Soonish
Episodes
Whose Private Mountain? Turning Corners, Episode 1
06 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Hello again, Soonish listeners! You might remember that in the final episode of Soonish last year, I said I'd be back in the podcast feed one last tim...
Preview: Turning Corners
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Hey Soonish listeners! I'm back in your podcast feed with some exciting news. I'm about to launch a new podcast called Turning Corners. It's full of ...
Final Episode: David Mindell on What It Takes to Power an Industrial Revolution
24 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David Mindell is a historian, an engineer, a startup founder, a venture investor—and now the author of The New Lunar Society: An Englightenment Guid...
What We're Losing If We Lose Public Media
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we're bringing you an episode of our sister Hub & Spoke show Rumble Strip, from producer Erica Heilman. It's a conversation with Jay Allison abo...
Toward a Psychedelic Future
30 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
My guest this week, Adele Getty, is the author of A Sense of the Sacred and an educator in the field of assisted psychedelic therapy. Together with he...
Well, We're in the Valley of Doom. Here Are Some Paths Forward.
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you listened to my previous episode, you’ll remember that I described four "valleys" or scenarios for how the 2024 presidential election could un...
Harris, Trump, and the Four Valleys
08 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why does every presidential race lately get described as "the most important election of our lifetimes"? Because it's true. In any election where Dona...
Introducing The Rabbis Go South from the Hub & Spoke Expo
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Don't worry, the next regular season of Soonish is still coming. But meanwhile I wanted to bring you something really special that I think you’ll li...
Welcome to Technofeudalism
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
I’ve been arguing on the show since 2019 that the companies that run the big technology platforms—Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the rest—have fa...
The Otherworldly Power of a Total Eclipse
18 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Looking Back at 50 Episodes of Soonish
19 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 to...
For the Love of Audio: It's the Hub & Spoke Radio Hour
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 Haddawa...
Bonus Episode: TASTING LIGHT Publication Day
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 wri...
Strange Newt Worlds
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
A Soundtrack for the Pandemic
21 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For most people, nightmares produce insomnia, exhaustion, and unease. For Graham Gordon Ramsay, a spate of severe nightmares in April 2020 developed i...
Can Albuquerque Make Room for Its Past and Its Future?
06 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last summer, a pair of murals celebrating New Mexico's landscape, heritage, and diversity appeared in Albuquerque's historic Old Town district. The la...
How Novartis Built a Hit Factory for New Drugs
12 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 mu...
How LEGO Learned to Click Again
26 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Art and Technology at Disney
12 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Soonish presents Part 2 of The Persistent Innovators, a miniseries I've been guest-producing and guest-hosting for Innovation Answered, Inn...
The Reinvention of Apple
29 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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-pro...
This Is How You Win the Time War
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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.Bu...
Goodbye, Google
25 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 qual...
Fusion! And Other Ways to Put the Adventure Back in Venture Capital
18 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Venture capital is the fuel powering most technology startups. Behind every future Google or Uber or Snapchat is a syndicate of venture firms hoping f...
Hope for Ultra-Rare Diseases
30 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 i...
Technology and Education After the Pandemic
03 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on education on schools around the world, often rendering in-classroom instruction too dangerous...
"We've Needed Something to Bring Us Together"
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
The Inventor of the Cell Phone Says the Future Is Still Calling
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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....
The End of the Beginning
15 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Soonish's six-month detour into electoral politics finishes where it started, with a conversation with our favorite futurist, Jamais Cascio. We talked...
American Reckoning, Part 2: A New Kind of Nation
12 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 a...
American Reckoning, Part 1: Civil Wars and How to Stop Them
09 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
After Trump, What Comes Next?
15 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Unpeaceful Transition of Power
24 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...
Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible: How One Futurist Frames the Pandemic
12 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Futurists—who sometimes prefer to be called scenario planners or foresight thinkers—specialize in helping the rest of us understand the big trends...
Making Moonrise
14 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 ri...
Election Dreams and Nightmares
31 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The moment in the voting booth when you put your pen to your ballot (or put your finger to the electronic touchscreen, as the case may be) is democrac...
The Great Blue Hill Heist
19 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this short bonus episode, hear the bizarre story of a college student who scaled a New England weather tower on a dare, stole a curious scientific ...
I Have Seen the Future of Displays
07 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Apple used the opening keynote presentation at its annual World Wide Developers Conference in San Jose in June to roll out the usual array of software...
