Posts by Jon Reed
European Disunion [Rebroadcast and Update]
Original broadcast: 4/16/2019. Our last podcast of the spring of 2019 featured Mai’a Cross, an expert on European politics. We discussed the constant threats, really since its inception, to the unity of Europe, with Brexit being only the most recent example. Maia’s candid assessment was that Brexit was mostly a British, not a European, mess,…
Read MoreThe Shifting Landscape of Music [Rebroadcast and Update]
Original Broadcast: 9/10/2018. One of the first podcasts of the second season of What’s New featured David Herlihy, an intellectual property lawyer and rock musician, about the major shifts in how music is listened to and paid for over the last several decades. During that podcast, which was recorded in September of 2018, David mentioned…
Read MorePrivacy in the Facebook Age [Rebroadcast and Update]
Original broadcast: 4/10/2018. Last year, professor Woody Hartzog was interviewed on What’s New about his new book related to digital privacy followed by a discussion about the then recent revelation of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where a research firm got access to tens of millions of personal profiles through Facebook. If anything, the privacy issues…
Read MoreEuropean Disunion
For the last two years, Brexit has threatened to sever one of Europe’s largest countries from the rest, a divorce that has now become a gigantic crisis. But it is far from the first existential crisis for Europe. The continent and its countries have regularly encountered discord and the threat of dissolution. This episode features…
Read MoreControlling Killer Robots
Science fiction is filled with examples of robots advancing in intelligence enough to become unrelenting killing machines, from the Terminator to Black Mirror’s metalhead. Now with advances in artificial intelligence that frightening imagined future is rapidly approaching, and we humans need to figure out right now how to prevent the worst from happening. Episode 30…
Read MoreThe Web at 30
The World Wide Web just turned 30 years old, and so much has changed over those three decades because of this powerful new medium. Books, music, and video are beamed instantly around the globe, and authors, artists, and the giant industries around them have reacted in excited, complicated and sometimes fearful ways. Joining us on…
Read MoreHow College Students Get the News
Last year on this podcast, we told you about a large study of the news consumption habits of college students that had just gotten underway. Now the results of that study are in and on today’s What’s New you will discover the many often surprising channels, formats, and apps that inform today’s youth and shape…
Read MoreTracing the Spread of Fake News
Two years after a presidential election that shocked so many, we are still trying to understand the role that fake news sources played, and how a swarm of propaganda clouded social media. Now a comprehensive study has looked carefully at the impact of untrustworthy online sources in the election, with some surprising results, and some…
Read MoreSeeking Justice for Hidden Deaths
In the United States between 1930 and 1970 there were thousands of racially motivated homicides, a brutal continuation of the gruesome murders that African Americans had endured for decades before, even as the Civil Rights movement began to stir. Many of these homicide cases are cold cases, left unsolved and, too often, forgotten. We’re joined…
Read MoreTouch This Page
Reading is one of the most profound things we humans do, a way for our minds to encounter new ideas, and our imaginations to run wild with stories. For many of us, reading means words in black ink on a white page, or pixels on a screen, but for some who have visual impairments, it…
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