Robert Hooker (an Information Technology professional living in London) is our featured guest.

Topics: trends in England and Europe compared to the USA especially involving cell phones, Internet connections, and other technologies. Robert also talks about: the lack of national unity in the UK; bigotry and prejudice in Europe against non-European immigrants and against Eastern Europeans; how globalization is changing Europe (for good and bad); why the impact of China and India are large but completely different; and his observations of trends in North Africa based on the time he spend living in a suburb of Tunis, Tunisia.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 1, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 37 minutes]

Robert Hooker has a Bachelors in Cognitive Sciences  from the University of Chicago and a Masters in Sociology from the Open University in Britain. For most of the 1990s Robert worked first as a researcher in Artificial Intelligence at Northwestern University Institute for Learning Sciences (ILS) and then as Web Developer and Entrepreneur. While at  the Institute for Learning Sciences he worked with Virtual Reality, web based video delivery,  Internet learning and content indexing. Current he works for Fujitsu Services in the United Kingdom. He has lived in London for the last 10 years.

Tom Atwood (Editor-in-Chief of Robot Magazine) is our featured guest.

Topics: the latest in 3D displays for TV and for video games; self-fueling robots; robots in warfare now and in the near future; robots as smart weapons; robotic fighter jets; educational robots; robotic dance competitions; fighting methods used by TV battle robots; diversity of robotic body styles; and getting started in robotics without much money or without having to build your robot.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 24, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 32 minutes]

Robot Magazine covers every aspect of the rapidly exploding field of robots. It has 'how-to' for robot hobbyists, 'what's going on' for robot enthusiasts and 'what's innovative' for tech and engineering professionals. Strong on education, it offers parents, teachers and kids guidance on using and playing with the latest consumer, toy and hobby robots that serve as educational tools and recreational fun. Every issue is full of hundreds of full color photos of robotic fun, gee whiz and hands on experience.

Tom Atwood (Editor-in-Chief of Robot Magazine) is our featured guest.

Topics: the astounding progress being made in all areas of robotics such as: how vacuum cleaning robots are getting improved house-mapping abilities; what's happening in artificial intelligence for robots; trends in Japanese robots; the brilliant new way in which robots are being used in physical therapy for post-operative patients; and which needs to advance more to put robots to work in our homes as cooks, house cleaners, gardeners and laundry workers -- artificial intelligence or the basic mechanics of robotic bodies.

Tom Atwood also talks about his conversation with Sebastian Thrun of Stanford University, winner of the Second DARPA Grand Challenge, about how Sabastian's team programmed their car to win the robotic auto race. (The DARPA Grand Challenge is a series of very long -- some might say 'grueling' -- road races sponsored by DARPA in which all the participants are computer controlled motor vehicles. Not toy cars; but full-sized cars and trucks with no human driver.  DARPA is the Defence Advanced Research Project Agency: the organization that created the Internet.)

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 17, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 33 minutes]

Robot Magazine covers every aspect of the rapidly exploding field of robots. It has 'how-to' for robot hobbyists, 'what's going on' for robot enthusiasts and 'what's innovative' for tech and engineering professionals. Strong on education, it offers parents, teachers and kids guidance on using and playing with the latest consumer, toy and hobby robots that serve as educational tools and recreational fun. Every issue is full of hundreds of full color photos of robotic fun, gee whiz and hands on experience.

Tom Atwood (Editor-in-Chief of Robot Magazine) is our featured guest.

Topics: Robots are in a world-wide boom time. Hundreds of thousands of hobbyists are building robots. Competitive robot events draw Rock-Star-sized crowds and are doubling in attendance each year. High schools and colleges are using the building and programing of robots (from scratch and from kits) to get students enthused about science, math, logic, engineering, programming and many other crucial subjects. Open source collaboration is driving innovation in robotic software as well as hardware. Tom emphasizes how these learning benefits are also beginning to work their way into grade schools, and how all this learning forms a foundation for the future of the students and of our world.

Tom Atwood also describes an experiment in which rat brain tissue (grown in a culture dish) was wired to a robot and taught to successfully navigate an obstacle course.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 10, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 34 minutes]

Robot Magazine covers every aspect of the rapidly exploding field of robots. It has 'how-to' for robot hobbyists, 'what's going on' for robot enthusiasts and 'what's innovative' for tech and engineering professionals. Strong on education, it offers parents, teachers and kids guidance on using and playing with the latest consumer, toy and hobby robots that serve as educational tools and recreational fun. Every issue is full of hundreds of full color photos of robotic fun, gee whiz and hands on experience.

James Maxey (author of the Dragon Age fantasy series and Nobody Gets the Girl) is our featured guest.

Topics: trends in medicine and the possibility that cancer may someday become completely curable. Privacy vs life-logging, twitter and the incessant text-messaging some people do about the trivial minutia of their daily lives. James suggests that 'When Orwell wrote in 1984 about people being watched by their TVs, what he didn't understand about the human condition is that a lot of people wanted the TV to watch them.' The compulsion of Googling one's own name, as well as  time travel paradoxes and human longevity.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 3, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 47 minutes]

James Maxey is the author of the Dragon Age fantasy series which includes the novels Bitterwood, Dragonforge, and Dragonseed. Set a thousand years in the future, after the fall of our modern civilization, in a world dominated by the intelligent dragons we created through genetic engineering. Humans are reduced to slaves, and the remnants of long forgotten nanotechnology make the world a wondrous place of magic.

