The Future of Everything
Episodes
Xiaolin Zheng: New benefits of combustion revealed
12 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Mechanical engineer Xiaolin Zheng really likes to burn things, but she is more like a modern-day Prometheus than a pyromaniac. She uses combustion to ...
Londa Schiebinger: Why does gender matter?
06 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In safety engineering, ergonomic differences between men and women are important. Conventional seat belts do not fit pregnant women properly and motor...
Billy Loo: “FLASH” radiation therapy brings hope to cancer patients
05 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Stanford radiation oncologist, Billy Loo, says that a new generation of radiation therapy technology called PHASER will be so fast that it can even co...
Carlos Bustamante: Genomics has a diversity problem
14 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Carlos Bustamante is an expert in genomics—the study of genetic variation and its effects on the living world. He says genomics holds tremendous pro...
Robert Reich: Is it time to rethink philanthropy?
11 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Why do well-off public schools often demand that parents supplement school programs with personal contributions? Why do many rare diseases receive the...
Toomas Ilves: Lessons in digital democracy from Estonia
04 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Of the many nations that have implemented some measure of digital democracy, none perhaps has had more success than Estonia. Toomas Ilves, a Distingui...
Nigam Shah: Artificial Intelligence transforms health care
20 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In hospitals across the world, the unmet need for end-of-life palliative care threatens to overwhelm the few doctors who are equipped to adequately pr...
Paul Oyer: Where, exactly, is the gig economy taking us?
20 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The worlds of academic economics and ride sharing are not so far removed – just ask Stanford labor economist Paul Oyer. When Oyer wanted to study th...
Alex Stamos: How do we preserve free speech in the era of fake news?
20 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It’s nothing we haven’t already heard – the news you read is being shaped by the ubiquitous presence of social media. So-called “fake news” ...
Adina Sterling: How will artificial intelligence change hiring?
20 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The next job search you conduct will likely be shaped by artificial intelligence. In the age of LinkedIn and Monster.com, job hunters can count on the...
Greg Beroza: Data helps prepare us for ‘The Big One’
17 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Earthquakes come in species, says Greg Beroza, professor of geophysics at Stanford and an expert in seismology. There are, of course, the well-known s...
Anne Kiremidjian: Cities built to endure disaster
17 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Like clockwork, every time a large natural disaster hits and wipes out billions in built infrastructure, public officials, developers and private citi...
Annelise Barron: The battle against Alzheimer’s is reinvigorated
24 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
While Alzheimer’s disease has cut short too many lives and devastated more families than can be counted, its root causes and effective treatments ha...
Marshall Burke: The impact of climate change on human behavior
22 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
While climate change is likely to bring rising sea levels, more frequent and stronger storms, as well as vanishing glaciers and coral reefs, experts s...
Riana Pfefferkorn: How are the boundaries of digital privacy shifting?
22 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Riana Pfefferkorn is a digital security expert and Cryptography Fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. She says that we are living in...
Balaji Prabhakar: Can digital incentives help alleviate traffic?
08 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
While well-known mapping apps have transformed the daily commute through better information, Stanford electrical engineer Balaji Prabhakar is explorin...
David Magnus: How will artificial intelligence impact medical ethics?
08 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Professor David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, says that artificial intelligence and machine learning are reshaping th...
Dan Boneh: Still in early days, Blockchain is rich with possibility
28 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
While cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum gather the lion’s share of headlines, few know that these “killer apps” are just the first generatio...
Gopi Shah Goda: You’re probably not saving enough for retirement
28 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Am I saving enough for retirement? Will I outlive my money? Can I count on Social Security? These are but a few of the nagging questions most every Am...
Jeffrey Pfeffer: Your job is killing you
14 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Sarah Billington: How we shape our buildings — and how they shape us
14 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Billington began her career in civil engineering studying concrete, a remarkable material that has literally shaped the world as we know it. Con...
