Flash Forward

We’re back! After a bit of a break, your regularly scheduled Flash Forward episodes will resume starting today. Every other Tuesday you’ll get a future delivered straight to your listening device. I hope you enjoy!On this episode, we’re talking about the future of senior care. Namely: what happens when we outsource care for our aging loved ones to robots, apps and devices?Let’s start by defining the challenge that the technology in today’s episode is trying to solve: in the United States, there are six million people over the age of 85. Experts estimate that, by 2050, that number will jump to 19 million. And a question looms over those numbers, right? Who’s going to take care of us? And who is going to pay for our care? The average cost of a year in a nursing home in the United States is over $80,000. In home services provided by humans are $48,000. At the same time, care facilities are already reporting a shortage of qualified nurses.So of course one of the classes of solutions proposed to this looming probl

In our last episode of the season, we take one one of the most requested futures: telepathy! What would it be like to be able to link minds, and communicate brain to brain? And how likely is it that we’ll ever get this kind of technology?   We start the episode by talking to Roger Luckhurst, a Professor in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, who explains where the word telepathy comes from, and how it totally obsessed men of science in the early 1800’s. Then, futurist and science fiction author Ramez Naam walks us through both the current state of science and the futuristic world of his science fiction series Nexus, that centers around a drug that gives people telepathic powers. After that, we consider what a future full of telepathic people might mean for etiquette with Robin Abrahams, the etiquette columnist for the Boston Globe. And then we talk privacy and digital security with Kit Walsh, a a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And we finish out the epis

This episode we travel to a future where the 2020 census goes haywire. What happens if we don’t get an accurate count of Americans? Who cares? Apparently the constitution does!   The 2020 census is currently in the crosshairs — census watchers say that it’s not getting enough funding, and community organizations and local governments are already worrying about what an inaccurate census might mean for their people.   To walk us through the current perils facing the census I talked to Hansi Lo Wang, a national correspondent for NPR who has been covering the census; Phil Sparks, the co-director of The Census Project, an organization that brings together groups who use census data; Susan Lerner, the director of Common Cause New York, a government watchdog group; Cayden Mak, the executive director of 18 Million Rising, an online organizing group that works with Asian American communities; and Dawn Joelle Fraser, a storyteller and communications coach who worked for the census in 2010.   Further reading:  Could A C

This episode is all about a world without plastic. What would that look like? Is it even possible?   Today, plastic is seen as one of our great environmental enemies. But it actually wasn’t always that way. Bradford Harris, a historian of science and the host of a podcast called How It Began: A History of the Modern World, and Susan Freinkel, a journalist and the author of Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, walk us through how plastic started out as a solution to unsustainable practices. Then we talk to Sherry Lippiatt, California Regional Coordinator for the NOAA Marine Debris Program, about what exactly is going on with garbage in the ocean. And finally I visit Danielle Trofe at her studio in Brooklyn, where she grows sustainable materials using mushrooms.   Further reading:  Debbie Chachra on peak plastics "On a scale beyond all previous conceptions" [electronic resource] : plastics and the preservation of modernity Bradford Harris: Plastics and Sustainability Our 'Toxic' Love-Hate Relationship With Plastics 99

In this episode, we travel to a future where a tech mogul feeds a machine learning system all the religious texts he can find, and asks it to generate a “super religion.”  Buckle up because this is a long episode! But it’s fun, I promise.  For the intro of this episode I worked with Janelle Shane to actually train a machine learning algorithm on a big chunk of religious texts that I assembled, and spit something back out. The specifics of the texts and the machine learning algorithm come with a handful of caveats and notes, which you can find at the bottom of this post. Janelle has done of ton of really funny, interesting things with machine learning algorithms that you can find here.  To analyze the text that this algorithm generated, and talk about the limitations of this kind of project, I spoke with a big group of people from a variety of backgrounds:  Linda Griggs is an Episcopal priest and an assisting priest at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Providence Rhode Island. Lauren O’Neal and Niko Bakulich ar

This episode we travel to a future where you can choose to turn off your ability to deceive yourself. Are you now a perfectly clear eyed genius? Or a perpetually depressed misanthrope? Maybe both?   This episode was suggested by my mom. It begins with two tales of self deception, one from Jacquelyn Gill, an assistant professor of paleo-ecology at the University of Maine and the host of a podcast about climate change called Warm Regards, and the other from Beth Duckles, a writer, researcher, ethnographer and social scientist. Then we talk to Zoë Chance, an assistant professor of marketing at the Yale School of Management and an expert on self-deception. After that, we go to therapy, and Chamin Ajjan, a clinical psychotherapist and author of Seeking Soulmate: Ditch the Dating Game and Find Real Connection explains what she does when she sees a case of self-deception in her office. And finally, Erik Vance, science journalist and author of Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, T

