Laws That Aren't Laws: Murphy's Law - Episode...

As Chief Scientific Advisor to the government during a pandemic, Sir Patrick Vallance's calm, clear summaries of the state of our scientific understanding of the virus were welcomed by many. But what was going on behind the scenes? In this extended interview with Jim Al-Khalili o ...  Show more

Prof Andrea Sella on the shifting image of the scientist in popular culture, from Victor Frankenstein to Iron Man via victorious post-war boffinry and megalomanical Bond villainry.The monster unleashed by Mary Shelley in her 1818 tale of gruesome gothic horror was in many senses ...  Show more

Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Nick Spark fell down a rabbit hole tracking down the origins of Murphy’s Law, the ubiquitous phrase that says “If it can go wrong, it ...  Show more

On Wednesday, President Biden signed a bill into law that would force the sale of TikTok or ban the app outright. We explain how this came together, when just a few weeks ago it seemed unlikely to happen, and what legal challenges the law will face next. Then we check on Tesla ...

The team that brings you In Machines We Trust has much to be grateful for—a brand new season of this show, a big awards nomination for The Extortion Economy, a show about ransomware that we made with ProPublica, and our new investigative series, Curious Coincidence. We celebrate ...  Show more

What happens when an algorithm gets it wrong? In the first of a four-part series on face recognition, Jennifer Strong and the team at MIT Technology Review explore the arrest of a man who was falsely accused of a crime using facial recognition. The episode also starts to unpack t ...  Show more