Promise

We finish season 7 with a something out of left field. In short, a group of artists have used cells donated by a now-deceased experimental musician, to create new music using their electrical signals. This is a live exhibition viewable at the time of recording. Take a moment. How does that make you feel? In this one piece of news, art, science, technology and ethics explicitly combine to shape one...

Without sounding too many alarm bells, we now have a study showing LLMs collaborating with one another to outwit their guardrails. Depending which side of the fence you stand on, this could be a miracle, or something much more sinister. Besides that, we cover everything from building DNA nanobots inside our cells, AI-powered IVF (3 guesses the dystopia these topics might lead to…), fluid non-metal...

A recent survey stated 75% of scientists want to leave the US. We look into what the knock on effects might be both for better and worse. Who benefits, and how do science and tech evolve as a result? Beyond that, we prompt questions like… Could predicting a heart attack end up causing one? Could the prestige of being a doctor drop as AI takes hold? Could we unleash a pandemic with fungal-based pac...

We take a hard look at how AI tools shape the way we think. We recorded this just before all the tariff news. Its since emerged the list of countries affected and how, have strong signs of AI-led decision making. In some cases, being confidently incorrect. As the font of all wisdom of our time, do we care at all where these generated outputs fit on the sociopolitical spectrum, or where the sources...

Much like past guest Billy Jeremijenko and his company Aquila are doing for reinventing energy transportation, we cover moonshot projects aiming to transfer data with light, and put data centers on the moon. Does this start a scramble for lunar space and a reinvention of copywright law? A little more controversial is we now live in a reality where we have cancer vaccines that work, and that, howev...

In this episode we look at the latest examples where theoretical physics starts intersecting with reality: what if you could store light as energy, to use it again later? What if we could use light as code, to manipulate our own cells? These scientific breakthroughs are tempered by more ominous tech developments: what do we make of a world where Uber with Guns is mainstream? Or when humanoid robot...

We already guessed it, but now we have the science to back it up: bots successfully drive up engagement of online platforms, but also drive down human connection in the process. For all the clamor, excitement, and maybe dread about an AI-powered future, we did settle on the fact its human connection that still matters most. But is that the path we’re headed down? Beyond this, we also look into hyd...

We find ourselves increasingly unable to avoid politics on this show. However, we did approach the topic from a scientific perspective: finally, someone has done cross-border research to see whether trust in science is declining, and whether political affiliation had an impact. The answers, if the science is to be believed, may surprise you. We also highlight the student-led uprising in Serbia, an...

We start off with a literal bang: people are successfully achieving nuclear fusion out of their kitchens. Beyond that, we chat about discovering new properties for the element bismuth, the world’s thinnest pasta, 3D-printing your own airplane, and of course much more in the realm of AI. One of these articles concerns US government intervention on AI driving rent prices up across the country. In th...

In the final episode of 2024 we look at growing new teeth, quantum computing breakthroughs, growing diamonds in 15 minutes, turning them into diamond batteries that last for 5000 years, materials that can learn and adapt, and much more. Again, we do discuss the sentiments surrounding the insurance industry right now. This is especially pertinent with proposed new forms of corporate and public gove...

In this episode, we cover AI big boys teaming up with defense big boys, open-sourcing AI compute, semiconductors dissolved in goo, electro-conductive tattoos, curing dementia, and even tapeworm-based machinery. It’d also be hard to avoid news from the insurance industry right now so we do question: does the model still work if we don’t trust our insurance suppliers? In this episode, the dystopias...

This episode, we debate the cultural acceptance of AI inference being good enough to replace us. Off the back of developing lightning fast inference hardware, should we care that outputs are 90% right rather than the full 100? The last decade has shown us that what we see, learn, know even… depends on who built the software that we use. Does it matter who builds the hardware too? What if they’re t...

We’ve largely steered clear of AI advancements in recent episodes, mostly because the news around them seems relentless. This episode though, we cover everything from generalist AI models for everyday robots, to AI-generated privacy masks, to the AI-powered robots that can build you anything, to our preference for AI-generated content. We’ve got it all. We even get into a heated discussion about u...

