So, there's this term in podcasting, always on. It means that in a 52-week year, we're going to deliver you, dear listener, 50 shows. Producing at that level requires a quick pace. And it means that too often we don't have the time to reflect on what we've learned or how the stories relate to each other. So, today we've gathered three of our busiest, quote-unquote, always-on podcasters to talk about the stories that crossed into all of our feeds in 2025. I'm Audie Cornish, and on the assignment, I cover culture and politics and the side stories that eventually make their way to the front page. I'm Claire Duffy, and on Terms of Service, I cover new technologies, including facial recognition, generative AI, and how we can navigate the rapid changes they're making to society. And I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon and CNN's chief medical correspondent. On my podcast, Chasing Life, I cover the worlds of health and medicine, no surprise, but also hopefully teaching people how to lead healthier and happier lives. And I'll tell you right off the bat, one way to do that is by spending time with your friends and colleagues, getting that connection, sharing what you know. So pull up a chair, join us. This is the CNN Podcast 2025 Roundtable. Stay with us. all right super friends unite super friends unite all right so we're trying to think of like how do we talk about what's going on at the end of this very kind of strange year strange for a couple of reasons that i realized had a lot to do with like your gigs like your column because we have the ascendance of maha culture, right? Make America healthy again and RFK and the dialogue that happens with that. And then also every other story I have done this week usually ends with some version of, so then AI and like talking about AI in this really intense way where it's both exerting a lot of pressure on all of us, but also no one fully understands what's going on, where it's going, how much money, its effect on the economy. It's just like a wild mix of things. So I just figured, let me bring in some experts. What did you think was the biggest story in your corner of the internet this year? Claire, you want to go first? Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting too, Adi. I feel like your intro and tying together the sort of rise of Maha and the political stories that we've seen this year are so interconnected with the tech world and just sort of the way that social media and the way that the internet works. Oh, really? Because I thought those were wildly disparate things. You're saving the day. It set the stage for that. Yeah. But no, I mean, I think to me, the biggest story this year has just been the way that we've seen so many people incorporating AI into their everyday lives. And, you know, in some ways that has been a benefit to people. It's people are learning how to engage with this new technology that at least Silicon Valley says is going to change the world. But I think we've also started to see the sort of potential downsides of that technology, certainly for children, which I know we're going to get to. But the mental health implications, I think, of this technology are huge. And I think there are really big questions about how it changes the way that we all relate to each other as people. And so to me, that's been the biggest story of this year is just the way that we've started to see people forming relationships with AI and kind of what that means for individuals and also for all of us communally. I have to say that I don't think there's a part of my life now that AI hasn't affected as a doctor, as a journalist, as a dad. It's really, it's interesting. In the medical world, I feel like people are really bullish on AI. I mean, first of all, most patients have already been affected by it, whether they realize it or not. And it's interesting as a guy in his mid fifties. Now I watch my residents, my medical students who've become so facile with it so quickly. I mean, so I'll see my medical students on their phones, walking into patients room, having a conversation with perplexity or chat GPT or open evidence, whichever, whichever platform they're using. So that's not considered cheating. Like you're not the boss looking at them like, oh, you're learning nothing. That's a good question. I spy some judgments on you. Everyone thinks you're so nice. So now we're going to find out. It's not so much judgment, but there's always this desire to sort of say, hey, look, pretend that the technology doesn't exist. And like, how would you sort of power through this or learn this without that technology? And, you know, we've seen this with other adoptions of new technologies in the medical world. When we started doing operations differently, where people were using, you know, tools to basically navigate their operations as opposed to understanding the anatomy as well. I think there was always this desire from the attendings to say, hey, man, that's cheating. You have to learn this for real and pretend that the technology doesn't exist. But the response you often get is, but the technology does exist. And this is the world in which we live. Why do we always have to pretend that we're going to live in a world where the technology doesn't exist? And it's a weird thing. Yeah, I can see how it could happen because the medical industry is so ripe for this, right? Like, no offense, a lot of you have bad handwriting. like there's oasis you have to like it's relying on recall right that's why every medical show is about a guy who has a photographic memory because