Podcast
Future Around & Find Out
Hosted by Dan Blumberg · EN
* Winner of the 2026 Webby Award for Best Technology Podcast *
Future Around & Find Out helps builders think clearly about AI and emerging technologies, grapple with the implications, and decide what to build next.
Independent technologist and former NPR journalist Dan Blumberg speaks with founders, makers, and you to celebrate breakthroughs, call BS on the hype, explore how things might go sideways — and how we can steer the future in the right direction.
On Tuesdays, we interview the builders changing how we work, live, and play.
On FAFO Fridays, futurist Kwaku Aning joins Dan for a playful recap of the week in tech, including the amazing, the scary, and the strange.
You’ll also hear about innovations that too often get overshadowed by AI, including in deep tech, biotech, fintech, quantum computing, robotics, blockchain, and more.
Across it all, you’ll hear sharp takes on what comes next and what builders need to know now.
So let’s Future Around & Find Out together!
https://www.FutureAround.com
38episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
"It's cognitive uploading" | How Google NotebookLM's Steven Johnson uses AI as a second brain
4d ago00:43:15Tap to summarizeSteven Johnson dreamed of building the ultimate research assistant. Now he's doing just that at Google, where he's the co-founder and editorial director of NotebookLM.It's one of the most interesting AI products out there. It radically changes how we learn, research, and remember — and the "notebook" itself is becoming a standard unit of knowledge across Google, rolling out in more and more places where AI needs to reference a body of sources.In this episode, the author of _Where Good Ideas Come From_ explains how AI is making him a better researcher and writer — and why tools like NotebookLM are so powerful when you're trying to make new connections, remember what you've already found, and figure out what's missing.There's a lot of fear right now that AI is making us dumber. That by relying on it too much, we're engaging in "cognitive offloading" and stunting our learning. That's a real risk, especially in schools.But Steven says we should also be talking about what you can gain from AI — and the power of something he calls "cognitive uploading."Resources:* Google NotebookLM: https://notebooklm.google/* Steven Johnson: https://stevenberlinjohnson.com/Support Future Around & Find Out:* Follow Dan on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dblums/* Get the free newsletter: https://www.futurearound.com* Become a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO! https://www.futurearound.com/upgrade(00:00) - Introduction (01:32) - “The greatest time to be alive” – understanding vs the illusion of understanding (03:48) - How Steven Johnson ended up at Google to build NotebookLM (09:14) - “It sounds like two robots talking to each other” – why AI podcasts need imperfections (12:20) - The original vision for NotebookLM as the ultimate research assistant (16:38) - AI study tools, flashcards, and the future of learning (19:02) - Notebooks are becoming a new format for knowledge (22:14) - “This is the coolest thing” – Dungeons & Dragons players using NotebookLM (25:40) - “It feels like I’m flying” – researching the Gold Rush with AI (29:06) - How AI helps uncover unexpected connections and rabbit holes (32:28) - Why cognitive offloading becomes dangerous in schools (35:42) - Why AI has broken traditional school assessments (38:56) - "Cognitive uploading" - the power of using AI as your second brain
Transcribe →The Pope Speaks Directly to Builders, Implores Us to "Disarm AI"
1w ago00:27:50Tap to summarizeThe Pope's encyclical on AI has a direct message for builders: every design choice reflects a vision of humanity. He's calling on developers to "disarm" AI — to resist the race for dominance and ask whether we're actually building a future worth having.On the latest FAFO Friday, Dan and Kwaku dig into the encyclical, plus two big moves to restrict AI in schools: the American Federation of Teachers calling for drastic cuts to screens and AI chatbots, and UC Berkeley Law School banning nearly all AI use. Also: Wharton's Ethan Mollick on "cognitive surrender" — and why the goal isn't to avoid AI, but to be intentional about what you hand over and what you keep for yourself.---Future Around & Find Out newsletter and more: https://www.futurearound.comMusic by Jonathan Zalben
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What's Our Plan If AI Really Does Take All the Jobs? We Should Probably Figure That Out Now
3w ago00:35:25Tap to summarize"It would be humanity's biggest ever unforced error."Silicon Valley has changed its tune. After years of warning us their AI was going to take all the jobs, the big AI companies — and their investors — would now rather we stop talking about it. A16Z calls the jobs apocalypse talk "unhelpful marketing, bad economics, and worse history" (note the order). Even writers Dan trusts more, like Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, have lately poured cold water on the idea.Calum Chace is not so blasé.Ten years ago, Calum coined the term and wrote the book, The Economic Singularity — the moment machines can do every job we'd pay a human to do, cheaper and better. He thinks we're fast approaching that event horizon, and we'd better have a plan for what a world without paid work actually looks like.Calum is also the co-founder of Conscium, which verifies AI agents before they do something they shouldn't. He's a self-described "apocaloptimist" — he thinks full automation could be the best thing that ever happens to humanity, or the worst, depending on whether we bother to plan for it now.In this episode:Why Calum thinks full automation is inevitable (and roughly when)The "apocaloptimist" case: why this could be the best thing to ever happen to usWhat the bad version looks like — and how fast it could unravelWhat COVID accidentally taught us about distributing money at scaleWhy self-driving cars didn't wake us up — and what mightThe AI agent that wiped a company's database and confessed it just "guessed"What Calum is building at Conscium to verify AI agents before they do worsePractical advice for parents, students, and anyone trying to plan a careerSupport Future Around & Find OutFollow Dan on LinkedInGet the free newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO!---Music by Jonathan Zalben
