The Future And You - podcast cover

The Future And You

Stephen Euin Cobbwww.thefutureandyou.com
This award-winning series explores The Future of Everything. What can we expect of next week, next year, next century? What will we eat, drive, wear, live in, vote for, want to buy, and want to avoid? What mistakes of the past will we make again, and which ones have we learned from? From the next tick of the clock to the ultimate end of the universe, every subject is fair game. Composed of interviews and essays, it's hosted by the author and futurist Stephen Euin Cobb. Guests include: famous authors and the occasional celebrity, but mostly futurists, innovators, technologists, analysts, entrepreneurs, and those pushing the limits of technology, as well as those struggling to understand the trends growing strong around us now--since it is those trends which will create the future in which we will all live. This program is not about magic, or prophecy, or psychic divination. Instead, we attempt to use verifiable facts as our foundation, and from them extrapolate forward. All such extrapolations--regardless of the credentials of those putting them forth--must be considered pure opinion. Time alone, will allow these extrapolations to be verified or nullified. Topics and themes explored include: nanotechnology and biotechnology; organlegging and organ transplants, molecular manufacturing and computers wired directly into the human brain; extropianism, transhumanism and the technology of individual immortality; terrorism, globalization, global warming and nuclear proliferation; cryonics and cryogenics; genetic engineering and the human genome project; embryos, cloning and stem cell research; astronomy and other space explorations (NASA, Hubble, exoplanets, SETI, ESA, CCCP, lasers and space probes); the singularity, robots, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI); remote sensing and waldoes; legal and illegal uses of the Internet (hackers and hacking, viruses and Trojan horses); solar cells, peak oil and alternative energy; aging and medical longevity; FTL (faster than light travel, as in Star Trek and Star Wars) and worm holes (as in StarGate SG-1); progress in health, education and neuroscience, as well as evolution, agriculture and inventions; and how what was once science fiction and fantasy is now biology, chemistry and physics. Everything from futurism to futurology. To learn more, check the show's website at: www.TheFutureAndYou.com

Episodes

The Future And You -- August 29, 2012

Eric Flint , Janet Morris , Lee Martindale , Holly McClure , Chris Morris and Daniel M. Hoyt are today's featured speakers. Topic: Electronic Piracy of music, books, movies, software, etc. (This is the second of two parts.) Eric Flint is the best selling author of more than 25 novels of science fiction and fantasy, as well as the former editor-in-chief of the online science fiction and fantasy magazine Jim Baen's Universe. Janet Morris is an author, publisher, editor and anthologist. Lee Martind...

Aug 29, 201238 min

The Future And You -- August 22, 2012

Eric Flint , Janet Morris , Lee Martindale , Holly McClure , Chris Morris and Daniel M. Hoyt are today's featured speakers. Topic: Electronic Piracy of music, books, movies, software, etc. (This is the first of two parts.) Eric Flint is the best selling author of more than 25 novels of science fiction and fantasy, as well as the former editor-in-chief of the online science fiction and fantasy magazine Jim Baen's Universe. Janet Morris is an author, publisher, editor and anthologist. Lee Martinda...

Aug 22, 201231 min

The Future And You -- August 15, 2012

Les Johnson , Dr. Gregory L. Matloff , Stephanie Osborn , and Phillip R. Cox are today's featured speakers. Topic: (1) The ways in which we will all suffer if we lose all of our satellites, and (2) the well-researched dangers which could destroy or disable all of our satellites. IE: Why it is that without satellites cell phones would not function, credit card transactions could not be processed, the Internet would shut down in many areas and be slow and unreliable in places which remain online, ...

Aug 15, 201258 min

The Future And You -- August 8, 2012

Eva Sawyer and Stephen Euin Cobb (your host) are today's featured speakers. Topic: Improving the Functioning of Your Brain (AKA: Cognitive Enhancement). Discussion points include: recent developments in cognitive enhancement, what is desired and what is desirable, drugs known to increase mental capacity , why there is push-back and resistance, the benefits, the dangers, and trends in medical research which will affect the future of cognitive enhancement. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the ...

Aug 08, 201257 min

The Future And You -- August 1, 2012

Today's featured guests are: Dr. Tedd Roberts (a medical researcher with 30 years of experience who also blogs as Speaker-to-Lab-Animals ); Cy Chase (a doctoral candidate in evolutionary biology at Vanderbilt); Cathe Smith (an insect molecular geneticist); Gary Shelton (an agronomist with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA); and, as moderator, your host Stephen Euin Cobb . Topic: Genetic Manipulation--what we can do today that we could not do as little as three years ago, the falling cost of...

Aug 01, 201259 min

The Future And You -- July 25, 2012

New York Times bestselling authors Brandon Sanderson , Timothy Zahn , John Ringo , and Eric Flint are joined by Janet Morris , Patrick Vanner , Richard Groller , Michael H. Hanson and Phillip R. Cox ; as well as three artists: Melissa Gay , Michael Bielaczyc , ~mel-mel ; and several convention organizers: Warren Buff , Brandy Spraker , Derek Spraker , Elayna Little Cook , and LibertyCon's Founder, Uncle Timmy . Mentioned are: The Space Proletariat , and a writers club called The Fictioneers . De...

Jul 25, 20122 hr 39 min

The Future And You -- July 18, 2012

Stephen Euin Cobb is today's featured speaker. Topic: A full explanation of the final results of my " TA-65 Evaluation Project " which I started nearly a year ago. In this episode I describe in detail the immunology blood test results for my mother and myself which were taken at the end of the evaluation period, and compare them with the immunology blood test results taken at the start the evaluation period. To bring everyone up to speed on my TA-65 evaluation project, I provide a thorough summa...

Jul 17, 201240 min

The Future And You -- July 11, 2012

Chris Phoenix (futurist, nanotechnologist and software engineer) is today's featured guest. Topics: The probability of developing human-like General Artificial Intelligence; Sky City (China's modular skyscrapers which are planned to be the tallest in the world); how and why medical progress in the USA is dragging its feet; the hope and value of Life Extension; things to watch in the next decade; his worry that governance may not get better; and recent research about the people who once inhabited...

Jul 11, 201227 min

The Future And You -- July 4, 2012

Chris Phoenix (futurist, nanotechnologist and software engineer) is today's featured guest. Topics: Examples of major disasters and how they can be categorized using The Phoenix Scale ; the current helium shortage; the singularity and artificial intelligence; general AI; conversational AI; and The AI named Watson which won on Jeopardy. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb , this is the July 4, 2012 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 32 minutes] This interview was recorded using Skype on June ...

Jul 04, 201232 min

The Future And You -- June 27, 2012

Chris Phoenix (futurist, nanotechnologist and software engineer) is today's featured guest. Topics: Trends in nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing ; methods of getting to the nanoscale; the problem with MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) ; some of the benefits of "scaling down" to the nanoscale; benefits of molecular manufacturing; and medical benefits from nanotechnology. Also trends in fusion ; the rise of space access; and his involvement with a satellite called SkyCube , which will ...

Jun 27, 201234 min

The Future And You -- June 20, 2012

Dr. Ben Davis (nuclear physicist and professor), Jim Craig (planetarium director), James Maxey (author), and Stephen Euin Cobb (your host) are today's featured guests. Topic: Trends in higher education in the USA, with an emphasis on what is going right and what is going wrong. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 20, 2012 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 55 minutes] This is a panel discussion recorded before a live audience on June 2, 2012, at the science fiction and fant...

Jun 19, 201255 min

The Future And You -- June 13, 2012

James Maxey (author), Edmund R. Schubert (editor and author), and David B. Coe (author) are today's featured guests. Topic: The upheaval in the traditional book publishing Industry as described by three people who rely on it to pay their bills. James Maxey is the author of the superhero novels Nobody Gets the Girl and Burn Baby Burn ; as well as the Dragon Age trilogy: Bitterwood, Dragonforge , and Dragonseed . His multi-book epic, Dragon Apocalypse, is an enthusiastic blend of the superhero and...