none of us can like wrap our minds around the idea that you have volumes of data in your mind that somehow can help you figure out a diagnosis and like that's what ai does great right like scrub look scrub look and the part of me that is a cynic is like, what happens when the power goes out? You know, like, I don't want that doctor who has never done a surgery without it. I don't want that doctor who's only perplexity their way through the process in case we're doing it by candlelight. You know, it's funny you say that, Adi, because I actually said that same thing to one of my residents the other day. Pretend the power has gone out and now you still have to do this operation. And the response to me basically was, hey, we would probably wait for the power to come back on. No, that's not how it works. We're so dependent on it now. It's like, you know, I'm not going to do five digit math without a calculator. Right. I'm going to wait till my calculator is powered up, you know. So it but I hear you. It's interesting. But I think sometimes we sort of hand ring over, you know, how much should we sort of slow roll the adoption of these new technologies. And sometimes it just is. For them, it just is. So the idea of saying, hey, imagine a world without, it's a weird sort of conceit for people who are now growing up in this world. It's also uniquely Western, uniquely American. Like our power will always be good. Like everything will always be good instead of like because, you know, they don't really deal with scarcity so well. And Claire, the thing I found fascinating about AI is the descriptions of it. And we just talked about this with Donia Sullivan of like the kind of religious fervor with which people talk about it. Like the people who are literally like, listen, we are going to X the greatest thing ever. And the people who, without fail, write some white paper that's like, here, we have three years before AI takes over and the whole world is collapsed. And these are such like the gap between these two perceptions from people in the industry is like absolutely baffling to me and is almost scarier than believing in one of those. paths or the other. Right. Well, it's almost like part of the point is just to paralyze people into doing nothing because either alternative feels so scary and extreme. One of my favorite interviews from this year was your interview that you did with Karen Howe about her book on OpenAI. And I feel like she her reporting shows this so well just the way that they have presented this as an inevitable thing that is coming and therefore everybody should get on board with it and start using it because it going to change your job and it going to change education So the best thing that you can do is engage with it and use it because it coming And I feel like her reporting does such a good job of showing the fact that it doesn't really have to be this way. Like there is this investment in building these massive data centers and building out this, you know, potentially all-knowings, more intelligent than humans technology. And yet, there is a way that we could do this on a smaller scale or a scale that rolls out on a, you know, less advanced timeline and is potentially better for both people and the environment and the way that our culture is able to sort of adapt around it. But I do think that that religious fur has been beneficial to Silicon Valley, certainly, you know, from a political perspective, they need these massive resources to build out this technology. And so convincing people that it is necessary for national security, it is necessary for the economy, that is helping them get the resources that they need to do the thing that they think they need to do. I think the question is, there's still this huge gap between the potential that they say this has to cure cancer and to make it so that everybody can work two days a week. Cancer is the first thing. People think they can sell you anything. Always. If they say it'll cure cancer. Pretty good selling point. Yeah. Like, you know, all they've given us is like delivery. You know what I mean? Like DoorDash. Or AI swap video feeds. It's like they haven't exactly gotten there yet. Yes. Yeah. So I think there's this huge gulf and they really need to prove to people, you know, what it's going to take and what they're going to do to bridge that gulf. Sanjay, did I make that up? Is it is like the promise of longer lives and health, the path to deregulating our hearts? Do you know what I mean? Just saying like, sure, build that data center because this is going to change the world and could cure diseases. Look, I think I don't think you're making that up. And I think a lot of people are saying this. some of the people who are saying this are surprising to me because I would have thought they would have been more tempered in terms of their enthusiasm for this. You mean in the medical community? In the medical community. Sorry, no, I'm talking about the medical community. Yeah, say more. Well, so I'll give you one example. So I think one of the big sort of question marks has been sort of how wide is the aperture for the inputs that you're using to train the platforms, right so for medical stuff you know is it hey look let's just widen the aperture completely let's look at every peer-reviewed journal sure but also let's look at every reddit stream that reddit thread that's coming through on this let's look at anecdotal case reports let's look at all these things that are happening around the world so take it all in and make these platforms from medical standpoint