Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's just the podcast host that calls herself
Speaker 1: your Internet dad.
Speaker 2: Ali Ward.
Speaker 1: Back from the holidays and my first work break in
Speaker 1: many years. I have a cold right now, but my
Speaker 1: heart's burning, ready to deliver a year's worth of brand
Speaker 1: new episodes of Ologies. Hello again, y'all, it's twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: We are no longer dabbling in the two thousands, like
Speaker 1: poking a gnarl toe in the waters of tomorrow. We're
Speaker 1: shinned deep in the century. The world is burning, New
Speaker 1: wars are a bloom. Drones deliver our lunches.
Speaker 2: We're in this, bitch.
Speaker 1: It's officially the future, So what better time to talk
Speaker 1: about futurology, the study of what happens next. It's a thing.
Speaker 1: But before we move forward, let's pause a quick second
Speaker 1: to thank every single patron who's ever supported the show
Speaker 1: and allowed me to do things like take the last
Speaker 1: two weeks off without sponsors. Thanks to everyone who's wearing
Speaker 1: fresh ologieswag from ologiesmarch dot com. Thanks to everyone who's
Speaker 1: telling friends about the show, keeping it in the top
Speaker 1: science podcast on iTunes, what rating and subscribing and reviewing
Speaker 1: You know, I tenderly creep your reviews it's true, so
Speaker 1: I can pull out a fresh one. Let's have at it.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: This week is from killen Kel's who said Ali is
Speaker 1: my dad, my mom, my weird classmate who has really
Speaker 1: good points, and my best friend all in one. The
Speaker 1: Pantatology episode with Cole and Perry changed my life, and
Speaker 1: now I'm trying to open my own business helping people
Speaker 1: plan the last party of their life the way they want.
Speaker 1: Let's do end of life parties instead of funerals. Okay, okay, cool, anyways,
Speaker 1: give it a listen. Okay, bye bye dang. That's a
Speaker 1: good idea. There is no better situation in which to
Speaker 1: be the end of the life of the party. And
Speaker 1: I say, we're at Tiara, We're all gonna die. Okay.
Speaker 1: Futurology very much a thing in a scholarly sense, and
Speaker 1: it's also called future studies sometimes futurism, although we're going
Speaker 1: to talk more with this week's guests about that. But
Speaker 1: it's a study of possible, probable, and preferable futures. So
Speaker 1: it's a social science like history, but the gearshift goes
Speaker 1: forward rather than in reverse. And this guest studied ecology,
Speaker 1: behavior and evolution at UC San Diego has a master's
Speaker 1: in Journalism science and has investigated topics like bionic human
Speaker 1: exoskeletons and sex, robots and tech progress, facial recognition, some
Speaker 1: Uncanny Valleys, and space travel for publications like the BBC
Speaker 1: and Scientific, American, Vice, Vox, The Atlantic Motherboard and more.
Speaker 1: And she's also produced, hosted, and edited over one hundred
Speaker 1: episodes of the very highly lauded podcast flash Forward, which
Speaker 1: is just pure auditory futurology, and in each episode she
Speaker 1: looks at possible future scenarios and then she talks to
Speaker 1: these experts about the trajectory that we squishy humans may
Speaker 1: take just marching toward tomorrow. So she's also just a
Speaker 1: badass advocate and a creative soul. I am a fan lady.
Speaker 1: She was lee reading a seminar at zycom camp in November,
Speaker 1: and so I nabbed her for an hour to ask
Speaker 1: all about her full time job studying and examining and
Speaker 1: forecasting the future. And we talked about everything from crouches
Speaker 1: to the Jetsons, What scares her the most, what gives
Speaker 1: her hope, the many types of technology that she has
Speaker 1: buried in her own body. Why some futurists don't want
Speaker 1: things to change, and if your phone is spying on you,
Speaker 1: and also why amid all of this technology and chaos,
Speaker 1: She considers herself an optimist. So cuddle up in your
Speaker 1: space blanket and have your cyborg butler brew you a
Speaker 1: goblet of the good stuff. Fulls to yourself for the
Speaker 1: friendliness and the forecasting. A flash forward host and professional
Speaker 1: literal futureologist, the Rose eveleth.
Speaker 2: Now you are a futurologist. I am a futurologist. What
Speaker 2: is that?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, So the futurelogist is not like a super common
Speaker 3: term but it is the one that I like to
Speaker 3: use for what I do because I kind of sit
Speaker 3: in between a bunch of different things that have other terms.
Speaker 3: So futurists is something that people probably have heard of.
Speaker 3: Futurists generally are people who are working in industry, so
Speaker 3: it's sort of like a vocation. There are degrees you
Speaker 3: can get in Strategic Foresight to become a futurist, which
Speaker 3: is very cool. Strategic Force Site. There are like various
Speaker 3: programs that have these schools that have these programs, and
Speaker 3: those people tend to like kind of work as consultants, right,
Speaker 3: they'll go into a company and be like, Okay, let
Speaker 3: me help you project out you know, five, ten, fifteen
Speaker 3: years and kind of think about the future of like
Speaker 3: Coca Cola or Nike or whatever it is. There's like
Speaker 3: professional groups for those futurists, and that's one bucket, and
Speaker 3: then there's this sort of like science fiction writer's bucket,
Speaker 3: and many of them sort of consider themselves future And
Speaker 3: there's overlap between all of these, right, Like they're sci
Speaker 3: fi writers who are also futurists, but those folks are
Speaker 3: like imagining fictional futures and thinking about the future in
Speaker 3: that way. And then they are sort of like critical
Speaker 3: future studies people or like future studies people, and they're
Speaker 3: on the academic side of like what we talk about
Speaker 3: when we talk about futurism.
Speaker 2: And I kind of like straddle all.
Speaker 3: Of those, okay, And so I think of myself as
Speaker 3: someone who like sort of studies futurists and someone who
Speaker 3: like studies science fiction writers, and someone who like thinks
Speaker 3: about these like academic fields. And so I like futurerologists
Speaker 3: because it kind of like is that nice umbrella term?
Speaker 3: And also people laugh when.
Speaker 2: I say it.
Speaker 3: That's all I can ask have you been using it
Speaker 3: about two years now, I would say I've been using
Speaker 3: it there, or I don't mind if people call me
Speaker 3: a futurist, but I do like futurologists better.
Speaker 2: I like it better too. I should thought you would,
Speaker 2: of course.
Speaker 1: I mean here we are, so yeah, if you were
Speaker 1: not a futurologist, would we be sitting on this couch today.
Speaker 2: I would have invented the word for you if.
Speaker 1: I could, because I've been wanting to talk to you
Speaker 1: for so long about what you do and about how
Speaker 1: you got kind of captivated by it because you have
Speaker 1: a journalism background. Yeah, and so when did you start
Speaker 1: studying journalism? When did you know that you wanted to
Speaker 1: tell stories? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So I thought I would be a scientist for a
Speaker 2: really long time.
Speaker 3: When I was a kid, I dressed up as Jane
Speaker 3: Goodall for like many years in a row as Halloween
Speaker 3: for Halloween, like many years in a row, enough for
Speaker 3: people to be like, this is weird, this is a
Speaker 3: cute anymore, you know, Like and then and then I
Speaker 3: learned that like there's Jack Custeau and there was this
Speaker 3: underwater world.
Speaker 2: So I was like, great, I'm going to be the
Speaker 2: Jangle all the sea. This is great. I have my
Speaker 2: career plan, like I'm ready.
Speaker 3: I made my dad get me scuba certification when I
Speaker 3: was twelve, which is the youngest age you're allowed to
Speaker 3: do it. I got certified through NAWI, which was run
Speaker 3: by this like ex marine, and I was like this
Speaker 3: scrawny twelve year old among like former Navy seals to
Speaker 3: getting this training. So it was like extremely brutal, but
Speaker 3: I was like committed to it. So I was like,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be a scuba diver. I'm going to
Speaker 3: like study the ocean. This is gonna be my thing.
Speaker 3: I went to college in San Diego. I worked at
Speaker 3: scrips and Studoshtography, and I.
Speaker 2: Was like, this is great. I'm going to be the
Speaker 2: Jacq Coustauv of ocean excellent.
Speaker 3: Turns out I love science and actually doing science is
Speaker 3: not the thing I'm the best at. And so I
Speaker 3: had a PI who I worked for, who was great
Speaker 3: and was like, what about this thing called science journalism,
Speaker 3: which was like like I'd never occurred to me that
Speaker 3: that was like a job someone could have, you can
Speaker 3: do it, and so that was really it. Like I
Speaker 3: had no journalism training, I had no journalism background. I
Speaker 3: applied to this program at NYU that's a master's program
Speaker 3: in science journalism specifically Oh Wow, which is like there's
Speaker 3: not that many programs like that, and I did not
Speaker 3: get in because I was not a very good student
Speaker 3: in school, and like my application was like all over
Speaker 3: the place. I had written this like speculative fiction thing
Speaker 3: about like a researcher who got obsessed with this squid
Speaker 3: and then like was like traveling the world that like
Speaker 3: put that in my application for journalism school, which it's
Speaker 3: like makes no sense. It was like all over the place.
Speaker 3: And so the program coordinator, who I'm now close friends with,
Speaker 3: I didn't get in. I was on the wait list
Speaker 3: and he I teased him all the time about it
Speaker 3: because but he's he was like, yeah, your application was bizarre.
Speaker 3: I was like, who is this person? And by chance,
Speaker 3: and it almost never happens at that program, somebody decided
Speaker 3: not to go and so I got to go. So
Speaker 3: it was like, you know, a luck of the universe.
Speaker 3: And so I got to go to this program and
Speaker 3: and that's really where I learned everything. I didn't know
Speaker 3: anything about journalism, and so I got thrown in with
Speaker 3: all these people who had like worked at their student
Speaker 3: newspapers and like had wanted to be journalists since they
Speaker 3: were kids. And I was like, what, it's a headline,
Speaker 3: Like I don't know what any of this means.
Speaker 2: So I'd like, really was a.
Speaker 3: Crash course and it was great and it was I'm
Speaker 3: very lucky to have gone to that program. And that's
Speaker 3: kind of like how I got into journalism. And I
Speaker 3: thought I would write about ocean. I thought I write
Speaker 3: about like environmental science, and I just happened to start
Speaker 3: writing about prosthetics. Actually, as like the first couple of
Speaker 3: stories I wrote that were published were about the first
Speaker 3: big feature I wrote was about whether Oscar Pistorius has
Speaker 3: an unfair advantage as a person with like bionic legs,
Speaker 3: and this is like a huge scientific debate, and I
Speaker 3: wrote about for Scientific American and then sort of like
Speaker 3: from there started writing more about like bionics, and that
Speaker 3: kind of like led me into body hacking and like
Speaker 3: this sort of like weird world of futurism. And at
Speaker 3: the time, everyone was covering it so badly that I
Speaker 3: was like, there had like someone has to.
Speaker 2: Do a better job of doing this, And so that's
Speaker 2: kind of like how I wound up starting to do it.
Speaker 2: What is a bad way of covering it?
Speaker 3: A lot of just like breathless coverage of technology companies
Speaker 3: being like, Wow, look at this amazing thing that's gonna
Speaker 3: like be on our shelves in a year and solve
Speaker 3: all our problems, and like that's not how anything works.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: No critical coverage. Now it's much better, But a lot
Speaker 3: of technology coverage at the time was literally just like
Speaker 3: the latest iPhone, how does it work?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: And there was nothing that was like analyzing like should
Speaker 3: you be giving Apple your data? Like, you know, none
Speaker 3: of that stuff was really happening, and it was like
Speaker 3: early facial recognition, and I remember being like, are we
Speaker 3: we should probably I don't know, talk about this, and
Speaker 3: no one was talking about it. So it was really,
Speaker 3: honestly like easy to kind of be a person who
Speaker 3: could make a name as someone who was like an
Speaker 3: interesting person in that field because there were so few
Speaker 3: people talking about that stuff in the journalism world. In
Speaker 3: academics and other places. People were but in sort of
Speaker 3: like technology journalism about the future, I mean, it was
Speaker 3: like pretty pretty like slim pickings.
Speaker 1: How often do people come to you to ask you
Speaker 1: like Should I get an Alexa?
Speaker 2: Should I do all the time, all the time, all
Speaker 2: the time. And I love it.
Speaker 3: Actually, I'm really glad that people ask because it's it
Speaker 3: is kind of one of my bug where like I
Speaker 3: know it's convenient, but I'm just like, it's so it's
Speaker 3: actually really hard. I think one of my jobs honestly
Speaker 3: is to help people understand like what the risks actually
Speaker 3: are because sort of like I think this is less
Speaker 3: true of climate change now. I think people more are
Speaker 3: more aware that like climate change is important and a thing.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people with privacy and surveillance,
Speaker 3: they're like, like Google already has all my information, Like
Speaker 3: what I didn't I'm not a serial killer, Like why
Speaker 3: do I care if they're scanning my face. It's really
Speaker 3: hard to kind of like conceptualize the risk because it
Speaker 3: sort of feels nebulous. It sort of feels like, oh,
Speaker 3: like whatever, and it's convenient. I can ask Alexa, like
Speaker 3: what the temperature is or whatever?
Speaker 2: Are we friends?
Speaker 3: The most common question I get actually is is my
Speaker 3: phone listening to me?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yes, it's not?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: No, come on, It's it's mostly not.
Speaker 3: So there have been tons of studies that academics have done,
Speaker 3: and there are some really shady apps that you can
Speaker 3: install on your phone that might be doing this, but
Speaker 3: like for the vast majority of people, it's just that
Speaker 3: we're like really predictable as humans, and like figuring out
Speaker 3: what you want to buy is actually like really easy
Speaker 3: based on all the other data that you've given Google already.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and I think also it's the confirmation bias
Speaker 3: thing where it's like you only notice the times when
Speaker 3: you know you were just talking to somebody about like
Speaker 3: some product, and then all of a sudden it shows up.
Speaker 3: You don't notice all the times when that doesn't it
Speaker 3: doesn't happen. So that's the most common question I get,
Speaker 3: is my phone listening to me?
