There was a time when everything on the internet seemed like it would be there forever, whether a Facebook status or a government website. But today the prospect of maintaining massive amounts of digital history is in doubt. This poses a particular issue for the open science movement, which has advocated for wide access to scientific data and papers over the last 25 years. The movement’s successes have led to the creation of digital research infrastructure such as data libraries and preservation systems that serve large and small research communities. Now, as the system is maturing, it’s becoming clear that open science isn’t free: it requires investment and significant effort to stay alive. Without it, open research cannot be verified or advanced. 

On this episode, host Megan Nicholson is joined by Jen Gibson and Kaitlin Thaney, authors of “Who Will Keep Research Data Infrastructure Open and Running?” in our Spring 2026 issue. Gibson is the executive director of Dryad, an open-access international research data repository and curation service. Thaney is the executive director of Invest in Open Infrastructure, a nonprofit that advances open-source solutions and systems for research communities. 

Resources:

Read “Who Will Keep Research Data Infrastructure Open and Running?” for more on the importance of maintaining digital infrastructure.

Visit Dryad and Invest in Open Infrastructure’s websites to learn more about open data, open infrastructure, and how you can support their work. 

On Science Policy IRL, we talk to people in science policy about what they do and how they got there. In this installment, host Josh Trapani talks to Mary Woolley about leading Research!America for 35 years. During her tenure, Research!America grew into a major research advocacy organization and helped advocate for many changes, including doubling the budget of the National Institutes of Health.

In this episode, Woolley reflects on the transitions she has seen in science and the role of scientists over her career, and shares how researchers can engage with policymakers and the community. 

Resources:

• How do Americans feel about science? Check out the results from Research!America’s 2026 January National Survey. 
• Read Mary Woolley’s letter in Issues about the importance of public engagement and understanding public sentiment. 
• Learn more about the McClintock Letters Initiative, a national op-ed letter writing campaign to share why science needs investment. 

Spam represents nearly half of all global email traffic, from obnoxious ads to dire warnings of impending account closures to absurd invitations to join the Illuminati (just ask our podcast producer). It is a constant, annoying part of online life, but does it have to be that way?. Understanding the efforts to address spam in the early 2000s offers lessons for how we might regulate technologies such as artificial intelligence today. 

On this episode, host Jason Lloyd is joined by Rebecca Coyne, who recently received her master’s degree in public policy from the University of Michigan. Coyne wrote about spam policy in the Spring 2026 issue, in an article titled “Spam Policy and the Myth of the Ungovernable Internet.” 

Resources:

• Read “Spam Policy and the Myth of the Ungovernable Internet” by Rebecca Coyne, from our Spring 2026 issue. 
• Learn more about the early internet by reading “A Prehistory of Social Media” by Kevin Driscoll, and listen to his podcast episode. 
• Check out Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet by Finn Burton for more on the history of spam, and read this article to learn about the vigilante hijinks during the “spam wars.” 
• For more on AI regulation, read “The Mirage of AI Deregulation” by Alondra Nelson in Science and “Moratoriums and Federal Preemption of State Artificial Intelligence Laws Pose Serious Risks,” a report from the Center for American Progress.

On Science Policy IRL, we talk to people in science policy about what they do and how they got there. In this installment, we’re exploring how science policy works from both inside and outside the government. 

Host Monya Baker is joined by Kumar Garg, president of Renaissance Philanthropy, an organization that helps philanthropists support science, technology and innovation. Prior to joining Renaissance Philanthropy, Garg trained as a lawyer and served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He shares how he has spent his career finding, funding, and implementing ideas both within the government and outside it via philanthropy, which is uniquely positioned to pilot “big, if true” ideas. 

Resources

• Learn more about Renaissance Philanthropy by visiting their website and listening to Garg’s interview on how philanthropy can fuel scientific innovation. 
• Visit the NIH Brain Initiative website for more information on the initiative. 
• See Team Kalil’s white board with more advice on how to get things done.

How do people find good jobs? How do employers find good talent? How should the American economy prepare for the future of work in the age of artificial intelligence? 

On this episode, Issues editor Molly Galvin talks to Burning Glass Institute president Matt Sigelman about these questions. Sigelman spent two decades developing the field of real-time labor market data as CEO and then chairman of a company now known as Lightcast. Five years ago, he founded Burning Glass to transform the way that policymakers, researchers, employers, education institutions, and workers understand, plan for, and connect with the world of work.

An edited version of this interview appears in our Spring 2026 issue. 

Resources:

Read the Issues Spring 2026 interview with Matt Sigelman. 

Learn more about Sigelman’s work by visiting the Burning Glass Institute and Lightcast websites. 

Assistive reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization have helped many people have children. Behind many of these births are egg donors, whose experiences remain largely invisible in public narratives and scholarship. As reproductive technologies change—along with the ethical and policy challenges they raise—the role of egg donors will too. 

On this episode, host Jason Lloyd is joined by Emily Packard Dawson, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan Medical School whose work focuses on the ethics of emerging reproductive technologies. In our Winter 2026 issue, Dawson reviewed a book by Diane M. Tober called Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them. Dawson discusses egg donors and the donation process, and what advances in reproductive technologies might mean for them. 

Resources

Read Emily Packard Dawson’s review of Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them. 

Check out the National Academies workshop report, “In Vitro–Derived Human Gametes as a Reproductive Technology: Scientific, Ethical, and Regulatory Implications: Proceedings of a Workshop” to learn more about in vitro gametogenesis.

