Stanford Radio

Glasses for kids can be cool and fun! Stanford alums Nathan Kondamuri and Sophia Edelstein of Pair Eyewear tell us how.

Nathan Kondamuri and Sophia Edelstein of Pair Eyewear tell us how they have fundamentally changed the world of eyewear for children and adults.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on May 29.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E150 | Sam Wineburg: How to improve American students’ fact-checking skills

A cognitive psychologist explains why, with so much information at their disposal, American students struggle to tell fact from fiction … and how he thinks we might fix it.

Sam Wineburg, a research psychologist at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, recently conducted a nationwide study of the fact-checking skills of thousands of American high school students.

He didn’t go about it with a survey asking the kids to self-report their own behaviors. Instead, he devised a live experiment that charged the 3,000 students in the study to determine the veracity of a now-famous bit of fake news from the 2016 election. Wineburg and team were then able to follow along as students tried to find the true source of the video, which had been produced in Russia as part of a disinformation campaign.

In the end, just three students – one-tenth of one percent – arrived at the right answer. Rather than blame the kids, however, Wineburg says fault lies with the tools they are using, which have changed so dramatically in speed and scope that their fact-checking skills have had trouble keeping up.

All is not lost, he promises, but fixing the problem will require changing not just what information students consume, but the way they think about it, as Wineburg tells host Russ Altman in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast. Listen and subscribe here.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E149 | Julie Parsonnet: How faith in herd immunity may be misplaced

An expert in infectious diseases says that an undue focus on herd immunity could actually be doing more harm than good in the fight against COVID-19.

Many have now become familiar with the term herd immunity, an idea few outside the infectious disease community knew just a few short months ago.

It’s an elusive concept to comprehend, and harder still to achieve, but Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Julie Parsonnet says it’s important to understand just what herd immunity does – and doesn’t – mean for today’s pandemic.

Broadly speaking, herd immunity is reached when enough people have either recovered from or have been fully vaccinated against an infectious disease and there are no longer enough susceptible people in the entire population (the herd) to sustain transmission. Herd immunity doesn’t mean there won’t be cases, only that when they crop up, they will then die out. Parsonnet says this term is meant for epidemiologists to model what things will and won’t work; herd immunity is never really a public health goal in and of itself. Parsonnet also says that, in models, there are many obstacles to attaining herd immunity, including vaccine hesitancy, especially in people most likely to transmit the infection (young adults); imperfect effectiveness of the vaccine; movement of people; carriage of the virus in non-human hosts; and the continuous appearance of variants.

Importantly, Parsonnet says, herd immunity is unlikely to be permanent. Society must remain vigilant, continuously limiting the number of susceptible people to keep the herd safe. She therefore counsels deemphasizing the concept and instead bringing the diversity of communities into the conversation to achieve high levels of protection in the U.S. and globally. She says every vaccine given is a step in the direction of “normal.”

In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast, host Russ Altman and Parsonnet also talk about her other research showing that average human body temperature is on the decline worldwide. Listen and subscribe here.

A new study from Stanford researchers shows that the content in college essays strongly correlates with income and SAT scores. Our guests discuss what this means for fairness in college admissions.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on May 8, 2021.

How disability intersects with race, gender, and social class in education.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on May 8, 2021.

While calls to "defund the police" have made headlines, a new Stanford Law report Safety Beyond Policing: Promoting Care Over Criminalization explores alternatives to the use of police in sensitive situations such as mental health crises and in schools. Two of the report's co-authors, Professor Robert Weisberg and Stanford Law student Michelle Portillo discuss key questions about policing, shedding light on promising alternatives that have been piloted in a variety of places around the country—alternatives that deploy mental health professionals, saving lives, police resources, and funds.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on May 8, 2021.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E148 |Maneesh Agrawala: How AI is changing video editing

Technology is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in video editing. Society must consider the creative possibilities as well as the misinformation risks..

Imagine typing words into a text editor and watching on a nearby television as a well-known celebrity speaks those words within seconds.

Computer graphics expert Maneesh Agrawala has imagined it and has created a video editing software that can do it, too. Given enough raw video, Agrawala’s application can produce polished, photorealistic video of any person saying virtually anything he types in.

While he acknowledges concerns about manufactured “deep fakes” of political leaders or others speaking words they never said, Agrawala chooses to focus on the profound upside. He envisions the television and film industries using his technology to forgo costly reshoots, for instance, or medical professionals helping people with damaged vocal cords regain their natural voices.

In the end, while ethical and legal frameworks are being developed to address deep fakes with all due seriousness they deserve, Agrawala says the benefits of the technology, and his passion for it, gets at the most basic of all human endeavors — better communication. Agrawala tells host Russ Altman all about it in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast. Listen and subscribe here.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E147 | Noah Rosenberg: How biology is becoming more mathematical

A geneticist explains why biology, a field once thought relatively removed from mathematics, is quickly becoming a hotbed of computational science.

Biology is not typically considered a mathematically intensive science, says Noah Rosenberg, an expert in genetics, but all that is about to change.

Math, statistics, data and computer science have coalesced into a growing interest in applying quantitative skills to this traditionally qualitative field.

The result will be better and more accurate models of life, ranging from genetic inheritance to the entirety of human society. The yield will be a greater understanding and, quite possibly, revolutionary interventions into disease, ecology, demography, and even evolution itself. The tools of mathematical biology have never been more apparent, Rosenberg says, as mathematical models of the spread of infectious disease have been central around the world in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

With applications in health care, forensic genetics, and human evolution, the tools of mathematical biology are proving more relevant and more needed than ever, as Noah Rosenberg tells Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast, with host bioengineer Russ Altman.

Anxiety is a natural response to stress. Summer Moore Batte, Stanford alum talks how to effectively manage it in her book “Name and Tame Your Anxiety.”

Summer Moore talks managing debilitating anxiety in her playbook for parents who are trying to help their kids with their anxious feelings.

The Importance of Cultural Humility and Mental Health in the Legal Field by Stanford Radio