The Futurists

Jerome Glenn is the CEO and co-founder of the Millennium Project, a global consortium of hundreds of experts in 70 nations, hailing from academia, government and private sector. Each year these experts collaborate on forecasting a consensus view of future trends. Jerome shares with The Futurists a summary of insights from this year’s 500-page report, The State of the Future. He describes a r...

Andrew Hessel believes that biology is the first technology because it created all living things, including us. And it’s also the most mysterious technology because we still do not understand exactly how the cells in our bodies convert molecules into new materials at room temperature. In this episode of the Futurists, Andrew explains how the science of synthetic biology enables humans to harness t...

Michael Clark data scholar and futurist joins The Futurists this week to talk the critical misalignment of our global data infrastructure when it comes to AI and the future of the planet. He argues that data is more valuable than water, more valuable than money but can’t be just an asset used by corporations, that it must be owned but each individual from cradle to grave. How? You will need to lis...

This week on TF we go to the cradle of civilization with Futurist, Economist and Professor Adrian Saville. Adrian, based in South Africa, is the Founder of Boundless World, a Professor of Economics, Finance and Strategy at GIBS (Gordon Institute of Business Science) and the founding director of the Centre for African Management and Markets (CAMM). We discuss how Africa’s nascent economy and infras...

This week Brett and Robert are joined by Futurist, Founder and Author Terence Mauri as he gets ready to launch his new book, The UPside of DisrUPtion. We talk long term disruptive potential of AI, how it will impact employment, economies and corporations. But we also get into future proofing strategies for businesses and individuals alike. One thing is for sure, you’re going to want to be as...

Journalist and media pundit Jeff Jarvis returns to The Futurists to discuss the strategies deployed by newspapers and magazines to prevent technology firms from dominating journalism. It’s an uphill battle. Jeff describes the growing rift between independent journalists and big publications controlled by private equity; the role of government and new legislation; and the future of journalism in a...

In this week’s episode we see the return of the philosopher futurist and award-winning science fiction author David Brin. We talk through the Fermi paradox, the ongoing civil war in the US, the geopolitical changes that are coming and how we get humanity to a place of real enlightenment. Brin brings his usual energy and intellect to a wide-ranging conversation that is sure to get you thinkin...

In this episode, cybersecurity specialist and advisor to the DoD and former DIA cyber chief, Tyler Cohen Wood, joins us to talk about the recent Microsoft update crash and DDOS attacks. Wood takes us through emerging vectors and the cyberpunk future of our internet. If you think you’re safer online, you might want to skip this one.

In this week’s show we interview the legendary British science fiction author Charlie Stross. From Accelerando through to the Laundry Files we talk through how politics and social dynamics of our day tend to inform science fiction and why science fiction authors should be thought of as hi-brow entertainers rather than particularly gifted seers of the future. And yet, we get into why sci-fi authors...

What will happen in the US Presidential election? It’s no exaggeration to say that the fate of the republic hangs in the balance as the United States heads to the national election in November. A series of historic incidents in the month of July 2024 has completely upset the dynamics of the contest: an attempted assassination, a surprise vice president pick and President Biden’s decision to withdr...

Monica Anderson returns to the Futurists to share a radical concept: future AI models based on Darwinism.  The “AI epistemologist” shares provocative opinions about where the current crop of generative AI systems went wrong, and why generative AI is computationally expensive and energy intensive, and why scaling AI with hardware will not achieve general intelligence. Instead she offers a rad...

This week Ross Dawson and Brett King sit down for an unscripted conversation about AI, Energy markets, climate survivability and resilience, mass migration, collaborative intelligence, advanced healthcare and other great topics for a futurists conversation to end out the week. Ross Dawson is one of Asia’s top ranked futurists and advises companies and governments around future-proofing and AI read...

This week we call upon renowned media personality and thought leader Tariq Qureishy. Based between London and Dubai, Tariq has recently helmed a project known as “Voices of the Future”. A chronicling of 110 of the world’s best future thinkers, analysts and researchers and their thoughts about humanity can adapt to the incredible changes being thrust upon society. He tells us why he’s MAD – d...