Speaker 1: Well, when did you decide to take your futurism journalism
Speaker 1: in futurology career and make it into podcast format? At
Speaker 1: what point? Because you're killing the kid, thank you? And
Speaker 1: when did you decide to do flashboard?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I had worked in podcasts for a bit.
Speaker 2: I worked at Radio Lab.
Speaker 3: I helped the New York Times launch there Now and
Speaker 3: No Longer Science podcast, So I knew I was like
Speaker 3: really interested in audio and radio and these things and actually,
Speaker 3: like an editor, Annelie Knwitz, who was an amazing writer,
Speaker 3: came to me because she was the founder of Io nine,
Speaker 3: and she came to me and was like, Hey, we
Speaker 3: really want to do a podcast. Do you have any ideas?
Speaker 3: And I was like, boy, do I have ideas to
Speaker 3: a podcast? And so we talked about it, and this
Speaker 3: was the one that we were both really excited about
Speaker 3: because Flashboard blends sort of like science fiction and these
Speaker 3: sort of like audio dramas and then journalism, and that's
Speaker 3: what Ion nine did too.
Speaker 1: Okay, so if you haven't heard it yet, every episode
Speaker 1: of flash Forward starts with this short radio play to
Speaker 1: set the scene, which kind of normalizes and humanizes what
Speaker 1: might be on the horizon for us all. But before
Speaker 1: we get ahead of ourselves, let's just take a step
Speaker 1: back in time and see how our elders saw art today's.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: So when it comes to the history of futurology, what
Speaker 1: did futurology look like at different points? Didn't people even
Speaker 1: fathom or try to predict or draw the future before
Speaker 1: like the Industrial Revolution?
Speaker 3: That's a great question and it's actually something that like
Speaker 3: academics debate a lot so I mean, obviously prophecy has
Speaker 3: been around for really long time, right, like looking to
Speaker 3: the stars trying to figure out what's going to happen.
Speaker 3: But you know this question of like when did it
Speaker 3: become the case that we sort of assume that the
Speaker 3: future will be different, like.
Speaker 2: Really different than it is now. Yeah, because for a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 3: In human history, like the future was kind of you know,
Speaker 3: like still did your thing. You were like in your
Speaker 3: cave or you were in your house, or like you
Speaker 3: farmed or you did this thing. The idea that like
Speaker 3: your future, even within your lifetime, would be like radically different,
Speaker 3: is not like that old. And there are debates about
Speaker 3: when this happened. Some people point to the Victorian era,
Speaker 3: when a lot of social norms actually started really changing
Speaker 3: and you had people sort of questioning, you know, family structures,
Speaker 3: you had people questioning sort of like.
Speaker 2: High society, you had all of that stuff, and that.
Speaker 3: Was sort of a gateway into being like, well, wait
Speaker 3: a minute, why couldn't things be totally different. Some people
Speaker 3: point to electricity as being like the thing where like
Speaker 3: the literal light bulb moment where like, you know, things happen.
Speaker 3: Some people point to the Industrial Revolution, where like all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, all of industry changes.
Speaker 2: It sort of depends on who you ask.
Speaker 1: So while now it's pretty commonplace to point a tiny
Speaker 1: handheld computer at our face and use an image filter
Speaker 1: that changes us into a cat and then beam that
Speaker 1: to millions of people across the world, just for Fonzis,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the mid eighteen hundreds that we even
Speaker 1: had flushing toilets or light switches.
Speaker 2: Life.
Speaker 1: Man, it comes at you fast.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's not like people have had people talk
Speaker 3: about futurism and prophecy and religion and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: But this idea that you know, we kind of have
Speaker 3: where like you know, in a hundred years, like who
Speaker 3: even knows, you know, like there's that feeling and that
Speaker 3: wasn't always the case.
Speaker 2: But like when exactly that started is actually up for debate.
Speaker 2: What do you think about tomorrow Land When Disneyland opened
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty five, tomorrow Land.
Speaker 4: The world of the future see more science fiction.
Speaker 2: Than actual fact in Disneyland.
Speaker 3: I love it, Oh really I do, because like I
Speaker 3: love nostalgic future stuff, right, because you can kind of
Speaker 3: be like, oh, like.
Speaker 2: Remember when we thought this was going to happen. I
Speaker 2: remember when we thought that.
Speaker 3: I think also the cool thing, one of the cool
Speaker 3: things about being a futurologist is that, like a lot
Speaker 3: of futurism, especially looking back on it, it says a lot
Speaker 3: more about the time that it was created than it
Speaker 3: says about the future.
Speaker 2: Right, And this is the same thing with science fiction.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Yes, in theory we're talking about the future, but a
Speaker 3: lot of the time you're really kind of talking about now.
Speaker 3: So you know, you could see this in the ways
Speaker 3: that the Kitchens of the future were presented the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 3: where you have all of these companies sort of realizing that,
Speaker 3: like housewives are no longer complacent to be at home
Speaker 3: and be cooking all the time. They got jobs during
Speaker 3: the war, they don't really want to stop having jobs.
Speaker 3: They want to be able to kind of like have
Speaker 3: it all, quote unquote, And you see all of these
Speaker 3: different companies presenting these like kitchens of the future to
Speaker 3: sort of like basically appease women and make it like
Speaker 3: oh no, no, no, you can still like do all the
Speaker 3: housework and stuff and like not really you don't need
Speaker 3: you don't need to go and you could stay you
Speaker 3: don't need to go anywhere, you know, And like I
Speaker 3: think a lot of the time when I see those
Speaker 3: like sort of like retro future things, it's really fun
Speaker 3: because it's a reminder of like, oh, that's how we
Speaker 3: thought about the future, and that's how I thought about
Speaker 3: the present then.
Speaker 2: And we still see that.
Speaker 3: I mean in kitchen designs of today, you still see
Speaker 3: some of those ideas of like who is who's depicted
Speaker 3: in those promotional images. It's always women still, and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 3: we can like land a rover on Mars, but like
Speaker 3: you can't imagine a man in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: You know, Like, oh my gosh, I get a real
Speaker 1: bug in my bonnet. When I see so many house
Speaker 1: cleaning products just for women, just only women are cleaning toilets, yeah,
Speaker 1: drives me a little crazy.
Speaker 3: There's a great book called More Work for Mother about
Speaker 3: how automation in homes has always been marketed to women
Speaker 3: as like, oh, it's going to be a timesaveror it's
Speaker 3: going to be a timesaver, and every single study shows
Speaker 3: that it just puts more work on women every time.
Speaker 1: Okay, quick aside, I look this up and there's a
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five book by Ruth Schwartz. Cohen called More
Speaker 1: Work for Mother the ironies of household technology, from the
Speaker 1: open hearth to the microwave, and it has a ton
Speaker 1: of data to support that the role of the homemaker
Speaker 1: has not, in fact gotten easier. And this was before
Speaker 1: people pinterested their kids lunch every day. And granted it
Speaker 1: was written thirty five years ago when people still smoked
Speaker 1: on airplanes. But every time nowadays you see a commercial
Speaker 1: for home janitorial products, just keep an eye on what
Speaker 1: gender is usually doing the scrubbing. Also side note on
Speaker 1: Amazon More Work for Mother, the book has mostly favorable responses,
Speaker 1: but there is one one star review, which I of
Speaker 1: course read, and this person, who identifies themselves only as
Speaker 1: Avid Reader said, More Work for Mother give me a break.
Speaker 1: The book we need is modern marriage. What's in it
Speaker 1: for father? Apparently Avid Reader is often dissatisfied with their purchases,
Speaker 1: because another Amazon reviewer posted the response, every book you've
Speaker 1: reviewed received one star? Are you just really bad at
Speaker 1: picking books? I'll put the link up to this in
Speaker 1: case you want to read this bloodthirsty book drama while
Speaker 1: you're like killing time on your phone waiting for a
Speaker 1: robot to bring you up, Panini, Now, why do you
Speaker 1: think that at no point in history people realized that
Speaker 1: we were all going to be.
Speaker 2: Staring at phones at some point? Oh, I think people did.
Speaker 2: I think people did.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, maybe not in the exact version
Speaker 3: of this, but people have been predicting sort of like
Speaker 3: video conferencing and video calling and sort of like screen
Speaker 3: based interactions for a long time. I think that the
Speaker 3: exact form of these like little glass boxes in our
Speaker 3: pockets might be slightly different. But you can look at
Speaker 3: some of the world fair stuff in like the early
Speaker 3: nineteen hundreds, and you see people predicting video like basically
Speaker 3: FaceTime and so like, you know, the exact details of
Speaker 3: how what it looks like are different.
Speaker 2: But people have kind of thought about this a lot.
Speaker 3: I mean, as soon as you have things like yellow journalism,
Speaker 3: like the attention economy that we talk about now, where
Speaker 3: it's like everyone is.
Speaker 2: You know, Facebook is competing for your eyeballs.
Speaker 3: They're not really competing for your money necessarily, because what
Speaker 3: they want is for you to look at stuff so
Speaker 3: that they can track what you're looking at and then
Speaker 3: sell add information to other people. Like that idea I
Speaker 3: think is actually relatively old, and that kind of plays
Speaker 3: into the phone thing as well. So I think actually
Speaker 3: that kind of concept has been around for longer than
Speaker 3: we might expect.
Speaker 1: Okay, so quick aside. Yellow journalism essentially means tabloid fodder
Speaker 1: like big exaggerated headlines and sensationalized crime stories and just
Speaker 1: hot hot celeb goss aka pretty much the whole Internet now.
Speaker 1: But the term yellow journalism arose during the late eighteen
Speaker 1: hundred's New York newspaper wars between Joseph Pulitzer and William
Speaker 1: Randolph Hurst, and these two rag magnets had a tug
Speaker 1: of war for the rights to publish this comic strip
Speaker 1: called Hogan's Alley, featuring a character called the Yellow Kid,
Speaker 1: a child from a rough part of the city wearing
Speaker 1: a mustard colored nightgown and depicted with two big front
Speaker 1: teeth and a shaved head from a rice infestation. According
Speaker 1: to its creator, he looks kind of like Dope from
Speaker 1: the Seven Dwarfs. And the Yellow Kid was everywhere in
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds, and these two rival newspapers competed
Speaker 1: to run Hogan's Ally in their dailies. And if you're like, wait,
Speaker 1: isn't Hogan's Aali the name of the FBI Tactical Training
Speaker 1: Center and also a Nintendo game. It is and it's
Speaker 1: named after this same strip. So now you can drop
Speaker 1: some ancient newspaper drama and comic trivia on your unsuspecting friends,
Speaker 1: or maybe you can break the ice with your FBI interrogator.
Speaker 1: You're welcome. Oh, speaking of cartoons, what about the Jetsons?
Speaker 1: What did they get right on the Jetsons?
Speaker 2: The Jetsons, I mean, there's it's so funny.
Speaker 3: The Jetsons is the one is the thing that people
Speaker 3: always talking about, like, oh, flying cars or what butlers
Speaker 3: blah blah blah, and.
Speaker 2: Like super regressive family dynamics.
Speaker 3: Although you still have you have like you have your
Speaker 3: Jane Jetson goes to work, you know, and I was like, yay,
Speaker 3: that was a big deal at the time. You know,
Speaker 3: you have your robot Butler who falls in love with
Speaker 3: another robot, which I love is one of my favorites.
Speaker 3: They have their food machine, which I think is really
Speaker 3: interesting because that's been a common thing in science fiction
Speaker 3: that we don't see, like why don't there they obviously
Speaker 3: vending machines, but like why aren't there like push a
Speaker 3: button and food comes out.
Speaker 4: How'd you make it raw?
Speaker 2: And your eggs? I don't get it.
Speaker 4: When we first got married, you could punch out a
Speaker 4: breakfast like mother used to make.
Speaker 1: In the opening credits, a perky Jane Jutson is also
Speaker 1: shown taking George Jutson's wallet to go shopping in a
Speaker 1: floating sky mall, as so many of us do these days.
Speaker 1: Gross Anyway, when you are looking at the future, how
Speaker 1: much do you think about yourself in those situations?
Speaker 3: I try to think of my about myself in those situations,
Speaker 3: but I also try to remember that like my experience
Speaker 3: is like singular, and like I am a like sis
Speaker 3: white lady born into the United States, and like all
Speaker 3: of those things. And so one of the big things
Speaker 3: I tried to do in my work with flash Forward
Speaker 3: and Elsewhere is think about, like, okay, but what if
Speaker 3: I was somebody else, and what if I, like had
Speaker 3: less privilege than I have now, and how does this
Speaker 3: impact these people? So, for example, in the episode I
Speaker 3: did about Crisper sort of like gene editing of human
Speaker 3: babies and stuff like that, which I was working on.
Speaker 3: It had basically done, and then the news broke about
Speaker 3: the Chinese scientist with the Chris Rabis and I was like.
Speaker 2: Nah, I just finished this episode and I have to
Speaker 2: go back and READO stuff.
Speaker 3: But that episode, most of the interviewees was the guests
Speaker 3: on that episode were disabled people and sort of about
Speaker 3: like what is it like to hear all these scientists
Speaker 3: talk about eliminating you?
Speaker 2: Basically, like how does that feel?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: What is that? Like? What would it be like to
Speaker 2: be the last deaf person on earth?
Speaker 3: You know? And like is that something we actually want?
Speaker 3: So I think I try really hard actually to think
Speaker 3: about how people who are not like me might might
Speaker 3: feel or find themselves in those futures. And I try
Speaker 3: to interview a lot of people on the show that
Speaker 3: are not like me, so I can kind of be like,
Speaker 3: how do you feel about this? Like what do you
Speaker 3: think about this? For the episode about body swapping, everybody
Speaker 3: on that episode almost except for one, is a transperson.
Speaker 3: It's like, Okay, how does this correlate with your experiences
Speaker 3: and your feelings about bodies and stuff like that, because
Speaker 3: like I don't know what that's like. So yeah, like
Speaker 3: thinking through like who are the people who are going
Speaker 3: to be most impacted by this? And like it's probably
Speaker 3: not me, and like trying to find those people is
Speaker 3: really important.
