Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Futurology Works

Episode Date: September 7, 2024

Science fiction writers have made some amazingly accurate predictions over the years, but in 1945 the pace of technological change created a field that spun off of sci-fi forecasting, futurology. Learn all about it with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold, with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. But the murder of Carmichael Lonti marked the beginning of the end. It sent the message that we can prosecute these people. Listen to Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about Biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the Biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even

mean? It's right here in black and white in print. They lying. It's bigger than a flag or mascot. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's me, Josh, and for this week's Select, I've chosen our January 2016 episode on Futurology. It's one of those topics that has a name that makes it sound way cooler and far out than it actually is. But happily we found that when you dig into it, even the blandest parts of Futurology are super interesting still.

Hope you like this one, guys. futureology are super interesting still. Hope you like this one, guys. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here and it's stuff you should know from the future But not really

How you doing? I'm fine Well good. That's good. I enjoyed this topic. I thought it was kind of neat. Yeah, it was it was funny like when you're reading about futurology and Futurolog, aka futurists, you tend to want to make it like more than it actually is. And when you look into the topic, it keeps having to be beaten down just because of the name alone. Yeah, you sound like a little bit like a Whackadoo. A Whackadoo.

You could say you're a futurist. A seer. Yeah. And you know, sometimes they're thinking about they're using these these really neat techniques to predict the future They're talking about some really mundane stuff Yeah, boring stuff economic forecasts things like that How much oil will be left in 30 years that kind of of thing. Then on the other hand, if you're a futurologist, you may also be tasked with figuring out

what technology we're gonna be using in 30 years, or what color the shiny jumpsuits we're all gonna wear will be, that kind of stuff. Yeah, I think one of my favorite things is to look at past future predictions. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, there's nothing that'll make someone look less knowledgeable than going back

to what they thought the future would look like in the year 2000, like back in the 1930s or 40s. Or sometimes some of those things happen. Yeah, and then it's amazing. Yeah, then it's like, wow, you know, there's something to this. Because sometimes these guys are like really, really dead on. And I was reading an article,

I think it was in Harvard Business Review, and it was a post by Paul Safo who runs a venture capital firm, I believe, called Discern. Yeah. And Paul Safo was saying like, he was trying to get across that sci-fi Authors and

Futurologists their paths overlap quite a bit But really there's pretty big distinctions and even in this article they got lumped in together Yeah, because sci-fi writers do definitely use Futurology techniques, but Paul Cepho was saying like yeah, but a use futurology techniques, but Paul Cepho was saying, yeah, but a real futurologist, you have to use logic. Whereas if you're a sci-fi writer, you can just use your imagination. You don't have to back it up with anything. If you're a futurologist, you have to use logic

that makes sense to whoever's hearing your prediction. Yeah, and I think that's one reason why some sci-fi writers have been right on the nose with some future predictions because they're not hampered by logic and they can just free form, you know? Yeah, but then it's just a lucky guess. No, I don't think so. I think they're still applying a lot of the same rules of Futurology. Yeah, but they're just not bound by, you know, the the laws of Well, not the laws, but you know the laws of logic. Yeah, exactly. I'm with you

But that's the best science fiction though. I think is something that logically makes sense Yeah, but is then it's just fantasy. Yeah, that's true. So Futurology is recognizing and assessing potential future events. I could have sworn Jonathan Strickland wrote this, by the way it read, but it was not. No. It's very Strickland-esque. Nicholas Gerbus. Yeah.

That's Strickland's alter ego. I wonder if it is. I've never met this Nicholas Gerbis. But the point Gerbis makes, which I think is good, is it's a product of our times in many cases, like depending on where we are as a society, and like he makes a great point, during the Civil War, there probably weren't a lot of like rosy predictions for the future, American Civil War. Sure. But in the Gilded Age, people are a lot more optimistic, so they may have, you know,

it's a whole different deal. Like during the Cold War, for instance. Right. A lot of paranoia, a lot of cynicism. Probably not going to be a rosy outlook for the future. Right. Like during the Gilded Age. When it was rosier? Yeah, way more optimistic than the Cold War. Which is kind of ironic because the Gilded Age. When it was rosier. Yeah, way more optimistic than the Cold War. Which is kind of ironic because the Gilded Age didn't have anything to be optimistic about.

