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Hub & Spoke, the nonprofit collective of audio makers dedicated to excellence in independent podcasting, announced today that it has secured its first major donation, a $100,000 gift from the Rasmussen Family Fund. The collective also announced that it is seeking to hire a development and communications manager to help build out its operations.

Exiting the Google ecosystem — as we explored in Soonish Episode 4.11, Goodbye, Google — is 1) a process, and 2) a continuum. You can’t do it all at once, and you can’t really reach the end. Rather than trying to cut Google out of your life entirely, it’s better to think of the metaphor of reducetarianism, the commitment to spare animals and the planet by eating less meat rather than zero meat.

So we've almost made it. 2020 is about to take its leave. It was a year that taught us so much about ourselves and the communities we live in—not all of it comfortable.

When I started reporting for Soonish four years ago, I never intended to make a podcast about politics. I just wanted to make a show about the future, and how part of being a smart citizen and a smart consumer is being more conscious about the ways we use technology. But then the election of 2016 turned everything upside down. And as the Trump years have rumbled onward, I’ve often found myself gravitating toward stories that are sorta about technology but are really about how American democracy works—or doesn’t work. And in Season 4, I’ve gone all the way, bringing you a series of conversations with futurists, legal scholars, and political scientists focused on ways to understand and confront current threats to our democratic norms and our system of government. In particular, I’ve concentrated on the danger represented by Donald Trump and his movement. Think of it as “political futurism.” Here in the Soonish Save-the-Future Kit I’m curating links to resources that can help you be a more informed and prepared citizen as we once again dive into a perilous and consequential election.

Making a solo, sound-rich, journalistic podcast is a challenging and sometimes lonely pursuit. It's made less lonely by colleagues, such as my fellow producers at Hub & Spoke. But the most encouraging thing is that so many people listen (and that some of you also send your hard-earned dollars my way via Patreon). You are, very literally, the reason I make the show. So it’s time to share an update about recent accomplishments and upcoming changes.

I interviewed Lillian Cunningham, Washington Post reporter and creator of the limited-run podcast Moonrise, on October 29. That was just three days before Apple released the first episode of For All Mankind, the counterhistorical drama series on Apple TV+ about an alternative world in which the Soviets beat the Americans to the moon. Lillian devoted great swaths of Moonrise to the largely forgotten history of the Soviet space program, and especially its presiding genius, Sergei Korolev. So I wanted to ask her whether she thought the premise of For All Mankind was at all realistic. You can hear her answer in this bonus interview tape.

Check out a slide show from Wade’s visit to Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference in San Jose in June, 2019. It’s a Disneyland-like experience for 6,000 Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and WatchOS developers, and always kicks off with a much-anticipated keynote presentation hosted by CEO Tim Cook.

Boston Speaks Up is an interview podcast—produced by Zach Servideo of Fabric Media in partnership with AmericanInno—where leaders, creators, innovators and artists with connections to Boston share their stories of inspiration. I was Zach’s guest for the July 8 episode. We talked about everything from urban planning to inequality to machine learning. Check out the full post at AmericanInno or click through to use the embedded player.

In this bonus audio file, hear my full interview with Tamar Avishai, producer and host of the art history podcast The Lonely Palette, about Facebook and the role it plays in her life. Tamar—a frequest guest of the show, and my fellow co-founder at the Hub & Spoke audio collective—stands out from the other guests who contributed to Episode 3.03, A Future Without Facebook, in that she has no plans to leave Facebook, and she's totally at peace with her decision to stay.

I’m pleased to announce that in addition to producing Soonish, I’m now writing a monthly column for Scientific American, the nation’s oldest contnuously published magazine (launched in 1845). The column is called “Ventures,” and debuted in the …

The following post is a copy of message I posted to Facebook this morning. I’m also publishing it here because, as you’ll see, it relates to an upcoming episode of Soonish—one that I need your help with, whether or not you’ve ever followed me on Facebook. Read on, and please reach out to respond if the spirit moves you.

The following is a complete transcript of Soonish Episode 3.02, The Track Not Taken, published in audio form on Friday, November 9.

