Modem Futura

Sean Leahy, Andrew Maynard

Modem Futura is your weekly guide to the future of science, technology, and society—where futures and 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, electric air taxis, or the sociology of robots, Modem Futura connects cutting-edge research with the narratives that drive innovation. Join us each week to explore possible, probable, and preferred futures, and discover practical insights for navigating an increasingly tech-driven world. 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!

  1. WEF Top 10 Emerging Technologies 2026: A Futures Breakdown

    23h ago

    WEF Top 10 Emerging Technologies 2026: A Futures Breakdown

    Every year, the World Economic Forum releases its Top 10 Emerging Technologies list — and this year, Andrew shares his front-row history with it: he was in the room in Dubai back in 2011 when the whole thing began. In this episode, Sean and Andrew walk through all ten of the 2026 technologies as the report drops. There's an unmistakable energy thread — everything-to-grid systems that turn your car and your house into a living power network, direct lithium extraction, passive radiative cooling materials that could make a Phoenix summer survivable without melting the grid. Then the conversation turns intimate and biological: PFAS destruction for the forever chemicals we were too clever at making, precision fermentation brewing protein and medicine in microscopic vats, exosome drug delivery and personalized mRNA cancer vaccines that turn a tumor's own signature against it. And running underneath it all, the compute layer — quantum simulation mapping "undruggable" diseases atom by atom, AI world models that learn the physical world the way a one-year-old does, and lattice-based cryptography hardening our secrets against quantum computers that don't yet exist. What makes this list interesting isn't novelty; it's the quiet convergence. Stack these together and you start to glimpse a tricorder-and-replicator future — scan, model, ferment, deliver — alongside harder questions about accountability, unintended consequences, and who gets to be the architect of the world the machines come to understand. A wide-ranging, warm, and genuinely curious tour through the technologies that may shape the next decade. Full WEF Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026 [Web] ----- Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura Host Bios: Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU BioSean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU BioAndrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures. -----

    1h 18m
  2. AI Jobs, Liquid Software & Human Flourishing with Jeff Abbott

    Jun 16

    AI Jobs, Liquid Software & Human Flourishing with Jeff Abbott

    School's out, the studio's packed into boxes, and Modem Futura is officially on summer roadshow — broadcasting from Andrew's home studio with returning guest Jeff Abbott, founding partner at Blitzscaling Ventures, founder of AI Salon, and Andrew's co-author on AI and the Art of Being Human. One year on from writing the book, the question at its heart — what does it mean to be human when AI can mirror so much of what we do? — has only grown louder, from boardrooms to commencement ceremonies where graduates are now booing the mention of AI. Sean, Andrew, and Jeff sit with that tension: a generation feeling like AI is happening to them, alongside builders doing things that seemed impossible three years ago. From inside the venture world, Jeff offers a candid tour of the new gold rush — why there are almost no technical moats left, what happens when the model beneath your startup shifts overnight, and why software itself is going liquid, spun up for a single task and discarded. Along the way: the plumber who no longer needs an office manager, the rise of the one-person unicorn, the minimum viable human team, and a question Jeff turns back on his hosts — what would an investment framework for human flourishing actually look like? Beneath the vibe coding and the venture math sits a stubbornly human truth the trio keeps circling back to: judgment, trust, and relationships remain the parts of the iceberg AI can't reach. Every business, it turns out, is still a human business. ----- Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura Host Bios: Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU BioSean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU BioAndrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures. -----

    54 min
  3. Synthetic Cells, Mirror Life, and the Future of Engineered Biology — with Emma Frow

    Jun 9

    Synthetic Cells, Mirror Life, and the Future of Engineered Biology — with Emma Frow

    What do we actually mean when we say we've made life in a lab? In this episode, Sean and Andrew welcome back ASU's Emma Frow — a researcher working at the rare intersection of bioengineering, governance, and care — to wander into one of the strangest frontiers in science: synthetic cells. Emma was one of roughly fifteen members of a National Academies committee tasked with thinking through the responsible innovation of synthetic cells, and as she tells it, the group spent its first six months simply trying to agree on what a synthetic cell is. It turns out there's no consensus — the term stretches from a humble bag of enzymes wrapped in a lipid membrane all the way to fully constructed, self-replicating organisms. From there the conversation moves into deeper water: What counts as living? Where does a cell end and a bundle of chemicals begin? And who, exactly, decides whether a new creation belongs to the world of chemical safety or biological oversight? The trio also takes on the unsettling idea of "mirror life" — organisms built from the opposite molecular handedness of everything that has ever lived — and the recent scientific reckoning over whether some doors are better left unopened. What emerges isn't fear, exactly, but a case for care: the recognition that biotechnology can't move at Silicon Valley speed, that containment is never perfect, and that the questions we ask matter as much as the things we build. It's a conversation about handedness and humility, about plasmids and power, and about why the slow, friction-filled work of asking "should we?" might be the most human technology of all. Emma's ASU Bio - [web] Read the Report: Supporting Responsible Innovation of Synthetic Cells: Biosafety, Biosecurity, and Environmental Considerations2026 [Web] ----- Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura Host Bios: Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU BioSean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU BioAndrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures. -----

