Short Wave Folgen

To round out our celebration of Black History Month, we're bringing you a special episode featuring acclaimed science fiction writer Octavia Butler from our friends at NPR's history podcast Throughline.Octavia Butler's alternate realities and 'speculative fiction' reveal striking, and often devastating parallels to the world we live in today. She was a deep observer of the human condition, perplexed and inspired by our propensity towards self-destruction. Butler was also fascinated by the cyclical nature of history, and often looked to the past when writing about the future. Along with her warnings is her message of hope — a hope conjured by centuries of survival and persistence. For every society that perished in her books, came a story of rebuilding, of repair. Read Throughline's article about Octavia Butler.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Today, what happens in your brain when you notice a semantic or grammatical mistake, according to neuroscience. Sarah Phillips, a neurolinguist, tells us all about the N400 and the P600 responses. Plus, we dive into some listener mail — which you can send to us by emailing shortwave@npr.org. (Encore episode)Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In June 2020, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM announced that they were limiting some uses of their facial recognition technology. In this encore episode, Maddie and Emily talk to AI policy analyst Mutale Nkonde about algorithmic bias — how facial recognition software can discriminate and reflect the biases of society and the current debate about policing has brought up the issue about how law enforcement should use this technology.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy