MIT Technology Review Narrated
Episodes
No one’s sure if synthetic mirror life will kill us all
29 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Synthetic biologists were tantalized by the idea of making mirror images of microbes. Then things got complicated. This story was written by Stephen ...
Desalination plants in the Middle East are increasingly vulnerable
22 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Conflict and extreme weather could threaten large desalination plants that supply water to the region. This story was written by Casey Crownhart and...
This company is developing gene therapies for muscle growth, erectile dysfunction, and “radical longevity”
15 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A small group of volunteers will receive multiple injections of an experimental treatments for various enhancements . This story was written by Jess...
The gig workers who are training humanoid robots at home
08 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
People in Nigeria and India are strapping iPhones onto their heads and recording themselves doing chores. This story was written by Michelle Kim and ...
Can quantum computers now solve health care problems? We’ll soon find out.
01 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
After 30 months of fast-paced innovation in quantum algorithms, six research groups are hoping to hit paydirt. But there can be only one big winner—...
How Pokémon Go is giving delivery robots an inch-perfect view of the world
25 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Niantic's AI spinout is training a new world model using 30 billion images of urban landmarks crowdsourced from players. This story was written by Wi...
How uncrewed narco subs could transform the Colombian drug trade
18 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Fast, stealthy, and cheap—autonomous, semisubmersible drone boats carrying tons of cocaine could be international law enforcement’s nightmare scen...
America was winning the race to find Martian life. Then China jumped in.
11 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Mars Sample Return mission got off to a promising start, hunting for potentially humanity-changing space rocks. How did it fall off the rails? ...
The curious case of the disappearing Lamborghinis
04 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A new wave of theft is rocking the luxury car industry—mixing high tech with old-school chop-shop techniques to snag vehicles while they’re in tra...
Hackers made death threats against this security researcher. Big mistake.
25 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Allison Nixon had helped arrest dozens of members of the Com, a loose affiliation of online groups responsible for violence and hacking campaigns. The...
Stratospheric internet could finally start taking off this year
18 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
High-altitude platforms could help connect over 2 billion people around the world who are still offline. This story was written by Tereza Pultarov...
How next-generation nuclear reactors break out of the 20th-century blueprint
11 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
From molten salt to TRISO fuel, here’s how technological advancements could upend an old power technology. This story was written by Casey Crownh...
This Nobel Prize–winning chemist dreams of making water from thin air
11 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Omar Yaghi thinks crystals with gaps that capture moisture could bring technology from “Dune” to the arid parts of Earth. This story was written ...
China figured out how to sell EVs. Now it has to deal with their aging batteries.
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
As early electric cars age out, hundreds of thousands of used batteries are flooding the market, fueling a gray recycling economy even as Beijing and ...
This Nobel Prize–winning chemist dreams of making water from thin air
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Omar Yaghi thinks crystals with gaps that capture moisture could bring technology from “Dune” to the arid parts of Earth. This story was written ...
Meet the new biologists treating LLMs like aliens
21 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
By studying large language models as if they were living things instead of computer programs, scientists are discovering some of their secrets for the...
What’s next for AI in 2026
14 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Our AI writers make their big bets for the coming year—here are five hot trends to watch. This story was written by Rhiannon Williams, Will Douglas...
How one controversial startup hopes to cool the planet
06 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
And why many scientists are freaked out about the first serious for-profit company moving into the solar geoengineering field. This story was written...
Why it’s so hard to bust the weather control conspiracy theory
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From effective rain-enhancing technology to a long, secretive history of trying to weaponize storms, there’s fertile ground for misinformation. Thi...
AI materials discovery now needs to move into the real world
24 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Startups flush with cash are building AI-assisted laboratories to find materials far faster and more cheaply, but are still waiting for their ChatGPT ...
How two brothers became go-to experts on America’s “mystery drone” invasion
17 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Two Long Island UFO hunters have been called upon by some domestic law enforcement to investigate unexplained phenomena. This story was written by Ma...
Is this the electric grid of the future?
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Nebraska, a publicly owned utility deftly tackles the challenges of delivering on reliability, affordability, and sustainability. This story was w...
The quest to find out how our bodies react to extreme temperatures
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists hope to prevent deaths from climate change, but heat and cold are more complicated than we thought. This story was written by Max G. Levy ...