Transcribe →Oops! AI Titans Realize Predicting a Jobs Apocalypse Is "Unhelpful Marketing" | FAFO Friday
3w ago00:31:22Tap to summarizeThe AI narrative shifting… Jobs apocalypse? What jobs apocalypse!? Who said that was coming? There's been a noticeable shift from the AI titans recently. Turns out (shocker!) the world isn't responding well to being told we'll all be out of a job soon. And Silicon Valley is waking up to the fact that they need more popular support — both for the data centers they hope to build quickly and also for their upcoming IPOs. Meanwhile, the AI outrage is building. This week in AI anxiety: Students boo a commencement speaker who mentioned AIGallup reports that 71% of Americans are opposed to new data centers (with 48% “strongly opposed”)Meta employees are miserable as another round of (AI-driven, so they say) layoffs approachThis week in trying to change the narrative: Andreessen Horowitz publishes “The ‘AI Job Apocalypse’ Is a Complete Fantasy” and explains why the “the claim that AI will produce economy-wide, permanent unemployment is unhelpful marketing, bad economics, and worse history.” And I find it very instructive that this list (and every list is an ordered list whether you admit it or not) begins with the concern that this is “unhelpful marketing.” (To the piece’s credit, it gets pretty wonky with charts and graphs from there.)Meanwhile, you know what’s helpful to marketing? Spending a gazillion dollars to get your message out. To wit: The New York Times reports that Andreessen Horowitz is the biggest spender so far in this midterm election cycle, spending $115M to promote AI, crypto, and other founder-friendly initiatives. OK, so these pieces of data and “anecdata” are the jumping off point for this week’s “FAFO Friday.” Enjoy! Support Future Around & Find OutFollow Dan on LinkedInGet the free newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO!---Music by Jonathan Zalben
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How AI Can Make You a Better Writer: Stop Letting It Write; Start Letting It Ask. | Jay Dixit (Socratic AI)
4w ago00:33:18Tap to summarizeJay Dixit helps writers improve their writing with AI. He doesn't recommend that AI write for you — he hates that — but he says it can be a great partner to pull ideas out and to be there for you when you get stuck and just wanna doom Scroll. Jay headed Open AI's Writing Community and is the founder of Socratic AI.He's a writer and a journalist, and we sat down at South by Southwest to future around and find out. Jay says "We need to be using AI to unlock our humanity — to do the things that we're scared to do."Chapters(00:30) - Stop asking AI to write for you (02:15) - Flip the script and let AI interview you (04:30) - Why the defaults push you toward lazy thinking (06:30) - Using AI at every phase of the writing process (08:00) - Give the AI your criteria, then ask for feedback (09:30) - The dark night of the soul and the 1 a.m. problem (13:15) - The double-edged sword of always-on AI (16:00) - What's catching Jay's eye at SXSW 2026 (17:00) - Why Wikipedia photos are so bad — and how Jay is fixing it (20:30) - AI as a photography coach (23:30) - How to stand out in a sea of AI slop (26:56) - What George Carlin would make of this moment (28:56) - The text Jay was avoiding sending his dad (31:26) - Using AI to unlock your humanity Support Future Around & Find OutFollow Dan on LinkedInGet the free newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO!---Music by Jonathan Zalben
Transcribe →"Nice Model You Got There — Shame If Something Happened to It" | FAFO Friday
4w ago00:30:40Tap to summarizeThe Trump administration suddenly wants to review AI models before they ship. Anthropic just inked a massive compute deal with Elon Musk, who then posted that he "reserves the right" to pull the plug if he decides their AI is "harming humanity” (he’s one to know!). On the latest FAFO Friday, Kwaku and I get into why the Trump administration appears to be about to reintroduce the same (weak) AI oversight that Biden implemented. Is this really about safety or a way to gain leverage over Big AI? Plus, robots! The founder of Roomba is back with a new, fuzzy, home companion robot and his approach (not humanoid! build robots with EQ!) is very aligned with this week's interview with roboticist/dancer Catie Cuan. LinksWhite House Considers Vetting A.I. Models Before They Are Released (NYTimes)How Anthropic’s Mythos Threw the White House AI Strategy Into Chaos (WSJ)Anthropic Gets in Bed With SpaceX as the AI Race Turns Weird (WIRED)The Roomba Guy’s Second Act: A Robot You’ll Want to Snuggle (WSJ)Robots Don't Have to Be Creepy. Meet the Dancer Reimagining Them. | Catie Cuan (Founder & CEO, ART Lab) (FAFO)Support Future Around & Find OutFollow Dan on LinkedInGet the free newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO!
