Meanwhile in the future

The Audio Signal #23

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Photographer Robert Burley takes pictures of the end of Analog for his book The disappearance of darkness. Christine Frohnert explains how conservators must care for Art with a Plug. Curator Christiane Paul tells us how the Whitney Museum of American Art restored the digital artwork "The world's first collaborative sentence" by Douglas Davis. And TOE's Washington D.C. corespondent 'Chris' tells us the truth about Edward Snowden and Snapchat. 

Artifacts (1 of 2)

Nathan Jurgenson wants us to understand what is truly revolutionary about ephemeral photographs and platforms like Snapchat, Fred Ritchin says we are going to get our minds blown "After Photography" and Finn Bruntun explains why we need to preserve this transition from Analog to Digital. 

Artifacts (2 of 2)

What happens when women no longer have to physically bear children? Who wins? Who loses? Who takes artificial wombs to a far away planet to create a colony of super-beings? 

A Womb Away from Home

What would happen if the Earth suddenly had a second moon? This week, we work through the impact an additional satellite would have on our planet, from tides, to the night sky, to the potential destruction of Earth. Oh also there are space pirates. 

The Second Moon is a Harsh Mistress

This week’s future is a social experiment. What if Earth had a robotic overlord who decided to ban all weapons? All fights would have to be hand to hand. Would there be less death that way? Less casualties? What counts as a weapon anyway? Listen to the episode to find out!

Forcing the Hand

This week on Meanwhile in the Future we step onto the field and talk about contact sports. What would it take to create a future in which the most dangerous sports die out? What are those sports to begin with? What does a world without football look like?

The Most Dangerous Games

Over the past 85 years, antibiotics have been miracle drugs. They’ve kept infections at bay and opened up a world of medical possibilities: organ transplants, heart surgery, chemotherapy. But they’re not going to work forever. The age antibiotic resistance is coming. So what does a world without these drugs look like? 

Revenge of the Germs

What if “life in prison” could mean 100 or 200 or 400 years? Does that change the way that sentences are dolled out? What happens when a person gets out of prison?

Eternal Life in Prison

Big Freedia demonstrates the "signature call" that made her famous all over New Orleans. Hear her full episode in our #InNewOrleans series here: bit.ly/1MCSa9R

Big Freedia's Signature Call

Mary Alice Hughes worked as a 'cottage mother' at the NY State Training School for Girls in Hudson, NY for what she recalls as “over 25 years." In this short excerpt from an interview conducted by Brian Buckley on Mary’s front porch in Hudson during the summer of 2013, she talks about that last day, her memories of what it was like at the Training School working with the girls, and what she took from that experience that she used in her life outside the Training School.

For more info and to see a transcript of the audio, see this post on our website at http://www.prisonpublicmemory.org/blog/2015/if-i-could-help-somebody

Mary Alice Hughes

Flash Forward is a show about possible (and not so possible) future scenarios. What would the warranty on a sex robot look like? How would diplomacy work if we couldn’t lie? Could there ever be a fecal transplant black market? (Complicated, it wouldn’t, and yes, respectively, in case you’re curious.) Hosted and produced by award winning science journalist Rose Eveleth, each episode combines audio drama and journalism to go deep on potential tomorrows, and uncovers what those futures might really be like. The future is going to be weird, so let's get ready for it together.