James Maxey (author of the Dragon Age fantasy series and Nobody Gets the Girl) is our featured guest.

Topics: the current search for other earths and what effect their discovery might have on people: the demise of circus freaks as professional performers; and (despite James' long-term atheism) his fascination with Angels, both in their original source material and in the popular culture.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the May 27, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 39 minutes]

James Maxey is the author of the Dragon Age fantasy series which includes the novels Bitterwood, Dragonforge, and Dragonseed. Set a thousand years in the future, after the fall of our modern civilization, in a world dominated by the intelligent dragons we created through genetic engineering. Humans are reduced to slaves, and the remnants of long forgotten nanotechnology make the world a wondrous place of magic.

Also in this episode we begin a 12 part serialization of a complete story from Jim Baen's Universe Magazine. The story is the Hugo Award nominated Article of Faith, written by Mike Resnick and read by Walt Boyes.

James Maxey (author of the Dragon Age fantasy series and Nobody Gets the Girl) is our featured guest.

Topics: the various ways our modern civilization might come to an end (all the usual suspects along with  total economic collapse); disruptive technologies such as the large scale use of cheap solar cells which could lead to the abandonment of the electric power grid; how the differences between men and women may affect their acceptance of the robotic husbands and wives which will become available within a decade or two; life-sized anatomically-correct sex dolls of today and the 2007 movie, Lars and the Real Girl, which co-stars one such doll.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the May 20, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 35 minutes]

James Maxey is the author of the Dragon Age fantasy series which includes the novels Bitterwood, Dragonforge and Dragonseed. Set a thousand years in the future -- after the fall of today's civilization, in a world dominated by the intelligent dragons we created through genetic engineering -- humans are reduced to pets and slaves, and the remnants of long forgotten nanotechnology make the world a place of wondrous magic.

Aliese, a college student, is today's featured guest.

Topics: trends in college in general, as well as in classes, dorm life, students and teachers. Also how personal computers and cell phones improve or degrade the learning experience. As well as YouTube, Facebook, Charlie Chaplin and wedding photography.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the May 13, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 38 minutes]

Aliese is studying for a degree in photography and fine arts, and has completed one year at a school with about 1,000 students.

Stephen Euin Cobb is today's featured guest. (This is the second half of the experiment in which the questions I normally pose to others I ask of myself.)

Topics: Why I am an atheist and why I am not an anti-theist; my insistance that there is a rapidly growing need for a new and different kind of tolerance, greater than any this world has ever seen before; how this universe will end, and why I think we will someday engineer other universes; why past predictions of the future have always been so wrong; the probability that we will invent faster-than-light travel; and my estimation of the probability of The Singularity.

Also described are: why I started doing this show, why I chose the future as my topic, and how doing this show for three years has completely re-written my understanding of the future.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the May 6, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 34 minutes]

Stephen Euin Cobb is an author, futurist and the host of the award-winning podcast The Future and You. He is also a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen's Universe Magazine, the online magazine from Baen Books. His articles have also appeared in Space and Time Magazine, H+ Magazine and >[gRiM]<>[cOuTuRe]< magazine. Within Second Life (as Boc Cryotank) he is a photographer and photojournalist. He has invented several games, the most popular being Death Stacks for which there is an annual tournament held each summer in Charlotte NC. He is also an artist, essayist, transhumanist, and is on the Advisory Board of The Lifeboat Foundation.

News: The Kepler mission to discover earth-like planets will radio its results to earth only once every thirty days. (NASA has not announced when this first report will be sent.  Possibly late May to mid June 2009) During Kepler's first 30 days of watching 100,000 stars, it will discover planets which orbit their star in ten days or less; as well as about half of the planets which orbit their star in fifteen days or less. In its second report Kepler will identify planets which orbit in less than 20 days, and about half of those that orbit in more than 20 days but less than 30 days. Every monthly report will increase, by a specific number of days, the orbital period of those planets discovered. But since the statistical probability of any planet crossing the face of its star diminishes with the size of its orbit, each of Kepler's monthly reports will contain fewer and fewer new planets. The first month will have, by far, the most.  Progessive reports will include planets in wider and wider orbits until the orbits of earthlike planets are (hopefully) revealed later in the three and a half year mission.

John Ringo (New York Times best selling novelist with over two million books in print) is today's featured guest.

Topics: Smart missiles smaller than insects; military tanks becoming robots; personal headup displays for soldiers; experiments with brain implants for soldiers; war going open-source; Chinese experiments with warfare in low earth orbit; the never-ending utility of bayonets; the bizarre fact that there is no such thing as a Chinese journalist; and the possibility that we will develop faster than light travel. He also describes his worry that a future teenager huddled in his mother's basement may write a biological virus which will wipe out all of humanity. 

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the April 22, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 35 minutes]

Translated into seven languages, John Ringo's novels range from science fiction to a mix of military and political thrillers. Always outspoken, never dull and sometimes controversial, he has been an op-ed writer for the New York Post and a guest commentator on TV for Fox News. An avid essayist, his website contains many essays he has written on a wide variety of topics. By the time he graduated high school, John Ringo had lived in, or visited, 23 countries and attended 14 schools. A former paratrooper in the army airborne, he has enjoyed cave diving, rock climbing, repelling, hunting, and spear fishing.

News: Your host has been granted official press credentials for World Future 2009 in Chicago (July 17 to 19, 2009). This is the annual convention of the World Futurist Society (of which I'm a member). Hundreds of professional futurists are expected to attend and dozens are scheduled to speak. Press credentials will allow me to gather live interviews and collect business cards for phone interviews which can be done later.

John Ringo (New York Times best selling novelist with over two million books in print) is today's featured guest.

Topics: Specific examples of the tens of thousands of robots in use in war right now and how they are transforming the methods and nature of fighting for the individual soldiers on the ground; how this transformation will change the wars of the future; and the longstanding psychology in the US military that is driving this robotic transformation. Also, anecdotes about the years he went to grade school in Iran; the summer camp he went to in Switzerland; and some of his other travels around the world as a child and teenager.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the April 15, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 36 minutes]

Translated into seven languages, John Ringo's novels range from science fiction to a mix of military and political thrillers. Always outspoken and sometimes controversial, he has been an op-ed writer for the New York Post and a guest commentator on TV for Fox News. An avid essayist, his website contains many essays he has written on a wide variety of topics. By the time he graduated high school, John Ringo had lived in, or visited, 23 countries and attended 14 schools. A former paratrooper in the army airborne, he has enjoyed cave diving, rock climbing, repelling, hunting and spear fishing.

John Ringo (New York Times best selling novelist with over two million books in print) is today's featured guest.

Topics: Anecdotes about his appearances on TV for Fox News in the years following The 9/11 Attacks; how it is that he is the only person to use the term Euro-Wiener on national TV; the terrible affect the economic crisis has had on the publishing industry; rumors that three of his novels are in the works to become major motion pictures, and one is in talks to become a first-person-shooter style game; and the changes he would make to the US Income Tax code.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the April 8, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 36 minutes]

Translated into seven languages, John Ringo's novels range from science fiction to a mix of military and political thrillers. Always outspoken and sometimes controversial, he has been an op-ed writer for the New York Post and a guest commentator on TV for Fox News. An avid essayist, his website contains many essays he has written on a wide variety of topics. By the time he graduated high school, John Ringo had lived in, or visited, 23 countries and attended 14 schools. A former paratrooper in the army airborne, he has enjoyed cave diving, rock climbing, repelling, hunting, and spear fishing.

News: The Kepler Mission to find earth-like planets orbiting other stars, was launched on March 6, 2009 and will begin its search a few weeks from now in early May.  Estimates of the number of earth-like planets it will discover during it's 3-1/2 year mission vary from zero to over 400. What's less talked about is the number of NOT earth-like planets it will discover. My own personal guess is that it will discover NOT earth-like planets at a rate of better than one per hour--maybe a lot better. If you would, email your estimates to me (steve [ at ] thefutureandyou . com)

Shaun Farrell (writer, actor, and award-winning podcaster) is today's featured guest.

Topics: online publishing verses paper publishing; the rise in small presses; the number of new readers is increasing; fiction sales are increasing; trends in podcasting and narrow-casting; the economy and personal debt; Connor his new baby; and the closing of Realms of Fantasy Magazine.

BTW: A few days after this interview was recorded, the situation at Realms of Fantasy Magazine turned around. Hearing the magazine was going to close, Tir Na Nog Press made an offer to buy it. The offer was accepted, so the magazine will be reopened this summer.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the April 1, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 42 minutes]

Shaun Farrell has has interviewed more than 100 speculative fiction authors and actors; most of these interviews can be heard on his podcast: Adventures in Scifi Publishing, which (like this show) has won a Parsec Award.

Based in Southern California, Shaun owns Singularity Audio, which provides podcast consultation, creates book promos, edits audio and develops new podcasts. He is also a contributing writer for Gateworld podcast; producer and content manager for The New England Fights! podcast; and an actor in the feature film Death Dress, where he plays a serial killer. Magazines he has written for include Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld and Raygun Revival.

Shaun Farrell (writer, actor, and award-winning podcaster) is today's featured guest.

Topics: Shaun's interview with Ray Bradbury, and others, such as the actors from Stargate Atlantis: Joe Flanigan, David Hewlett and Jewel Staite (who also played the ship's mechanic on the TV show Firefly and in the movie Serenity). Trends in publishing: both print and electronic (such as involving the Amazon Kindle). Trends in acting, and why your look matters far more to a talent agent than your ability to act.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 25, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 46 minutes]

Shaun Farrell has interviewed more than 100 speculative fiction authors and actors; most of these interviews can be heard on his podcast: Adventures in Scifi Publishing, which (like this show) has won a Parsec Award.

Based in Southern California, Shaun owns Singularity Audio, which provides podcast consultation, creates book promos, edits audio, and develops new podcasts. He is also a contributing writer for Gateworld podcast; producer and content manager for The New England Fights! podcast; and an actor in the feature film Death Dress, where he plays a serial killer. Magazines Shaun has written for include Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld and Raygun Revival.

News in this episode: H+ Magazine has redesigned its website. In addition to articles written specifically for the magazine, it now offers late breaking news and videos.

David Drake (author of over 60 novels of science fiction and fantasy) is today's featured guest.

Topics include: his opinion of the Amazon Kindle; his improving opinion of the future of electronic publishing; the collapse of the Borders Books Store chain, which occurred before the economic down turn; and why he urged Jim Baen into ask Eric Flint to be the first Editor-in-Chief of what has become the widely popular online magazine called Jim Baen's Universe.

Working with Newt Gingrich is also topic. Specifically how it came about that David Drake and Jim Baen helped Newt Gingrich write a World War Two thriller-type novel named 1945; why the political climate during the book's release prompted the media to universally pan the book; and how this storm of negative reviews nearly put Baen Books out of business.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 18, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 38 minutes]

David Drake is an author of science fiction and fantasy, and is widely considered one of the premier authors of the military science fiction sub-genre. He has written over 60 books some of which are in his Hammer's Slammers series of military science fiction, his Lord of the Isles series of fantasy novels, and his newer Republic of Cinnabar Navy series.

David graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Iowa, majoring in history and Latin. His studies at Duke University School of Law were interrupted for two years by the U.S. Army, where he served as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam and Cambodia. After finishing law school, he spent eight years as Assistant Town Attorney of Chapel Hill, NC. In 1980 he resigned and drove a city bus part-time for a year while doing more writing. Since 1981 he's been a full time writer. Some of his novels are available for free download in the Baen Free Library.

For relaxation David translates ancient books from the Roman Empire from their original Latin into English, many of which can be read on his website.

News in this episode: CNN's sad and somewhat pathetic confusion over which way the Earth rotates and the direction satellites orbit the Earth, as depicted in the animated graphic for their March 13, 2009 report on the orbiting space junk which temporarily endangered the International Space Station. A confusion which may result from their layoff, three months earlier, of their entire Science and Technology reporting team, including their Senior Science Reporter, Miles O'Brian.

David Drake (author of over 60 novels of science fiction and fantasy) is today's featured guest.

Topics include: How blatantly morality and ethics must be depicted in fiction, and which self-appointed thought-police will jump on you if you do not toe-the-line. The unknown risks of the experiment now known as the Baen Free Library, and Jim Baen's other efforts to innovate within the publishing industry. David Drake also talks about: Rudyard Kipling; Project Gutenberg; Samuel Johnson, and his biographer James Boswell; as well as the power and value of online Search.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 11, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 41 minutes]

David Drake is an author of science fiction and fantasy, and is widely considered one of the premier authors of the military science fiction sub-genre. He has written over 60 books some of which are in his Hammer's Slammers series of military science fiction, his Lord of the Isles series of fantasy novels, and his newer Republic of Cinnabar Navy series.

David graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Iowa, majoring in history and Latin. His studies at Duke University School of Law were interrupted for two years by the U.S. Army, where he served as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam and Cambodia. After finishing law school, he spent eight years as Assistant Town Attorney of Chapel Hill, NC. In 1980 he resigned and drove a city bus part-time for a year while doing more writing. Since 1981 he's been a full time writer. Some of his novels are available for free download in the Baen Free Library.

For relaxation David Drake translates ancient books from the Roman Empire from their original Latin into English, many of which can be read on his website.

News in this episode: The Spring 2009 issue of H+ Magazine is available. H+ magazine is dedicated to an intelligent and informed exploration of the future, especially as relates to transhumanism and the singularity. This issue contains more than two dozen articles about the future, one entitled Singularity 101 which is an interview with Vernor Vinge (the mathematician who first suggested the idea of the Singularity in 1993, and who has been a guest on the April 8, 2006 and May 1, 2006 episodes of The Future And You).

Stefano Vaj (Author, futurist and transhumanism activist) is today's featured guest. (This is the second half of his interview.)

Topics include: The state and health of Transhumanism worldwide; his worry that some people are watering down transhumanism to gain acceptance from mainstream culture or to make it more Politically Correct; his expectations about the future of human longevity, and the political forces needed to bring it to fruition. And he describes some of the powerful political and religious forces that are trying to prevent transhumanist goals, such as Life Extension.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 4, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 39 minutes]

Stefano Vaj is author of the book Biopolitics of the New Paradigm which covers the biotechnological areas of transhumanism. He is also: a public speaker fluent in several languages; on the Board of Directors of the Italian Transhumanist Association; an Italian lawyer with offices in Milan, Italy and Brussels, Belgium; an Architect of the Order of Cosmic Engineers; and an active contributor to the Hplus2, Extropy and World Transhumanist Association discussion boards. (Though fluent in several languages, his own blog and his books are written in Italian and not yet available in English.)

Stefano Vaj (Author, futurist and transhumanism activist) is today's featured guest. (This is the first half of his interview.)

Topics include: Why transhumanism is taken seriously by the Italian public and the Italian press (as opposed to the American public and American press which often view transhumanism as a delusional fantasy). Why Europeans do not share the American view that Intellectuals are outside the loop in their ivory towers and are therefore unimportant. The influence of the Catholic Church in public and political life in Italy, and as the main opponent to transhumanism. How politicians in Europe use fear of transhumanist ideas as a tool to get more votes. What Stefano does as a transhumanism activist, and what listeners can do in their own lives and in their own ways if they wish to help this cause too. He also talks about the new Singularity University, and the new transhumanist periodical, H+ Magazine.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 25, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 44 minutes]

Stefano Vaj is author of the book Biopolitics of the New Paradigm which covers the biotechnological areas of transhumanism. He is also: a public speaker fluent in several languages; on the Board of Directors of the Italian Transhumanist Association; an Italian lawyer with offices in Milan, Italy and Brussels, Belgium; an Architect of the Order of Cosmic Engineers; and an active contributor to the Hplus2, Extropy and World Transhumanist Association discussion boards. (Though fluent in several languages, his own blog and his books are written in Italian and not yet available in English.)

News in this episode: [1] Google's new Latitude lets you see the location of your friends on Google maps using the GPS in their phone, and lets you immediately contact them with IM, SMS or a phone call. [2] Google has made one million public domain books freely available for reading on iPhones.

