Something You Should Know - Great Strategies to Maximize Your Money & New Technologies that Will Change Your Life

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

What happens if you try to make a photocopy of a $20 bill? This episode begins by revealing why it is so hard to do and why a picture of money won’t open in PhotoShop either. http://www.businessinsider.com/money-counterfit-eurion-constellation-copy-scan-photoshop-2017-1 Financial guru Suze Orman has been preaching the importance of financial responsibility for a long time. Listen as she offers some effective strategies to help you keep more of your money and help it grow while still enjoying life to the fullest. For information about the document package she talks about go to: https://www.suzeorman.com/products/must-have-documents Temptation often wins over willpower. But the next time you need a little burst of willpower to overcome that urge you will later regret, there is a strategy that really seems to work. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psyched/201104/clenching-your-fists-increases-willpower All the talk about artificial intelligence and robot technology can sound scary. What will be left for humans to do? Futurist Steve Brown, author of The Innovation Ultimatum: Six Strategic Technologies That Will Reshape Every Business in the 2020s (https://amzn.to/2ORNJOt) joins me with some good news about all of this. He also offers a glimpse into some amazing technology that will be able to detect cancer just by listening to your voice.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, wherever you get your podcasts. an absolute joy. You can spend the money that you save. Nobody tells you that you can't touch it, but you have to have money that you can access when things go wrong. And trust me, things will go wrong. Also, an effective way to get a burst of willpower to resist temptation. And will

artificial intelligence and other technologies make your job and career obsolete? We need to be realistic. There are some people who will lose their jobs. But for most of us, these technologies are not going to automate us out of work. They're going to make our jobs more fun, more enjoyable. All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes.

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And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. We start today with something that's pretty interesting and could also easily win you a bar bet. And that is to bet somebody they can't photocopy a $20 bill. Because you can't. It is illegal to copy money and it is almost impossible. If you try to copy a U.S. dollar bill of any denomination on a modern photocopier or a scanner, it won't work.

That's because in 1996, a series of five dots resembling the Uriyan constellation and then repeated over and over again was added to U.S. banknotes as well as to the paper money from several other countries. Software in modern photocopiers and scanners recognize that pattern of dots and will not copy the money. Even if you try to take a picture that you find online of a $20 bill or something and try to drag it into Photoshop, it won't open. So you can't make money by copying it.

You have to earn it the old-fashioned way. And that is something you should know. Would you say that you're completely happy with the way you handle your money? Are you saving enough? Are you investing wisely? Do you feel like you have enough money? I'll bet not. I think everybody wishes they had more money, and wish they had more money saved and invested,

and wish they had less debt. And maybe, just maybe, had a better handle on the whole thing. Well, here to help is Susie Orman. Susie has been preaching financial responsibility for a long time. She's been on television. She's written several books. She is really a personal finance guru. She also has a podcast called Women and Money.

And she, as you are about to hear, she isn't wishy-washy about what you should do with your money and the reasons why. Hi, Susie. Welcome. Mike, Money Mike. How are you? I'm good. Thank you. So let's begin with this question. What is it that you think, from all the people you talk to, particularly people later in life as they look back on their financial life, what is the thing that older people regret that younger people may not even think about or contemplate that perhaps they should? Debt. Seriously, debt is the biggest thing that people said. Why did I buy that? Why did I have to buy cars? Why did I take out so much student loans? Why did I have to buy such a big house? Why did I have to refinance

my house just so I could go on vacation? Debt is really the one thing that makes you feel like you are in financial jail. And a lot of debt, such as student loan debt, you cannot get rid of. So especially from younger people, like in their 20s, in their 30s, even in their 40s, they're always saying to me, Susie, why did I take out so much student loan debt? What should I do about it? I don't know what to do. And really, debt is the biggest mistake that most people wish they had never taken on. But once you take it on, and a lot of young people take it on without a whole lot of thought, and short of bankruptcy, you've still got to deal

with it. So how do you deal with it? If somebody listening has debt and says, okay, well, but I still got to pay it back. So this answer is going to be a little bit surprising to you. The first thing you have to do is you have to call every single person you know and tell them how much debt you have. And I'm serious about this because the biggest problem with debt is nobody knows you have it. So you have all the shame and you feel like you're the only one who's like this. And when you start calling your friends and you go, I have $10,000 of debt. How much debt do you have? And they go 20,000. And then you talk to somebody else. You find out that everybody around you, number one, has debt. So now you don't have to feel shamed about it because believe it or not, shame is one of the internal obstacles to wealth.

Fear, shame, and anger because you got to deal with things. And normally when an emotion comes up, Mike, that's when you go out and you spend more than. So you spend more than when you feel less than. So now you have this debt. So here's what you're going to do. You are going to total up all the debt that you have, and you're going to do. You are going to total up all the debt that you have. And you're going to arrange it from the highest interest rate to the lowest interest rate. You're going to try to get your high interest rates lowered. And you are going to add 20% to that figure. So if you find out that your minimum payments due on all your credit cards, for instance,

happens to be $300, then add 20% to that or 60 bucks. You're then going to pay 60 extra dollars per month plus the minimum payment due to your highest interest rate card. And next month when the bills come in and they've now lowered your minimum payment due every month, you're going to stick with the minimum payment due that you were making the month that you did this. You are not going to send in less. When the first card is all paid off, you're going to take that

payment plus the 60 and add it to your second card. And you're just going to keep rolling it down till you are out of debt. Which sounds good, except then your car breaks down or your mom gets sick and you have to take time off work and go fly to see her and life happens. And life happens, which is why besides getting out of debt, you need to have an emergency fund. So I've always told everybody they need eight months emergency fund and they say, well, Susie, I don't have eight months of emergency fund. I don't have that kind of money. So some money

is better than no money. And you really have to make it a priority. You have to get as much pleasure out of saving as you do spending. And time, the other regret that a lot of people have is that they didn't start early. They didn't understand that when you're 25 years of age and you start putting money into a retirement account, it will grow far faster than when you are at 35 years of age and you start. So time is the most important ingredient in any financial freedom recipe. So there are people who work, they're 25, they're 35, and they've got to put something away for retirement.

The best place would be a Roth IRA or a Roth 401k. And in case of an emergency or something, they can always take out their original contributions Best place would be a Roth IRA or a Roth 401k. And in case of an emergency or something, they can always take out their original contributions from a Roth IRA. But these are things they need to know, Mike. They need to know these things. And nobody wants to know any of these things. They just don't. That's the thing is that people hear this and go, eh, maybe next year, maybe another time.

But right now, I'm young and I need to spread my wings and fly. All right, so then let me just give you an example, those of you who want to fly. Let's just say you're 25 years of age and you put $100 a month away in a Roth IRA. And the reason I want you to put it in a Roth IRA is a Roth IRA. And the reason I want you to put it in a Roth IRA is a Roth IRA is the best

retirement account you will ever have bar none. Any money you put into a Roth IRA, you can take out without any penalties or taxes, regardless of how old you are or how long that money has been in there. So don't be afraid about putting money in because you can get it out if you need it. So let's just say you put $100 a month in from 25 all the way till 70, which is really the new retirement age today. So you did it for 45 years at $100 a month

with just a 9% annual average rate of return, you would have about $700,000. But let's say you go, oh, Susie, I'm 25. What difference does $100 a month make? $100 a month is $1,200 a year. 10 years is only $12,000. What difference can it make? I'll start at $35,000. If you start at $35,000, you would have only about $300,000 at the age of 70. So those 10 years cost you $400,000, and that's at $100,000 a month. Think if it was at $500 a month, which is what you can put into a Roth. You said something a moment ago about you need to enjoy saving money as much as you enjoy spending it. Well, I'd love to know how to do that because most people don't see it that way. It's like, you know, you need to enjoy your root canal as much as you enjoy your vacation.

