Why does the most cited fisheries scientist in the world call modern fisheries a global Ponzi scheme? Welcome to part two of our dive into the future of oceans, where my focus is still on the pathways we can take to preserve ocean ecosystems and fisheries for the future, but this time I’m putting my questions to Daniel Pauly . Daniel is Professor of the Institute of Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia, and Principal Investigator of the Sea Around Us Project , winner of the...
Jul 01, 2025•49 min
How do we feed another 2 billion AND preserve the future of ocean ecosystems? In 2025, over three billion people rely on seafood as a significant source of protein. Over 80% of the world's biodiversity comes from oceans. A multitude of ocean ecosystems are in crisis mode . By 2086, the global population is projected to increase by another 2.2 billion (from 8.1 today to 10.4 at peak). How can we feed them and make future fisheries sustainable? This is a topic of VAST importance in determining our...
May 26, 2025•57 min
How do we create a happier future? What are the factors that influence happiness? What can we do as managers and leaders to enhance happiness, and why is this fundamental to achieving ALL our goals? Join me for a deeply insightful discussion with John Helliwell , Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of British Columbia, and editor of the World Happiness Report 2025 . They can be no more universal theme than this. Happier organizations are more productive. They are more innovative. T...
Apr 13, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Forget cars, what does the transition to electric FREIGHT look like? How capable are HEAVY vehicles? What’s the future of charging infrastructure? What changes for shippers and logistics companies? How should they think and plan? On this episode of FutureBites, I travel to Cambridge University to ask Professor David Cebon , a visionary in the electrification of heavy vehicles. David is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Cambridge University. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engine...
Nov 16, 2024•51 min
What is driving the NEXT generation of autonomous vehicles? How are scientists upping the innovation rate? Why are AVs utterly inevitable, everywhere? How will they transform industries, cities and even economies? To get a deep sense of where we are headed, I checked in with Paul Newman , a trailblazer in robotics and autonomous systems. Paul is BP Professor of Information Engineering at Oxford University, Founder of the Oxford Robotics Institute , Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and ...
Nov 13, 2024•53 min
Can carbon pricing incentivize a sustainable future? Join us for a compelling conversation with Professor Cameron Hepburn , the Battcock Professor of Environmental Economics and co-Director of the Economics of Sustainability Programme at Oxford University, as we unravel the power of carbon pricing and its potential to incentivize decarbonisation across industries, economies and countries. What lessons have early-movers learned about acceptance and building momentum? How to neutralize the politic...
Nov 10, 2024•36 min
Imagine a future where, based on a diagnostic in your teens, your doctor gives you a customized infusion with a top-up every 5 to 10 years that “dials down” your genetic risk factors for all kinds of diseases WITHOUT making permanent changes to your DNA. Welcome to the world of epigenetic editing, a frontier that will unlock a new universe of gene therapies that are both potent and reversible. My guest today is Dr Ben Oakes , Co-founder, President and CEO of Scribe Therapeutics , a company that’...
Jul 22, 2024•51 min
How can we build a more secure digital future? Cyber-attacks and data-breaches are escalating, attackers are employing all manner of sophisticated tools, AI is transforming the ‘arms race’ for both attackers and defenders. We see the headlines, but is this a future we have to accept? What are the pathways to a more secure digital future? I asked Bruce Schneier , the biggest name in cybersecurity. Bruce is a DEEP thinker. He’s been researching and writing prolifically on cybersecurity since 1998,...
May 30, 2024•47 min
The fifth largest economy in the world is smashing renewables records! For 41 of the past 49 days, California's grid has met more than 100% of electricity demand using solar, wind and hydro generation supplemented by grid-scale batteries. Supply is frequently exceeding 140% of demand, with the excess exported to neighbouring states. On some days renewables have supplied more than 100% of demand for more than 9 hours. These outstanding milestones for the atmosphere, the US economy and for consume...
