After a head-spinning year in the worlds of health and technology, Audie Cornish of The Assignment sat down with Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Clare Duffy to break down the stories that ended up on all their podcasts this year.

Producer: Dan Bloom

Technical Director: Dan Dzula

Executive Producer: Steve Lickteig

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you have new tech gadgets on your holiday wishlist, chances are you also have old devices that have passed their prime. What’s the safest and most responsible way to get rid of these items? Christine Datz-Romero, the co-founder and executive director of the Lower East Side Ecology Center, shares some tips for reducing and recycling e-waste.

Terms of Service is a CNN Podcasts and Goat Rodeo production. This episode was produced by Hazel Hoffman. At Goat Rodeo, the lead producer is Rebecca Seidel, and the executive producers are Megan Nadolski and Ian Enright. At CNN, Matt Martinez is our Senior Producer and Dan Dzula is our Technical Director. Production support from Sofía Sanchez. Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN Audio.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Making friends can be hard. So, 23-year-old Avi Schiffmann decided to create his own Friend, a wearable AI device that he says “bottles” the best human relationships he’s had. Friend listens and creates “memories” of everything you say and chats with you via an app. Clare sat down with Avi to discuss why he created the device, his controversial New York City marketing campaign and why he thinks we should embrace a new kind of relationship with AI. 

We’re taking listener questions for upcoming episodes! If you have tech questions or concerns you’d like answered, email us or send us a voice note at [email protected].

Terms of Service is a CNN Podcasts and Goat Rodeo production. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn. At Goat Rodeo, the lead producer is Rebecca Seidel, and the executive producers are Megan Nadolski and Ian Enright. At CNN, Matt Martinez is our Senior Producer and Dan Dzula is our Technical Director. Production support from Sofía Sanchez. Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN Audio. Production support from Anna Sturla and Kelly Burns. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trying to get kids to spend less time online is an uphill battle. It can be hard to keep track of parental controls, especially when they function differently across devices and apps. Is there a single, foolproof way to stay on top of it all? Nicki Petrossi, host of the podcast Scrolling 2 Death, says it’s not that simple – but she does have some concrete tips for managing your kids’ screen time.

We’re taking listener questions for upcoming episodes! If you have tech questions or concerns you’d like answered, email us or send us a voice note at [email protected].

Terms of Service is a CNN Audio and Goat Rodeo production. This episode was produced by Hazel Hoffman. At Goat Rodeo, the lead producer is Rebecca Seidel, and the executive producers are Megan Nadolski and Ian Enright. At CNN, Matt Martinez is our Senior Producer and Dan Dzula is our Technical Director. Production support from Sofía Sanchez. Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN Audio.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Smart glasses aren’t a new idea, but they’re having a moment in Silicon Valley. With sleeker designs and AI-enhanced capabilities, the newest models of these glasses have the potential to enter the mainstream. But just how much can you actually do with smart glasses? And could they really one day replace our smartphones? CNN Tech Editor Lisa Eadicicco, who’s covered the tech and gadget world for more than a decade, has some thoughts.

We’re taking listener questions for upcoming episodes! If you have tech questions or concerns you’d like answered, email us or send us a voice note at [email protected].

Terms of Service is a CNN Podcasts and Goat Rodeo production. This episode was produced by Hazel Hoffman. At Goat Rodeo, the lead producer is Rebecca Seidel, and the executive producers are Megan Nadolski and Ian Enright. At CNN, Matt Martinez is our Senior Producer and Dan Dzula is our Technical Director. Production support from Sofía Sanchez. Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN Podcasts.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With the launch of apps like OpenAI’s Sora 2, creating videos with AI is easier than ever. On our feeds, it’s getting harder to spot AI-generated videos — and to avoid obvious slop. How much of this boom is novelty and how much is here to stay? Henry Ajder, a deepfake expert and co-founder of the University of Cambridge’s AI in Business Program, charts the latest developments in the field and offers advice about trying to determine what’s real and fake.

We’re taking listener questions for upcoming episodes! If you have tech questions or concerns you’d like answered, email us or send us a voice note at [email protected].

Terms of Service is a CNN Podcasts and Goat Rodeo production. This episode was produced by Jay Venables. At Goat Rodeo, the lead producer is Rebecca Seidel, and the executive producers are Megan Nadolski and Ian Enright. At CNN, Matt Martinez is our Senior Producer and Dan Dzula is our Technical Director. Production support from Sofía Sanchez. Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN Podcasts.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week marks a special milestone for Terms of Service! It’s been one year of demystifying technology and talking about how to engage with new tools without getting played by them. To celebrate, CNN Anchor and Correspondent Omar Jimenez took over hosting duties to ask Clare about the inception of the podcast, how hosting has changed her own tech habits and what she hopes to achieve in the next year of Terms of Service.

Listen to Omar’s podcast, CNN Presents: Tortured Justice, here.

If you have tech questions or concerns you’d like answered, email us or send us a voice note at [email protected].

Terms of Service is a CNN Podcasts and Goat Rodeo production. This episode was produced by Cara Shillenn. At Goat Rodeo, the lead producer is Rebecca Seidel, and the executive producers are Megan Nadolski and Ian Enright. At CNN, Matt Martinez is our Senior Producer and Dan Dzula is our Technical Director. Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN Podcasts.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cryptocurrency ATM machines have become a prime tool for scammers to seize money from victims — in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars. How do these scams work, and how can you steer clear of them? Curt Devine, a producer for CNN Investigates, shares what his team found when they dug into these scams. You can read more about their investigation here.

–
For an upcoming episode, we want to know how AI is affecting high school students’ plans for what to study in college or what to pursue as a career. If you’re a high school student, or if you’re a parent of a teen who’d be willing to talk with us about this, please get in touch. Send us a voicenote or email at [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the past few decades, we have all collectively gotten worse at reading. Is our ever-increasing screen time part of the problem? Or could new technology actually help us raise better readers? According to Susan Neuman, a specialist in early literacy development and a professor at NYU, it’s a bit of both.

We’re taking listener questions for upcoming episodes! If you have tech questions or concerns you’d like answered, email us or send us a voice note at [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if we could understand what the animals around us are saying? It’s the subject of countless movies and thought experiments, and something many of us wish we could do. Thanks to artificial intelligence, that reality may be closer than ever. Aza Raskin is the co-founder of the Earth Species Project, a nonprofit that's using AI to decode animal communication. He explains how AI identifies language patterns across the animal kingdom, which species we’re closest to understanding, and how to mitigate harms that could result from this new technology. 

We’re taking listener questions for upcoming episodes! If you have tech questions or concerns you’d like answered, email us or send us a voice note at [email protected]. 

The humpback whale songs you heard in this episode were recorded by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. You can listen to the audio at https://freesound.org/s/498708/.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices