Flash Forward

Today we travel to a future where the Earth’s magnetic poles reverse. → → → Further reading available here ← ← ← Guests: Eftyhia Zesta -- Chief of the Geospace Physics Laboratory in the Heliophysics Division at NASA Michael Purucker -- Planetary Magnetosphere Lab chief at NASA Alanna Mitchell -- author of The Spinning Magnet   Rory Cottrell -- archaeomagnetism researcher at The University of Roche...

We're back! Did you miss me? Don't answer that please. Today's episode kicks off Season FIVE of Flash Forward. This year, I'm doing things a little bit differently. Instead of doing a new episode every other week, you're getting little mini-seasons. Each little block of five episodes will come out weekly, and center around a theme. This week we're starting our EARTH series. Five episodes, five dif...

In case you think I've been sitting on my butt doing nothing, here's a trailer to let you know that I have been sitting on my butt doing lots of things! Flash Forward returns to your feeds NEXT WEEK, but to get you excited, I wanted to drop in and give you all a little taste of what’s to come. See you in the future!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At long last, we’re doing genetic editing. What’s the deal with the recent news about CRISPR babies? What does a future full of human genetic editing look like? And how might CRISPR change the food we eat?  Guests: Sarah Zhang , reporter at The Atlantic Greta Johnsen , weekend anchor at WBEZ, co-host of Nerdette Alice Wong , founder of the Disability Visibility Project Alison Van Eenennaam , resea...

What happens when the Rio Grande dries up? The river is often overshadowed, at least in the US, by the Colorado River. But the Rio Grande creates the border between US and Mexico, and the water that flows through it is at the center of a looming geopolitical crisis. So what happens when towns, farms and cities on both sides of the border start to run out of water? Guests: Naveena Sadasivam : staff...

Getting from one place to another is hard. What if we could just teleport? From the physics of how this would work (it wouldn’t) to the ripple effects it might have on politics, urban development, and tourism, this episode is all about what would happen if we could zip instantly from one place to another. Guests Matt Lubchansky , comic artist and associate editor at The Nib Zeeya Merali, physicist...

If humans want to really have a go at leaving Earth and living in space or on other planets, we’re going to have to figure out a lot of things: spaceships, food supplies, fuel, how to keep everybody from killing one another. But one thing seems to be frequently left out of the picture, when it comes to distant space travel research: reproduction. It turns out we know very, very little about what p...

On today’s episode we tackle a future that was once a staple of science fiction: food pills. Instead of shopping and cooking and sitting down to eat meals together, we all simply pop our nutritional pills and move along with our lives. How feasible is this, really? Where did the idea come from? And what does the rise and fall in the popularity of the idea say about our changing relationships to fo...

Computers are getting smaller and smaller. But what if we had sensors the size of dust, that could float through the air undetected, talk to one another, gather information, and transmit that information back down to a central place? This is the concept behind smart dust, and it's more plausible than you might think. Guests: Amy Webb , quantitative futurist and founder of the Future Today Institut...

What if we just gave everybody money? It sounds simple, but universal basic income is a trendy idea right now and a lot of you have asked for an episode about a future where everybody gets money from the government no matter what. And it turns out that while it sounds simple, just giving everybody money is way more complicated than you might thing. Guests: Atossa Araxia Abrahamian , Senior editor...

How much of what you do is actually your choice? What if you were secretly being controlled by a parasite that had infected your brain? What if that infection was spreading?  Guests: David Walton, author of The Genius Plague Tade Thompson, author or Rosewater Charissa de Bekker, researcher at the University of Central Florida Sandeep Ravindran, science journalist For additional reading and resourc...