This episode we take on a future full of bioprinted replacement organs. You asked for more hopeful futures, this is about as hopeful as they get!   We start by hearing a bit about what the current organ donation market is like from Christine Gentry, who donated a kidney to a stranger. Then we talk to Dr. Anthony Atala, the Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and of the world’s leading regenerative medicine specialists. Dr. Atala has implanted organs grown from the cells of patients themselves in clinical trials. Then Kelly and Zach Weinersmith join us to talk about what they learned while writing a chapter about bioprinting for their new book Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything. And finally, we get an impassioned indictment of 3D printing file formats from Meghan McCarthy, Project Lead for the NIH 3D Print Exchange.  Further reading:  Organ Donation Statistics Neural and cognitive characteristics of extraordinary altruists Boston woman's donati

In this episode we travel to a world without bees. And not just honey bees, all bees.   You’ve probably heard a lot of doom and gloom predictions about what might happen if honey bees went extinct. Mass famine! The end of coffee! World economic collapse! But is that all true? (Probably not.) And how likely is a honeybee extinction anyway? (Extremely unlikely.) Plus, what about all the other bees in the world? We ponder these questions and more in this episode.  To walk us through what might happen to agriculture if bees went away, I talked to Marcelo A. Aizen, a researcher who studies plant pollinator interactions. His research suggests that the loss of honeybees might not be as dire as everybody claims. And to talk about the more neglected bees out there, I called up Elaine Evans, a professor at the University of MInnesota’s Bee Lab, and Paige Embry, the author of the forthcoming book Our Native Bees: North America’s Endangered Pollinators and the Fight to Save Them.   Plus, a little bonus “what if” at the e

This episode we go to a future with pirates! There always has to be at least one pirate episode per season. This time it’s pharmaceutical pirates.   This episode was inspired by a new book by Annalee Newitz called Autonomous. It’s very good and you should read it. I am not being paid to say that, I just really like the book.   Autonomous tells the story of two main characters: Jack the pharmaceutical pirate, and Palladin the bot that is trying to hunt her down. A few cool links related to Autonomous:  How to Write a Novel Set More Than 125 Years in the Future Robots need civil rights, too Sword and Laser podcast #306 - Indentured Robotude w/ Annalee Newitz Pirates and Robots Square Off Over Drugs in Annalee Newitz’s Debut Novel In A Future Ruled By Big Pharma, A Robot Tentatively Explores Freedom — And Sex: 'Autonomous'  For our episode, we focused on the pharmaceutical piracy part of the book. And to talk to us about the nitty gritty of how pharmaceuticals are made, and how they’re protected by patents, I ta

This month’s episode is about what it would take to sterilize the Earth, and why you might want to figure that out in the first place.   First we talk to the authors of a paper that tries to figure out this exact question. David Sloan and Rafael Alves Batista are the authors of a paper called “The Resilience of Life to Astrophysical Events” (along with Avi Loeb). No, they’re not evil scientists, just interested in what it might take to find life on other planets.   They explain their calculations, and how we mostly don’t have anything to worry about. Plus, cool facts about tardigrades!  Then we talk to science-fiction author N.K. Jemisin who is the author of The Broken Earth trilogy. Which is very good! She explains her thinking behind the books, why the Earth is out to get her characters, and how humans banding together to survive is more interesting to her than the lone ranger making it on his own.   Further reading:  What Would It Take to Completely Sterilize the Earth? The Resilience of Life to Astrophysi

This episode is a little different than other episodes. As many of you know, Flash Forward is my second job. My first job is at ESPN, where I recently helped launch an audio documentary series called 30 for 30 Podcasts. Please go check that out, even if you don’t like sports I promise there’s something for you. My episodes are numbers three and four in the series, and they’re both out, and if you like the weird stuff I do on this show I think you’ll probably enjoy them.  Trying to make two highly produced shows at once is hard though! So for my mental health, this month’s Flash Forward is a bit of a remix. The top of the show is new, it’s an interview with Kit Walsh, who is a staff attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation where she works on free speech, net neutrality, copyright, coders' rights, and other issues that relate to freedom of expression and access to knowledge. Then, you’ll hear a remixed version of an old episode about the future of the internet, and what it would take for us to abandon the wor

This episode, we travel to a future where your romantic partners aren’t chosen by questions or swipes, but rather by your brainwaves.  This future is based on an idea from Shelly Ronan and Ernesto D. Morales and their project Object Solutions. If you liked what you heard about Object Solutions you should check out their other work, and their Patreon page.   I also talked to Suzanne Dikker, who has used EEG headsets to study everything from education, to Marina Abramovic’s art, to compatability.   And to get a true expert position on dating apps, I talked to Andrea Silenzi from the podcast Why Oh Why. If you’re interested in the intersection between sex, dating, relationships and technology, check out her show.   Other things to read:  The Mutual Wave Project by Suzanne Dikker ‘EEG Dating’ matches people based on their brainwave data This Tinder Hands-Free App Makes Dating Decisions by Reading Heartbeats This Tinder-Swiping Biometric Love Robot Knows Who Your Body Wants  Flash Forward is produced by me, Rose E

