The Future of Everything

While cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum gather the lion’s share of headlines, few know that these “killer apps” are just the first generation of products based on a relatively new ledger-like technology called blockchain. Founder of the Center for Blockchain Research at Stanford, Dan Boneh says that blockchain is generating a swell of excitement among coders and computer scientists not witnessed since the earliest days of the internet. While the true killer apps are still to come, Boneh says it is never too early to contemplate what blockchain is, where things might be headed and what the consequences might be on a personal, financial and societal level. From cryptokitties to mining bitcoin, host Russ Altman and guest cybersecurity expert Dan Boneh explore the state of blockchain as we know it. You can listen to the Future of Everything on Sirius XM Insight Channel 121, iTunes, SoundCloud and Stanford Engineering Magazine. Connect With Us:Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything WebsiteConnect with Russ >>> Threads / Bluesky / MastodonConnect with School of Engineering >>>Twitter/X / Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Am I saving enough for retirement? Will I outlive my money? Can I count on Social Security? These are but a few of the nagging questions most every American grapples with when contemplating retirement. Gopi Shah Goda of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) says that the migration from once ubiquitous and relatively secure pension programs to today’s self-directed retirement plans are producing anxiety and indecision in retirement planning precisely at the worst time, and it could spell a coming crisis. Throw in a teetering Social Security system and it’s no wonder so many Americans do not know when — or if — they will ever truly retire. Join host Russ Altman and economic policy expert Gopi Shah Goda for a look at the true state of U.S. retirement planning. You can listen to the Future of Everything on Sirius XM Insight Channel 121, iTunes, SoundCloud and Stanford Engineering Magazine. Connect With Us:Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything WebsiteConnect with Russ >>> Threads / Bluesky / MastodonConnect with School of Engineering >>>Twitter/X / Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Over the last three-quarters of a century, global corporations have lost sight of their broader role in society and now are focused almost exclusively on serving their shareholders. That reality has had dire consequences for the workers of the world who are, quite literally, dying for a job, says guest Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Pfeffer says the workplace is the fifth leading cause of death and that as many as 1 million people worldwide die each year from overwork. The biggest culprits are long hours and micromanagement that leave workers both exhausted and unsatisfied. Pfeffer insists that breaking the deadly cycle rests in encouraging companies to be as good at stewarding human capital as they are at financial capital. It all begins by getting a better handle on the problem through more research. Because, Pfeffer says, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. You can listen to the Future of Everything on Sirius XM Insight Channel 121, iTunes, SoundCloud and Stanford Engineering Magazine. Connect With Us:Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything WebsiteConnect with Russ >>> Threads / Bluesky / MastodonConnect with School of Engineering >>>Twitter/X / Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sarah Billington began her career in civil engineering studying concrete, a remarkable material that has literally shaped the world as we know it. Concrete is one of the most-consumed materials on Earth — second only to water, but this one material alone is also responsible for 6 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. That cold realization and a dispiriting morning meeting spent in a bunkerlike concrete-walled room led Billington to alter her research focus. She now studies how we can construct buildings designed to enhance human health and well-being. As a part of their research for the Stanford Catalyst for Collaborative Solutions, Billington and James Landay are co-leading efforts to better understand how buildings could be central contributors to our sense of fulfillment in life. From artistic, behavior-nudging digital displays to spaces that inspire a sense of belonging and creativity, tune in as host Russ Altman and Sarah Billington discuss a new and more holistic approach to building design. You can listen to the Future of Everything on Sirius XM Insight Channel 121, iTunes, SoundCloud and Stanford Engineering Magazine. Connect With Us:Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything WebsiteConnect with Russ >>> Threads / Bluesky / MastodonConnect with School of Engineering >>>Twitter/X / Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Populism can be a powerful force in a democratic society. But according to Anna Grzymala-Busse, a Stanford professor of political science and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, once in power populists often implement authoritarian policies that threaten the very foundations of democracy itself. Grzymala-Busse says that the antidote to authoritarianism is to defend democratic norms, to speak out and to vote. She discusses the issue in this episode of The Future of Everything radio show with host Russ Altman. Connect With Us:Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything WebsiteConnect with Russ >>> Threads / Bluesky / MastodonConnect with School of Engineering >>>Twitter/X / Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From Bitcoin theft to the embarrassing revelations in the Sony Pictures hacking to the recent assault on the U.S. election, the threats of international cyberattack are growing in both number and consequence. As our technology steadily becomes more cloud based, these threats will only grow and could be soon be directed at fundamental institutions we all trust and rely upon, including the electrical grid and our financial systems. Our guest in this episode of The Future of Everything radio show is Andrew Grotto, the William J. Perry International