    57 min
  4. Alien Minds, Time Travelers, and Consciousness Backups: A Futures Thought Experiment

    Jun 2

    Alien Minds, Time Travelers, and Consciousness Backups: A Futures Thought Experiment

    We're back for another round of Futures Improv — the segment where an AI-generated scenario lands on the table and we improvise our way through what it might mean for the rest of us. This time the spinner sends us into three very different futures, each one quietly serious underneath the play. We open with the Solaris Problem: humanity makes first contact, but the intelligence on the other end is a moon-sized organism that communicates only by generating vivid hallucinations drawn from our own repressed memories. It isn't hostile. It isn't friendly. It may not even know we exist as separate beings. That sends us into the hard problem of consciousness, the limits of recognizing a mind that doesn't look like ours, and the slightly humbling observation that we still can't have a proper conversation with an octopus. Then The Wells Reset: a time traveler arrives from the year 8,002,701 with one verified fact — humanity survived — and one question they're willing to answer before returning. They look sad. What do you ask? And, just as importantly, what do you choose not to ask? We close with The Backup's Dilemma: every night while you sleep, your consciousness is copied to the cloud. Ten years in, the backups start dreaming differently than you do. Who, then, has the right to your marriage, your grudges, your name? And the question that always sneaks up behind it — how would you know you weren't already the backup? Plus a wildcard run at first contact via TikTok, because of course. A loose, playful episode that ends up somewhere genuinely strange. Bring your favorite metaphysical anxiety. ----- Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura Host Bios: Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU BioSean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU BioAndrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures. -----

    44 min
  5. Project Hail Mary, Dead Civilizations, and the Trouble with Feel-Good Endings

    May 26

    Project Hail Mary, Dead Civilizations, and the Trouble with Feel-Good Endings

    A timed episode (they gave themselves 35 minutes — barely made it) becomes an excuse for two arguments stitched together. First, Sean and Andrew finally have it out over Andy Weir's *Project Hail Mary*: Sean loved both the novel and the film; Andrew, while admitting it's an enjoyable piece of moviemaking, can't get past what he calls the sugar-coated solutionism baked into its core — a story that presents extreme utilitarian sacrifice as morally settled rather than morally contested. The conversation widens out from there: when adversity becomes a turning point in one survivor's story, what happens to the ninety-nine who didn't make it? When a film blends real science and invented science, who gets to tell the audience which is which? Then the timer pushes them into the return of Futures Improv, where Sean reads AI-generated speculative scenarios to Andrew cold. Two land. In "The Fermi Paradox Answered Badly," they imagine a sky full of automated distress signals from dead civilizations — and arrive at a chilling possibility: maybe the beacon *is* the extinction event, a galactic mind virus that collapses societies through the act of warning them. In "The Heptapod Update," a Ted Chiang–inspired scenario about a neural implant that installs a time-rewiring language sends them into the contested territory of consciousness, psychedelics, and whether language can change reality or only our perception of it. By the end, two threads converge: every scenario this week was really about the same question — what we do, or fail to do, when we receive a signal we can't unhear. ----- Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura Host Bios: Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU BioSean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU BioAndrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures. -----

    41 min
  6. School's Out for Summer: AI, Vibe Coding, and What Teaching Still Requires