This episode, we go on another vacation! Can you tell I need a vacation? Anyway, back to the episode. What would it be like if you could hop on a space cruise ship, and take a trip to Mars?  This is a special episode because our little future intro is actually two real people playing real parts. Olivia Koski and Jana Grcevich are the authors of a new book called Vacation Guide to the Solar System. The book is a spinoff of their long-running project the Intergalactic Travel Bureau, a project of Guerilla Science and a place where people could really come inside and ask about trips to other planets. And they take us on a very fun tour of what you could do, as a tourist, to Mars.  Along with Olivia and Jana, this episode features Ben Longmier, a former rocket scientist, and Rebecca Boyle, a science writer who has a true love for Mars.   There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to intergalactic travel, so in this episode we focus specifically on tourism. Not colonization, or research, or any of the other things t

Long time listeners of Flash Forward might feel like this future is kind of… familiar. And it is. It’s actually the first future we ever traveled to on this show. A future where humans have invented artificial wombs. And this is a special bonus episode of Flash Forward where we’re going to go back and revisit that future, because a new piece of research recently came out about artificial wombs. I’m calling this, a BACK TO THE FUTURE episode.  Related reading:  Fluid-filled ‘biobag’ allows premature lambs to develop outside the womb An extra-uterine system to physiologically support the extreme premature lamb Early Ectogenesis: Artificial Wombs in 1920s Literature The Man Who Ran a Carnival Attraction That Saved Thousands of Premature Babies Wasn’t a Doctor at All The World, the Flesh & the Devil An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus Daedalus, or Science and the Future  Flash Forward is produced by me, Rose Eveleth, and is pa

In this future there are no more human police officers. Is that even possible?  The future of policing is a really really complicated topic. And it’s also, and this might be the understatement of the year, a controversial one. On this episode we’re not going to try and give you a full picture of what the future of policing might be. That would take hours. Instead, we’re going to focus on two really specific pieces of this topic.  First we talk to Madeline Ashby, futurist and science fiction writer, about robots, and what it might be like if we replaced human law enforcement with robotic law enforcement. Then, we talk to historian and writer Walidah Imarisha, about a future with no cops at all. We also hear from Doug Wyllie, the Editor at Large for PoliceOne, who, perhaps unsurprisingly, doesn't like either proposal.   Further reading:  Disrupt Tha Police by Madeline Ashby Bomb Robots: What Makes Killing In Dallas Different And What Happens Next? Robocop Delivers Pizza, Prevents Suicide 11 Police Robots Patrol

This month on Flash Forward, we go to a future where anybody can make a video of you doing anything they want. And that technology is cheap and easy to access. What happens?  This episode we start by talking about the technology as it exists now. Hamed Pirsiavash the show to explain his research into generating videos using algorithms.   So that’s where the technology stands now. But once it gets better, there are all kinds of applications. Hal Hodson, a tech reporter at The Economist, tells us about how it could be used in movies. Right now, movie-makers use CGI to project faces onto other faces. Recently, in the latest Star Wars, the faces of Princess Leia and Grand Moff Tarkin from the original trilogy were projected onto actors faces for the few scenes in the new movie. Here’s a look at how they did it.  But in the future, they might not have to do any of this. They could simply generate the video they need using images of Leia and Tarkin’s faces. Which also means that movie stars could wind up being in h

California has one of the largest economies in the world. So what would happen if it broke away from the United States? Could California ever go independent? And if it did, what would that look like?  This is a future that’s been on my list for a while, but since the election here in the United States it’s taken a bit of a different tone. California voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, 66 percent of the state cast their votes for her. And as most of you probably know, she did not win. And this is one of the big talking points of many California secessionists. The presidential election is almost alway totally decided before California’s polls even close. So why should California continue to be ruled by a government that it basically doesn’t elect? And, they argue, that doesn’t really have their best interests at heart.  To help figure out what this future might be like, I talked to:  Peter Laufer, a journalist and the author of a book called The Elusive State of Jefferson. Jon

Every year, over 20 million people get on a cruise ship and set sail for a seafaring vacation. Most of those cruises take their vacationers to warm, sunny climates. But thanks to climate change, a new hoard of ships might start sailing North rather than South. This episode of Flash Forward explores a future where the Arctic becomes a tourist destination just like the Bahamas or the Great Barrier Reef.  Researchers at UCLA have projected that the Northwest Passage might be totally ice-free by 2050. And that’s something that big commercial cargo ships have been eyeing for a while. But now, cruise ships are getting in on the game. The first big cruise ship to make the full Northwest Passage trip was the Crystal Serenity.    This week we talk to a few people who have seen the impacts of this new tourism boom.  Arielle Duhaime-Ross is a climate and environment correspondent for HBO’s VICE News Tonight. Arielle went up to Pond Inlet to see the Crystal Serenity, and talk to the people in Pond Inlet about what it's l

Today’s episode is about a future where nobody works on farms anymore, all farming is done by robots. It might be closer than you think.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we travel to a future where there is so much fake news that nobody can tell what is real anymore. Are we already there? What happens next?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices