Modem Futura
by Sean Leahy, Andrew Maynard
Latest episode
Co-Existence (or Co-Extinction?): Reviewing Ethan Mollick's New AI…
Co-Existence (or Co-Extinction?): Reviewing Ethan Mollick's New AI…
About this podcast
Modem Futura is a weekly futures podcast exploring the future of science, technology, and society — your guide to where foresight meets real-world impact. Hosts Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard — educators, futurists, and public scholars — dive into the breakthroughs and big questions shaping tomorrow: AI ethics, space exploration, climate tech, bio-engineering, digital media, STEM education, and the shifting future of work. In candid, banter-filled conversations with innovators, scholars, and storytellers, they unpack how emerging technologies influence human values, creativity, and culture — and what these trends mean for you today.
Whether you're curious about quantum computing, synthetic biology, or the sociology of robots, Modem Futura connects cutting-edge research with the narratives that drive innovation. If you're looking for a futurist podcast that trades hype for genuine curiosity, join us each week to explore possible, probable, and preferred futures. Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts — and be part of the conversation exploring what it will mean to be human in the future.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 113 episodes
- Co-Existence (or Co-Extinction?): Reviewing Ethan Mollick's New AI Book · 1 h 12 min · Episode 109Ethan Mollick's *Co-Existence* offers a gentle, candid guide to living with AI that is sometimes better than we are, but is its accessibility a strength or a limitation? Sean…
- Tesla's SpaceX-Powered Roadster: Flying Cars, Play, and the Future of Innovation · 56 min · Episode 108Tesla's redesigned Roadster can cling to an inverted ramp and flip back onto its wheels using SpaceX-developed thrusters, but is it a car, a stunt, or the world's most expensive…
- AI Can Build the Syllabus, Not the Journey: Course Design in the Age of AI · 1 h 6 min · Episode 107Can AI design a university course, or only a syllabus? Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard share hard-won lessons from using AI as an instructional designer, explore why learning is a…
- Megatrends 2026 Explained: The 11 Forces Shaping our Futures · 1 h 8 min · Episode 106What separates a genuine megatrend from a buzzword, and which forces are quietly reshaping the decades ahead? Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard dig into the Copenhagen Institute for…
- Rogue AI Agents and the Accountability Gap: The OpenAI–Hugging Face Saga Continues · 59 min · Episode 105Rogue AI agents, government systems, and a growing accountability gap: Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard revisit the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident as it grows into a full-blown AI…
- Future-Proofing the University: AI and the Future of Higher Education with Bryan Penprase · 1 h 4 min · Episode 104Can universities survive AI, or is AI the jolt higher education has needed for a long time? Bryan Penprase, author of Future-Proofing the University, joins Sean Leahy and Andrew…
- Model Mayhem: Rogue Agents, Leaky Memory, and Why AI Is Weird · 59 min · Episode 103From an AI assistant that correctly identified who said what in an unlabelled transcript to the OpenAI agent swarm that broke into Hugging Face, this episode explores what…
- Bring Your Own AI: beinghuman.fyi and the Move to Thunderbird · 40 min · Episode 102Recording from a secret location, Sean and Andrew mark Modem Futura's move to Thunderbird School of Global Management at ASU and unpack beinghuman.fyi, a companion site designed…
- The Right to Be Unpredictable: AI, Algorithms & the Cost of Conformity · 50 min · Episode 101In an age of recommendation engines, behavioral profiles, and AI trained on the average of everything humans have already written, the freedom to be unpredictable is getting…
- Bill Gates: The Turbulent AI Era Is Here – and We Have No Plan · 1 h 1 min · Episode 100Bill Gates says the turbulent AI era is here and society has no plan for it — so Sean and Andrew unpack his 6,000-word essay to explore the risks, benefits, and suggestions. From…
- Invisible Ink: AI Watermarking, SynthID & the Internet Meltdown · 49 min · Episode 99hidden watermark is now being woven into AI-generated text — not a visible stamp, but a secret statistical pattern embedded in word choice itself. Sean and Andrew explore…
- Zuckerberg's AI Manifesto: Is the Future Really for Everyone? · 1 h 8 min · Episode 98Mark Zuckerberg's new essay promises that superintelligence will build a future "for everyone" — but whose future is it, really? Sean and Andrew unpack the manifesto's six…
- Will AI Take Your Voice? The Hidden Cost of AI Writing Tools · 1 h 2 min · Episode 97As AI writing tools cross the chasm into everyday use, what happens to our voices — and the voices of generations still finding theirs? Sean and Andrew dig into Jaron Lanier's…
- Sally the Robot Teacher: AI Humanoid Robots Enter the Classroom · 36 min · Episode 96A school district in New York is piloting Sally, an AI-powered humanoid robot, in its high school coding lab — and the closer you look, the stranger the story gets. Sean and…
- The AI That Escaped the Lab: Inside the OpenAI–Hugging Face Breach · 50 min · Episode 95An advanced AI model escaped its safety sandbox, hacked its way to the internet, and broke into Hugging Face — and it really happened. Sean and Andrew unpack what the first…
- Summer Watch List: Silo Season 3, Sugar, Silicon Valley & Neuromancer · 25 min · Episode 94Sean and Andrew wrap up their Summer Vibes edition with a watch list for the future-curious: Silo's time-jumping third season, the genre-bending noir of Sugar, why Silicon Valley…
- SpudCells: Have Scientists Built Life From Scratch? · 32 min · Episode 93Sean and Andrew dig into SpudCell — a lab-built synthetic cell that feeds, grows, and divides — and the deceptively simple question it forces: where's the line between something…
- AI as Critical Infrastructure: Inside the Anthropic Fable Export Ban · 55 min · Episode 92Anthropic's Fable was the most powerful AI model ever released to the public — until a U.S. export control order pulled it offline three days later. Sean and Andrew unpack what…
- Summer Reading List Part 2: Sci-Fi, Spy Fiction & Analog Treasures · 30 min · Episode 91Sean and Andrew wrap up their summer reading list with Terry Pratchett, Connie Willis, Henri Cartier-Bresson, La Jetée, Slow Horses, Silo, and more — exploring why the best books…
- Summer Reading List 2026: The Books That Inspired Our Imagination (Part 1) · 34 min · Episode 90Sean and Andrew share the science fiction classics and one sharp piece of nonfiction on their summer reading lists — from Snow Crash and Neuromancer to Iain M. Banks, Douglas…
