The Ongoing Transformation

On Science Policy IRL, we talk to people in science policy about what they do and how they got there. Most of the people we’ve interviewed work in the legislative branch of the federal government or in agencies in the executive branch. In this installment, we’re going to an unexpected place for science policy: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Host Lisa Margonelli is joined by Edward You, who has been called “America’s Top Bioterror Cop” by MIT Technology Review. A biochemist by training, You worked for the FBI for over 20 years. At the FBI, he served in the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, and was also on joint duty assignment at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where he served as the National Counterintelligence Officer for Emerging and Disruptive Technologies. In this episode, Margonelli and You discuss how his time as an FBI agent enabled him to reframe the way the policymakers understand what is required to protect biosecurity and support innovation.Resources: Watch a 60 Minutes episode on DNA and the big-money market for biodata, featuring Edward You. Read “National and Transnational Security Implications of Big Data in the Life Sciences” (2014), a joint report from the FBI, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute. Learn more about big data, security, and the FBI’s role by reading “Biosecurity in the age of Big Data: A Conversation With the FBI”. Check out Issues’s recent publications on biosecurity: Interview with Senator Todd Young on emerging biotechnologies.“Reconsidering Research Security” by John C. Gannon, Richard Meserve, and Maria T. Zuber. “When All Research Is Dual Use” by Sam Weiss Evans.

Innovation lately feels synonymous with the digital entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley or the high-tech corridor of Route 128 outside Boston. But when Thomas Edison opened his first research lab in the 1870s, it was in Newark, New Jersey. A few years later, in nearby Menlo Park, he invented the light bulb. Now, Newark is working to build a new, inclusive tech innovation ecosystem that goes beyond this legacy.On this episode, host Lisa Margonelli is joined by Fay Cobb Payton and Lyneir Richardson, who are both at Rutgers University. Payton directs the Institute for Data, Research, and Innovation Science (IDRIS) and Lyneir is the executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development. Together they have been pioneering data-led innovation and business accelerators with a diverse group of entrepreneurs.ResourcesRead Senator Andy Kim’s vision for New Jersey’s Einstein Corridor. Learn more about the Exit to Win accelerator by watching this video. Check out more Issues articles on regional economic development. “Cultivating Mastery in Place” by Maryann Feldman and Alaina Kayaani-George. Diné entrepreneurs entwine economic renewal with mutual obligation, providing a model of regional economic development that serves the community.“Revisiting the Connection Between Innovation, Education, and Regional Economic Growth” by Grace J. Wang. What have we learned over the past 40 years about how to generate sustained economic growth through scientific research and technological innovation?“Place-Based Economic Development” by Maryann Feldman. “Lessons from Baltimore for Participatory Research” by Alvin Hathaway Sr. A pastor and community organizer explains what a landmark Black neuroscience study needed to gain insight, influence, and credibility.

What do the design of high-visibility public safety vests, the distance between two railroad tracks, and the protocols that allow for file transfers between devices have in common? Each is determined by a technical standard set through a process coordinated by a private, non-profit organization called the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Technical standards are behind most of the products Americans interact with in everyday life, underpinning public safety, consumer protection, interoperability, and innovation. On this episode, host Megan Nicholson is joined by president and CEO of ANSI and former director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Laurie Locascio. Locascio explains the importance of standards for innovation and competitiveness, and describes how the US approach to standards development depends on the participation of people with all kinds of expertise. She also shares how more researchers can find their way into setting “the invisible infrastructure of modern life.” ResourcesRead ANSI’s United States Standards Strategy 2025 and review their courses and webinars about the American national standard designation.  Check out the US government’s 2023 National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technology, which has not been adopted by the Trump Administration. Read an Issues piece from 1999 on “Why Standards Matter” by Robert L. Mallett, former Deputy Secretary of Commerce.

Cannabis policy in the United States has been, in many ways, a giant experiment. The drug was recently reclassified by the Trump administration from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug, but remains federally illegal. On the state level, cannabis’s availability to patients and consumers has been determined by voters, not by scientists and regulators. Each state has a different approach to cannabis regulation and product safety, and as a result, a patient using medical cannabis in Florida might be exposed to different risks than a consumer in California, for example.On this episode, host Kelsey Schoenberg is joined by toxicologist Maxwell C. K. Leung, assistant professor at Arizona State University and the director of the ASU Cannabis Analytics, Safety and Health Initiative, and Symone T. Griffith, an ASU Presidential Scholar and doctoral candidate at Arizona State University. Leung and Griffith, who wrote about cannabis regulation and product safety for the Fall 2025 Issues, explain how the federal-state legal divide has shaped cannabis safety, research, and policy. They also share what it’s like to be a researcher working in this space. RESOURCESRead Leung, Griffith, and Marisa Kreider’s essay, “A Coordinated Approach to Cannabis Policy and Product Safety,” in the Fall Issues.Check out Leung and Griffith’s paper on cannabis use and Parkinson’s patients, as well as their lab’s analysis of state-level regulations for cannabis contaminants.Read a paper from the Cannabis Regulators Association outlining a research agenda for how science can shape cannabis policy.Listen to another episode on cannabis: “Minimizing Cannabis’s Harms to Public Health,” with Sara Frueh and guest Yasmin Hurd.

