MIT Open Aggregated Podcast Feed

The eighth season of MIT’s climate change podcast starts next week, and we’ve got some news! TILclimate is now Ask MIT Climate. It’s part of an effort to bring all of our climate change resources under one umbrella and reach learners in as many ways as we can. We’re also diving into video! Find us on Instagram , TikTok , and YouTube @askmitclimate for outtakes, bonus content, and more climate know...

Artificial Intelligence is frequently hailed as a transformative force for global supply chains, yet the gap between technological promise and operational reality remains a central challenge for industry leaders. In this episode, host Dr. Matthias Winkenbach, Director of Research at MIT CTL, leads a nuanced discussion on the transition from AI hype to the implementation of functional "decision tec...

Who are the people staffing the digital economy? In The Social Codes of Tech Workers: Class Identity in Digital Capitalism (MIT Press, 2025) Robert Dorschel an Assistant Professor in Digital Sociology at the University of Cambridge, explores an occupation that has emerged as central to modern economies and societies. Drawing on an extensive range of interview fieldwork, the book offers a compelli...

In this bonus episode, Princeton University professor and artificial intelligence researcher Tom Griffiths joins Sam to unpack The Laws of Thought, his new book exploring how math has been used for centuries to understand how minds — human and machine — actually work. Tom walks through three main frameworks shaping intelligence today — rules and symbols, neural networks, and probability — and he e...

Nick van der Meulen reads MIT CISR's January 2026 research briefing, which he co-authored with Hippolyte Lefebvre and Barb Wixom. See the text version and related content at https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2026_0101_GenerativeAIRisk_VanderMeulenLefebvreWixomLegner. Abstract: Generative AI (GenAI) risks have multiplied as organizations progress from GenAI tools and solutions to AI agents—amplified...

MIT OpenCourseWare has been one of the pioneers of open education, leading the way by offering free materials from MIT courses as early as 2001, when no other institutions were pursuing comparably ambitious initiatives. But in subsequent years, there’s been an explosion of activity in open education, led by faculty members, instructional designers, and librarians at institutions throughout the Uni...

Sebastian Lourido is an associate professor of biology and a member of the Whitehead Institute. Sebastian studies human pathogens and seeks to unravel the genetic pathways that help parasites like Toxoplasma gondii exist in human cells. He hopes that his work will lead to new treatments for toxoplasmosis as well as drugs that could treat diseases caused by similar parasites. Show notes and transcr...

In Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behavior (MIT Press, 2025), Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer reveal how scientists studying animal behavior have long projected human norms and values onto animals while seeking to understand them. When scientific studies conclude that these norms and values are natural in animals, it makes it easier to think of them as nat...

A new and provocative take on the formerly classified history of accelerating superpower military competition in space in the late Cold War and beyond. In March 1983, President Ronald Reagan shocked the world when he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively known as “Star Wars,” a space-based missile defense program aimed at protecting the US from nuclear attack. In Weapons in...

What does AI really mean for jobs, productivity, and the future of work? Recorded with a live audience at the MIT Museum! In this special live taping of the CSAIL Alliances Podcast, host Kara Miller explores big questions on AI and the future of work with two MIT researchers leading research on technology and labor—David Autor, MIT economist and coauthor of The Work of the Future, and Neil Thompso...

Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property (MIT Press, 2023) provides a framework for knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of inequality in modern society. Scholars of science, technology, medicine, and law have all tended to emphasize knowledge as the sum of human understanding, and its ownership as possession by law. Breaking with traditional discourse on knowledge proper...

Alan Thorogood reads MIT CISR's December 2025 research briefing, which he co-authored with Stephanie Woerner. See the text version and related content at https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2025_1201_EntITOperatingModels_ThorogoodWoerner. Abstract: Newer digital technologies such as artificial intelligence are blurring the lines between the IT function and business units, offering new approaches to t...

