This month, Jack and Shobita talk about the role of government in both funding and regulating innovation, as well as the politics of vaccine approval as European governments suspended distribution of the AstraZeneca vaccine. And we speak with David Goldston, currently director of MIT's Washington office, who has extensive experience in science and technology policy including on Capitol Hill and at the National Resources Defense Council. He was also a former columnist at Nature.

It's a New Year, and may soon be a new world! Shobita and Jack discuss the big changes brewing in the US and UK, from the new president to Brexit, and consider what it all means for science and technology policy. And we chat with Lina Dencik, Professor and Director of the Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University. - Lina Dencik (2019). "Social Justice in an Age of Datafication." Talk at the Alan Turing Institute. May 28. - Lina Dencik,Arne Hintz, Joanna Redden & Emiliano Treré (2019)....

Shobita and Jack reflect on the US election and the future of conservatism and exciting vaccine news, and speak with philosopher and STS forefather Langdon Winner about the politics of technology today. Winner recently released a new edition of his groundbreaking book, The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology.

Jack and Shobita discuss the growing politicization of COVID-19 science and at listeners' request, review the Netflix movie The Social DIlemma. And Shobita speaks with Priti Krishtel, co-executive director of the i-MAK, the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge about how we can reform the patent system to make pharmaceuticals more affordable and accessible.

Shobita and Jack talk about how patents might shape access to a COVID-19 vaccine. And, in light of a recent report by the US and UK national scientific academies, we talk about heritable human genome editing (using CRISPR-Cas9) and the role that the world's citizens might play in deciding whether and how it might proceed, with Ben Hurlbut, Associate Professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University.

Shobita and Jack discuss the recent US congressional hearings with the Big Tech CEOs, and the curious role that behavioral scientists have played in the UK's COVID-19 response. They also chat with Jill Fisher, Professor of Social Medicine at University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill and recent author of Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals, about the "healthy volunteers" who participate in clinical trials--including for COVID-19--and their exploitation.

n this episode, Jack and Shobita discuss big tech's decisions to pull back from facial recognition technology, and how the Black Lives Matter movement is influencing science and technology overall. And they chat with Virginia Eubanks, author of Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor (St. Martin's Press, 2018) and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, SUNY.

Shobita and Jack discuss the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its implications in the United States and Britain, and interview Jane Flegal, Program Officer overseeing US climate at The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation, and Society at the University of Oxford, Adjunct Professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University.

Jack and Shobita talk to five experts in science, technology, policy, and society about their perspectives and experiences with COVID-19 around the world. Interviews include Monamie Bhadra (Singapore), Silvio Funtowicz (Italy), Roger Pielke (US), Poonam Pandey (India), and Michael Veale (UK). Transcript available at thereceivedwisdom.org

Jack and Shobita compare the US and UK responses to the coronavirus outbreak, and consider the legacy of the US approach to research funding policy 75 years after publication of the famous report by Vannevar Bush, Science: The Endless Frontier. And we speak with Ben Pauli (@benjaminjpauli), professor at Kettering University, about his recent book on the politics of the Flint Water Crisis.

Shobita and Jack answer listener questions, discuss Jack's trip to the weird world of the World Economic Forum in Davos, and talk to Professor Alondra Nelson about the social life of ancestral DNA testing. Professor Nelson is the Harold F. Linder Chair in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, and President of the Social Science Research Council.

Shobita and Jack discuss what responsibilities scientists and scientific institutions bear when research results--like DNA phenotyping or human germline gene editing--are used to morally dubious ends. And they consider whether the problem with Big Tech is actually just one of Big Business. Jack interviews tech journalist Nicholas Carr, author of numerous books including Utopia is Creepy and Other Provocations (2017).

Shobita and Jack talk about the price of technological optimism, and speak with Ruha Benjamin, Associate Professor of African American Studies and founder of the JUST DATA lab at Princeton University. She is the author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, published by Polity Books earlier this year. (Transcript available at thereceivedwisdom.org.)

Shobita and Jack talk about climate and tech activism, and interview Dan Sarewitz, Co-Director, Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes and Professor of Science and Society, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Issues in Science and Technology and is a frequent contributor to Nature. A transcript of this episode and links to Dan's writings are available at thereceivedwisdom.org.

The first episode of ‘The Received Wisdom’ is coming this September! Shobita and Jack discuss their plans for the show, which will feature interviews with thinkers, doers, and activists, who are challenging the received wisdom around science, technology, and policy, as well as a discussion of current science/technology/policy news and events.