Wide Angle

In this podcast I feature Reina Ley, my former student, now a senior, who weighs in on her diverse experiences that shaped her as a student at Benjamin Franklin High School. Reina was a finalist on The Voice, selected by Camilla Cabello. She still sings at events.

You may never expect students facing the onslaught of AI (as tempting as it is for school work) to say what they do in this podcast. You may never expect teenagers at a high school to weigh in on parenting. The phrase 'Kids These Days' is often a statement of exasperation. I hope this will give you a new perspective. On this episode of Wide Angle , I combine two recordings made by them in...

Let's be clear: I am an AI skeptic. I run into so much of AI as a teacher it's not even funny. Not just from students but in workshops, newsletters, and nearly every tools I use whether it is Photoshop, Canva, YouTube, Descript, or Capcut. The shenanigans by Meta, Anthropic, and OpenAI, however, worry me. In this podcast I take up some of these contentious issues. But my guest, Tyron Devot...

There are still some things in life that money can't buy. In this episode I've got three stories of people and situations that enrich our lives: Tuk-tuks, goat milk, and Alaskan salmon. It all began while I was on a ride-share taxi in Sri Lanka, in a three-wheeled vehicle we call Tuk-tuks, so named after the noisy engine. The Tuk-tuk has become an iconic symbol of the country, brightly pai...

Remember The Matrix? That 1999 cult sci-fi movie starring Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne. There's something happening today, here in 2025, that feels slightly like that synthetic world. Not just social media, but now with AI becoming part of every digital space, we could be trapped inside a simulated, controlled world and not realize it. So in this podcast I wanted to shed some light in those...

It's as if we're one nation, under attack. Cyber attacks are so common, we tend to dismiss them as someone else's problem. Until it isn't. Our home, our workplace, our identity, our social media account. What have you done lately to ward off the next hack? What if you're identity has already been compromised? If the answer is 'nothing' then you should listen to two peop...

On this show, hear from three writers I met during a recent visit to Sri Lanka. Tyron Devotta , a former journalist is about to publish a book set during World War 2 in Ceylon. He talks about the role of the writer in a time when the audience's reding habits are changing. Shannel Pinidiya, still a student, talks about the construction of her complex novel, and how she got into historical ficti...

For about 1,250 hours a school year, our students' phones are turned off, and they're not in their pockets either! It's how we make sure the 'attention hackers' can't get through. There's plenty of evidence that this model of education is best for our youth. (Do listen to a podcast called 'Your Undivided Attention' for more on this.) In this episode I talk about...

Let's just admit--we are all biased. But as my guest, Rick Panganiban at  KQED Teach , says, not all biases are bad! Rick has deep experience in media literacy. He's got an interesting take--But we got to fight our urge to click on every link that sails into ur feeds. Bias to me is part of the toxic eco-system we live in. Or to put it another way, bias is part of a giant venn diagram overl...

Hello, and welcome to a brand new podcast. Yes, it's about tech, but a different side of tech. Think of it as the technology that wraps us around its little fingers. It’s called Wide Angle because I'll be probing those blind spots in those platforms, apps and systems we use. Those pesky issues that come up from behind us and …. jolt us. I'm phasing out my class podcast, Radio 201 , a p...