Speaker 1: I think, how much anxiety do you feel about the future.
Speaker 3: I feel I feel like I feel like a healthy
Speaker 3: amount of anxiety like the future, which is to say,
Speaker 3: I feel anxious about the future. But I also I
Speaker 3: think that you can't get buried in it because otherwise,
Speaker 3: like what do you It's really hard to do anything.
Speaker 2: A lot of the future is scary.
Speaker 3: But also the future isn't written yet, and I think
Speaker 3: that's like something that we need to remember, like, yes,
Speaker 3: certain things are in motion, and yes, like all of
Speaker 3: us are kind of like one person, but in fact,
Speaker 3: like the future has not happened yet, like there are
Speaker 3: things that we can do and like things that you
Speaker 3: can try, and also ways to kind of mentally think
Speaker 3: about the future. I've been thinking a lot about There's
Speaker 3: a concept in psychology called mental time travel, which is
Speaker 3: basically that you can kind of imagine yourself and fee situations,
Speaker 3: and certain people with certain forms of amnesia actually cannot
Speaker 3: do that, which is like kind of hard to even fathom.
Speaker 3: They talk about being marooned in the moment, which is
Speaker 3: like really terrifying sounding, but also they know that people
Speaker 3: with depression actually have a really hard time with this,
Speaker 3: where it's like you're depressed, it's really hard for you
Speaker 3: to imagine yourself in the future. But they also find
Speaker 3: in these studies that if you can and when you
Speaker 3: do imagine yourself in the future, specifically imagine what you're
Speaker 3: going to do, imagine your next steps, people are happier,
Speaker 3: People tend to be more productive, people tend to like
Speaker 3: just feel better because they can actually be like, Okay,
Speaker 3: here's my plan, here's are going to do. So I
Speaker 3: always say that when people are like, how do I
Speaker 3: cope with this like horrible anxiety that I'm feeling about
Speaker 3: the future, which is totally normal given like what's happening
Speaker 3: in the world, is like actually thinking through like imagining
Speaker 3: yourself and what you can do can be really like
Speaker 3: calming because it's specific and it's you. It's not just like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, like I don't know, like climate change
Speaker 3: is in the hands of nine companies, you know, which
Speaker 3: is like really terrifying, unless you're one of those companies,
Speaker 3: I guess, in which case it's just.
Speaker 2: She's really yes, money, money, money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, it's the world birds and literally, what do
Speaker 1: you think based on all the episodes you've done, like
Speaker 1: one hundred, what do you think is going to change
Speaker 1: the most in like the next decade.
Speaker 3: I think that and this is like an unpopular answer
Speaker 3: given that I live in Berkeley, which is like in
Speaker 3: tech central kind of area.
Speaker 2: But I think it's social stuff that's going to change
Speaker 2: the most.
Speaker 3: I think right now we're seeing a really awesome moment
Speaker 3: with like gender, for example, where like people are sort
Speaker 3: of like finally realizing in the more popular culture that
Speaker 3: like gender is not binary, and like that people have
Speaker 3: different options, and like it's more acceptable to kind of
Speaker 3: talk about those questions. I always say that, like trans
Speaker 3: people are the original body hackers, because like they actually
Speaker 3: do all this stuff that the body hackers talk about
Speaker 3: doing and are doing like really amazing stuff. I mean,
Speaker 3: like you're seeing people question like the value of capitalism,
Speaker 3: which was probably was unfathomable to people twenty years ago
Speaker 3: to even say, like, I mean people did say this,
Speaker 3: but to have like it be a more common thing
Speaker 3: you see on Twitter being like, oh, capitalism the worst,
Speaker 3: Like you did not see that for a long time.
Speaker 3: So I think a lot of it is going to
Speaker 3: be more social change than technological change. I think people
Speaker 3: assume when we talk about the future that we're always
Speaker 3: talking about like flying cars and jetpacks and like these
Speaker 3: tech things.
Speaker 2: But I think that a lot of this, especially.
Speaker 3: Coming out of these climate change conversations, it's going to
Speaker 3: be people asking like why have we made the decisions
Speaker 3: we've made culturally and sort of like sociopolitically, and like
Speaker 3: are they actually the right decisions? And can we change
Speaker 3: the way that this whole thing works? And like should
Speaker 3: we have prisons? Like that's a question that I think
Speaker 3: is getting a lot more attention now that like you
Speaker 3: didn't see twenty years ago as much.
Speaker 2: So Yeah, I think those are.
Speaker 3: The questions that people are going to be asking more
Speaker 3: of as opposed to like you know, which app stiond
Speaker 3: I get? Or like, you know, is there going to
Speaker 3: be the next iPhone? Which is I think people love
Speaker 3: to ask and it's.
Speaker 2: Like who cares? That's like not important?
Speaker 1: You know, Like, well, how do you reconcile some of
Speaker 1: the regressions it seems that are happening socially, Like we're
Speaker 1: in a moment that is so progressive in some right
Speaker 1: areas and so not in others.
Speaker 2: What the fuck's going on? Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean I think that like different people have said
Speaker 3: this where you know this is common right, you make
Speaker 3: progress and then you move back. I should say that
Speaker 3: I do not actually believe that, like the arc of
Speaker 3: justice been, the arc of history bends towards justice. Which
Speaker 3: is a quote from doctor Martin Luther King that I'm
Speaker 3: probably butchering.
Speaker 4: Rhen on nights become darker than a thousand midnights. Let
Speaker 4: us remember that is a creative force in this universe
Speaker 4: working to pull down the gigantic mountings of evil. Power
Speaker 4: that is able to make a way out of no way,
Speaker 4: transform dark yesterday's and to break tomorrows. Let us realize
Speaker 4: at the dark of the Marrow universe is long, but
Speaker 4: it bends toward justice.
Speaker 3: But I do think that like you're seeing, you know,
Speaker 3: you are seeing some huge aggression out You're seeing like
Speaker 3: the rise of populism and sort of the rise of
Speaker 3: fascism in countries like the United States, and that's hugely problematic.
Speaker 3: You're also seeing people kind of like come show up
Speaker 3: to say like no to that. So I think that like, yes,
Speaker 3: we're seeing a lot of bad, bad things, but we're
Speaker 3: also I think seeing a lot of people sort of
Speaker 3: like realize that they need to actually show up and
Speaker 3: like to do something to stop those things from happening,
Speaker 3: whether that's about like populism or just like climate change,
Speaker 3: which is the thing that a lot of people ask
Speaker 3: me about and are like, well, why should I have
Speaker 3: kids if we're all gonna be on fire underwater in
Speaker 3: the next like three years, which is not true, but
Speaker 3: but yeah, I think, like that's the thing. I'm sort
Speaker 3: of muddling this answer, but like to to remember that,
Speaker 3: like you can do something, and we can do something,
Speaker 3: and it's not like predetermined, like.
Speaker 1: They haven't won yet, right, you know. Well, I have
Speaker 1: another question is why should I have kids? The world
Speaker 1: is gonna be a fire and water?
Speaker 2: I mean, I cannot tell anyone to or to not
Speaker 2: have kids, Okay.
Speaker 3: At the same time, like, I think that it's a
Speaker 3: really interesting question, and there is a whole movement of
Speaker 3: people right who believe that, like we just shouldn't have
Speaker 3: kids and we shouldn't put them into the situation.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Side note, as discussed in the Exchatology episode from last
Speaker 1: November about the apocalypse, which is really more relevant than
Speaker 1: ever this week, the choice to nope babies is called
Speaker 1: voluntary childlessness or a child free lifestyle. And a more
Speaker 1: scholastic term is anti natalism, which includes the philosophy that
Speaker 1: you can't get the consent of a child to exist,
Speaker 1: therefore it's immoral to procreate. So do you have a
Speaker 1: child who, when told to do a chore, has screamed
Speaker 1: whatever I didn't ask to be born? Well, congratulations, you
Speaker 1: have engaged in philosophical discourse about anti natalism. Oh and
Speaker 1: if your child free, but your relatives insist you should
Speaker 1: pop out some shorties, here's an idea. You can present
Speaker 1: them with the data that one American child has the
Speaker 1: same carbon impact per year as seventy five round trip
Speaker 1: transatlantic flights, or that it would take one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty meat eaters going vegan to offset a kiddo. But
Speaker 1: on the flip side, babies are cute and their heads
Speaker 1: smell like powder and milk, and they turn into adults
Speaker 1: that keep hospitals and government in the world. So to
Speaker 1: all the smug child free folks who have dogs instead,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking to myself right now, bad news or
Speaker 1: meat hungry hairy children have substantial carbon pop prints too.
Speaker 2: So what to do?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Go with your heartband. Rose says that
Speaker 1: having kids or dogs is just a deeply personal decision.
Speaker 1: So cut banks, text your crush and decide on your
Speaker 1: own terms if you want to have babies with them
Speaker 1: and if the babies will have banks.
Speaker 3: If you really want to have children and you are
Speaker 3: not having them because you think climate change is scary,
Speaker 3: then you should do something about climate change. You should
Speaker 3: like actually get off your butt and do something about
Speaker 3: climate change. And that's hard to do, right, Like, as
Speaker 3: we've said, like you know, climate change is largely in
Speaker 3: the hands of like very huge companies. But like I mean,
Speaker 3: there are protests you can go to, Like, there are
Speaker 3: local politics you can get involved in. There are like
Speaker 3: local issues you can work on. I mean, I can't
Speaker 3: tell people to or to not have children. I do
Speaker 3: not have children myself.
Speaker 1: Or nor am I planning to. Yeah myself, that's right.
Speaker 1: I've been worried about overpopulation. Don't worry about it, okay,
Speaker 1: really because I've been worried about it since like high school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is a huge topic in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: which is maybe when you and I.
Speaker 2: Are both in high school.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I guess in nineties and it was largely
Speaker 3: a lot of it came out of, honestly just racism
Speaker 3: of like, oh, all of these countries like India and
Speaker 3: China and places in Africa are suddenly have all these
Speaker 3: people and they're going to like want rights and they're
Speaker 3: not going to want us to just tell them what
Speaker 3: to do, and like, oh, suddenly they have an overpopulation issue.
Speaker 2: And I think that like a lot of that.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of really good work done by researchers
Speaker 3: and scholars that basically say that like that is like
Speaker 3: not the problem. The problem is racism, you know, or
Speaker 3: the problem is like you know, distribution of resources among
Speaker 3: the people on Earth.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of people on Earth.
Speaker 3: But if you want to talk about, like what's the
Speaker 3: problem with climate change, overpopulation is pretty.
Speaker 2: Low on the actual list.
Speaker 3: Like if we also have having children right now, the
Speaker 3: climate will still warm. You know, Like there's nothing like
Speaker 3: that's not you know, necessarily what's happening.
Speaker 2: I mean, so, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Think that like a lot of there's been a lot
Speaker 3: of really interesting stuff. Mother Jones had a big series
Speaker 3: about this, I think a couple of years ago, about
Speaker 3: like trying to push back on this narrative of overpopulation
Speaker 3: and sort of revealed that a lot of people who
Speaker 3: first posited this as like the problem were basically just racists.
Speaker 1: Wow oh man, because I remember looking at population density
Speaker 1: curves of like deer and mice and certain populations and
Speaker 1: looking at the human population density curve and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: something's going to give.
Speaker 3: And it's already leveling off too, right, Like we are
Speaker 3: not still in the like highest highest upswing, Like you know,
Speaker 3: humans are having less children generally, like as I think
Speaker 3: a global trend.
Speaker 2: I hear millennials are having fewer Yeah right, I'm getting
Speaker 2: dogs instead, is what I hear. That's what I got
Speaker 2: on your dog, by the way, thank you.
Speaker 1: Okay, quick aside, population curves can make a shape like
Speaker 1: a J or really more like a backwards L, which
Speaker 1: is when the head count for a species kind of
Speaker 1: lopes along steady for a long time and then has
Speaker 1: a huge upswing and goes up sharply in a really
Speaker 1: short matter of time. So, for instance, in the year
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred, Earth's population was one point six billion, but
Speaker 1: we just hit seven point seven billion in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: partly oddly because of better agriculture and just figuring out
Speaker 1: how to make ammonia from airborne nitrogen. How weird is that? Anyway,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of us, and when a population hits
Speaker 1: what's called a carrying capacity, it tends to level off
Speaker 1: rather than continuing to shoot up. So think of that
Speaker 1: Jay kind of taking a rite in forming an.
Speaker 2: S shaped curve.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily plunge downward into extinction. It's not like
Speaker 1: a good party that is so lit, so off the chain,
Speaker 1: as your children say that it suddenly gets shut down
Speaker 1: by the cops. In the great mysterious Kegger that is life,
Speaker 1: we're so worried about the apocalypse of a squad car
Speaker 1: we forget that some parties just kind of peter out
Speaker 1: because they suck. When it comes to topics to explore
Speaker 1: in the future, how do you decide which ones are
Speaker 1: worthy of exploring?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 3: I feel like for flash forward, I always want to
Speaker 3: do something that's like interesting and surprising that like people
Speaker 3: haven't heard before. So there's certain topics that I just
Speaker 3: like part of me is like I just don't know
Speaker 3: what I'm going to say about this. Like self driving cars,
Speaker 3: I feel like they've been just like everyone writes about them.
Speaker 3: People know, I've always struggled with, like, what is the
Speaker 3: like version of this that I can do that like
Speaker 3: no one thought of before. People aren't talking about. There
Speaker 3: was one that I did that people had asked people.
Speaker 3: One of the most requested episodes always is Living Forever,
Speaker 3: which is the future that I'm like not particularly interested
Speaker 3: in because really just the purview of the rich basically,
Speaker 3: And it's like, oh, living Forever's great if you are
Speaker 3: making compound interest, you know, like wonderful, and so it's
Speaker 3: just like a thing that like really really rich white
Speaker 3: guys are obsessed with, and for me, I'm like, I
Speaker 3: just feel there's so many other things that are more interesting.
