What are the Most Incredible Technologies Coming Soon(-ish)?

reported on. I mean, in the last fifteen years, we've talked about things like contact lenses you wear at night that would adjust your eyes so that you take them out in the mornings and have perfect vision through the day, which is cool, right, Or I remember writing about peanut butter and jelly slices so you can just slap those on bread for faster sandwiches. I mean, I was with you.

I'm not sure about the peanut butter thing. I feel like spreading peanut butter on bread doesn't take that much time or effort, I know, but I can't outsource that job to my kids. Plus, you know, when I'm rushing out in the morning, so I don't want to leave like a dirty butter knife in the sink, which I realized is I'm saying it is like a very minor gripe. But that's the kind of future I want to live in I mean, that's my favorite part about a P. B and J is actually licking the peanut butter off

the knife after that. But anyway, I actually looked up these newspaper predictions for the future for this episode, and there's this article from I think it was nineteen hundred in the Boston Globe, and the author makes all these predictions about the year two thousand, no pollution, moving sidewalks, and for some reason he thinks there will be an AM and PM newspaper, which I mean, I guess there is if you consider the round the clock reporting on

the Internet. But the thing I loved about it was that he refused to make any predictions about the weather because he assumed that, you know, a hundred years from then, it would still be impossible to predict. Speaking of genius, we've actually got Zach Weener Smith on the program today. He's the co author of the book Soon Ish, and it's basically the super fun textbook of the future. It's almost more a guide to the hurdles will face, plus a status check on how things like asteroid mining or

nuclear powered toasters are coming along. And I'm already doing too much talking. Let's get him on the line. M Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend man guest Ticketer and sitting behind the soundproof glass playing with his doc Brown bobble Head. I didn't know Tristan was a Back to the Future fan. Well, apparently he only likes the first and the third one, so so do not talk to him about Back to the

Future Part two. He gets really emotional. But but that's our pal and producer Tristan McNeil. Now I want to jump right into this interview. Today we've got a very special guest, the super funny cartoonist and the co author of the book soon Ish ten Emerging Technologies that will improve and or ruin Everything, Zach Wiener Smith. Welcome to

Part Time Genius. Than now, Zach, we should mentioned up front that this is a book that you wrote with your super smart wife, Kelly, who's a professor at RICE. Can can you remind us what she what she does at Rice? Her research pertains to parasites that manipulate host behavior. So if your audience is familiar with any of this, they probably heard of toxoplasmosis, which perhaps manipulates a lot of human behavior cats right in cat litter. Yes, yeah, precisely,

lots of us have it. Um. I actually don't know idea, I probably do. I group with cats. But yeah, so so they're they're never of claims about it, like it reduces reaction time, which you can kind of understand if if you wanted to have if you were the parasite and you were trying to make a mouse get etn my cat. Uh, it makes mice less averse to the

small cat urine. Um. There, there's some there's some studies. Uh, Kelly knows this stuff better than I do, but minderstaining from talking to her is there's some studies that try to correlate the stuff to humans, and they're very tantalizing. But obviously you're you're not allowed to like get a hundred humans and then put parasites in them and see what changes. Meanwhile, Kelly's at work right now doing exactly that. Yeah,

we don't talk about that. So this book soon is is so fun and funny, and especially the nota Benet sections which are just so great. But can you tell us why you chose to write a book about the future and why you concentrated on the ten subject areas that you did. Sure. Um, so we were kind of just interested in future stuff. And also we we both had this thing where we're sort of generally interested in space travel and realize we know really nothing about it.

The tent technologies in particular, we got into sort of a process of cutting away. We actually started with a list of fifty and some got cut because they turned out to just not really exist. We thought maybe it was a thing, and it's not a thing. Uh so we we have to give an example of that. Like we we thought, hey, what is anyone working on like perfected economic forecasting or something like that, Like, is there's gonna be some future like you know, super computer devices.

