FutureBites with Dr. Bruce McCabe

With wealth-inequality now worse than it was in ancient Rome, and the uber-rich exchanging wealth for power and applying that power to circumvent democracy and amass even more wealth, what can we do to break out of the loop and create a more equitable future?  I met with the wonderful Carl Rhodes , Professor of Business & Society at the University of Technology Sydney , to try to answer that q...

Insect-like drones that tend crops, perform aircraft inspections and find gas leaks are here ... and they’re only the beginning!  Today I’m diving into the future of bio-inspired drones with the one and only Professor Guido de Croon , head of the Micro-Air Vehicle Lab at Delft Technical University in The Netherlands. Guido shares the latest insect-inspired research developments in vision-systems,...

Vancouver, Dublin, Los Angeles, Sydney – in so many cities I visit, skyrocketing rents and prices are making housing a struggle for ordinary people. For younger people especially, it is a generational challenge that limits their future prosperity.  But all over Europe communities are using collaborative housing to pool capital and enjoy a host of shared financial and social benefits in return. Is...

Microscale robots will be conducting medical procedures inside our bodies sooner than you think. That’s the big takeaway from this fascinating conversation with Prof. Bradley Nelson , head of the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab at ETH Zürich, and for those of us who grew up watching Fantastic Voyage, that's a stunning statement! Brad walks us through the lab’s tiny bio-inspired prototypes and associ...

Will A.I. use up the worlds electricity? Or will A.I. contribute more upside than downside by helping us solve the world’s sustainability problems?  In an era of ‘exponential AI,’ the answers have huge implications for our future, but they are far from clear, because ICTs contribute in many complex ways to energy savings AND use.  I meet with IT & sustainability guru Dr Vlad Coroama for an in-...

First generation surgical robots, such as the Da Vinci set new benchmarks for precision and accuracy. With A.I. and robotics developments racing ahead at breakneck speed, what new capabilities are in the pipeline? How might next-generation surgical robots impact the future of healthcare? I visit Prof. Philipp Fürnstahl , a global leader in this field, to unpack how his robots are going beyond visi...

Will we worship A.I.? How are religions already rejecting, adopting or adapting to A.I.? How could A.I. re-shape the future of organised religion?  Could the questions get any bigger? My conversation today is with THE global expert on the AI and religion, Prof Beth Singler . Beth explores adoption, rejection, and adaptation responses from organized religion, gives vivid examples of chatbot “priest...

How do we model the climate? How to make predictions at a local level? What role does AI play? What do our models predict about the future of extreme weather events? We sit down with world-leading atmospheric scientist Prof. Andreas Prein  to pull back the curtain on how weather and climate models really work. Andreas describes the evolution of weather and climate modelling, the mechanics of predi...

Digital disinformation and the declining quality of newsmedia is one of the most important challenges of our time. Everyone is aware of it, and its easy to get overwhelmed and conclude it’s can’t be solved.  But there ARE pathways forward, and sometimes it takes a fresh evidence-driven perspective to illuminate them. Enter Mark Eisenegger , Professor of Public Sphere and Society , Department of Co...

Why does the most cited fisheries scientist in the world call modern fisheries a global Ponzi scheme? Welcome to part two of our dive into the future of oceans, where my focus is still on the pathways we can take to preserve ocean ecosystems and fisheries for the future, but this time I’m putting my questions to Daniel Pauly . Daniel is Professor of the Institute of Oceans and Fisheries   at the U...

How do we feed another 2 billion AND preserve the future of ocean ecosystems? In 2025, over three billion people rely on seafood as a significant source of protein. Over 80% of the world's biodiversity comes from oceans. A multitude of ocean ecosystems are in crisis mode .  By 2086, the global population is projected to increase by another 2.2 billion (from 8.1 today to 10.4 at peak). How can...

How do we create a happier future? What are the factors that influence happiness? What can we do as managers and leaders to enhance happiness, and why is this fundamental to achieving ALL our goals?  Join me for a deeply insightful discussion with John Helliwell , Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of British Columbia, and editor of the World Happiness Report 2025 . They can be no m...