How to fix the internet
26 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If we want online discourse to improve, we need to move beyond the big platforms. This story was written by Katie Notopoulos and narrated by Noa - ne...
Why climate researchers are taking the temperature of mountain snow
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As climate change fuels increasingly erratic weather, scientists need a better read on snowpack temperature to understand when water will reach reserv...
What it’s like to be in the middle of a conspiracy theory (according to a conspiracy theory expert)
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mike Rothschild has spent years studying the rise of QAnon and antivaccine conspiracism. After his house in Altadena, California, burned down, he foun...
Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT. Clients are triggered.
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Some therapists are using AI during therapy sessions. They’re risking their clients’ trust and privacy in the process. This story was written by...
Supershoes are reshaping distance running
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kenyan runners, like many others, are grappling with the impact of expensive, high-performance shoes. This story was written by Jonathan W. Rosen and...
How Antarctica’s history of isolation is ending—thanks to Starlink
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The seventh continent has always been a bleak, unconnected place. Elon Musk’s satellite internet is changing that, and people want to see what life ...
Inside the strange limbo facing millions of IVF embryos
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Frozen embryos are filling storage banks around the world. It's a struggle to know what to do with them. This story was written by Jessica Hamzelou ...
How to measure the returns on R&D spending
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Forget the glorious successes of past breakthroughs—the real justification for research investment is what we get for our money. Here’s what econo...
How do AI models generate videos?
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With powerful video generation tools now in the hands of more people than ever, let's take a look at how they work. This story was written by Will Do...
What’s next for AI and math
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The last year has seen rapid progress in the ability of large language models to tackle math at high school level and beyond. Is AI closing in on huma...
How AI can help supercharge creativity
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Forget one-click creativity. These artists and musicians are finding new ways to make art using AI, by injecting friction, challenge, and serendipity ...
Google DeepMind has a new way to look inside an AI’s “mind”
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Autoencoders are letting us peer into the black box of artificial intelligence. They could help us create AI that is better understood, and more easil...
How a top Chinese AI model overcame US sanctions
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With a new reasoning model that matches the performance of ChatGPT o1, DeepSeek managed to turn restrictions into innovation. This story was written ...
Cyberattacks by AI agents are coming
27 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Agents could make it easier and cheaper for criminals to hack systems at scale. We need to be ready. This story was written by Rhiannon Williams and ...
How to run an LLM on your laptop
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It’s now possible to run useful models from the safety and comfort of your own computer. Here’s how. This story was written by Grace Huckins and ...
Can nuclear power really fuel the rise of AI?
13 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tech giants are looking for more energy, but building new reactors takes time. This story was written by Casey Crownhart and narrated by Noa - newso...
GPT-5 is here. Now what?
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The much-hyped release makes several enhancements to the ChatGPT user experience. But it’s still far short of AGI. This story was written by Grace...
AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Despite fewer clicks, copyright fights, and sometimes iffy answers, AI could unlock new ways to summon all the world’s knowledge. This story was w...
Are we ready to hand AI agents the keys?
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’re starting to give AI agents real autonomy, and we’re not prepared for what could happen next. This story was written by Grace Huckins and n...
AI crawler wars threaten to make the web more closed for everyone
23 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There’s an accelerating cat-and-mouse game between web publishers and AI crawlers, and we all stand to lose. This story was written by Shayne Long...
This rare earth metal shows us the future of our planet’s resources
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The story of neodymium reveals many of the challenges we’ll likely face across the supply chain in the coming century and beyond. This story was wr...
The Biggest Questions: How did life begin?
09 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
AI is helping chemists unpick the mysteries around the origins of life and detect signs of it on other worlds. This story was written by Michael Mar...
The tech industry can’t agree on what open-source AI means. That’s a problem.
02 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What counts as 'open-source AI'? The answer could determine who gets to shape the future of the technology. This story was written by Edd Gent and n...
How did China come to dominate the world of electric cars?
25 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From generous government subsidies to support for lithium batteries, here are the keys to understanding how China managed to build a world-leading ind...
Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In China, people are seeking help from AI-generated avatars to process their grief after a family member passes away. This story was written by Zeyi...
The surprising barrier that keeps us from building the housing we need
11 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sure, there's too much red tape, but there is another reason building anything is so expensive: the construction industry's "awful" productivity. Th...