I mean there are things that kind of do related suff but no one's trying to sort of forecast like the weather gets forecast, right. So Yeah, it was sort of willing away to stuff that we thought we could do properly in five to ten thousand words and which was interesting, and also stuff that we thought maybe people

hadn't heard about. Um that's not true every chapter, but stuff like programmable matter I think most people have not heard of, Um, maybe synthetic biology most people have not heard of it, and I think probably most of the like cheap access to space technology stuff is not the exception of a couple of things is probably not on people's radar. Yeah, and we we definitely want to ask

you about a few of those things. I will say one of our favorite sections was the note on the End for humanity and you know and why you and Kelly are are pessimistic about betting on humans if robots ever revolt. So can you tell us a little bit about promobod and guyas specifically? Sure? Problem about we kind of just throwing for a cute seas this is this Russian robot or maybe maybe sort of set the table. Is this Russian robot designed to assist people like to

assist the elderly. So the idea is basically elder care. There are a lot of people who want to do it. It's not well paid work. It would be really nice if you could have a machine to do a lot of the basic tasks of elder care. Uh. And so there's this robot a Russian company is working on called

promo Butt. I think I'm sure I'm pronouncing that wrong, but anyway, it uh tried to escape from the facility we're working apparently twice and one time it escaped and like died in traffic, which I presumably wasn't like a choicebody who knows, Um, guy is this robot made by Serena Booth who's was doing an undergraduate thesis at Harvard.

And the basic deal on Guya is it's just a dumb remote control robot and she would secretly control it so to an onlooker would look like, you know, for all you know, it was like a startup autonomous robot

deal because it's it's Boston after all. And uh, the robot would go up to students near their dorm rooms or their dorms and say, well, you let me into the building, which which is a big no no. It's especially big no no and on Harvard because Harvard is you know, the world famous, so they're like lots of looky loose and weirdos trying to get into buildings. Uh. And actually, so to speak fortuitously, around the time of

the experiment, there apparently been bomb threats. Um and so I forget that the numbers are in the book, but it's something like twenty percent of students will let people in which is, you know, not not a high number. I remember it's harvardson so they're supposed to be ultra genius is um And and furthermore, if you're trying to cause some trouble and you only have to try five times, uh,

you know, that's not great odds. But but they're the really interesting thing that there are a number of permutations of this, and there's a different set of experiments by another researcher, but the really the one we were really interested in was she didn't experiment where all she did was load the robot with cookies, like she just got a box of cookies to put them on top, and the rowbout what compeist didn't say, I'm here delivering cookies,

will you let me in? And it's shot up to the exact numbers in the book, but it's something like three quarters of students would let that robot in. Um. So, I mean it's sort of a funny experiment, um. But but there is a sort of serious side to it, which is the way we like to say in talks we've given on this is essentially, if you look at movies we humans make about what it would take to

fool us into obeying the robots. The robots always have to really put out right, like build an exoskeleton with like stem cells or I don't know what, Like the terminator looks exactly like a human except for it's got a metal endoskeleton and this and that, Like they bulot a tea one thousand like this a possible complicated robot just to like look kind of human. It just turns out we'll we'll like opening a trash can with cookies. Yeah, yeah,

and so so it is. It is kind of I don't know, I suppose ominous um or I think you think about it hard. PUD should cause you to rethink your relationship to machines a bit like yeah, and well and cookies. It is kind of analogous to something like um. I think a lot of us have been rethinking our relationship with Facebook, right, which is kind of the same deal.

It's giving us something cool, which is the sort of proverbial cookies, and in exchange, it's taking something or I know, for example, like I used to second guess my GPS, and I discovered literally every time I did that, I was wrong. The machine is always right, and so now I will obey the GPS, even if it appears to be doing something stupid to me, I've completely gotten rid of my my like regard for self. As it as

it pertains to mapping, it is a little ominous. I mean, you don't even have deposit sentient machines to be scared. It could be just some bad actor. Well, let's let's let's talk a little bit about the positive applications because imagine it sticking with robots and programmable matter. I'm really fascinated by the benefits in medicine and then also in the home that you talked about. Could you explain a

little bit about to our listeners. So the basic idea with programm will matter is something like, you know, the neat thing about a computer is a computer is not just one machine. It's potentially infinite machines. You computer does almost everything for you. That's why your phone can be a radio and a clock and well phone to it occasionally. Um. And the idea with programmable matter is to be able

to do that sort of thing but with stuff. So it's like if you had a sort of object that could be a cup, or it could be a phone, or it could be anything else. And the the way we like to describe it is it's like having the T one thousand, only it's not trying to kill you. So obviously that level of stuff that sort of like shimmering good that turns into whatever, that's really far off if it's even possible. But there are lots of intermediate versions.

And so one idea is what's called Oregonmy robots. And so if you think about it in terms of universality, Oregonmy is basically this thing where you take a piece of paper and the piece of paper can be almost infinite things. It might be literally infinite the math on it um, but it's something like infinite. Right. You can get many different shapes out of one thing, and many of them could be useful. And so one idea is you could um do Oregonmy robots that do stuff in

the body. Right. Um. So, the the the really cool version of this that we were interested in was done by a woman named Danielle Rouse, or done by her lab at M I. T. And the basic idea was you have a pilly swallow in the pill. The pills made of ice, but in it is this little um it's actually piece of sausage casing with some wiring in it so that it can fold along preprogrammed axis. Uh. And you swallow it, it it melts. Well, it's in your gut.

And now there's this little machine that you can manipulate remotely that can fold the different configurations. Uh and and you know, it's sort of like future optimal version. It's it's completely self powered and could do all sorts of cool stuff. In this version, it's it's I think we're out controlled by like a magnet you have outside the body. But anyway, the reason why would you want this? Why

would why do you want an orgony robot in your guts? It? Well, it turns out in America thirty of us every year swallow a watch battery. Which thing gets lodged in our guts? And I I hasten to add that's just the people who a report and and who'd be didn't pass it naturally. So there's like a like a shockinglar high number of people swallowing watch batteries. I don't know why. Presumably most of them are children, but I we didn't get that

set um so. Uh So, But to the idea is you just have a slow machine that walks in kind of grabs the battery and then the whole thing passes right out as nature intended. This one's about the size of a postage stamp. You can imagine ones that are much more mentorized. Um and why that would be exciting or something like this. So you know, if you have a headache, it's not like your whole body hurts, but

you take a pill, it lowers the inflammation your whole body. Right, So, so aspirin is good whether you have like a banged up knee or a headache or what have you. Ideally, and be nice if you could get machines to deliver the medicine to a specific location. And you know, an aspirin it's not a big deal. But if you imagine like really toxic like chemo medication, it would be really nice if you could dose only the necessary areas. UM. So that's a sort of very futuristic application of this

sort of thing. Um it could be really interesting. I think you asked about programmable homes. I I'm trying to remember what they think. There are a couple of different versions of that we talked about. I think the thing I was fascinated moths about was just that because I lived in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and the fact that you know, your whole room could transform so quickly or and French and assembly, un assemble and like that. That's all just amazing to me. Yeah, it's funny because

so pregimal matter we call it that. It actually goes under a lot of different names. But but yeah, so there's a lot more sort of you know, macro stuff. It's really interesting. Um, there's there's a group we talked about called room bots and rombots. Basically, these cube like

things about the size of a baseball. Uh, it's sort of a cross between a cube and a circle, so can sort of roll around and and then it's just that and then it has a little sensing ability and it can doc with other versions of itself and it's needs. Then they can self assemble into like chairs or tables

or whatever. So if you're really wanted to be you know, Swedish about your your room, you could just have a pile of these robots in the corner and you could say, assemble into like my kitchen set up or whatever whenever you need. Of course, they're very slow right now, but you can imagine a future right where it doesn't take

you know, ten hours. I don remember if we put this in the book, but actually people worked on systems of room buts that mate with each other to produce like um terrifying Yeah right, it's like implementing genetic algorithms in the real world. Dogs everywhere shivering the promise. It's really slow. And again I don't remember mentioned this this in the book, but there's one group that actually did

basically like machine breading via a three D printer. If that makes sense that you have two machines the quote unquote agree to mate in whatever sense machines do that, and then you have a three D printer sort of print the outcome. Uh. And what it was funny is, for whatever reason, the group decided to have the robots kind of rubb on each other. But they were like completely needlessly. Uh. I don't know. It just gets lonely working on these projects. I think these people are kind