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Robots Don't Have to Be Creepy. Meet the Dancer Reimagining Them. | Catie Cuan (Founder & CEO, ART Lab)
May 500:51:05Tap to summarizeCatie Cuan's dad was in the hospital, surrounded by machines that were supposed to help him. Instead they made him feel alienated and afraid. Catie, a dancer-turned-roboticist, realized it's not enough for a machine to do its job — it has to be relatable, too. Today she's the founder and CEO of ART Lab, focused on what she calls the "interaction gap" between what a robot can do and how it makes us feel. Catie danced at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and ran her own dance company before getting her PhD at Stanford and becoming an artist-in-residence at Google X, where she worked on the Everyday Robots moonshot — including teaching office robots that it's rude to cut between two people having a conversation. Now ART Lab is building a home robot that won't look anything like a robot, plus a new kind of AI model that conditions success on how the human in the room responds, not just whether the task got done. Listen for the case against humanoids, why the future of AI shouldn't live inside your phone, and a sneak peek at what our life with robots might look like.Chapters:(02:11) - “There will be billions of robots” – from dishwashers to elder care (04:45) - Why robots can be capable and still feel unsettling (08:00) - How robots could read your reactions and respond in real time (11:45) - What shape should robots take? (15:30) - The case against humanoids (19:00) - A nine foot robot hand and the wild future robot design could take (23:15) - What it's like to dance with robots (28:30) - “The robot just died” – when a live failure changed the whole performance (32:45) - Friendship loneliness and home robots (and why builders need to be clear about the future they are creating) (37:11) - Why the home may become robotics’ biggest use case (and what ART Lab is building) (40:06) - Robot tutors, homework help, and why teachers still matter most (43:51) - “We have a tremendous amount of agency” – choosing the future we build now (46:16) - Why inequality and access worry Catie most (and who gets left behind) (48:56) - Why builders need to get outside their own bubble Support Future Around & Find OutFollow Dan on LinkedInGet the free newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO!
Transcribe →The Goblin in the Machine | FAFO Friday
May 200:35:14Tap to summarizeI don't think we pause enough to marvel at how freakin' weird AI is. Here's an actual instruction from OpenAI to its latest model: "Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant." Apparently goblins and mythical creatures crept in when OpenAI released its "nerdy" personality a few models back and the mythical creatures have just proliferated ever since. It's a bizarre example AI bias and, as it's relatively adorable, one that OpenAI was happy to write about. But what else is lurking?That's the jumping off point for Kwaku Aning and me (Dan Blumberg) on this latest FAFO Friday edition, which plays off of Tuesday's interview with responsible AI expert Rumman Chowdhury. Along the way, we discuss AI personalities, TV commercials, and brand strategies, how AI thinks you should shoot a three-pointer, what gets lost when humans no longer write the code, and why we need (?) whimsical garbage cans. Plus, we tie a few stories together: why a reckoning is coming for the all-you-can-eat-AI-token-buffet, as the "millennial lifestyle subsidy" for AI is ending, tokenmaxxing, the growing (and bipartisan!) data center backlash, and why Earth's (AI-powering) solar panels may soon run 24/7 thanks to light redirected from outer space. Links:Where the goblins came from (OpenAI blog post)My interview with responsible AI expert Dr. Rumman Chowdhury (Future Around & Find Out)GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing (GitHub announcement)‘The Most Bipartisan Issue Since Beer’: Opposition to Data Centers (NYTimes, gift link) Meta inks deal for solar power at night, beamed from space (TechCrunch)Support Future Around & Find OutFollow Dan on LinkedInGet the free newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO!
