The Future And You

The Future And You is an award-winning podcast hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb and teamed with Jim Baen's Universe Magazine (the online magazine of SF&F from Baen Books). In each episode the show's host interviews a variety of authors, scientists, celebrities and "pioneers of the future" as to what they believe both the near future and distant future will be like for individuals as well as for humanity in general.

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Subjects

Subjects have included: nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing, computers wired directly into the human brain, exoplanets, cryonics, bootlegging of movies, global warming, the current interglacial period, genetic engineering of humans and other biotechnology, faster-than-light travel, wormholes and black holes, cloning and stem cell research, futurism and futurology, social marketing (the engineering of specific attitude changes within a population), transhumanism, extropianism, and the technology of living more-or-less forever.

Or as the host describes it: "Topics are strictly limited to those things that, in the future, will exist, or cease to exist, or change in some way."

Authors

• Jack McDevitt (SF author)
• Greg Bear (SF author)
• Robert J. Sawyer (Canadian Hard SF author)
• Mike Resnick (SF&F author, anthologist and editor)
• Alethea Kontis (Fantasy editor for Solaris Books and buyer for Ingram)
• David Brin (SF author and scientist)
• Robert Buettner (SF author)
• Kim Stanley Robinson (SF author)
• Alan Dean Foster (SF&F author)
• Walter Jon Williams (SF&F author)
• Randal L. Schwartz (Programmer, consultant and activist; author of many programming books and articles)
• Spider Robinson (SF author and musician)
• Vernor Vinge (SF author and scientist)
• David B. Coe (Fantasy author and environmentalist)
• John Barnes (SF&F author)
• Elizabeth Bear (SF&F author)
• David Drake (SF&F author)
• Joe Haldeman (SF author and professor)
• Toni Weisskopf (editor and head of Baen Books, but also an SF&F anthologist and an author of non-fiction)
• Eric Flint (SF&F author, anthologist and editor)
• John Ringo (SF&F author)
• Marjorie M. Liu (SF&F author and former lawyer)
• Catherine Asaro (SF&F author, scientist and former ballerina)
• Ginjer Buchanan (Senior Executive Editor and Marketing Director of Ace and ROC Books)
• Edmund R. Schubert (SF&H author and Editor of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show)
• Nancy Kress (SF author)
• Dave Freer (South African SF&F author)
• Sarah A. Hoyt (SF&F author)
• Jeanne Robinson (dancer, choreographer, dance instructor and SF author)
• L. E. Modesitt, Jr. (SF&F author)
• Jay Lake (SF&F author, anthologist and editor)
• Davey Beauchamp (Librarian, author, editor, anthologist, and voice actor)
• M. M. Buckner (SF author)
• Paul Levinson (author, professor and media commentator)
• Stephen L. Antczak (SF author, screen writer, comics writer, film maker and theatrical producer)
• Stoney Compton (SF&F author)

Celebrities

• Bodie Olmos (actor from the TV series Battlestar Galactica)
• Aria Giovanni (nude model)
• Aimee Sweet (glamour model and porn star)
• Linda Tran (glamour and nude model)
• Jerry Rector (TV actor from Star Trek, NYPD Blue and Sliders)
• Gary Jones (TV actor from Stargate SG-1)
• Betsy Palmer (actress who played Mrs. Voorhees in Friday the 13th)
• Robin Curtis (Actress who played Lt. Saavik--a Vulcan woman Starfleet officer--in the movies: Star Trek III and Star Trek IV)
• Ken Weatherwax (actor who played "Pugsley" on the 1960s TV show The Addams Family)
• Lisa Loring (actress who played "Wednesday" on the 1960s TV show The Addams Family)
• Jordan Marder (actor from American History X, Virtuosity, L.A. Confidential and Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions; as well as The Drew Carey Show, Jag, The Equalizer and The X-Files)
• Hattie Hayridge (actress and stand-up comedian best known from the British science fiction TV series Red Dwarf)
• Lydia Cornell (TV actress best known for playing Ted Knight's daughter, Sara Rush, on the TV comedy show Too Close for Comfort
• Michael Berryman (actor appearing in 37 films and 15 TV shows; the star of Wes Craven's original version of the motion picture The Hills Have Eyes)
• Erin Gray (actress who played Colonel Wilma Deering in the TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century as well as Kate Summers in the TV series Silver Spoons

Pioneers

• John R. Douglas (editor at scifipedia (a division of the Sci Fi Channel) and World Fantasy Convention boardmember since the 1980s)
• Rudi Hoffman (cryonics insurance provider and cryonics financial planner)
• Lionel Vogt (transhumanist and futurist, best known for his TV appearances with his battling robots)
• David Pascal (marketing consultant specializing in social marketing)
• John Buckman (CEO of the recording label Magnatune)
• Mike Treder (executive director of CRN: The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology)