Speaker 3: But so it was requested so often, and finally I
Speaker 3: sort of figured out like how to do it, and
Speaker 3: I did it as an episode about what would happen
Speaker 3: if we had that technology and applied it to the
Speaker 3: criminal justice system and prisoners could be sentenced to like
Speaker 3: three hundred years in prison, and like, how does that?
Speaker 3: What does that look like? You know, we already have
Speaker 3: issues when people get out of prison and they like
Speaker 3: don't have never seen a cell phone before, right, and
Speaker 3: like what does that look like?
Speaker 2: Times? You know, three hundred So that was kind of.
Speaker 3: My way into that episode of like, Okay, what's the
Speaker 3: interesting thing that I can say about this that people
Speaker 3: aren't talking about?
Speaker 2: What about the way that we'll look at animal rights
Speaker 2: in the future. It's one of my favorite topics.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's something that is just yeah, it's something
Speaker 1: that you do, and there's a lot of somethings that
Speaker 1: you do in the past that are egregious totally.
Speaker 2: What is going to happen with that? What's your stance?
Speaker 3: I'm so fascinated by this because I think, you know,
Speaker 3: the more you look into animals and their intelligence, everything
Speaker 3: we ever thought about them and how smart they are
Speaker 3: has been wrong because they're smarter, right, They're just like
Speaker 3: we've consistently underestimated non human animals, just over and over
Speaker 3: and over again. And so yeah, this question of like
Speaker 3: at what point do we start to decide like actually,
Speaker 3: like we can't do it, we should not do this.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are people who believe we shouldn't have pets.
Speaker 3: There are people that believe that zoos are unethical, and
Speaker 3: then there's this question of like what is the point
Speaker 3: of some of these things? And like some pets, right,
Speaker 3: like dogs and cats, evolved with hu in a way
Speaker 3: that like I don't I mean, most people's dogs would
Speaker 3: not survive out in the wild.
Speaker 2: Some cats would not all cats.
Speaker 3: But so like this question of like what are what
Speaker 3: are our obligations to these animals and what, you know,
Speaker 3: what should we be doing? Like should we be training
Speaker 3: dolphins to do tricks in zoos? Like, you know, it's
Speaker 3: hard to say I'm obsessed with this question and I
Speaker 3: should say, like, I don't know what I think still
Speaker 3: about it. It's really hard, like, you know, on the
Speaker 3: one hand, you know, it's not something you know, I'm
Speaker 3: not totally comfortable coming in particularly as like you know,
Speaker 3: a western white lady being like you have to stop
Speaker 3: eating meat, you know where it's like okay, Like that's
Speaker 3: like a hard proposition to make. At the same time,
Speaker 3: like the more you learn about what these animals are
Speaker 3: capable of, the.
Speaker 2: More it's like, oh, should we really be doing this?
Speaker 2: Like is this really okay?
Speaker 3: You know, what do we owe to these creatures that
Speaker 3: we've like destroyed their habitats?
Speaker 2: Like you know, all this stuff.
Speaker 3: So I'm I'm like obsessed with this question of like
Speaker 3: the future of animal rights if we could actually communicate
Speaker 3: with them.
Speaker 2: How would that change things?
Speaker 3: Or like if we could understand what they were saying
Speaker 3: or they could understand what we were saying better, Like
Speaker 3: how would that change things? And I've done a bunch
Speaker 3: of episodes about that and sort of like this question
Speaker 3: of like what where do we draw the line?
Speaker 2: I think it's really hard.
Speaker 1: Can we talk to dogs?
Speaker 2: Certain places have have come passed laws.
Speaker 3: So last year India passed a law I think it
Speaker 3: was actually just a region of India pastor law that
Speaker 3: basically said that human animals had human rights basically, and
Speaker 3: then when you get.
Speaker 2: Into it, like what does that actually mean?
Speaker 3: Because like if that's the case, then like you can't
Speaker 3: eat meat right because they'd be murdering someone. But the
Speaker 3: details of the law are actually kind of confusing and
Speaker 3: it's unclear if it's actually going to change anything.
Speaker 2: But yeah, these.
Speaker 3: Questions of like what should we do about these like
Speaker 3: other creatures that we share the planet with that like
Speaker 3: are actually like way smarter than we thought they were.
Speaker 1: Okay, real quick, I look this up. And recently the
Speaker 1: Indian High Court of Punjab and Harryana has determined that
Speaker 1: all animals are persons and that humans in Haryana are
Speaker 1: de facto parents to all the animals, giving animals rights
Speaker 1: in the.
Speaker 2: Courts and the eyes of the law.
Speaker 1: Also in India, the Ganzas and the Yumana rivers, plus
Speaker 1: all of their streams and all of their little tributaries
Speaker 1: are also considered persons. And side note, I'm the youngest
Speaker 1: of three daughters, and by default I was usually just
Speaker 1: a dirty faced rug rat, tagging along with older siblings
Speaker 1: and their friends and my mom, your grandpadma Fancy. Nancy
Speaker 1: taught me to respond to any bullying by saying, I'm
Speaker 1: a person with rights and feelings, and I hope that
Speaker 1: when you're feeling down, whether you're a turtle or a
Speaker 1: stream or a hairless ape, and remember that you're a
Speaker 1: person with rights and feelings. So take that into the future.
Speaker 1: What about What are some other things that you are
Speaker 1: looking forward to in the future.
Speaker 2: What are you most stoked about? Ooh, most stoked about?
Speaker 3: I'm like, this makes me feel kind of old, but
Speaker 3: I'm stoked about the youth.
Speaker 2: And and they're.
Speaker 3: Like they're obsession with climate change, Like, honestly, I think
Speaker 3: like I feel like the last couple of years there's
Speaker 3: been such a huge change in the way that younger
Speaker 3: people are talking about climate change.
Speaker 2: I did a series recently.
Speaker 3: On flash Forward where I had a bunch of teen
Speaker 3: actors come in and do some stuff, and then I
Speaker 3: was asking them, you know, how do you feel about privacy?
Speaker 3: And they were basically like, I don't care about privacy.
Speaker 3: I care about climate change. Like literally, they were like,
Speaker 3: privacy is not going to end the human race. And
Speaker 3: I was like whoa, And they were like very intense
Speaker 3: about it. And just to see that like them be
Speaker 3: like no, like this is a thing that we care about,
Speaker 3: Like we are out in the streets, like we are
Speaker 3: doing this. I think, like that's honestly quite exciting to me,
Speaker 3: as like someone who has watched people sort of be
Speaker 3: apathetic about climate change for so long, so I think,
Speaker 3: like that is really exciting. I'm excited by like the
Speaker 3: advances in like health services for trans people, and like
Speaker 3: the way that like that has advanced the ways that
Speaker 3: we talk about gender.
Speaker 2: Is like cooler now. I think in general that's great.
Speaker 3: I generally don't get excited about like technology stuff because
Speaker 3: like so much of it it's like is it really
Speaker 3: going to happen? First of all, and also like is
Speaker 3: it only going to be available to like super rich people.
Speaker 2: M M question. Probably you know, A yeah, the kids
Speaker 2: these days.
Speaker 1: And these kids are doing such good things, so great
Speaker 1: sci fi movies. Ooh, do you avoid them because it's
Speaker 1: your work or do you see every single sci fi
Speaker 1: movie said in the future.
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm in between. I do not avoid them.
Speaker 3: I like them, but I also like I just sometimes
Speaker 3: don't get to find time to watch them. It's not
Speaker 3: like an on purpose thing, but I watch a lot
Speaker 3: of sci fi movies. I am not someone who like
Speaker 3: gets caught up in like that's not realistic or like
Speaker 3: warp drive doesn't work like that. Like I just like
Speaker 3: don't care. I'm like totally happy to suspend us belief
Speaker 3: and like have a good time in a movie. I'm
Speaker 3: much more like I get much more annoyed if like
Speaker 3: the character development is bad, you know, and like the
Speaker 3: women just like are only there to suffer or whatever
Speaker 3: it is, Like that's what I care about. I don't
Speaker 3: care if like whatever technology thing doesn't make sense, Like
Speaker 3: that doesn't bother me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you say that there are any sci fi
Speaker 1: movies that predicted this time and history? Right?
Speaker 3: I mean two thousand and one got a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff right about the way we were going to communicate
Speaker 3: with one another, like the sort of way that space
Speaker 3: has no sound, just kind of like I mean, that
Speaker 3: movie is like really interesting. The movie that I always
Speaker 3: talk about that like no one has seen is called
Speaker 3: Born in Flames and it's this old movie from the
Speaker 3: I want to say, early nineties.
Speaker 1: Been puzzled in the past week by what they described
Speaker 1: as well organized bands of fifteen to twenty women on
Speaker 1: bicycles attack in.
Speaker 3: That a history and it has Catherine Bigelow in it,
Speaker 3: who was zero dark thirty Catherine Bigelow, Oh, she's an
Speaker 3: actress in it.
Speaker 2: It's very weird. It's this indie movie.
Speaker 3: It's so interesting and like some of it has not
Speaker 3: aged well because it's about like these dueling feminist radio
Speaker 3: stations in New York City.
Speaker 1: So Rose explained that the plot involves a futuristic socialist state,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of police brutality feminism that is
Speaker 1: not intersectional, and she says it's eurally prescient. Also good news.
Speaker 1: You can stream Born in Flames on Vimeo for three
Speaker 1: bucks and I'll put a link on my site at
Speaker 1: alleywar dot com. Slash ologies slash futurology, and I asked
Speaker 1: Rose if at the heart of futurology is just wanting
Speaker 1: to believe that things will be better than they are today,
Speaker 1: and she said that one reason she uses the term
Speaker 1: futurologist for herself as someone who studies the future is
Speaker 1: because a lot of professional futurists are people hired by
Speaker 1: Big Fortune five hundred companies who have an interest in
Speaker 1: maintaining the status quo because it's how those corporations make
Speaker 1: their money, and ethically, she doesn't feel aligned with that.
Speaker 1: So the future not everyone has the shiniest, most gleaming intentions. Now,
Speaker 1: on that note, why do you think our visions of
Speaker 1: the future involve so much metal, so much shiny silver.
Speaker 3: Metal, Shinese lillar metter. Yeah, I mean they're like the
Speaker 3: techno utopianism is like it's so alluring. We love like
Speaker 3: the robots with their like beautiful shiny shiny I mean,
Speaker 3: in nineteen oh nine ish, the Italian art movement called futurism.
Speaker 3: The main guy They're published a manifesto about futurism. It's
Speaker 3: not the same futurism what we're talking abot, but I
Speaker 3: think is deeply connected because basically his manifesto was like,
Speaker 3: I mean they were fascists. His manifesto was like, we
Speaker 3: don't care about what's happened in the past, like we
Speaker 3: only care about the future.
Speaker 2: We like speed, we like youth, we like disruption.
Speaker 3: It's like kind of eerie how much it sounds like
Speaker 3: the way that people talk about Silicon Valley and the Futurists,
Speaker 3: the Italian Futurists' art movement. They were really into like
Speaker 3: shiny gold, smooth, like that kind of aesthetic, and you
Speaker 3: see it still in some of this future imagining.
Speaker 2: So I think some of it has to do with that.
Speaker 3: I'm not an art historian, but like, I feel like
Speaker 3: there's a shared aesthetic among some of this where it's
Speaker 3: like this beautiful, perfect, shiny chrome and that's like not
Speaker 3: the future I'm interested in.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Do you think that that in the future will just
Speaker 1: kind of lose control over our own lives more and more?
Speaker 1: Or do you think that we have more control of
Speaker 1: our voices because social media has democratized things like where
Speaker 1: does the control lie?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that we are seeing a lot of
Speaker 3: control to algorithms right now.
Speaker 2: That kind of tell us what we want, right.
Speaker 3: And there's some really interesting work right now going on
Speaker 3: about the ways that suggestion algorithms kind of like create
Speaker 3: a monoculture. So when you go into Spotify and it
Speaker 3: recommends what you should listen to, we're all kind of
Speaker 3: getting recommended the same stuff.
Speaker 2: You're not. You're not finding these new interesting things.
Speaker 3: You're not kind of like stumbling upon a book in
Speaker 3: a bookstore because Amazon is telling you what you should
Speaker 3: read basic what you've read before. And those recommendations can
Speaker 3: be really useful. But I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: really worry that we're kind of like collapsing everything down
Speaker 3: into like one taste, like that you wouldn't have, you know,
Speaker 3: you have your people don't have their own aesthetic anymore.
Speaker 2: They don't have their taste.
Speaker 3: They have whatever taste sort of fits within the Spotify
Speaker 3: algorithm or fits within the Amazon algorithm. And I think,
Speaker 3: you know a lot of people have written about like
Speaker 3: the attention economy, this idea that like we are all
Speaker 3: kind of our eyeballs are sort of like what all
Speaker 3: of these apps want, and we're all kind of looking
Speaker 3: at the same couple of apps all the time, you know,
Speaker 3: many of which are owned by Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, all
Speaker 3: of that, and so I think, like that's the thing
Speaker 3: that I worry about, is that like all of our
Speaker 3: communication and all the cool creative stuff that people do
Speaker 3: in group text, right, Like when you think about like
Speaker 3: the jokes you make and like the gifts and whatever
Speaker 3: and all that stuff that is constrained by the the
Speaker 3: technology that is constrained by what they allow you to do,
Speaker 3: Like you only get a certain number of like reactions
Speaker 3: on the like I message thing, right, So it's sort
Speaker 3: of like collapsing down what we can do and what
Speaker 3: we can say and the ways we can communicate. And
Speaker 3: that's why when people complain about there being too many emoji,
Speaker 3: I'm like, no unlimited emoji, Like give me all the emoji, right,
Speaker 3: because like you want like this ability to be able
Speaker 3: to like pick and choose emoticons and emoji that are
Speaker 3: like not just the like six smiley faces or the
Speaker 3: like the four reactions that Facebook gives you, and because
Speaker 3: which it kind of collapses to emotion and reaction and
Speaker 3: the way that we talk to each other, the ways
Speaker 3: that we are allowed to kind of react to each
Speaker 3: other and like interact with each other are constrained by
Speaker 3: these design choices that I think, like we aren't interrogating enough.
