The Future And You

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the October 23, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 32 minutes]

Stephen Euin Cobb is an author, futurist, magazine writer and host of the award-winning podcast The Future And You. A contributing editor for Space and Time Magazine; he has also been a regular contributor for Robot, H+, Grim Couture and Port Iris magazines; and he spent three years as a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen's Universe Magazine. He is an artist, essayist, game designer, transhumanist, and is on the Advisory Board of The Lifeboat Foundation. Stephen is the author of Indistinguishable from Magic: Predictions of Revolutionary Future Science as well as A Brief History of Predicting the Future.

Topic: Part TWO of our panel on Transhumanism.

Panelists include: Stephanie Osborn (space scientist and SF author), Dr. Ben Davis (nuclear physicist), Lillian Price (microbiologist in the final months of her doctoral work), Daniel M. Hoyt (programmer and SF writer), Sarah A. Hoyt (author and polyglot), Robert Hoyt (SF writer with a fresh BS in biology), me (your host, Stephen Euin Cobb), and Dr. Tedd Roberts (neuroscientist and researcher) as the panel's moderator.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the October 16, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 30 minutes] This is the second half of a discussion panel which was recorded before an audience on June 29, 2013 at the science fiction and fantasy convention LibertyCon in Chattanooga TN. The first half was in last week's episode.

Topic: Transhumanism. This is a panel discussion with eight participants--a mixture of scientists and science fiction writers.

Panelists include: Stephanie Osborn (space scientist and SF author), Dr. Ben Davis (nuclear physicist), Lillian Price (microbiologist in the final months of her doctoral work), Daniel M. Hoyt (programmer and SF writer), Sarah A. Hoyt (author and polyglot), Robert Hoyt (SF writer with a fresh BS in biology), me (your host, Stephen Euin Cobb), and Dr. Tedd Roberts (neuroscientist and researcher) as the panel's moderator.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the October 9, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 30 minutes] This is the first half of a discussion panel which was recorded before an audience on June 29, 2013 at the science fiction and fantasy convention LibertyCon in Chattanooga TN. The second half will be in next week's episode.

Anthony Thomas, M. Doc Geressy and Chuck Carte are our featured guests; with Stephen Euin Cobb as moderator.

Topic: Part TWO of New Media. The nature and effects of the many different newly-invented forms of media which have grown large thanks to the overwhelming popularity of the Internet--without which they could not exist. This includes: streaming TV, wiki's, facebook, podcasts, blogs, twitter, pintrest, and many other tools for sharing information digitally.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the October 2, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 32 minutes] This is the second half of a discussion panel recorded before an audience on June 1, 2013 at the science fiction and fantasy convention ConCarolinas in Charlotte NC. The first half is in last week's episode.

Anthony Thomas, M. Doc Geressy and Chuck Carte are our featured guests; with Stephen Euin Cobb as moderator.

Topic: "New Media" (as opposed to traditional media). An informal examination of the nature and effects of the many different newly-invented forms of media which have grown large thanks to the overwhelming popularity of the Internet--without which they could not exist. This includes: streaming TV, wiki's, facebook, podcasts, blogs, twitter, pintrest, and many other tools for sharing information digitally.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the September 25, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 37 minutes] This is the first half of a discussion panel recorded before an audience on June 1, 2013 at the science fiction and fantasy convention ConCarolinas in Charlotte NC. The second half of this panel will be in next week's episode.

Michael Nuschke (Retirement Futurist) is our featured guest.

Topic: Part TWO of Retirement planning in the age of the Singularity.

Michael Nuschke is a Professional Retirement Planner who is also a Futurist and Life-Extensionist. By combining his profession with his futurism he has written a report entitledThe End Of Retirement As We Know It. This report is available as a free pdf download from his website (www.retirementsingularity.com). I've read it and it's excellent. In my interview with Michael we discuss his report at length. We cover his assessment of how things are changing, and his advice which you can use to improve your personal future. As he says on his website: "I specialize in retirement income planning–how to ensure you don’t run out of money before you run out of life. This gets tricky if you live well past age 100 in good health."