Scientists

• Dr. Aubrey de Grey (medical gerontologist working to promote medical longevity)
• Dr. Travis S. Taylor (scientist with NASA and DOD, SF author and discoverer of two exoplanets)
• Dr. Greg Matloff (astronomer, author and professor)
• Dr. Grover Swartslander (physicist and professor)

Others

• Senator John McCain (2008 presidential candidate)
• Scott Dean (mayor of Harlem, Georgia USA)
• Tony V. Baughman (newspaper reporter for The Aiken Standard)
• Uncle Timmy (founder and chairman of LibertyCon - an annual SF&F convention)
• Paula Goodlett (managing editor of Jim Baen's Universe Magazine)
• Hildy Silverman (owner/publisher of Space and Time Magazine, and contributing editor of Achieving Families Magazine)
• Walt Boyes (nicknamed: Bananaslug) (marketing director of Jim Baen's Universe Magazine)
• Peter Stampfel (submissions editor at DAW Books and musician)
• Lucienne Diver (New York literary agent)
• Ricki Dean (School Nutrition Manager of Columbia County Georgia USA)

Content

The show's goal seems to be to provide variety within each episode: a variety of guests, subjects and ideas.

Most of the show is composed of interviews: anywhere from four to nine in a single episode. (Which explains why the show is so long compared to most podcasts.) Each episode opens with the host reading a Table of Contents, sometimes followed by a few brief news items, then the interviews begin. Near the middle of the show, after two or three interviews, about fifteen minutes worth of the science fiction novel "Bones Burnt Black" is read by the author. (The serialization of this novel was begun in the first episode.)

Many episodes end with a "Celebrity Interview" which usually has little to do with the show's theme (the future) and may have been included to increase the show's status, or to pull in more listeners by showing up in Google searches of those celebrity names.

There has been a noticeable abundance of SF writers on the show, perhaps because the host feels that since many SF writers write about the future they have spent a great deal of time pondering what is to come (a logical, if unproven, theory) or maybe its just because the host is an SF writer himself and finds it easiest to find guests within his own field.

Also notable is the show's length. Striving for so much variety forces the program to a far greater length than most podcasts. Episodes have fluctuated from 68 minutes to 150 minutes. For many months the target length seemed to be 79 minutes. (Perhaps because 80 minutes is the most that can be burned to a 700 megabyte audio CD.) But more recent episodes seem to be gravitating around two hours.

The alliance with Jim Baen's Universe (see History below) brought ten minutes of new content to each episode. These ten minute segments are provided by the staff of Jim Baen's Universe and are produced by Walt Boyes (AKA: Bananaslug) and Stoney Compton.

History

During the show's first five months (from December 2005 until April 2006) episodes were released every two weeks. As of May 1, 2006 episodes are being released one per month on the first of each month. All the old episodes have remained available for listening (which is typical of most podcasts). And like most podcasts, there is no charge for listening to one episode or for subscribing.

The June 1, 2006 episode was the first to use VoIP for recording all the phone interviews, and so was the first to provide professional quality sound. (The May 1, 2006 episode contained one VoIP interview, but all the rest were recorded over conventional analog phone lines.)

October 1, 2006 saw another improvement in the show's audio quality. This was done by changing the mp3 file compression from 32 kbit/s (which had been used for all previous episodes) to 64 kbit/s. This better sound was good, but it was also bad in that it made the files twice as large, and take twice as long to download.

The December 1, 2006 episode had two major events. It was declaired the show's One Year Anniversary Episode (the first episode was actually uploaded on December 15, 2005) and it was the beginning of the show's alliance with Jim Baen's Universe the online magazine of SF&F.

Awards

The 2006 Parsec Award for "Best Speculative Fiction News Podcast" was given to the show's host, Stephen Euin Cobb, on the evening of September 2, 2006. This was at the first annual Parsec Award ceremony which was held in Atlanta GA, as part of "the world’s largest popular media convention: Dragon*Con."

In his acceptance speech, Stephen thanked the three podcasters who had encouraged him to create a podcast when he knew little about how podcasting was done: Mur Lafferty, Tee Morris, and Rich Sigfrit. Stephen also thanked his photographer and assistant, Peggy Gregory (who is also his sister) for helping him throughout his many promotional travels to science fiction conventions, book signings and TV appearances.

References

• Page from which episodes of The Future And You may be downloaded This page includes outlines of each episode's content along with iPod shaped buttons to click on to download the individual episodes. (Warning: Dial-up users will find the episodes slow to download because (like most Podcasts) the mp3 files are often quite large.

• The show's page at iTunes.