How to Fix Social Media
24 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this year Soonish took on social media in an episode called A Future Without Facebook. In that show I explained my own decision to quit the tr...
The Art that Launched a Thousand Rockets
14 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The adjective “visionary” gets thrown around a lot, but it’s literally true of Chesley Bonestell and Arthur Radebaugh, the two illustrators feat...
A Future Without Facebook
22 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Every technology has its growing pains, but Facebook, at age 15, has matured into a never-ending disaster. Here at Soonish, I'm fed up, and I'm closin...
The Track Not Taken
09 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Meigs Elevated Railway—one of the world’s first monorail systems—looked like something out of a Jules Verne novel. But it was very real. In ...
When Minds and Machines Converge
01 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Can thought-power control the world outside our heads? Thanks to new brain-machine interface technology, the answer is yes. But the real question is w...
Making Music with Machines
27 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We can’t predict what kind of music people will want to make or hear in the future. But based on the sounds coming out of today's studios and clubs,...
Tomorrow, Today with Ministry of Ideas
02 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The way we picture the future is still based, in large measure, on the visions brought to life at the world’s fairs and international expositions th...
Sci-Fi That Takes Science Seriously
18 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The golden era of “hard” science fiction that respects the rules of actual science lasted from the 1940s to the 1960s. In the 1970s, demand for ha...
The Future Is Clear
17 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 2.07: What's ubiquitous but invisible, versatile yet temperamental, goopy when it's hot yet brittle when it's cold, as old as civilization yet...
Looking Virtual Reality In The Eye
05 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 2.06: The immersive, 3D environments of virtual reality aren’t science fiction any more, and they aren’t just for video games. In this epi...
A Space Shuttle Isn't Cool. You Know What's Cool? A Space Elevator (Soonish on Soonish)
15 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 2.05 of Soonish, the podcast, is all about Soonish, the book! Host Wade Roush interviews Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, the husband-and-wife team...
Back To The Futurists With Tamar Avishai
08 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 2.04 is a special crossover show featuring Tamar Avishai's The Lonely Palette, one of the founding shows in our new podcast collective, Hub &a...
Mapping the Future with Tim O'Reilly
24 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 2.03: For a sane, humane, and skeptical perspective on what’s happening to Silicon Valley and why our high-tech economy seems to be failing ...
Introducing Hub & Spoke
13 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 2.02: Big news! Soonish is a founding member of Hub & Spoke, a Boston-centric collective of smart, idea-driven podcasts. Together with the...
Shadows Of August: The Eclipse Road Trip Edition
14 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 2.01: The conflict in Charlottesville in August of 2017 showed that Americans are having a hard time figuring out how to represent the country...
Washington, We Have A Problem
03 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 1.10: Just in time for Independence Day 2017, it's a special politics edition of Soonish! With his attacks on judges and journalists, his atte...
A Tale Of Two Bridges
08 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 1.09: When Boston’s elegant Longfellow Bridge opened in 1907, it was innovative example of classical European bridge architecture adapted fo...
Hacking Time
11 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 1.08: Why do "productivity" tools like email, to-do lists, and calendars make so many of us feel miserable and overburdened? Why has...
Astropreneurs
20 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 1.07: More than 500 people have flown in space since Yuri Gagarin’s historic ride in 1961—and virtually every one of them has been a milit...
Origin Story
29 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 1.06: After in-depth episodes about movies, monorails, museums, manufacturing, and meat, the show goes meta and I talk about Soonish itself. H...
Meat Without The Moo
08 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 1.05: We meet people working to promote a range of alternatives to meat from livestock--including a cricket farmer, a researcher studying ways...
Future Factories, With Workers Built In
22 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 1.04: Six million manufacturing jobs have disappeared in the U.S. since 2000, and you've probably heard economists and politicians say "t...
Can Technology Save Museums?
08 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 1.03: Museum attendance declined steeply in the first decade of this century, according to a survey by the National Endowment for the Arts. Th...
Monorails: Trains Of Tomorrow?
25 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 1.02: Monorails first captured the public imagination as the "trains of the future" here in the U.S., thanks to projects like the Di...
How "2001" Got The Future So Wrong
11 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 1.01: This inaugural episode of Soonish is about the boldest vision of the future ever put down on film: Stanley Kubrick’s "2001: A Spa...
Coming Soon
10 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 1.00: A preview of coming attractions from Soonish, a new podcast about the future hosted by technology journalist Wade Roush, PhD. Each episo...