Stay ConnectedEvery Friday, Slate’s popular daily news podcast What Next brings you TBD, a clear-eyed look into the future. From fake news to fake meat, algorithms to augmented reality, Lizzie O’Leary is your guide to the tech industry and the world it’s creating for us to live in.
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In this episode April Glaser is joined by co-host Kim-Mai Cutler, a partner at Initialized Capital, an early-stage venture firm. She’s also a former full-time journalist at TechCrunch.
First, April and Kim-Mai discuss the lack of affordable housing in California and the political battles that are hindering progress.
Then they talk about the upcoming wildfire season with Faith Kearns from the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Lizzie Johnson from the San Francisco Chronicle.
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In this episode, April Glaser is joined by guest co-host Max Read, an editor at New York magazine who covers technology and the internet.
First, April and Max talk about Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes’ apostasy. Last week, Hughes wrote a long op-ed in the New York Times about why he thinks the company that made him so wealthy should be broken up.
Then Katherine Lo joins the hosts to discuss how Facebook’s redesign will change how we communicate on the platform. These days she leads the content moderation team at a nonprofit called Meedan, which works with journalists on disinformation. While we talk a lot about how large social networks are governed—and misgoverned—it’s less frequent that we talk about how these platforms are designed, and how that can lead to toxic behavior.
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In this episode April Glaser is joined once again by guest co-host Meredith Broussard, a data journalism professor at NYU and author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World.
First, historian Mar Hicks joins the show to talk about the tech industry’s long-time aversion to organized labor and how that’s clashing with recent worker actions at major tech companies like Google and Uber.
Then Alexis Madrigal joins the hosts to talk about his recent piece in the Atlantic called “The End of Cyberspace” where he argues that the 90s dream of an unregulated internet is starting to fade. According to Madrigal, it’s time to create a new alluring vision for what cyberspace should be.
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In this episode April Glaser is joined by co-host Meredith Broussard, a data journalism professor at NYU and author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World.
First they talk about the history of Silicon Valley’s decades-long quest to replace teachers with computers. Then the hosts have a conversation with Nellie Bowles, tech reporter for the New York Times, about a Kansas town that’s struggling with the implementation of Summit Learning, a personalized web-based education program funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan.
Also joining the show is Tom Henning, a parent in Kansas who pulled his son out of his local public school after Summit Learning was adopted. Henning discusses how he and other parents organized to try to bring human-centered learning back to their schools, citing the physical and emotional problems their kids came home with after being stuck in front of a computer all day.
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In this episode April Glaser is joined once again by co-host Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. They start by talking about the Sri Lankan government’s shutdown of Facebook and WhatsApp after the Easter attacks on churches and hotels.
Then they talk to Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, a staff writer for Motherboard and producer for CYBER, a Motherboard podcast about hacking. In their conversation Franceschi-Bicchierai talks about the time he corresponded directly with hackers who infiltrated the servers of the Democratic National Committee. Those hackers initially tried to pass themselves off as a lone Romanian hacker named Guccifer 2.0.
Then slate writer Rachelle Hampton joins the show to talk about her cover story, The Black Feminists Who Saw the Alt-Right Threat Coming.
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In this episode April Glaser is joined by guest host Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia and author of several books about social media and the internet, including a recent one on Facebook, “Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy.”
First they talk about the ongoing elections in India and how fake news and propaganda on Facebook and WhatsApp is wreaking havoc on an electoral process that’s otherwise celebrated for working quite well in the world’s largest democracy. Then they discuss Uber’s recent IPO filing and the litany of ways the company’s reliance on a contractor workforce and business in only a handful of major cities could destabilize the rideshare company’s hopes of ever being profitable.
After that, author and WIRED writer Andy Greenberg joins the show to talk about the recent indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, threats the case poses to press freedom, and how Assange’s ideology has been much more fluid than his alleged co-conspirator, Chelsea Manning. Greenberg is the author of This Machine Kills Secrets: Julian Assange, the Cypherpunks, and Their Fight to Empower Whistleblowers.
This episode of IF Then is brought to you by LinkedIn. Post a job today at LinkedIn.com/IFTHEN and get fifty dollars off your first job post.
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April Glaser is joined by Gizmodo investigative reporter, Kashmir Hill, to talk about an ambitious British proposal to regulate content on social media sites. Then they discuss Airbnb’s efforts to kick White Nationalists off its platform ahead of a national summit in Tennessee.
After that they talk to Pat Brown, CEO and founder of Impossible Foods, about his company’s eerily realistic fake meat products and his vision for a more environmentally sustainable food system.
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April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss a recent report in Bloomberg that says executives at YouTube ignored employees who raised concerns about the spread of harmful videos. The company’s algorithm often recommends conspiracy videos, which lead viewers down rabbit holes they might not otherwise explore.
Then journalism professor Emily Bell talks about Google and Facebook’s recent efforts to revive the local news industry. Since the tech giants are partially complicit in harming local news in the first place, Bell says it’s akin to asking a bull that broke everything in a China shop to come back and piece things back together.
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Aprill Glaser and Will Oremus kick off the episode by talking about Apple’s plan to be the ultimate middleman--with new offerings announced this week of streaming video, games, and more. Then April offers an update on efforts in Congress to restore net neutrality.
After that Veena Dubal, a law professor at UC Hastings, talks about worker strikes at Uber and Lyft and then sheds light on a California case that reclassifies most gig workers as employees instead of contractors.
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On today’s show, April Glaser and Will Oremus first talk to two researchers who’ve uncovered new information about the way the U.S. government trains its facial recognition software. According to their findings, the government uses photos of immigrants, children, and even deceased prisoners to train their programs.
Then NBC News reporter Ben Collins talks about the role of online extremism in last week’s New Zealand attacks, specifically with regard to Facebook and other platforms that allow live broadcasting. Collins also discusses how the shooter left a manifesto riddled with white supremacist signals from online communities and the difficulty of reporting on these racist communities without broadening their reach.
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