They were just pretending, hence the name. Yeah. The thing is, what you've just said though is kind of an argument against futurology because one of the big critiques of it is that a futurologist, they're not doing anything. Even if you're commenting on the past or the future, Because one of the big critiques of it is that a futurologist, they're not doing anything. Even if you're commenting on the past or the future, you're still really commenting about

your present, your contemporary time, because that's what you... Or recent past. Sure. Yeah. That's what you've lived through and experienced. That's all you can really reflect on is... And futurology seeks to go beyond that. Well, yeah, that makes sense though.

If you like look at this thing that is happening now or just happened, then what is going to be happening in that thing in 10 years. And it's a lot of times based on how the direction is currently going. Yes. Okay. So, Gerbus makes a pretty good, gives a good example that the cell phone grew out of the telegraph, which ultimately is related further back to the smoke signal. Sure.

Right? Yeah. But if you were a futurologist hanging out around somebody who was sending smoke signals, would you be able to predict the cell phone? Probably not. Or? Probably not. Or could you predict the impact of the automobile or the highway system? Right. Maybe. But would you predict that people would have sex in the backseat of a car? Maybe.

Because it provides a little, well I don't think they did. Urban sprawl. Yeah, could you predict exurbs and edge cities just because the highways got built? Yeah, and not a lot of people did even though a lot of people said There's going to be horseless carriages one day and it's going they're going to change things big time People are gonna be able to move around a lot more. Yeah, but that doesn't mean that everybody saw every result of the automobile It was a game changer., is what you could call it. Agreed.

So what we're saying here, and if it sounds a little weird that we're at once supporting and criticizing futurology, that's basically the fun thing to do when you talk about futurology, is to criticize it and be awed by it because a lot of times they really are super right. That's right. Futurology has been around for a long time. I mean there since people were writing fiction there were people predicting the future. Right. But as far as things didn't really get going as far as being meaningful until after World War II, when the U.S. started developing technological forecasting, basically like, it was really important to try and see where things were going militarily.

Right. Because it was super expensive to develop new technologies. It could take a long time. So they started thinking, hey we need to get some people on board that can kind of hopefully predict where we're headed here so we can make the right decisions. Yeah, because if it takes a really long time, like you said, to develop a weapon, by the time you have that weapon deployed in the field, you're gonna need to know it's not already obsolete. Right. The only way to do that is to predict what kind of warfare you're gonna be engaged in. Because this is a time, like at the end of World War II,

so many inventions came out of World War I and II, war machine inventions, that things were changing so quickly that there was actually, you can kind of put modern futurology into the lap of one guy, an Air Force general named Hap Arnold Who saw that things were changing so fast that his Air Force needed to? Basically predict the future and see what direction it needed to go right so he looked around he started tapping people to do that one of the first people he taps is a scientist an

Aeronautical engineer named Theodore von Karman an aeronautical engineer named Theodore von Karman. Yes, he was a super smart dude. And he led a team that did predict a lot of stuff, like drones. And as far as the military using drones, not your uncle who flies it around the neighborhood just to film stuff. He predicted the rise of Brookstone.

Target-seeking missiles, supersonic aircraft, and even the atom bomb. All of this was in one report. Yeah. To Hap Arnold. It's crazy. And this guy knocked it out of the park, but he and his group were very much limited to small academic and military circles. The general public wasn't aware that this was going on. But his group, von Karman's group, so accurately foresaw the

direction that modern warfare was going that you can also very easily make the case that, no, he basically created a roadmap to the future that the Air Force followed. So his prophecies were self-fulfilling because he said, go this way and the Air Force followed. So his prophecies were self-fulfilling because he said, go this way, and the Air Force went that way and created all this stuff. Yeah. And then the military and, well, the brand corporation specifically, it grew out of the U.S. Air Force and Douglas Aircraft in the mid-40s.

