartphones, and faster speeds for your favorite streaming videos, 5G is expected to help the growth and adoption of other cutting-edge technologies such as connected cars, drones, industrial robots, AR/VR, medicine, and next-gen supply chains. Indeed, the power and potential of 5G and its role in gi...
Aug 12, 2021•37 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast Ever since the disease was recognized more than 100 years ago, patients with Alzheimer’s, and their families and caregivers, have longed for an effective drug for this brutal and tragic disease. But last month, when the Food and Drug Administration finally approved a drug named Aduhelm for use as the first Alzheimer’s drug in 18 years, there was little rejoicing. Instead — a big uproar from critics both outside and inside the FDA who say that there’s no clear evidence that Aduhelm has any benefi...
Jul 29, 2021•58 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast For decades, like in many other sports, track and field athletes and coaches have been stymied by their inability to easily use analytics to help athletes reach their highest potential, with their performance data trapped largely in paper silos. In the lead-up to the Tokyo Summer Olympics, Seattle-based startup Zelos has integrated roughly 20 million track and field records dating back 50 years, into its data analytics platform to generate powerful, predictive insights into the world’s oldest an...
Jul 14, 2021•33 min•Ep 15•Transcript available on Metacast Over the past seven months, non-fungible tokens or NFTs have captured the world's imagination and hype cycle, especially after the digital artist known as Beeple sold an NFT, which is a blockchain-verified proof of transfer of ownership, for one of his prints, for a record $69 million. Since then, demand for these types of collectible digital art has exploded. Artists, writers, and entire industries are trying to tap into this lucrative new art form and create all kinds of NFTs for movies, album...
Jul 08, 2021•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast After decades of secrecy, the US Government last week shared a new report about unidentified flying objects or UFOs and the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence. The bottom line: more studies are needed, the report said, raising more questions than it answered. Renowned astrophysicist Adam Frank says there’s little evidence to show a correlation between UFO sightings and extraterrestrial intelligence. In May, Frank wrote a guest essay in the New York Times titled, “I’m a Physicist Who Se...
Jun 30, 2021•43 min•Ep 13•Transcript available on Metacast UFOs are back in the news. After decades of secrecy, the American public and especially UFO-believers are waiting for a report from the Defense Department to Congress this month. The report is expected to reveal what our military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies know, and don’t know, about unidentified aerial phenomena or UAPs. That’s the government’s fancy new terminology for UFOs. The upcoming report would have been a wish-come-true for Bryant and Helen Reeve. Between 1953 and 1955 ...
Jun 23, 2021•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast COVID-19 virtually overnight changed the tone, tenor, and texture of cities, bringing the global economy to a slow grind and forcing people to retreat into bubbles, silos, and pods, and remote work — connected mainly through social media and Zoom. Now, as we slowly start to get a grip on the virus and think about reopening society, what will the long-term impact of the pandemic be on cities and on the evolution of Smart Cities? My guest today has some of those answers. He’s Michael Proman, Manag...
Jun 09, 2021•39 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the entertainment industry was being upended by the rapid pace of streaming and other technology. Then COVID-19 hit, shuttering movie theaters, shutting down the world, and driving people into their homes and in front of our television screens, where we’ve largely remained over this past year. The pandemic has been a giant wakeup call to an already disrupted industry, which increasingly, is turning to data-driven insights, to figure out how to survive, and how ...
Jun 02, 2021•45 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast Technology is shaking up the news media — as content creators of every ilk and genre have taken advantage of the digital revolution, commoditizing content and forever blurring the lines between e-commerce and content, news and entertainment, information and disinformation. One media executive who saw the digital revolution coming long before others did, is journalist, media investor and advisor, Marcus Brauchli. He is co-founder of North Base Media, an investment firm specializing in media and t...
May 26, 2021•42 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast When tech entrepreneur Anjana Rajan joined Polaris as its Chief Technology Officer last year, she thought she was setting aside her prior focus on domestic terrorism to help Polaris with its core mission of fighting human trafficking. But then Rajan learned the far-right conspiracy group QAnon had been making outlandish human trafficking allegations against Polaris resulting in massive Denial of Service or DDoS attacks by QAnon followers who were even making death threats against the non-profit....
May 06, 2021•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast For nine years, Vanessa Slavich took a traditional, reactive, “whack-a-mole” approach to manage her battle against a rare and aggressive tumor, working with highly specialized doctors operating in various treatment silos. Frustrated with the outcomes, this year, Slavich is taking a new more proactive and strategic approach. She’s using her career in technology startups as a model for turbo-charging her research and treatment options in a unique way — which she describes in a recent post in Subst...
Apr 28, 2021•38 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast The extraordinary scientific and technological innovations around the COVID-19 vaccines have enabled the U.S. government and governments around the world to deploy multiple vaccines against the lethal virus — allowing a gradual reopening of society and return to a new normal. What do we need to do to defeat COVID-19 once and for all and how can technology be used to prevent such devastating pandemics in the future? It’s always a wake-up call to speak with Dr. Robert Pearl, author of a new book o...
Apr 22, 2021•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast A large number of women participated in the rioting at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 by violent supporters of former President, Donald Trump. Some allegedly played a key role in plotting the protests and two of the five people killed in the riots were women. How have women exploited technology to expand their reach and influence in the alt-right movement? And have technology companies done enough to counter and combat their disinformation campaigns and hate messaging by white nationalists? Seywa...
Mar 25, 2021•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast There’s a global semiconductor chip shortage brought on by the massive supply chain disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And it’s hurting U.S. industries in a big way. President Joe Biden recently signed an executive order to try to help industries ranging from medical supplies to electric vehicles, that have been affected by this shortage. But will it solve the problem? If not, what does the U.S. government need to do to resolve the chip crisis? That’s the focus of our conversation today. ...
Mar 10, 2021•24 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast What’s causing Bitcoin mania and massive investments in cryptocurrency by institutional investors? Perianne Boring, Founder and President of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, explains the economic and geo-political forces at play. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Well, Bitcoin mania is sweeping the world. Investors, big and small, have propelled the cryptocurrency to record highs, rallying more than 400% over the past year, with one Bitcoin worth more than $50,000. That's per ...
Mar 05, 2021•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast How did technology fuel the explosive birth and growth of the nationalistic extremist movements fueled by former President Donald Trump? How does it compare to the proliferation of foreign terrorist threats? And how can the U.S. government wield technology to combat domestic radicalization? Anne Speckhard, Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism has interviewed hundreds of terrorists all over the world and offers her expert perspectives. Read the Transcript Downlo...
Feb 11, 2021•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast How did technology fuel the conspiracy theories that resulted in the unprecedented sacking of the U.S. Capitol on January 6th by violent Donald Trump supporters? Joseph Coohill, professor of modern world history and host of the popular Professor Buzzkill History Podcast offers perspectives on how this event compares to others in history and its implications for American democracy. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: How did technology help fuel the spread and reach of conspiraci...
Jan 24, 2021•33 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast 
