Can the algorithms built into social media really understand your emotional well-being? Munmun De Choudhury says yes, and explains how it works. 

An app that alerts you to potentially suicidal tweets from the people you follow on Twitter raises ethical and even legal questions. 

Ed Snowden was not the only leaker to have defied the government’s secrecy programs. Ladar Levison and William Binney each paid the price for a moral stand against the U.S. government. 

Despite the technological leaps made in the realm of artificial intelligence, people often object to the idea that the minds of machines can ever replicate the minds of humans. But for engineers, the proof is in the processing. Brooke talks with Stanford lecturer and entrepreneur Jerry Kaplan about how the people who make robots view the field of AI. 

The Pew Research Center recently published a study titled “Political Polarization in the American Public,” which prompted a wave of alarmist reporting about how Americans are more ideologically divided than ever before. But, as Stanford political scientist Morris Fiorina explains, that's not what Pew's data actually shows.

After a loved one passes away, accessing his or her Facebook profile, emails, and other “digital assets” often puts family members in a legal bind. But there’s a robust array of online services tailor-made for people who want to control the future of their own digital content, pre-mortem. Brooke talks with Evan Carroll, co-author of the book, Your Digital Afterlife, about the potential for these services to change the way we think about death.

Europe's highest court recently ruled that EU citizens have the right to be forgotten—by Google's search engines. Bob talks with Emily Bell, Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, about the impact of this decision on freedom of information and internet privacy. 

Paul Lamere is a blogger who writes about music and technology. So it makes sense he'd write about Spotify. His latest article is about "the skip," the practice of skipping songs when listening to spotify, and it's so granular that gets more and more fascinating as it goes along.

Despite the technological leaps made in the realm of artificial intelligence, people often object to the idea that the minds of machines can ever replicate the minds of humans. But for engineers, the proof is in the processing. Brooke talks with Stanford lecturer and entrepreneur Jerry Kaplan about how the people who make robots view the field of AI. 

On Google Maps, Crimea is still a part of Ukraine, though Vladimir Putin is urging the mapping behemoth to redraw Russia's borders to include the Black Sea peninsula. Whatever Google decides, it’s sure to be politically and culturally fraught.

The seemingly arcane business of running the web recently made headlines when the United States government agreed to cede control of the Internet's global address book, also known as the Domain Name System (DNS). Bob talks with Bloomberg Businessweek's Brendan Greeley about the move and the future of internet governance.

When an earthquake sent tremors through Los Angeles this week, an algorithm called Quakebot allowed the LA Times to release the news faster than any other media outlet. Bob talks with Nick Diakopoulos, a Tow Fellow at Columbia Journalism School, about what reporters should keep in mind as algorithms increasingly play a role in newsrooms.

With more than 240 million active users engaged in activities ranging from abetting revolutions to reporting tornadoes, Twitter’s cultural impact can’t be denied. But can we use it to chart how we actually communicate, not just with our own cohorts, but the world outside? Bob talks to Pew Research Center's Lee Rainie about mapping the informational ecosystem of Twitter.

Earlier this week the California Supreme Court ruled that Stephen Glass could not become a lawyer in the state. Bob considers whether that was the right decision.  

On Tuesday a DC circuit court of appeals dealt what many are calling a death blow to net neutrality, the principle that all content providers should be treated equally. To understand this ruling and its potential effects on the future of the internet, Brooke talks with Siva Vaidhyanathan, chair of media studies at the University of Virginia and author of The Googlization of Everything (and why we should worry).

When Time Washington bureau chief Michael Scherer got a call from a telemarketer named Samantha West, he knew the voice on the other end of the line wasn't quite right somehow. Yet Samantha West kept insisting she was, in fact, human. OTM producer Chris Neary finds out who, or what, Samantha West really is.