Where What If Becomes What's Next

Materials Science: From Silly Putty to Self-Healing Robots

A failed rubber substitute. A cloudy liquid that looked like a mistake. A robot that heals itself. This episode looks at three chapters in Carnegie Mellon University's l

Imagining the Future: One Story at a Time

What happens when a kid who devours science fiction novels grows up to earn a PhD in robotics — and then writes the books he once dreamed of?  Daniel H. Wilson, a Cherok

Bold Strokes: Making the Ordinary Pop

What if the coffee cup on your desk or the ketchup bottle in your fridge could become a symbol recognized around the world? For pop artist and Carnegie Mellon University

A New Equation: Teaching Math for an AI World

What is the purpose of learning math in a world where AI can solve any equation in seconds?  Carnegie Mellon mathematician Po-Shen Loh has spent his career arguing that

Tech for Good: Rescuing Food to Fight Hunger and Climate Change

What if the surplus food restaurants and grocery stores throw away every day could instead feed the millions of people who don't know where their next meal is coming from

Down the Rabbit Hole: How Alice Turned Computer Coding Into a Wonderland

Thirty years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch asked a simple question: What if anyone could learn to program a computer? Not just computer scienti

Encore: Curtain Up - What’s Next for Theatre Arts

Greatness is inevitable when focus marries passion, and theatre arts educator Freddie Hendricks lives by, and teaches, that mantra to his students.   On June 7, Carnegie

Bold Builds: How a Class Project Sparked World-Changing Startups

What if a successful startup began with a collaborative class project instead of a business plan? For CMU alum Shanna Tellerman that’s exactly what happened, and it spar

The Shape of Everyday Life: How Carnegie Mellon Revolutionized Industrial Design

What if the objects around you weren't just built, but carefully designed to shape how you live?  In this episode, we trace the origins of industrial design from Pittsbu

Making Machines Make Music

What happens when a computer scientist is also a trumpet player?  Meet Roger Dannenberg — CMU professor, pioneer of computer music, and co-creator of Audacity — one of t

Designing for the Planet: The Clever Thermostat and the Odorless Food Recycler

What if the secret to saving the planet was hiding in your hallway and under your kitchen sink?  Matt Rogers, Carnegie Mellon University electrical and computer engineer

Watching the Universe Change: A New Era in Astronomy Begins

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is now operational, and humanity's view of the universe will never be the same.   In this episode, we return to Carnegie Mellon Un

The Birth of the Hashtag: How a Simple Symbol Changed the World

In 2007, an unused key on the phone keypad became the internet's most powerful organizing tool. In this episode, we sit down with Chris Messina, the Carnegie Mellon Unive

Season 3 Trailer: Where What If Becomes What’s Next

The smiley face in your last text, the Kevlar protecting first responders, and the Wi-Fi signal connecting us all—where did they actually come from? Welcome to Season 3

Guiding a Safe Future for AI – Part 2

What if machines could reason like humans? We're racing toward that reality. It's called artificial general intelligence. The question is, can we build it safely? In the

Guiding a Safe Future for AI – Part 1

What if AI is automating the one thing that's always made us human—Intelligence itself? And how do we ensure that it's developed safely? In this first of a two-part seri

Unlocking the Future of Gene Therapy

What if AI could help design gene therapies so precise they eliminate chronic pain while leaving other senses completely intact? And what if the secret to treating Parkin

Critical Choices: AI in Disaster Management and Healthcare

What if AI could help emergency responders make split-second decisions that save lives during disasters? And what if that same technology could be used in healthcare to i

Farm to Future: How Robotics and AI are Revolutionizing Agriculture

What if robots could pick apples without bruising them, detect diseases in tomatoes before farmers can see them, or even help prevent catastrophic wildfires? In this epi

Cracking the Cosmic Code: How Software Powers the Rubin Observatory

Imagine a telescope so powerful it could give us a whole new picture of the cosmos and help answer some of the biggest questions about the universe–if we can handle the d