of fulfilling other needs. But the speaking of multiple robots of it. What about these robotics swarms and robots that work in teams. Can you talk a little bit about the applications there? Yeah, robot swarms, So we talked about them in two contexts. Is robot swarm is what it sounds like. It's a swarm of robots, and you might ask yourself, why why would I want that instead of one robot or one large robot. So there are a

couple of contexts where might be valuable. One is suppose you UM have some kind of disaster areas, so there's like a nuclear accident, or there's just a lot of rubbles something where you wouldn't want to send people in. UM with a store of robots, you can have a lot of small cameras sort of going all over the place to explore an area. And also if one breaks, it's less of a big deal. Yeah. In addition, UM, you can design them. There's some groups that work on this.

You can design them so they can do stuff with each other, so they can their modular So you know, there's one group we looked at where they had this this clever trick where I suppose you have You can imagine a little tiny robot about the size of your fist that's rolling around and it comes across a chasm

it can't cross on its own. It then signals like five other of the same robot to dock with it to form a sort of train and now it can go over or for example, of it has to cross like on a narrow passage, you can configure so that it has the sort of robot equivalent of holding two arms out to the sides. Uh and so it can balance the stuff like that. So you can imagine it was some fairly simple algorithms that can navigate all sorts

of terrain more effectively. The other context in which we talked about robot sworms is we have trapped on what's called robotic construction, which is again what it sounds like, it's machines sort of taking over the work of construction workers or even extending it. The opposite of a swarm would be this this one idea, which is to have a sort of giant gantry, like basically a huge three D printer that kind of prints out a house, which is cool, but like might be limb to say, if

you wanted to build in New York. That's a little tough to do. A robot swarm would be building upward, kind of like termites do. Right, So you have like a lot of little robots delivering small amounts of material um and and sort of coordinating with each other. Uh. And so there would be sort of an interesting different way to do it. Um like like pretty revolutionary for

better end worse. Um. But but to me that that seems kind of like plausible because the idea that is is essentially what might happen is like a semi shows up and it's loaded with you know, a thousand or whatever little robots, and they come out and they slowly assemble your house, kind of like a team of ants. Um And again it has the same virtue of if one breaks or something screwy, it doesn't matter. So it's just like an ant colony. One dies, it's no big deal.

And they can do this trick of building up structures. They're very simple. They're not ready for prime time. They can't put in things like plumbing, etcetera. But it's really cool to see it done. They can build structures and they can even climb up the structures to add more concrete. It's a really cool potential future paradigm for construction. Wow, I kind of want to see this. There are there

videos of this. They totally are. If you have a good section in the about construction chapter about swarm robotics. There are a bunch of different ways it might go down. If this is the paradigm we choose that there's there's also two reasons that it might not work. You know, we talked about a guy named Justin Warfel who was sort of a friend of ours now who works he studies termites to kind of see how they do it. Because the neat thing with termites is no particular termite

knows what the structure is supposed to. Like the new Blueprint system, they have some sort of algorithm they're running um or or however you want to say it, um and and so it's sort of fascinating that I learned a new word. I don't remember if we put it in the book, but the word of stigmer g, which is embedding information in an environment, which is really interesting

because you say, how to termites do this? Well, one thing they can do is they can leave a chemical trail that says something like don't go here or don't build here. Um, I don't actually know what. You know, literally every termite chemical trail does. But they can leave chemical trails. And it's interesting because they don't even know I have to know what the trail does, right, They're just acting out part of this process of building. It's

sort of fascinating. Now there's so much more we want to ask you about, from the future of poco sticks to the important of breathing through both your nostril. But before we get to that, let's take a quick break. So I want to switch gears a little bit and and talk a little bit about travel to space, because you know that this week we watched the SpaceX launch and one of the things you talk about in your