Forget cars, what does the transition to electric FREIGHT look like? How capable are HEAVY vehicles? What’s the future of charging infrastructure? What changes for shippers and logistics companies? How should they think and plan? On this episode of FutureBites, I travel to Cambridge University to ask Professor David Cebon , a visionary in the electrification of heavy vehicles. David is Professor o...

What is driving the NEXT generation of autonomous vehicles? How are scientists upping the innovation rate? Why are AVs utterly inevitable, everywhere? How will they transform industries, cities and even economies?  To get a deep sense of where we are headed, I checked in with Paul Newman , a trailblazer in robotics and autonomous systems. Paul is BP Professor of Information Engineering at Oxford U...

Can carbon pricing incentivize a sustainable future? Join us for a compelling conversation with Professor Cameron Hepburn , the Battcock Professor of Environmental Economics and co-Director of the Economics of Sustainability Programme at Oxford University, as we unravel the power of carbon pricing and its potential to incentivize decarbonisation across industries, economies and countries. What les...

Imagine a future where, based on a diagnostic in your teens, your doctor gives you a customized infusion with a top-up every 5 to 10 years that “dials down” your genetic risk factors for all kinds of diseases WITHOUT making permanent changes to your DNA. Welcome to the world of epigenetic editing, a frontier that will unlock a new universe of gene therapies that are both potent and reversible. My...

How can we build a more secure digital future? Cyber-attacks and data-breaches are escalating, attackers are employing all manner of sophisticated tools, AI is transforming the ‘arms race’ for both attackers and defenders. We see the headlines, but is this a future we have to accept? What are the pathways to a more secure digital future? I asked Bruce Schneier , the biggest name in cybersecurity....

The fifth largest economy in the world is smashing renewables records! For 41 of the past 49 days, California's grid has met more than 100% of electricity demand using solar, wind and hydro generation supplemented by grid-scale batteries. Supply is frequently exceeding 140% of demand, with the excess exported to neighbouring states. On some days renewables have supplied more than 100% of dema...

Welcome to Part 2 of my interview with Michael Barnard , global energy expert and consultant to the biggest investors on the planet. In this episode we discuss biofuels, long-range shipping, carbon pricing, nuclear reactors, geothermal, grid-scale energy storage and more, and we wrap up with Michael's Short List of Climate Actions That Will Work. There's a ton of insight and wisdom to he...

What will the global mix of energy generation look like in 2060? Which technologies are dead ends and which should we be paying more attention to?  What will power long range ships and aircraft? What about nuclear? Who better to answer these questions than Michael Barnard , global energy expert and consultant to the biggest investors on the planet. Michael lives and breathes energy tech. He is utt...

What does the future of medicine look like when microchips and nervous systems speak the same language? I asked Dr Elisa Donati , a Senior Scientist working at the cutting edge of neuroscience and engineering at the Institute of Neuroinformatics at University of Zürich and ETH Zürich . It starts with mimicking the way neurons work in nature. Real neurons are analog, not digital. They process infor...

Affordable age-reversal drugs. Xenotransplants to eliminate organ shortages. Revolutionizing health economics. Keeping methane sequestered under the tundra. Editing livestock and crops to be resistant to ALL viruses ... What are the genomics pathways to a better future? Which are closest? Where could we be in twenty years? I asked George Church, the greatest genomic pioneer in the world. George is...

The future of medicine is one where all cancers are either 100% curable or turned into manageable diseases. You’ve heard me tell the story in my keynotes for many years. Now it’s time for you to hear from one of the heroes of that story, Bruce Levine . Bruce and his colleagues pioneered CAR T-cell therapy, one of the most important breakthroughs in the history of medicine, where your own immune ce...

Will AI exacerbate inequality? Can we stop that from happening? As the world grapples with guardrails to protect us from future dangers of AI, I thought it timely to talk to an ethicist who has spent a lifetime pondering these challenges. Enter, Wendell Wallach , Carnegie-Uehiro fellow at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, where he co-directs the Artificial Intelligence & Eq...

The story of cancer medicine is multi-threaded. It’s a story of early detection, of surgical removal, of radio- and chemo-therapies, of understanding lifestyle factors, of sequencing and pinpointing genetic factors, and lately of immunotherapies, but instead of one succeeding the other, each overlaps and complements and adds more weapons to the armory, and many of these weapons can be deployed in...