reflect society or reflect the world or there's a there's a platform which I've used a lot called Open Evidence, which is really, really streamlined in terms of what it's using to train itself. So it is all peer reviewed journals. Because I got to be honest, I don't think someone's Quora answers are going to help me solve anything. I have been on some, you know, let's just call them not very rigorous Yahoo answers. And I don't really want that in the sample set. I think it's I think it's challenging. I agree with you. I think it's challenging, you know, especially when you're dealing with a discipline like medicine and science, which is different than math and physics, for example. When you're talking about medicine and public health, it's not always two plus two equals four. There's always some degree of uncertainty here. So, you know, part of the way that medical science moves forward is this constant challenging back and forth. And then hopefully you get to a better sort of answer. So that makes the case for some people to open the aperture as much as possible. Let's just look at what everybody is saying around these topics. Unfortunately, it's happening at a time when I think so much of medicine and public health is so politicized. So you're getting a lot of political sort of input into this as well. Well, I mean, you guys took a hit post-pandemic. Like the medical community has lost its status as the doctor says it, so it must be true. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I don't know what that means exactly to say it took a hit. I think that the idea is that if there's a lack of trust in things because things are politicized, do you push back on that or do you just accept this as the new sort of normal? Well, that's what I mean by took a hit. I mean, right now, RFK Jr., it's like Maha has a seat at the table. The vaccine skeptics, after years of being told, you're crackers, they have a seat at the table. And so it changes. if you rely on the thinking from the administration, it's not aligned with the settled science. You know what I mean? You're sitting there kind of being like, well, there's aluminum in this. And is that a neurotoxin? And like now you're sort of on their playing field about what are the facts that are known about any given thing? And please disagree with me. I'm just saying it's like the way that I would sort of contextualize that, though, is that I think there's a deeper desire to understand these things as opposed to sort of taking the expert's word for it. I don't think mean that the outcome in terms of what would be recommended would change. So take aluminum, for example. You know, this idea that aluminum is used in vaccines as an adjuvant, which basically means if you didn't use an adjuvant, you'd have to give a lot more of the vaccine to get the same immune response. This sort of accelerates it a bit. Oh, well, aluminum, that's problematic. That's a heavy metal. Why would you be doing that? But then if I also add into there that these children would absorb more aluminum into their bodies just in daily life through eating and drinking and being in living on planet Earth. Oh, OK. Well, now you've contextualized that for me. That sort of context, I think, wasn't always there before. It was just like, hey, we've already thought about this. We've studied it. Yeah. Look at this. Yeah. And trust us in the sense that we also have children. We're also trying to do the best thing for our patients, all that sort of stuff. I don't think that in terms of taking a hit, I guess, if you use that term, that's what's changed, is this desire to not just say the what, but the why behind this. We're going to take a quick break. Back in a minute. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast, Hibernation. We've all heard the term and might even think we know what it means. Bears and squirrels, other animals, hunkering down for the winter, only to emerge when the warmer weather of spring arrives. But what if hibernation itself was more complicated than we realized? His heart rate will go from about three beats a minute to upwards of 400 beats per minute in about 10 minutes. That's incredible. And what if hibernators had superpowers that could one day be tapped for humans, for things like cancer, heart attacks, depression, and even space travel? Those are the questions researchers and scientists all over the world are getting closer to answering every day. Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts. Claire, one of the interesting things that happened to Sanjay this year is he was the subject of a deepfake. Of course, around a health ad, because everyone's always trying to sell you a supplement somewhere. Before, Sanjay, we get to your story. Claire, I find as a woman, I have no interest in going to look for deepfakes of myself. I feel like that will go to a place that I cannot cleanse my mental timeline of. Am I overthinking that? No, not at all. I think that it has gotten really scary. I mean, it just you don't even have to be a public figure. We're all out there. We're on TV. It's very easy for somebody to find a clip of us and in seconds make a deep fake photo, a deep fake video. So wasn there a kid was it a middle school kid who got in trouble with their school system because they created an image of a classmate like a sexualized image We seen a number of those instances where kids create deepfake sexualized images of other kids of their teachers. And because you don't even have to be a public person for this to happen to you. So many people have a photo on Instagram, on