Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel prize-winning psychologist and economist and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, a landmark book that decodes human decision-making. Yann LeCun is the chief AI scientist at Meta (Facebook) and a pioneer in the field of deep learning, which the cutting edge of AI is based on today. The two come together on Big Technology Podcast this week to discuss how machines and humans learn, whether there are parallels, and what each field can learn from each other.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As companies head back to the office, and communities try to figure out the right Covid mitigation measures, data from sewage can help them get it right. Newsha Ghaeli and Mariana Matus are the co-founders of Biobot Analytics. Their company uses data from wastewater to alert companies and communities when they’re in the early stages of Covid outbreaks. Then they can adjust appropriately. Founded out of MIT, Biobot initially took on the Opioid epidemic, helping communities figure out the right way to respond, then it expanded to Covid as the pandemic set in.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inflation is skyrocketing and everyone’s quitting their jobs. What does it mean? Liz Young, the head of Investment Strategy at SoFi, and Ranjan Roy, the co-author of Margins, help us figure it out in this week’s Big Technology Podcast. Come for an exploration of the source of the price hikes (Turkeys are 14% more expensive this year!) and a wild theory connecting interest rates with quitting. Stay for where to find savings (Hot Dogs!).

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Horacio Gutierrez is Spotify's head of global affairs and chief legal officer. He's a relentless critic of the way Apple treats smaller companies, testifying before the Senate in April that the company is abusing its power and harming competition. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss how Spotify has experienced Apple's behavior, why it's decided to speak up, and whether anything will come of this latest round of antitrust scrutiny for the tech giants.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zach Coelius is the managing partner of Coelius Capital. He's participating in an unprecedented moment where venture capitalists like him simply can't lose. There's so much money flooding the private markets that, as he put it, "any idiot with a checkbook looks like a genius right now." Coelius joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss why this is happening, where it will lead, and who gets hurt when the party ends. Stay tuned for the third segment where we read his tweets and mostly talk about San Francisco's many challenges.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lawrence Lessig is Frances Haguen's lawyer and a Harvard Law School professor. He joins Big Technology Podcast to address the various questions about Haugen's motivations, backers, and intent that have percolated since she came forward. We start by addressing whether the the leaked documents should be available to all and move into the conspiracies about her. A lively discussion follows.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Farhad Manjoo is an opinion columnist for the New York Times. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss whether the criticism of Instagram's impact on kids is overblown, the subject of a recent column. Stay tuned for the third segment, where we discuss Farhad's views of virtual reality, his Thanksgiving column, and his cats.

Subscribe to Big Technology: https://bigtechnology.substack.com/

Farhad's story about Instagram: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/opinion/instagram-teenagers.html

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a 'mega' episode with three guests! The Markup investigative reporter Adrianne Jeffries leads off with a discussion of Amazon's self-preferencing in search. Stanford Internet Observatory's Renee DiResta joins for our second segment to discuss her story on bottom-up propaganda on social media, something she calls 'ampliganda.' Verge Reporter Zoë Schiffer rounds out the week with a look into the state of worker activism at Netflix and Apple.

Check out Adrianne's story on The Markup, Renee's in The Atlantic, and Zoe's on The Verge.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charlie Warzel writes the Galaxy Brain newsletter on Substack, a publication he started after a career at The New York Times and BuzzFeed. Warzel joins Big Technology Podcast in a live recording at Unfinished Live to discuss what a nuanced conversation about social media's harms should look like. Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss Warzel's views on post-Covid workplace culture, the subject Out of Office, a forthcoming book for which he is a co-author.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Sayman was 16 years old when Facebook recruited him to join the company. The overture arrived as he was sitting in math class, and the teacher promptly took away his iPad. Sayman joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss why and how Facebook builds products for kids and teens (something he has intimate knowledge of) and the reasons why it won't stop.

You can find Sayman's new book, App Kid, here: https://amzn.to/3uNDazI

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices