This episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Gemma Milne, a science and technology writer whose book, Smoke & Mirrors: How Hype Obscures the Future and How to See Past It, just recently came out.

Her work explores science, tech and the broad cultural issues surrounding their advancements, and she has a particular interest in deep tech, including biotech, agriculture, energy, space, health, quantum computing, AI.

Gemma is also a deep tech advisor to governments, investors and other organisations working in these spaces, and she’s the Co-Founder of Science: Disrupt, a media organisation that connects and showcases innovators and entrepreneurs creating change in science.

In this rich conversation, we talk about everything from hype, advertising and fake news, to simplified narratives and emotion-laden messaging, and how all of these things can influence our perception of the world and the situations around us.

We explore why there’s such a great need for robust critical thinking, especially in this moment, and why it might serve us better not to think so much in terms of fixing broken systems, but assessing them according to the values on which they were built, so that we might more consciously choose the values on which to redesign them.

Join in the conversation #hivepodcast, and find out more at www.nathalienahai.com/the-hive-podcast/