The most important piece of advice David Baron ever got: “Before you die, you owe it to yourself to see a total solar eclipse.”The recommendation came from the Williams College astronomer Jay Pasachoff, a beloved teacher and textbook author, af

Looking Back at 50 Episodes of Soonish

Feb 19th, 2024 1h 5m

After a long hiatus, Soonish is back for a celebration: this is the 50th full episode of the show! (I’m not counting a few bonus episodes in that total.) Tamar Avishai, creator and host of the Hub & Spoke podcast The Lonely Palette, joins this

For the Love of Audio: It's the Hub & Spoke Radio Hour

Feb 14th, 2024 51m 25s

Hey listeners! A new, original episode of Soonish is coming very soon. Meanwhile, I wanted to share a Valentine's Day treat.As the philosopher Haddaway once asked, "What is love?" Well, it can be anything that stirs the heart: passion, grief, a

Bonus Episode: TASTING LIGHT Publication Day

Oct 11th, 2022 58m 59s

Why does the world of young adult fiction seem to have more wizards, werewolves, and vampires in it than astronauts and engineers?And why have the writers of the blockbuster YA books of the last 20 years fixated so consistently on white, straig

Strange Newt Worlds

Jun 15th, 2022 1h

This week we're featuring a conversation with Ian Coss, co-creator of Newts, a wild new six-part musical audio drama from PRX and the fiction podcast The Truth. The show is inspired by the writings of the Czech journalist and science fiction pi

A Soundtrack for the Pandemic

May 21st, 2022 58m 14s

For most people, nightmares produce insomnia, exhaustion, and unease. For Graham Gordon Ramsay, a spate of severe nightmares in April 2020 developed into something more lasting and meaningful: a five-movement, 18-minute musical work for organ o

Can Albuquerque Make Room for Its Past and Its Future?

May 6th, 2022 51m 40s

Last summer, a pair of murals celebrating New Mexico's landscape, heritage, and diversity appeared in Albuquerque's historic Old Town district. The large outdoor pieces by muralists Jodie Herrera and Reyes Padilla—two artists with deep roots in

How Novartis Built a Hit Factory for New Drugs

Mar 12th, 2022 1h

When you hear people use the phrase "It's a hits-driven business," they're usually talking about venture capital, TV production, videogames, or pop music—all industries where you don't make much money unless you come up with at least one (and

How LEGO Learned to Click Again

Feb 26th, 2022 55m 38s

LEGO is so omnipresent in today’s culture—through its stores, its theme parks, its movies, and of course its construction kits—that it’s hard to imagine a world not strewn with billions of colorful plastic LEGO bricks. Yet less than two decades

Art and Technology at Disney

Feb 12th, 2022 54m 23s

This week, Soonish presents Part 2 of The Persistent Innovators, a miniseries I've been guest-producing and guest-hosting for Innovation Answered, InnoLead's podcast for people with creative roles inside big companies. You can think of Persiste

The Reinvention of Apple

Jan 29th, 2022 54m 29s

This week, I've got something different for Soonish listeners. I'm sharing Part 1 of "The Persistent Innovators," a miniseries I'm currently guest-producing and guest-hosting for InnoLead's podcast Innovation Answered. The big question the seri

This Is How You Win the Time War

1 Nov 4th, 2021 51m 14s

Clock time is a human invention. So it shouldn’t be a box that confines us; it should be a tool that helps us accomplish the things we care about.But consider the system of standard time, first imposed by the railroad companies in the 1880s. It

Goodbye, Google

Jun 25th, 2021 42m 9s

What if a technology company becomes so rich, so powerful, so exploitative, and so oblivious that that the harm it's doing begins to outweigh the quality and utility of its products? What if that company happens to run the world's dominant sear

Fusion! And Other Ways to Put the Adventure Back in Venture Capital

May 18th, 2021 38m 55s

Venture capital is the fuel powering most technology startups. Behind every future Google or Uber or Snapchat is a syndicate of venture firms hoping for outsize financial returns. But the vast majority of venture money goes into Internet, mobil

Hope for Ultra-Rare Diseases

Apr 30th, 2021 45m 20s

In this episode of Soonish you'll meet Stanley Crooke, the former CEO of Ionis Pharmaceuticals and the head of a new nonprofit called N-Lorem, which is working to make mutation-correcting "antisense oligonucleotide" drugs available free for lif

Technology and Education After the Pandemic

Feb 3rd, 2021 39m 16s

The coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on education on schools around the world, often rendering in-classroom instruction too dangerous for both students and teachers. But one reason the effects of the pandemic haven’t been even

"We've Needed Something to Bring Us Together"

Jan 20th, 2021 45m 35s

In honor of the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden—a day of long-awaited endings and new beginnings—I'm republishing my Season 2 opener, "Shadows of August," which I first released a little more than three years ago, during the the fiery early mon

The Inventor of the Cell Phone Says the Future Is Still Calling

Dec 18th, 2020 41m 14s

In 1973, there was only one man who believed everyone on Earth would want and need a cell phone. That man was a Motorola engineer named Martin Cooper.“I had a science fiction prediction,” Cooper recounts in his new memoir, Cutting the Cord: The

The End of the Beginning

Nov 15th, 2020 55m 8s

Soonish's six-month detour into electoral politics finishes where it started, with a conversation with our favorite futurist, Jamais Cascio. We talked late on November 6—when it was already clear that Joseph R. Biden would win the presidential

American Reckoning, Part 2: A New Kind of Nation

Oct 12th, 2020 41m 8s

Welcome to a special two-part series about the looming clash over the future of America. In Part 1, we looked at the tattered state of our democracy and searched for peaceful ways through an election season in which one candidate—Trump—has thre

American Reckoning, Part 1: Civil Wars and How to Stop Them

Oct 9th, 2020 53m 31s

Welcome to a special two-part series about the looming clash over the future of America. In Part 1, we look at the tattered state of our democracy as the election approaches, and we assess nonviolent ways to respond to the twin threats of polit

After Trump, What Comes Next?

Sep 15th, 2020 36m 36s

Donald Trump will not be president forever. Whether he leaves office in 2021 or 2025; whether he steps down peacefully or not; whether he’s replaced by a Democratic president or a Republican one—he will leave. And then the country will face the

Unpeaceful Transition of Power

Jun 24th, 2020 48m 54s

Voters, hold on to your hats. The U.S. election system could face an unprecedented array of challenges in November, from the coronavirus pandemic to the prospect of cyberattacks to the depradations of President Trump himself. And that means the

Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible: How One Futurist Frames the Pandemic

May 12th, 2020 36m 36s

Futurists—who sometimes prefer to be called scenario planners or foresight thinkers—specialize in helping the rest of us understand the big trends and forces that will shape the world of tomorrow. So here’s what I really wanted to ask one: Is a

Making Moonrise

Nov 14th, 2019 43m 34s

Fifty years after Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins went to the moon, it’s hard to shake off the afterimage of the Saturn V rocket rising into the sky on a column of flame, and remember that the astronauts' bold adventure was als