Best Wade Roush Podcasts (2025)

1
Well, We're in the Valley of Doom. Here Are Some Paths Forward. 1:39:35

7M ago1:39:35

1:39:35

If you listened to my previous episode, you’ll remember that I described four "valleys" or scenarios for how the 2024 presidential election could unfold. The fourth scenario was one where Donald Trump wins both the electoral college and the popular vote, with a margin big enough to claim he has a mandate for change. I called that the Valley of Doom…

1
Harris, Trump, and the Four Valleys 28:36

8M ago28:36

28:36

Why does every presidential race lately get described as "the most important election of our lifetimes"? Because it's true. In any election where Donald Trump is on the ballot, Americans are faced with a world-changing choice about whether we want the democratic experiment to continue. Right now, four weeks out from the 2024 vote, it's totally uncl…

1
Introducing The Rabbis Go South from the Hub & Spoke Expo 19:36

9M ago19:36

19:36

Don't worry, the next regular season of Soonish is still coming. But meanwhile I wanted to bring you something really special that I think you’ll like. It's first episode of a new podcast from Hub & Spoke called The Rabbis Go South. It’s a documentary that we’re presenting as part of a new project we’ve cooked up called the Hub & Spoke Expo. The Ex…

1
Welcome to Technofeudalism 45:44

12M ago45:44

45:44

I’ve been arguing on the show since 2019 that the companies that run the big technology platforms—Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the rest—have far too much wealth and power. In the world these companies have built, we exist only to generate behavioral data. We supply that data through our decisions about what social media posts to click on and what …

1
The Otherworldly Power of a Total Eclipse 1:08:35

1y ago1:08:35

1:08:35

The most important piece of advice David Baron ever got: “Before you die, you owe it to yourself to see a total solar eclipse.” The recommendation came from the Williams College astronomer Jay Pasachoff, a beloved teacher and textbook author, after Baron interviewed him for a 1994 radio story. Baron listened—and it changed his life. He saw his firs…

1
Looking Back at 50 Episodes of Soonish 1:05:25

1+ y ago1:05:25

1:05:25

After a long hiatus, Soonish is back for a celebration: this is the 50th full episode of the show! (I’m not counting a few bonus episodes in that total.) Tamar Avishai, creator and host of the Hub & Spoke podcast The Lonely Palette, joins this time as co-host to help us take a look back at the first 49 episodes of the show. She quizzes me on the ac…

1
For the Love of Audio: It's the Hub & Spoke Radio Hour 51:25

1+ y ago51:25

51:25

Hey listeners! A new, original episode of Soonish is coming very soon. Meanwhile, I wanted to share a Valentine's Day treat. As the philosopher Haddaway once asked, "What is love?" Well, it can be anything that stirs the heart: passion, grief, affection, kin. The desire to consume; the poignancy of memory. At Hub & Spoke—the collective of independe…

1
Bonus Episode: TASTING LIGHT Publication Day 58:59

2+ y ago58:59

58:59

Why does the world of young adult fiction seem to have more wizards, werewolves, and vampires in it than astronauts and engineers? And why have the writers of the blockbuster YA books of the last 20 years fixated so consistently on white, straight, cisgender protagonists while always somehow forgetting to portray the true diversity of young people’…

1
Strange Newt Worlds 1:00:12

3y ago1:00:12

1:00:12

This week we're featuring a conversation with Ian Coss, co-creator of Newts, a wild new six-part musical audio drama from PRX and the fiction podcast The Truth. The show is inspired by the writings of the Czech journalist and science fiction pioneer Karel Čapek. He’s best known for coining the word "robot" in his 1920 play Rossum's Universal Robots…

1
A Soundtrack for the Pandemic 58:14

3y ago58:14

58:14

For most people, nightmares produce insomnia, exhaustion, and unease. For Graham Gordon Ramsay, a spate of severe nightmares in April 2020 developed into something more lasting and meaningful: a five-movement, 18-minute musical work for organ or string ensemble called "Introspections." To me, it's one of the most arresting artistic documents of the…

1
Can Albuquerque Make Room for Its Past and Its Future? 51:40

3y ago51:40

51:40

Last summer, a pair of murals celebrating New Mexico's landscape, heritage, and diversity appeared in Albuquerque's historic Old Town district. The large outdoor pieces by muralists Jodie Herrera and Reyes Padilla—two artists with deep roots in New Mexico—brought life back to a once abandoned shopping plaza and became instant fan favorites, endless…

1
How Novartis Built a Hit Factory for New Drugs 1:00:13

3+ y ago1:00:13

1:00:13

When you hear people use the phrase "It's a hits-driven business," they're usually talking about venture capital, TV production, videogames, or pop music—all industries where you don't make much money unless you come up with at least one (and preferably a string of) massively popular products. But you know what's another hits-driven business? Drug …