Snapchat, on YouTube. It doesn't take very much data now to create these very realistic looking deep fakes. And, you know, now we're even getting to a place with OpenAI Sora 2 image generation model where you can create these videos and people can opt in to having their faces used by strangers, but you don't even have to opt in. Like, it just is so easy. And I think the challenge with AI is even if we see some of the bigger actors, the OpenAIs, the Googles, the metas require that people have consented to have their image used. It's kind of a game of the lowest common denominator. So as soon as it's clear that this technology is possible, somebody is going to find a way to do it in a way that is harmful to people. Sanjay, what was it like? Are you still weirded out? I would say even more than harmful, it's nefarious and reprehensible, frankly. Yeah, I was weirded out. I mean, this has actually been happening for a little bit now where people will, before they were using AI video, people just using images and saying that me and others are selling these products and they would attribute certain statements to us that we never had made. And, you know, I think there was a part of me in the beginning who thought, okay, look, most people are going to see right through that. I had a really weird experience where I was walking down the street in Ann Arbor, Michigan with one of my daughters who goes to college there. And I went to school there and a former professor of mine, someone who I really admire and he's in his early eighties now. Um, but I know him well. So he knows, you know, like I would think this would not be a guy who would be faked out by a deep fake of me because he knows me. And you know, when you, when you watch these videos, the voice is a little different, even the, the imagery is a little different, but he came up to me on the street. I hadn't seen him in years and he said hey just want to let you know I bought some of those products you were talking about online I'm really looking forward to it oh and I was like my goodness you that that's not me that is not me and and he just had this look on his face and this is a very educated guy who knows me who was totally taken in by this so that was a bit of a jarring moment my my parents friends will call my parents sometimes and say hey you know I'm really looking forward to trying these products. A lot of them, by the way, are around dementia. So they are preying on older people and presumably older people who are worried about their memory. These are reprehensible people. I don't even know what these products are. I can only pray that these are not products that will actually harm people. They're obviously taking their money, but I'm hoping that they don't end up buying something that could actually physically harm them. Yeah. It's interesting to see all of these scams running around health, partnership, companionship. That's where we seem to be vulnerable, right? Like I don't see a ton of AI like trying to break into banks, although I'm sure that's a thing. That's going to be the thing of 2026, I think. I mean, I think we're going to, we're very quickly moving from a place where you can create a video, like people create a deepfake video, like somebody created of Sanjay and put it on social media. And we're moving to a place where I could be on this call with you all and it would actually be somebody else. And yet it looks and it sounds exactly like me in real time. And I think that is where the story is moving and whether that ends up targeting people because it looks like I'm calling my grandmother and I'm in trouble, or it's a CEO who's calling their executive assistant saying, give me the password to our shared account. That's the sort of thing I think we're going to start to see in the coming year, unfortunately. I don't think it's an accident. And Sanjay, I don't know if this has happened to you, but like I've heard my kids who are under the age of 10 say to one another like, oh, that's fake. That's AI. And I'm like, have you even seen AI? Because like we don't let them on the computer by themselves that much. And they really haven't. But it's that sense that they're aware that this thing is not what it seems to be. Yes. Whereas I feel like coming up on the Internet, if you're sort of millennial Gen X-y and people told us they're like, Facebook, it'll be great. You're going to make more friends. We were all like, yes, awesome. Like only good things could come from this. And this is coming in a moment where we're all more skeptical, like up and down the spectrum. People don't feel like tech companies have their interests, their best interests at heart. And they don't necessarily believe in the utopias that they're describing. I completely agree with that. You know, I have three teenage girls. So this is conversation topic number one almost every day. And one of the things that sort of strikes me, I think I mentioned this to Clara when we did the podcast together. My youngest daughter, she showed me this meme once on her phone. I don't remember Snapchat or Instagram, whatever it was. And it was about John McCain. And I was very close to John McCain. And it somehow suggested, it was supposed to be humorous, but it somehow suggested that he was actually alive, that he had never died. And because she knew that I was close to him, she was showing me this and ha ha, dad, look at this and blah, blah, blah. And I said, okay, funny meme, but you, you know, that's not true. Right. And she's like, yeah, but it's here on Snapchat or Instagram. I said, right. But you know, that's