They said, well, having one person to say these things is great, but what we need is a team and a consensus among this team. So they kind of, well, not kind of, they very much patented a technique they called the Delphi technique, D-E-L-P-H-I, and that is basically a technique where they're trying to get agreed on consensus from a number of people? So there's this very famous story about how the Navy, I think, lost a submarine, a nuclear submarine, or the Russians had lost a submarine, something like that. There was a lost sub that they wanted to find, and they had no idea where it was. So the Navy polled all these different experts

in all these different fields that might have something to do with nuclear submarines, weather, aeronautics, people from NOAA, all these people, right? And asked them, where do you think this sub is? And no one hit it on the nose. But when they basically used statistical distribution of these various opinions, guesses of professionals, it led them right to that sub and that's what the Delphi technique does too.

It takes opinions of experts in various fields and says what do you think of this and everybody sends in a questionnaire anonymously and there's no group meeting. So the group doesn't bow to pressure, no leaders emerge. They're giving their unvarnished opinion. And then after those opinions come in, they take that information and send it out again. So it goes in rounds and rounds and rounds

until they finally come to a group consensus that in the future we're all going to be wearing metallic blue jumpsuits. Yeah, and what they're doing is generating what's known as a scenario. And a guy named Herman Kahn, K-A-H-N, worked with Rand in the 1950s, and he's the one that kind of coined the term scenario as it applies to futurology. Right. A pretty good definition I found was scenario is a detailed portrait of a plausible future

world, one sufficiently vivid that a planner can clearly see and comprehend the problems, challenges and opportunities that such an environment would present. So it's saying in the future we're going to have a scenario where there are going to be robots in every house. Yeah. And one of the biggest ways that they work on scenarios is with something called back casting, which is starting at the end, which is you've got a robot in every house. Right. And then go backwards. To how you got there?

Yeah, to how you got there. Brilliant. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, and that's a pretty cool scenario. They can also be as mundane as running a fire drill where you're envisioning the fire broke out in the high school gym. Right.

And so everybody needs to get out. That's a scenario, it's as simple as that. Yeah. The weather forecasts or economic forecasts that are run through computer algorithms. The computer algorithms, the model, the process that it's going through is the scenario and it spits out a possible prediction. It's almost like effect then cause. Right. Yeah. You know?

Yeah. Excellently put. Thank you. So Herman Kahn worked with Rand and... And he... Did you look him up at all? Oh, yeah. He's one of the inspirations for Dr. Strangelove. Yeah. He was described as a super genius. Yeah, he was super smart and he kind of was a bit of a celebrity at the time.

He wrote a book in 1961 called On Thermonuclear War and then went on to form... left Rand to form the Hudson Institute where he basically was like we're a group That is going to forecast the future So he became it was like super popular book Yeah, and it spawned a lot of other books similar books. Well, we need to take a break But we're getting we'll get right back to this in a second For decades, the Mafia had New York City in a stranglehold, with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene.

It uses terror to extort people. But the murder of Carmichael Lonti marked the beginning of the end, sparking a chain of events that would ultimately dismantle the most powerful crime organization in American history. It sent the message to them that we can prosecute these people. Discover how a group of young prosecutors took on the mafia, and with the help of law enforcement, brought down its most powerful figures.

These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way and with the help of law enforcement, brought down its most powerful figures. These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government. From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts, this is Law and Order Criminal Justice System. Listen to Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It is summer, and on NPR's Planet Money podcast, that means it is time to grab your notebooks and your headphones and tune into the economics crash course for your ears. Planet Money Summer School is covering the economic history of the world. From the birth of money to the Industrial Revolution to modern trade policy, we've got the lessons to keep you sounding smart at the beach with help from real economic historians. Every Wednesday until Labor Day, listen to Planet Money from NPR on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello everyone. money from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everyone. I am Lacey Lamar. And I'm Amber Ruffin, a better Lacey Lamar. Boo. Okay, everybody, we have exciting news to share. We're back with season two of the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. You thought you had fun last season? Well, you were right. And you should tune in today for new fun segments like Sister Court and listening to Lacey's steamy DMs.

