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The Download: AI headphone translation, and the link between microbes and our behavior

Rhiannon Williams

created: May 9, 2025, 12:10 p.m. | updated: May 15, 2025, 9:32 a.m.

This scenario is the inspiration for a new AI headphone system that translates the speech of multiple speakers simultaneously, in real time. —Rhiannon WilliamsYour gut microbes might encourage criminal behaviorA few years ago, a Belgian man in his 30s drove into a lamppost. Over the space of a few years, the man was apprehended for drunk driving three times. Microbes living inside the man’s body were fermenting the carbohydrates in his diet to create ethanol. His case, along with several other scientific studies, raises a fascinating question for microbiology, neuroscience, and the law: How much of our behavior can we blame on our microbes?

1 month, 2 weeks ago: MIT Technology Review