Short Run

There is a sophisticated computer model that can estimate a patient's chance of dying in the next year. It's being used at a Stanford hospital to encourage important end of life care conversations and decisions.

But would you want to know if an algorithm predicted when you might die?

Ethics and AI. It's episode II of On Point's special series Smarter health.

Health care is heavily regulated. But can the FDA effectively regulate AI in health care?

It's episode three of On Point's series “Smarter health."

The final episode of On Point's series Smarter health gets up close with the people working and developing AI technology, and the patients receiving AI care. How can this technology thrive in our complex and broken health care system?

What happens in our brains when we trust someone? In the second episode of On Point's series Essential trust, neuroscientists explain how our brains process trust, and why it's worth the risk.

Brazilians don't trust each other.

Some studies find that more than 60% of Brazilians don't trust the people in their own communities.

In the third episode of On Point's series Essential trust, we look for lessons from Brazil as trust in the United States erodes. 

Trust is essential for survival, for relationships, for a civilized society. But trust needs an unexpected ally: skepticism. But what happens when your skepticism turns into cynicism, or outright disbelief? In the fourth episode of On Point's series Essential trust, we discuss the need for healthy skepticism.

Trust — in our institutions, our leaders, in each other — can erode away. But trust can also be rebuilt, even after devastating events. How can humans rebuild trust?

In the first episode of Endless Thread's series "Good Bot, Bad Bot," co-hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson delve into the history of ELIZA, the world's first chatbot therapist.

Why did this computer's creator have a lot of complicated feelings about the development of AI? Can AI help us cope with mental health issues?

In the second episode of Endless Thread's series "Good Bot, Bad Bot," co-hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson consider the possibilities of bots being used in governments around the world.

How can bots increase transparency and shine a light on corruption, such as insider trading, among our elected officials? Will bots be put on the ballot in the near future?

In the third episode of Endless Thread's series "Good Bot, Bad Bot," co-hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson explore a growing field of artificial intelligence: immortalizing the dead through predictive AI text.

They talk with two individuals who used this tech in different ways, and discuss how these bots can help us improve our understanding of grief.

In the final episode of Endless Thread's series "Good Bot, Bad Bot," co-hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell visit Google, the frontier of AI, to see just how close the field is to creating bots with minds of their own.

President Richard Nixon has a plan: He wants to go to China. The only problem? The U.S. and China have had zero contact since the Communist Party took over China two decades before.

In the first part of Here & Now's "The Great Wager," host Jane Perlez digs into the beginning of Nixon’s improbable diplomatic mission.

Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger make contact with China. But in the midst of the Cold War, they don’t want anyone to know. How will Kissinger get to Beijing without alerting anyone — and what’s Frank Sinatra got to do with it?

In the second part of Here & Now's "The Great Wager," host Jane Perlez digs into how Kissinger pulled off a secret trip to China. 

The news of Nixon’s trip to China is public, and he’s getting credit for pulling off such a historic event. Now, he and his advisers have to work with the Chinese to forge a relationship between two very different countries.

In the third part of Here & Now's "The Great Wager," host Jane Perlez revisits when Nixon met Mao.

The relationship between China and the U.S. is off and running — and now the two countries are collaborating on secret, sensitive intelligence.

The fourth part of Here & Now's "The Great Wager" includes exclusive information about how Chinese and American intelligence officials agreed to work together against their common rival of many years. 

All of a sudden, it’s less clear if Nixon’s wager is paying off. After years of collaboration and mutual economic benefit, relations between China and the U.S. are at a low point. What does the start of this important relationship reveal about its next chapter?

In the fifth part of Here & Now's "The Great Wager," host Jane Perlez considers how Nixon's actions are reverberating today.