Technology, Connected

Would you eat meat made in a lab? Could cultivated meat replace industrial farming without asking billions of people to change what they eat? Bruce Friedrich, founder of the Good Food Institute and author of Meat, explains why the future of food may depend less on changing human behaviour and more on changing how meat is produced. For more than 12,000 years, humans have relied on animal agricultur...

Asteroid mining sounds insane until you speak to AstroForge CEO Matthew Gialich. Then it makes perfect sense. Matthew’s team at AstroForge builds spacecraft to mine metallic M-type asteroids for platinum group metals, the unglamorous but essential metals inside phones, cars, chips, electronics and much more. AstroForge is one of the few companies trying to make space mining real, targeting metal-r...

Quantum computers could change medicine, material science and AI. Unfortunately, it's impossible to know how because the industry is buried under hype. In today’s show, Dr. Bob Sutor takes us on a masterclass through the hype and conflicting headlines to the reality of quantum technology today.  By the end of the show you’ll know what’s fact and fiction, where the industry is heading and how to pr...

Have you used Google Search recently? Exactly. Most companies, and most people, still think about Google when they think about search. They’re still spending heavily to rank there and paying for the ads around it. But more people are asking ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini what to buy, read, use or trust. SEO isn’t disappearing. It’s evolving into GEO. Awad Sayeed, co-founder and CTO of Parsnipp AI, joi...

The UK produces world-class technology and is home to exceptional tech entrepreneurs. All too often it watches them scale in America. Rory Daniels, Head of Emerging Technology and Innovation at techUK, joins Thinking on Paper to discuss whether the United Kingdom can remain competitive as quantum computing, robotics, photonics, AI and advanced computing begin to converge. The UK has strong researc...

The Vij brothers join Thinking on Paper to discuss Neo, an autonomous machine learning engineer designed to automate parts of the AI development process. As demand for AI systems grows, companies and governments are competing for a limited pool of experienced machine learning engineers. The challenge isn’t only access to data or computing power. Many organisations also lack the technical expertise...

We read NASA’s Moon Base User’s Guide and ask what it would take to establish a sustained human presence on the Moon. A permanent lunar base requires far more than rockets, landers and astronauts. NASA and its partners would need to build an integrated infrastructure system covering power generation, communications, navigation, habitats, transportation, logistics, robotics and resource extraction....

Sanjay Vijendran of TerraSpark joins Thinking on Paper to explain how space-based solar power could become a practical source of clean energy. TerraSpark is developing wireless power-transmission systems that could eventually collect solar energy in orbit and beam it to receivers on Earth. The company plans to demonstrate the concept by powering a live music event in Portugal and by testing radio-...

Jennifer Dunn, professor of chemical engineering at Northwestern University, joins Thinking on Paper to explain how lithium and copper mining affect water, ecosystems, local communities and the wider energy transition. Lithium and copper are essential to electric vehicles, grid storage, renewable energy, drones and data centres. But the environmental consequences of extracting these minerals vary...

Anders Sandberg examines whether artificial general intelligence could manage the global economy more effectively than human institutions. A sufficiently capable AI system might coordinate markets, allocate resources, interpret legal rules and respond to complex global problems faster than governments or companies. Greater efficiency, however, wouldn’t necessarily mean greater freedom. In this sho...

NASA scientist Philip Metzger joins Thinking on Paper to explain why Moon dust and rocket exhaust create a major engineering problem for future lunar missions. When a spacecraft lands on the Moon, its engines can accelerate dust and rocks across the surface at high speed. That material can damage nearby equipment, including solar panels, telescopes, antennas, sensors and thermal-control systems. T...

Matthew Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau, authors of Space to Grow, join Thinking on Paper to explain how the commercial space economy is developing and what governments, companies and investors are trying to build beyond Earth. The space economy already supports communications, navigation, Earth observation and national security. Its next phase could include commercial space stations, lunar infrastr...

Scott Crowder, Vice President of IBM Quantum Adoption, joins Thinking on Paper to explain IBM’s approach to quantum-centric supercomputing. Rather than replacing classical computers, IBM expects quantum processors to work alongside CPUs, GPUs and high-performance computing systems. Each type of hardware handles the parts of a problem it’s best suited to solve. In this episode, we discuss: What qua...