book is why cheap travel to space will be important. Um, can you talk a little bit about why that is and what's the real hindrance right now? And also can this idea of a giant pogo stick or super gun really help us get there? Yeah? Good, Okay, So the first question was why does it matter? I actually I want to punch a little of the mattering thing. Actually, I feel bad because I've had We've been on economics podcasts and they'll say, like, so, what's the economic benefit

of space? And I'm like, I just don't know. I don't know if there is one. I'm giving you some arguments that might work. There are minerals in space, it might be valuable. The question you always have to ask yourself is would it be cheaper to just dig a big hole on Earth, and often it probably isn't more valuable. I I really think the value of going to space

you have to be a bit poetic about it. I think Carl Sagan wrote a bit about how it just kind of satisfies the fundamental human urge um to to explore. And then you know, an economists I talked to a pointed out, well, you know, the deal is we don't know so that there could be developments were not imagining yet um in these other environments. So who knows. But I think we we just kind of want to do it um so, and the basic deals we can't now,

mostly because it's expensive. You know, people will say we don't find NASA enough. I think there's a good argument there, But NASA is funded about half as much as in the glory days of Apollo, and a lot of technology is a lot cheaper um. So I don't think it comes down to funding. It comes down to just the the general extreme difficulty and expensive going to space, and because until very recently the technology had not developed that much.

Because I think it's mostly you know, it's mostly governmental technology. And I'm not in any way against governmental science research. But there wasn't they that drive to get cost down that you get with you know, companies like SpaceX that have a bottom line. Um. And so I would say the best argument in Favorite cheap space flight is basically that it's awesome. It would be amazing, it would be wonderful. You I. I really think there's no no stronger argument Favorite.

And there's also sort of let's find out what we'll do in space. We don't really know what we're going to do up there. Um. If you want to be a little more cynical, they're they're incredibly strong military applications. Um. Just space. You know, if you go to g geosynchronous orbit and you can drop a rock, it's space, just like a hunk of metals. Say, it's like dropping nuclear weapon. Um, and it's a nuclear weapon. It's actually worse than a

nuclear weapon because it's very hard to stop. Um, because you're just it's just Newton who's throwing the piece of metal down at you. It's not you know, a little ticklish nuclear warhead. Um that that could be diffused. Uh. So they're they're tremendous military applications. They're also their communication satellite applications. That's a little less sexy, but it's you know, impartant and so so those are some arguments I do think. If you if you want to talk about like why

is it valuable to go to Mars? The only legit argument I think is that we want to do it. And it's sort of in a way. I mean that seriously, it's sort of a glorified art project. It just sort of satisfies some desire we have. There are two things that really allows you about taking a rocket to space and most uses. Um So the first thing that's a lousy is in in every company but SpaceX, we throw away the rocket. And it's actually pretty close in terms

of price point. If you imagine you wanted to fly from London to Los Angeles, uh, and imagine the only way to do that would you get in the plane and you fly until your over Los Angeles and then you jump out in a parachute and then the plane crashes into the ocean. That is essentially what we do with rockets. These rocket launches, they cost at the very cheapest, like SpaceX rates. You're talking like sixty million dollars and

that's for a pretty ho hum mission. That's just putting like satellites and in lower thorbit um and and it's about the same for planes. Like if you had to if you had to crash the plane every time you went to London, you probably would have to pay a million dollars to seet maybe more so. Part of why it's so exciting that SpaceX can land part of its rocket. It can't land the whole thing yet, but maybe one day is that that's the major part of the cost. The the the fuel is minimal, right, so we said

sixty million, it's generally more than that. Let's say sixty million. The cost for fuel is under a million dollars. I don't know what the cost for like staff is, and we don't know yet what the cost of refurbishment is or even if SpaceX notices, I don't think they're telling um yet. But but it's like planes, right, Your plane ticket from London is now, you know, maybe a thousand bucks instead of the million bucks it would be. So

you can do the same for space travel. It's kind of wild, right, So you as a first approximation, imagine you get the price of all space stuff down by a factor of ten. Uh. Take any space mission you care about, and multiplied by say a factor of two or three, you know, so instead of two dudes on the moon, it's four or five dudes or well and four or five ladies. So that's just awesome. That's great, and nothing is bad about that. The other thing that's