Speaker 1: That's such a good point. I mean, someone also wants
Speaker 1: said to me, forget where this quote comes comes from,
Speaker 1: but if the app is free, then you you're the product. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know who said that, but it's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: chilling and like so obvious.
Speaker 2: PS.
Speaker 1: I needed to know who said that, and I did
Speaker 1: a little digging, and nine years ago, on the website metaphilter,
Speaker 1: the user blue Beetle aka a guy named Andrew Lewis
Speaker 1: wrote this regarding the internet quote, if you're not paying
Speaker 1: for it, you're not the customer. You are the product
Speaker 1: being sold, and he later said that he wasn't quoting
Speaker 1: anyone directly, but merely restating a fairly common sentiment, and
Speaker 1: for some reason, the Internet just seems to have.
Speaker 2: Picked it up and ran with it.
Speaker 1: If you're like, damn, that should go on a T shirt,
Speaker 1: don't worry. Andrew Lewis has set up a Cafe Press
Speaker 1: store and you could get a T shirt bearing that
Speaker 1: wisdom for fourteen ninety five, which honestly seems pretty fair.
Speaker 1: And since you'd be paying for it, you're not the product.
Speaker 3: Totally yeah, righted, Yeah, your data like all that stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's definitely something I think about it.
Speaker 3: And even if the app isn't free, you still might
Speaker 3: be the product. I mean, like Alexa is not free,
Speaker 3: but you are absolutely still the product, right, So, like
Speaker 3: it's definitely something that I think about a lot where
Speaker 3: it's like and it's hard also, like I want to
Speaker 3: talk to my friends and they all we all use
Speaker 3: these same apps and whenever, and like I'm not gonna
Speaker 3: be able to commit all my friends to use an
Speaker 3: encrypted messaging app that.
Speaker 2: I want to use, you know, like I'm that friend.
Speaker 2: Just like if we can use the signal, that would
Speaker 2: be great.
Speaker 1: And everyone's like, no, I love that about You're like
Speaker 1: I want to be like on your plot of Land
Speaker 1: during the apocalypse.
Speaker 2: Trust me.
Speaker 3: I literally look at Land. I literally I'm like I
Speaker 3: could build a compound.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What do you think about doomsday preppers? Oh? I
Speaker 2: mean they're funny, Like it's silly. I enjoy it because
Speaker 2: it's like why not think about it?
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean like a lot of it is
Speaker 3: like really rich people buying land in New Zealand for
Speaker 3: that and they'll be fine.
Speaker 2: But like I don't know. I think.
Speaker 3: I mean, you've talked about this on the Disastrology episode
Speaker 3: about like we're actually more pro social during these kinds
Speaker 3: of things than we think we're gonna be.
Speaker 2: So like, I'm ready, I'm ready to fight with everybody else.
Speaker 2: It's so sweet. Just get solar powers and dehydrated potatoes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: oh that was you know what?
Speaker 1: Uh message just popped up on my computer off work
Speaker 1: in ten minutes because I've tried to put a thing
Speaker 1: for myself that I'm off work at seven of you.
Speaker 1: So what happens is every night at seven o'clock, I say,
Speaker 1: if you shut the fuck up.
Speaker 2: A funny joke, I like, not today, I'm going to
Speaker 2: ask you questions for patrons. Yeah I did. I did peak.
Speaker 2: I did peak. Good for you. This is because you're
Speaker 2: prepared for the future, and I if I can't prepare.
Speaker 2: It's funny. I was.
Speaker 3: I was talking to a psychologist recently about this mental
Speaker 3: time travel things. I'm really interested in it, and I
Speaker 3: think that it actually is like very meta, like what
Speaker 3: I'm in, what I want to talk about with and
Speaker 3: I talk about the future where I'm sort of like no, no,
Speaker 3: like if we think collectively about the future. It actually
Speaker 3: makes us more prepared, makes us happier, it makes us
Speaker 3: less freaked out. But there is a fine line right
Speaker 3: where if you think too much about the future, you're like,
Speaker 3: oh god, and you're like, imagine every possible terrible scenario,
Speaker 3: which I do sometimes.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's a fine line.
Speaker 1: Would you say that in general you're a prepared person,
Speaker 1: like do you prepare for the future?
Speaker 2: Well, like, what do you pack well for trips? Do
Speaker 2: you pay your your tax as well before they're due quarterly?
Speaker 2: Things like that? Yes, and no.
Speaker 3: I find that I'm very prepared if I think it's important.
Speaker 3: But if I don't, then I'm not. And so like
Speaker 3: things that fall into my like eh, bucket, like are
Speaker 3: probably that are in fact important, like paying dixst.
Speaker 2: Now I do pay my taxes.
Speaker 3: Do not audit me, please, But yeah, there are certain
Speaker 3: things I'm good at and certain things that I like.
Speaker 3: At some point I just have to be like it's
Speaker 3: gonna be fine, like but packing and very particular about Oh.
Speaker 1: Yes, when there's someone who is very smart and knowledgeable
Speaker 1: and prepared, I like to just parasite onto them and
Speaker 1: ask them advice about everything, which is what.
Speaker 2: I do with you a lot like roads. What are
Speaker 2: we doing?
Speaker 1: What's happening? Yeah? Okay, so patron questions. But before we
Speaker 1: dive into your questions, to your patrons, a few words
Speaker 1: from sponsors who make it possible for us to donate
Speaker 1: to a charity of the ologists choosing, and this week
Speaker 1: Rose chose the Gender Reveal Grant, which she says is
Speaker 1: a grant program run by the amazing Molly Woodstock through
Speaker 1: their podcast Gender Reveal, which is a super good, funny
Speaker 1: and informational podcast about gender. Gender Reveal describes itself as
Speaker 1: a podcast for non binary folks, for people who don't
Speaker 1: know what non binary means, and everyone in between. Rose
Speaker 1: is a huge proponent of direct giving, and the Gender
Speaker 1: Reveal Grant goes directly to trans artists, activists, and educators
Speaker 1: around the world doing rad shit in her words, So
Speaker 1: more info is up at gender podcast dot com slash
Speaker 1: grant and now you may hear some words about sponsors
Speaker 1: zoologies who make that possible. Okay, on to your questions.
Speaker 1: Sabine Deschauzo wants to know how do we remain optimistic
Speaker 1: about the future when it feels like things are going
Speaker 1: badly on a global scale.
Speaker 2: So just how screwed are we?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question, Okay, And I think like,
Speaker 3: first of all, uh, that's a really like honestly, probably
Speaker 3: actually the most common question I get. I said earlier
Speaker 3: that it was about like phones or whatever. I think
Speaker 3: that's probably the most common question I get, which is like, uh, yeah,
Speaker 3: and I feel that, and that's totally normal. And if
Speaker 3: you don't feel that, then like you weren't paying attention, right,
Speaker 3: so like a normal regular you're a regular person. But
Speaker 3: I think a lot of it does come down to
Speaker 3: this thing that I've been thinking a lot about, which
Speaker 3: is if we can stop, like pause for a second
Speaker 3: and actually think about specific things we can do, like
Speaker 3: get involved with community, local community stuff and that you know,
Speaker 3: we joked about preppers earlier, but I do I think
Speaker 3: actually that like in our climate change future, in our
Speaker 3: future where things might get kind of dicey, if that's
Speaker 3: where we're going, like being a part of your local
Speaker 3: community is actually the best thing you can do, because
Speaker 3: that's those are the people.
Speaker 2: That you're gonna want to rely on.
Speaker 3: And whether that's because there's like an extreme weather event
Speaker 3: in your area because of climate change, or that's because
Speaker 3: like the global economy collapses, like whatever it is that
Speaker 3: you're worried about, Like, those are the people that you're
Speaker 3: gonna rely on. So I think the first step I
Speaker 3: would say is like small local community stuff can make
Speaker 3: you feel like plugged in and connected to people who
Speaker 3: genuinely care about the future, and that makes a huge
Speaker 3: difference if you feel like you're not going it alone.
Speaker 3: We are a social species. As much as I joke
Speaker 3: about hating people, like, we all like want to be
Speaker 3: with other people. And so the biggest thing I say,
Speaker 3: and like, you're not going to necessarily like fix climate
Speaker 3: change by getting involved with a local community group, but
Speaker 3: you will feel better about it, and also you will
Speaker 3: be able to move us.
Speaker 2: You can move the needle.
Speaker 3: I think, like local community politics is so overlooked and
Speaker 3: so important, and yeah, just like getting in touch with
Speaker 3: people and like talking about it and figuring out like
Speaker 3: what are specific things that we can do is is
Speaker 3: really important. The other thing I'll say is like, like
Speaker 3: I've sort of been going on and on about this
Speaker 3: mental time travel thing, but I think it's the studies
Speaker 3: I'm reading about it are really interesting because they do
Speaker 3: show students who mentally visualize doing well on an exam,
Speaker 3: tend to actually do better on the exam, and obviously,
Speaker 3: like to a point, right, like this is not like
Speaker 3: it's not magic like the secret and like, but you
Speaker 3: can kind of like if you think abo like Okay,
Speaker 3: what do I want the future to look like, and
Speaker 3: actually being specific about what that is, like what do
Speaker 3: you want to see? And then thinking about like, okay,
Speaker 3: if that's what I want, like how do I get that?
Speaker 3: Like where do I go? What do I do? Sort
Speaker 3: of like really visualizing what you want out of the
Speaker 3: future in specifics where it's like if you have kids,
Speaker 3: like I want my kid to have a world where
Speaker 3: blank happens, and then you can kind of work back
Speaker 3: from there and figure out, like what are the organizations
Speaker 3: that are getting that are trying to work towards that.
Speaker 3: Who are the people that I can even if you
Speaker 3: can't donate your time, donate your money, or like do
Speaker 3: something where you kind of spread the word about it
Speaker 3: like that those little things I think actually make you
Speaker 3: feel a little bit like you're in more control and
Speaker 3: can actually kind of try to push towards the future.
Speaker 3: So that's what I would say to that, that's.
Speaker 1: A great advice. Okay, side note. Humans obviously mentally time travel,
Speaker 1: and there's great debate among ethologists folks who study animal
Speaker 1: behavior as to whether other apes and ravens and crows
Speaker 1: and jays can imagine their futures. And for more on
Speaker 1: bird brains, listen to the Halloween twenty eighteen Corvid Thanatology
Speaker 1: episode about crow funerals with expert doctor Kaylee Swift, Dead
Speaker 1: Birds Band Who It's a wild world, I promise, also
Speaker 1: fun tidbit. Another word for mental time travel is chronosthesia.
Speaker 1: So if your boss is not the googling type and
Speaker 1: you envision a day off work eating corn dogs on
Speaker 1: a beach, just call in sick with chronosthesia. You won't
Speaker 1: even be a liar, You'll be a hero. My hero
Speaker 1: Ja X Barnett wants to know what do you think
Speaker 1: has been the biggest misstep in future technology? Examples might
Speaker 1: include the Ford Deedzel, Crystal Pepsi, or Friendster.
Speaker 3: I would say that, I would sort of say, like
Speaker 3: broadly surveillance culture, and like our our willingness to seed
Speaker 3: so much of our personal space to devices and companies,
Speaker 3: and that's like facial recognition, that's the always on listening devices.
Speaker 2: I can hear you shit? Okay.
Speaker 1: Also, this next part is really interesting from a future
Speaker 1: logical legal perspective.
Speaker 2: And I think that's important and we you know, because.
Speaker 3: Yes, you might think, like, oh, well, Google aready knows
Speaker 3: everything about me, Like what's why not just add Google
Speaker 3: Home into my house? And my answer to that is
Speaker 3: that there is this idea in law that you are
Speaker 3: protected from unreasonable surveillance, right, and so that means that
Speaker 3: like in certain states you can't record somebody without them knowing,
Speaker 3: or you know, you're really not supposed to wire tap
Speaker 3: people like in general, you know, like and that's because
Speaker 3: we have a reasonable expectation of privacy and that's sort
Speaker 3: of what the term is that they use. And so
Speaker 3: you know, if I were to sneak into this room
Speaker 3: and put a recorder here and leave and record you,
Speaker 3: that would be a violation of your privacy because you
Speaker 3: have a reasonable expectation of being in your hotel room
Speaker 3: and not having a recording device. If we all accept
Speaker 3: that we are going to put these devices into our
Speaker 3: homes and let them listen all the time, we are
Speaker 3: basically telling a court in the future that like, actually,
Speaker 3: I don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in my
Speaker 3: house anymore. And that also means that anybody who walks
Speaker 3: through the door no longer has a reasonable expectation of
Speaker 3: privacy in your home, and that I think is scary
Speaker 3: because that means basically that law enforcement can subpoena. We
Speaker 3: know that Amazon and Google both have worked with law
Speaker 3: enforcement to give over certain records. We know that like
Speaker 3: law enforcement targets certain individuals more than they target other individuals.
Speaker 3: We know like Ice for example, can sometimes use facial
Speaker 3: recognition systems to try to find people they're looking for.
Speaker 3: And so those of us who like maybe don't have
Speaker 3: to worry about those things are making it much harder
Speaker 3: in the future for other folks who do have those
Speaker 3: concerns because they no longer can be protected in their
Speaker 3: own homes from surveillance. And so I think that's the
Speaker 3: big thing that I worry about. Obviously, like fossil fuels
Speaker 3: is probably the better answer to this question that I'm
Speaker 3: thinking about it, like you know, burning dinosaur bones that
Speaker 3: have been liquified. But I think that's the the other
Speaker 3: big one I think a lot about. Is this like
Speaker 3: sort of like we throw our hands up and say, like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: like there's nothing we can do at this point.
Speaker 2: And I think actually we are still at a point.
Speaker 3: Before we have completely lost the battle for privacy, but
Speaker 3: like we're getting there and so like that's my like
Speaker 3: big treatise against the like always on listening devices, Like
Speaker 3: at some point there will be a case in the
Speaker 3: future in which a judge has to decide did that
Speaker 3: person have a reasonable expectation of privacy? And if everybody
Speaker 3: has these devices, it's possible that judge will be like, Nope,
Speaker 3: not anymore.