Anna Grzymala-Busse: Lessons from the rise of global populism
30 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Populism can be a powerful force in a democratic society. But according to Anna Grzymala-Busse, a Stanford professor of political science and senior f...
Anna Lembke: How do we fight the disease of addiction?
16 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in the 1980s, medical doctors started treating pain with increasing amounts of opioid medications. That shift was driven in part by an effor...
Andrew Grotto: Combating cyberthreats in the age of the cloud
16 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
From Bitcoin theft to the embarrassing revelations in the Sony Pictures hacking to the recent assault on the U.S. election, the threats of internation...
Martha Crenshaw: Fighting terrorism in the age of social media
02 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When Stanford’s Martha Crenshaw, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and an expert on terrorism, is asked if she...
Fred Turner: The 60s counterculture roots of today’s social networks
19 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 capi...
Maya Rossin-Slater: Health policy and its impact on families
19 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Can an expectant mother’s exposure to air pollutants or even extreme temperatures impact her unborn child’s earning potential 30 years later? Can ...
Jeremy Bailenson: Taking a grand tour of the latest in virtual reality
05 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Roz Naylor: Changing how — and what — the world eats
21 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As the global population approaches 10 billion and the effects of climate change continue to alter familiar agricultural patterns, the world is alread...
Michal Kosinski: Living in a post-privacy world
21 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 electi...
Craig Criddle: Redefining waste treatment
07 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 environmen...
Michael Fischbach: Making sense of the gut biome
07 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The bacteria of the human digestive system have been likened to tiny factories that ingest raw materials — food — and processing them into finishe...
Michael Bernstein: Welcome to the future of crowdsourcing
24 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
While billions scroll their merry ways through Facebook and Twitter each day, behind the scenes are legions of reviewers scanning photos and video to ...
Paul Wise: Saving the children, on the frontlines of war
24 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 frontlin...
Maneesh Agrawala: Artificial intelligence comes to multimedia
24 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Sarah Heilshorn: Building replacement parts for the human body
24 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Heart attacks, burns, strokes, disease and just plain-old aging can devastate human tissues. But, emboldened by new understandings about the building ...
Manu Prakash: The physics of biology
10 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 dem...
Jennifer Cochran: Guided missiles target cancer
10 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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...
David Relman: What dolphins can teach us about our own health
27 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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. Th...
Megan Palmer: How do we solve the security challenges in biotech?
11 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
As a founding member and former chair of the Department of Bioengineering, possibly no one has enjoyed a better purview on the recent remarkable advan...
Marco Pavone: How autonomy is shaping the future of space exploration
28 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The vast distances and extreme conditions of outer space make the prospects for remote control of exploratory vehicles extremely challenging, if not i...
Audrey Shafer: Why Frankenstein still holds a mirror to modern science
28 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
On the eve of the 200th anniversary of the first publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, medical doctor and bioengineer Russ Altman and Stanford...
Jenny Suckale: A Better Plan B for Managing Disasters
21 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Living in quake-prone California, Russ Altman is no stranger to the impending threat of natural disaster, but watching a devastating hurricane season ...
Allison Okamura: Exploring the next big thing in modern robotics
21 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
As a bioengineer, Russ Altman has long marveled at intersection of biology and engineering that is modern robotics. Recently, he found himself wonderi...
David Lentink: What small birds teach us about the physics of flight
07 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 en...
Debbie Senesky: Developing electronics for the extremes of space
07 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
From his perch at Stanford, nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley, Russ Altman wonders whether the silicon-based electronics of which we Earthlings a...
Euan Ashley: Exploring a new age of medical diagnostics
09 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the Future of Everything radio show, Stanford’s Russ Altman and Euan Ashley discuss wearable technology, data and the extraordinary challenges wh...
Kwabena Boahen: What does the next generation of computers look like?
26 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Per Enge: How safe and secure is GPS?
26 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 —...
