Hello, my name is Brea. I live in Los Angeles and I use a period tracker app called Clu.

Brea, talk about data getting personal.

And with Clu, if you want to, you can let them use your anonymous data in the reproductive

health studies that they do. And even though I'm giving them access to this extremely private

information, I'm actually really happy to share it because I get to contribute to their

menstrual and reproductive health research.

Listeners, there's a question for you. Would you give up your most intimate information

if you knew it would be used for the greater good? While 75% of you said yes in our survey

about privacy. But how do you know that the people you give that data to really will

use it for the greater good? How do you know they won't just sell it to other people or

use it to sell you more stuff or worse?

It's note to self the tech show about being human. I'm a new summer ody.

This week we're exploring how our personal information, yours, mine, millions of others

can be put to work to illuminate injustice and even reduce suffering around the world.

Yeah, it's a big claim. We visit two of the world's top scientists at MIT who are inventing

new ways to use data to improve people's lives. And we discover what or shall I say who could

spoil all this potential for good?

Yeah. Hello. Hi, Sandy. It's Maneuch. How are you?

Sandy Pantland has been called one of the world's most powerful data scientists. He co-founded MIT's

Media Lab, he advises the UN, and his goal is to upend how entire societies function, especially

places where problems are literally life and death. You have to remember that it's still

possible to have a genocide occur without the rest of the world knowing about it. It's still

...