Future Is Here

How will advances in genomics - and advances in smartphones - shape the future of medicine? Dr. Eric Green describes the Precision Medicine Initiative, at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC. About the Speaker: Dr. Eric Green is the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health.

How will we feed the Earth's growing population? In this talk at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC, explorer, storyteller, and environmentalist Alexandra Cousteau discusses growing up in the real ‘life aquatic’, and how saving the oceans is the key to feeding the planet.

How can we help save Planet Ocean? Dr. Nancy Knowlton says we should consider the shark. She shares the shark success story, as well as others that are helping the conservation movement grow, at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC. About the Speaker: Dr. Nancy Knowlton is a marine biologist and serves as the Sant Chair in Marine Science at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

What has Watson the supercomputer been up to since winning Jeopardy in 2011? Marc Teerlink tells us about Watson's last four years, and where cognitive supercomputers are headed, at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC. About the Speaker: Marc Teerlink is the Chief Business Strategist at IBM's Watson Group. This talk was originally recorded in May 2015.

What do you do when cutting carbon emissions doesn't cut it? Dr. David Keith discusses why re-engineering the atmosphere may be crucial to stopping climate change, at the Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC. About the Speaker: Dr. David Keith is a physicist who has worked on climate science, energy technology, and public policy for 25 years. He is a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a professor of Applied Physics at the Harvard Paulson School.

Can geology help predict earthquakes? Kirk Johnson certainly thinks they can do that, and much more— Johnson calls himself “Chief Rock Collector” at the world’s largest museum. In this talk at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC, Johnson explains how earth’s geology can predict the future, helped create technology, and helps us imagine life on Mars.

Why is Quantum Woman the greatest superhero of all time? Dr. Shohini Ghose explains the incredible powers of quantum particles at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC. About the Speaker: Dr. Shohini Ghose is an Associate Professor of Physics and Computer Science at Wilfrid Laurier University, where she serves as Director of the Center for Women in Science. She is also an affiliate of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Think we're smart? In this talk at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC, Seth Shostak explains why we’re probably not the smartest creatures in the universe, how SETI is going about looking for aliens, and the probability that life exists outside of our solar system.

What can parasites teach neuroscientists about the brain? Dr. Kelly Weinersmith tells us about three parasites who have mastered the minds of their hosts with incredible precision, at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC. About the Speaker: Dr. Kelly Weinersmith is an ecologist specializing in parasite and host behaviors. She is a Huxley Fellow at Rice University.

What does sleep have to do with emotion and memory, and why does the future of sleep mean a return to the past? Dr. Matt Walker explains what's going on behind the scenes when we close our eyes for the night, at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington DC. About the Speaker: Dr. Matt Walker is a professor of psychology and neuroscience, and director of UC Berkeley's Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory.

What makes volcanoes erupt? This talk from Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC is all about active volcanoes — and not just they might spew fire and destruction across a hundred mile radius. Instead, Elizabeth Cottrell, Director of Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program discusses an often overlooked facet of how Volcanoes function: their breathe.

How can we harness the huge power of data? Dr. Bill Casebeer describes the "cognitive exoskeleton", which he sees as a way to help our brains navigate a complex and increasingly data-rich world, at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC. About the Speaker: Dr. Bill Casebeer is a Research Area Manager in human systems optimization for Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Laboratories.

How do you 3-D model whale fossils? In this talk at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC, Nick Pyenson gives us the down low on digitizing a whale fossil graveyard with the “Laser Cowboys” and why too much data can be a good thing… eventually.

Have you ever Googled the phrase “who invented the internet?” Vinton G. Cerf’s name is in the top results. Granted, he does work at Google, but as the Co-designer of TCP/IP protocols and the basic architecture of the Internet, his claim is pretty legit. In this talk at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC, Vinton not only recounts the birth of this thing we now totally take for granted, how he uses it to keep teenagers out of his wine cellar, and where he sees it going in the future.

How did we get here? In this talk at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC, Nobel Laureate John Mather walks us through the Big Bang, Dark Matter, and the essential instability of the universe. Sound terrifying? Don’t worry, Mather actually thinks the future will be much like the present… only more so.

How can't fragile human bodies survive deep space exploration? Maybe they don't have to. In this talk at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC, Tony Antonelli explains the challenges of deep space exploration for humans, and how robotics will help us transcend our fragile bodies in space.

What does a Terminator look like in real life? Erik Schechter takes us on a tour of the past, present, and future of killer robots at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC. About the Speaker: Erik Schechter is a veteran, former defense contractor, PR agent, and journalist who has written for Scientific American, The Wall Street Journal, and Popular Mechanics.

Do we matter? Does mattering matter? In this talk at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC, philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein asks these questions and more. Find out why mattering matters so much to us from this MacArthur “genius” grant winner.

How do you make a building truly sustainable, when the land it's built on is susceptible to floods and earthquakes? Architect Greg Henderson has a surprising answer, which he discussed at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC. About the Speaker: Greg Henderson is an architect and the co-founder of the architecture technology firm Arx Pax.

Could we really colonize Mars? This episode features NASA Deputy Administrator, Dava Newman, in conversation with author and astronomer Phil Plait at Smithsonian Magazine's The Future Is Here Festival in Washington, DC. Learn not just how NASA plans to get to Mars, but why it will ultimately have to be self-sustaining on the Red Planet. Actually, I’m still trying to figure that out on Earth.