And I don't see it. Well, the reason you don't see it is that who in their right mind would compare saving money, saving money that would mean in case your car breaks down, in case something happens, an emergency, that you actually have that money there to pay for it and you don't have to put it on your credit card. A root canal is absolutely painful. If saving money is painful, then really there's a psychological problem that we have here because saving money should be an absolute joy. You can spend the money that you save. Nobody tells you that you can't touch it.

Nobody says you can't ever use it. But you have to have money that you can access when things go wrong. And trust me, things will go wrong. My favorite thing that I'm doing right now in life is I am hosting the Women in Money podcast. And the emails that I get, and I read every single one of them, they always say to me, Susie, I need money. I just got divorced. I just got sick. I'm maxed out on my credit cards. I don't know what to do. Where do I go to get money? And when you're in that position, it's so sad because all of a sudden you're saying, mom, dad, can I have money? And mom and dad don't have any

money. So the key really is if you really hate saving money, you better ask yourself the question, why? Because, and this is a little deep, but not that deep, is that you and your money are one. If your money is a mess, it's because you're a mess. Because your money cannot do anything without you. You are the one who goes and you earn a paycheck. You decide if you save it, spend it, waste it. Money can't do anything without you. So if you decide to waste it all the time, what is it about who you are that doesn't want to value who you are? I remember talking to you several years ago and seeing you on television, talking about this idea of the amount of money people spend on coffee every morning. If you go to Starbucks every day and get a coffee, how much money you're spending, and that if you save that money and made your coffee at home, that could really help you become wealthy. And there was pushback. You got a lot of pushback on that because people said, look, I want to have coffee every morning.

I want to go to Starbucks. I don't want to live a life of deprivation. I want to go to Starbucks. All right, then go to Starbucks, get a coffee every day for $3 a day, which is $100 a month. Oh, do that every day for 40 years rather than having invested it. And that's $700,000 that you just peed down the drain. I'm not saying that you

never do it, but every day. I was somewhere the other day and this person came in carrying one of those trays where you have seven cups of coffee on it. And they showed up and they bought Starbucks for every single person in their little cubicle that they worked in. And so they passed it out and they were so proud of it. And then I said to them, by any chance, do you have credit card debt? And they said, oh, yeah. I said, well, you pay it off at the end of every month, right? And they go, oh, no, we pay the minimum payment due.

I go, how did you pay for those Starbucks? And they said, oh, I put it on my credit card. And I said, and how much interest rate do you pay? And they said, oh, we're at 18% because I have a really bad FICO score. So they didn't pay $100. They didn't pay whatever it was, $21. If they're paying the minimum payment due, it's going to take them forever. That's like $75 or $100 by the time they paid it off. And it's the same thing with manicures and massages and all these things. If you have money and you don't have debt

and you're fully funding your retirement account and you own a home and all these things are happening, do whatever you want. But all right, once a month, once a week, you go get your Starbucks. But every day? Really? My guest is Susie Orman. She is the author of several books on personal finance,

and she's hosted the podcast Women and Money. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you

thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events.

Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. So, Susie, one of the questions I think people have now because cars have gotten so expensive is, or buy, because leasing on the surface looks like it's a lot cheaper than putting a down payment and making car payments to buy the car. And you're not a proponent of leasing, so explain why. So if you're somebody who buys a car and every three years you trade that car in, no matter what, for a brand new car,

all right, you can lease. But if you really want to get the most out of your money, you would buy a car. And if you didn't have money, you would buy a new car for you, but one that's used because the second you drive that car off the lot, if it's new, it depreciates 20%. Totally depreciates 20%. But anyway, if you buy a car, number one, you should never finance it for more than three years. If you can't afford the payments of a three-year financing deal, you're buying too expensive of a financing deal, you're buying too expensive of a car. So after the car is paid off,

if you keep it another seven years, now we're talking. Now you're making money. Otherwise, if you lease it, every three years, you have to turn it back in. Every three years, you're going to have a $200, $300, $400 a month payment. If you simply buy a car and in three years it's paid for, and now you're saving that payment every single month for seven more years, that's money you can fund your retirement account with. That's why. Good answer. What, were the other ones not good? Oh, of course they didn't. Just joking. What else do people give you a hard time about or you notice that they are not really paying attention? Have we hit the big ones or what else are people missing?

People are also missing that they really don't have the paperwork in place today to protect their tomorrows. They never think they're going to get sick. They never think they're going to do anything wrong. So once you especially are out there and you have kids, do you know that minors cannot inherit money? So if you are, let's say, 35 years of age, you've just had your first kid, you're married, and now something happens and you have this little kid, what is this

little kid going to do if something happens to you and your spouse? What's going to happen? The money will go into a blocked account and they won't be able to get it until they're 18 unless somebody petitions the court. So everybody also needs a will, a living revocable trust, an advanced directive, and a durable power of attorney for health care. And I know those are all things that wants to make everybody like, what? I don't have any money, Susie. Why do I need that? I've been told only rich people have that. I'm sorry. The less money you have, the more you need those documents. And so it's just, it's sad

that there is no financial education out there. Nobody is telling you the right things to do. Nobody is telling you the downside of a student loan that happens to be on an income-based repayment program. And maybe you owe $500 a month on a standard repayment method, but because you don't make much money, you're only paying $50 a month. Nobody ever told you that the difference between those two, which is $450 a month, is added on to your loan plus interest. They don't tell you that a Roth IRA or a Roth 401k would be better than a traditional IRA or a traditional 401k. They don't tell you the things that you really, really need to know. Don't waste your money on whole life universal or variable life insurance only by a term policy. You know, be careful of how you are investing your money. If you do,

you know, how to use a financial advisor, what should they charge you? All those things. I could send you five emails that I got today from my Women and Money podcast about wrong financial advice that their financial advisors gave them that are costing them anywhere from $50,000 to $90,000 each in penalties. And it's really sad. It's sad. And you're so right about the educational part of this. My son, who's 15, has said to me, I think it was a month or so ago, he said, you know what they don't teach us in school? Can you show me how do you pay a bill? He has no idea. And he was interested in knowing. And I said, well, you know, it's pretty easy,

but no one ever told him. And he's at that age where he kind of wants to know how money works. And what's very fascinating is I had a kid write into the podcast and said, Susie, I got a credit card when I went to college with an $800 credit limit on it. And I used the credit limit. And now they're mad at me because they want the money back. The kid had no idea that a credit card had to be paid off every single month. But let me tell you something else, Mike, that I bet you don't know as well. Once your kid turns 18, do you know that you have no legal authority over him whatsoever? You don't have the legal authority to request what his grades are at the school. If he ends up in a hospital for whatever reason, you do not have the legal authority for you

to make decisions with his health providers. Did you know that? That's why, you know, years ago, I decided to create products truthfully, to make it easy for people to do all these things on their own. Because if you were to go to a lawyer truthfully and get the will, the trust and everything, it's going to cost you at least $2,500. And who has $2,500 for that? So I created about 20 years ago, my own must have documents package, which sells for $69. And I'm not saying this just to sell this to all of your listeners or whatever. But it's something that if

you went on, and it's $69, if you just went to suzyorman.com slash offer, you would find it there, what would happen at that point is you could download it, do all these documents, share your activation code that you get with all the members of your family or anybody you want, for that matter, and you would have $2,500 worth of documents right on the spot. It is interesting how money really confounds people, that they make such bad errors in judgment with money, and they are otherwise intelligent people. If you understood how money worked, and money is not that difficult.

Listen, I was still a waitress at the age of 30. I had been making $400 a month for seven years. So for me to go from that to where I am today, don't tell me that you can't do this. I was dyslexic. I never got a grade above a C in college, if I can even remember that. But if I can do it, I didn't come from money. My mother was a secretary. My dad was sick. He died at 70 years of age. He was always in the hospital. If I can really become who I've become and have the knowledge that I have about money, there's not one person listening to this today that has an excuse, not one.

Well, as I said in the beginning, you're not especially wishy-washy about the advice you give and how you feel about money. And I appreciate you sharing it with us. Susie Orman has been my guest. Susie is the author of many, many books on the subject of personal finance. And she is host of the podcast Women and Money, which you can listen to. And her website is SusieOrorman.com. And there's a link to that in the show notes. Thank you for being here, Susie. All right, Mike. Thanks so much. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan,

the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic,

check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Bitches on Comics is a bi-monthly interview podcast Check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. and so much more. We're also both voting members of GALICA, the Society of LGBTQ Plus Entertainment Critics. Join Bitches on Comics for in-depth, hilarious, and heartfelt conversations with the likes of Stephanie Williams, Leah Anderson, and the late, great Rachel Pollack. Listen to Bitches on Comics on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or tune in at bitchesoncomics.com.

New episodes every other Wednesday. I don't often have people on the podcast who talk about the future. I don't think I've ever had anybody on this podcast talking about the future. Because often people who talk about the future are wrong about the future. And also, what can you do with the information except just sit around and wait to see if it comes true? But this is a little different. Steve Brown is a guy who looks into the future of technology, not with wild guesses of what's coming 50 years from now, but what's coming in the next 10 years or so, and how that technology will likely impact our lives,

and what it means for businesses and industry as well. He's author of a book called The Innovation Ultimatum, Six Strategic Technologies That Will Reshape Every Business in the 2020s. Hey, Steve. Thanks for having me, Mike. So let's dive right in here and talk about some of these technologies and why you think these are so important and why you think they're not that far off and what they're going to do. Yeah, I mean, you probably can tell from the tone of my voice, I'm super optimistic about the future. We all get to watch Hollywood movies where Terminators stamp on human skulls and Neo runs through the Matrix and, you know, things generally are dystopian in science fiction

movies. And I'm trying to be the antidote to that because technology is wonderful and it is going to help to solve a lot of problems for us. You know, there's a good chance that somebody listening to this podcast right now or their children are going to have their lives saved by a drug that's developed in the future in partnership with an artificial intelligence. So let's start with artificial intelligence, because I know you're a big proponent of it,

and you see it as doing many things in the future that are very cool. Is artificial intelligence something that's easy to define, or is it more of an umbrella term that covers a lot of things? Well, yeah, that's a very good question, because it's sort of hard to define. I mean, it's our effort to create a machine that can do a task as well as a human can. And you do that in a way by, it doesn't really think, but artificial intelligence in a particular, this category of computing that's been called machine learning or deep learning, it solves problems in a completely different way to what I would call traditional computers, like your smartphone or your laptop. So instead of running programs, AIs are trained by being given examples. And if they're given enough examples, it will figure out its own rules for how to determine

what's in a picture. And it can, that you showed a picture it's never seen before, and it will categorize it for you. So it's a, it's a different way of doing computing and it's enables us as humans to use it as a tool to solve problems that we don't really know how to solve. And that's what makes it so powerful. You mentioned a few moments ago that you're very optimistic about the future, that technology will do wonders. And yet there's also a lot of fear from people that they'll be out of a job, that things won't work the way they've always meant or always known them to work. Things are going to be too complicated. So address that. Yeah, and that's very natural. And I speak all around the

world. And the audience reaction is always the same, which is, wow, this is amazing stuff. And I'm slightly scared by it. And that's a natural human reaction. You know, change is different and difficult, especially something complicated like AI that we don't really understand. But, you know, as I've studied this in a lot of detail, we need to be realistic. There are some people who will lose their jobs because of automation. And we're going to need to work to use the same technology that displaces people from jobs to help them retrain and get into new jobs. And those jobs will be hopefully better and more fun than the jobs that they left.