Kim Stanley Robinson, the best selling and award-winning science fiction author is today's featured guest.

Topics include: Kim Stanley Robinson describes his reaction to being chosen as Guest of Honor for the 2010 World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne Australia. He also describes the benefits and challenges of the January 17, 2009 personal appearance he did in Second Life.

He also explains his conviction that we will never develop artificial intelligence, or the singularity, or mind-uploading. But he enthusiastically agrees with the desirability of increasing human longevity as much as possible, even if that means centuries, and even if it throws a monkey wrench into population control. He equates increasing longevity with decreasing human suffering. However, he doubts that an indefinate lifespan will come soon enough for anyone alive today.

Earth's current population, he says, may be the result of an Oil Bubble, and may be unsustainable after we run out of oil. He also explains why some people may be disappointed concerning the relationship they have with their robots in the future, since they will watch their machine for some glimmer of personality but will not find it.

He also talks about his involvement with the Clarion Writer's Workshop. About his teaching there this summer; about his teaching there once before in 1988; about being a student there in 1975; about the teaching methods used at Clarion; and about how, when it was forced to relocate, he helped Clarion find a new home at his alma mater (UCSD).

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 18, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 80 minutes]

Kim Stanley Robinson's writings have won the Hugo, the Nebula, the Asimov, the John W. Campbell, the Locus, and the World Fantasy Awards. He has a Bachelors degree in literature, a Masters in English, and a PhD. also in English. He considers science fiction to be one of the most powerful of all literary forms, which explains why his doctoral thesis was titled The Novels of Philip K. Dick.

Probably best known for his Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars); his other novels include: Fifty Degrees Below, Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and most recently, Sixty Days and Counting (which describes the first year of a new and innovative environmentalist president, and may be becoming historical fiction). His newest novel is called Galileo's Dream but will not be released in the US until January of 2010.

News in this episode: As many as 50 planets like the Earth are expected to be discovered during the next three years. They will be discovered by the Kepler orbiting telescope, which will begin it's search a few days after NASA launches it on March 5, 2009. As a side result it will also locate many thousands, or even tens of thousands, of planets not like the earth.

Jerry Pournelle (author, journalist, editor, technology columnist, and military textbook writer) is today's featured guest. (This is the third and final portion of his two-hour long interview.)

Topics today include: Why political debates are not debates, why the U.S. electoral college was devised, and why the 1787 Congress was more successful by being a closed-door session. Comments on the Cray-1 supercomputer; the remarkable fact that Moore's Law has held so long and still seems to be going strong; and what he tried to accomplish in his long-running column in the iconic computer magazine Byte. His observation that today's computer hardware has become so powerful that our software has not kept up; and his feeling that, 'The next big step will be to make programming obsolete.' The possibility that electronic piracy is what's killing the publishing industry, and his ideas on the possibilities of an 'Enhanced Electronic Book.' The advantages of space-based solar energy compared to ground-based; and a few comments on Escape from Hell: his and Larry Niven's sequel to Inferno.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 11, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 48 minutes]

Doctor Jerry Pournelle has written more than thirty novels and at least thirteen books of non-fiction. More than a dozen of his novels, he coauthored with his friend Larry Niven, including The Mote in God's Eye, Lucifer's Hammer, Footfall, Inferno; and their new sequel to Inferno: Escape From Hell.

Novels, however, have been only a portion of Jerry Pournelle's work. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he acquired Master's degrees in both experimental statistics and systems engineering, and Doctorates in both psychology and political science. He co-wrote a military textbook called The Strategy of Technology which was required reading at West Point and the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He helped to write a portion of Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Address concerning a missile defense system which the media at the time enjoyed making fun of and calling Star Wars, since they believed the technology needed to shoot down incoming missiles with our own missiles was impossible. He worked in operations research at Boeing, The Aerospace Corporation, and North American Rockwell Space Division. He was founding President of the Pepperdine Research Institute. He was campaign manager for Congressman Barry Goldwater, Jr., as well as for Mayor Sam Yorty. And he was a columnist for Byte Magazine beginning in 1982.

News Item: A new university dedicated specifically to teaching about the technological singularity was announced on February 3, 2009. Singularity University will be housed at NASA's Ames base in California and will begin classes this summer. It is the brainchild of Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis, and has the backing of NASA and Google.

Jerry Pournelle (author, journalist, editor, technology columnist, and military textbook writer) is today's featured guest. (This is the second portion of our two-hour interview. The third and final portion will be provided next week.)

Topics today include: How he contributed to President Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Address in 1980, and became part of Reagan's group of advisers concerning the Strategic Defence Initiative (which Ted Kennedy, by the way, dubbed Star Wars because he did not believe it would ever be possible to shoot down an incoming missile with one of our own missiles). And how this lead directly to the Patriot Missile and other missiles which routinely do the impossible by routinely shooting down incoming missiles.

Laser-based warfare: including one proposal that would turn Grand Coulee Dam into a space-based weapon of immense power and very nearly global reach. A weapon so powerful that only one would be needed in a war.

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, which states that, 'In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals which the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.' Doctor Pournelle explains and gives examples.