On today’s episode we travel to the near-future of advertising. Welcome to a future in which you can sign up to be a brand ambassador, and get paid for every time you mention a product in conversation. Simply download the app, and your phone will listen to your every word waiting to hear brand names, and pay you some money every time you mention one.  Guests: Deborah Dahl , speech technology exper...

~~~~ TAKE THE SURVEY! (Please) ~~~~ Today we tackle the age-old question: what if animals could talk? Or, more precisely, what if we could actually understand what animals are saying? Guests: Con Slobodchikoff , professor at Northern Arizona University, CEO of Zoolingua , and author of Chasing Dr. Doolittle: Learning the Language of Animals . Irene Pepperberg , professor of psychology Harvard Univ...

In the 1960's, the United States spent millions of dollars exploring two different realms: outer space, and the deep oceans. But today, only one of those programs is still around. Why do space colonies seem more likely than underwater cities? And what does it take to build a settlement on the sea floor? Guests: Ben Hellwarth , journalist and author of SEALAB: America's Forgotten Quest to Live and...

In today’s episode I welcome you to the Museum of Non-Human Art, a brand new gallery full of art made entirely by machines, computers, algorithms, robots and other non-human entities. I hope your enjoy your visit! To see pictures of any of the artworks we talked about on this show head to the website!   Guests: Elizabeth Stephens , Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the Institute for Adv...

In 1918, the Spanish flu killed four to five percent of the entire global population. Infectious disease experts all agree that another pandemic is coming. It's when, not if. But are we ready for it? Today's episode explores what happens when a pandemic strikes, what the most likely candidates are, and whether or not the world is ready. Guests : Ed Yong , science writer at The Atlantic Nahid Bhade...

This episode we take on a future where space junk has gotten so bad, that active spacecraft are constantly having to maneuver around it, which wastes fuel and cuts down on operation time. And humans decide to finally do something about it. But what? Guests: Loren Grush , science reporter at The Verge Lisa Ruth Rand , historian of science technology and the environment. Tiago Soares , systems engin...

With the rise in consumer DNA tests and online genealogy, people might soon have a pretty good idea where their families came from for generations. But are we putting too much faith in DNA? Can our genetic ancestry really tell us anything about ourselves? And what happens when DNA databases become playgrounds for true crime sleuths? Guests: Carl Zimmer, science journalist and author of She Has Her...

Guests: Susan Quinn , author of Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times and other books. Monet Noelle Marshall , playwright, consultant, artist, director, founder of JOCOAA. Monica Byrne , novelist, playwright, futurist, activist. Further Reading: Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times...

This episode we talk exoskeletons: what are they being used for now? What might they be used for in the future? And what happens when they’re everywhere? Guests: Tim Pote , PhD student at Virginia Tech Greg Pote, Tim’s brother Dr. Bill Marras , professor at The Ohio State University & Director of the Spine Research Institute Larry Jasinksi , CEO, Rewalk Ashley Shew , assistant professor at Vir...

Some people love going to the gym. Some people hate it. But what if there was a pill that could replace exercise? Today’s future might actually be closer than you think. Today’s guests: Nicola Twilley, co-host of Gastropod and New Yorker writer David Eveleth, my dad and biotech expert Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, historian and co-host of Past Present Sigmund Loland, philosopher of sports at Norwegian...

In this episode, a huge submarine volcano erupts, breaks the surface of the ocean, and forms a new island. What happens next? Guests: Tracy Gregg , associate professor of geology at the University at Buffalo Rebecca Carey , senior lecturer at the University of Tasmania Paraskevi V. Nomiku , assistant professor of geological oceanography at the University of Athens Gianpierro Orbasano, Tongan photo...

We’re back! After a bit of a break, your regularly scheduled Flash Forward episodes will resume starting today. Every other Tuesday you’ll get a future delivered straight to your listening device. I hope you enjoy! On this episode, we’re talking about the future of senior care. Namely: what happens when we outsource care for our aging loved ones to robots, apps and devices? Let’s start by defining...

In our last episode of the season, we take one one of the most requested futures: telepathy! What would it be like to be able to link minds, and communicate brain to brain? And how likely is it that we’ll ever get this kind of technology?     We start the episode by talking to Roger Luckhurst, a Professor in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, who explains where t...

This episode we travel to a future where the 2020 census goes haywire. What happens if we don’t get an accurate count of Americans? Who cares? Apparently the constitution does!     The 2020 census is currently in the crosshairs — census watchers say that it’s not getting enough funding, and community organizations and local governments are already worrying about what an inaccurate census might mea...