Speaker 1: And there is no such thing as it's not listening
Speaker 1: to me unless I say it's.
Speaker 2: Name, correct. I mean, in theory that is how it works.
Speaker 3: But there have been so many documents that employees at
Speaker 3: these companies are listening in on conversations as part of
Speaker 3: either testing or by accident or whatever it is. Like
Speaker 3: I would say that, correct, You are sort of like
Speaker 3: you should expect that they can hear anything you say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do not.
Speaker 1: Like Jessica Jansen wants to know what do you foresee
Speaker 1: for the future of healthcare, like using our own immune
Speaker 1: systems and genetics to defend us against the world.
Speaker 2: What do you think about healthcare?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's such interesting work going on with
Speaker 3: genetics and with sort of the ways that we are
Speaker 3: using gene editing. I think that is very exciting. My
Speaker 3: worry always is like the way that the healthcare research
Speaker 3: system works is that like a lot of things don't
Speaker 3: get developed because they don't make sense financially for a
Speaker 3: pharmaceutical company, which means that like they're not going to
Speaker 3: make money on a population, even though like that people
Speaker 3: need that stuff. That said, there is some really cool
Speaker 3: stuff going on with like genetic advances, and yeah, like
Speaker 3: personalized genomics is something people have talked about for a
Speaker 3: really long time, but I think actually is like finally
Speaker 3: getting some like real progress. That's a classic one where
Speaker 3: sort of like nuclear fusion, where it's like always ten
Speaker 3: years away, you know, but like I think at this point,
Speaker 3: like there is some really interesting research on that. There's
Speaker 3: another bit of research that I find really interesting about
Speaker 3: biomedical tattoos and sort of like let's say you might
Speaker 3: have like you want to met under your glucose and
Speaker 3: you don't, you can have a tattoo that actually like
Speaker 3: turns a cu when it's time like when you're glucoss low.
Speaker 3: So that kind of stuff is really interesting to me.
Speaker 3: Things that are just like personalized medicine. I think is
Speaker 3: like really interesting and it's kind of a buzzword and
Speaker 3: it can get kind of like pseudoscience.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Side note if you're like, what is the deal with
Speaker 1: nuclear fusion? Don't worry. I look this up for us
Speaker 1: because I wasn't sure either. So the gist is nuclear
Speaker 1: power we're using now is fission, where we split uranium
Speaker 1: atoms and it generates a ton of power, but also
Speaker 1: some radioactive waste.
Speaker 2: Woops.
Speaker 1: Now nuclear fusion would instead jam two hydrogen atoms together
Speaker 1: into a helium and would theoretically give off more power
Speaker 1: than fission without the waste. Now, there is one giant
Speaker 1: proof of concept already in use, and it's the sun.
Speaker 1: Same shit happens in the sun. But when Rose said that,
Speaker 1: everyone keeps saying it's ten years off, she's not whistling.
Speaker 1: Dixie News articles from twenty fourteen promise it'll be a
Speaker 1: reality by twenty twenty five, and in a report that
Speaker 1: was out just last week, two labs in the UK
Speaker 1: are apparently neck and neck to get it figured out
Speaker 1: in YEP, the next decade, using deuterium and tritium, which
Speaker 1: are two isotopes or forms of hydrogen. And I want
Speaker 1: to say that if I had a pair of hamsters,
Speaker 1: I would like to name them Dutes and trit. I
Speaker 1: know you don't care, but this is my podcast, and
Speaker 1: I'll say what I want to. Katie Coast wants to
Speaker 1: know if there was one thing that we currently don't
Speaker 1: know about the future that you could be magically gifted
Speaker 1: with the full understanding.
Speaker 2: What would it be? What do you want to know?
Speaker 2: What do I want to know? What I want to know?
Speaker 2: That's such a good question. I wish I had read
Speaker 2: that one in advance and thought of an answer. What
Speaker 2: do I want to know? I mean, what would I
Speaker 2: want to know about the future?
Speaker 3: I mean I think that like what I would love
Speaker 3: is to just like be able to teleport one hundred
Speaker 3: years from now just to kind of like look around,
Speaker 3: and I think like there'd be so many It's not
Speaker 3: like one thing. There'd be so many pieces of information
Speaker 3: I'd be getting from being how the cities are laid out,
Speaker 3: like what people are wearing, like what people are using,
Speaker 3: what people are doing, if we exist at all, Yeah,
Speaker 3: like it for still year. I think that would be
Speaker 3: like one hundred years is a cool time. Not because
Speaker 3: it's just like a you know, nice round number, but
Speaker 3: because it does feel like enough time that like it's
Speaker 3: really hard to know what's going to happen, but not
Speaker 3: so much time that it's like, you know, we might
Speaker 3: be Primordials line somewhere else in the other planet.
Speaker 2: Like you know, I have a picture.
Speaker 1: Like coming out of the teleporter and it's just smoldering
Speaker 1: ashes and they.
Speaker 2: Turn around and get back in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's just like ooh, yikes, yeip, we did it.
Speaker 1: I Mean I always think and this is maybe this
Speaker 1: is terrible, but I feel like it's just logical that
Speaker 1: like we're going to get wiped out and that's.
Speaker 2: Fine, Like you're ready for it.
Speaker 1: I'm ready for Like I don't feel like we need
Speaker 1: to put ourselves.
Speaker 2: On any other planet. Like like we had our shot.
Speaker 2: We had our shot, Like ninety is a good run. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a good run. Bye bye. Yeah, even the
Speaker 2: Sopranos had to end, right, I get the shack, let's
Speaker 2: get out of here.
Speaker 1: Like ninety nine point nine percent of all species that
Speaker 1: have existed are extinct, and like if we fuck ourselves
Speaker 1: up beyond the ability to survive, that is how the game.
Speaker 2: Works like like feeling no, no, not there.
Speaker 1: Yeah No, it's like you did this to yourself and
Speaker 1: you took a bunch of species with you and bye bye.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take your atoms and make them into new
Speaker 1: interesting animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that, like on a long enough time skill
Speaker 3: that's absolutely true, Like humans are not forever, Like nothing
Speaker 3: is forever, right, like not even James Bond, and so
Speaker 3: like you, yes, we will absolutely But the question is like,
Speaker 3: is it in one hundred years or is it in
Speaker 3: like ten thousands?
Speaker 1: Right, I feel like it's in twelve but twelve years
Speaker 1: or twelve twelve years?
Speaker 2: Twelve years, that's what? Okay? Why twelve?
Speaker 3: Because I was recently with some teens and they were like,
Speaker 3: is it true that climate change is going to kill
Speaker 3: us all in twelve years?
Speaker 2: And I was like, where did you get that number from?
Speaker 1: That seems a little conservative, But I just was thinking,
Speaker 1: like enough time where like I still have a house payment,
Speaker 1: you know, like enough time where you wouldn't definitely wouldn't
Speaker 1: be ready for people still have student loans I had
Speaker 1: to pay, Yeah, like still be like fuck, you know,
Speaker 1: like I brought I'm sure there are still boxes in
Speaker 1: the garage I won't have unpacked.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, mail, I have not opened since I like
Speaker 3: moved to more houses ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like I have had spices is
Speaker 1: for over twelve years, you know, I know that.
Speaker 2: I'm like, how long have I had this garlic powder?
Speaker 3: Like you moved it between every Yes, totally thrown away.
Speaker 2: It's not garlic powder. So I feel bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like it's the same where it's just
Speaker 1: like just where it catches you off guard.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Twelve is good. Yeah, okay, yeah, but is climate
Speaker 2: change can to kill us in twelve years?
Speaker 3: No, it will kill a lot of things in twelve years,
Speaker 3: potentially all the insects. Oh no, oh no, twelve years No,
Speaker 3: I don't think so. But I mean things like twelve
Speaker 3: years is long enough for us to kind of really
Speaker 3: I mean, we're already seeing impacts of climate change, right,
Speaker 3: there are already things happening. I think twelve years it
Speaker 3: will start to become like very clear to everybody that
Speaker 3: like this is happening, and you know, like things are changing.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you do in your personal life
Speaker 1: differently because of climate change? I don't eat meat. I
Speaker 1: feel terrible.
Speaker 3: I fly a lot, which I don't like, but I
Speaker 3: do pay for carbon offset stuff.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 3: I try to do as much usable, non plastic kind
Speaker 3: of things, and I just like, I donate a lot.
Speaker 2: Of money good for you. Yeah, that's what I mean,
Speaker 2: a lot of money.
Speaker 3: I'm not Bill Gates, you know, I donate as much
Speaker 3: money as I can.
Speaker 1: Right now, you're you have an open briefcase full of
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars. Well, listeners can't see this, but I'm
Speaker 1: just rolling around in cash right now. Your overalls are
Speaker 1: just brimming. Yeah, just nowhere else to put it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Casey Wright says, my dream has finally come true. Flash
Speaker 1: Forward was my first podcast. Rose anyway, onto the question,
Speaker 1: do you think true equality across race, gender, sexuality is
Speaker 1: actually possible?
Speaker 2: To pature I can see, I love you. Possible. Possible?
Speaker 3: Yes, very very difficult, Okay, I mean I don't want
Speaker 3: to say it's impossible. I think that's like two defeatists.
Speaker 3: But I think it's really hard. There will always be
Speaker 3: people who I mean, power corrupts absolutely, right, absolute power
Speaker 3: crops absolutely. Anybody who's at like a top of a
Speaker 3: chain should it is always going to want to maintain that.
Speaker 3: And so I think it's really hard, but I want
Speaker 3: to believe that it's possible, because otherwise I think it's
Speaker 3: hard to push forward. But yeah, I think it's possible,
Speaker 3: but very very hard, and we all literally.
Speaker 2: Every person has to be working towards it all the time,
Speaker 2: every person. Yeah, or put the ones that we don't
Speaker 2: like on an eyelon. Yeah, they can go to Mars now.
Speaker 1: This next great question was also asked by patron Ron
Speaker 1: dagdec great question, Lindsay Beasley. With the high frequency of
Speaker 1: robots replacing the human workforce, what changes do you predict
Speaker 1: for our society? How will the vocational options available to
Speaker 1: us change?
Speaker 3: That's such a good question. I know, yes, Okay, so
Speaker 3: two things I will say. Number one is I'm just
Speaker 3: because this is like a bugbear of mine. Robots are
Speaker 3: not replacing us, managers are replacing us with robots, right,
Speaker 3: It's a specific choice that like people who are making
Speaker 3: money are making it, like the robots are not doing
Speaker 3: this on their own.
Speaker 2: That's a good point.
Speaker 3: Brian Merchant, who works for or what used to work for, Gizmoto,
Speaker 3: has written a bunch of really great pieces about this,
Speaker 3: basically being like stopsying that the robots are taking our jobs.
Speaker 3: It's managers that are doing this. At CEOs. It's like
Speaker 3: specific people were making the decision to hire or to
Speaker 3: fire employees and replace them with these sorts of machines.
Speaker 2: Honestly, we don't even want your jobs.
Speaker 3: And often that's not necessarily because the machines are going
Speaker 3: to save them more money in the long run. It's
Speaker 3: because machines don't unionize, machines don't complain, machines don't need
Speaker 3: labor protections.
Speaker 2: There's no OSHA protection for machines.
Speaker 3: So it is a specific choice that human beings are making.
Speaker 3: That said, it is happening lots and lots of places.
Speaker 3: There are always reports about automation. Depending on who you ask,
Speaker 3: automation is killing jobs and making a lot of people unemployed.
Speaker 3: Some people believe that those people are finding work elsewhere.
Speaker 3: There was recently a study that looked at this and
Speaker 3: found that people who had been sort of like automated
Speaker 3: out of their jobs wound up with I think eleven
Speaker 3: percent lower income where they wherever they moved on to.
Speaker 3: There's an interesting problem with automation, which is that a
Speaker 3: lot of the actual kind of like quote unquote good jobs,
Speaker 3: of mid lay level jobs, things like accounting and even
Speaker 3: like car manufacturing assembly lines, which you know blue collar,
Speaker 3: but like union jobs have good worker protections. Those are
Speaker 3: the things that are pretty easy to automate, and the
Speaker 3: jobs that are hard to automate are often the ones
Speaker 3: that are we consider quote unquote low skill jobs. I
Speaker 3: think there's no such thing as a low skill job.
Speaker 3: Working at McDonald's is very challenging, but things like working
Speaker 3: at McDonald's being a waiter, those sorts of jobs where
Speaker 3: it requires kind of being able to process a lot
Speaker 3: of information at once and kind of like do a
Speaker 3: lot of things that wants. Machines are really bad at that.
Speaker 3: Machines are really bad at picking vegetables. So, like you know,
Speaker 3: in a field, because it's like in a car plant,
Speaker 3: it's all on anensembly line. The environment is completely regulated.
Speaker 3: Everything looks the same, Every windshield is the same size.
Speaker 3: If you're out in the field, every pepper is not
Speaker 3: the same size, every apple is not the same size,
Speaker 3: every tree is slightly different. And so a lot of
Speaker 3: agriculture is really hard to mate. It is hard to automate.
Speaker 3: And that's like a place where there is a labor shortage,
Speaker 3: where people don't want to do those jobs because those
Speaker 3: jobs fucking suck.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: There's a name for this, It's called Pollenni's paradox, which
Speaker 3: is basically that like, the jobs that people kind of
Speaker 3: want are the ones that are getting automated, and the
Speaker 3: jobs that people don't want are the ones that can't
Speaker 3: be automated.
Speaker 2: It's really hard.
Speaker 1: And if you're like, who is Polyanni and why does
Speaker 1: he have a paradox? Okay, quick cliffs notes. So Carl
Speaker 1: Polyianni was a Hungarian born and British based chemist and
Speaker 1: a philosopher and a professor who essentially posited that we
Speaker 1: know way more than we can explain, so we can
Speaker 1: perform some duties so intuitively that they're just hard to describe,
Speaker 1: let alone map out for artificial intelligence to then replicate.