Jun 13, 201237 min

The Future And You -- June 6, 2012

Jonah Knight (singer, songwriter, performer); Jaysen Buterin (independent film maker); three popular authors: James Maxey , David Drake and Janine Spendlove ; half of the Mon Frere Comedy Troupe (specifically Bob Bashir, Tom McCoy and Matt Shawn ); and my favorite Klingon, Commander Keela Septaric , are today's featured guests. Composed of seven interviews I gathered in the hallways of the Hilton Hotel in Charlotte NC, this episode is dedicated to the SF&F convention ConCarolinas. I spoke on a n...

Jun 06, 201254 min

The Future And You -- May 30, 2012

Stephen Euin Cobb is today's featured speaker. Main Topic: A detailed description of a new form of Internet spam so cleverly disguised that you have probably read lots of it without even noticing. It's called Spintax (a contraction of the words spin and syntax). Secondary Topics: A sampling of Forecasts for the next 25 years from the World Future Society ; Nine Ways to Bias Open-Source Artificial General Intelligence Toward Friendliness (a new peer-review article by Ben Goertzel and Joel Pitt of...

May 30, 201234 min

The Future And You -- May 23, 2012

Stephen Euin Cobb is today's featured speaker. Topics: Erotic novels are getting a sales boost from ebooks such as the Kindle and the Nook; Google's anticipated eyeglass computers ; many (and possibly most) human beings are chimeras ; the next big boom-time for programmers who write apps; how science fiction's vision of the future changes based on the decade in which it is written; sequencing each patient's personal exome ; and the steadily falling price of sequencing a patient's personal genome...

May 23, 201242 min

The Future And You -- May 16, 2012

Stephen Euin Cobb is today's featured speaker. Topic: A major photovoltaic problem will hit the United States, and many other nations, in about two or three years (in 2014 and 2015). There is no need to speculate as to how this photovoltaic problem will play out since it has already hit the state of Hawaii. We need only observe the existing problem to fully understand the problem that is to come, since the effects it is currently having on consumers and business and government are all available ...

May 16, 201231 min

The Future And You -- May 9, 2012

Les Johnson (author, speaker and NASA deputy manager) is today's featured guest. Topic: Part 2 of Trends in space exploration. What's going on now, and some of the missions which are planned for the future. Les Johnson serves as the Deputy Manager for the Advanced Concepts Office at the NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He was the technical consultant for the movie Lost in Space . And In his spare time he writes popular science books and articles--for example. I...

May 09, 201235 min

The Future And You -- May 2, 2012

Les Johnson (author, speaker and NASA deputy manager) is today's featured guest. Topic: Trends in space exploration. What's going on now, and some of the missions which are planned for the future. Les Johnson serves as the Deputy Manager for the Advanced Concepts Office at the NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He was the technical consultant for the movie Lost in Space . And In his spare time he writes popular science books and articles--for example. In collabor...

May 02, 201238 min

The Future And You -- April 25, 2012

Marshall Brain (founder of HowStuffWorks.com) is today's featured guest. Topic: The remarkably GOOD future which we can create for ourselves using the robots which will dominate our economy during the next decade or two. (Last week Marshall explored the bad possibilities, this week he explores the good.) This is a thorough examination of Marshall Brain's new book: Manna: Two Visions of Humanity's Future . One of his two visions is remarkably bad, and the other is remarkably good. Both are comple...

Apr 25, 201233 min

The Future And You -- April 18, 2012

Marshall Brain (founder of HowStuffWorks.com) is today's featured guest. Topic: The remarkably BAD side of what the rise of robots may do to our culture, civilization, economy, and lifestyles during the next decade or two. This is a thorough examination of Marshall Brain's new book: Manna: Two Visions of Humanity's Future . One of his two visions is remarkably bad, and the other is remarkably good. Both are completely different from any form of civilization we have seen before. Currently we are ...

Apr 18, 201230 min

The Future And You -- April 11, 2012

Paul Fischer (digital network engineer) is our featured guest. Topics: Fun, Interesting and Cool Stuff (but no future or computer security). For example: Beer (especially high-end micro-brews), BaltiCon and the BaltiCon Podcast, The one time your host accidentally visited a Brothel, the time your host's high school chemistry teacher showed the class how to make wine, and the world's simplest method for distilling wine into hard liquor. Bonus: After you have listened to this episode you will know...