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the September 18, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 35 minutes] This interview was recorded using Skype on August 31, 2013. This is the second half of his interview; the first half was in last week's episode.

Michael Nuschke (Retirement Futurist) is our featured guest.

Topic: Retirement planning in the age of the Singularity (Part One).

Michael Nuschke is a Professional Retirement Planner who is also a Futurist and Life-Extensionist. By combining his profession with his futurism he has written a report entitled The End Of Retirement As We Know It. This report is available as a free pdf download from his website (www.retirementsingularity.com). I've read it and it's excellent. In my interview with Michael we discuss his report at length. We cover his assessment of how things are changing, and his advice which you can use to improve your personal future. As he says on his website: "I specialize in retirement income planning–how to ensure you don’t run out of money before you run out of life. This gets tricky if you live well past age 100 in good health."

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the September 11, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 33 minutes] This interview was recorded using Skype on August 31, 2013. The first half will be presented in this week's episode, and the second half will be presented next week.

Frederik Pohl, one of the legends of science fiction, passed away just a few days ago on September 2, 2013. In memory of his life and work today's episode contains an interview he gave me back in 2010 shortly after he'd turned 90 years old.

Topics: How he and Arthur C. Clarke became friends many decades ago; and how in Arthur's declining years Arthur asked Fred to finish a book that he had started but could not complete. Fred's years working as a literary agent--during which he became Isaac Asimov's first agent, and sold Isaac's first novel: A Pebble in the Sky. His work as the editor of various magazines including Astonishing, Galaxy and If--which is when he bought Larry Niven's first few professional stories, and when he hired Judy-Lynn del Rey as his secretary at Galaxy Magazine even though she knew nothing about Science Fiction at the time. (This was long before she worked at Ballantine Books, married Lester del Rey, and became so influential at Ballantine that they put her in charge of an imprint and named it after her.) Miscellaneous topics include: how he came to write for Playboy Magazine; why he wrote under so many pseudonyms; his method of collaborating with other authors; and how he become Encyclopedia Britannica's first official authority on the Roman Emperor Tiberius; predicting the future using the Delphi Method; his co-founding ofThe Futurians; his nonfiction books: The Way the Future Was, Our Angry Earth, and Science as a Spectator Sport; the Americanization of the world (which he has witnessed by traveling to more than 50 different nations); his modest contribution to democracy in Moscow; how he was excluded from attending the very first WorldCon; and a few insights about his long-term friends: Donald A. Wollheim (the creator of DAW Books), andIsaac Asimov.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the September 4, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 61 minutes] This interview was recorded on January 30, 2010.

Frederik Pohl is a science fiction writer, and has been a book and magazine editor, as well as a poet, critic, literary agent and teacher. He edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine If, winning the Hugo for If three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.

Dr. Ben Davis (nuclear physicist and professor) is our featured speaker.

Topic: The Singularity, and some of the things which might prevent it from occurring.

Dr. Ben Davis earned his PhD in Nuclear Physics from the University of Notre Dame. For several years he then taught mathematics, programming, astronomy and physics. He now works in the biometrics industry. His personal interest include: futurism, skepticism, science fiction, and history.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the August 28, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 51 minutes] This is a presentation recorded before an audience at the SF&F convention LibertyCon in Chattanooga TN on June 29, 2013.

Catherine Asaro (theoretical physicist, author and SIGMA consultant), Stephanie Osborn (former NASA payload specialist and author) David L. Burkhead (who works at a scanning electron microscopy facility, and writes science fiction as well) and your host: Stephen Euin Cobb.

Topic: Nanotechnology. What is being done today and what it may produce in the future.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the August 21, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 53 minutes] This is a panel discussion recorded before an audience at the SF&F convention LibertyCon in Chattanooga TN on June 29, 2013.