Harvard Thinking

Relationships are hard and people are lonely. Enter: chatbots. They can be your best friend, your therapist, your romantic partner, even your spiritual guide. But what is lost when we turn to machines for human connection? In this episode, host Samantha Laine Perfas talks with humanist chaplain Greg Epstein, psychologist Anat Perry, and ethical intelligence researcher Julian De Freitas about how the frictionless nature of chatbots is affecting our human relationships.

GLP-1 usage has surged as a weight loss management drug. But given how new they are to the market, medical professionals are only now starting to figure out who should – and should not – be using them. In this episode, host Samantha Laine Perfas talks with obesity specialist Caroline Apovian, evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman, and obesity medicine physician scientist Fatima Cody Stanford about why we should be excited – and cautious – about the potential of GLP-1s.

Children have minds of their own and those minds might lead to behaviors parents either want to mitigate or reinforce. Parents have difficult choices to make when it comes to guiding their kids, all with the goal of raising successful human beings. In this episode, host Samantha Laine Perfas talks with economist Emily Oster, clinical psychologist Meredith Elkins, and educator Kiran Bhai about how to tell if your parenting tactics are helping or hurting your kid’s development.

Gene therapy has been used to treat many previously incurable conditions, like correcting deadly genetic disorders or giving children born with hearing loss the ability to hear. The field has massive potential, but there are still many economic, regulatory, and scientific hurdles to overcome to adequately address a variety of both rare and more common conditions. In this episode, host Samantha Laine Perfas talks with gene editing researcher David Liu and ear, nose, and throat surgeon Eliot Shearer about how gene therapy can help treat diseases that were previously considered too rare to research.

We all make mistakes. Sometimes we’re able to brush off these experiences, but other times we’re left with regrets. We regret that thing we said, how we handled that situation, or the choice we made. In this episode, host Samantha Laine Perfas, palliative care specialist Susan Block, neuroscientist Liz Phelps, and behavioral scientist Leslie John discuss how to make peace with the actions – or inactions – that still haunt us.