standing in the way with rockets. Uh, people don't realize this. If you look at rockets sitting on the pad ready to launch, about of it by mass is propellant. It's fuel and oxidizers. The stuff you're gonna burn in order to go up and over about sixteen sevent is just the machine itself, like the metal and plastic and silicon that go into you know, going up. Uh. And the the stuff you might call actually going to space is

on on a really lower thorbit. Efficient mission is about three and a half percent, right the little tippy top. It's so it's it's essentially like you have to launch a skyscraper into space to put the first floor into space. Uh, And which you might imagine is is is pretty inefficient. Uh. There are also some environmental concerns, but but in terms

of costs that it's pretty dramatic. Right, So as a way to think about it, if you could just get the fuel usage from pent to you know, seventy six and a half percent, you've cut the cost in half of any card goo going up. The tricky part is is rocketcern Like they're pretty optimized to my understanding, Like you know, it's just it's the rocket equation. It's it's pretty Newtony, and it's it's there's not a whole lot you can do to make it better. There's some wacky ideas.

Um but I'll get to the pogo stick in a moment um. But but but so, uh I can I can get a lot more into that. But but so, like a lot of the proposals for how to get to space without using a rocket or in one way or an they're essentially fighting this problem of the idea that most of what you're doing when you go to space is lifting fuel that you're gonna burn on your way to space, and not stuff that you want to

go to space. Right, I hasten to add to for like Apollo going just to the moon, just the moon, not very far at all in a solar system sense, that was about one point five percent stuff going to space. Um so the Poco stick. So how might you improve. Well, so remember I said, only let's say three percent is going it's just for efficiency and math. So that means if you just get three percent more efficiency, you double the amount of cargo, you cut the price in half.

So well, so part of the fuel, as you might imagine, is just getting the like the initial launch, because right when you launch, most of what you're lifting is other fuel. Right. Um, so if you could spare yourself just a little of that need to get that fuel up to speed, you you get like that. Our guy we talked to it NASA said you could get like one or two percent more efficiency maybe. So the basic idea, it's a poco stick rocket up some height I don't know, let's say

a hundred feet, You drop it, it bounces. Now you've got some speed, uh, and off you go to space. And so there might be some people who are thinking, I don't see how the physics of this checks out. The way to think about it is just, um, you know, you're imparting some of your energy just by lifting it up and then dropping it, and so it's it's a more efficient use of energy than having to burn the fuel in the rocket to move the rocket. We have we have some sort of analogies for for how to

explain that in the book. But but, but the basic idea is, as long as you're burning fuel, it's a little more fuel, it's bad or is it is a simple way to think about it. The best way to fly to space would be a magic pixie dropped a drop of fuel in the tank every time you needed it, so you'd only be looking stuff, so that the popo gets you just a nudge towards that. Um and at least a card of the guy we talked to it.

And now it would work in the sense of physics. Uh, whether I said I just like rocket just bouncing slowly getting high off back, yeah, I'd be like t minus you know one second to pogo drop. But I do understanding solutions aren't tried because it went wrong, you'd look like such an idiot. Um So, but yeah, that's that's the pogo stick method. More with Zach Weener Smith right

after this break. One last question for you. Your book is so good to encover so many topics from you know, synthetic biology through d printing for food, like like there's there's just so much in their asteroid mining, which we didn't even get to, which is really great. But um, but I did want to ask you about this one experiment that you guys found on the effects of breathing through one nostril. Yes, talk about that. Yeah, if I correctly, there was an acronym. It was like unilateral force nose

breathing something like that. You you and B or so anyway, So uh yeah, so let me set the table a little for that. So we we did the chapter I think this is in the chapter and augmented reality. And so in the book we have these things called not to bannis, which are generally just little tidbits of weirdness we came across that had nothing to do with anything where just didn't fit the chapter, but that we still wanted to write about. And so this one was on

uh noses. And the reason it's relates to augmented reality is when you put on an augmented reality helmet, one of the obvious things that has to do is offset the image you see in each eye in order to convey a three D environment, right, because of course in the real world, your eyes are offset from each other. Uh. And so you actually would if if you would have an augmented reality system for the ears. You have to

