The TechTank Podcast released two many years ago on August 6, 2020. In the final two decades, we have brought you all the most current discussions with professionals about technology and telecom, breaking down intricate problems into palatable bits—not bytes. To commemorate two many years of believed-provoking conversations on anything from STEM to semiconductors, the Metaverse to misinformation, and racial biases in algorithms to the future of operate. Here are some highlights of episodes above the very last 12 months:

Taylor Lorenz, then-technological innovation reporter for The New York Periods and affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Centre for Net & Society, joined host Samantha Lai to talk about how youthful men and women use the online and how influencer culture operates. The pair mentioned algorithmic discrimination, misinformation, and the exploitation of youngsters on-line.

When Facebook changed its identify to Meta previous calendar year, a lot of men and women began inquiring thoughts about what the “Metaverse” intended. Nevertheless, as host Darrell West talked about with Tom Wheeler, a checking out fellow in Governance Scientific tests at Brookings and Katherine Cross, a Ph.D. student in the Info University at the University of Washington, the Metaverse is far more than just one particular company. In this episode, industry experts discuss fears around privateness, protection, virtual written content moderation, the sale of digital goods, and data ownership in the Metaverse.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues, as perfectly as rising concerns over new epidemics these types of as monkeypox. As a outcome, vaccine passports, or digital wellness certificates, have risen in popularity. Nicol Turner Lee remarks on this development with Mark Hall, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and the director of the Well being Law and Policy System at Wake Forest University’s Faculty of Law Jay Stanley, a senior coverage analyst at the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technological innovation Challenge and editor of the ACLU’s No cost Long term site and Emily Skahill, a previous analysis assistant at the Heart for Technology Innovation at Brookings. With each other, they explore private wellbeing data privateness concerns with vaccine passports.

Nicol Turner Lee asked Michael Hansen, a senior fellow at the Brown Heart on…