Security Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) and a reserach fellow at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford. Grotto was senior director for cybersecurity policy in both the Obama and Trump administrations. He says that successfully counteracting these looming threats is among the most serious and challenging issues of the present day. Grotto cautions that it is not just a technical challenge anymore, but a matter of national security that will require American resilience, leadership and a return to the basic norms of civil discourse. Join Russ Altman and Andrew Grotto for a clear-eyed look at the challenges of cybersecurity in the era of cloud computing. Listen here on the latest episode of The Future of Everything radio show. Connect With Us:Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything WebsiteConnect with Russ >>> Threads / Bluesky / MastodonConnect with School of Engineering >>>Twitter/X / Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Beginning in the 1980s, medical doctors started treating pain with increasing amounts of opioid medications. That shift was driven in part by an effort by the profession to be more humane to those in serious pain, but also by misinformation and aggressive marketing by the pharmaceutical industry, which wrongly convinced doctors that their drugs were both safe and not addictive. According to Anna Lembke, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, those changes wrought the current opioid crisis in which millions are addicted to heroin-like medications and many more are dead from overdoses caused by unregulated, immensely powerful street drugs. Lembke tells Altman their profession is slowly reckoning with a long-simmering problem of their own making by questioning the indiscriminate prescription of opioids and by championing new approaches to dealing with addiction, including more behavioral dependencies like those to sex and gambling. A prescription for addiction is on the table in the latest episode of The Future of Everything radio show with host Russ Altman. Connect With Us:Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything WebsiteConnect with Russ >>> Threads / Bluesky / MastodonConnect with School of Engineering >>>Twitter/X / Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When Stanford’s Martha Crenshaw, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and an expert on terrorism, is asked if she thinks terrorism is evolving, growing more widespread, violent and shocking by the year, she has one response: It’s complicated. She says that many of those trends are true, but they are driven both by the intense motivation of the terrorists and by their ability to broadcast images and messages across the world in a flash. This ability to communicate, she says, is both a tool to shock opponents and to recruit adherents. When combined, the result is a more-violent violence. The obvious question soon follows: How can we fight terrorism? Crenshaw says that it is unlikely that terrorism will ever end, but one path to reducing its influence lies in resolving many of the civil struggles that make it a compelling option for so many organizations throughout the world. Join host Russ Altman and terrorism expert Martha Crenshaw for a wide-ranging look at terrorism today, on The Future of Everything radio show from Stanford School of Engineering. Connect With Us:Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything WebsiteConnect with Russ >>> Threads / Bluesky / MastodonConnect with School of Engineering >>>Twitter/X / Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Can an expectant mother’s exposure to air pollutants or even extreme temperatures impact her unborn child’s earning potential 30 years later? Can paid family leave improve workforce attachment for new mothers? According to Maya Rossin-Slater, economist and an assistant professor of health research and policy at Stanford School of Medicine, the answer to these and other questions is “yes.” She says that research on these topics can provide policy makers with more comprehensive information on the costs and benefits in their decision-making, which is especially important for policies that have disproportionate effects on the less affluent. Rossin-Slater says, for instance, that just 14% of Americans have access to paid family leave from their employers and the numbers grow starker the further down the economic ladder a new parent happens to be. The consequences are hurting not just future generations of Americans, but also American businesses, she says. On this episode of The Future of Everything, host Russ Altman and Rossin-Slater discuss the many ways public policy decisions can affect families and America’s poor. Connect With Us:Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything WebsiteConnect with Russ >>> Threads / Bluesky / MastodonConnect with School of Engineering >>>Twitter/X / Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It may not be widely known, but before he launched Apple, Steve Jobs lived for a year on a commune. The fact that he became one of the wealthiest capitalists in America, however, should not surprise anyone who knows anything about the antecedents of Silicon Valley, says Stanford’s Fred Turner, professor of communication and history. The truth is that there is a strong countercultural thread running through the fabric of today’s digital world. From “phreaking” scams of the long-distance telephone system to the Whole Earth Catalog, those who sought to disrupt society often found comfort in computers. For proof, one need only consider the Utopian ideals that led to the ascendancy of the internet itself — universal, free and limitless. Seen in that light, Facebook is about as communal as it comes. Nonetheless, while all that freedom has made many people very rich, very fast, it has not come without a cost to our social consciousness and our social fabric, says Turner. In this episode of The Future of Everything radio show, Russ Altman and Fred Turner look at the somewhat surprising communal roots of today’s social, digital world. Tune in, if you dig. Connect With Us:Episode Transcripts >>> The Future of Everything WebsiteConnect with Russ >>> Threads / Bluesky / MastodonConnect with School of Engineering >>>Twitter/X / Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.