Throughout human history, we’ve wanted to fly – and to fly fast. So it’s hard to resist Blake Scholl’s idea. His startup, Boom, is building a new supersonic jet, which will fly at twice the speed of sound. If he succeeds, it could be the biggest disruption to air travel since the Jet Age of the 1960s. But progress always has a price. There’s the sonic boom, yes. But also — what happens when the world’s wealthiest can descend en masse on places that used to be hard to reach? And what happens...

What if your computer had an "emotion chip" — AI that could read the expression on your face (or the tone in your voice) and know how you’re feeling? Could online courses teach you better if they knew when you were bored or confused? Could your car help you stay awake if you drift off when driving? These are the questions Rana El-Kaliouby asked when she built an AI tool that examines every micro-muscle in the human face to detect universal emotions — happiness, fear, grief,...

Woebot is a mobile app that gives one-on-one therapy and gets 2 million messages a week. But Woebot isn't a person – it's a chatbot. It was invented and developed by psychologist Alison Darcy and it uses AI to guide users through a session, anytime, anywhere. Darcy hopes that Woebot will help break down the stigma of therapy and help provide services to communities with a lack of mental health resources. But what happens when we remove the human therapist from therapy? Host Caterina Fake,...

Neuroscientist Daniel Chao created a headset that hacks your brain with electricity so you can learn as fast as a kid again. It’s called Halo, and it helps you learn motor skills faster. Athletes use it; musicians too. But we’re not far from a future when Halo could help anyone master anything. Where will that take us? Host Caterina Fake leads the journey, joined by Comedian Baratunde Thurston and Quartz Editor in Chief Kevin Delaney, who help Daniel future-cast, and see his invention through...

Find out what is technology doing to us, and for us on Should this Exist? — premiering February 21, 2019.