Few have done more to popularize and bring science to a level for everyone to understand than Neil deGrasse Tyson.
He will host the “Cosmic Perspective” here in Columbus next week.
But what does he have to say about the future of space exploration and about scientists here on earth?
We’re talking with him today on Tech Tuesday.
When it’s a touch screen world, everyone clicking through daily chats and tasks, what about those who can’t see the screen? How do they navigate digital life?
Amazon unveils a new personality for Alexa: Meet her adults-only "Sassy" side.
Guests:
- Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, teacher, author
- Janae Miller, founder/managing principal, Sight Unseen
- Russell Holly, director of commerce content, CNET
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. We cover a wide range of the latest discoveries, technologies, and stories about space during our weekly Tech Tuesday segments. However, few have done more to popularize and bring science to a level for everyone to understand than Neil deGrasse Tyson. He will be hosting the "Cosmic Perspective" right here in Columbus. But what does he have to say about the future of space exploration and about scientists here on Earth? Joining us now is Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Welcome to the show, Dr. Tyson.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Thanks for having me, and why do you only do science on Tuesdays?
Juravich: We came up with a gimmick called Tech Tuesday, and here we are. Tech Tuesday.
Tyson: Tech Tuesday, I guess Tech Wednesday doesn't quite ring in the same way.
Juravich: Doesn't have the same ring to it. No, no, we went with the two, we went with with the T's. All right, so next week, Wednesday, March 25, you're going to be presenting what's called "Cosmic Perspective" at the Mershon auditorium right here on Ohio State's campus. Can you tell us a little bit about the event? What's a "Cosmic Perspective"?
Tyson: Well, first, it's not my first visit to the Murchon Auditorium. I'm delighted and honored to be asked to return. And when I'm invited to a city and a theater, what I do is I offer them a dozen, 15 possible topics that I can speak on. And then the host, based on their knowledge of the audience and whatever is prevailing in the news, they'll pick a topic that they judge to be most relevant. And that's then the topic that I deliver. So in that sense, it's not a tour where you're trying to sell something. Although I always do have a book I could buy. There's always a book that's like floating, but that's not the goal of this. And so they picked a "Cosmic Perspective", which is the most philosophically deep subject of all the talks that I give because it attempts to reset for you. Or set perhaps for the first time, what our place is, what our relationship is to each other on earth, what our relationships is to the planet and to the universe itself. And it can be so enlightening, so mind-expanding that ideas that you had before that were either petty or provincial or they just evaporate away. And you come away with a completely different outlook in the world. And so my goal is at the end of our time together in that theater, of course it's illustrated, I have images and some videos and things and me talking, but all combined at the of that, I want you to walk away saying, I feel like I'm a different person.
Juravich: Wow. Okay. Does it get into our place in this universe? Like, do you talk about whether there is other life out there or if it's just us?
Tyson: Well, so I do touch on that. However, there's an entire other talk. You can invite me back if you'd like, called "The Search for Life in the Universe."
Juravich: Okay, well they didn't pick that one, yeah.
Tyson: Yeah, they picked that one. I can't cram it all into the one talk. But yes, a sense of, are we rare? Are we, you know, there's a, here's for me perhaps the most profound dimension of this. On earth as humans, we tend to think of being special as being different from everybody else. Oh, you're special. Whereas in the universe, I actually, take the opposite view, I realize as an astrophysicist that one of our great gifts to civilization in the 20th century was the discovery that our atoms are traceable to events in the Big Bang and in the life and death of stars that preceded our sun in the evolution of the universe. And so it's not just figuratively true, it is literally true that we are stardust. And so when I look up at the night sky, I feel special, not because I'm different from the universe, but because I am the same. And there's a sense of participation for us all when we look up. And at the extreme limit of that, you can realize, yes, we're alive in the universe. But because the handiwork of stars, manufacturing all the elements where carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron in our bloods, all of that came from stars. So in a way, not only are we alive in the universe, the universe is alive within us.
Juravich: Wow. So being stardust makes you feel so big and so small at the same time.
Tyson: Yes! See? There you go. You got it. You don't even have to come.
Juravich: Well, since you're coming to Ohio, I just wanted to look at Ohio and our place in the world of space. Have you ever done any work at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland?
Tyson: I've worked for NASA, but we all know the Glenn Center. I mean, it's plus Ohio has no shortage of astronauts who were born there. We got a few, yeah. Plus I'm disappointed you guys didn't jump in ahead of North Carolina, whose license plate says first in flight. So leaving people to think that the Wright brothers were from North Carolina.