1
How LEGO Learned to Click Again 55:38

3+ y ago55:38

55:38

LEGO is so omnipresent in today’s culture—through its stores, its theme parks, its movies, and of course its construction kits—that it’s hard to imagine a world not strewn with billions of colorful plastic LEGO bricks. Yet less than two decades ago, in 2003, the company came close to extinction, thanks to a frenetic bout of new-product introduction…

1
Art and Technology at Disney 54:23

3+ y ago54:23

54:23

This week, Soonish presents Part 2 of The Persistent Innovators, a miniseries I've been guest-producing and guest-hosting for Innovation Answered, InnoLead's podcast for people with creative roles inside big companies. You can think of Persistent Innovators as the corporate equivalent of human super-agers—meaning they don’t settle into a complacent…

1
The Reinvention of Apple 54:29

3+ y ago54:29

54:29

This week, I've got something different for Soonish listeners. I'm sharing Part 1 of "The Persistent Innovators," a miniseries I'm currently guest-producing and guest-hosting for InnoLead's podcast Innovation Answered. The big question the series tackles is: "How do big companies become innovative—and stay innovative?" I'm looking at four long-live…

1
This Is How You Win the Time War 51:14

3+ y ago51:14

51:14

Clock time is a human invention. So it shouldn’t be a box that confines us; it should be a tool that helps us accomplish the things we care about. But consider the system of standard time, first imposed by the railroad companies in the 1880s. It constrains people who live 1,000 miles apart—on opposite edges of their time zones—to get up and go to w…

1
Goodbye, Google 42:09

4y ago42:09

42:09

What if a technology company becomes so rich, so powerful, so exploitative, and so oblivious that that the harm it's doing begins to outweigh the quality and utility of its products? What if that company happens to run the world's dominant search, advertising, email, web, and mobile platforms? This month's episode of Soonish argues that it's time t…

1
Fusion! And Other Ways to Put the Adventure Back in Venture Capital 38:55

4y ago38:55

38:55

Venture capital is the fuel powering most technology startups. Behind every future Google or Uber or Snapchat is a syndicate of venture firms hoping for outsize financial returns. But the vast majority of venture money goes into Internet, mobile, and software companies where consumer demand and the path to market are plain. So what happens to entre…

1
Hope for Ultra-Rare Diseases 45:20

4y ago45:20

45:20

In this episode of Soonish you'll meet Stanley Crooke, the former CEO of Ionis Pharmaceuticals and the head of a new nonprofit called N-Lorem, which is working to make mutation-correcting "antisense oligonucleotide" drugs available free for life to people with uncommon genetic diseases. These are conditions so rare they often don't have a name. But…

1
Technology and Education After the Pandemic 39:16

4+ y ago39:16

39:16

The coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on education on schools around the world, often rendering in-classroom instruction too dangerous for both students and teachers. But one reason the effects of the pandemic haven’t been even worse is that, in education as in many other fields, a few new technologies were ready for broader deploym…

1
"We've Needed Something to Bring Us Together" 45:35

4+ y ago45:35

45:35

In honor of the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden—a day of long-awaited endings and new beginnings—I'm republishing my Season 2 opener, "Shadows of August," which I first released a little more than three years ago, during the the fiery early months of the Trump presidency. On a road trip to southern Illinois to witness the total eclipse that sliced …

1
The Inventor of the Cell Phone Says the Future Is Still Calling 41:14

4+ y ago41:14

41:14

In 1973, there was only one man who believed everyone on Earth would want and need a cell phone. That man was a Motorola engineer named Martin Cooper. “I had a science fiction prediction,” Cooper recounts in his new memoir, Cutting the Cord: The Inventor of the Cell Phone Speaks Out. “I told anyone who would listen that, someday, every person would…

1
The End of the Beginning 55:08

4+ y ago55:08

55:08

Soonish's six-month detour into electoral politics finishes where it started, with a conversation with our favorite futurist, Jamais Cascio. We talked late on November 6—when it was already clear that Joseph R. Biden would win the presidential race, but before the networks had officially called it—and we explored what Biden's unexpectedly narrow wi…

1
American Reckoning, Part 2: A New Kind of Nation 41:08

4+ y ago41:08

41:08

Welcome to a special two-part series about the looming clash over the future of America. In Part 1, we looked at the tattered state of our democracy and searched for peaceful ways through an election season in which one candidate—Trump—has threatened violence and disruption if he doesn’t win. Here in Part 2, we look at the work waiting for us after…

1
American Reckoning, Part 1: Civil Wars and How to Stop Them 53:31

4+ y ago53:31

53:31

Welcome to a special two-part series about the looming clash over the future of America. In Part 1, we look at the tattered state of our democracy as the election approaches, and we assess nonviolent ways to respond to the twin threats of political polarization and President Trump's thuggish behavior. Part 2 is coming October 12. These are probably…