He also mentions working with: Buzz Aldrin, Robert Heinlein, Greg Bear, Jim Baen, Larry Niven, Poul Anderson, Ben Bova, and Dean Ing. He describes a fundamental problem he sees with today's space suits; and talks of Patton and MacArthur, military theory, teacher's unions, and NASA.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 4, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 47 minutes]

Doctor Jerry Pournelle has written more than thirty novels and at least thirteen books of non-fiction. More than a dozen of his novels, he coauthored with his friend Larry Niven, including The Mote in God's Eye, Lucifer's Hammer, Footfall, Inferno; and their new sequel to Inferno: Escape From Hell.

Novels, however, have been only a portion of Jerry Pournelle's work. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he acquired Master's degrees in both experimental statistics and systems engineering, and Doctorates in both psychology and political science. He co-wrote a military textbook called The Strategy of Technology which became required reading at West Point and the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He worked in operations research at Boeing, The Aerospace Corporation, and North American Rockwell Space Division. He was founding President of the Pepperdine Research Institute. He was campaign manager for Congressman Barry Goldwater, Jr., as well as for Mayor Sam Yorty. And he was a columnist for Byte Magazine beginning in 1982.

News Note: Last week, in the January 28 2009 episode of this show, Jerry Pournelle mentioned his battle with a brain tumor, described the annoyances of his radiation treatment, and reported that he is now cancer-free.

Jerry Pournelle (author, journalist, editor, technology columnist, and military textbook writer) is today's featured guest.

Topics include: Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Larry Niven and other authors he has been friends with; how the downfall of the Soviet Union was an engineered event, planned decades in advance, which worked exactly as planned (and specifically what that plan was); how he orchestrated the political campaigns of Barry Goldwater, Jr., and Sam Yorty; his friends and involvement in the Survivalist Movement, and his being editor of the magazine Survive which was closely allied with the magazine Soldier of Fortune; political stories from The Cold War and Mutual Assured Destruction; a few words about his and Larry Niven's new novel Escape from Hell; the difficulties of his chemotherapy; the good news that he is now cancer free.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the January 28, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 65 minutes]

Doctor Jerry Pournelle has written more than thirty novels and at least thirteen books of non-fiction. More than a dozen of his novels, he coauthored with his friend Larry Niven, including The Mote in God's Eye, Lucifer's Hammer, Footfall, Inferno; and their new sequel to Inferno: Escape Fom Hell.

Novels, however, have been only a portion of Jerry Pournelle's work. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he acquired Master's degrees in both experimental statistics and systems engineering, and Doctorates in both psychology and political science. He cowrote a military textbook called The Strategy of Technology which was required reading at West Point and the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He helped to write a portion of Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Address concerning a missile defense system which the media at the time enjoyed making fun of and calling Star Wars, since they believed the technology needed to shoot down incoming missiles with our own missiles was impossible. He worked in operations research at Boeing, The Aerospace Corporation, and North American Rockwell Space Division. He was founding President of the Pepperdine Research Institute. And he was a columnist for Byte Magazine beginning in 1982.

Alan Dean Foster (author of over 100 novels of science fiction and fantasy and noted world traveler) is today's featured guest.

Many of this interview's topics were made possible only because of Alan's longstanding enthusiasm for traveling to places tourists rarely go. He seeks the places where wildlife is still unspoiled; and where the ancient ways that predate writing still exist. He knows they are fading rapidly, and wants to see them before they are gone forever.

Topics include: how cell phones are changing even the third world with amazing speed; primitive cultures accepting technology, and leapfrogging passed the intermediate technologies; the rise of ebooks overseas, as well as how traditional publishers may watch their income evaporate when people buy ebooks online directly from the authors, which would cut publishers out of the loop; how policing oceanic piracy is forcing the naval ships of nations which are normally enemies to cooperate, and how this may build relationships of respect: a precursor to trust.

He also shares some personal anecdotes: about writing movie novelizations such as Aliens 1, 2 and 3--and why he didn't write number 4; how he met Diana Rigg (who played Emma Peel on The Avengers) as well as Julie Newmar (who played the original Catwoman on Batman); his trip with James Gurney (author of Dinotopia and illustrator for National Geographic) who joined him on travels through Malta, Tunisia, Morocco, Dakar and Gibraltar.

He also described his intention to travel to the Western Indian Ocean, which is part of the area threatened by the pirate's that have been in the news so much lately for hijacking cruise ships and oil tankers and holding everyone aboard hostage, sometimes for many months.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the January 21, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 64 minutes]

While most of his novels involve worlds he has created himself, such as those in his Commonwealth series and Spellsinger series, and those in his various trilogies such as The Damned, The Taken and Icerigger, a portion of his time is spent writing novelizations of successful movies and TV shows. Examples include: the first three Aliens movies, The Chronicles of Riddick, Outland, Clash of the Titans, Starman, The Thing, Alien Nation, Transformers, The Last Starfighter, and the first Star Wars novelization, which he co-wrote with George Lucas.

The quality and extent of this body of work won him the 2008 Grand Master award from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.

Doctor Bob Boan (scientist and author) is today's featured guest.

Dr. Boan's work has involved US Government space programs for the intelligence departments, but he has also done work for NASA and for commercial communications.

He is coauthor (along with Doctor Travis S. Taylor) of the book: An Introduction to Planetary Defense: A Study of Modern Warfare Applied to Extra-Terrestrial Invasion. This book makes a serious and scientifically rigorous analysis of exactly how to defend Earth against an attack from space. Today that would mean from an alien force, but eventually this might mean human forces which have been deployed into space.

John Ringo (the New York Times, Bestselling Military SF Author) called it: '...the definitive book on the defense of the Earth against a potential alien incursion... the book also serves as an important primer on the potential future of warfare on every level. It is tightly grounded in current day realities of war and extrapolates thoughtfully but closely about future potentials. It should be on the reading list of anyone who is serious about national security and the future of war.'