Emmanuel Mignot: Sleep impacts our lives in ways we might not even recognize
19 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Getting a good night’s rest can be a struggle for many. Yet good “sleep hygiene” is critical to normal brain function and remaining healthy. Lis...
Amy Zegart: How vulnerable are we to cyber attacks?
19 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the Future of Everything radio show, Amy Zegart explains just how worried we need to be about cyber threats. Among the threats: the security of our...
Jure Leskovec: The power of social networks
05 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What’s most likely to go viral? Where do online trolls come from? How do recommendation engines work? What do fitness apps tell us about the world? ...
Pamela Hinds: How do you get the most out of a global team?
05 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the Future of Everything radio show, Pamela J. Hinds, professor of management science & engineering, discusses how multinational companies can ...
John Dabiri: Technology inspired by nature
17 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the Future of Everything radio show, Stanford’s Russ Altman and John Dabiri discuss renewable energy and technologies that are inspired by nature...
Pat Brown: Where’s the beef? How plants could be used to build a better burger.
17 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the Future of Everything radio show, bioengineer Russ Altman and food entrepreneur Pat Brown discuss the creation of a better meat. Brown, a Stanfo...
Jennifer Dionne: The power of light
03 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jennifer Dionne, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, talks about improving solar cells, creating invisibility, and how light ...
David Eagleman: Adding to the senses
03 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: "Adding to the Senses with guest David Eagleman" David Eagleman, an adjunct associate professor i...
Drew Endy: Exploring the biotechnology revolution
20 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
On the Future of Everything radio show, bioengineering professor Drew Endy discusses what's next for the bio-economy. The question, he says, is, how d...
Fei-Fei Li and Chris Gerdes: The future of artificial intelligence and self-driving cars
06 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
At a live taping of The Future of Everything, a SiriusXM radio program hosted by Stanford bioengineering professor Russ Altman, two Stanford engineeri...
Christina Smolke: How to grow better painkillers and other medications
29 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the Future of Everything radio show, Stanford bioengineers Russ Altman and Christina Smolke discuss advances in our ability to create medications a...
Oussama Khatib: “Bringing a new revolution in robotics”
29 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the Future of Everything radio show, Oussama Khatib, a computer scientist and director of the Stanford Robotics Lab, discusses a future in which ro...
Carolyn Bertozzi: How the sugars on the surface of human cells affect our health
08 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the Future of Everything radio show, Stanford bioengineer Russ Altman and chemist Carolyn Bertozzi discuss the biology of sugars on human cells and...
Audrey Bowden: What is the future of medical diagnostics?
25 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Forget WebMD, a new technology will soon make it possible to bring a diagnosis lab into your bathroom. On the Future of Everything radio show, Stanfor...
David Camarillo: What can we do to protect ourselves from concussions?
25 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
From sports injuries to bicycle accidents, we're hearing a lot about concussions. On the Future of Everything radio show, Russ Altman talks to bioengi...
Zhenan Bao: Bendable Electronics
11 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: "Bendable Electronics with Zhenan Bao" Stanford Chemical Engineering Professor Zhenan Bao discuss...
Janine Zacharia: What is the future of media?
11 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the Future of Everything radio show, Stanford bioengineer Russ Altman discusses the future of journalism, fake news, and how to become an informed ...
Andrea Goldsmith: What is the future of wireless networking and communications?
25 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of The Future of Everything, bioengineering professor Russ Altman talks with electrical engineer Andrea Goldsmith about the high-power...
Hank Greely: How babies (will) get made
25 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We’re entering a different world when it comes to procreating. In this episode of the Future of Everything radio show, Stanford Bioengineering Profe...
Jennifer Granick: Our digital fingerprints are everywhere. How do we protect ourselves?
11 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Keeping our private information away from hackers and spies is a growing concern for many Americans. In the Future of Everything radio show, Stanford ...
Marc Salit: What is the future of genome measurement?
11 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the not too distant future, our ability to measure very tiny things will change the way we fight diseases ranging from cancer to the common cold. I...