Speaker 1: So things like advanced facial recognition, or driving a car
Speaker 1: on windy roads or picking out the most magical pumpkin
Speaker 1: on the farm. See the q Crepatology episode about pumpkins
Speaker 1: to know what the hell I'm talking about now. Pollyanni
Speaker 1: explained this whole theory in his book The Tacit Dimension,
Speaker 1: which came out in nineteen sixty six, but did a
Speaker 1: little look in and perhaps some credit should go to
Speaker 1: the US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stuart, because just two
Speaker 1: years prior, in a famous case about the First Amendment
Speaker 1: and obscenity in an art house film, just to Stuart
Speaker 1: legendarily addressed hardcore pornography by saying, I shall not today
Speaker 1: attempt further to define the kind of material I understand
Speaker 1: to be embraced within that shorthand description. And perhaps I
Speaker 1: could never succeed in intelligibly doing so, but I know
Speaker 1: it when I see it. We know more than we
Speaker 1: can tell. Sometimes robots just don't get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so neither of those things. The answer is a question.
Speaker 3: But I think the answer is that we're going to
Speaker 3: see a lot of those sorts of jobs that are
Speaker 3: really hard for robots to do. So that's like food service,
Speaker 3: customer service, anything where you're kind of like really having
Speaker 3: to think.
Speaker 2: Across a range of disciplines. Those will see more of.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is why like unions are really important,
Speaker 3: because like is it does help buffer against some of this,
Speaker 3: some of the automation. I think we'll see a lot
Speaker 3: of creative jobs. I mean, like robots can be creative
Speaker 3: in their own way, but they're not going to be
Speaker 3: able to do a lot of the stuff that we
Speaker 3: currently think of as sort of like uniquely human creative work.
Speaker 3: But the thing this is why, like social safety nets
Speaker 3: are so important, because like there will be a period
Speaker 3: of time where a lot of people are kind of like,
Speaker 3: I don't know what to do because again, like managers
Speaker 3: and CEOs have made a decision to automate a process.
Speaker 3: The future, the future of work Unfortunately right now looks
Speaker 3: like a lot of freelancing, which I think is not
Speaker 3: good for stability and for a lot of people. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it'll be a lot of sort of like what are
Speaker 3: the things that robots are really bad at? Things where
Speaker 3: we have to kind of like generalize information across domains,
Speaker 3: Like those are the jobs that are going to take
Speaker 3: longer to automate.
Speaker 1: What's your take when you see really advanced robots that
Speaker 1: are like running and jumping that are so black mirror like,
Speaker 1: how because I know that all of us are, like
Speaker 1: I have a fear deep in the core of my
Speaker 1: being that turned like icy.
Speaker 2: How the heck?
Speaker 3: Yeah, war robots are very scary and that's what those are, right.
Speaker 3: Boston Dynamics, like they are creating robots for DARPA.
Speaker 1: Basically, Okay, heads up if you're like DARPA, that's also
Speaker 1: a great hamster name, cool your jets. It stands for
Speaker 1: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and it's part of
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense. It makes new war toys like
Speaker 1: insect spies and submarine drones and computer brain implants and
Speaker 1: robots that could probably tear our limbs off like rose petals.
Speaker 3: And the one thing I will say, and this doesn't
Speaker 3: necessarily make me feel better or worse, but the video
Speaker 3: you see, you don't see.
Speaker 2: All the failures.
Speaker 3: You don't see all the times that the robot just
Speaker 3: fell on its face, which is like ninety nine percent
Speaker 3: of the time.
Speaker 2: It's really hard to get robots to run and jump.
Speaker 3: That said, like, yeah, it's terrifying, right, like, especially given
Speaker 3: what we know about the ways that the military industrial
Speaker 3: complex treats certain kinds of people. And like, imagine Ice
Speaker 3: having that robot, right, Like, that's scary to me, don't.
Speaker 2: I don't like that?
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, there's a lot of conversations
Speaker 3: right now among technologists about like what are the ethical
Speaker 3: questions that people who work at places like Amazon or
Speaker 3: you know, whatever it is, like what should they be
Speaker 3: thinking about? Like the bunch of workers at gethub recently
Speaker 3: quit because they were working gethub was working with ice,
Speaker 3: Like where do you draw the line? And a lot
Speaker 3: of people go into technology, and especially go into like
Speaker 3: robotics and engineering, like they don't have any kind of
Speaker 3: training and ethics and sort of like thinking through these questions.
Speaker 2: You know, they when I ask them. You know, I
Speaker 2: did an episode about.
Speaker 3: Deep fakes a couple of years ago, and my question
Speaker 3: was like, okay, like what about you know, people who
Speaker 3: create these videos of their exes and it's like sort
Speaker 3: of a revenge porn situation. And I asked the engineer.
Speaker 3: I was like, do you ever think about that? And
Speaker 3: it had not occurred to me, So like this is
Speaker 3: just like I think there's a wall sometimes between people
Speaker 3: who are technical and people who like think about like, oh,
Speaker 3: how do I make this robot's legs work really well?
Speaker 3: And then this bigger like okay, but like should I
Speaker 3: write this? I just didn't stop to ask if they should.
Speaker 2: They should yeah, you know, in the words of cold Bloom.
Speaker 3: So right, Like, I think there is that question, and
Speaker 3: I think more and more it's becoming common for technologists
Speaker 3: to start thinking about that. But many of them don't
Speaker 3: have the training, they don't have the background, they don't
Speaker 3: have like the sort of like framework to even ask
Speaker 3: like okay, but like why are we doing this and
Speaker 3: should we be doing it? And like what is the
Speaker 3: and a fit here and you know who wins and
Speaker 3: who loses.
Speaker 1: So we can look forward to a future that might
Speaker 1: have war robots. Oh, we already have war robots.
Speaker 2: We do have them. Yeah, well I guess we have
Speaker 2: drones right, So right.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's a really big important question. Sarah Ayannucci wants
Speaker 1: to know. Will Brad asked me out for the spring flaning? Uh?
Speaker 3: I mean if you want him to, I hope. So
Speaker 3: if not, fuck Brad, okay, or don't fuck Brad or
Speaker 3: don't if you do, please use protection.
Speaker 2: Always thinking about the future. You know what I just
Speaker 2: let you know. Family planning very important?
Speaker 1: Okay, speaking of kids and populations, these patrons and a
Speaker 1: Valerie Jamie Pickles, Vanessa Frey, and Tara McNee asked about
Speaker 1: family sizes in the future.
Speaker 2: Family planning very important.
Speaker 1: Do you think anything's going to change family planning wise
Speaker 1: in the future.
Speaker 2: Yes? Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean, like this is a male birth control has
Speaker 3: been like on the horizon for a really long time.
Speaker 3: Whether it will ever actually happen, I think is like
Speaker 3: open to debate. It sort of feels like nuclear fusion
Speaker 3: in that like theoretically possible, will it happen?
Speaker 2: Don't know?
Speaker 3: I mean, there are people who believe that birth control
Speaker 3: is actually the most impactful technology that has ever kind
Speaker 3: of come up post industrial revolution. Some people argue that
Speaker 3: that's refrigeration, so sort of like those are the two camps.
Speaker 3: It's like birth control or fridges. You know, I'm both
Speaker 3: actually were like incredibly important. But birth control is huge
Speaker 3: in the way that has changed how we think about
Speaker 3: the future and how our social structures and like, you know,
Speaker 3: people who can have babies are now like free to
Speaker 3: not have babies if they don't want to, which is like.
Speaker 2: A giant shift.
Speaker 3: I often say that that the IUD is the original,
Speaker 3: sort of like body hacking. I write about how I
Speaker 3: have an IUD and an RFID chip in my hand.
Speaker 1: Wait, what Rose futurologist has a radio frequency identification chip
Speaker 1: in her body? Before we all lose our shit, it's
Speaker 1: pretty much the same thing my dog g Remy has,
Speaker 1: But unlike Gmy, Rose also has an IUD or an
Speaker 1: intra uterine device, which, although it's fully analogue, she says,
Speaker 1: is way more powerful technology.
Speaker 3: I talk about how like anybody who has an ID
Speaker 3: is basically a cyborg and you should like own it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The RFID chip is just like a party trick in
Speaker 3: the ID. Actually, like it makes my life better.
Speaker 1: So you have an IUD and you have an RFID chip,
Speaker 1: correct implanted?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'd like to know.
Speaker 3: More, yes, Okay, So if you have a dogg or
Speaker 3: a cat that is micro chipped, it's basically the same
Speaker 3: exact technology. It's like a small glass bead that is
Speaker 3: in my hand. If you would like to feel it,
Speaker 3: you can't. I would like to feel it, Okay, So
Speaker 3: if you touch, like right there, how big is the
Speaker 3: band right here?
Speaker 2: It's right there, bug.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a little mug. It's like smaller than
Speaker 3: a pill. It's kind of the size of a tic
Speaker 3: tac yeah, or a grain of rice maybe, yeah, like
Speaker 3: a grain of rice.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And inside of it is an RFID chip which cannot
Speaker 3: communicate with satellites. There's no power source in here. It
Speaker 3: can only contain a very small amount of information. So
Speaker 3: if you like have ever used a fob to get
Speaker 3: into a door or like an Apple pay. It's like that,
Speaker 3: so you would swipe it your touch it to something
Speaker 3: so I can either to unlock my car door orunlock
Speaker 3: my house door.
Speaker 2: It's really kind of a part.
Speaker 3: At one point, I had it set to be a
Speaker 3: geocaching site, so if you found it, you could get
Speaker 3: a little gift that would pop up when you would
Speaker 3: scan it and like dance. Yeah, that's that's my little
Speaker 3: well hand thing. When I wrote about it. I got
Speaker 3: this years ago. When I wrote about it, I got
Speaker 3: a lot of emails from people who believe that I
Speaker 3: am now like cursed by the devil.
Speaker 2: So there's that which might be true. Who knows?
Speaker 1: Do you have to have like a some sort of
Speaker 1: receiving site to open your car door?
Speaker 2: Like what I know that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's like anything like you would have an office.
Speaker 3: If you have like a little black box on your
Speaker 3: office to like touch your card to, you have to
Speaker 3: install that on your car or on your house. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like, I mean, these are easy to buy. You
Speaker 3: can buy them meant best buy.
Speaker 1: So you can buy the receiver at like best Buy
Speaker 1: or online. A whole door handle with a chip reader
Speaker 1: will set you back around one hundred bucks, or a
Speaker 1: simple reader is three dollars on Wish. But the chip itself,
Speaker 1: the part that lives all snugly in your flesh, is
Speaker 1: not an electronics store like sold in a kit with
Speaker 1: a syringe.
Speaker 3: You cannot buy an RFID chip to implant into yourself
Speaker 3: at best Buy.
Speaker 2: You can buy it at a website called Dangerous Thing.
Speaker 3: If you would like to do that, obviously, like you
Speaker 3: should probably if you want to do it, you can
Speaker 3: purchase it there. I would suggest taking it to a
Speaker 3: piercer who actually knows what they're doing and don't try
Speaker 3: to do it yourself.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean you can. You can buy them.
Speaker 1: So all of the talk about like oh one day
Speaker 1: we're just kind of microchips in o're like you're living
Speaker 1: that dream.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people like me have them. And there is a
Speaker 3: company that sort of as almost a stunt, did this
Speaker 3: and they offered it to all their employees as actually
Speaker 3: a way to get in and out of the building.
Speaker 3: I would say, like, don't do that, okay, in part
Speaker 3: because like your employer should never have access to something
Speaker 3: that is like physically inside of your body.
Speaker 2: In my opinion. But yeah, that's that's how I feel
Speaker 2: about Does that freak people out? Do you think more
Speaker 2: than it should? The RFID chip?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think as soon as people understand what it
Speaker 3: actually is, they're less freaked out. Some people are. The
Speaker 3: first question I always get is like, so are you
Speaker 3: being tracked right now? And it's no, Like it can't
Speaker 3: communicate with satellites, It is not powerful enough to do that.
Speaker 3: It's really truly just like a silly thing that I have.
Speaker 3: And once they kind of understand what it can and
Speaker 3: can't do, they're like, oh, okay, that's cool. It is
Speaker 3: interesting when I am in body hacking spaces like this
Speaker 3: is totally normal. But when I try to talk about
Speaker 3: my IUD as a body hacking these there are definitely
Speaker 3: dudes who are like munths.
Speaker 2: That makes me uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Where Why do you think that, like contraception isn't regarded
Speaker 1: the same way that like I have way more concentration
Speaker 1: when I put coconut oil in my coffee.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think it's because it's largely the
Speaker 3: domain of women. I mean, in the same way that
Speaker 3: like soilent is just slim fast marketed to men. Right,
Speaker 3: Like this is like there when you repackage something as
Speaker 3: like a disruptive technology that like is cool and that
Speaker 3: men do, then as soon as you start to try
Speaker 3: to say like actually, like all this other stuff then
Speaker 3: also counts like that like it makes it less cool
Speaker 3: to men.
Speaker 1: Please see diet Coke versus Coke zero or Pepsi Max,
Speaker 1: which actually used images of a Playboy bunny in its
Speaker 1: ad campaigns like why not just shape the bottle like
Speaker 1: a dong?
Speaker 3: So I think that's mostly part of it. There are
Speaker 3: people in the body hacking space that are totally on board.
Speaker 3: Was talking about i uds as like body hacking. I
Speaker 3: think that it's not all of them, but they're definitely.
Speaker 3: I have had moments. I mean I go to these
Speaker 3: like body hacking conferences, and I've had moments where men
Speaker 3: have been like, oh that's gross.
Speaker 1: You know it's a period. Oh I guess like you
Speaker 1: came out of one of those. I mean, what could
Speaker 1: be more disruptive literally than that?
Speaker 3: I truly literally the NID where like people who bare
Speaker 3: children no longer have to have just unlimited children until
Speaker 3: they die.
Speaker 2: Like whoa, that's like changes a lot, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, my grandma had eleven man thirty. It's
Speaker 1: like that's a lot.
Speaker 2: That's a lot.