Juravich: No, we have we have birthplace of aviation. That's our license plate.
Tyson: Okay.
Juravich: I didn't, I didn't make it up, man.
Tyson: Yeah. Yeah, so that's good. That's good, so Ohio is a special place in many people's hearts and minds for those reasons especially.
Juravich: There's been a lot of talk over the past year with the Trump administration and how much money from the federal government should we should be putting into science. What are your thoughts on federal funding versus private funding and where taxpayer funding should go when it comes to science?
Tyson: Yeah, I don't, as a matter of personal philosophy, I learned maybe 10 to 15 years ago, just to not tell people what to do, okay? To say, how should we, I'm not that guy, all right? I'm, yes, I have a huge platform, social media platform with like, all combined tens of millions of followers. So I could be just pontificating, telling people who they should vote for, how they should, I won't do that, I'll do that. Instead, what I will tell you is the consequences of your actions or inactions. And then you decide, this is a free country, you decide. So in this past year, 10,000 PhD scientists have evaporated from the ranks of the US government. These are people who are rotating in in the capacity as advisors, others that took early retirement because the funding climate was was constricted. And you can ask, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, I can tell you that private enterprise, yeah, they have R&D. They do, however, that R& D at some point has to tack into their quarterly report or their annual report. Whereas government funded research is way more fundamental than that, way deeper in the pipeline. So that you might not see how that matters years, possibly even decades later. And that is the government investing in its own future. And so it's weird when I hear members of Congress review paper titles from the National Science Foundation, of course a government agency, and they say, oh, what relevance could that possibly have? That sounds stupid, let's not fund that. You have no idea what role today's science will play in the future if it's basic science. You just don't know. And so you kind of have to fund it all. And to pass judgment on it in that way is to shoot ourselves in the foot. So if we do that, again, I'm an if-then guy, so if we constrict things in this way and rely only on science that you can see a product at the end of a quarterly report, then fundamental science goes out the window. Other countries who do not feel that way will rise up and we will be chasing after them, saying, could you let us in the room? Could you buy our products, even though your products are better, because they're based on more fundamental science that we neglected. So, yeah, it's, I grew up, I'm shaped in the 20th century, where the United States led in practically every dimension of science. And our economy shows that, that it pumps our health, our wealth and our security. Without it, we might as well just move back to the stone ages.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about space and science with Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. We have done a few shows about the future of space exploration being dominated by private companies, like SpaceX, instead of being publicly funded through NASA. What do you think about this change to more private space travel? I guess I'll use the word travel.
Tyson: No, it's not it's it's not space exploration when it's done by private enterprise. It's it a space industry. That's different. That SpaceX, unless it's a vanity project for them, they're not going to have a rover to a place that's never been explored before. There's no business model for that. So let's distinguish this. When SpaceX first took cargo to the space station, there were banner headlines Stay. New future of space, private enterprise. SpaceX did what NASA had been doing for 20 years, bringing cargo to the space station. So this is not the first time private enterprise has come in after the fact. Columbus, the first European to the new world, funded by Spain, they didn't say, oh, Chris, come back, give us a slideshow on the new life forms you see. No, it was find a shorter route to the Indies. And by the way, make any other discoveries you can so that other things can follow. So only after he could tell us where the trade winds were, where the hostels were, where the friendlies were, only after that, did the Dutch East India Trading Company rise up, okay? So private enterprise, if it's really expensive, is not doing the frontier research. That's just not how it has ever worked. And I don't see it happening that way going forward. SpaceX in January launched their 11,000th satellite. Yeah, they weren't the first to launch satellites. Governments were, all right? And then you come in after. The, just to be clear, the postal service doesn't have their own airplanes. They rent space in the bellies of commercial airplanes because delivering mail is not a frontier activity. Okay, so let's just be clear and present about this. So yeah, there's always been a place. For private enterprise in the exploration of space. Not as the frontier, because the government has geopolitical reasons for going to the moon, for going Mars, for going back to the Moon. That's what's driving it. And yeah, you might say, I got a rocket that'll get us there. Then we'll buy the rocket off of him. But it's not his initiative that does it.
Juravich: So the geopolitical reason. So there's no money for SpaceX to make by us going to Mars. But if America wants to be the first in Mars, then maybe SpaceX will.
