Future of Being Human an Arizona State University initiative

Modem Futura: the podcast

Last updated 2026-08-13 · build 20260815T1525Z-161d1724 · Markdown version · corpus index

Modem Futura is our weekly podcast — created and launched by Sean Leahy with Andrew Maynard in October 2024, and a core output of the initiative, not outreach garnish. In our philosophy, broadcasting done this way is the scholarship: sustained, trust-based public engagement and publicly visible scholarship with the questions that define us — filing it under “media” misreads the model (Philosophy).

The show’s own description: a “weekly guide to the future of science, technology, and society—where futures and foresight meets real-world impact,” in which the hosts “unpack how emerging technologies influence human values, creativity, and culture,” inviting listeners “each week to explore possible, probable, and preferred futures” (Modem Futura RSS feed, captured 2026-08-05).

The show is also where much of the initiative’s thinking is made, not just shared. In Andrew’s words, conversations with Sean are “absolutely critical to the development of my ideas and thinking. The podcast is essentially intellectual formation in public, and feeds my thinking and research in transformative ways — no Sean, no podcast, less substantive content and impact from me” (Andrew Maynard, 2026). Read the episode archive accordingly: not a broadcast of finished conclusions, but the initiative thinking together, out loud, week by week.

Vital facts (established, August 2026)

What the show covers

True to the initiative’s remit, the show works across the full range of technology transitions — AI dominates the current moment but does not define the catalog (see Identity). Recurring territory, from the episode index (2024–2026): AI ethics, capabilities, and education; space exploration; robotics and bio-hybrid machines; synthetic biology and de-extinction; autonomous vehicles and urban air mobility; spatial computing and the metaverse; foresight methods themselves (the Futures Cone, Three Horizons, futures improv); and the stories — film, television, and science fiction — through which cultures imagine their futures. Guests include scholars, astronauts, storytellers, educators, entrepreneurs, and once, memorably, a nine-year-old.

Illustrative episodes — examples of the range, not a highlight reel (all from the episode index, captured 2026-08-05):

Why a podcast: trust as method

The reasoning behind the show is documented — formally, in a federal report. The Future Travel Foresight Catalyst final report (Maynard & Leahy, 2025; rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/91942 — note: this repository resists automated fetching; we represent its content here) names parasocial relationship-building as a methodological pillar: cultivating genuine audience bonds through consistency, authenticity, accessibility, and voice, so that communication is relational rather than transactional. Parasocial methods, the report argues, “can combine the reach of broadcast media with the impact of interpersonal interaction” — and trust is what “gives us permission to talk about what we know.”

Andrew has made the case in his own words, publicly: “Sean and I are constantly re-evaluating what we are doing, and why, with the podcast. And the answer keeps coming down to the parasocial relationship we’re building with our audience, and the permission they grant us as a result to talk about things that matter” (“Why parasocial communication around complex ideas is important,” futureofbeinghuman.com, 2025-05-25) — a stance he reaffirmed after Cambridge Dictionary made “parasocial” its word of the year: “It’s a concept that I practice in my own work, and still stand by” (2025-11-19).

Modem Futura is that method in practice, and the podcast served as a platform for the DOT project’s transportation foresight work (episodes on autonomous driving and EVs, 2024–2025). That alignment was produced rather than incidental: Sean Leahy shaped and hosted episodes explicitly around the project’s transportation questions, with guests running from robotaxi engineering to electric-vehicle ownership (Sean Leahy, 2026). The audience relationship is the primary outcome — the asset that everything else (ideas landing, minds changing, networks forming) is built on. The report is blunt about what this means for measurement: “a podcast with 100 deeply engaged listeners can be more influential than one with 10,000 half-listening multitaskers” (DOT report, §3, 2025). The hosts said the same on air at the one-year mark, describing why they double down on being a relational rather than transactional podcast (Ep 53, “We Turned One - plus Liquid Media, Work Slop, and the Road Ahead,” 2025-10-14). This is the initiative’s stance on measurement applied to broadcasting — see Philosophy.

Reach — texture, not justification

Consistent with that stance, we offer reach numbers as evidence of resonance, never as the case for the work:

A note on precision: podcast analytics are notoriously slippery — figures like these are best estimates assembled from the metrics available across Simplecast, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and PODSEO indexing (per Andrew Maynard, 2026-08-05). We treat them accordingly: texture, held loosely.

Experimentation at the edge of the medium

Status: active work. The show doubles as a laboratory for the future of the medium itself: a purpose-built studio with professional-grade audio and then video (DOT report, 2025); short-form video as a reach multiplier; and from mid-2025, episodes captured in Apple Vision Pro spatial 3D video, with a public gallery at spatialfutures.io/modemfutura/ and the on-air experiment beginning at Ep 35 (2025-06-10).

The studio is not just production infrastructure — it is designed as a space, on three layers at once: audio engineered for an immersive quality that pulls a listener in; a studio set up to signal welcome, permission, and relationship — informal, comfortable, reflecting its hosts’ personalities — because the room shapes how the hosts interact, and that comes across even to someone only listening; and the conversation itself crafted as storytelling that opens space in a listener’s head (Andrew Maynard, 2026). The design thinking is part of the initiative’s larger spatial argument: Space as infrastructure.

Where to listen

For the people behind the microphones, see People.