Twelve Tomorrows, the hard science fiction anthology from MIT Technology Review and the MIT Press that served as a jumping-off point for Soonish Episode 2.08, was the featured book on last week’s edition of the New Books in Science Fiction podcast from the New Books Network.

Today I'm binge-listening to Star Wars: The Original Radio Drama, produced by NPR and aired in 1981. I was inspired to check it out by the Theater for the Mind episode of Eric Molinsky's Imaginary Worlds podcast.

"William Shatner has called crypto 'cyber-snob currency.'" There, in a single sentence, from this week’s (dis)enchanting Nick Paumgarten New Yorker story about Ethereum, is the entire cryptocurrency mess in eight words. First off: what kind of world are we in where William Shatner 1) even knows about cryptocurrency 2) has an opinion about it 3) gets quoted on that opinion in the New Yorker 4) is actually correct?

It's been a privilege and an education to work with the composer/producer team of Joel Roston and Andrew Willis of Titlecard Music and Sound on this year's Soonish episodes. And now I'm thrilled to announce that Titlecard's original score from Episode 2.10, Making Music with Machines, is available for purchase at Bandcamp as a standalone album. Obtaining "pod-safe" music to set a mood, reinforce an emotional turning point, or help move a narrative along is a vexing challenge for independent podcast producers. For obvious legal reasons, it's important to…

The second segment or "movement" in Soonish Episode 2.10, Making Music with Machines, is all about a basic form of musical counterpoint called the canon. And our guide to the canon is Rudi Seitz, who is such a devotee of the form that he has released an entire album of 45 original canons perform on the harpsichord. It's called, naturally, Canons. It's available on Bandcamp and it's wonderful to listen to. The segment in the full episode focuses on Rudi's philosophy about the role of software in music composition. He uses a standard music notation program called Finale, from Boulder, CO-based MakeMusic, to capture drafts of his canons, and he says…

I'm thrilled to announce the publication of Twelve Tomorrows, the science fiction anthology I edited for MIT Technology Review and The MIT Press. With help from assistant editor Mark Pontin, I recruited famous and up-and-coming voices in science fiction to write "hard SF" stories that offer deep, provocative, funny, frightening perspectives on how present-day technologies could evolve. The book includes 10 original short stories and a 20-page, full-color graphic novella. Soonish fans are invited to join me at 6:00 pm June 5 at the MIT Press Bookstore in Cambridge, MA, when I'll host an event with Twelve Tomorrows contributors Elizabeth Bear, SL Huang, and Ken Liu. The authors will read from their stories, and we'll discuss the role of hard science fiction in helping us understand how today's technologies are evolving.

I'm thrilled (and a little intimidated) to be part of the lineup of storytellers bringing you tales of science, medicine, and technology as part of the Story Collider performance during the Cambridge Science Festival. The event will be at 8:00 pm on April 15 at the Oberon Theater in Harvard Square, Cambridge. Info about the show is here. You'll hear stories from pediatrician-in-training and youth development expert Dr. Elorm Avakame, clinical psychologist and relationship expert Dr. Monica O'Neal, filmmaker and NOVA science editor Caitlin Saks, celebrity chef Dan Souza, and me.

As an experiment, I’m posting the full script for Episode 2.05, “The Future is Clear.” The conventional wisdom in the podcasting business is that posting full scripts of episodes is a good SEO move. That stands for Search Engine Optimization. In other words, if I post the full script, Google and other search engines might rank it highly it when people are searching for information about Corning, or Josh Simpson, or the MIT Glass Lab. I’ve never seen data to support this belief, but why not give it a try?

I'm able to put out a new episode of Soonish every three to six weeks. For folks who love to think about the future, that's a long time to wait! To help tide you over, I've made a list of other podcasts and radio shows about science, technology, innovation, and the future that you might like. I aim to keep adding to this list. If you have a favorite future-oriented show that's not shown here, let me know!