But for most of us, these technologies are not going to automate us out of work. They're going to make our jobs more fun, more enjoyable. They're going to help us to be more productive, but more importantly, to be more creative and to augment our ability. So I talk in my recent book about the idea of automation and augmentation. So automation is where you, you know, you use technology to automate someone's job, and they have to go do something new. But for the majority of us, it's going to augment our abilities and help us be more creative. And I think as a result of that, we're going to see people enjoying their work, finding it more meaningful, more rewarding, and they're going to enjoy going to work more every day. So can you offer some examples of how that might look? One of the categories of future work is augmented work, where we're using technology to guide us

in new ways. So think about a construction worker. Today, they're still running off 2D printed blueprints, and yet they're building three-dimensional structures. So to be able to put on a pair of augmented reality glasses, working on the job site, look up, and instead of having to try and visualize in their minds where the HVAC system and the electrical and mechanical systems are going to go, they'll actually see it overlaid on the structure as it's being built. And that'll make life easier for them and help them to do their jobs more efficiently. It's helping to visualize that.

So that's one good example. So some other technology that you think is going to be really revolutionary like this? You know, artificial intelligence for clinicians, for doctors, to help them see in new ways. There is already an AI that can look at the back of your eye, at the retina, and with the same accuracy as a blood draw, it can predict your cardiovascular health risk, so your risk of stroke or heart attack. There's another technology from a company called Beyond Verbal in Israel, and they're able to use artificial intelligence to hear what they call biomarkers, vocal biomarkers. So particular characteristics of your voice that are indicators of diseases. They can already hear

sleep apnea, COPD, chronic heart failure, coronary artery disease in the sound of your voice, which is amazing, right? And they're working with the Mayo Clinic already and doing trials. They're optimistic they'll be able to hear diabetes, hypertension, and even cancer in the sound of our voices and give us early alerts on that so we can get it treated early and hopefully get things fixed. Really? How can you hear cancer? That just seems so bizarre to me. It does, doesn't it? And that's why I said earlier that AI can help us solve problems we don't really know how to solve ourselves. AI is good at finding patterns in data that humans can't see. In this case, it's particular patterns in the vocal cords and the way that our voices sound that betray

disease states inside our bodies. And we're going to use AI as a lens through which we can see the world more fully. And we often think about AI powering machine vision so that robots and machines, self-driving cars, you know, can see the world and navigate safely through it. But it's really going to help us as humans to see the world more fully in all its beauty and glory. But is there real evidence that we're on our way to that? Or is that, well, if AI can do this, maybe it can hear cancer in your voice? Well, I mean, these trials are already going. And I'm, as a futurist, I'm fascinated to figure out what are the other things that AI will help us to

see. There's an effort at MIT's Media Labs. Dr. Dina Katabi and her team there have developed, it's essentially a Wi-Fi hotspot. It's a fancy Wi-Fi hotspot on the wall, just sends out radio frequency signals. But because they've attached that to an AI, the AI is able to interpret that. And it is able to watch someone sleeping and determine what sleep state they're in. So if you think about the sleep monitors people wear, a simple sensor on the wall will now be able to tell if you're in deep sleep, REM sleep, light sleep, awake. And that's important because your sleep is an indicator, again, of healthcare conditions. Then they're aiming this technology at assisted living facilities to keep an eye on patients there, keep an eye on people in case they fall over, it will detect that. But if people have disturbance in their REM sleep or they take repetitive patterns of motion walking

around their rooms, that can be an indicator of early onset Alzheimer's. So there's all kinds of projects that are already underway that indicates this has incredible potential and power to do really good things for humans. Wow, that's pretty amazing. What else? Give me another one. Well, I think the most exciting, let's get away from AI, the most exciting is all of these satellite constellations that are being put into space. We're going to see more satellites go into space in the 2020s than have gone into space in the entirety of human history. And these low Earth orbit satellites will whiz around the planet and they will form a mesh so that we can send a signal

up from Earth to a satellite. It'll bounce through space to multiple satellites and then down to Earth somewhere else. That's going to bring connectivity to everywhere on earth and it's going to enable us to connect 100 trillion sensors to the internet by the end of this decade and it's going to give the digital world that we know has all this amazing capability the ability to understand what's happening in our physical world and act upon that and make the world more responsive automatically to human needs. So there's just all of this infrastructure being put in place that's going to enable amazing innovators to use that to create incredible stuff for us. So give me, if you can, an example of how that would work and what it would do for something specific.

