Flash Forward

Today a future without schools. Instead of gathering students into a room and teaching them, everybody learns on their own time, on tablets and guided by artificial intelligence.    First, I talk to a Ashok Goel, a computer scientist who developed an arti

Today week we take on a doomsday future: all the active volcanoes in the world erupt at the same time. This is not good for us. But how bad is it? What happens to humans and our planet? Who survives? How?

Today week we take on a doomsday future! We haven’t done one of those this season. So, what would happen if all the active volcanoes in the world erupted at the same time? The short answer is: bad things. The long answer is, well, you’ll have to listen to

Today we go to a future where all pop stars use avatars, clones, robots or cartoons instead of their real bodies and faces. What does that do to music? Can everybody pull off an avatar? And why would any pop star even want that?     We start with a conspi

Today we go to a future where all pop stars use avatars, clones, robots or cartoons instead of their real bodies and faces. What does that do to music? Can everybody pull off an avatar? And why would any pop star even want that?

Today we travel to a future where everybody knows exactly when they’re going to die. If you could know your death date, would you chose to find out? Why? How would knowing your death date change your outlook on life, your behavior, your relationships. ...

Today we travel to a future where it’s possible to know exactly when you will die. Do you chose to find out?    Now, this is, impossible. Totally impossible. And I’m not even going to try and come up with some strange pseudoscientific explanation for how

Today we travel to a world with universal translation devices. Where the babelfish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comes true (although probably not in the form of an evolved organism, but let's not fret about the details).     We start this epi

Today we travel to a world with universal translation devices. In this episode we talk about how machine translation could be meddled with, who gets to be the baseline language, and what these devices might do for language loss and assimilation.

Today we travel to a future where America has converted to a direct democracy. Everybody votes on everything!     Hey, did you know it was an election year in the United States? I know, you've probably not really heard about this, it's not like it's on th