Tyson: Yeah, yeah, so SpaceX, you know, if China says, I'm making this up, of course, if China say they wanna put military bases on Mars, we're gonna be in Mars in 10 months, okay? That's the kind of forcing that got us to the moon in the 1960s when Russia, the perceived or real threat that Russia represented, the godless communists showing the world their technologies, and here we are, a free country trying to show that we're the best. And they were beating us at everything. The first satellite, the first animal, the like of the dog, the human, the woman, the first dark-skinned person. Remember Cuba was on their side and they got dark- skinned people in Cuba. They beat us at every thing. And so we turned around and said, we gotta beat them at something. So we go to the moon first and we say, we win. And we look over our shoulder and they're not there. And so, we just end the program. That's evidence that is completely geopolitically driven. And so, at the moment, there's not an economic case for going to Mars. Once we set it up and we know what the cost limits are, maybe SpaceX will say, let's have a tourist journeys to Mars, like we have basically tourism now with the suborbital, the Bezos Branson billionaire boys space race, they're going up with civilians. So So just, we need to keep separate in our head space exploration from the commercialization of space. The frontier, if it's expensive, is not commercializable immediately until you have other factors that are well understood and characterized.
Juravich: I wanted to talk to you a little bit about teaching science and science literacy. I mean, that's a part of what you've devoted your career to. What do you think is being done well, or how are we doing with teaching the next generation of scientists right now?
Tyson: Yeah, bad, sorry, bad. And I don't think it's anybody's fault because I don't think we knew. You go back over the decades, science was treated as a satchel of facts, a book of information. You remember your science books. There'd be vocabulary words that would be bold-faced and you'd be tested on those. So science was treat like any other subject. You learn this body of knowledge and then you put it back on the test. The problem is, science is not really that. The practice of science is the development of methods and tools to query nature, to learn what is objectively true and what is not. And the methods are designed to ensure that you do not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not, or that something is not true that it is. Did I say that right?
Juravich: I wanted one to be the opposite of the other. I think you got there.
Tyson: Oh, thank you, thanks. So as a result, look at what happened with COVID and we have a vaccine that rolls out. And just even before the vaccine, what should have happened, and I knew this in real time. I'm not just being Monday morning quarterback for the Sunday game. I knew at real time, they should have said, here's the latest of our understanding of this novel virus. It may be transmitted by liquids or fluids on surfaces. Clean your surfaces and your groceries when you come in, check in in a week when we have more data, better evidence, and we might update this advice. And that's not what happened. People were turning to government officials expecting the facts that are immutable and that would not be modifiable as you go forward. That is not how the moving frontier of science works. And when everyone is participating in that frontier, because we're trying to characterize this novel virus, the novel virus. We're trying get a vaccine for it. Everybody's just waiting for a fact and a rule to follow rather than recognize the bearing witness to the moving frontier of science. And you do the best you can at any given moment, Awaiting the next round of research. Had people been trained to think of science that way, then the officials would not have been spooked to give you partial information because you'd realize that's how it works on the frontier. And everyone would have just been excited maybe even or intrigued by a front row seat in how science works. So again, it's not the knowledge base you acquire, it is how is your brain wired for thinking. About discovery on the frontier. That is, science is more that than it is anything else.
Juravich: Here in Columbus, we have a pretty famous hands-on science museum called COSI. It's won lots of national awards.
Tyson: Very not well known.
Juravich: Yeah, do you feel like something like that can inspire future scientists if our schools are just teaching us the vocabulary words?
Tyson: Yeah, so my biggest, my, let me say, the most lasting influences on me growing up were visits to science museums. Okay, it was a long while before I ever got to Ohio. I'm a native of New York City, but I visited the Boston Museum of Science, very well-known place, almost as storied as Kosai, and there were immersive exhibits there I still remember to this day, to this date. And the immersion is very important because then you're surrounded by the science. It's not just words on a page in front of you that you then have to memorize. You become a participant in it. And I've asked people who've been to various key museums across the country, science museums, what exhibit do you remember the most from childhood? And they always give you the same answer, always. In Philadelphia, in the Franklin Museum, there's the living heart that you walk through. And you hear the, I don't know if it's still there, but it was there when all the people I asked about, and you're like moving along one of the ventricles, and you just feel and hear the heartbeat. People never forget that, never. In the Boston Museum of Science, there was a five-story tall. It might've been smaller, because I might've, I might be exaggerating that because I was just a little kid. So I think it was five-storey tall. Van de Graaff generator. You know, that silver ball where lightning jumps off of it, but this is five stories tall, and there's lightning sparks, and you see this. I was like, I still remember that. I'm sorry, I remember that, and so did I become a scientist because of it? I don't know, probably not, but my sense, my awareness of how people can think about science and how they're exposed to science and to realize science empowers you. It empowers you to know when other people have no clue what they're talking about. How about that?