Borrowing from the traditional alphabet book genre for children, An Alphabet for Dreamers: How to See the World with Eyes Closed (MIT Press, 2025) by Dr. Sharon Sliwinski provides adult readers with a new grammar for dreams, or what neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro calls “oracles of the night.” In this book, Dr. Sliwinski restores dreaming to its proper place as an important worldmaking activity, on...

Global food systems produce more than enough to feed the world—yet nearly one-third of all food is lost or wasted. Much of that loss happens far upstream, driven by perishability, cold chain failures, infrastructure gaps, climate pressures, and supply chain inefficiencies that span continents. In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Chris Mejía, founder and director of the MIT Emerging Market Economi...

On today’s episode, Wendy’s product manager Will Croushorn joins Sam to share how FreshAi, the fast-food restaurant’s voice-based AI ordering system, is reinventing the drive-through experience for millions of customers. From handling 200 billion ways to order a Dave’s Double burger to making fast food more accessible for guests in multiple languages, Will reveals how empathy and innovation will p...

An analysis of advances in military technology that illustrates the importance of organizational flexibility in both an attacker’s innovations and an opponent’s adaptations. How important is military innovation in determining outcomes during armed conflict? In Innovation and Adaptation in War, Matthew Tattar questions the conventional wisdom that, to succeed, military organizations must innovate e...

On this episode, OpenAI’s chief economist Ronnie Chatterji describes how artificial intelligence is reshaping both the economy and scientific innovation. Ronnie discusses the dual economic impacts of AI — the near-term boost from infrastructure investments like chips and data centers, and the longer-term productivity gains as AI tools integrate into enterprises and consumer life. Beyond consumer c...

Host Kara Miller sits down with MIT Professor Russ Tedrake, a leading researcher in robotics and AI at CSAIL to explore the rapidly accelerating world of humanoid and intelligent robots. Tedrake takes us behind the scenes of the robotics revolution—from the cultural resistance and skepticism, to the moment everything shifted. Today, major tech leaders are declaring humanoid robots “the biggest pro...

Thomas Princen explores issues of social and ecological sustainability at the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. He works on principles for sustainability, overconsumption, the language and ethics of resource use, and the transition out of fossil fuels. His latest book is Fire and Flood: Extreme Events and Social Change Past, Present, Future (MIT Press, 202...

We’re pleased to share powerful reporting from our friends at the show Click Here, from Recorded Future News and PRX. They tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. Over the past year, they’ve been documenting the digital – and cultural – erasure of Uyghurs in China. As part of that series, they follow one man who set out to preserve his culture the old fashioned wa...

An important critic of modern culture, American economist Thorstein Veblen is best known for the concept of “conspicuous consumption,” the ostentatious display of goods in the service of social status. In the field of architectural history, scholars have employed Veblen in support of a wide range of arguments about modern architecture, but never has he attracted a comprehensive and critical treatm...

AI isn’t taking jobs — it’s changing what jobs are. On today’s episode, GeekWire’s Todd Bishop joins host Sam Ransbotham to dive into how artificial intelligence is reshaping work, learning, and creativity — not by replacing humans but by amplifying what we can do. From classrooms where students use AI on exams to newsrooms rethinking how news stories get written, they explore the opportunities (a...

Barb Wixom reads MIT CISR's November 2025 research briefing, which she co-authored with Joaquin Rodriguez, Gabriele Piccoli, and Cynthia Beath. See the text version and related content at https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2025_1101_DataLiquidityLevers_WixomRodriguezPiccoliBeath. Abstract: Organizations with big aspirations for leveraging AI technology increasingly need data assets with high data li...

Asegun Henry, an innovator and professor at MIT, says that energy storage is arguably the single most important technological problem we have to solve. He is developing and commercializing a new type of battery based on thermal energy conversion instead of the conventional electro-chemical reaction—a battery that’s been dubbed, “sun in a box.” He shares what it takes for a new technology to compet...

Rising geopolitical tensions and global trade volatility have revealed a key power struggle: supply chains are a matter of national security. This year’s annual report from the congressional U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission warns that China has begun weaponizing key supply chain chokepoints, from critical minerals to foundational semiconductors, creating risks that reach far beyo...