The Future of Everything

Rishee Jain is an engineer and an expert in the built environment – the manmade structures of modern life. The future, Jain says, will be a place where everyone has a safe, comfortable place to live and work, and the built environment adapts in real time to our needs. Jain is now exploring cool roofs that reflect heat to lower indoor temperatures and improve occupants’ well-being. We once believed that humans bent infrastructure to...

In a special Future of Everything podcast episode recorded live before a studio audience in New York, host Russ Altman talks to three authorities on the innovation economy. His guests – Fei-Fei Li, professor of computer science and co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI); Susan Athey, professor and authority on the economics of technology; and Neale Mahoney, Trione Director of the Stanford Institute for Ec...

About a year ago we released an episode on the future of ultrafast electronics and it quickly became one of our most popular episodes on YouTube. We’re excited to re-share it with you today. Physicist Matthias Kling walks us through his study of photons and the things science can do with ultrafast pulses of x-rays. The knowledge he’s gaining could reshape fields like materials science, artificial intelligence, ultrafast and quantum...

Allergist Tina Sindher acknowledges that allergies may be affecting more people worldwide, influenced by a combination of factors such as environmental changes, modern lifestyles, urbanization, and evolving dietary habits. Prevention is playing catch-up, and promising new strategies include earlier food introduction than was popular only a few years ago. On the treatment front, hopes are rising for immunotherapies and a new prescri...

Endocrinologist Joy Wu says that osteoporosis can affect more than half of women and a quarter of men over 50 – often without symptoms until a fracture changes everything, leading to a loss of mobility and independence. Wu explains why bones weaken with age and how to strengthen them through exercise and smart medicine. Her lab is exploring innovative drugs and turning skin cells into new bone-forming osteoblasts. We’re delving int...

It’s still summer, but many children and teachers are back in school or preparing to return to the classroom. About a year ago, we sat down with Rebecca Silverman, a professor of education, to discuss the complex process of learning how to read. Professor Silverman unpacks the challenges of decoding and comprehension, two things that are vital for reading instruction to be successful. Whether you’re supporting a new reader or curio...

Sociologist David Grusky argues that all the usual debilitating debates about inequality can be sidestepped if we focus on the worst forms – those rooted in cronyism, racism, and nepotism – that everyone can agree are nothing more than a pernicious transfer of income or wealth from the powerless to the powerful. To fight this “worst form” of inequality, Grusky shows how powerful interventions can be identified with new quasi-experi...

Neurologist Michelle Monje studies the close relationship between cancer and the nervous system, particularly in an aggressive brain cancer that often strikes in childhood. Her research shows that the cancer cells are electrically integrated into the brain itself and these connections actually help the cancer to grow. Monje and collaborators have now developed an immunotherapy that has shown great promise in mice and early human tr...

It’s summertime, and for many of us that means a recreational trip to the beach or coast. Worldwide, billions of people live year-round near a coastline, and these settings can be responsible for everything from buffering storms and preventing sea-level rise to fishing, flourishing tourism, and trade. For all these reasons, the acceleration of coastal erosion is an important topic to understand. A couple years ago, we sat down with...

Chemical engineer Beth Sattely studies the intricate chemistry of plant life. Plants are more than food, she says: They are living chemical factories churning out molecules that help plants do everything from adapting to climate change to fighting infections – or even producing valuable new cancer drugs. Lately, Sattely’s lab is working on ways to make crops more resilient to engineer more sustainable foods and environments. Some o...

Biologist Lauren O’Connell studies poisonous frogs, but not just the toxins that make them dangerous. She also studies the neuroscience of their complex parenting. She’s learned that tadpoles recognize their mothers by smell and do a “begging dance” when hungry, and that the frogs produce a protein that protects them from their own poisonous chemistry.  That protein could help treat overdoses in humans, O’Connell tells host Russ Al...

We’re in the midst of summer and we know that power outages can happen more frequently during this season due to higher temperatures and an increased demand for electricity. A couple years ago we sat down with Ram Rajagopal, an expert in the future of electrical power. He shared a few ways our existing system of massive power plants is slowly but surely giving way to a much leaner, decentralized system of small-scale power generati...

Law professor Daniel Ho says that the law is ripe for AI innovation, but a lot is at stake. Naive application of AI can lead to rampant hallucinations in over 80 percent of legal queries, so much research remains to be done in the field. Ho tells how California counties recently used AI to find and redact racist property covenants from their laws—a task predicted to take years, reduced to days. AI can be quite good at removing “reg...

Psychiatrist Carolyn Rodriguez studies hoarding disorder and says that all of us have attachments to our possessions. But for many, these attachments can disrupt daily life and even pose health risks. For those with loved ones who struggle with hoarding disorder, she says treatments exist, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Lately, she’s been studying how virtual reality can augment CBT through virtual discarding practic...

Summer is in full swing and we hope you are enjoying it with family and friends. As we spend more time outdoors, it’s an opportune moment to revisit a conversation we had with Zakia Rahman, a dermatologist who shared a number of helpful measures we can take to care for our skin. She reminds us that skincare is about more than vanity — it’s about vitality. We hope you’ll tune in again and enjoy.

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Guest Lisa Goldman Rosas is an authority on public health who says that food insecurity goes deeper than hunger and can lead to chronic diabetes, heart disease, and even anxiety and depression. Rosas champions a concept she calls “nutrition security,” which focuses on food’s health value over mere calories. She discusses her work with “Recipe4Health,” an Alameda County-led program that issues produce prescriptions, offers health co...

Everyone has goals — some are monumental, others modest — but every goal matters. Join guest Szu-chi Huang, an expert in sustaining enthusiasm for individuals, customers, and employees across global corporations and organizations, as she delves into the science of motivation. Discover how the gap between where you are and where you want to be is bridged by a dynamic blend of psychology, sociology, behavioral economics, neuroscience...

It’s graduation season here at Stanford and students are getting ready to collect their diplomas and take their education out into the real world. A couple years ago, we sat down with Tina Seelig, a professor in our Management Science and Engineering department who’s done a lot of research on how we can teach skills including imagination, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship — all things that can come in handy when you’re s...

Jason Yeatman is an expert in the neurobiology of literacy whose lab is fostering a virtuous research cycle between academia and school communities, aligning scientific inquiry with real-world needs of students, parents, and educators. His lab has developed ROAR – the Rapid Online Assessment of Reading—a gamified, web-based dyslexia screening tool. ROAR provides fast, precise, and scalable assessments, helping educators identify an...