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the January 14, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 34 minutes]

In today's interview Dr. Boan says: 'Our schools are based on conformity, but we need to encourage greater creative thinking. Let the kids color the cows purple and draw jewelry on them; they'll learn cows don't wear jewelry soon enough.' And he suggests: beyond identity theft, we need to be aware of 'personality theft:' literally the specific details of who we are: the details of our lives, and what makes us unique.

Dr. Boan also describes why he thinks: China may be the place where the next big software security innovation gets developed; software development is being pushed most by video games; and nuclear power's bad rap is not only unjustified, it is hurting our future by ensuring our continued dependence on foreign oil; software has only begun to change our lives to the extent that it will; there are three areas that are already important but which will soon become exceedingly important: data archiving, data retrieval, and data security. He also talks about: robotics, AI, Virtual Reality, and movies with virtual actors rather than real ones.

News in this episode: Kim Stanley Robinson (the bestselling author) will be making a personal appearance inside Second Life at noon Pacific time on Saturday, January 17, 2009. He will be speaking and answering questions in the Grand Meeting Room inside the Central Nexus Building in the City State of Extropia Core. The event will be hosted by Sophrosyne Stenvaag. Your host plans to be there taking pictures.

Phillis George and Billy George are today's featured guests. Both Phyllis and Billy have worked in banking for many years, however, this interview is NOT about the current bailouts and other well publicized banking debacles. Those thoroughly examined topics can be left to the army of other interviewers. This interview is about the trends within all of banking, and especially at your neighborhood bank, and how these trends are changing your bank into what it will eventually become.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the January 7, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 68 minutes]

Topics include: how Billy George discovered a crook working inside his bank who was stealing money from his account; why the  scam called Check Kiting is becoming impossible in more and more locations; methods of sending money--without a check--to people in the US and Mexico; circumstances in which fear over identity theft make no sense; and why sometimes the people you think will be early adopters resist new technologies, and those you think will resist already love it.

Also, how some banks are dumping their problem customers in order to improve customer service for those who are not a problem; why your check sometimes clears the bank while you're still talking to the merchant you just handed it to; why banks like their employees to bring their cell phones to work, as long as they don't use them very much; the benefits of online banking which go way beyond saving money; as well as credit cards, debit cards, smart cards, and cards with computer chips inside them.

All this, combined with other misunderstandings about banking which cost people money. For example: many people don't understand that a loan officer's job is to sell them a loan. They are no different than a car dealer. Their job to sell the customer the loan that is best for the bank, not best for the customer.

Rhonda Leigh Jones (author of erotic romance novels, and just back from a year living in and participating in the Eastern European culture of Romania) is today's featured guest.

Sex, BDSM, and life in Romania verses American are the general topics of the interview. Specifics topics include: the sexiness of the Joker from Batman; sexual repression within our culture; surprises from living a year in Romania; how her novels differ from the BDSM movies The Story of O and The Secretary; other alternative lifestyles such as polyamory; many people who are dating and in relationships rarely talk about sex, and when they do, rarely describe what they actually want; differences between occasional kink and lifestyle kink; people consider murder less a crime than rape even though it's possible to recover from rape but not from murder; that goth is mostly about music and only secondarily about style; and the goth scene in Romania.  Also, how Romania differs from America in terms of music, sexual attitudes (both kinky and non), clothing styles, culture, employment, crime, living conditions (it being a former communist nation), even how Romanians differ from Americans when just standing in line.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the December 31, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 67 minutes]

The Maestro's Butterfly and The Maestro's Maker are the first two novels in her erotic romance series which explores the dark side of eroticism using Vampires as some of the principal characters and the erotic elements of BDSM. Both novels are now also available as downloadable audio books. (Her publisher Ravenous Romance released her second novel only days after this interview was recorded.) Rhonda Leigh Jones has a Bachelors in English, and is a former newspaper reporter.

Sound-bites from the interview: 'There is so much kink out there.'

'Sexual attitudes in Romania are simultaneously more open and less open.'

'My novels are for people who like the dark side of eroticism; these are kinky vampires. It's an exploration of power dynamics: of domination and submission, and also of corporal punishment. There's a lot of corporal punishment in my writing.'

'People, if they are like me, get into BDSM because they don't skydive. A little bit of fear is the ultimate aphrodisiac.'

R.U. Sirius (Editor-In-Chief of the new Transhumanist Magazine called H+ as well as writer, talk show host, and cyberculture icon) is today's featured guest.

R.U. Sirius tells how Timothy Leary (his friend and fellow cyberculture activist) helped him trick William Gibson (the reclusive author of the seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer) into providing them with an interview for Mondo 2000 (the cyberculture magazine of which R.U. Sirius was editor and co-founder).

He also talks about his work with Bruce Sterling (SF author and cyberculture leader); his candidacy for president in 2000; how the decline of print magazines is opening up the possibility that the new transhumanist magazine H+ may become a print magazine; and he accepts an invitation from me (your host) to do two personal appearnces inside the virtual world of Second Life.