1
After Trump, What Comes Next? 36:36

4+ y ago36:36

36:36

Donald Trump will not be president forever. Whether he leaves office in 2021 or 2025; whether he steps down peacefully or not; whether he’s replaced by a Democratic president or a Republican one—he will leave. And then the country will face the immense task of restoring democratic norms and facing up to the failings that allowed a populist, white-n…

1
Unpeaceful Transition of Power 48:54

5y ago48:54

48:54

Voters, hold on to your hats. The U.S. election system could face an unprecedented array of challenges in November, from the coronavirus pandemic to the prospect of cyberattacks to the depradations of President Trump himself. And that means there’s a non-zero chance that the election will misfire, leaving us with the wrong president—or no president…

1
Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible: How One Futurist Frames the Pandemic 36:36

5y ago36:36

36:36

Futurists—who sometimes prefer to be called scenario planners or foresight thinkers—specialize in helping the rest of us understand the big trends and forces that will shape the world of tomorrow. So here’s what I really wanted to ask one: Is a cataclysm like the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 the kind of event we should be able to see coming? If so,…

1
Making Moonrise 43:34

5+ y ago43:34

43:34

Fifty years after Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins went to the moon, it’s hard to shake off the afterimage of the Saturn V rocket rising into the sky on a column of flame, and remember that the astronauts' bold adventure was also the product of decades of work by engineers, politicians, propagandists, and even science fiction writer…

1
Election Dreams and Nightmares 35:23

5+ y ago35:23

35:23

The moment in the voting booth when you put your pen to your ballot (or put your finger to the electronic touchscreen, as the case may be) is democracy distilled. It’s the act that makes America a republic. But while the casting your vote is critical, it’s everything that happens before, during, and after that moment that makes up the larger electi…

1
The Great Blue Hill Heist 6:43

6y ago6:43

6:43

In this short bonus episode, hear the bizarre story of a college student who scaled a New England weather tower on a dare, stole a curious scientific instrument as a trophy, and inadvertently disrupted a series of climate observations going back more than 130 years. I made this four-minute, non-narrated piece in 2018 as part of the 24-Hour Radio Ra…

1
I Have Seen the Future of Displays 28:42

6y ago28:42

28:42

Apple used the opening keynote presentation at its annual World Wide Developers Conference in San Jose in June to roll out the usual array of software updates and new computer hardware. But tucked into middle of the keynote was one the event's most consequential and underappreciated pieces of news: For the first time in more than three years, Apple…

1
How to Fix Social Media 34:24

6y ago34:24

34:24

Earlier this year Soonish took on social media in an episode called A Future Without Facebook. In that show I explained my own decision to quit the troubled platform and talked with friends and colleagues about their own reasons for staying or going. But the story of how these platforms are confounding earlier hopes for social media—and are instead…

1
The Art that Launched a Thousand Rockets 34:12

6y ago34:12

34:12

The adjective “visionary” gets thrown around a lot, but it’s literally true of Chesley Bonestell and Arthur Radebaugh, the two illustrators featured in this week’s episode. Both men used their fertile visual imaginations and their artistic skills to create engaging, influential depictions of human space exploration and our high-tech future. Their w…

1
A Future Without Facebook 44:08

6y ago44:08

44:08

Every technology has its growing pains, but Facebook, at age 15, has matured into a never-ending disaster. Here at Soonish, I'm fed up, and I'm closing my accounts. In this episode, you’ll hear how I reached this point, and how other Facebook users are coming to grips with the chronic problems at the social network. You might just come away with so…

1
The Track Not Taken 25:22

6+ y ago25:22

25:22

The Meigs Elevated Railway—one of the world’s first monorail systems—looked like something out of a Jules Verne novel. But it was very real. In this week’s episode, hear how nineteenth-century Bostonians missed their chance to build a steam punk utopia. The monorail system was the brainchild of Joe Meigs, a Civil War veteran and tinkerer who had po…

1
When Minds and Machines Converge 30:38

6+ y ago30:38

30:38

Can thought-power control the world outside our heads? Thanks to new brain-machine interface technology, the answer is yes. But the real question is whether it can it help us control the world inside our heads. In the Season 3 opener of Soonish we meet Ariel Garten, co-founder of Interaxon, a Canadian startup that’s one of the first to offer a cons…

1
Making Music with Machines 40:27

7y ago40:27

40:27

We can’t predict what kind of music people will want to make or hear in the future. But based on the sounds coming out of today's studios and clubs, it's a good bet that the tunes of tomorrow will be heavily mediated by digital technology. This week’s show asks how software has changed the way composers and performers make music, and how our tools …