not true. And she, she said something to me, which really stuck, stuck with me, which was dad, I don't think any of it's true. And it was this bizarre sort of moment where, you know, they look at these platforms as engaging, as entertaining, but as a platform of truth, I don't think the expectation is different. The expectation of truth is not there. The expectation of privacy is not there. And do they care about that? Like I care, like we all grew up with a platform of truth. You may have disagreements, but at least you had the platform of truth. I just don't, I don't know what happens to a generation of kids that don't have that the way that we did. I think they care a little. I mean, they care, they're like buying vinyl and talking about holding books in their hands. And, you know, one of the things you can say that's a high compliment to someone is facts. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like I'm actually wondering if we're going to move towards a period where there's a market of a human verified internet, right? Social media news, where the main selling point is we can tell you for certain what you're seeing is real. And where can I go where there's a little watermark that's like this happened, or there's some technology that sort of verifies that. I mean, maybe that's not a good business for the tech people. I don't know. There are people that are working on it. I spoke with Kevin Rose, who was the founder of Dig, and he's trying to bring back that old social media platform with the selling point of saying, hey, everybody who is on this platform is going to be a verified human. We are going to verify you by making you talk to the camera or providing your credit card. But with the idea that people want to engage with other people and not with bots, And not to have this uncertainty. Because I'm on Reddit now. Are you back on Reddit? A little bit. After all these years, I've gotten back on Reddit because I'm like, at least these schmucks are probably real. Other people. You know, and the algorithm is not recommending things. I'm clicking and joining. And some of it's nostalgia, but some of it is like, I don't want everything fed to me. Right. Well, and I think it's really important, too, because the experts who study this sort of information ecosystem talk about this phenomenon of reality apathy, where if nobody can trust if what they're seeing is real or fake, they do just sort of stop caring. And then what happens is you decide what's real and fake based on what aligns with your personal belief system. And it just sort of pulls people even more deeply into the rabbit holes that we've seen divide us in the last decade. Is the inflection, though, I'm curious, Claire, is the inflection bots versus humans, or is it just truth versus fiction? Because fiction can come from humans as well, you know, especially if you're trying to get clicks and monetize content. I think it's both. I mean, I think it's people wanting a sense of authenticity, whether it I seeing something that somebody who is a human is saying even if what they saying is wrong or I not seeing something that artificial And I think to your point Adi people have this sense that they're being manipulated, but don't quite know what to do about it. So it is going to be interesting to see how, you know, if there really is a market for this where people will demand enough control over their online experience. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the answer Yeah. But to me, I'm like, does someone want to give me the VC? Like, I'll spend the money on it. I want to verify. A hilarious point of order, semi-related but not related, is the other day when I was online, and I think it was Reddit, somebody made a comment about how the algorithm had fed them something, but they called it the Al Gore's rhythm. And I just thought that was great. Someone else has to hear that happen. They were probably dictating and they got it wrong. Okay. So enough about Al Gore's rhythm. We're going to touch grass for a minute. What's something that happened this year or even is the seasons approaching is that, you know, you're thinking about that is not online. Hmm. What is not online? We're all like, what do you mean? What does that mean? What do you mean? You want me to go first? Yes. Yeah. Give us an example. You know, I think that I have been surprised at returning to like church life, like returning to community. We talked about this on the on the last show for the assignment. There's this movement of people who are like more Catholic or more Orthodox or, you know, a lot of people who are surprised and dismayed by the anti-Semitism in the culture have started going back to synagogue. And I have found in my own life, our church is packed. Like kids, like families, like people, they were having two baptisms a week. And I actually wonder if it's part of that world of people who are like offline. I want to shake hands with someone. I want to see someone else's baby. I want to like just get away from it. Right. They're not all coming out of religious zealotry. I think they're also coming for community. I think along that vein, just sort of building on what you were even talking about earlier, like I think so much of the conversation around health care and medicine has been, you know, the Maha sort of movement, you know, 90 percent plus of how people think about that has been dictated by that. And yet there are so many amazing things that are happening in the world of science and medicine with regard to treatment of dementia, for example, and wonderful