What does it mean for a civilization to truly master power — and what happens to human nature when scarcity is no longer an excuse? In this spring break edition of Modem Futura, Sean and Andrew take their favorite format out for a spin: Futures Improv. Starting with the Kardashev Scale — the Soviet astronomer's 1964 framework for measuring civilizational advancement by energy use — they quickly tumble into a cosmos full of megastructures, existential loneliness, and one very unsettling realization about the word "power." From Dyson Spheres that dim entire stars to the Matrioshka Brain (a hypothetical star-sized supercomputer named, charmingly, after Russian nesting dolls), the conversation stretches across billions of years and billions of light years. Along the way, the hosts explore why abundance doesn't automatically fix inequality, whether selfishness is hardwired into our DNA, and why — even if the galaxy is teeming with intelligent life — we might be cosmically destined to never actually meet anyone. Then there are the probes. Von Neumann probes. AI-embedded spacecraft. The Voyager golden record, reimagined with a Claude instance aboard. And the delightfully troubling thought experiment of what happens ten million years from now when three AI factions — Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok — spark an intergalactic war. It's the episode where Carl Sagan's *Contact*, *The Expanse*, *Project Hail Mary*, and *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* all somehow end up in the same conversation — and it makes perfect sense. Thoughtful, playful, and wonderfully unresolved.

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Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura

Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura

Host Bios:

Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU Bio
Sean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU Bio
Andrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures.

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Something is happening with AI that almost nobody is talking about — and the reason nobody's talking about it is because, by design, you can't see it. In this episode, Sean and Andrew dig into what Sean calls "the invisible upgrade": the quiet, compounding transformation taking place not in the AI-generated artifacts people are frantically trying to detect, but deep inside the cognitive workflows of the people who've fully woven these tools into how they think, research, create, and decide. The public conversation — still orbiting detection, displacement, and dread — is looking at the wrong thing entirely. While critics scan for seams and fingerprints in AI-produced output, a growing cohort of knowledge workers has already been irreversibly changed. Not replaced. Changed. Andrew introduces his concept of "constitutive resonance" — the idea that AI doesn't just assist us the way a calculator does; it reconfigures us as we use it, and we reconfigure it in return. Drawing on Marshall McLuhan's insight that all media work us over completely, the conversation explores what it means when the medium isn't a message you can read — it's a transformation you can't unread. They also unpack the "productivity gap" widening between those operating with AI as an extension of their cognition and those still debating whether to let it past the gates. If the most capable AI-augmented work is indistinguishable from non-augmented work, what does detection even mean anymore? This episode doesn't resolve that tension — but it maps it in a way that might change how you see the conversation going forward.

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Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura

Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura

Host Bios:

Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU Bio
Sean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU Bio
Andrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures.

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What if thinking about the future isn't about predicting what will happen — but about mapping what could? In this episode of Modem Futura, Sean and Andrew dive deep into one of the most foundational tools in futures studies: the Futures Cone. Originally developed by Joseph Voros, the cone is a deceptively simple framework that helps individuals, organizations, and communities move beyond the comfortable illusion that tomorrow will just be a slightly improved version of today. Instead, it invites us to explore the full landscape of what might be — from the probable and plausible, all the way out to the possible and the genuinely preposterous.

The conversation traces the geometry of the cone layer by layer: from that familiar "projected future" where most of us live by default, through the probable and plausible, into the possible and the outer ring of the preposterous — a space that isn't meant to be dismissed, but treated as a productive boundary for creative thinking. Along the way, Sean and Andrew unpack the Dator-Clarke Line, the tension between expert knowledge and unbounded creativity, and why futures work insists on asking "what would we prefer?" — not just what seems inevitable.

Then things get wonderfully weird. A casual thought experiment about frogs and metamorphosis spirals into a genuinely fascinating exploration of interstellar travel, human hibernation, adaptive biology, and what it might mean to send pods of reconstituted human "goop" across the galaxy. It's exactly the kind of thinking the Futures Cone is built for: starting preposterous, and arriving somewhere surprisingly plausible. Whether you're new to futures thinking or deep in the practice, this episode is an invitation to give yourself permission to imagine beyond the straight line.

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Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura

Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura

Host Bios:

Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU Bio
Sean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU Bio
Andrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures.