For as long as people have speculated about the development of artificial intelligence, they have debated its potential impacts on the labor market. Today, several years into widespread use of large language models, those questions are more urgent, but the answers are less clear. Is AI already taking jobs away? Could human beings flourish in a world in which they no longer have to perform economically valuable work?On this episode, Massachusetts Institute of Technology labor economist David Autor joins host Sara Frueh to discuss the possible impacts of AI on the future of work, what that means on an economic and human level, and what policies may be able to shape AI in a way that works for humans.ResourcesRead the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s 2024 consensus study, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work.”Check out Autor’s book, The Work of the Future.Could AI help rebuild the middle class? Autor explores in an essay for Noema Magazine.Read Frueh’s interview with economist Anne Case mentioned in this episode.More on this topic from Issues: “A Vision for Centering Workers in Technology Development” by Amanda Ballantyne, Jodi Forlizzi, and Crystal Weise.

On Science Policy IRL, we talk to people in science policy about what they do and how they got there. In this installment, host Lisa Margonelli talks to Bhavya Lal about the trajectory of her career. Lal began as a nuclear engineer, then completed a midcareer PhD and began to work in science policy. A few years in, she decided to specialize in space policy—which is when things really started to get interesting. Lal has since served in a variety of roles at NASA, including acting chief of staff, chief technology officer, and associate administrator for technology, policy, and strategy. She is currently a professor at the RAND School of Public Policy. In this episode, Lal shares how policy and governance became her passion, how she went from writing reports to leading programs at NASA, and the big questions that drive her work. ResourcesRead Lal and Roger M. Myers’ Fall 2025 Issues piece, “A Strategy for Building Space Nuclear Systems That Fly,” to learn more about NASA’s efforts to build a nuclear reactor in space. Read Lal and Myers’ white paper “Weighing the Future: Strategic Options for US Space Leadership.”What does space leadership mean? Lal explores this in her SpaceNews piece, “The US can get to the moon first — and still lose.”Check out Earth Abides, the novel that inspired Lal’s career.

Artificial intelligence assistants such as Google’s Gemini have exploded in popularity, constantly offering to help summarize a document, craft an email response, or answer a question. AI chatbots take this even further. These chatbots—sometimes called AI companions—generate conversations with users, and because they “remember” interactions and modulate their responses, they can appear, at times, quite human. On this episode, host Megan Nicholson explores chatbots with J. B. Branch, the Big Tech accountability advocate at Public Citizen. Branch discusses who is using chatbots, what the companies behind these AIs are doing, and how they might be regulated. He also wrote about this topic in his essay for our Fall 2025 edition, “AI Companions Are Not Your Teen’s Friend.” Resources:J. B. Branch on the need to regulate AI chatbots:“AI Companions Are Not Your Teen’s Friend,” Issues in Science & Technology.“AI chatbots shouldn’t be talking to kids — Congress must step in,” The Hill. Learn more about AI companions’ impact on teens mental health by reading Common Sense Media’s risk assessment. Visit the Tech Law Justice Project to read more about the current lawsuits in California state courts against OpenAI.  What could regulating AI chatbots look like? See a model state law from Public Citizen.

Our miniseries Not Now, But Soon challenges the stories we often tell about disasters and explores how we can use speculative fiction to create better futures and policies.On our final episode of this season, host Malka Older examines the role art and fiction play in understanding war. She talks with art and culture historian Brigitte van der Sande, who has spent 25 years studying how war is represented in art—research that brought her to many active conflict zones. Van der Sande discusses how art humanizes the victims of war and spurs action, and how humor and imagination can be forces for resistance. Resources: “Inside Hell We Build Paradise.” Read more about van der Sande’s visit to Rojava, Syria, as part of efforts to build democracy in the region. Check out Other Futures, a multidisciplinary festival that presents speculative visions of the future, founded by van der Sande in 2018. See artwork mentioned in this episode: “The Eyes of Gutete Emerita” and “Soft Target.”Learn more about van der Sande’s latest project, Culture House FKA the Cannibals. This podcast is part of the Future Tense Fiction project, a speculative fiction series that uses imagination to explore how science and technology will shape our future. Read the short stories from the series published by Issues in Science and Technology.

Our miniseries Not Now, But Soon challenges the stories we often tell about disasters and explores how we can use speculative fiction to create better futures and policies.On this episode, host Malka Older is joined by Nasir Andisha, ambassador and permanent representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations, to reimagine Afghanistan and the stories we tell about its past, present, and future. As ambassador, Andisha represents the people—not the current government—of a country that has been navigating disaster for decades. He shares the story of what it’s like to lose his nation while continuing to advocate for its people.ResourcesVisit Nasir Andisha’s website to learn more about human rights, policy, and Afghanistan’s challenges.This episode features brief audio snippets from the BBC and Inside Edition. This podcast is part of the Future Tense Fiction project, a speculative fiction series that uses imagination to explore how science and technology will shape our future. Read the short stories from the series published by Issues in Science and Technology.

Our miniseries Not Now, But Soon challenges the stories we often tell about disasters and explores how we can use speculative fiction to create better futures and policies.On this episode, host Malka Older examines the stories behind statistics with Julisa Tambunan, deputy executive director of Equal Measures 2030, a global feminist coalition. Tambunan uses data to advocate for policies that center the lived experiences of women, girls, and underrepresented minorities. She explains why gender inequality is a disaster and how collecting better data—both statistics and stories—can help create a better future for everyone. ResourcesVisit Equal Measures 2030 to learn more about achieving gender equality through data-driven advocacy. This podcast is part of the Future Tense Fiction project, a speculative fiction series that uses imagination to explore how science and technology will shape our future. Read the short stories from the series published by Issues in Science and Technology.