Juravich: How about that? I'm so inspired right now, I want to run to COSI and have an experience like that.
Tyson: Yes! Yes!
Juravich: Well, just to end on before I let you go, what is something looking forward, what is a discovery that you're most excited about in the realm of your career? Like, what is coming up in science? We talked a little bit about COVID. We talked about going to Mars. What excites you right now?
Tyson: I like the fact that we're searching for life in the universe, and James Webb's space telescope has been deputized in that role. It's currently in a whole cottage industry within astrophysics. It's studying the atmospheric composition of planets that move across the sight line to a host star. And when that happens, light from the star passes through the atmosphere, and the atmosphere, the atmosphere leaves its fingerprint. In the light of the star? And then you can see, are there gasses there that are derivable from life? Like oxygen in Earth's atmosphere is here only because there's life that generates it. There's no other source of oxygen, of free oxygen on Earth than its production through photosynthesis, plant life and plankton and the like. So that's one way to search for it, because you can't see the surface of the planet, they're too far away. So this is a secondary indicator of it. We're still searching the soils of Mars, maybe there are aquifers, we know there's water on Mars, and every place on Earth where there's water, there's life. So this search for life, I think, is quite exciting. And I'd like to know that in my lifetime, that we'll have the answer to whether there's life anywhere other than Earth in our solar system, in our backyard. I want to know that before I die
Juravich: We are talking about space and science with Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. He will be here in Columbus on March 25th, presenting a show called "The Cosmic Perspective." Thank you so much for joining us today, Neil de Grasse Tyson.
Tyson: Excellent, thank you for having me. Oh, can I give one last plug? It's a fast plug. Oh, plug away. A quick play, I feel cheap doing this, but I got it, because we just talked about the search for life. Yeah. In two months, in May, I have a book coming out titled, "Take Me To Your Leader."
Juravich: What a good title, all right.
Tyson: And it's a primer on how you should think and behave in your first encounter with an alien. And it brings to factor the laws of physics, expectations you might have, how you might look, how alien you would look to the alien, right? Imagine you make friends with the alien and then you say, oh, excuse me, I have to lay down and be semi-comatose for one third of Earth's rotation. I'll get back to you in eight hours.
Juravich: What?
Tyson: So it's an attempt to reset the conversation about our expectations of them and their expectations of us.
Juravich: All right, well, we will check out that book in May, and we look forward to seeing you in just about a week here in Columbus. Thank you so much for joining us. To coming back. Thank you.
Tyson: Thank you.
Juravich: And coming up on Tech Tuesday, we're going to talk about how to navigate a touchscreen world when you can't see the touchscreen. That is when Tech Tuesday from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment.
When it's a touchscreen world, everyone clicking through daily chats and tasks, what about those who can't see the screen? How do we navigate digital life then? It's an issue that was brought to us by one of our listeners. John Whitney of Galloway was born blind. He left us a voicemail suggesting this topic for Tech Tuesday.
John Whitney: Is some of the challenges that elderly people and disabled people have with keeping up with the technology that is becoming more and more ubiquitous. I mean, you can't even go to a concert without a smartphone these days. And as a blind person, you could sort of use a smartphone, but it's a lot of trial and error.
Juravich: Joining us now to address this topic is Janae Miller, founder and managing principal of Sight Unseen. She provides corporate training and consulting services to promote the hiring and development of individuals with disabilities. She also serves as the chapter president of the Columbus chapter of the American Council of the Blind and sits on the board of directors for its Ohio affiliate. Welcome to All Sides Janae.
Janae Miller: Well, thank you so much for having me.
Juravich: So I wanted to ask you about the comments we just heard in that voicemail from John Whitney. He talked about being born blind, receiving services when he was young, and then he found it increasingly frustrating to keep up with the digital world. So you made it your mission to help those who are visually impaired. What advice do you have for people like John who are wondering how to manage a touch screen life in this world when they have a visual impairment?
Miller: Well, let me speak to that in a couple of different ways. What's a serious problem across all sectors of disability, especially in the blindness field, is that once you reach the age of 22, you lose all of those supports and classes and training. When you become an adult, there's not continuous services for someone to continue to learn the technology as it changes. Unless you're getting a job. If you have a case with the vocational rehabilitation agency in your state like here is opportunities for Ohioans with disabilities outside of that there's no continuous computer training and it's something that's very much needed for adults who are blind no matter if you're born blind or if you lost your eyesight whether you lost it in your teenage years or as an adult or a senior. That's kind of the greater challenge. I will say for John, there are organizations like the American Council of the Blind of Ohio. We have a local chapter which I'm the president of. We have state affiliate and we're a national organization. The American Council the Blind is one of three of the largest civil rights organization out there for blind people. I always try to tell people, if you know who the NAACP is, they fight for the rights of black people, we fight for rights of blind people, but within that organization, we are a member-based organization, so within that, we provide support, calls, classes, from a peer-to-peer perspective. Currently we have a whole national platform of calls that are available every day that if someone can even just dial in to Zoom on their phone, they can learn about what technology is out there. We have a whole special interest affiliate called BITS, and BIT stands for Blind Information Technology Specialist, and it's all geared around helping all of us learn how to use technology, accessible technology, from each other, especially for those who have mastered it. And now they are eager to come and teach you because they know that we all share the same challenge.
Juravich: He mentioned in his voicemail that you need a smartphone to do just about everything, including go to a concert because all places use digital tickets now. So that's just one challenge. Are you noticing that this digital touchscreen world is happening faster and faster and it's harder for people to keep up?
Miller: It is, and yes, it's true. I'm a very heavy use my phone person. I have an iPhone. I did spend like 20 years with an Android and I left the Android world because I just felt like their accessibility features weren't up to par for what I was seeing from the Apple world. And so yes, I use my phones for almost everything. But even though I use phone, I'm pretty good at that. There are times when because of how an app is designed or a website is designed, it's hard to use. And so it's not always the technology, it's how the application is designed. So when IT people are coding it, there's a way that you can code your website and your application so that anybody using any type of screen reading technology, such as voiceover on the iPhone, or talk back on an Android device, or if you're using a Windows computer, the main screen reader for the Windows platform is JAWS for Windows. If it's not coded in a way so that when I swipe my finger or use the arrow keys to navigate the screen, if it doesn't say, hey, this is a go button, But all it says is that this is just a button. I don't know the functionality of the button. It's all about coding. And I think that just like in school when teachers go to school and they may learn a little bit while they're becoming a teacher about special education or kids with disabilities. There needs to be a lane for that in the technology world. We need more what we call rehab techs in the space, especially here in Ohio.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News, and we're talking with Janae Miller from Sight Unseen about navigating the digital world for individuals with disabilities. You wrote in your bio that you view your disability as an opportunity for innovation. So tell me more about that. Tell me about the innovation.
Miller: Well, the innovation comes in a couple ways, because I'm not only blind, but as the deaf community says, I'm hard of hearing. I wear hearing aids in both of my ears. I was born with rubella. And so because of that, I have always had vision challenges, but I did not completely go blind until I was diagnosed with glaucoma and my vision began to change throughout my high school and college years. And so... When I say innovation, I'm always saying there's ways to create, ways to do things that haven't always been thought of. Tradition is good, but it's okay to think outside the box. It's okay, to stretch yourself. It's OK to even come into a place of collaboration, because sometimes what may have been developed for one group of people tends to work for other group of of people. Even if you look throughout history of creating of different things, I'll use something separate, for example. I was told once that the battery operated toothbrush was designed for people who have muscular dystrophy but look how many people use battery-operated toothbrushes who don't have muscular
Juravich: And so, oh, go ahead. No, no, that's okay. I was just gonna say, you also use a term called complete inclusion. So I wanted to have you explain what you meant by that.
Miller: Well, complete inclusion means when I go to different places and spaces, whether it's a classroom, it could be a performing arts thing, it could at work. I find that they do, the world does a good job of covering every disability in my opinion, but deaf and blind. I always seem to find that there's stuff for people who are on wheelchairs. There's things for those who have sensory disabilities like autism or cognitively delayed, but I can never find a Braille or maybe a large print a lot of times. I always have to ask for it. I'll give you a really good example. I am a city commissioner for the city of Columbus. Columbus has a lot of different boards and commissions. And I currently sit on the Columbus Advisory Commission on Disability Issues, and recently the Parks and Rec Department did a wonderful presentation on their ADA audit and how they have gone to all of their facilities to talk about, they did an assessment, okay, we need to update this, this, this, and that, and they did a good job of covering every disability in their audit except for blind, and I pointed out to them, I said, you don't have anything about brown signage? Don't have anything about making your signs have sizeable print for people who may have low vision. I find that that happens very commonly. And so I work to make sure that if you're going to be inclusive, include everybody, including people like me.
