Stanford Radio

Calley Means, Stanford Alum and Founder of Anomalie, a start up driving change beyond the traditional in the wedding dress industry.

Accomplished fashion entrepreneur Calley Means is disrupting the bridal industry through customizable technology that designs the perfect wedding gown and ready to wear pieces.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on October 17, 2020.

Revelations about President Trump’s tax returns, and news about how much or how little he has paid to the federal government, have made headlines in recent weeks. In this episode, Stanford Legal co-host Joe Bankman, himself a tax law expert, breaks down the important takeaways from what we know about the President and his taxes.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on October 10, 2020.

The Electoral College is a uniquely American system, with electors in each state choosing our president rather than the popular vote. After two recent presidents lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College (Bush and Trump), is it outdated and unfair? In this episode, Stanford historian Jack Rakove joins Pam and Joe to discuss the history and present-day relevance of the Electoral College.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on October 10, 2020.

Antero Garcia, Stanford education professor, discusses civic engagement in times of COVID-19 and political division.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on September 26, 2020.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the legal icon known as the architect of the legal fight for women’s rights in the 1970s, is remembered in this episode of Stanford Legal by her former SCOTUS clerk Lisa Beattie Frelinghuysen. Join Pam, Joe, and Lisa for this discussion about RBG’s legacy, key cases, and recollections of the notorious justice.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on September 26, 2020.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E126 | Rafael Pelayo: How to get a good night’s sleep

A sleep expert offers insight into why so many of us are not getting enough zzz’s, what the consequences are and, above all, how we can sleep better.

COVID-19 is changing how many scientists, like Stanford sleep expert Rafael Pelayo, MD, view their field. First off, the shift to telemedicine is providing Pelayo, author of the new book How to Sleep, an unprecedented glimpse into the sleep environments of his patients. “I’m making house calls for the first time,” he says.

Second, surprisingly, some of his patients, unburdened of long commutes, say they are sleeping and dreaming more than ever. But, others are not so fortunate, reporting increased trouble sleeping and more nightmares. Pandemic-induced or not, the consequences of lost sleep are universal and readily apparent in the country’s diminished productivity, in the rates of stroke, heart attacks and car accidents, and in the pervasive irritable mood many can’t seem to escape.

To get a better night’s sleep, Pelayo says, put the screens away, consider that continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine if you snore (it could save your life, he says), and find a way to create a personal sleep environment even if you share a bed with someone you love.

Join us as Rafael Pelayo and our host, Stanford bioengineer, Russ Altman, talk sleep on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast. Listen here, and subscribe to the podcast here.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

Marietje Schaake: Can democracy survive in a digital world?

A former Member of the European Parliament sizes up the state of democracy in the digital age and finds much to fret about, but also ways to fight back.

Marietje Schaake was a Member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2019 and now serves as the international policy director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. As she has watched democracy evolve in the age of instantaneous global communication and hyperconnected social media, she has grown concerned about the resilience of democracy as technology disrupts the status quo.

While the technologies—and the often-unregulated companies who created them—claim to be well-meaning, she says democracy is under attack from propagandists and bad actors using these transformative tools in troubling ways. The business models based on surveillance and advertising were never designed with preserving democracy in mind. We now find ourselves at a decisive moment for the future of elective government, she says. America and other democratic nations can expose the meddlers and their techniques or succumb to their approaches. The solutions, she says, begin at the grassroots and with the tech companies. We need real-time and independent monitoring and research to better expose manipulations and to allow for evidence-based policy making.

Join Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast for an insider’s sobering look at democracy in the digital age. Listen here, and subscribe here to the podcast.

Ronan McGovern on empowering people to be their best selves, with a particular focus on the Neurodiverse among us.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on September 19, 2020.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman

Andrew Huberman: How stress affects the mind — and how to relieve it

The year has unleashed stresses few would have imagined just months ago, but the science of stress — and of stress relief — is keeping pace. A Stanford neurobiologist explains.

Andrew Huberman is a Stanford neurobiologist and ophthalmologist keenly interested in the biology of stress and ways to manage stress.

He’s developed and tested a number of stress-relieving techniques — from specific patterns of breathing to visual tools — and uses virtual reality to help humans control their stress in adaptive ways. He is also testing how people can access better sleep using stress-relief tools. Much of this work is done in collaboration with David Spiegel, MD, associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine.

Huberman studies how the nervous system takes in and processes information and uses it to drive reflexive and deliberate behavior. In that regard, humans are largely visual animals. The vast majority of the information we collect about the world comes through the eyes, and those circuits are tied directly to our most primordial “fight or flight” systems. Light, and how our brains process light energy, is closely tied to our stress mechanisms. Our most immediate reaction to stress, he notes, is for our pupils to dilate, which changes how we see the world — literally — in a way that allows us to better respond to threats. Breathing and vision can also be used to control stress.

Huberman tells us all about it in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast, hosted by Stanford bioengineer Russ Altman. Listen and subscribe to the podcast here.

Xiao Wang, Founder of Boundless, a start up that empowers families to navigate the immigration system more confidently, rapidly, and affordably.

Originally aired on September 12, 2020.