Future Tense
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Future Tense
A critical look at new technologies, new approaches and new ways of thinking, from politics to media to environmental sustainability.
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253 epizod
Are we turning the housing crisis into a living crisis?
We build more and more homes for growing urban populations. But doing so without providing much needed amenities doesn't serve our suburbs and the peo...
Reviving the past and digital mapping for the future
The remote Canadian island of Oikiqtaruk is disappearing fast, but its cultural and environmental heritage is being captured in digital form. We talk...
Are we kidding ourselves about decarbonisation?
Australian rooftops are resplendent with solar panels, but sustainability expert, Martin Brueckner, warns the popular notion that we're rapidly transi...
Is globalisation dying?
Globalisation isn’t what it used to be thanks to the legacy of the Covid-19 lockdown and, more recently, Donald Trump’s weaponisation of tariffs. But...
Taxing carbon on the border and at sea
The European Union is implementing a groundbreaking new tax: a carbon border tax. It's meant to prevent distortions between countries with differing e...
Existential hope vs Existential Fear
Existential risks to human life abound, from the threat of nuclear Armageddon; to an uninhabitable planet; or an AI-induced apocalypse. Understanding...
Cooperation, not conflict on the High Seas
We're now halfway through the UN-designated "Ocean Decade" — new research initiatives have been launched, and global cooperation has been strengthened...
Convenience culture's inconvenient truth
Humans have an evolutionary bias toward seeking convenience, experts say. But what happens when the desire for convenience becomes a dominant social a...
Perspectives on the potential of AI-powered policing
Policing has always embraced new technologies and Artificial Intelligence is, of course, the flavour of the month. Working out when and why it should...
The truth about AI and productivity
How real is the link between Artificial Intelligence and increased productivity? Jon Whittle from the CSIRO, one of Australia's leading science agenci...
Sinking Cities
Cities across the world are beginning to sink — some by as much as 10 centimetres a year. A recent study suggests that more than a third of urban Chin...
How to balance the population needs on our planet
We face multiple looming demographic crises — and our responses seemingly contradict each other.
A rapidly aging population means that we need...
Lessons from South Korea's security dilemma
South Korea is a test case in how to maintain democracy against sustained pressure from dictatorship. The innovative and entrepreneurial country lives...
A turning point for the United Nations
Suffering internal division and stymied by geopolitical bullying, the United Nations is facing a future of diminishing influence. As the organisation...
The potential benefits and risks of developing "mirror life"
Synthetic biologists are hard at work developing artificial biological molecules as the first step toward developing a mirror cell that would be immun...
The world after us!
What will Earth look like when humans become extinct? What "technofossils" will paleontologists of the future unearth and no doubt ponder over? Will w...
How to start your own golden age
History has many lessons for how to develop a successful civilisation. The trick is to understand the patterns that lead to optimism and innovation. S...
Australia and Canada — Strategic partners, but near total strangers?
Australia and Canada share much in common, politically, historically and socially. Why then do we know so little about each other? In a time of global...
Reassessing the laws of war; and why progress isn't always a straight line
The International commitment to ban landmines is wavering. Several European countries are reversing their opposition to using them. The shift comes as...
Beyond the cloud — storing data in space
Researchers and corporations are already working to relocate data servers beyond the Earth's atmosphere — on satellites.
Data servers are essent...
Forgetting, not memory, moves us forward
Forgetting is the only safe response to the world's problems, from a geopolitical perspective, according to author and journalist David Rieff. Sometim...
Bitcoin boom or digital deception?
Donald Trump is establishing a US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. He wants it to rival the country's stockpile of gold. He boasts America will one day be t...
Can the oceans solve our carbon removal problems?
There's been growing research and investment in projects that use the oceans to artificially remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Such technique...
YouTube turns 20; and the interesting side of boredom
YouTube is the second biggest website in the world, containing more than 14.8 billion videos. It's been a huge success, but its public image as a have...
Remember the Jevons Paradox!
We like to think that increases in efficiency lead to greater sustainability – to lower resource use. But from cars to computers to bitcoin, it seems...
The power and peril of the optimistic mind
Human beings have a bias toward optimism, says astrophysicist turned author and editor, Sumit Paul-Choudhury. While we may not always acknowledge it,...
AI's "hidden labour" and the move toward a linkless internet
Artificial intelligence, it turns out, has a heavy human backend — they're called "data labellers"; they mostly live in developing countries, and ther...
The roots of techno-authoritarianism
Does the spirit of the "Futurist" movement live on today in the likes of Elon Musk and America's intrigue of techno-oligarchs? The Italian poet and fa...
Some challenges to conventional economic thinking
Does modern economic thinking act as a roadblock to change? Economists Kate Raworth and Rainer Kattel certainly think so. The alternatives they propos...
Civility, trash talking and more sociable cities
It certainly feels like a very shouty world. But have we really reached a new low point in civility? And, if so, where to from here?
We examine...
Limitarianism — could a cap on wealth reduce inequality?
When a company CEO can be paid 1,000 times the average employee's salary it's probably time to take a long hard look at wealth inequality. And those c...
Understanding attention and a craving for certainty
Are we really facing an attention crisis? Historian, Daniel Immerwahr, has his doubts. In fact, he says ours is an era of obsession as much as distrac...
Flow Batteries, windships, and a new approach to off-grid solar
They're cheaper and safer than their lithium counterparts, they're easier to scale-up, and they can hold power for much longer than conventional batte...
Modern museums, accountability, and openness
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is opening-up its storeroom, turning the back end of the operation into a public resource. It's about attract...
Nuclear tombs and the distant discourse of danger
A series of massive underground tombs for nuclear waste are currently under construction. They've taken decades to plan and build and they're designed...
The danger of generational labelling
Terms like "Gen Z", "Boomer" and "Millennial" are popular, but they have no basis in science. Demographers and social scientists are now pushing back....
Could Utopian thinking save democracy?
Why does Utopian thinking get such a bad rap? It’s often derided as delusional and dangerous. But what if that stereotype is designed to limit our ima...
How to ensure privatisation serves the public good
Privatising public services like trains, hospitals or prisons — is a proven vote loser. But governments of both the left and right continue to privati...
The vicious cycle of fear and anger — and how it traps society
Authoritarians rule through fear. We can clearly see that from China to the Middle East to eastern Europe. But why do we constantly overlook the way i...
Algorithms create a dull conformity — off and online
Algorithmic feeds are meant to personalise our online experiences, but increasingly they're flattening our culture and fostering a dull conformity, ac...