sort of progress that is made, which I think sometimes it's online in small sectors of society. Certainly, I follow this stuff online. I have regular communications with people who are experts in this area or things that I'm working on. But the public doesn't hear about it as much unless they seek it out. Because if you turn on the news or you're on Reddit or whatever, you're probably mostly hearing a sort of politicized version of medicine and science. Because we're prone to like we are conflict hunters as journalists. Right. Like and so sometimes you don't follow the innovations as closely because you're busy being like, oh, the stakes are really high. We've got to cover this thing. Yeah. And I think it's too bad sometimes because there are some wonderful things that are happening as well that are really inspiring and may make all of our lives better. I mean, you know, dementia, which is something I care about just because I'm a brain guy. But what I learn is that if you're over the age of 55 in this country and you say, what are your top health concerns? For most people, dementia is right at the top of the list, you know, either for themselves or for their parents or whoever it might be. And I think there's this sense for a long time. It's just preordained. Either you're going to get dementia or you're not. And there's nothing you can do about it. Kind of the way that we used to think about heart disease 50, 60 years ago. That's changing. And yet, you know, not enough people sort of know about it because the allure is towards, you know, looking at the politicized medical public health stuff. This is a very literal interpretation of this question, but one of the things that I've really loved seeing this year is there's this movement of teenagers who are communally sort of coming together to not reject technology entirely, but take intentional breaks or sort of downgrade their technology use. We're seeing teens, including here in New York, there's a group called the Luddite Club that many of them have chosen to opt for flip phones instead of smartphones. Or they come together on the weekends and they just spend time phone free for a few hours where they go to the library and read or they crochet, they do art. They're also organizing these delete days where they all decide, you can pick which one you want, but they all decide to delete an app off of their phone. And I think it's really cool to see not just that they're, you know, deciding to take this intentional action to lessen the influence of technology in their lives. You know, again, sort of in this vein of realizing that they've been manipulated by these companies, their data is being used by these companies for profit, but also doing so in a way that brings them together for real life community. I think that's really cool. Well, they also seem to understand the codependency of it, right? Right. Part of the whole problem of having the phone in the teen years is like, if everyone's on it but me, like that loneliness is intense. So I like that they both diagnosed the problem and then like accurately found a remedy, which is I don't want to be alone. I don't want to be the only person taking this stand. Right. That makes me optimistic, you know, to just to hear that, because I think ultimately all these problems that we're talking about, we are saddling the next generation with them. and they are, you know, you're starting to see glimmers of this. You know, my kids, they would do this summer camp where as part of the summer camp, they could not have their devices. And it would be a few weeks and they would come back and they were happy. And you'd have a conversation over the dinner table and they would look you in the eyes. You know, we never allowed phones at the dinner table, but you could sense that their energy was somewhere else. And I remember talking to one of my daughters about that and just sort of highlighting this. Look how you feel when you've been off your device for three weeks. And she made this comment to me and she says, you know, part of the reason we weren't on those devices is because we were in this really, really intense social atmosphere. We're all at camp. We're together. Social media for them is trying to, at least for my daughters, I don't want to overextend this argument, but social media is to get the social part of it. And I think in an increasingly isolated world, that's where they gravitated toward. That should not be a surprise. But when they can have these really intense in-person social experiences, the desire for online social media goes down and they didn't seem to miss it. Yeah. Well, Claire, I want to thank you for ending on a high note. I did not expect that to come from terms of service, to be frank. I'm not saying the pod is dark, but it has its moments. I love the pod. I think it's awesome. I love listening to it. I told you he was the nice one. No, I'm truly inspired by it. No, it's hard to tackle this stuff. So I appreciate the both of you. And yeah, Sanjay, I feel like you've been on the like between Ozempic and AI and this and that. It just feels like the world of health and like consumer thinking around health. It's just been it's been a time. 2025 was a lot. Yeah, no end in sight either. I think it's just coming. We're constantly at it. Well, I appreciate both of you. I hope everyone checks out the pods. And thanks, guys. Thanks for being with us. Thanks, Audie. You're the best. Appreciate it. Crew is here to help with a comic take on the week's headlines. New episodes Saturdays at 9 on CNN and next day on the CNN app.
