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The Future And You

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The Future And You is a talk-show style podcast in which its host (the science fiction author Stephen Euin Cobb) interviews an assortment of authors, scientists, celebrities and "pioneers of the future" as to what they believe both the near future and distant future will be like for individuals as well as for humanity in general.

Contents

Subjects

Subjects have included: nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing, computers wired directly into the human brain, exoplanets, cryonics, bootlegging of movies, global warming, the current interglacial period, genetic engineering of humans and other biotechnology, faster-than-light travel, wormholes and black holes, cloning and stem cell research, futurism and futurology, social marketing (the engineering of specific attitude changes within a population), transhumanism, extropianism, and the technology of living more-or-less forever.

Authors

Celebrities

Pioneers

Scientists

Others

Content

The show's goal seems to be to provide variety within each episode: a variety of guests, subjects and ideas.

Most of the show is composed of interviews: anywhere from four to nine in a single episode. (Which explains why the show is so long compared to most podcasts.) Each episode opens with the host reading a Table of Contents, sometimes followed by a few brief news items, then the interviews begin. Near the middle of the show, after two or three interviews, about fifteen minutes worth of the science fiction novel "Bones Burnt Black" is read by the author. (The serialization of this novel was begun in the first episode.)

Many episodes end with a "Celebrity Interview" which usually has little to do with the show's theme (the future) and may have been included to increase the show's status, or to pull in more listeners by showing up in Google searches of those celebrity names.

There has been a noticable abundance of SF writers on the show, perhaps because the host feels that since many SF writers write about the future they have spent a great deal of time pondering what is to come (a logical, if unproven, theory) or maybe its just because the host is an SF writer himself and finds it easiest to find guests within his own field.

Also notable is the show's length. Striving for so much variety forces the program to a far greater length than most podcasts. Episodes have fluctuated in length from 68 minutes to 118 minutes. The target length seems to be 79 minutes. (Perhaps because 80 minutes is the most that can be burned to a 700 megabyte audio CD.)

History

During its first five months (from December 2005 until April 2006) episodes were released every two weeks. As of May 1, 2006 episodes are being released one per month on the first of each month. All the old episodes have remained available for listening (which is typical of most podcasts). And like most podcasts, there is no charge for listening to one episode or for subscribing.

The June 1, 2006 episode was the first to use VoIP for recording all the phone interviews, and so was the first to provide professional quality sound. (The May 1, 2006 episode contained one VoIP interview, but all the rest were recorded over conventional analog phone lines.)

External links

 

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