The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

"Michelle Monje: New therapies for brain cancer"

A deepening understanding of how the healthy brain grows and functions is leading to exciting new brain cancer therapies that are both more effective and easier on patients.

Brain cancers are known to be elusive and clever killers, but Michelle Monje, associate professor of neurology and neurological sciences, is helping to find new treatments through a better understanding of how healthy brain cells develop and how cancers often hijack those very same processes in order to grow themselves.

Monje says that the last decade has seen tremendous progress in our understanding of how cancers thrive and in the development of new drugs and therapies to kill the killers. Unfortunately, many chemotherapy drugs powerful enough to kill cancers also cause lasting impairment of the patient’s cognitive abilities, a condition known among doctors and patients as “chemobrain.”

Monje is on the hunt for more effective and safer treatments for brain cancer. One exciting development, she says, is a quickly evolving field known as immunotherapy, which harnesses the body’s own immune system to recognize and to kill cancers. She’s also exploring a new drug that can help specific brain cells, known as glia, counteract the harmful effects of chemobrain.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on March 23, 2019.

Recorded at Stanford Video.

Stanford Pathfinders with Howard Wolf:

"What it's Like Being the President of a Major League Baseball Team w/ guest Dave Kaval"

Dave Kaval, President of the Oakland Athletics talks about his career in sports and the A's quest to build a new ball park.

Originally aired on March 23, 2019.

Recorded at Stanford Video.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

"Dennis Wall: The changing face of autism diagnosis and treatment"

AI is reshaping diagnosis of autism, making it quicker, less expensive and more accurate. As a result, interventions are coming earlier in life, a key to more effective treatment.

The current process for diagnosing autism requires no less than 10 hours of intensive doctor-to-patient observation.

It is expensive and time-consuming, says autism expert Dennis Wall, an associate professor of pediatrics and of biomedical data science at Stanford. Wall is developing new ways to tackle the problem.

He says advances in machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence focused on training computers to perform important medical tasks, stand to shake up the field. He’s developing computer models that can spot autism by watching just a few minutes of video of a child at play in their natural home environment.

With these technologies, diagnosis happens in as little as four minutes. In addition, Wall says, scoring can be done by non-experts, rather than highly trained psychiatrists, lowering the costs further. He thinks such AI models could reduce bottlenecks and get kids with autism into treatment sooner, a key to maximizing the treatment’s effect.

Beyond diagnosis, Wall says that digital technologies together with AI are also changing therapeutics. For example, he’s developing augmented reality applications, one for Google Glass, that can help autistic kids better recognize and learn emotional cues – anger, joy, sadness – in the faces of others, a particular challenge for those with autism. Another that goes beyond the wearable form factor to even more ubiquitous technologies – your phone – is an app that can teach social skills through fun but poignant AI-enabled games, such as charades, where imitation advances the child’s social skills as the AI engine tracks progress automatically.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on March 23, 2019.

Recorded at Stanford Video.

Stanford Pathfinders with Howard Wolf:

"Football Powerhouse Andrew Luck Discusses His Life and Career"

From growing up as a child in Germany to choosing to attend Stanford University, this football great talks about his Stanford days, reveals some of his favorite memories on and off the football field, and discusses his bright future with the NFL.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on March 9, 2019. Will re-air with a fresh preface mentioning his retirement on September 7, 2019.

Recorded at SiriusXM in New York City.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

"Xiaolin Zheng: New benefits of combustion revealed"

Humankind has prospered greatly from fire, but that doesn’t mean we know all its secrets.

Mechanical engineer Xiaolin Zheng really likes to burn things, but she is more like a modern-day Prometheus than a pyromaniac. She uses combustion to create minute nanoparticles of various metal oxides that have many practical and valuable uses in today’s world.

For instance, she has created nanoparticles that can turn water into hydrogen peroxide using only energy from the sun. Hydrogen peroxide is a powerful disinfectant that kills microbes and removes other pollutants from water. Zheng imagines creating inexpensive, portable, solar-powered water purifiers to help the two to three billion people in the world who lack access to plentiful potable water.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on March 9, 2019.

Recorded at Stanford Video.

School's In with Dan Schwartz and Denise Pope:

"The Intersection of Language and Race with guest Jonathan Rosa"

Jonathan Rosa is a linguistic anthropologist and an assistant professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. He discusses how language and race intersect, and how teachers can approach these language differences in the classroom.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on March 2, 2019.

Recorded by Stanford Video.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

"Billy Loo: “FLASH” radiation therapy brings hope to cancer patients"

This technology aims to eliminate cancer while minimizing collateral damage to surrounding healthy organs.

Stanford radiation oncologist, Billy Loo, says that a new generation of radiation therapy technology called PHASER will be so fast that it can even compensate for the patient moving during treatment.

High-energy X-rays will be fired so quickly, like a flash photograph, that motion is frozen and radiation can be more precisely focused on tumors. His research team is also finding that such ultra-fast “FLASH” radiation kills cancer cells through new biological mechanisms while causing less damage to healthy tissues.

Loo says that while radiation benefits two-thirds of U.S. patients, half of patients with cancer around the world lack access to these curative technologies. To address issues of access, the Stanford Radiation Oncology and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory team is designing PHASER to be a mobile unit that will fit in a standard cargo shipping container and can be powered by solar energy.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on February 23, 2019.

Recorded at Stanford Video.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

"Londa Schiebinger: Why does gender matter?"

From designing research to setting priorities for funding decisions and drafting policy, understanding gender differences enhances all phases of scientific research.

In safety engineering, ergonomic differences between men and women are important. Conventional seat belts do not fit pregnant women properly and motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of fetal death related to maternal trauma. Analyses of sex differences have led to the development of pregnant crash test dummies that enhance safety in automobile testing and design.

In medicine, osteoporosis has been conceptualized primarily as a women's disease, yet after a certain age men account for nearly a third of osteoporosis-related hip fractures. Tragically, when men break their hips, they tend to die. We don't know why. Analyzing the interaction between sex and gender in osteoporosis has led to new diagnostics for men, and the search for better treatments is underway.

In these and many other cases, historian Londa Schiebinger points out that if we don't consider sex or gender analysis, past bias may be perpetuated into the future, even when governments, universities and companies have implemented policies to foster equality.

The big question now, she says, is: How can humans automate processes that also contribute to creating a fair and equal society? Schiebinger highlights examples of efforts where computer scientists are working to create mathematically rigorous definitions of fairness in order to develop and optimize algorithms that guarantee fairness. There is much work to be done, but as Scheibinger sees it, there is a big opportunity for these algorithms as well as the robotic systems they will enable to challenge and eventually reconfigure gender norms.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on Febrary 23, 2019.

Recorded at Stanford Video.

Stanford Pathfinders with Howard Wolf:

"Constructive Vigilance with Larry Diamond"

Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, discusses his recent report, “Chinese Influence & American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance,” and the compelling conclusion it draws about China’s manipulation attempts in the United States

Originally aired on SiriusXM on February 23, 2019.

Recorded at Stanford Video.

School's In with Dan Schwartz and Denise Pope:

"Learning Differences with guest Elizabeth Kozleski"

Elizabeth Kozleski is a Dean’s Senior Scholar for Teaching and Learning at Stanford Graduate School of Education. She discusses inclusiveness, learning differences and how children are tracked into special education classrooms.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on February 16, 2019.

Recorded at Stanford Video.