Speaker 1: Oh no, okay, the worst thing about being a futurologist
Speaker 1: what sucks the most? Is it people trying to force
Speaker 1: gadgets on you? Is it depression?
Speaker 3: I would say the worst thing about being a futurologist
Speaker 3: is men on the internet telling me that I'm being
Speaker 3: too pessimistic.
Speaker 2: Oh smiles sweetie, exactly, or like, oh, I just don't
Speaker 2: understand the benefits that this is going to happen.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I do actually, and I don't actually think
Speaker 3: of myself as particularly pessimistic. I think of myself as
Speaker 3: kind of like a skeptical optimist. I actually do think that,
Speaker 3: like there are lots of people who are doing really
Speaker 3: amazing things and that are making the future better as
Speaker 3: we go.
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot to do.
Speaker 3: I'm not like naive about like how much fucked up
Speaker 3: stuff there's out there, like children are engages, like you know,
Speaker 3: we like there's a lot of work to do. But
Speaker 3: I think that sometimes I get people who are like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're being overly dramatic, or like, oh, you're overstating you
Speaker 3: know how important.
Speaker 2: This is, or like oh, why should I care or
Speaker 2: whatever it is.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I have a lot of conversations
Speaker 3: with people about Alexa and Google and like the always
Speaker 3: on operating systems and people being like, well, you know.
Speaker 2: It's it's so convenient. Why should I care? You're just
Speaker 2: being a downer?
Speaker 3: Like why are you being such a downer about this
Speaker 3: like amazing technology? And you know, I have my ol
Speaker 3: shpiel that I give about like, well, if you allow
Speaker 3: these always on listening devices into your house, there you're
Speaker 3: setting a court precedent to be like no longer have privacy,
Speaker 3: and like that is an important thing, and that's something
Speaker 3: I care a lot about. And I think that's like
Speaker 3: a thing that scares me is like this this willingness
Speaker 3: to kind of just seed control to these companies that
Speaker 3: do not have our best interests in mind.
Speaker 1: Do you think that what was once paranoia is now
Speaker 1: just becoming fact?
Speaker 3: Well, I think this is the challenge, right, Like I
Speaker 3: joke that I am a tidfoil hat person, right, I'm
Speaker 3: always you know, I'm also very very careful about like
Speaker 3: my home address and my phone number.
Speaker 2: I was docs during.
Speaker 3: Gamer Gate and like they came to my house and
Speaker 3: we're like we're gonna kill you. So like I am
Speaker 3: very careful about those things. So I am definitely the
Speaker 3: person who's like constantly get your two factor authentication, use
Speaker 3: encrypted services, like don't put your home address places, don't
Speaker 3: post where you are, and like my threat model is different,
Speaker 3: right than other people's. But I do think that it's
Speaker 3: hard because like, yes, there are certain things to worry about.
Speaker 3: But then because we're so we sort of we know
Speaker 3: these companies are so powerful, we kind of almost over
Speaker 3: index on what they think they can do. So like
Speaker 3: this idea that like, oh, our phones are always listening.
Speaker 3: I think most people I talk to you believe that
Speaker 3: their phone is listening to them all the time, and
Speaker 3: like that's actually probably not true, right, So it's like
Speaker 3: it's hard to sometimes know because like, yes, the Alexa
Speaker 3: is listening to you, but your phone isn't. And like
Speaker 3: so you should be worried and kind of like you know,
Speaker 3: not paranoid, but you shouldn't be worried. But it's hard
Speaker 3: sometimes to know what to actually worry about, yeah, because
Speaker 3: it's like which one of these things is spying on me?
Speaker 3: You know, all that stuff, So many things to be
Speaker 3: paranoid and cautious about but yeah, but it's also like
Speaker 3: I understand people being exhausted by it, where you're just
Speaker 3: like I know, I know I shouldn't do this and
Speaker 3: I shouldn't do that. You know, Like I totally get that,
Speaker 3: and you just have to like make whatever reasonable decision
Speaker 3: for yourself that makes sense, right, we I do see
Speaker 3: more and more people just giving up totally and I
Speaker 3: get it, Like I get it, Like I mean, I
Speaker 3: have a PO box because I don't ever use my
Speaker 3: home address, and that costs money to have a peobox
Speaker 3: R Like it is, like it is a lot of
Speaker 3: time and a lot of money and a lot of
Speaker 3: effort to make sure that you like have X, Y
Speaker 3: and Z. And I want to say, I don't think
Speaker 3: it should be the user's responsibility. I think it should
Speaker 3: be on these companies to not constantly take as much
Speaker 3: land grab like as much as they can and not
Speaker 3: of like, oh, well you didn't read the privacy Paula.
Speaker 3: See It's like who can read every privacy policy. They're
Speaker 3: also written in a way that there's no way a
Speaker 3: regular person would understand them, so like it's not on
Speaker 3: you and me to fix this. So like the companies
Speaker 3: need to be held accountable for like all the shady
Speaker 3: shit they're doing.
Speaker 2: Oh what about your favorite thing? About favorite thing? I
Speaker 2: get to talk to such cool people all the time?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like being a journalist, do you have
Speaker 3: the excuse of literally calling anybody? Yeah too, and most
Speaker 3: of the time they talk to you, which is like
Speaker 3: wild right, and you're like, you don't have to do this,
Speaker 3: but like it's so fun. I get to talk to
Speaker 3: like just also, And I think this is why I don't.
Speaker 3: I often feel like I am maybe more optimistic about
Speaker 3: the future than a lot of people, is that I
Speaker 3: get to talk to people every day who are doing
Speaker 3: stuff that is going to make the future better, that
Speaker 3: are like commit it and working really hard at making
Speaker 3: the future better.
Speaker 2: And that's like a balm.
Speaker 3: It's not that I don't wake up some days and
Speaker 3: I'm just like, oh my god, like I can't you know,
Speaker 3: like I definitely have those days where you're just like ugh,
Speaker 3: it just feels totally hopeless and like there's nothing we
Speaker 3: can do. But then I get to go call people
Speaker 3: and listen to people and talk to people who are
Speaker 3: like in their small communities and their small ways, like
Speaker 3: making a change. So I often like to point to
Speaker 3: this woman, Aisha Nandoro, who is working on a universal
Speaker 3: basic income program specifically with black mothers in the South.
Speaker 3: And it's a small program, but like they're giving money
Speaker 3: away and they're like helping people in this very specific
Speaker 3: way and this very specific context, and like they're working
Speaker 3: really hard and it's having these impacts and it's not
Speaker 3: going to solve like the nation's problem, but it is
Speaker 3: like a small thing that is making a difference locally.
Speaker 1: So this program is called the Magnolia Mother's Trust through
Speaker 1: the Springboard to Opportunities program, and there's more info on
Speaker 1: that at Springboard two dot org. And an additional donation
Speaker 1: went their way as well with this episode. So it's
Speaker 1: a future ology too, fer because damn it, let's turn
Speaker 1: this boat around make the world a little better if
Speaker 1: we can.
Speaker 3: I think that's like why I can sometimes be a
Speaker 3: little bit more not optimistic, but like hopeful about the
Speaker 3: future because I get to talk to all those people
Speaker 3: every day and it's such a joy, and I'm like
Speaker 3: so thankful that they give me their time and like
Speaker 3: or make time to like have me talk to them.
Speaker 3: But it's so fun to talk to people who are
Speaker 3: smart and interesting and like working really hard on something
Speaker 3: and really care about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you if you're not a journalist or don't
Speaker 1: have a podcast, it's hard just to call someone and
Speaker 1: be like, Hi, I think you're cool to talk to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: I will say, like Twitter is good for that, right,
Speaker 3: people like love like especially people who are working really
Speaker 3: hard on making the future better, like they want to
Speaker 3: talk to people. I mean, they also feel like they
Speaker 3: are toiling away at like a hopeless problem a lot
Speaker 3: at the time. So if you find someone who's doing
Speaker 3: something cool, like literally just being like hey, I think
Speaker 3: you're doing something cool, it's like that like keeps people going.
Speaker 3: So I would say, like, if you admire somebody's work,
Speaker 3: like absolutely say something, because it truly doesn't make a difference.
Speaker 1: That's very good advice because probably people think that it
Speaker 1: would be weird to know compliments.
Speaker 3: Someone Compliments are never weird. I mean that's not true.
Speaker 3: Compliments can absolutely be weird, But like in general, if
Speaker 3: you're like, hey, I just love what you're doing. And
Speaker 3: also like often if you are like I don't know
Speaker 3: how to get involved, is there something I can do
Speaker 3: just like reach out to people, I mean people, and
Speaker 3: they won't always be able to reply because a lot
Speaker 3: of them are, you know, strapped for time and stuff.
Speaker 3: But yeah, people like community building and like making a difference,
Speaker 3: like we all want to make the world better, I think,
Speaker 3: and especialologies listen ologits, so yeah, like reaching out to
Speaker 3: people and being like how can I help? Like what
Speaker 3: can I do?
Speaker 1: Any kind of words of wisdom or anything stick with you,
Speaker 1: like on the day to day.
Speaker 2: That kind of keeps you going.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's a quote by Octavia Butler that I come back
Speaker 3: to you over and over again, and I'll just like
Speaker 3: read it to you because I always forget that I worry.
Speaker 3: She's like such a pillar an important person that I
Speaker 3: don't want to like butcher her words because she's so
Speaker 3: good at them.
Speaker 1: Okay, how prepared for the future is Rose? She had
Speaker 1: this quote readily available on her phone.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to read it to you.
Speaker 3: It says, there's no single answer that will solve all
Speaker 3: of our future problems. There's no magic bullet. Instead, there
Speaker 3: are thousands of answers. At least you can be one
Speaker 3: of them if you choose to be.
Speaker 2: Oh, goose bumps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, it's like, that's the thing I think
Speaker 3: about a lot, where it's like you can, you can,
Speaker 3: you can be a part of the solution.
Speaker 2: You don't. It doesn't have to be hopeless. Mm hm.
Speaker 1: So you just have to figure out what your priorities are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: figure out what kind of future you want, work backwards
Speaker 1: from there, and then kind of get to work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: get on it, get on it. So the future is ours,
Speaker 1: whether we would like it or not, and so we
Speaker 1: might as well try to make it better.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The future is not set yet, it hasn't happened.
Speaker 2: It can be what you wanted to be. Oh that's
Speaker 2: so exciting. Yeah, I know we can fix this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so much better. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I feel like people's therapists or they're like, I
Speaker 3: need to talk to about the future.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be okay. Oh my gosh. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for doing this. We thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: I'm a huge fan. I love this. Oh I'm a
Speaker 2: huge fan. No you.
Speaker 1: So, if you are now a huge fan of professional
Speaker 1: future ologist Rose Evelyth, feel free to board your internet
Speaker 1: space car and just zoom over to Roseevelith dot com.
Speaker 1: She's at Twitter dot com, slash Rosevealith Instagram dot com,
Speaker 1: slash rose Evelyth and of course listen to her wonderful
Speaker 1: podcast flash Forward that's at flashforward pod dot com. She's
Speaker 1: on Facebook at flash forward Pod Twitter same handle flash
Speaker 1: forward Pod on Instagram too. We are at Ologies on
Speaker 1: Instagram and I'm at ali Ward with one l on
Speaker 1: both and more links about all the things we talked about.
Speaker 1: We'll be up at Aliward dot com slash ologies slash Futurology.
Speaker 1: There's a link to that and to the causes and
Speaker 1: the sponsors for this episode in the show notes. And
Speaker 1: for merch, you can head to ologiesmirch dot com or
Speaker 1: Alleyward dot com. Thank you Shannon Feldas and Bonnie Dutch
Speaker 1: of the comedy podcast You Are that they handle all
Speaker 1: the merch. Thanks to Aaron Talbert and Hannahlipo for admitting
Speaker 1: the Facebook group. Thank you to Emily White and all
Speaker 1: the Facebook transcriptionists who make transcripts available at Alleyward dot
Speaker 1: com slash ologies, dash Extras. We're getting through all the
Speaker 1: past episodes still. Thank you as always to Jared Sleeper,
Speaker 1: host of the podcast My Good Bad Brain about Mental Health,
Speaker 1: for assistant editing, and to the man whose mustache resides
Speaker 1: in both the past and the future. It wants Stevenry Morris,
Speaker 1: host of the Cat podcast, The Percast and the Dinosaur
Speaker 1: Pods Jurassic Right, for piecing all these clips together for
Speaker 1: me each week.
Speaker 2: He is a hero.
Speaker 1: Nick Thorburn of the very good band Islands wrote and
Speaker 1: performed the theme music. And if you stick around to
Speaker 1: the end, you know I tell you a secret. This
Speaker 1: week's secret it's going to be threefold because I just
Speaker 1: took two weeks off. I'm just like a chicken holding
Speaker 1: eggs over here, so okay. One is that I've been
Speaker 1: trying to use mental time travel before things that stressed
Speaker 1: me out to imagine a good outcome, and it's helped
Speaker 1: me shake off the jitters a bunch, so thanks Chronothesia. Also,
Speaker 1: since the Chronobiology episode, I've been sleeping in a bed
Speaker 1: with the lights off way more and it's glorious. But
Speaker 1: also I think I'm getting sick more and my doctor
Speaker 1: said that that can happen when you finally rest, So yes,
Speaker 1: we need an immunology episode. Stat Also, I have a
Speaker 1: potato for a brain and I used way too harsh
Speaker 1: to cleaner on an engineered quartz countertop, and now it's
Speaker 1: spotty and dull. And if anyone has done this or
Speaker 1: fixed this, please tell me your secret, because wow, it
Speaker 1: looks real bad and it's my fault. Okay, let's meet
Speaker 1: back here next week. In the future, we have a
Speaker 1: whole whole year of brand new episodes now that I'm
Speaker 1: all rested up, So twenty twenty, let's make this ding
Speaker 1: dank future better together.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Good Bye, pacodermatology, hombiology, ydo zoology, lithology, new technology, meteorology,
Speaker 1: al pedatology, ethology, seriology, elenology.
Speaker 4: Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on
Speaker 4: in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.