Soonish went public one year ago today, at a big party at the PRX Podcast Garage. It was only 12 months ago, but it feels like it was a different era. Barack Obama was president! No one had heard the term "alternative facts"! You could browse Twitter without fear of nuclear conflagration! But as we barrel into an unknown future, buffeted every day by news that gets stranger and stranger, I've managed to stay sane in part by just doing the work and making the show. We need to think clearly about the future, now more than ever. Having the freedom to focus on where technology is going, one episode at a time, has been a huge joy and privilege. I'm so thankful to everyone who has listened to the show over the past 12 months and to everyone who…

We're thrilled to announce that Soonish is now part of the library of high-quality podcasts at NPR One. It's NPR's mobile listening app, featuring a customized blend of radio programs and podcasts from NPR, member stations, and independent partners. You can download NPR One for iOS and Android. Find Soonish inside the app by clicking the Search (magnifying glass) icon in the upper right of the screen and typing in "Soonish." From there you can listen to…

Dear Friends: Before we all turn off the computers, put away the smartphones, and settle in for a long week of holiday relaxation, I wanted to reach out to all Soonish mail list subscribers, Patreon supporters, Facebook followers, and blog readers and thank you for helping to make this an amazing first year for the podcast. I launched the show on January 13, 2017, at the beginning of a year that has brimmed with political tumult and natural and human-made disasters. But with your help and encouragement, I've been able to stay focused on making the show, which reached a series of big milestones. 1) I produced 10 episodes in the show’s first season and five (so far) in the second season. With each episode, the show’s audience has grown bigger. I’m in a great position to reach lots of new listeners in 2018. 2) I’ve been able to test and refine the basic ideas driving the show, zeroing in on…

Do you like science? Do you like movies? Then what could be better than a night at the movies with Science On Screen, the series created by the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA, that pairs current, classic, cult, and documentary films with talks by notable figures from the world of science, technology, and medicine. I'm not sure I count as "notable," but at the Coolidge's invitation I gave a Science On Screen talk last week keyed to the classic 1999 comedy OFFICE SPACE from writer/director Mike Judge. The video of the talk was just posted online. Check it out…

Huge news! Yesterday I joined up with my fellow podcasters Tamar Avishai of The Lonely Palette and Zachary Davis and Nick Andersen of Ministry of Ideas to unveil Hub & Spoke, a new audio collective designed to help each show grow through mutual support and cross-promotion. Click through for the official press release…

For your viewing enjoyment, here a few of my best shots from Gettysburg, PA, Future City, IL, and Makanda, IL. For the full story behind these images, listen to Soonish Episode 2.01, Shadows of August: The Eclipse Road Trip Edition.

In Episode 1.08, Hacking Time, I argued that we’re not well served by the technology tools that promise to keep us productive and efficient at work. I’ve been searching for a long time, and I’ve never found the idea e-mail manager, the ideal calendar, or the ideal to-do list app. (Or the ideal robot-who-will-just-do-my-job-for-me.) All I really want is a tool that can help me manage all the information coming at me and meet my commitments in a stress-free way. But it turns out that technology can abet the problem rather than aiding with it.  So I’ve hacked together a combination of digital and analog methods as best I can. And I think lot of people still struggle to survive in workplaces where the constant stream of tasks and meetings and memos can be deadening. The up side to this truth is that it's the fuel for a lot of great office-comedy movies and TV shows—and Mike Judge’s Office Space (1999) is the granddaddy of them all…

If you follow @soonishpodcast on Twitter you may have noticed a few links to Soonish-related items on Fair Observer.

It's a California-based news publication and "crowdsourced multimedia journal" about global politics, co-founded by my friend Atul Singh. This summer Fair Observer offered to republish some Soonish episodes and blog posts, and of course I said I'd be delighted…

The Pulse, the weekly WHYY health and science show hosted by Maiken Scott, published a space-themed episode on July 21 called "Leap of Space." The second segment of the show, '2001' Came and Went, But the Movie's Ideas Still Resonate, might sound familiar to Soonish listeners. It's a condensed version of Episode 1.01, How '2001' Got the Future So Wrong. Staffers at The Pulse approached me about adapting the episode after they decided to do a space show and heard the Soonish episodes about 2001 and Astropreneurs. I said yes right away, of course. And working with them was a blast. It was a challenge to squeeze a 33-minute episode down to about 6.5 minutes!  But…