Juravich: Did the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department listen to you, or are they adding Braille to their signs?
Miller: Well, they said, well, we will have to go back and make a note of that and follow up with you. So I'm waiting for their follow up and waiting to see when they come back to the commission with once they do that assessment.
Juravich: How would you how inclusive would you say central Ohio or Ohio companies are when it comes to? People with disabilities you mentioned earlier that there's a lot of companies out there that could do better Companies could hire someone who maybe has a disability to understand the tech better, but how is Ohio doing overall?
Miller: It needs some help, it needs some work. You know, I recently am working to get a part-time gig with an Ohio agency. And it's an agency that I know has other people that work for them who are blind. And they're sending me a form that they want me to sign. I'm going, but I don't use a mouse to draw a signature.
Tyson: Mmm.
Miller: And I'm like, I'm surprised you all haven't figured out how to make these hiring forms accessible.
Juravich: So what way would you need to do your signature on the form? Like, you would need to speak it into the signature part? No.
Miller: Just type it.
Juravich: Just tie- oh yeah, well that's simple. Duh.
Miller: I mean, if you really think about computers, before we ever were doing all these using the mouse and all this stuff, in the days of DOS and Apple II E's, if anybody remembers those days, it was still all F1 did this and F3 did this, and you did this plus this. It was all keyboard driven. Now people don't know how to do something without a mouse, and even computer code is still keyboard driven.
Juravich: All right, so they made the form too complicated. There we go. All right. At Sight Unseen, you also promote the hiring and development of individuals with disabilities. How do you work with companies to promote this talent pipeline?
Miller: Well, I tried to get them to really look at what we bring to the table, because a lot of times in the world in which we live in, disabilities are seen as a liability and not an asset. And so I try to give them to look at, think about how we have to figure out how to do things that you don't have to think about. That creates a creative mind, that's an inventive mind, that's a strategic mind. When we have to find workarounds to do everyday tasks that people who don't have a disability don't even have to conceive about, that's somebody you want on your team that they're gonna always be thinking in a strategic way that's gonna increase growth. It's not going to make you go backwards. We're definitely gonna be thinking forward because we have think forward so we can live our life every day.
Juravich: Yeah, back to the original, our listener John Whitney, who proposed this topic for us. He said that he worked for 20 years in customer service. He said he learned the customer service through the phone for his job, and he was taught what he needed to keep the job, but he never learned the next step, or the switch from a landline phone to a cell phone. Do you find that that happens sometimes, where people learn what's needed, but then have trouble getting to the next stop?
Miller: Yes, I see that a lot of times, because all the members in my chapter are above a certain age. Most of them probably could be my parents. And so for a lot of them, they still have a landline phone. They still probably use an operating system that has long since not been supported. Because they they haven't really been taught using whatever screen reader you're using that, you know, in the old way you did this. But in a new way is this, it's the same thing as this, except now we do it this way. It's like learning how to use a, going from a manual screwdriver to an electric one. And some people haven't been taught that transition. So yeah, it is very common.
Juravich: Is there certain screen readers that work better than others? Do you have like a favorite one, or are there certain screen reader apps that you always recommend to people?
Miller: Well, I mean, what I named earlier, those are the common ones. Everybody that has an iPhone uses voiceover on their phone. That's just the standard on the iPhone. Anybody that has Android, their standard screen reader is Google TalkBack. Most people who use a Windows computer who are blind, we are taught how to use JAWS. And JAWS is an acronym that stands for Job Access with Speech. And it's been around for over 40 years. Now there's a new open source screen reader that is similar to JAWS. The JAWS would be considered more proprietary software. There's an open source of screen reader that a lot of people in the blind community are getting because it's free. It's called NVDA, non-visual display. And it was created by a bunch of guys in the UK.
Juravich: Is that something, if someone's listening right now and wants help learning to use those, is that something that Sight Unseen does or the American Council for the Blind? Where could they go to for help?
Miller: So earlier I mentioned that the American Council of Blind, we have different calls every, we have a call every day of the week on a variety of topics and we have special interest affiliate that people can come and be a part of. It's called BITS. It stands for Blind Information Technology Specialist. They have calls every day and they have open, you know, free chat. Where you can log on if you're able to even just dial into the Zoom number and learn and have conversations about how to use whatever technology that you have to use. And there's different, there's a handful of people that I know personally who live here in Columbus who are technology gurus. But I know, they know, but I also know they are overworked. Because again, as I said, we need more rehab techs who know about adaptive technology in the Ohio ecosystem. We don't have enough.