do the same thing. You have to offset sounds a little like so you know something's to your right because you hear the sound from it a little earlier in the right ear. And so we thought, well, let's see, you've got two eyes, you've got two ears. The only other thing on your face you have two of is your nose, And so can you sort of triangulate with smell? And we realized either had an answer to that, so

we started like, how can we explode this question? And and it turned out Kelly happened to know a guy who worked on snakes, and it's a sort of similar question. Why do snakes have forked tongues? And it turns out snakes and the number of other species might have the ability to do something like that to say like, I'm getting a little more chemical on this side of the fork, therefore I should go this way when I'm I'm trailing a rat. Uh. And so then our crush was can

humans do this? And it basically turns out the answer is probably no. Very sadly, you cannot probably tell where the bad smell of the room is by by using you know, offsetting your nostrils. Um so then the question we had was, then why do you have two nostrils

line up one big, giant, awesome nostril um. And it turns out the best argument is, essentially your your nostril is this sort of um, your your You have this mucous line system that protects you from pathogens and other stuff, and it has to be kept moist in order to do its job. And so the you don't realize it, but you constantly have one nostril dominant quote unquote, you have one dominant nostril that has this engorged tissue that's the term in the field and gorged uh um in

one nostril. So so one one side is essentially getting a break. Uh and um you really noticed this, by the way, when you have a cold, you know, when when when one nelson was just not doing anything? Um and uh so um, so what does this have to do with abuse to undergrads? Uh So, it turns out there's some weirdness that goes with this. There's some evidence we're i would say, pretty skeptical of that when you force people to use their non dominant nostril, they perform

worse in all sorts of ways. Uh and so um, so they they're apparently this was done to undergrade. There are these tests that do unilateral force. I think it's nostril breathing or nose breathing. Anyway to the book where you guess compel students to breathe through the wrong nostril and do stuff like I I think it was like, you know, just like intelligence tests. And there's there's even some argument that there's some correlation with like schizophrenia, uh

like using the wrong nostril. Yeah, like weird of Um, I'm pretty skeptical of any of it, but I just love the idea that, you know, someone was like, hey, we need undergrads for a test. You're like, oh, I'm gonna come in and take a test, and it's like, okay, breathe through the nostril you don't feel like breathing through and answer questions. That's what that's what they're good for. Right, Bring out of that nostril and now go get on that poco stick. We're sending that's right, and we'll see

what happens. Yeah, before we let you go, I do have to know after all of this research for this book, and by the way, the amount of research and the amount of fact checking that must have gone into this project was just tremendous and really impressive to see. I can only imagine. But I'm curious after putting this together, you know what, what about the future excites you the most? And then on the flip side of that, what terrifies you the most now that you've you've you know, dug

into so much of this. Sure, UM, I would say the technology that is in some ways less or sexy spacy than the other technologies, but it is really exciting is what's called UM precision medicine. Uh. We have chapter on this in the book. And the basic ideas you just have a sort of stats approach to medicine. UM. So maybe some of your listeners have heard of all these blood tests now coming out that can detect cancer early,

maybe heart attack early, all sorts of stuff. So the idea is maybe maybe in thirty or forty years will be a new system where essentially when you go to the doctor and so of UM instead of the basic stuff, the fight still do the basic stuff blood pressure and talking to your doctor, etcetera, or you exercising enough, but they'll also take a blood test that will be run through a fancy computer and and we'll spit out a lot of results. And what's exciting to that is is

potentially it means you drastically drop healthcare costs. A lot of healthcare costs have to do with unprevented stuff, um, discovering cancers late, that sort of thing. I'm not to mention, you know, a lot of like a lot of why, for instance, pancreatic cancer is dangerous is because you don't detect it early, um, and so stuff like that, like subtle heart to detect cancers you can detect early, would save a lot of money, but it would also obviously save a lot of you know, horror, a lot of

badness in human life. Um. And so to me, that's that's really exciting, especially because it kind of comes at a time when, especially in the US, but also this is happening in other countries where healthcare costs are really getting high and it's not exactly clear how the system can say solvent over the long term, this could be

a way out. It might take us in the other direction of the short term, but in the long term, you know, you can imagine a paradigm where it's like Star Trek, where someone weighs a little wand over you. More likely the one is like poking you and taking tissues and but still uh, and it just tells you, hey, and this is this is apparently literally possible. It might be able to say, hey, you're headed for a heart attack.