How DeepSeek became a fortune teller for China’s youth
04 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
AI-powered BaZi analysis has become the new oracle for a disillusioned generation seeking answers. This story was written by Caiwei Chen and narrated...
Google, Amazon and the problem with Big Tech’s climate claims
28 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How companies like Amazon and Google reach their emissions goals is more important than how fast. This story was written by James Temple and narrate...
Congress used to evaluate emerging technologies. Let’s do it again.
21 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A look back at the Office of Technology Assessment, the Congressional think tank that detected lies and tested tech. This story was written by Peter ...
What’s next for our privacy?
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The US still has no federal privacy law. But recent enforcement actions against data brokers may offer some new protections for Americans’ personal ...
How Trump’s tariffs could drive up the cost of batteries, EVs, and more
07 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The incoming administration’s hostile trade plans threaten to slow the shift to cleaner industries, boost inflation, and stall the economy. This st...
The second wave of AI coding is here
30 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A string of startups are racing to build models that can produce better and better software. They claim it’s the shortest path to AGI. This story w...
Quantum computing is taking on its biggest challenge: noise
23 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For a while researchers thought they’d have to make do with noisy, error-prone systems, at least in the near term. That’s starting to change. Thi...
Will we ever trust robots?
16 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If most robots still need remote human operators to be safe and effective, why should we welcome them into our homes? This story was written by James...
Exosomes are touted as a trendy cure-all. We don’t know if they work.
09 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
People are spending thousands of dollars on unproven exosome therapies for hair loss, skin aging, and acne, as well as more serious conditions like lo...
The quest to figure out farming on Mars
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If we’re going to live on Mars we’ll need a way to grow food in its arid dirt. Researchers think they know a way. This story was written by David...
How tracking animal movement may save the planet
26 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Researchers have been dreaming of an Internet of Animals. They’re getting closer to monitoring 100,000 creatures—and revealing hidden facets of ou...
Happy birthday, baby! What the future holds for those born today
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An intelligent digital agent could be a companion for life—and other predictions for the next 125 years. This story was written by Kara Platoni and...
How the Ukraine-Russia war is reshaping the tech sector in Eastern Europe
12 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Startups in Latvia and other nearby countries see the mobilization of Ukraine as a warning and as inspiration. They are now changing consumer products...
AI search could break the web
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At its best, AI search can better infer a user’s intent, amplify quality content, and synthesize information from diverse sources. But if AI search ...
The messy quest to replace drugs with electricity
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Electroceuticals” promised the post-pharma future for medicine. But the exclusive focus on the nervous system is seeming less and less warranted....
The weeds are winning
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the climate changes, genetic engineering will be essential for growing food. But is it creating a race of superweeds? This story was written by Do...
Why AI could eat quantum computing’s lunch
12 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tech companies have been funneling billions of dollars into quantum computers for years. The hope is that they’ll be a game changer for fields as di...
The race to save our online lives from a digital dark age
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’re making more data than ever. What can—and should—we save for future generations? And will they be able to understand it? This story was wr...
Is this the end of animal testing?
29 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
More than 60 companies now produce organs on chips commercially, focusing on five major organs: liver, kidney, lung, intestines, and brain. They’re ...
Meet the divers trying to figure out how deep humans can go
22 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Figuring out how the human body can withstand underwater pressure has been a problem for over a century, but a ragtag band of divers is experimenting ...
Palmer Luckey on the Pentagon’s future of mixed reality
15 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR, has set his sights on a new mixed-reality headset customer: the Pentagon. His company Anduril Industries, wh...
How covid conspiracy theories led to an alarming resurgence in AIDS denialism
08 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Podcaster Joe Rogan, former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and football quarterback Aaron Rodgers are all helping revive AIDS denialis...
How to fine-tune AI for prosperity
01 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The newest versions of generative AI are bedazzling, with lifelike videos, seemingly expert-sounding prose, and other all too humanlike behaviors. Bus...
Meet the radio-obsessed civilian shaping Ukraine’s drone defense
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despite it being over 100 years old, radio technology is still critical in almost all aspects of modern warfare—including in the drones that have co...
ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like.
11 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You can practically hear the shrieks from corner offices around the world: “What is our ChatGPT play? How do we make money off this?” Whether it’...
Beyond gene-edited babies: the possible paths for tinkering with human evolution
04 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the future, CRISPR will get easier and easier to administer, potentially opening up paths for tinkering with human evolution. What will that mean f...
