Thinking Through Podcast

Thinking Through...AI Governance

Who's governing AI — and who even gets to decide? In this episode of Thinking Through, host Dr. Allison Lester and student co-host Ana Carolina Oliveira sit down with Dr. Adam Pacton — Associate Teaching Professor and Dean's Fellow for AI Literacy and Integration at ASU — to wrestle with one of the messiest questions of our moment: how do you govern something that's changing faster than institutions can keep up? We dig into the questions keeping educators, students, and public servants up at night:-Why does the digital divide keep widening into a canyon?-What happens when academic freedom and institutional coherence collide?-Who gets to set AI policy — the professor, the college, the university, the government?-Is AI a threat to human connection, or an invitation to rebuild it?-What do election offices, classrooms, and composition syllabi all have in common right now?From co-creating AI policy with students to dreaming of a modern-day Agora where everyone gets a seat at the table, this conversation is real, urgent, and — somehow — hopeful.The question Adam wants us still asking in 10 years? Not "who's in charge." Something much better.🎧 Press play.

Thinking Through...Digital Twins

What if AI could be designed around your needs, your values, and your life?In this episode of Thinking Through, Dr. Darwin Mastin, founder and CEO of TwinWise, joins host Dr. Allison Lester and ASU student cohost Ana Carolina Oliveira in the studio to explore digital twins, personal AI, personalized AI, and the ethical questions that emerge when technology starts to feel more human, more intimate, and more tailored to us.This conversation invites us to think through what kind of AI we actually want, and what it would take to build it responsibly.Dr. Allison Lester is the host of Thinking Through, where she explores AI, emerging technologies, education, and civic life through thoughtful conversations with students, scholars, and practitioners.#AI [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/ai] #ArtificialIntelligence [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/artificialintelligence] #DigitalTwins [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/digitaltwins] #PersonalAI [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/personalai] #PersonalizedAI [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/personalizedai] #EthicalAI [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/ethicalai] #AIEthics [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/aiethics] #EmergingTechnology [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/emergingtechnology] #TechnologyAndSociety [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/technologyandsociety] #AIInEducation [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/aiineducation] #ThinkingThrough [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/thinkingthrough] #Podcast [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/podcast] #YouTubeShorts [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/youtubeshorts] #FutureOfAI [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/futureofai]

Thinking Through...The AI Con & Deconstructing the Hype

Dr. Allison Lester sits down with Dr. Emily M. Bender and Dr. Alex Hanna for a conversation about what ChatGPT is, what it is pretending to be, and what we lose when we treat it like an all-knowing answer engine. Together they ask: What is a large language model, actually? Why does “search engine” framing mislead people so quickly? What gets erased when we focus on convenience, from labor and surveillance to environmental cost? They talk resistance, agency, and the classroom, including why banning is a dead end, how to protect learning without turning teaching into policing, and what it means to be human together in an era of synthetic text.

Thinking Through... Preparing Students for AI’s Impact on Work

In this episode of Thinking Through, Dr. Allison Lester sits down with Dana Stephenson, co-founder of Riipen, to explore how AI is reshaping the workforce and what that means for students entering an increasingly uncertain job market. Together, they unpack the quiet disappearance of traditional entry-level roles, the limits of skills lists, and why experiential learning matters more than ever. This conversation moves into the complex realm of learning by doing: building confidence, practicing uncertainty, iterating through feedback, and learning to trust your voice. Dana shares how students, educators, and employers can co-learn in real time, using AI to amplify human judgment rather than replace it. The episode centers on a core question: How do we prepare students for futures we cannot fully see while keeping humanity at the center of learning and work? #FutureOfWork #AIinEducation #ExperientialLearning #HigherEd #CareerReadiness #EdTech #HumanCenteredAI #LearningByDoing #WorkforceDevelopment #CriticalThinking #Education #AI

Thinking Through...The AI Mindset Gap

In this episode of Thinking Through…, Dr. Allison Lester talks with Dan Fitzpatrick about what it feels like to live inside a moment where AI keeps arriving faster than our ability to make sense of it. Rather than focusing on tools or predictions, they explore the widening mindset gap between those immersed in AI’s rapid evolution and those encountering it from the outside. The conversation moves through hype cycles, shock moments, and why AI may behave less like a single innovation and more like an underlying infrastructure reshaping daily life. They also wrestle with digital equity, access, and what happens when speed outpaces support. Along the way, they unpack why “AI and cheating” keeps surfacing in education and what that debate reveals about trust, assessment, and learning itself. This episode invites listeners to slow down, sit with uncertainty, and think more carefully about how we adapt to AI without losing curiosity, agency, or human connection.