In this episode, we cover everything from restoring vision, creating synthetic olfactory systems, making protein out of thin air, 3D-printing organs with light and sound, artificial magnetic muscles, and so much more. All these breakthroughs have a pretty clear convergence around creating a synthetic human: if not in its entirety, then definitely restoring full physical ability to someone whose lo...

The highlight of this episode is a breakthrough out of UC Riverside, where researchers have managed to grow plants in total darkness. Obviously, there could be implications to this advancement, as there always are. We try and pull apart these unknown unknowns. We also talk about extracting water out of even the driest of air, learned about mosquito’s preferred tastes, surmised about the intelligen...

This episode, we look at how the dream-sharing tech of Inception is now real. Yes, we think it is as crazy as it sounds with equally crazy potential! We also talk about the developments in anti-aging from a variety of angles, from mitochondrial recharging to centromere manipulation. We also look into the de-extinction of animals like the Thylacine or Tassie Tiger, how we might shoot webs like Spid...

We start with probably the most mind-bending concept we’ve covered on the show: that of observable time travel. We don’t quite know what to do with that yet, but we did cover a lot of other ground with bio-concretes, building things by shooting clay, synthetic milk, mining and manufacturing on the moon, as well as Meta Ray Bans and their privacy nightmares. We also talk about hurricane prediction...

Ladies and gentlemen we did it, for the first time we got a prediction right! Hot on the heels of the rogue wave predictor, we suggested earthquakes might be next. Lo and behold. This ties in quite nicely with AI being able to predict group human behavior better than humans can which we cover this episode. Besides that, we also look into exponential cost reductions in space exploration and culture...

In this episode, we discuss all kinds of advancements from rogue wave prediction to better ways we can use our current batteries. We try to answer the following questions. What could we achieve by storing DNA in Jurassic Park-esque amber resin? How do we solve a labor shortage in chip design? What do we need to grow plants in zero gravity, and would they even look the same? Do we reeeeaally want t...

In this episode, Ben and I delve into the latest fascinating articles. As a taster for the conversation, we emerged with a few questions: How might water-powered electro-bandages accelerate wound healing? What role do heat-absorbing bricks play in the clean energy transition? What is the potential of air-powered analog computers? How is a new brain-computer interface transforming communication for...

Welcome back to Season 6! We have new mics for this season, so please forgive some teething issues with the sound quality in this episode. In this edition, Ben and I look into how robots might physically adapt to their surrounding environments. Could we control the world around us with a thought? Why might we need universal basic income? What would omni-use reconfigurable furniture look like? What...

We are releasing this episode a couple days after a former US president had an attempt on his life. Without getting political, I believe it emphasizes the gravity of the question that we always try to pose: what is the future that you would like to build? We wrap up Season 5 by covering breakthroughs in passive insulation and cooling, self-powering blood monitors, and how AI has developed never-be...

In this episode, we start the discussion with quantum computing time crystals, contrasted by the bristlecone clock timepiece. After delving into the nature of time, we also cover the benefits and pitfalls of geoengineering, hard but stretchy glassy gels, biodegradable barley starch plastic, X-ray vision, and AI scrubbing emotions from calls. We discuss the tension between differing perspectives ab...

As usual this week we try to cover the latest advancements in technology and science, and mapping them against potential ethical dilemmas. Among the inventions we cover, I specifically want to call out China's rifle-equipped robot dogs, and the really, REALLY, unsettling use of human brain tissue in computing. We had a less structured conversation today to focus mainly on these topics, as they’re...

This episode, we chat about everything from spy headphones, to synthetic bones, officially-sanctioned election deepfakes, battery tech, mental disorders, to AI dating agents and so much more. The topics begin to converge around how emerging tech is rapidly changing what we understand of our society. What do the concepts of democracy or business mean in this new world? What about how we view fictio...