So there are also satellites going up that have cameras on them that are connected to AI that are able to look for particular events. So for privacy reasons, you don't get to see the camera feed, but they're able to look for certain events. So the AI is looking for things like lightning strikes. So if you can spot lightning strikes and fire starts early, then maybe you can dispatch an autonomous firefighting drone or swarm of drones to that spot, put that fire out before it even starts to spread,

because it's once they spread that suddenly you get the kind of fires we've seen in Australia and in California last year. So by connecting all this stuff together and making an automated response, maybe we can help the human firefighters to be more successful and put less human life at risk. I think people have heard about artificial intelligence as it relates to healthcare, and you just brought up this thing that, you know, AI could potentially hear cancer in your voice, which is pretty awesome. But what about more everyday medical stuff and how this kind of technology is going to improve what people sometimes find to be a very frustrating experience dealing with the

world of medicine? If you think about when you go to a doctor's office, you know, you may be reporting something that you didn't feel well last week, and the doctor's trying to understand, well, how did you feel? And you try and tell them a story about it. With wearables, we'll be able to record data about what's happening in our bodies, and maybe even flip that around. So in the future, it may be your doctor calls you and says, hey, you know, Mike, I'm monitoring something that's going on with you right now. You may not be aware of it even, but I'd like you to come in and just get checked out.

So we can start being much more proactive in the way that we care for people. The other thing to think about is, you know, the poor, my wife works in medicine as well. And most clinicians, most physicians are spending almost half their time doing administrative work that has no benefit to the patient. And artificial intelligence will be able to record all of your medical information, present that to the doctor to help them to understand you more holistically as a person when you walk into that doctor's office so they're better prepared and then take all the notes that are needed do all the coding for um for insurance purposes and do all of that automatically so that the doctor can spend more quality human to human time with the patient so those are the kind of things that are going to be coming in the next decade or so that I think will improve the way that we all interact with the healthcare system. What is it that's driving this?

Is there some new technology that is underlying all this? You know, like, I don't know, that like the invention of the transistor changed everything. Is there something like that? Or is this just little incremental improvements on existing technology that just keeps making things better and better? A great question, Mike. I'll answer that question by saying if you look back over the last 40 years, there were four, I would argue, big breakthrough technologies that changed the way we live our lives. The first one being the PC in the 1980s. In the 1990s, the emergence of the web and the

internet. In 2007, Steve Jobs held that iPhone aloft and we first got our introduction into the mobile era. And at the same time, cloud computing technology emerged that enabled innovators to innovate more quickly. So four technologies in 40 years, there are six new technologies that are all as big as those, I think, that are being deployed. And it just happens to be that in the 2020s, they're all coming to maturity in the same decade. That's artificial intelligence, autonomous machines, the Internet of Things and sensors, 5G and satellite networks, blockchain technology and augmented reality. It's just happened to be that in this decade, they're all coming at the same time. So six blockbuster technologies all in the same decade, and they all multiply together. So it's not just they don't just work on their own,

they multiply together like the sensors I was telling you that are turbocharged by AI to enable innovators to do incredible things. So buckle up. It's going to be a really exciting decade to be alive. Of all these new technologies that are coming, and in some instances already here, what are these things that really excite you and keep you up at night? There's so many cool things. Let's pick one. I mean, I think artificial intelligence is as powerful as any technology we have seen before. And your listeners should think about this as being on a par with electricity, right? Before electricity,

we had to have ice blocks to keep our food cold. And, you know, the HVAC was a fan that you would wave made of paper and we heated our homes with fire. It has changed the way we live our lives and artificial intelligence is as profoundly important of a new technology that will change our lives in as profound a way as electricity changed the lives of our great-great-grandparents. What of the concerns that people often say about AI away as electricity changed the lives of our great-great-grandparents.