And somewhere in the middle of all this he finds time to talk about technological enhancements to our IQ and mood; the accuracy of Ray Kurzeil's time-line; artificial intelligence; diminishing privacy; biotechnology; Amazon's Kindle; virtual reality; and why molecular manufacturing might become the magic bullet to end scarcity, increase health and extend human longevity.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the December 24, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 51 minutes]

R.U. Sirius (who was born Ken Goffman) may be best known as co-founder and the original Editor-In-Chief of Mondo 2000 Magazine from 1989–1993. He was Editor-In-Chief of Axcess magazine in 1998, and GettingIt.com from 1999-2000. He was also chairman and candidate in the 2000 U.S. presidential election for The Revolution Party; which had a platform that was a mixture of libertarianism and liberalism. He has been a regular columnist for Wired News and the San Francisco Examiner, a contributing writer for Wired and Artforum International. And he has written for Time, Esquire, Rolling Stone and many other publications. Altogether, he has written several hundred articles and essays.

News Items in this episode include: [1] Review of Robot Magazine. A glossy, full-color, 80 page-thick magazine crammed with articles about how to make robots, program robots, where to get robot parts, and what happened at all the latest robot competitions. [2] Kim Stanley Robinson will be in Second Life for an open forum discussion on Saturday, January 17, 2009. Beginning at Noon Pacific Time, it will be hosted by my friend Sophrosyne Stenvaag as part of her series of open forum discussions with people who are shaping the future, entitled Sophrosenye's Saturday Salon. [3] I attended my first baby shower inside Second Life. On December 14, 2008 Giulio Prisco (in Spain) threw the shower for Amara Graps (in Denver). Photos I took are on my Flickr page.

R.U. Sirius (writer, editor, talk show host, and cyberculture icon) is today's featured guest.

As Editor-In-Chief of a new magazine called H+ (which is written by transhumanists, for transhumanists) he describes how he was recruited, his goals for its future, and admits (possibly for the first time) that he is a transhumanist and has been one, possibly his whole life.

Timothy Leary (who he recruited as a regular writer for Mondo 2000) in the 1980s, he points out, wrote about and promoted many ideas that today are widely considered transhumanist in nature. He suggests that although Timothy Leary did not describe himself as one, he might be considered an early transhumanist.

He also answers the host's question: How many of your articles, over the years, have been rejected because they were too controversial? And: if human longevity is developed, how will carrying our sometimes controversial reputations for centuries change our lives? He also talks about his expectations concerning artificial intelligence and the Singularity.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the December 17, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 49 minutes]

H+ magazine is available worldwide as a free download in PDF format. The first issue of is out. Your host has read it, and enjoyed it very much. Many of its articles were written by people who have been a guest on The Future And You.

Previously, R.U. Sirius (who was born Ken Goffman) was best known as co-founder and the original Editor-In-Chief of Mondo 2000 Magazine  from 1989–1993. He was Editor-In-Chief of Axcess magazine in 1998, and GettingIt.com from 1999-2000. He was also chairman and candidate in the 2000 U.S. presidential election for The Revolution Party; which had a platform that was a mixture of libertarianism and liberalism. He has been a regular columnist for Wired News and the San Francisco Examiner, a contributing writer for Wired and Artforum International. And he has written for Time, Esquire, Rolling Stone and many other publications. Altogether, he has written several hundred articles and essays.

News Items in this episode include: [1] This is Third Anniversary episode of The Future And You. [2] The Future And You, and other podcasts, can be listened to by phone. Podlines assigned this show the phone number  +1 (210) 957-5545 . [3] The Annual Death Stacks Tournament (a game invented by your host) has been invited to become part of the IAGO World Tour by The International Abstract Games Organization. [4] New Scientist Magazine reports that eating food with heavier isotopes of hydrogen and other atoms might lengthen human lives.

Brain Wang (writer, speaker and noted futurist) is today's featured guest.

Biases remain strong, Brian says, within government and the scientific community that have prevented the funding of some nanotechnology projects while promoting others. Brian explains how these biases are misused to secure funding for projects which have nothing to do with nanotechnology, at the cost of those that do.

Brian also talks about: Bussard Fusion (not to be confused with the interstellar ramjet also invented by Doctor Robert Bussard); types of nanotechnology and how each would change our lives and our civilization; the military's attitude toward nanotechnology; the need to quit keeping all our eggs in one basket and spread a meaningful portion of our species throughout the solar system; how future space wars in our solar system will differ from ground-based wars; that solar cells are likely to become cheap by 2015; and what a 'Mundane Singularity' might be like (one without AI or molecular manufacturing) and how much change such a Singularity might still produce in our lives.
 
Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the December 10, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 57 minutes]

Brian Wang is a long time futurist, who has been involved with nanotechnology associations since 1994. He is a Senior Associate of the Foresight Institute, a member of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology Task Force, and on the Advisory Board of both the Nanoethics Group and the Lifeboat Foundation.

He is the author of Predictions For a Technological Future, Now Until 2050; The Impact of Nanofactories on Jobs in the USA; and Considering Military and Ethical Implications of Nanofactory Level Nanotechnology. He has also been involved in e-commerce, Internet startups and real estate investing. He is a competitive dragon boat racer and has competed at the World Club Crew Championship.

His blog is NextBigFuture.com, but he is also a featured blogger on Michael Anissimov's acceleratingfuture.com, and on Ray Kurzweil's kurzweilAI.net.

News Items in this episode include: [1] CNN has laid off its entire Science and Technology reporting team including their Senior Science Reporter Miles O'Brian; [2] Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, describes his efforts to get China to lift their ban on Wikipedia; [3] The City State of Extropia inside Second Life celebrated its first anniversary (your host's photos may be viewed on Flickr).