    May 19

    School's Out for Summer: AI, Vibe Coding, and What Teaching Still Requires

    What happens when the semester ends and you finally have a moment to look back at what just happened? In this episode, Sean and Andrew sit down for an honest, reflective conversation about what it actually looks like to teach at a university in 2025 — not the polished version you hear at conferences, but the messy, exhausting, exhilarating reality of it. Sean just wrapped three compressed courses in seven weeks — all new — and uses the moment to reflect on how AI tools, especially vibe coding, quietly transformed parts of his teaching practice this semester. From building interactive HTML primers in 20 minutes to vibe coding a fully functional Jeopardy review game for graduate students, these weren't flashy demonstrations of technology — they were bridges built in real time to meet students where they actually were. But the conversation goes deeper than tools. Sean and Andrew explore why teaching remains fundamentally relational — why trust between instructor and student is the real infrastructure that makes AI use in the classroom work (or not). They wrestle with the difference between access to information and genuine learning, why modeling what it means to be a knowledge professional matters more than ever, and why the push to scale education through AI agents misses something essential about how humans actually learn. Woven through it all is a quiet appreciation for educators at every level — from the chemistry professor with chalk-dusted elbow patches to the K-12 teachers holding entire communities together. This isn't a roadmap for AI in education. It's a semester's worth of hard-won insight, offered with warmth, humor, and the kind of honesty that only comes when the grades are finally in. ----- Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura Host Bios: Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU BioSean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU BioAndrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures. -----

    1h 3m
  7. The Dawkins Effect: Why Even Skeptics Fall for AI Consciousness

    May 12

    The Dawkins Effect: Why Even Skeptics Fall for AI Consciousness

    When Richard Dawkins — the man who gave us The Selfish Gene and decades of rigorous scientific skepticism — published an essay declaring that Claude, an AI chatbot, might be conscious, the internet had feelings. Some cheered. Many cringed. But on this episode of Modem Futura, hosts Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard sit down with returning guest Punya Mishra to ask a harder question: if it can happen to Dawkins, what does that say about the rest of us? The conversation moves quickly past the easy takedown. Mishra, whose own intellectual foundations were shaped by Dawkins' writing, brings a deeply personal lens — discovering The Selfish Gene as a teenager in a British Council library, then watching his intellectual hero fall for the very illusions his tools of skepticism should have caught. The trio explores what Andrew calls the "cognitive Trojan horse" — how AI bypasses our epistemic defenses not through deception but through honest non-signals: fluent language, apparent effort, and conversational warmth that cost the machine nothing but trigger everything in us that evolved to build trust with other humans. Drawing on theory of mind, Kahneman's dual-process thinking, evolutionary psychology, and even the spandrels of San Marco, this episode asks whether our oldest cognitive armor might be our greatest vulnerability. And it raises a question nobody can quite answer yet: if a technology taps into something this deep about who we are, what happens to the middle of the bell curve — the billions of people using these tools with no idea what they're really interacting with? ----- Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura Host Bios: Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU BioSean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU BioAndrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures. -----

    58 min
  8. Convergence Day: Opus 4.7 and the Reliability Question

    May 5

    Convergence Day: Opus 4.7 and the Reliability Question

    Something has changed with Claude — not catastrophically, not visibly, just enough that the writers, researchers, and builders who'd come to rely on it have started to notice the seams. What does it mean when a tool you've come to think of as a creative partner quietly becomes someone slightly different? When the thing you depended on yesterday isn't quite the same thing you're working with today, and no one tells you? Drawing on a clearly traceable timeline of recent shifts — adaptive thinking made mandatory, hidden routing tiers, verbosity caps, expanded safeguards beginning to block legitimate creative and academic work — they trace how the launch of Anthropic's Opus 4.7 has surfaced a question that goes well beyond any single model release. What is our relationship to a technology that can be re-tuned beneath our feet? The conversation moves through the tension between liquid platforms and personal agency, why mission-critical workflows now feel suddenly fragile, whether a frozen or locally-hosted model might become the next quiet luxury for serious users, and what it really means to build a *relationship* with something that, by design, won't sit still. Along the way, Andrew shares an unexpected workaround that started getting him better writing back — giving Claude permission to be itself rather than him — and Sean offers a small "canary in the coal mine" trick that anyone using these tools can borrow today. This isn't an episode about whether AI is good or bad. It's an episode about what it means to depend on something you can't see, can't freeze, and can't fully know — and what kind of humans we are becoming while we figure it out. ----- Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura Follow us on Instagram: @ModemFutura Host Bios: Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU BioSean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU BioAndrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures. -----

    52 min
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About

Modem Futura is your weekly guide to the future of science, technology, and society—where futures and 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, electric air taxis, or the sociology of robots, Modem Futura connects cutting-edge research with the narratives that drive innovation. Join us each week to explore possible, probable, and preferred futures, and discover practical insights for navigating an increasingly tech-driven world. 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!

Information

  • Creator
    Sean Leahy, Andrew Maynard
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    93
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025
  • Show Website
    Modem Futura

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