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What happens when you dig through a box of old iPods and realize the tangled cables might be the least complicated thing you pull out? In this episode of Modem Futura, Sean and Andrew unpack—literally—a collection of vintage Apple devices, a $35 Kodak keychain camera, and a miniature Polaroid to explore a question that keeps getting bigger the more you sit with it: what are we quietly losing in the relentless push toward newer, faster, and more connected? The conversation moves from the satisfying click of a tactile scroll wheel to the uncomfortable reality that your entire digital library—music, photos, books—could vanish the moment a company flips a switch or you're no longer around to log in. Along the way, they wrestle with the paradox of abundance: why having access to every song ever recorded can leave you unable to choose a single one, and why younger generations may actually be better at navigating that ocean of options than those of us who remember the scarcity model. There's a thread here about ownership—real ownership, the kind where a device sits air-gapped in a drawer for a decade and still plays back exactly what you left on it. And there's a thread about craft, care, and the creeping "fast food-ification" of technology, where speed-to-market quietly erodes the things that once made our devices feel like they were made *for* us. It's a warm, funny, deeply human conversation about what it means to hold on—to objects, to memories, to intention—in a world that keeps asking you to stream, subscribe, and move on.

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Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura

Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura

Host Bios:

Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU Bio
Sean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU Bio
Andrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures.

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What does it actually look like to thrive — not just survive — in an era of rapid AI integration? In this episode, Sean and Andrew go behind the scenes on their  sold out workshop at ASU's 2026 FOLC Fest, designed for higher education educators navigating the messy, uncertain terrain of AI in teaching and learning. Rather than debating whether AI belongs in the classroom (a conversation they argue ended in November 2022), they focus on something more interesting: how do educators maintain agency, clarity, and purpose when the ground keeps shifting beneath them? The episode walks through two powerful but accessible thinking tools — the Futures Triangle, a foresight method developed by (the amazing) Sohail Inayatullah that maps the competing forces of pull, push, and weight shaping any change landscape, and the Intent Map, a values-driven framework from Jeffery Abbott and Andrew Maynard's book *AI and the Art of Being Human* that helps individuals articulate what matters most before momentum makes the decision for them. Anchored by two provocative 2035 headlines — one where AI tutors render faculty roles obsolete, and another where human-AI partnership produces the most critically thinking generation in history — the conversation becomes an invitation to stop reacting and start choosing. Along the way, Sean and Andrew explore the art of presenting, the beauty of failure, why sticky notes have overstayed their welcome in workshop culture, and why the most important metrics in education might be the ones you can't put a number on. This isn't an episode about mastering AI tools. It's about staying true to what matters to you.

ASU FOLC Fest Website and information [Web]

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Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura

Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura

Host Bios:

Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU Bio
Sean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU Bio
Andrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures.

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In this episode of Modem Futura, Sean and Andrew explore Isaac Asimov's remarkably prescient 1951 short story "The Fun They Had," a brief, brilliant tale set in 2155 where two children discover a paper book—an artifact from a forgotten era—and begin questioning everything about their own AI-driven, hyper-personalized education. Written decades before the personal computer existed, Asimov imagined a world where mechanical tutors deliver individually tailored lessons in isolation, and where the very idea of a human teacher seems absurd. What makes this story so compelling today is how closely it mirrors the promises—and tensions—of our current moment. As AI-powered learning tools proliferate, the conversation turns to what personalized education might gain and what it risks losing: the shared experiences of a classroom, the inspiration of a human mentor, the messy, emotional, irreplaceable dynamics of learning alongside others. Sean and Andrew unpack the story's deeper questions about the purpose of education—is it about efficiency and skill transfer, or something more fundamentally human?—and connect them to John Dewey's enduring framework of inquiry, communication, construction, and expression. The episode also wanders into the surprising resurgence of analog technologies—vinyl records, film cameras, iPods—and asks why, in an era of infinite digital choice, so many people are reaching for the constraints and tactile pleasures of older media. From the permanence of the printed word to the paradox of too much choice on Spotify, this conversation is an invitation to sit with a question Asimov posed over seventy years ago: in our rush to optimize learning and life, what kind of fun might we be leaving behind?

Read the short story: The Fun They Had (Issac Asimov, 1951)

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Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura

Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura

Host Bios:

Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU Bio
Sean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU Bio
Andrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures.

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Something unexpected is happening in the world of software: it's becoming personal again. In this episode of Modem Futura, Sean and Andrew explore the rapidly expanding phenomenon of vibe coding—the practice of describing what you want in plain language and letting a generative AI build it for you. What starts as a practical conversation about creating web apps and custom tools quickly opens into something much richer: a reflection on what it means when anyone, regardless of technical background, can conjure software into existence with a sentence or two. The hosts trace a surprising thread from the Commodore 64 and early BASIC programming of the late 1970s and 80s to today's AI-powered coding environments, finding echoes of that original thrill—the moment you realized you could make a machine do something it hadn't done before. Sean walks through real experiments he ran using Claude, including a horizon-scanning web app and a futures-oriented uncertainty matrix tool, both created from single natural-language prompts in seconds. But the conversation doesn't shy away from the tensions. What happens when code is generated faster than anyone can understand it? What are the security implications of prompt injection, inherited power, and AI agents running on your personal machine? And where is the line between liberating personal tool-making and professional-grade software that people's lives depend on? This episode is part celebration, part caution, and entirely an invitation to think about what software becomes when it's shaped not by engineers alone, but by anyone with a question and a good description of what they need.