Apr 30, 2024•42 min
Welcome to Part 2 of my interview with Michael Barnard , global energy expert and consultant to the biggest investors on the planet. In this episode we discuss biofuels, long-range shipping, carbon pricing, nuclear reactors, geothermal, grid-scale energy storage and more, and we wrap up with Michael's Short List of Climate Actions That Will Work. There's a ton of insight and wisdom to help you target the real energy opportunities. We also had a ton of fun. Wait until you hear some of Michael's o...
Jan 30, 2024•57 min
What will the global mix of energy generation look like in 2060? Which technologies are dead ends and which should we be paying more attention to? What will power long range ships and aircraft? What about nuclear? Who better to answer these questions than Michael Barnard , global energy expert and consultant to the biggest investors on the planet. Michael lives and breathes energy tech. He is utterly pragmatic, laser-focused on cutting through the nonsense, and backs all his assertions with scie...
Jan 22, 2024•1 hr 5 min
What does the future of medicine look like when microchips and nervous systems speak the same language? I asked Dr Elisa Donati , a Senior Scientist working at the cutting edge of neuroscience and engineering at the Institute of Neuroinformatics at University of Zürich and ETH Zürich . It starts with mimicking the way neurons work in nature. Real neurons are analog, not digital. They process information event-by-event, not in lock-step with computer clocks. They transmit and process large volume...
Jan 05, 2024•23 min
Affordable age-reversal drugs. Xenotransplants to eliminate organ shortages. Revolutionizing health economics. Keeping methane sequestered under the tundra. Editing livestock and crops to be resistant to ALL viruses ... What are the genomics pathways to a better future? Which are closest? Where could we be in twenty years? I asked George Church, the greatest genomic pioneer in the world. George is a professor of genetics at both Harvard and MIT, the developer of the first direct genomic sequenci...
Dec 01, 2023•59 min
The future of medicine is one where all cancers are either 100% curable or turned into manageable diseases. You’ve heard me tell the story in my keynotes for many years. Now it’s time for you to hear from one of the heroes of that story, Bruce Levine . Bruce and his colleagues pioneered CAR T-cell therapy, one of the most important breakthroughs in the history of medicine, where your own immune cells are reprogrammed to attack and destroy your cancer. They developed it, applied it, saved the fir...
Nov 23, 2023•43 min
Will AI exacerbate inequality? Can we stop that from happening? As the world grapples with guardrails to protect us from future dangers of AI, I thought it timely to talk to an ethicist who has spent a lifetime pondering these challenges. Enter, Wendell Wallach , Carnegie-Uehiro fellow at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, where he co-directs the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative (AIEI). He is also Emeritus Chair of Technology and Ethics Studies at Yale Univers...
Nov 10, 2023•59 min
The story of cancer medicine is multi-threaded. It’s a story of early detection, of surgical removal, of radio- and chemo-therapies, of understanding lifestyle factors, of sequencing and pinpointing genetic factors, and lately of immunotherapies, but instead of one succeeding the other, each overlaps and complements and adds more weapons to the armory, and many of these weapons can be deployed in series or in combination. In this episode of FutureBites, I’m talking to Dr Ben Stanger about adding...
Oct 20, 2023•27 min
Is this the most important gene therapy in the world? At the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine , a cutting-edge facility at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr Kiran Musunuru is developing something truly extraordinary, a ‘one and done’ gene therapy to prevent heart disease, which happens to be the number one killer on our planet today. Welcome to FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe, futurist and keynote speaker, where we interview scientists and explore pathways to a better future. I visited D...
Oct 03, 2023•1 hr 8 min
Insurance companies must deal with the financial realities of climate change. They must make quantitative decisions and translate risks into dollars. They must do it for today’s impacts as well as making quantified predictions about future impacts. And behind the insurance companies are the reinsurance companies, who must act as shock absorbers to the industry and do all of the above on a global scale. Who better to go to for insights on how climate change translates into real dollars? Welcome t...
Sep 25, 2023•42 min
I’m calling neuromorphic computing the most important computer engineering research in the world. That’s right, more important than quantum computing (you heard it here first!) So what is neuromorphic computing? How is it inspired by biology? Where is it taking us? Why are the opportunities so vast? How is it fundamental to future directions in artifical intelligence? And why does it matter SO much to the future of this planet? Welcome to FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe, futurist and keynote s...
