Future Around & Find Out

Future Around & Find Out is a best technology podcast nominee! And with your help it could be a winner. The Webby Awards voting is open now. Please vote for FAFO!

Thanks to AI, “content is about to become infinite.” And just like the Internet disrupted distribution, AI is disrupting creation. And so when anyone, anywhere can create content, what’s left? What’s defensible? That would be trust and humanity. 

Live from Podcast Movement Evolutions at SXSW, I sit down with Jim Louderback — former VidCon CEO, Inside the Creator Economy newsletter writer, and media veteran — to unpack what's actually changing and what builders and creators should do about it.

We get into why the "age of perfection" is over, why founders need a meme instead of an elevator pitch, and why putting a creator on your cap table might be the smartest move a startup can make. Jim makes the case for a trust economy where views and likes are meaningless — and where the real question is how far your trust graph extends. We also talk digital twins (and what happens when yours goes rogue), why events are still the best way to prove you're human, the state of journalism and public media, and why 2004’s “Subservient Chicken” was so ahead of its time.

Chapters:

• (01:30) - How AI disrupts creation

• Vote for FAFO to be a Webby Awards winner!
• Get the newsletter 
• Sponsor the show? Want to share your message with senior technologists? Email Dan: [email protected]

Very fun news… The Webby Awards have just nominated Future Around & Find Out as a nominee for Best Technology Podcast!!!

And you can help make it a Popular Choice winner. Winning would be great for the growth of show. Thank you!

Please vote for FAFO! 

---
OK, on to today’s episode… it’s another good vibes rooftop episode recorded at SXSW. 

For the second year in a row I’m joined by Rob Kenedi, a fellow podcaster, who is the founder and host of Decelerator. 

Last year he, very memorably, said we were in the “fart app era of AI”. Meaning: people are trying stuff (a la the make-a-fart-sound apps that people built in the early days of the iPhone). So, we revisit that comment and ask where are we now? And what’s defensible for app makers — and for creators like us?

Podcaster that he is, Rob turns the tables on me and asks me a bunch of questions about how I’m approaching this question and I shared what was top of mind when I rebranded the show recently from CRAFTED. to Future Around & Find Out. Namely, I wanted to give the show more personality, but that is how you stand out right now and that’s what going to be defensible in the age of AI. 

And the Webby nomination — you already voted, right?? — only makes me feel more confident in the rebrand and the addition of more of these casual “FAFO Friday” episodes that feature a lot more of my (and regular guest Kwaku Aning’s) personality. 

(You’ll hear more about how AI is changing the creator economy and why “being human” is so important in a few days when my episode with Jim Louderback, writer of Inside the Creator Economy, comes out; he gives a great annual talk at SXSW and I had seen it the day before recording with Rob.)

In the meantime, come join Rob and me for some good vibes from Austin… 

And (ask your friends to) vote: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/shows/technology

Climate-tech founder Eben Bayer is on a mission to protect Spaceship Earth. And he says it's time for climate control, i.e. active measure that cool the Earth. Why? " Because all other reasonable approaches have failed miserably," he says, slapping the table for emphasis.

Eben is the co-founder of Ecovative and MyForest Foods, the makers of MyBacon, which is sold in more than three thousand stores. It’s a non-meat bacon, made from mycelium, which (more or less) means mushrooms roots. Fewer people eating meat —> fewer farting animals —> a cooler planet. 

And Eben's latest Earth-cooling idea is (nearly) out of this world. Eben wants to put giant parasols in the stratosphere where they could block sunlight from reaching Earth. With "shade-as-a-service" a maxed-out utility (say in Phoenix) could pay for shade to cool a city or an individual could pinpoint a shadow over their backyard for an afternoon barbecue.

The idea is in its early stages, but Eben says it's feasible and it's the kind of big idea we need to get climate change under control. And while the idea of messing with the sun may sound scary, he says we alter the climate in all sorts of ways already: " We are geo-engineers. We farm animal livestock. We live on Planet Earth. We have impact. We emit CO2. We should not limit ourselves to modifying just one or two atmospheric gases to modify the planet. It's not how we operate, and it's an unbelievably constraining framing if you actually want to address this problem in a practical manner... When you start to take that frame, the options open way up."

Eben is a fascinating guy — very steampunk in his approach to entrepreneurship — and I'm sure you'll find this interview eye-opening.

And a special shout out to my field producer for this onsite recording from Troy, NY: my eleven-year old son, Julian! He was my camera and sound guy and he also makes his long-awaited (YouTube!) debut to ask Eben a question about protecting Spaceship Earth. 🤩

Thanks also to PopTech, the amazing tech conference where I first met Eben, and where he became a fellow more than a decade ago as he was just scaling up.