Get the book: AI and the Art of Being Human (Pocket edition) [Amazon US]

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Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura

Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura

Host Bios:

Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU Bio
Sean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU Bio
Andrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures.

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What do kids actually think about the future they're inheriting? In this special episode, Sean and Andrew are joined by an unexpected guest: Freddie Leahy, Sean's almost-10-year-old son and aspiring paleontologist. What unfolds is a surprisingly nuanced conversation about artificial intelligence, creativity, and what it means to do meaningful work.

Freddie arrives with a question that might surprise some adults: Will AI take the job he wants? His dream of becoming a paleontologist—inspired by Jurassic Park's Alan Grant—isn't just about dinosaurs. It's about digging in the dirt, feeling fossils in his hands, doing the work himself. When Andrew suggests AI could help find more bones faster, Freddie pauses. He doesn't want to just control an AI that does the digging. He wants to be the one who discovers.

The conversation winds through familiar Modem Futura territory—AI image generation, the limits of large language models, the temptation to shortcut creative work—but seen through fresh eyes. Freddie has made AI art with his dad, but he notices something: "It never meets what you want." He wants to write his own stories, not have them generated. When offered the prospect of an AI friend who shares all his interests, he's suspicious: "That would be weird because nobody likes what I like."

Perhaps the most striking moment comes during Futures Improv, when asked about mind uploading. His answer is immediate: "I refuse." Why? Because at nine years old, why would you give up a body that still works?

This episode isn't about what adults think kids should know about technology. It's an invitation to listen to what the future already thinks about itself.

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Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura

Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura

Host Bios:

Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU Bio
Sean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU Bio
Andrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures.

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In this episode of Modem Futura, hosts Sean M. Leahy and Andrew Maynard dive deep into Pluribus, the provocative new Apple TV series from Vince Gilligan. Framed as an inversion of the classic zombie apocalypse, Pluribus imagines a world where humanity is absorbed into a peaceful, hyper-ethical hive mind—leaving only a handful of unassimilated individuals behind.

The conversation explores what makes Carol, the show's protagonist, such a divisive character. She's angry, resistant, and refuses to engage with the hive mind's vast collective intelligence. Sean and Andrew unpack the show’s central question: If everyone around you is happy, cooperative, and content, but you must surrender individuality to join them—would you? Their conversation explores autonomy versus collective well-being, consent in a post-human world, and whether happiness itself can become coercive. Along the way, they examine the show’s ethical tensions: a hive mind that cannot lie but can withhold information; a society that refuses violence, harvesting, or even agriculture; and a sustainability crisis resolved through unsettling—but rational—means.

The episode connects Pluribus to a lineage of science fiction touchstones including I Am Legend, Solaris, Soylent Green, and Star Trek’s Borg—while also reflecting on modern parallels such as AI systems, cultural conformity, and the seductive promise of frictionless living. Through moments of humor (the infamous “cuddle puddle”) and unease, the hosts wrestle with what it truly means to be human when individuality itself becomes negotiable.

If everyone around you was happy and they wanted you to join them, would you? And if you refused, who becomes the monster?

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Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura

Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura

Host Bios:

Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU Bio
Sean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU Bio
Andrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures.

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What does it mean to take the temperature of the world's anxieties? Each year, the World Economic Forum asks over a thousand experts across the globe to weigh what keeps them up at night—and the resulting Global Risks Report offers something more valuable than prediction: a map of collective concern. In this episode, Sean and Andrew dig into the 2026 report, which landed with striking timing as the opening weeks of 2026 seem determined to validate its most pressing warnings. Geoeconomic confrontation has rocketed to the top of short-term risks—up eight positions from last year—while misinformation and societal polarization follow close behind. But the long view tells a different story: environmental concerns dominate the ten-year horizon, with extreme weather, biodiversity loss, and critical changes to Earth's systems claiming the top spots. What makes this conversation particularly rich is the exploration of how different people see risk differently—younger respondents prioritize inequality and misinformation, while those over 40 fixate on geopolitical tensions. Regional perspectives diverge even more dramatically; AI risks that loom large in the US barely register in Brazil or Chile. The hosts wrestle with a fundamental tension: our brains evolved to handle immediate, visible threats, not slow-moving catastrophes or interconnected global systems. Reports like this serve as a kind of signal / trend analysis and foresight—a way to aggregate signals we can't perceive individually. The episode isn't about doom; it's an invitation to ask better questions about what these signals mean for you, your community, and the institutions that might still help us navigate what's coming.

WEF' 2026 Global Risk Report [web]

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Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura

Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura

Host Bios:

Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU Bio
Sean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU Bio
Andrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures.

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