We've got new and exciting guests like Michael Beach, that's my husband, Daphne Spring, Daniel Thrasher, Peppermint, Morgan J, and more. You gotta watch us. No, you mean you have to listen to us. I mean, you can still watch us, but you gotta listen. Like, if you're watching us, you got to watch us. No, you mean you have to listen to us. I mean, you can still watch us, but you got to listen. Like if you're watching us, you have to tell us. Like if you're out the window, you have to say, Hey, I'm watching you outside of the

window. Just, just, you know what? Listen to the Amber and Lacey Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels,

into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the biscuits. It's right here in black and white in Prince of a Lion. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch is a leader. You choose hills that you want to die on.

Why would we want to be the losing team? I just take all the other stuff out of it. Segregation academies, when civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools, these charter schools were exempt from it. Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, you were just talking about Herman Kahn being the super genius who is something

of a celebrity. I read that Timothy Leary animated that he had taken acid with him. I believe it. He was a part of the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove and this book that he wrote called The Year 2000, a framework for speculation on the next 33 years. Yeah. It basically established this outlook that that America and capitalism could do anything thanks to basically technological inventiveness. Yeah here's a let's hear some of these there was a list in that book 100 technical innovations very likely in the last third of the 20th century. 100. Some of the first 10, multiple applications of lasers. Boom.

High strength structural materials. Nailed it, wouldn't you think? Alloys. New or improved materials for equipment and appliances. Now that's easy. Anyone can say that. Sure, I'd be better material in the predict right now for 2050 Longer range longer range weather forecasting more reliable

Weather forecasting. Yeah, I don't know about that one. I think that was a mess How about this here? Here are a few of the Other ones new techniques for cheap and reliable birth control for sure. Yeah, the pill. I don't know if the pill was around. We should do a whole thing with the pill. It may have been the same year, because it came out in 67. Was it? Yeah.

Well, this book came out in 67. Right, right. Widespread use of nuclear reactors for power. Duh. Improved capability to change sex of a children or adult. Gender reassignment. Pervasive business use of computers. Yeah, they're all over. Personal pagers.

Yeah, they came and went. And then one of the other ones was home computers to run households and communicate with the outside world. Yeah, the Internet of Things. Yeah. They also predicted the rise of the credit economy. Oh, really? Yeah, that we currently are in.

Interesting. Yeah. That was just like a list, like a sidebar basically in this book. But the whole idea that America and capitalism in the West could invent its way out of any problem we possibly ran across in the future was the premise or the position of this book. And it caused an enormous furor in academic circles. And not just academic circles, because this book was one of the first to introduce to the public that there were such things

as think tanks like Rand. And that the- Or the Club of Rome. Yeah, and that these people were sitting there thinking about the future and were writing books about it. And it kind of became a hip thing. But the Club of Rome was basically diametrically opposed to the outlook that Herman Kahn had.

And the Club of Rome was a business consortium that conspiracy theorists say is basically the seat of the New World Order. They're still around. They are. And the seat of the new world order. They're still around. They are. And the Club of Rome basically said, no, we are establishing the gloom and doom camp that there is such thing as resource depletion over population and we are basically doomed. Yeah, I mean, we've covered this a lot on the show, different people that have made

wild predictions about we're going to run out of this by this year. Thomas Malthus. Yeah, very Malthusian. One of the books that came out of the Club of Rome in 1972 was called Limits to Growth by Dannella H. Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jurgen Randers, and William Behrens at MIT. And they had a very dire apocalyptic outlook of the future, as did a lot of other people at the time, and a lot of these were way off base, a lot of these dire predictions, you know? It's happened over and over again.

Yeah, and so on the Club of Rome website, they defend the Limits to Growth, no, not the Limits to Growth, the Limits to Growth book, basically saying that it's often miscited as predicting the collapse of civilization due to renewable resource overuse. And it doesn't do that. But they did use these same kind of techniques that Herman Kahn and some of his other colleagues were coming up with by taking population information, food production data, industrial production, pollution and non-renewable resource consumption, and then running scenarios through this model that they built using computers.

