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Flash Forward

Season Four

Your face is one of your most valuable possessions. But what happens when facial recognition is so good that any company can grab an image of your face while you’re walking down the street, and link it to everything from your social media profiles, to your credit score, to your workplace? 

Facetime

In Episode 1.4, we conclude our look at robotics, and we challenge commonly held fears regarding machine intelligence. The “angry god” AI of The Terminator is an over-hyped myth. Here’s why.

[Archive: UTOPIA #4]

Elon Musk has laid out a goal of a million humans colonizing Mars. Are we ready?

Planning Out a Trip to Mars

California has one of the largest economies in the world. So what would happen if it broke away from the United States? Could California ever go independent? And if it did, what would that look like?

California Dreaming

President Kersti Kaljulaid is the first female and youngest person ever to be president of Estonia, a Baltic nation whose worries about a resurgent Russia are tempered by its faith in NATO and democracy.

Does Estonia understand democracy better than any of us?

This episode, we travel to a future where your romantic partners aren’t chosen by questions or swipes, but rather by your brainwaves.

Love On The Brain

What would it be like if you could hop on a space cruise ship, and take a trip to Mars?

Mons Voyage

About 130 million years ago, two neutron stars collided, unleashing an explosion that rippled space-time and splattered the cosmos with a cocktail of heavy metals. This week, astronomers announced that they’ve spotted the signals from that “kilonova” explosion, both in gravitational waves like the ones LIGO previously detected from merging black holes, and in signals across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Astrophysicists Vicky Kalogera and Daniel Holz, members of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, join Ira to talk about the observation, and what it can teach scientists about the way the universe works.

A Stellar Collision, Ripples In Space-Time, And The Origins Of Gold

The final work from the Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning writer, actor, and musician, drawn from his transformative last days<br> &#160;<br> In searing, beautiful prose, Sam Shepard&rsquo;s extraordinary narrative leaps off the page with its immediacy and power. It tells in a brilliant braid of voices the story of an unnamed narrator who traces, before our rapt eyes, his memories of work, adventure, and travel as he undergoes medical tests and treatments for a condition that is rendering him more and more dependent on the loved ones who are caring for him. The narrator&rsquo;s memories and preoccupations often echo those of our current moment&mdash;for here are stories of immigration and community, inclusion and exclusion, suspicion and trust. But at the book&rsquo;s core, and his, is family&mdash;his relationships with those he loved, and with the natural world around him. Vivid, haunting, and deeply moving, <i>Spy of the First Person </i>takes us from the sculpted gardens of a renowned clinic in Arizona to the blue waters surrounding Alcatraz, from a New Mexico border town to a condemned building on New York City&rsquo;s Avenue C. It is an unflinching expression of the vulnerabilities that make us human&mdash;and an unbound celebration of family and life.

Spy of the First Person by Sam Shepard, read by Michael Shannon

Penguin presents the complete, unabridged audiobook of Wonder by R. J. Palacio, read by Nick Podehl, Kate Rudd and Diana Steele.

'My name is August. I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.'

Auggie wants to be an ordinary ten-year-old. He does ordinary things - eating ice cream, playing on his Xbox. He feels ordinary - inside. But ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. Ordinary kids aren't stared at wherever they go.

Born with a terrible facial abnormality, Auggie has been home-schooled by his parents his whole life. Now, for the first time, he's being sent to a real school. All he wants is to be accepted - but can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, underneath it all?

Astonishingly powerful, WONDER is a read you'll never forget.

Read more at https://www.penguin.co.uk/puffin/books/304772/wonder/#Pev8dqyIt1HDzVMX.99

Wonder by R.J. Palacio (Audio Extract) Read By read by Nick Podehl, Kate Rudd and Diana Steele

What would it be like if we could actually understand what animals were saying?

Dr. Doolittle

Welcome to a future in which you can sign up to be a brand ambassador, and get paid for every time you mention a product in conversation. Simply download the app, and your phone will listen to your every word waiting to hear brand names, and pay you some money every time you mention one.

Spawn of Sponcon

How much of what you do is actually your choice? What if you were secretly being controlled by a parasite that had infected your brain? What if that infection was spreading?

Fungus Among Us

The new novel from visionary SF writer Kim Stanley Robinson tells the compelling story of the first colony on the moon

IT IS THIRTY YEARS FROM NOW, AND WE HAVE COLONIZED THE MOON. 

American Fred Fredericks is making his first trip, his purpose to install a communications system for China's Lunar Science Foundation. But hours after his arrival he witnesses a murder and is forced into hiding. 

It is also the first visit for celebrity travel reporter Ta Shu. He has contacts and influence, but he too will find that the moon can be a perilous place for any traveler.   

Finally, there is Chan Qi. She is the daughter of the Minister of Finance, and without doubt a person of interest to those in power. She is on the moon for reasons of her own, but when she attempts to return to China, in secret, the events that unfold will change everything - on the moon, and on Earth. 

RED MOON is a magnificent novel of space exploration and political revolution from New York Times bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson. 

Praise for Kim Stanley Robinson:

'Robinson is one of the world's finest working novelists, in any genre' Guardian 

'Polymathic, visionary brilliance' Financial Times

'Robinson's work has a strong, intelligent social conscience' GQ

'Robinson blends mystery and suspense with lyrical evocation of a complex future' Sunday Telegraph 

'Kim Stanley Robinson is one of science fiction's greats' Sunday Times

Recent titles by Kim Stanley Robinson:

2312
Shaman
Aurora
New York 2140

Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson, read by Maxwell Hamilton, Joy Osmanski and Feodor Chin

What if we just gave everybody money? It sounds simple, but universal basic income is a trendy idea again and a lot of you have asked for an episode about a future where everybody gets money from the government no matter what. And it turns out that while it sounds simple, just giving everybody money is way more complicated than you might thing.

Money For Nothing

Computers are getting smaller and smaller. But what if we had sensors the size of dust, that could float through the air undetected, talk to one another, gather information, and transmit that information back down to a central place? This is the concept behind smart dust, and it’s more plausible than you might think.

Eyes In The Skies

Would you replace ALL your food with pills? Where does this trope come from in science fiction, and what does it say about us that it still persists?

Farm To Tablet

If humans want to really have a go at leaving Earth and living in space or on other planets, we’re going to have to figure out a lot of things: spaceships, food supplies, fuel, how to keep everybody from killing one another. But one thing seems to be frequently left out of the picture, when it comes to distant space travel research: reproduction. It turns out we know very, very little about what pregnancy in space might look like, or whether it’s even possible at all.

What To Expect When You're Expecting In Space

Getting from one place to another is hard. What if we could just teleport? From the physics of how this would work (it wouldn’t) to the ripple effects on politics, urban development, and tourism, this episode is all about what would happen if we could zip instantly from one place to another.

The Commute From Hell

What happens when the Rio Grande dries up? The river is often overshadowed, at least in the US, by the Colorado River. But the Rio Grande creates the border between US and Mexico, and the water that flows through it is at the center of a looming geopolitical crisis. So what happens when towns, farms and cities on both sides of the border start to run out of water?

Water Would Be Nice

At long last, we’re doing genetic editing. What’s the deal with the recent news about CRISPR babies? What does a future full of human genetic editing look like? And how might CRISPR change the food we eat?

Snip Snip Snip

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.