Support Future Around & Find Out

• Follow Dan on LinkedIn
• Get the free Future Around & Find Out newsletter
• Become a paid subscriber and help future proof the podcast!

Sponsor the show? 

• Are you looking to reach an audience of senior technologists and decision-makers? Email me: [email protected]

---
Music by Jonathan Zalben

— Melania Trump, Futurist

Ah, yes, I can’t wait for my children to learn from an embodied AI. And that their access to everything be “instantaneous.” No struggle. No unreliable (fleshy) teachers. Just an embodied AI stuffed with the “entire corpus of information.” What an inspiring vision!

Regular listeners to Future Around & Find Out will know that I’m a fan of robots (think: self-driving cars), but really don’t understand why they need arms and legs (whether dog- or human-shaped). 

Well, as you may have seen our fever dream of AI with arms and legs reached the White House, with Melania and “Figure 3” competing to see which one could walk and talk more haltingly. (The robot was more engaging to listen to.) 

The robot was there, along with a patronizing display of first spouses from around the world, for a summit on education technology. So Kwaku and I use it as a jumping off point for this week’s FAFO Friday (yes, delivered on a Saturday) this week. 

Kwaku, a tech consultant to many schools, and I discuss this insatiable need for humanoid robots, AI, and instant gratification. And, following up on my conversation earlier this week with Khan Academy’s Chief Learning Officer, Kristin DiCerbo, we discuss what counts as a “productive struggle” and what’s wasted effort when it comes to AI and learning. 

Please enjoy this very human conversation… full of totally unnecessary tangents, riffs, asides, non-sequiturs, and other detours that Plato, the humanoid teacher, would find inefficient and useless. 🙂

---
Subscribe to the Future Around & Find Out newsletter: https://www.futurearound.com

So what the heck should kids be studying today!?

That's my opening question to Khan Academy's Chief Learning Officer, Kristen DiCerbo, a learning and AI expert who is back for her second appearance on the show. 

We discuss:

• Kristen's advice for what to study today: fundamentals, AI literacy, and critical thinking
• How helpful should AI be? 
• Why the productive struggle is critical to learning, but also why we shouldn't "fetishize" struggle
• When should AI be Socratic — "and why do you think that?" — and when should it just give you the answer?
• The "5% problem" — why edtech that's proven to work still barely gets used
• How Khan Academy overhauled its classroom platform and evolved Khanmigo from a standalone chatbot into something woven into the whole learning experience
• Personalization that actually works 
• How Khan Academy uses LLMs as judges to evaluate 20,000 student interactions a day
• The scenario planning report that imagines deepfakes of school principals and AI going underground in schools
• What parents should be asking their kids' schools about AI right now
• What it looks like when a school implements AI well — and what it looks like when they don't

Chapters:

• (01:44) - What the heck should kids be studying right now?

• Follow Dan on LinkedIn
• Get the free Future Around & Find Out newsletter
• Become a paid subscriber and help future proof the podcast!

Sponsor the show? 

• Are you looking to reach an audience of senior technologists and decision-makers? Email me: [email protected]

---
Music by Jonathan Zalben

South By Southwest was strange this year. No convention center to anchor the event (it’s a giant hole in the ground right now, being rebuilt from scratch, much like [insert your analogy here] will also need to be rebuilt in the age of AI). 

This South By was a all about convergence. How AI will impact [xyz] continues to be the dominant theme at the conference and in so much tech coverage (including on this podcast; sorry!). 

So, Kwaku and I report on the convergences we saw (and not only at Amy Webb’s annual talk where “convergence” was her key word). This includes everything from:

• the RoboCup, a quest (a la Deep Blue winning at chess) for humanoid robots to be able to defeat a team of great humans at soccer 
• pants that you wear (or do they wear you) that are kind of like an e-bike for your legs
• an AI-powered Cyrano de Bergerac that can help you whisper sweet nothings in your lover’s ear
• falling in love with an AI (and their business model)
• and AI that can tell you whether to have another slice of brisket (yes, duh, you’re in Austin!) 

So, come on along to Austin for what’s become an annual tradition: Kwaku and my SXSW Rooftop Revue. 

This year recorded in fabulous 4K with a three camera setup that we didn’t deserve! Big thanks to Podcast Movement Evolutions, Nomono, The Podcast Academy, and Simplecast!

And stay tuned for a few more episodes from a wild week!

Chapters:

• (00:25) - SXSW 2026: everything everywhere all at once

• Get the newsletter, support the show, check out past episodes: https://www.futurearound.com

How do you build a system for turning wild ideas into world-changing innovations? Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at X, The Moonshot Factory, has spent over 15 years leading Google’s audacious innovation lab—the birthplace of Waymo, Google Brain, and other breakthrough projects.