And coming up, the scenarios they came up with were kind of grim. The thing is, is even though they missed the mark, they still helped establish a very young idea that we can't just, you can't just throw your McDonald's styrofoam on the ground. You can't drive a car that gets two miles per gallon. We can't live like everything is just forever abundant, that there's no such thing as scarcity.

Yeah, it's a double-edged sword though, like I totally agree, but then it also, when you're wrong about these things, it gives cynics something to point to, to say, well see, we didn't run out of oil in the early 1980s like you said we would, so why do anything about it? Yeah, I mean man, that is a great point. It's a very great point, but at the same time, what you're seeing here between the limits to growth and the year 2000, we still see this today with climate change.

You know, it's like, let's do something about climate change. The other people say, no, we can invent our way out of it. And besides, if we do something about climate change, it's gonna mess with the economy. Right. And these people are saying forget about the economy we are all going to die. Yeah or not necessarily forget about the economy but maybe you can do both. Right.

You know? Yeah. You know my whole deal with that has always been just like why take that risk? Well we humans aren't very good at like preparing future risk, which is I think one of the reasons why futurologists are so revered and awed, but also mocked and scorned, because they're doing something that almost flies in the face of human nature. Yeah, you're really putting yourself out there

when you predict some of this stuff. You are. That was one other episode that just reminded me of the 10,000 year clock. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a great one. Yeah. Oh, that was one other episode that just reminded me of the 10,000 year clock. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a great one. Yeah.

So, the military, the United States military obviously has used it for years. Then beginning, when was this, in the 60s or 70s that business got into it? So in 1972, I think Royal Dutch Shell heard, somebody at the top heard that there wasn't going to be any oil by 1985, and they went, what? Yeah, businesses basically said, wait a minute, there are people that can actually use models to determine what the future might look like. How can we use that to make money? Well, let's throw money at them and find out.

Exactly. A couple of other places too that were nascent think tanks like Rand was the Stanford Research Institute Futures Group and the California Institute of Technology. Yeah. Early like kind of think tank breeding grounds. Just smart people walking around thinking about the future. But that wasn't enough. You can't just say, this is what I think it's going to be like. You have to back it up.

And we'll talk about how they back it up right after this. For decades, the Mafia had New York City in a stranglehold, with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. But the murder of Carmichael Lonti marked the beginning of the end, sparking a chain of events that would ultimately dismantle the most powerful crime organization in American history.

It sent the message to them that we can prosecute these people. Discover how a group of young prosecutors took on the mafia, and with the help of law enforcement, brought down its most powerful figures. These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government. From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts, this is Law and Order, Criminal Justice System. Listen to Law and Order, Criminal Justice System on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It is summer and on NPR's Planet Money podcast, that means it is time to grab your

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Well they use different techniques. If you're a futurist or a futurologist, you're going to be using techniques that are pretty recognizable but the way you put them together and the things you sort out is what's going to make you successful or not successful, right? So you brainstorm ideas. Yeah, that's probably where you start. It's just like blue sky territory, as they say. Yeah, you imagine things using scenarios or games. Apparently game theory. But we got to do that at some point.

Yeah, I've been avoiding it because it's so... Me too. It's a mind bender. We could mess it up really bad, but we'll do it. That changed the futurism field tremendously when they came up with game theory, because it's a pretty good way of predicting how people will work. And that's one of the big confounding factors, is you can predict something, follow every single one of these steps that we're talking about right now, and then people will just cut to the left all of a sudden. And your prediction just fell to the wayside because humanity went this way real quick.

Yeah, or somebody invented a game changer, a game changing product or innovation that nobody saw coming. Yeah, what's that called? Disruptive technology? Is it? Yeah. That's a good, I like that. Not a bad band name. Oh, I wonder if it's out there.

If so, it's made of like Silicon Valley rich guys. Yeah, this is like my side band. Right. Do you want to gather professional opinions using, say, the Delphi technique? Yeah. You want to do historical analysis? Sure. Current trends are very huge and can help you as well.