The global supply chain is the most complicated thing that humanity has invented with more than 1 million companies in 209 nations trading 90% of manufactured goods via maritime transport. Now, thanks to climate change, extreme weather events and geo-political strife, it’s growing geometrically more complex. Brett King and Rob Tercek discuss the implications for domestic politics, employment and i...

David Wood and Calum Chace lead the London Futurists, a group that promotes radical scenarios for the future. In this episode they explain how expectations about the future have evolved in the UK during the past 15 years under Tory leadership, and they identify the trends that will shape the next 15 years.  Brett King and Rob Tercek draw comparisons to economic and political trends in the US, Aust...

The future is complicated!  Brett King and Rob Tercek trace the trajectory of several major economic, political, and technology trends, including:  the rising cost of home ownership, price-fixing scams that crank up apartment rent, the rising cost of insurance due to climate change, the dramatic increase in populist movements, the politics of resentment in democracies worldwide, and the advent of...

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. In this episode, Rob Tercek shares tools and techniques for team-based collaboration to create innovations that can change the world.  He knows his stuff.  Rob designed and launched digital platforms for games and video that are used by hundreds of millions of people today. In this special edition of the Futurists, Rob shares an easy and fun meth...

Looking to the future, a startup from Iceland innovates to address the opioid epidemic. In today’s episode of The Futurists, guest host JP Nicols, co-host of The Futurists’ sister podcast Breaking Banks, spotlights a healthtech innovator that he met on a recent trip to Iceland that is doing something to address a growing problem. Dr. Kjartan Thorsson, Prescriby, Co-Founder, acted on co...

In this weeks episode Brett King is in London talking the future with renowned OG futurist JP Rangaswami. JP was the Chief Scientist for Salesforce and the Chief Data Officer for Deutsche Bank, way back before that was a thing. In this interview he talks about the philosophy of the future that is redrawn by AI and technology. A great discussion from a great learned mind and a modern philosopher. B...

In this special edition of the Futurists, media expert Peter Csathy debates with Rob about copyright and generative AI. It’s a preview of their upcoming live debate at the Streaming Media summit in New York. Peter and Rob discuss the major issues in copyright, the most contentious lawsuits, and the most relevant precedents. If you are interested in the future of gen AI for storytelling and enterta...

In this week’s show returning guest Shelly Palmer (CNBC, CNN, Fox5) dives with Rob and Brett into what it will take for corporations to stay relevant in the AI-age. This is a wide ranging discussion on the way AI-based commerce, agency and automation will disrupt many of our current industries and institutions. Not one to be missed! Shelly’s BIO –  https://shellypalmer.com/shelly...

In every work environment, from factories, hospitals, retail shops to elder care homes, the future workforce will include robots. Dr Harry Kloor, the founder and CEO of Beyond Imagination has blazed a trail toward building reliable, strong robots that can operate safely alongside human workers. Harry tells the Futurists how to design a robot for a variety of workplaces at an affordable price, and...

AI safety pioneer Roman Yampolskiy believes that artificial intelligence presents a challenge unlike anything humanity has ever faced. He says we have just one chance to get it right. A single AI model can cause an existential crisis, and there are already more than 500,000 open source AI models available. In his view, the AI arms race is creating an infinite range of possibilities for catastrophe...

What’s next for retail shops and shopping malls? The previous decade was excruciating for national retail chains. Steve Dennis, the author of Remarkable Retail and Leaders Leap, explains how shopping will evolve in the aftermath of pandemic, e-commerce and the “collapse of the middle”. Why Amazon gets too much blame and the real reason why differentiation is the key to success. 

This week we get into AI in health care, generative and personalized medicine, the cure for cancer and why CoVID helped supercharge that and how AI is helping us live longer, healthier lives. Alex Zhavoronkov, the founder of AI-MedTech player Insilico joins us on TF to talk how health care is going to radically change over the next decade or two. An amazing deep dive. Don’t miss it!