On Science Policy IRL, we talk to people in science policy about what they do and how they got there. Most of the people we’ve interviewed work in the legislative branch of the federal government or in agencies in the executive branch. In this installment, we’re going to an unexpected place for science policy: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

Host Lisa Margonelli is joined by Edward You, who has been called “America’s Top Bioterror Cop” by MIT Technology Review. A biochemist by training, You worked for the FBI for over 20 years. At the FBI, he served in the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, and was also on joint duty assignment at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where he served as the National Counterintelligence Officer for Emerging and Disruptive Technologies. In this episode, Margonelli and You discuss how his time as an FBI agent enabled him to reframe the way the policymakers understand what is required to protect biosecurity and support innovation.

Resources: 

Watch a 60 Minutes episode on DNA and the big-money market for biodata, featuring Edward You. 

Read “National and Transnational Security Implications of Big Data in the Life Sciences” (2014), a joint report from the FBI, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute. 

Learn more about big data, security, and the FBI’s role by reading “Biosecurity in the age of Big Data: A Conversation With the FBI”. 

Check out Issues’s recent publications on biosecurity: 

• Interview with Senator Todd Young on emerging biotechnologies.

• “Reconsidering Research Security” by John C. Gannon, Richard Meserve, and Maria T. Zuber. 

• “When All Research Is Dual Use” by Sam Weiss Evans.

Innovation lately feels synonymous with the digital entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley or the high-tech corridor of Route 128 outside Boston. But when Thomas Edison opened his first research lab in the 1870s, it was in Newark, New Jersey. A few years later, in nearby Menlo Park, he invented the light bulb. Now, Newark is working to build a new, inclusive tech innovation ecosystem that goes beyond this legacy.

On this episode, host Lisa Margonelli is joined by Fay Cobb Payton and Lyneir Richardson, who are both at Rutgers University. Payton directs the Institute for Data, Research, and Innovation Science (IDRIS) and Lyneir is the executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development. Together they have been pioneering data-led innovation and business accelerators with a diverse group of entrepreneurs.

Resources

Read Senator Andy Kim’s vision for New Jersey’s Einstein Corridor. 

Learn more about the Exit to Win accelerator by watching this video. 

Check out more Issues articles on regional economic development. 

• “Cultivating Mastery in Place” by Maryann Feldman and Alaina Kayaani-George. Diné entrepreneurs entwine economic renewal with mutual obligation, providing a model of regional economic development that serves the community.
• “Revisiting the Connection Between Innovation, Education, and Regional Economic Growth” by Grace J. Wang. What have we learned over the past 40 years about how to generate sustained economic growth through scientific research and technological innovation?
• “Place-Based Economic Development” by Maryann Feldman. 
• “Lessons from Baltimore for Participatory Research” by Alvin Hathaway Sr. A pastor and community organizer explains what a landmark Black neuroscience study needed to gain insight, influence, and credibility.

What do the design of high-visibility public safety vests, the distance between two railroad tracks, and the protocols that allow for file transfers between devices have in common? Each is determined by a technical standard set through a process coordinated by a private, non-profit organization called the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Technical standards are behind most of the products Americans interact with in everyday life, underpinning public safety, consumer protection, interoperability, and innovation. 

On this episode, host Megan Nicholson is joined by president and CEO of ANSI and former director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Laurie Locascio. Locascio explains the importance of standards for innovation and competitiveness, and describes how the US approach to standards development depends on the participation of people with all kinds of expertise. She also shares how more researchers can find their way into setting “the invisible infrastructure of modern life.” 

Resources

• Read ANSI’s United States Standards Strategy 2025 and review their courses and webinars about the American national standard designation.  
• Check out the US government’s 2023 National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technology, which has not been adopted by the Trump Administration. 
  Read an Issues piece from 1999 on “Why Standards Matter” by Robert L. Mallett, former Deputy Secretary of Commerce.

Cannabis policy in the United States has been, in many ways, a giant experiment. The drug was recently reclassified by the Trump administration from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug, but remains federally illegal. On the state level, cannabis’s availability to patients and consumers has been determined by voters, not by scientists and regulators. Each state has a different approach to cannabis regulation and product safety, and as a result, a patient using medical cannabis in Florida might be exposed to different risks than a consumer in California, for example.

On this episode, host Kelsey Schoenberg is joined by toxicologist Maxwell C. K. Leung, assistant professor at Arizona State University and the director of the ASU Cannabis Analytics, Safety and Health Initiative, and Symone T. Griffith, an ASU Presidential Scholar and doctoral candidate at Arizona State University. Leung and Griffith, who wrote about cannabis regulation and product safety for the Fall 2025 Issues, explain how the federal-state legal divide has shaped cannabis safety, research, and policy. They also share what it’s like to be a researcher working in this space. 

RESOURCES

• Read Leung, Griffith, and Marisa Kreider’s essay, “A Coordinated Approach to Cannabis Policy and Product Safety,” in the Fall Issues.
• Check out Leung and Griffith’s paper on cannabis use and Parkinson’s patients, as well as their lab’s analysis of state-level regulations for cannabis contaminants.
• Read a paper from the Cannabis Regulators Association outlining a research agenda for how science can shape cannabis policy.
• Listen to another episode on cannabis: “Minimizing Cannabis’s Harms to Public Health,” with Sara Frueh and guest Yasmin Hurd.