World famous Oxford futurist and philosopher Anders Sandberg joins Thinking on Paper to discuss transhumanism, mind uploading, artificial general intelligence and the technologies humans use to extend their capabilities. Human augmentation doesn’t begin with brain implants or uploaded minds. Memory systems, smartphones, language models and AI agents already allow people to outsource parts of think...

Carissa Véliz joins Thinking on Paper to examine how AI forecasts, platform algorithms and prediction markets can influence the future they claim only to predict. Predictions aren’t always neutral descriptions. When they come from powerful technology companies, executives, platforms or financial markets, they can change investment, policy and public behaviour. A forecast may become a self-fulfilli...

The AI meme war between the US and Iran has evolved into an absolute shit show. If you thought it was awful a few weeks ago, you ain't seen nothing yet. AI-generated Lego propaganda videos were a curiosity. Sometimes funny, often violent, always troublesome and never diplomatic, they quickly gained millions of views across social media... because social media. The White House Twitter (X) account w...

This episode of Thinking on Paper uses Space to Grow to examine who has the right to mine the Moon, extract resources from asteroids and build commercial activity beyond Earth. The Outer Space Treaty prohibits national sovereignty over celestial bodies, but it leaves important questions unresolved. Can companies own the resources they extract? Who grants mining rights? What happens when commercial...

This episode of Thinking on Paper examines the largest space technology funding rounds of 2026 and what they reveal about the direction of the commercial space economy. Investment is moving beyond satellite launches and communications. Companies are now raising capital for orbital data centres, private space stations, reusable rockets, alternative navigation systems, weather intelligence, secure c...

The Martens Clause says that when written law runs out of steam, humanity still has obligations under the laws of humanity. This episode asks whether that old idea from the 1899 Hague Peace Conference can help govern new technologies that move faster than law: AI, autonomous weapons, military AI, space mining, space governance, and the race to build beyond Earth. The conversation moves from Nuremb...

This episode of Thinking on Paper, we look at how artificial intelligence is moving from military planning into intelligence analysis, targeting and battlefield operations. Using a White House memorandum on America’s military AI strategy, Mark and Jeremy explore the push to build an AI-first warfighting force. The objective is to process information, identify threats and execute decisions faster t...

Iran made an AI Lego propaganda video about the United States. It was kind of funny. The US replied with Grand Theft Auto, Wii Sports, and Call of Duty. It wasn't. Children's toys and video games to push a distorted view of war at kids and morons on Twitter. Oh how they'll laugh. This is our first reaction video. Probably be our last. -- 🎧 Listen to every podcast⁠ 📺 Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ 🏠 F...

Space junk is becoming one of the biggest risks in low Earth orbit, from satellite collisions and Kessler syndrome to the millions of debris fragments already moving above Earth. This episode looks at how we got here, why deorbit rules have struggled, and whether active debris removal companies like Astroscale can turn space cleanup into a real market. The second half asks what happens when the sa...

Conductor Quantum founder Brandon Severin joins Thinking on Paper to explain Google’s latest quantum breakthrough, the race to scale beyond today’s experimental systems, and why the future of computing may depend on controlling individual electrons. From spin qubits and trapped ions to semiconductor manufacturing, AI driven quantum control, drug discovery, and cryptography, the conversation maps t...

Quantum computing for materials is moving closer to practical use because quantum computers, GPUs, CPUs, and AI coding tools are beginning to work together. Pranav Gokhale explains how future battery design could depend on simulating electrons, splitting materials problems between GPU workflows and quantum subroutines, and using Hamiltonian simulation where classical computers fall short. The conv...

Space SPACs promised to turn early space startups into public-market winners, but many collapsed before proving they had real products or real markets. This episode looks at the space investment boom through Virgin Orbit, Astra, Planet, SPAC redemptions, failed rockets, and the danger of valuing space companies on fantasy revenue projections. It then moves from speculation to coordination: the sta...