The great commercial takeover of low Earth orbit
27 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Did you know that NASA intends to destroy the International Space Station by around 2030? Once it's gone, private companies will likely swoop in with ...
The world’s on the verge of a carbon storage boom
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Pump jacks and pipelines clutter the Elk Hills oil field of California, a scrubby stretch of land in the southern Central Valley that rests above one ...
Is robotics about to have its own ChatGPT moment?
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Robots that can do many of the things humans do in the home—folding laundry, cooking meals, cleaning—have been a dream of robotics research since ...
Gorillas, militias, and Bitcoin: Why Congo’s most famous national park is betting big on crypto
06 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In an attempt to protect its forests and famous wildlife, Virunga has become the first national park to run a Bitcoin mine. But some are wondering wha...
How gamification took over the world
30 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We live in an undeniably gamified world. We stand up and move around to close colorful rings and earn achievement badges on our smartwatches; we medit...
Technology that lets us “speak” to our dead relatives has arrived. Are we ready?
23 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Digital clones of people's dead relatives are far from perfect: they're occasionally impersonal and sometimes downright creepy. But if the technology ...
Inside the quest to engineer climate-saving “super trees”
16 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A Silicon Valley startup wants to supercharge trees to soak up more carbon and cool the climate. Is this the great climate solution or a whole lot of ...
What is AI?
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Artificial intelligence is the hottest technology of our time. But what is it? It sounds like a stupid question, but it’s one that’s never been mo...
The cost of building the perfect wave
02 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The growing business of surf pools wants to bring the ocean experience inland, making surfing more accessible to communities far from the coasts. The...
How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play
25 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Open-world video games are inhabited by vast crowds of computer-controlled characters. These animated people—called NPCs, for “nonplayer character...
The entrepreneur dreaming of a factory of unlimited organs
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At any given time, the US organ transplant waiting list is about 100,000 people long. Martine Rothblatt sees a day when an unlimited supply of transpl...
Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?
11 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Design thinking suggests that we are all creatives, and we can solve any problem if we empathize hard enough. The methodology was supposed to democrat...
How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrime
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tokelau is a group of three isolated atolls strung out across the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand (of which it’s an official territory) and Hawaii...
An AI startup made a hyperrealistic deepfake of me that’s so good it’s scary
28 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An AI startup created a hyperrealistic deepfake of MIT Technology Review’s senior AI reporter that was so believable, even she thought it was really...
It’s time to retire the term “user”
21 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Though “user” seems to describe a relationship that is deeply transactional, many of the technological relationships in which a person would be co...
The search for extraterrestrial life is targeting Jupiter’s icy moon Europa
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We've known of Europa’s existence for more than four centuries, but for most of that time, Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon was just a pinprick of li...
Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.
07 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despite all their runaway success, nobody knows exactly how—or why—large language models work. And that’s a problem. Figuring it out is one of t...
How ASML took over the chipmaking chessboard
31 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Moore’s Law holds that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years or so. In essence, it means that chipmakers are al...
Minds of machines: The great AI consciousness conundrum
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
AI consciousness isn’t just a devilishly tricky intellectual puzzle; it’s a morally weighty problem with potentially dire consequences. Fail to id...
In Machines We Trust: That's a wrap!
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Three years ago this week we launched this podcast on a mission to show the world how AI touches our everyday lives. It's been our great honor and pri...
In Machines We Trust: When AI hears a problem
17 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hidden away in our voices are signals that may hold clues to how we’re doing, what we’re feeling and even what’s going on with our physical heal...
In Machines We Trust: Harvesting the future with AI and satellites (Encore)
10 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
AI is used in farming in some ways you might not expect, like for tracking the health of crops—from space. We travel from test farms to labs in the ...
In Machines We Trust: A conversation with Geoffrey Hinton (Live)
06 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this special episode we bring you a live taping between the "Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton and MIT Technology Review's Senior Editor for AI Will...
In Machines We Trust: The Chip War (Live)
03 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode, we get an insider's look at the ongoing chip war from the person who wrote the book on it, Chris Miller, professor at Tufts University a...
In Machines We Trust: I Was There When... AI reached a crossroads
26 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
I Was There When is an oral history project that’s part of the In Machines We Trust podcast. It features stories of how breakthroughs and watershed ...