You have dying heart tissue. If this goes on for three more days, you're gonna be here for a heart attack. And so instead of you know, having it in your car or at work or whatever and having to be worked to the hospital, you come in early and they take care of it. Um that the amount of prevented in medicine that could be done is amazing. UM. So I'll just say that, I mean, I'm on a visceral level,

I'm I'm I suppose more excited about like this space stuff. Um. But but that's really that's really sort of I don't know if you've ever known someone who's who's died of cancer or some sort of prevent a littleness, especially the young agents, it's very sort of moving to think about being able to do these things. Um. In terms of scary, I would say far and away the most scary one for me is we do have to on brain computer interfaces, which again is what it sounds like. Uh, and what

scares me a little. So let me give you a scenario we wade about that was proposed as a positive, which is something like this. Suppose you're on the job, uh, and you lapsed and focus. Well, that's bad for your job. But suppose you have a brain computer face it to texts that you're not focusing and does something. Maybe he tells your boss Bob isn't focusing. Maybe it just gives you a little something, a little uh, little shock or

a does of chemical or something, and then you focus again. Now, of course that that sounds instantly dystopie on the way I'm describing it. There is a plausible good version, which is something like if you're you know, you don't want that on the job. You might want the guy piloting your plane to do that. You might want a surgeon

to do that. There are situations where it's reasonable. Um. But but the scary thing is once the cats out of the bag, like once this is a possible thing, um, then there's a sort of race to the bottom or race to the cydeboard, however you want to say it. Uh, just something like um, so I don't know. I assume y'all are either an academia or cross swords with it. UM.

You know, you're you're familiar with that world. You may not know that on surveys, something like fifth to a quarter of elite American researchers will admit to using mind enhancing drugs. And I don't mean like they're dropping acid. I mean like they're taking adderall or moda, phanil or what have you to to you know, or or or illegal stuff like a cocaine or or what have you. Maybe crack, I don't know, um to to be able to put out more papers, uh, you know, sleepless, etcetera.

I think drugs are sort of morally neutral, but there is an externality problem, which is if the top researchers are all on crack, and presuming crack actually helps by the way that these are some of the questions, but I think it's probably possible that it does, especially if you're like a post talk or something, you have an narrow time band to do a lot of work. There's an externality, which is it means that people who aren't willing to do this stuff, um are putting in a

bad position. Uh, and so we kind of I feel like most of us don't care if it's happening with researchers because there's an extent to which you're like, well I get more science. Uh so whatever, I don't care that much. And also anyway, they're already elite people, so whatever. But you can imagine a situation where this goes all the way down, Like, you know, the worker who is willing to release their data to an employer, um, and

allow the employer to manipulate that data is more employable. UM. So do we get into a situation where everyone has to be wearing one of these and publicly sharing their data or at least not publicly maybe but sharing it with employers or what have you. That there's a really ominous scenario where where we're all, you know, being forced to become cyborgs or whether we want to or not, you know, over over the next hundred years, say not

not anytime soon. Yeah, Well, to make sure that we finish on a positive note, maybe we should just we should just repeat the term pogo stick to space. Let's just let's just maybe close with that. What do you think I think pogo stick to space? I should have done the precision medicine thing. Second, we have two in the wrong order. But this this book, I know we've already said it. It is so fascinating and so fun to read. I hope all of our listeners will check

it out. It's called soon Ish Ten Emerging Technologies that will improve and or ruin Everything. But Zach, thanks so much for joining us today, Thanks for having a lot of fun. That's it for today's show, but be sure to check out Kelly and Zach Wienersmith's new book soon Ish, which is on shelves everywhere right now. And if you like the program or just have anything to add, remember you can always hit us up on Facebook or Twitter.

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