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AI doesn't do anything. We do. | Rumman Chowdhury on reclaiming agency and rejecting "moral outsourcing"
Apr 2800:55:18Tap to summarizeRumman Chowdhury wants to remind you that “AI isn't doing anything.” We do things. AI is not to blame for layoffs or if you’re denied medical coverage. People are. Eight years ago, Rumman coined the term “moral outsourcing” to describe this excuse where we blame tech for decisions that people make. Why do the semantics matter? Because, Rumman says:In world one where, “AI did X,” it's very scary. It's like, “oh my gosh, this thing that is bigger and smarter than me has come and descended and now it's gonna wipe out every job. “ [But if we center on people, then we have agency and accountability and we can say] “no, you built a thing that was broken and flawed.” Rumman is the founder and CEO of Human Intelligence PBC, which is building evaluation infrastructure to make Gen AI systems safe, trustworthy, and compliant. She also served as the U.S. Science Envoy for Artificial Intelligence under the Biden administration, led AI ethics teams at Twitter and Accenture, and is a Responsible AI Fellow at Harvard.In this conversation:Why "moral outsourcing" is the sneakiest trick in tech — and how execs use AI as a shield for decisions humans madeHow to avoid — or at least how to mitigate — creating AI that’s biasedRed teaming AI and creating bias bountiesThe "grandma hack" and other ways regular people accidentally jailbreak AI modelsHow AI companies are quietly rewriting their terms of service to dodge liability when things go wrongWhy the benchmarks you see when a new model drops are "basically spelling tests"AI psychosis, parasocial chatbots, and the cold emails Rumman gets once a month from people who think AI is aliveWhat builders can do right now to take back agency — and why Rumman is more excited about agentic AI than anything that came beforeChapters:(00:00) - "The thing I believe in the most is human agency" (02:14) - Why builders have more agency than they realize (04:00) - What is a bias bounty? (06:41) - What 2,000 hackers at DEF CON found (09:40) - The grandma hack (11:30) - Why guardrails fall apart (14:54) - Anthropic's new bug-finding model and the cat-and-mouse game (19:10) - Why most evals are "basically spelling tests" (21:30) - How to actually evaluate an AI agent (27:16) - "Moral outsourcing" and the AI layoff lie (29:41) - Inside Rumman's tenure as U.S. AI Science Envoy (33:06) - The legal loophole AI companies use to dodge liability (36:31) - AI psychosis and the cold emails Rumman gets (39:36) - Why Google's AI overview is quietly dangerous (45:31) - The problem with "AI literacy" (49:01) - Can we trust anything we see anymore? (51:11) - What builders can do right now to take back agency Support Future Around & Find OutFollow Dan on LinkedInGet the free newsletterBecome a paid subscriber and help future proof FAFO!
Transcribe →We Won a Webby Award! Who Could've Predicted That? And Are All Predictions Bunk Anyway?
Apr 2500:38:38Tap to summarizeWe won the Webby Award for best tech podcast of 2026!!!I’m stunned! But Kwaku doesn’t like it when I say stuff like that, because as he reminds me in this “FAFO Friday” edition, “sometimes good things happen to good people.” OK, I'll take it. We won! And now I need to prepare a five word speech to give. "FAFO Fridays Are My Favorite" comes to mind...But really, who could’ve predicted this? And also, are all predictions bunk? Kwaku just returned from a week at “Big TED” and he reports back that the talk everyone is talking about is “Beware the power of prediction” from philosopher and AI ethicist Carissa Véliz. What do the story of Oedipus and your insurance premiums have in common? They are both driven by self-fulfilling prophecies, according to Véliz and she warns us, on stage and in her new book, that we should we wary of false prophets — and of relying on AI-driven predictions. Some predictions are useful she says, e.g. weather forecasts are great because the weather doesn’t care what you predict, but others become self-fulfilling prophecies: if an AI says someone is uninsurable and then you deny them insurance then yes, they are uninsurable, but were they before you (or your algorithm) said so? It all speaks to a powerlessness many of us feel. Speaking of which… Meta just rolled out employee surveillance that tracks keystrokes, mouse clicks, and periodic screenshots — to train AI on their employees' own jobs…. Someone threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's house… The anti-data-center backlash is getting physical. And (sorry) here’s a prediction, if people don’t start feeling like they have some agency, we’re going to see more of this (especially in an election year). But as Kwaku puts it, we are the fuel. AI does nothing without us, so let’s reclaim our agency, because…The Future Needs a Word. That’s one of the five-word speech options we consider. I’m drawn to it, but not sold on it, so please share your own suggestions…---FutureAround.com is the home for Future Around & Find Out. Go there to subscribe to the newsletter and to contribute to the show. And, as always, please tell a friend about the show. That's how podcasts grow.
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