1
Tomorrow, Today with Ministry of Ideas 39:27

7y ago39:27

39:27

The way we picture the future is still based, in large measure, on the visions brought to life at the world’s fairs and international expositions that swept the globe between the 1850s and the 1960s—especially the New York World’s Fairs of 1939-40 and 1964-65, the Seattle World’s Fair of 1962, and Disney World’s EPCOT Center (which is, in essence, …

1
Sci-Fi That Takes Science Seriously 39:00

7y ago39:00

39:00

The golden era of “hard” science fiction that respects the rules of actual science lasted from the 1940s to the 1960s. In the 1970s, demand for hard sci-fi fell off a cliff, with a big push from the first Star Wars movie in 1977. But for the last year and a half, Soonish host Wade Roush has been part of a project to revive this underappreciated gen…

1
The Future Is Clear 35:55

7+ y ago35:55

35:55

Episode 2.07: What's ubiquitous but invisible, versatile yet temperamental, goopy when it's hot yet brittle when it's cold, as old as civilization yet as new as the screen of your smartphone? The answer is glass. This week on Soonish, we ask what glass really is, where it comes from, who's using it in interesting ways today, and how it will fit int…

1
Looking Virtual Reality In The Eye 36:21

7+ y ago36:21

36:21

Episode 2.06: The immersive, 3D environments of virtual reality aren’t science fiction any more, and they aren’t just for video games. In this episode Wade visits “The Enemy,” a groundbreaking VR exhibit about the psychology of war. The creation of photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa, it introduces visitors to hyper-realistic avatars based on six rea…

1
A Space Shuttle Isn't Cool. You Know What's Cool? A Space Elevator (Soonish on Soonish) 55:14

7+ y ago55:14

55:14

Episode 2.05 of Soonish, the podcast, is all about Soonish, the book! Host Wade Roush interviews Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, the husband-and-wife team behind the new book Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything. Kelly Weinersmith is a parasitologist at Rice University and co-host of the podcast Science…Sort of, and…

1
Back To The Futurists With Tamar Avishai 39:42

7+ y ago39:42

39:42

Episode 2.04 is a special crossover show featuring Tamar Avishai's The Lonely Palette, one of the founding shows in our new podcast collective, Hub & Spoke. In this episode Tamar focuses on Italian Futurism, a pre-World War I art movement fueled by a heady mix of diesel and testosterone. The Futurists consciously aimed to use painting, sculpture, a…

1
Mapping the Future with Tim O'Reilly 47:24

7+ y ago47:24

47:24

Episode 2.03: For a sane, humane, and skeptical perspective on what’s happening to Silicon Valley and why our high-tech economy seems to be failing us, there’s no better source than Tim O’Reilly, master trend spotter and founder of computer book publisher O’Reilly Media. Soonish’s in-depth conversation with the admired entrepreneur, investor, and a…

1
Introducing Hub & Spoke 18:02

7+ y ago18:02

18:02

Episode 2.02: Big news! Soonish is a founding member of Hub & Spoke, a Boston-centric collective of smart, idea-driven podcasts. Together with the art history podcast The Lonely Palette and the new philosophy-and-culture show Ministry of Ideas, we’re celebrating independent audio storytelling and the power of art, science, arguments, and ideas to c…

1
Xconomy Voices 03: Nathan Myhrvold 14:27

7+ y ago14:27

14:27

Nuclear power isn’t dead, despite a body blow from the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan. And if our guest Nathan Myhrvold has anything to do with it, nuclear technology might see a true resurgence, taking the place of carbon-emitting coal plants in fast-growing countries like China and India. In this episode Myhrvold talks about progress at TerraPo…

1
Shadows Of August: The Eclipse Road Trip Edition 46:09

8y ago46:09

46:09

Episode 2.01: The conflict in Charlottesville in August of 2017 showed that Americans are having a hard time figuring out how to represent the country’s past, let alone how to fix the present or plan for the future. But sometimes a stunning natural event like a total solar eclipse can bring us back together—if only for a few minutes. For the Season…

1
Xconomy Voices 02: Christopher Ahlberg 15:11

8y ago15:11

15:11

Our guest Christopher Ahlberg is the CEO and co-founder of Recorded Future, a cybersecurity firm based in the Boston area. He says countries and companies who want to defend against cyber attacks can’t depend on spies, wiretaps, satellites, or network software. These days, the Web itself is a rich source of threat intelligence. So, his Somerville, …

1
Washington, We Have A Problem 31:15

8y ago31:15

31:15

Episode 1.10: Just in time for Independence Day 2017, it's a special politics edition of Soonish! With his attacks on judges and journalists, his attempts to quell inquiries into his campaign’s Russia ties, his early-morning tweetstorms, and so much more, Donald Trump has breached every norm of presidential conduct. And he’s testing the constitutio…

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