In this special episode, recorded live in Austin at last year's SXSW, Astro shares the playbook to create a moonshot factory.

(I'm at this year's SXSW right now and you'll hear all about it soon. If you are here, drop me a line and let's meet up!)

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The “Train the Monkey First” approach to innovation
• Why audacity, humility, and intellectual honesty are key to moonshots
• How your org can get more 10x (not +10%) outcomes — and how to avoid the “innovator’s dilemma”
• Why you should “greenlight everything” and then redlight most projects quickly, following kill criteria you’ve agreed to in advance
• Where X is placing bets today, including climate-tech, modernizing the electric grid and bioengineering

---
Future Around & Find Out newsletter and podcast: https://www.futurearound.com

Greetings from SXSW, where I'm learning, recording, and eating... You'll hear all about it soon... For now, enjoy this short, sweet, and geeky bonus episode.

Have you seen that weird graph about all the jobs that AI is going to kill? It looks like an ink blot or a Rorschach test... It's from an Anthropic report and it's really making the rounds. If you follow tech stuff on social media you've probably seen it. The report is interested, but I'm convinced people are only sharing it because the graph looks cool and people will think they're smart if they share this inscrutable data visualization...

Anyway, here's a very short excerpt of my upcoming interview with Paul Ford (@ftrain), one of my favorite tech writers and the founder of Aboard. He and I took a break from talking AI and such to geek out on this data visualization and why it's so bad, plus I told him about how I used AI to make my own version of a radar graph (about how many, and which kinds of, tacos I will and could theoretically eat in Austin).

---
Subscribe to the Future Around & Find Out newsletter!

So why is one of the world’s leading AI researchers teaching AI to understand pain and suffering? Well, Daniel Hulme says that if we build an empathetic AI, perhaps even a conscious one, then we’ll be safer. His hypothesis is that a "zombie" AI will eat our brains, but an empathetic AI would stay aligned with us. So he's building this "antivirus" (with AI, of course) and he's very aware that this sounds crazy or like "something from Marvel."

That's just some of what broke my brain in this conversation with one of the world's top AI researchers and founders. And Daniel has serious credibility, so I'm not dismissing the threat he sees — you know, the one where we all get turned into paperclips. 

Daniel sold his company Satalia to WPP, where he now serves as Chief AI Officer. He’s just founded Conscium, which verifies that AI agents are safe and can do what they promise — and is also researching consciousness and pain. Some of the world’s leading AI thinkers are on the advisory board and Daniel has been in this space for decades: we’ll talk about why, for his PhD, he studied bumblebee brains (yes, really — and it's deeply relevant). 

We get into: 

• His unified theory of consciousness — his "color wheel" model — and why he thinks consciousness only exists in motion 
• Why he believes large language models are ultimately a dead end — and what neuromorphic computing could replace them with 
• What bumblebee brains can teach us about building AI that's up to a thousand times more energy efficient 
• Why he calls today's AI agents "intoxicated graduates" — and says companies should spend 80% of their time testing them 
• The concept of "mind crime" — the idea that we could build conscious AI and accidentally put it through horrendous suffering without realizing it 
• His vision of a "protopia" — where AI makes food, healthcare, education, and energy so abundant that people are freed from economic constraints to pursue what actually matters

We future around and find out a lot in this one!

---
Chapters

• (01:39) - "Would a conscious superintelligence be safer than a zombie one?"

• Conscium
• Daniel Hulme on Wikipedia 
• Daniel on LinkedIn

---

So how do Kwaku's kids know that it's FAFO Friday? "They're like, 'oh, we know you're doing the podcast 'cause we just hear you cackling through the walls.'"

So laugh along with Kwaku and me today as we work our way through a quick victory lap (stuff we said would happen last week happened!), why Sam is like that desperate guy at the bar who refuses to go home alone, quantum computing explained via children's literature, why the Jetsons are not reason enough for us to build humanoid robots, robot choreography (are we human or are we dancers?), wen self-driving cars in NY?, riding a wave of green lights up Manhattan's third avenue at 2 AM, artificial wombs and other moonshot off-shoots, and the real origin of Velcro (AI lied to me about it).

Plus... goat ranches, breakfast tacos, and what we're most excited about heading into SXSW. It's a choose your own adventure kind of day.

Chapters

• (01:24) - Victory Lap — We Called It

• Follow Dan on LinkedIn
• Get the free Future Around & Find Out newsletter
• Become a paid subscriber and help future proof the podcast!

Sponsor the show? 

• Are you looking to reach an audience of senior technologists and decision-makers? Email me: [email protected]

---
Music by Jonathan Zalben