In this conversation, we talk with Jim Pethokoukis, the author of "The Conservative Futurist" and the newsletter "Faster, Please!" where he writes about innovation, economics, and the potential of future technologies.
In this conversation, we talk about the optimistic cultural zeitgeist of the 1960s space race, the unfulfilled promises of that era, such as nuclear-powered space exploration, the role media plays in shaping societal attitudes towards the future, and much more!
Enjoy!
Mentioned in this conversation
- "Faster, Please!" on Substack
- The Conservative Futurist: How We Get the Science Fiction Future We Were Promised
- "For All Mankind" TV series
- SpaceX Mars colonization video
- "The Peripheral" by William Gibson
- "The High Frontier" by Gerard K. O'Neill
Chapters
00:00 Welcome to Build the Future
01:10 Introducing Jim Pethokoukis
01:52 The science-fiction future we were promised
05:10 The optimism of the 1990s
08:25 A new cluster of technologies and old constraints
12:37 Energy, growth and zero-sum thinking
16:43 What up-wing and down-wing mean
19:47 Ambition, politics and looking forward
23:08 Policy that supports innovation
26:00 The High Frontier and visions after Apollo
28:52 For All Mankind and the stories we tell
31:12 Energy, planetary defense and concrete goals
32:57 What dystopian stories leave us with
34:49 Fiction that inspires people to build
38:07 Creating compelling stories of progress
41:46 Interstellar and the cost of lost ambition
43:12 World’s fairs and the spectacle of progress
48:36 Where to find Jim and a closing challenge
50:16 Closing
Links
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Build the Future Podcast. This is a project by World's Fair Co. You can learn more at worldsfair.org.