Juravich: I wanna thank you so much for your time today. We've been talking with Janae Miller, founder and managing principal with Sight Unseen. Thank you so for joining us.
Miller: Thank you for having me, I appreciate it. Hope to come back soon.
Juravich: And coming up, we are going to talk with our resident tech expert, Russell Holly, about a sassier version of a popular smart speaker. And we're going to hear about how Google Maps is getting more friendly and casual. That is when Tech Tuesday from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment.
Samsung fans might want to tune in. There's a new phone on the market. The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra has hit the shelves, and it's a whopping $1,300. And is already being praised for its unique privacy features, its storage, its camera, and more. To tell us if it's worth the price tag, we have Russell Holly, Director of Commerce, Content at CNET. Welcome back, Russell.
Russell Holly: Thank you.
Juravich: So appearance-wise, this phone is not much different than its immediate predecessors, but what makes it stand out to you?
Holly: There are a couple of really interesting things that stand out for this. The first is despite being roughly the same size as its predecessor, it has a battery that lasts just about four hours longer on average. You know, there's some interesting battery saving tech that is a combination of the work that Android, Google has been doing with the Android operating system and Samsung has been sort of optimizing against, but also there's really interesting stuff happening with the display on this that I believe is also helping reduce how much power is being consumed. By the display and you mentioned it in in the intro with this this privacy display that is a big part of this phone
Juravich: So yeah, the privacy display, does that mean that, is it not as bright, I guess? Is that what I'm saying?
Holly: It's not that it's not as bright. There's some really clever stuff happening with the individual pixels that make up the display here in that they do not need to all be completely lit in order to show you the information that's on the screen. An LED is round in nature. And so that's why you can see it from a bunch of different angles because the light is shining from a lot of different angles and why everything doesn't always look exactly the same as when you're looking at something straight on versus the side is that not all of the same colors are being displayed in the same way because of the tiny curves that are found there. What Samsung is doing here is essentially either dimming or fully darkening the kind of center cylinder around that individual pixel, making it so that the only light that is coming at you is coming from one direction, which means when you're looking at the phone straight on, you can see everything really clearly, but if you lean a little bit to the left or to the right, there's no more light coming from either of those sides. You can't really see what's going on on the screen. This used to be possible with. You know different kinds of screen protectors that you could put on the phone that would work in various ways, but you know introduce kind of problems of their own and this is now something that's just built into every part of this phone it works no matter what you're doing.
Juravich: So if you're yeah, you're sitting on an airplane the person beside you can't read all your texts and stuff like
Holly: That's exactly right. And there doesn't appear to be any significant cost to this from a processing standpoint or from a power consumption standpoint. In fact, it's possible that this is actually saving some battery life because less power is being used to light the entire display. But it is a really interesting kind of visual effect. When you first see it, it feels like there's like a filter on the phone, but it is, in fact, part of the operating system doing this work.
Juravich: So why is it so much? $1,300, I thought normally Samsung's were cheaper than Apple's, so.
Holly: No, Samsung and Apple have been pretty competitive as far as prices go for quite some time now. The Ultra series is what Samsung has in, you know, kind of coordination. If you were to give it an Apple variant, it would be the like Pro Max versions. You know, so the Samsung Galaxy S26 when you don't have the Ultra attached is going to cost a little more in line with that thousand dollar mark that we're starting to see more of these phones reach at. This is just the larger screen and the more impressive camera and all of the top features go into this larger version of this phone, which is why you get that increase in price.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides, and we're talking about some recent tech news with Russell Holly, Director of Commerce Content at CNET. Google's AI Gemini has been steadily making its way into the tech's various applications. And at long last, it's arrived to Google Maps, and apparently it is much more chatty and conversational than its predecessor. So what new qualities is Gemini bringing to Google maps?