What of the concerns that people often say about AI that, you know, the machines will get smarter than us, they're going to take over, that this is scary business? I think that needs addressing. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, it's a common concern and a fair concern. But we need to remember that AI is a powerful technology, no doubt. And a powerful technology can be used for great good or great evil. And we need to be careful about how we use it. Personally, I'm not worried that Skynet is going to be born and decide that, as in all Hollywood movies it seems,

humans are just getting in the way and need to be destroyed and kill and kill them all. I don't think that's the issue. Well, that's comforting to hear. Yeah, I know. You know, with AI, it is a powerful technology. I would encourage people to not be fearful of it. We should be cautious. We should ask tough questions. We should ask about where is it fair to use and where is it not? Do we want a robot to be looking after our elderly parents in the future? Do we want a robot to be looking after our children when we're out or not? We need to ask those types of tough questions. But we should always be mindful that AI is an incredible force for good.

As I said, you know, it will probably discover medicines that will save the lives of multiple people listening to this right now. It will help us discover new materials that will perhaps help us fight climate change, new battery, electrolytes, new superconductive materials that enable us to develop energy and distribute it in new ways. I mean, it is a very powerful potential technology for good. The biggest concern for me is not that AI is going to kill us and kill us all. It is that the speed of automation is going to displace people from work at a rate that we're not quite ready to cope with. So that's something that I, that's what keeps me awake at night on the dark side of things. And we'll be fine in the end. It's just in the short or medium term,

this could be a very quick transition where certain jobs go away and we need to retrain people quickly and get them back into new work what if anything comes to mind when i ask you that people like you futurists and i know there are several of them who write and consult and look to the future what have you missed what have you some technology that you never saw coming that changed the world or something that futurists were saying, this is going to be the greatest thing and it turned out to be nothing. Anything come to mind? As a futurist, I'm trained to ask fundamentally two questions and I would encourage all of

your listeners. I deputize you as futurists and ask these same two questions when you're thinking about the future you want to build for yourself, which is what is the future we want to build? And what is the future we want to avoid? Very often we're too focused on the first question and we don't spend enough time thinking about the latter question. And the example I would give is social media. When social media first jumped onto the scene in the mid-2000s, you know, we had this great idea that it would be wonderful for staying in contact with old school chums, for seeing photographs of babies,

of people who live a long way away when they're born. I mean, all of the great things that social media did and still does do for us in some degree, but we underestimated how people might misuse that for spreading disinformation, for bullying. So I think it comes down to the human factor. Technology is pretty benign. It's neither good nor bad. It's how we humans choose to use it that matters. And if there's anything that I think people like me, futurists, miss is we don't spend enough time thinking about the darker sides of things and thinking them through. Not that the technology will turn on us and kill us all, but that humans will misuse the technology and use it in ways that are not intended and to guard against those up front.

Well, I appreciate the glimpse into the future. I think some of this stuff is so amazing that if what you say is true, that it's really not that far off that people will be able to hear disease in your voice and things like that. I mean, it's something else. Steve Brown has been my guest. He is a futurist and author of the book, The Innovation Ultimatum, Six Strategic Technologies That Will Reshape

Every Business in the 2020s. There's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Steve. Hey, appreciate it. Nice talking to you, Mike. The next time you're tempted to eat junk food or smoke that cigarette you shouldn't smoke or buy that thing you really don't need.

Try clenching your fists. The Journal of Consumer Research did a study that found that tightening any muscle in your body strengthens willpower. Clenching your fist or flexing your biceps, that can actually trigger your brain to take control of the situation. It also appears that willpower, no matter where it comes from, is like a muscle that can be taxed and worn out. So use it sparingly. And that is something you should know. This podcast continues to grow almost exclusively because of word of mouth,

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