Apr 11, 201236 min

The Future And You -- April 4, 2012

Paul Fischer (digital network engineer) is our featured guest. Topics: Cyberwar: Several specific examples of computer hacking done by military forces around the world. How Iran's nuclear program was successfully cyber attacked. How the Chinese government successfully attacked a school in the USA (and bragged about it on their official TV news program). How a commercial airliner's onboard computer was accidentally infected with a virus which crashed the plane and killed all aboard. Also describe...

Apr 04, 201236 min

The Future And You -- March 28, 2012

Evo Terra (author, speaker and digital business strategist) is our featured guest. Topic: Trends in New Media: Where we are now, how we got here, and some of the shifting trends which are changing the direction of New Media in our future. Evo Terra is: co-founder of ePublish Unum ; founder of Podiobooks.com ; a professional public speaker at digital & social media events; and a digital Business strategist at ASW Consulting Services. Previously Evo was the host of Dragon Page Live Fire at 550 AM ...

Mar 28, 201246 min

The Future And You -- March 21, 2012

Paul Fischer (digital network engineer) is our featured guest. Topics: Even more examples of how your smart phone is vulnerable to viruses, trojans, worms, and other hacker software; some of which attacks your phone by way of blue-tooth, Wi-Fi, attached to the apps you download, or by tricking you into thinking the attacking software is actually an update for a trusted app you installed some time ago. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 24, 2012 episode of The Future And You . [Runnin...

Mar 21, 201242 min

The Future And You -- March 14, 2012

Paul Fischer (digital network engineer) is our featured guest. Topics: specific examples of why your smart phone is even more vulnerable to viruses, trojans, worms, and other hacker software than is your computer, and why you can do pretty much nothing about it; how Corpus Christie's automated water meter-reading system caught a thief who'd stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of water, as well as allowed the city to lay-off every last one of their meter readers; and why cities and town...

Mar 14, 201239 min

The Future And You -- March 7, 2012

George Dvorsky (futurist and ethicist) is our featured guest. Topics: Why he has changed from a Vegetarian Diet to a Paleolithic Diet (which is limited to the foods our species ate before the rise of farming and animal husbandry), and his recent personal-record-breaking dead-lift of 400 pounds. Also, his expectations concerning: techlepathy (neurotechnologically-assisted telepathy); postgenderism; astrosociobiology (the speculative scientific study of extraterrestrial civilizations and their pos...

Mar 07, 201241 min

The Future And You -- February 29, 2012

George Dvorsky (futurist and ethicist) is our featured guest. Topics: Is it wise to use our emotions (especially repugnance) as a guide to truth? Giving protective rights to intelligent animals (apes, whales, dolphins, and elephants), and eventually (when the time is right) to artificially intelligent software; augmenting animals to raise their IQ (animal uplifting); the new movie Planet of the Apes ; the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey ; better ways to conduct the search for extraterrestrials (SETI...

Feb 29, 20121 hr 1 min

The Future And You -- February 22, 2012

George Dvorsky (futurist and ethicist) is our featured guest. Topics: the importance of studying history in order to extrapolate the future; how democratic transhumanism differs from other flavours of transhumanism; why he is a technogaian environmentalist and how that relates to Bright Green Environmentalism; the abolition of suffering in all species; political problems of putting a thermostat on the earth; as well as the good and bad of living an engineered blissful existence permanently. Host...

Feb 22, 20121 hr 2 min

The Future And You -- February 15, 2012

Wendy S. Delmater (editor, author and safety engineer), Joe Naff (author), and Myself (your host) are our featured guests. Topic: Future disasters, and what you can do now to prepare for them. (Part 3) The future will contain many bad events as well as many good. Your individual journey through your personal future will be less painful if you are prepared. Here are dozens of ways to greatly reduce your future suffering. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 15, 2012 episode of The Fu...

Feb 15, 201239 min

The Future And You -- February 8, 2012

Jonathan Mugan (author of The Curiosity Cycle , and computer science researcher) is our featured guest. Topics: Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, online games, learning styles and methods, arguing to agree, errors in our thinking process, and many topics covered in his book The Curiosity Cycle: Preparing Your Child for the Ongoing Technological Explosion . (Part 2) Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 8, 2012 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 39 minutes]. This ...

Feb 08, 201239 min