Holly: There are a couple of different features that come into this, and I think that they vary in terms of how useful they are. The first is when you are using the spoken language part of Google Maps, where you're driving somewhere and it says turn left at the light or something like that, it is now much more descriptive. So if there is a local business nearby or a playground or something that is like a physical landmark, it will mention that landmark in terms of how you're getting somewhere. So it'll be turn left to the 7-Eleven there. Turn, you know, so that that like visual landmark instead of just the street sign. This is in my opinion, not 100% effective. I have been in several situations where it has asked me to turn it at establishments that are either not open or no longer in business or doesn't have a sign. So it's just a faceless building. And I had no idea that that was the name of that building. So not perfect to be clear. But there are certainly some benefits to that, especially if you're somewhere that you've never been before. And it's not like a giant you know, city with a lot of changes that you might have trouble navigating. The other feature that has been rolled out is the way in which you can ask Google Maps for things if you are driving has become quite a bit more conversational. So instead of saying, you know I need a navigation to the nearest gas station, you can say, you now, I want to go to the gas station that has the lowest price in the area. And Gemini is going to grab, you, know, those, you that array of requests and present something to you that gives you something along that line. A really great example that I had not thought of, that I saw used quite a bit in the demonstration for this is, where is the closest public bathroom that isn't disgusting? And it will actually take a look at Google Maps reviews that people have left. If they have left reviews about gas station bathrooms that have been like, yeah, this was really gross, then avoid, then Gemini will leave that off of the list.
Juravich: So it, you can, and you can ask that while you're driving. So you don't have to stop. Cause there's all that time whenever you're like, I'm just trying to find a coffee shop and you have to and like navigate through the phone because it's having trouble figuring out what you want, right?
Holly: That's right. If this gets easier, if you're a part of the, like, you know, Android Auto or, or, you know, Apple CarPlay, and you can just press a button on your, on your steering wheel, if you've got a more modern vehicle. But yeah, in either way, you'd be able to do that.
Juravich: I also think it's interesting, it sounds like it's giving directions more like a human would, because you would say, you know, go down to where the McDonald's is and turn left, right? Like, instead of, if you don't know the name of the street, right.
Holly: That's exactly right. The idea here is to make it just easier to find those landmarks. And I wonder how long it's going to take folks to transition. I feel like there have been more than a decade now of us learning how to translate robot in order to get navigation to places. And now we're reverting back to a more conversational tone. It really makes me wonder how many people are going to actually have to relearn how to use their navigation, in a sense, because it is more like a person is talking.
Juravich: Yeah, I'm from Pittsburgh, born and raised, and we're notoriously known in Pittsburgh for giving weird directions, because we'll always say, you got to go down to where the Pizza Hut used to be, and then you make a right, you know, like, that's the directions. So is it going to tell me to go where something used to
Holly: So far I have not encountered that, but it genuinely wouldn't surprise me if you were to quantify something by saying that you used to live in the neighborhood or something like that.
Juravich: Just quickly, we have time for one more topic. We've all heard the standard monotone responses from Amazon's Alexa, but part of the commands, they're trying to roll out a more stylistic with a new personality, and it includes a new sassy style. So what is your opinion of this new sassier version of the smart speaker?
Holly: I'm going to establish some brief bias here by making it clear that I'm not personally the biggest fan of the Plus subscription service that Amazon has got rolling out now and the way that it talks, I find the previous iteration more in line with what it is that I prefer. But yeah, so when the Plus version of this service, and I apologize, I'm gonna keep I'm avoiding to say the name because I know what happens.
Tyson: I know
Holly: The plus service had, it started off with three different kinds of conversational tones where you could have it be chill or sweet or brief in the way that it does this. And sassy is now added. And it's really just some awkwardly placed sarcasm and swear words from my experience. It chooses different ways to try and relate to you. But it really, at the moment, these kinds of things tend to improve over time. But at the moment, it really just strikes me as someone who was told to make it sound like you were talking to someone Gen Z without asking anybody who is Gen Z if this was how they wanted to be talked to. It's certainly worth hearing for yourself for the first time. Just remember that you can ask to turn it off at any point just by vocally asking for that to change. But yeah, this is clearly, Amazon as a company is very clearly trying to create a bunch of different ways for people to have a more conversational experience with this platform. And it's not immediately clear that this is working.
Juravich: Right. With the plus version of mine, our family ended up deciding to go back to the other one because we just like the old one better. Yeah. Are you in that category?
Holly: I have absolutely been in that category. You know, I did try this sassy version and the first time that the robot in my kitchen said, oh honey, to me, I was just, it wasn't for me. It might be for you. And I'm not, you know, certainly not here to pass judgment if it is, but it was not my thing.
Juravich: All right, well, oh, honey, Russell Holly, thank you so much for joining us. This has been Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. Russell, thanks for your time today.
Holly: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: And Russell Holly is the director of commerce content at CNET. You've been listening to Tech Tuesday on 89.7 NPR News. Thanks for joining us.