As ICE cracks down in Minneapolis and across the country, reporters and privacy advocates have drawn attention to how the agency is using technology: scanning people’s faces without consent, using private health records to make arrests, tracking people’s location in real time with phone data.

So how does all this work? How does the United States’ data ecosystem make it possible for not just ICE, but any number of government agencies and businesses to buy our private data? And what actually happens after we send that DM or open up Instagram at a protest to post a picture?

To learn more, Host Flora Lichtman sits down with law professor and tech policy expert Laura Moy. She’s testified in Congress about privacy laws and how data brokers profit off of personal data.

Guest: Laura Moy is an associate professor of law at Georgetown Law, based in Washington, D.C.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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The new dietary guidelines from the USDA call for Americans to “eat real food” and consume less “highly processed” food. But how? By some estimates, ultraprocessed foods make up nearly 60% of the average American adult diet, and they’re all over school lunch menus.

Health policy expert Laura Schmidt and nutrition policy researcher Alyssa Moran join Host Flora Lichtman to talk about ultraprocessed foods and our food supply. What might they be doing to our health, and what steps could policymakers take to help Americans eat less of them?

Guests:
Dr. Laura Schmidt is a professor at the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Alyssa Moran is deputy director of the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy at the University of Pennsylvania

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In an effort to make their farms more environmentally and economically sustainable, some farmers are experimenting with agrivoltaics: growing crops underneath solar panels. This dual harvest is working for some, but what will it take for agrivoltaics to work on a larger, more industrial scale?

Joining Host Ira Flatow are journalist Jana Rose Schleis and environmental economics expert Madhu Khanna.

Guests:
Jana Rose Schleis is a news producer at KBIA in Columbia, Missouri. Her podcast series, “The Next Harvest,” is available on podcast platforms.
Dr. Madhu Khanna is a professor of environmental economics and director of the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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