And then like you were saying, I think you call it back masking. No. That's turned me on, dead man. Right. From the Beatles. Yeah, that's what they do. They listen to the Beatles backwards. What was it?

It's not backmasking, I know, but where you envision a future and then you work your way backward from it. When you do this, you do all this stuff together and again, back casting. And when you're using this along with computer algorithms that can model like the economy or the weather or oil consumption or something like that, you can come up with something that you could rightly say is a prediction or a forecast for the future, where we're going to be. That's right.

Again though, just things happen. Like for example, Herman Kahn did not predict the oil crisis that came the year after he wrote another famous book in 1972. He wrote a response, I think, to limits to growth and just totally missed the oil crisis. But how could he predict that? Because the oil crisis came out of the OPEC oil embargo that was punishment for the U.S. being involved in the Yom Kippur War. So you couldn't see that coming. No, and that's the big problem with Futurology. Yes, exactly. Our own US government has been wrong. The US Department of Interior

announced twice in 1939 and then in 1951 that we only had 13 years of oil left. Yeah. It's so weird that both times it was 13 years. They don't like to bother people, so they wait until there's 13 years left and they sound their luck. Is that what it is? It's just such a specific number.

It is. What else? Well, we've talked about Moore's Law before. That has aged a little better than some other futurology predictions because it has been revised over the years, which is sort of a cheat. A little bit, but still. What I really meant was...

Right. I think it went from 18 months to two years or something like that, but what's funny is Gurbis stakes his position in this article. He's saying like the limits to growth and the other Club of Rome stuff, they missed the mark because they predicted catastrophe. And Moore's Law predicts technological innovation, so it's successful. So clearly, Gerbus agrees with the Hermann Kahn group rather than the Club of Rome group. I don't think it's subtle.

I think you can't just say like the gloom and doom camp has just been completely eradicated or proven wrong. Agreed. You know? Yeah, Moore's Law, I don't even think we said specifically, it predicts the number of transistors on integrated circuits in computers doubles every two years. Right. And like we said, it's been updated and it's been pretty consistent.

And so with Herman Kahn's popularity and then the big high-profile Book publishing argument That he got in with the Club of Rome that led to like a spate of other Futurology books that I remember it being a big deal when I was a kid. I remember a lot of people talking about The the near and far future the one that I ran across in this article that I had heard of but I didn't know anything About it's Alvin Toffler's future shock. I remember that I think across in this article that I had heard of but I didn't know anything about was Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. I remember that, I think. Did you read it?

No. The cover, I guarantee, would just give you nostalgia, I'm sure. But it came out in 1970, and it predicts a future where too much rapid change, technological change and advancement, it happens too quickly, and people get all sorts of stressed and just worn out and Basically have all all manner of terrible Reactions to it and I'm like, oh that guy predicted 2015. So like a person's Emotions couldn't handle. Yeah, we're just overwhelmed. Okay. Through too much rapid technological innovation. Happens too quick.

You think we're overwhelmed? Like I get stressed out by like say social media or something like that. Yeah. I wonder if it's a certain people of a certain age. Maybe. Yeah, I would guess if you're born into it, you're used to it. So it would probably more likely apply to a transition population like us. Right. The transitional generation, is that what we are? more likely apply to a transition population like us.

Right. The transitional generation, is that what we are? Don't you get stressed by social media? Don't you get like just tense and... Yeah, I mean, I kind of just hate it. Or having like, having information, all this information and all of it's just so thin, content-wise or value-wise, but there's tons. Yeah, and it's always coming at you. Yep Where's me out? It wears me out. I got the future shock Chuck. You got you got the jimmy legs. Yeah

No, I totally agree. I'm like that. I just want to shut it all down just Not podcasts though That should live on Shh, everybody. Not podcasts, though. Right, yeah. That should live on. So we talked about science fiction writers and how they are easily off the hook because they're just writers, right? They're not supposed to predict the future. But they have been, you can't dismiss it

because they've been on the money or close to it a lot over the years because like we said, they're not hampered by the rational laws of today. They can just say whatever they want. And if they're wrong, it's like, hey, dude, I'm just writing stuff. Yes. This is fiction. Right.