Sep 10, 2023•33 min
Innovation is a deeply, deeply social phenomenon that requires many people to come along for the ride. It’s not easy! So, where to start? What are the principles? How to think about it? If you want to make the world a better place by building new products or services, or simply by creating better ways of doing things inside your organization, then this episode is for you! Welcome to FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe, futurist and keynote speaker, where I interview scientists and leading thinkers...
May 28, 2023•1 hr 10 min
Has Martin Green done more than any other human to safeguard our future? For fifty years – yes fifty – he’s dedicated his life to pushing the boundaries of photovoltaics so they convert more sunlight to electricity and produce more electricity for less money. He and his team have held the world record for solar cell efficiencies for 30 of the past 39 years, and his technology is now imbedded in – wait for it – no less than 91 percent of worldwide solar cell production. And he isn’t stopping! So,...
Mar 05, 2023•45 min
Designer babies, agricultural mishaps, extinction via gene-drive. Now CRISPR has placed into our hands the awesome power to "edit life" in all its forms, how to keep the good while preventing the bad? How to safeguard our future? Is this even possible? Welcome to FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe, futurist and keynote speaker, where we interview scientists and explore pathways to a better future. In this episode, I ask Jennifer Kuzma , global expert on biotech responsibility, to shed light on on...
Feb 19, 2023•51 min
What comes after Lithium-ion? It’s only one of the most important technology questions in the world! Everything in the future of electronics, road vehicles, renewables, the electricity grid and even commercial aviation hinges on the answer. So I went looking for a true expert, a realist, a deep thinker and someone working at the absolute global cutting-edge of energy storage science and engineering. And I found Dr George Crabtree! Welcome to FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe, futurist and keynot...
Dec 13, 2022•50 min
Rejuvenation and regeneration, hope versus hyperbole, healthspans and lifespans. Such is the frenzied focus on the potential for new drugs to extend our lifespans right now, I cannot deliver a keynote on the future of healthcare or even the future of the world in general without addressing the possibility of ‘age reversal’ therapies. But it’s a complex field, with more than a few charlatans and opportunists promising new drugs that’ll buy you 150 years and more, which makes sifting through the r...
Nov 27, 2022•41 min
What does it mean for a robot to be conscious? Can a robot have feelings? Will we make robots that take care of one another, upgrade themselves, and reproduce? I discussed these and other mind-bending questions about the future of robots with Hod Lipson, the brilliant founder of Columbia University’s Creative Machines Lab. Welcome to FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe, futurist and keynote speaker. In this episode, we're looking at the extraordinary future lives of robots with Hod, a global pione...
Nov 15, 2022•54 min
Can lawyers save the planet? I asked the world’s foremost climate lawyer. Welcome to FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe, futurist and keynote speaker. In this episode, instead of examining science and technology pathways to a better future, we're looking at the role of litigation. Michael Gerrard is a globally-recognised leader in environmental law and a passionate lifelong advocate for sustainability. He is Professor at the Columbia Law School and Founder of the Sabin Center for Climate Change L...
Nov 10, 2022•26 min
Welcome to the second episode of FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe. In this episode, Dr Aykut Demirkol of the Harkness Eye Institute joins Bruce to talk about CRISPR gene-editing and the future of ophthalmology! CRISPR is short for CRISPR-Cas9. The CRISPR-Cas9 system and a family of related tools have brought faster, cheaper, more accurate, and more efficient methods to genome editing. They are unquestionably one of the top technologies changing the world. Dr Aykut Demirkol works in Professor St...
Nov 06, 2022•20 min
Welcome to the first episode of FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe. In this episode, Prof. Rodolphe Barrangou of North Carolina State University joins Bruce to talk about CRISPR and gene-editing and the future of food! CRISPR is short for CRISPR-Cas9. The CRISPR-Cas9 system and a family of related tools have brought faster, cheaper, more accurate, and more efficient methods to genome editing. They are unquestionably one of the top technologies changing the world right now. Professor Barrangou was...
Nov 01, 2022•45 min