But a few of the highlights. Jules Verne, mid-19th century, predicted going to the moon in a spacecraft. Not only that. So he predicted it would be shot out of a cannon basically. Yeah, a big gun. The thing that he really got though was that he placed the moon shot in Florida. Yeah. Like 137 miles from Cape Canaveral where they do launch rockets to the moon. Not bad.

No, and for the same reason too, like it it's close to the equator. Oh is that why? It's one of the reasons why. Plus Cape Canaveral is largely protected by the Gulf Stream from hurricanes. Like as a hurricane comes ashore right before it starts to get to Canaveral it goes out again and then hits North Carolina. Interesting. That'd be an interesting conversation to have been in on. Canaveral it goes out again right and then hits North Carolina interesting that'd be an interesting conversation to have been in on like when they were picking places like where should we launch yeah this I mean where should we put all of our money in right HG Wells he predicted tanks yeah he was he had a three supposedly he was the first guy to really think of himself as a futurist. He predicted atom bomb in 1908 aerial bombing in 1908

What the the name robot was actually coined by a science fiction writer and Czech writer named Carl Kapek and In 1921 he named robots. I think the all-time Winner though is Hugo Gernsbach and Hugo Gernsbach if you're into science fiction You recognize his first name because he's who the Hugo award is named after you may also recognize his last name too If you're a Hugo Gernsbach fan, but back in I think the 1910s yeah, yeah, he wrote a book called Ralph 1 2 4 C 41 plus He predicted Everything in this. Yeah, you know what that means. It's actually a play on words

One to it means one two four C for one another You get it? Wow, yeah, that's great. One, two, four, C, four, one, and then another is the plus sign. That alone, I was sold. I was like, I love this guy. It's just like that Van Halen album, OU812. Exactly. So what has he predicted? He predicted solar power, like the realistic use of solar power. He predicted plastics, video phones, tape recorders,

jukeboxes, loudspeakers. Tin foil, rust proof steel, synthetic fabrics, all in one book. And he's famous, and the Hugo Award's named after him because he wanted to make science fiction more science based. Yeah. You know, using that same logic.

So he would have been a very, like almost a father of futurology. Oh yeah, for sure. You know? Here's a few other things from that book. This one to me, I'm surprised no one's done this yet. The appetizer, which is at a restaurant in an advanced, scientifically advanced restaurant,

it'll be a room that you wait in before you get your table that's flooded with gases that make you hungry. Oh yeah. Not bad. Yeah. Just have a seat in the appetizer room. Right. We'll be ready shortly. There's like bloody fingernails that's scratched into the walls as people are trying to get to the other room where the food is.

The telotograph, which is basically a fax machine. Okay. The telephot, which was a picture phone. It had a universal translator where they translate any language right there in your hand. Yeah. Not bad. And then this one I love, the vacation city was a suspended city in a domed suspended city 20,000 feet in the air that used a device that nullified gravity and in Vacation City no mechanical devices are permitted because it was supposed to be a true escape from the mechanized world. Waiting for that one. And this was in 1911. He predicted just that there would be a need for that. That's like that town in West Virginia, green something West Virginia, where people who

have electromagnetic sensitivity go because you're not allowed to have any electromagnetic stuff. Oh, really? Because there's like a radio telescope or there's something there that could be interfered with. Yeah. Yeah, you could go be Amish. Can you just be Amish?

No. Like, hey, I want to be Amish. If you're Harrison Ford, you could be. Yeah, or Woody you could go be Amish. Can you just be Amish? No Like hey, I want to be Amish if you're Harrison Ford you could be yeah, or Woody Harrelson Yeah, right You got anything else? How about these predictions for the future? There's a couple in here. They're kind of funny ten predictions that miss the mark And these are real predictions in 1967 And these are real predictions. In 1967, US News and World Report said that by the end of the century, we will launch our freight across the continent with missiles. Like you order something from Amazon in New York, instead of having a fulfillment center nearby, they just put it in a missile and shoot it to you.

Didn't happen. No, but drones are coming. Are they really? Are they still on that probably okay in 1955 a guy named Alex Lewitt predicted nuclear power vacuum cleaners This one I think would be pretty great dissolving dishes yeah and Asked what it would be like in the year 2000 a science writer named Asked what it would be like in the year 2000 a science writer named Waldemar come forth There's a lot of and one two, three, four five

He's a fabulous science writer with the funny name consonants in a row He said you would basically Put your plate in 250 degree water at the end and it would just dissolve it No more dishwashing Bucky Fuller Predicted that Canada would be a subtropical climate because we've built a dome over it That didn't happen. No, it didn't which is strange because Bucky Fuller was pretty sharp, dude Here's another one. Was he really? Yeah, Buckminster Fuller. Oh, I didn't pick up on that He's who buckyballs are named after really?

Why I? Don't he may have invented him. I'm not sure what's a buckyball It's the those little balls that are magnetic spheres that like you know, they'll shape and awesome buckyballs. Yeah. Yeah Here's one a Scottish geneticist that shape into buckyballs. Yeah, yeah. Here's one, a Scottish geneticist that said in the 1920s that in the future, one third of the babies would not be born, oh, only one third

would be born as a result of pregnancy. And the other babies would be born in a lab. Would they be grown, basically? Exogenesis. Yeah. Here's the last one, Chuck, you ready? 1975, the Research Institute of America, which sounds pretty smart, said that by 1975, I'm sorry, this is several years before that,

we would all be driving personal helicopters. Yeah. Did not pan out. Probably never will. I don't know if I'd want a personal helicopter You know I was For Emily's birthday. I rented a cabin in the North Georgia mountains. Hmm. Did you take a personal helicopter there? No, but I was sitting on the deck we all were and way across the valley on the side of a mountain was this huge huge house and I heard a sound of a helicopter and I was like and I saw blinking light I got out the binoculars and This dude had a helicopter Wow and he took it and he flew it down about two miles to the lake at the bottom of the valley and

I guess he has a lake house and a mountain house and the easiest way to get there is to make the four-minute And the easiest way to get there is to make the four-minute helicopter flight. That's crazy. Yeah, wow It was pretty amazing. Wow. I want to know who that guy is and that guy could be a lady Yeah, it could be what am I saying could be Carly Fiorina. Yeah, who's that? She's the the woman who's running for GOP president candidate. Oh, right Fiorina that's right Gotcha go ahead. Oh Right. Feerina, that's right. Gotcha. Go ahead. I'm done.

Oh, sorry. Let's see, well, if you wanna know more about Futurology, you can type that word into the search bar at howstoveworks.com, and since Chuck had an anecdote about helicopters, it's time for listener mail. It sort of looked like one of those Magnum PI ones too. Well, if I did have a personal helicopter helicopter it would look an awful lot like that.

I'm sure it would. Hey guys, my name is Shelby. I'm honored for you to be reading this. My husband and I love your show and you've solved our dilemma as to what to listen to in our car together. I want to let you know you did a great job on the HIV AIDS podcast. However, I think you missed telling a really important story about the AIDS crisis. Just before the AIDS crisis broke, a method for treating hemophilia called a clotting factor concentrate was developed.

It finally let those suffering from the disease live into adulthood and completely change the landscape of the disorder. By the time HIV was discovered to be a blood-borne virus, many of those suffering from hemophilia already had it, not to mention that many also contracted hepatitis. However, the pharmaceutical companies did not begin to pasteurize the drug in spite of their knowledge that it was spreading HIV until a strong public outcry prompted a government intervention. I think this story is not told often enough and the injustice that these individuals suffered at the hands of big pharma is undoubtedly one of the greatest our country has seen. There's an

extremely informative and sad documentary on the topic called Bad Blood, a cautionary tale. Anyway, that's about it. And I'm sorry if I bummed everyone out. That is from Shelby. Shelby, thank you for not only that illuminating email, but also the documentary recommendation. We're always looking for those.

Absolutely. If you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com and as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoshouldknow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold with law enforcement

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