Flash forward is, as you've heard me say, approximately 180 times and counting, a show about the future.

Sure, it's about cool science, and tech, and research, and sometimes aliens.

But fundamentally, it's about the ways that tomorrow could be different from today.

Since the beginning, this show has been a way for me to explore ideas of change.

How do we change the world for the better? How do we become the people we want to be?

How do we make the futures we want?

This is a literal question, one that has real, on-the-ground answers.

But it can also be served, I think, by metaphors.

At some point in the past, someone who lived where I now live in Berkeley planted a butterfly

bush. I didn't know that's what it was, being a person who always thinks that I will learn about

plants, and then never does. I only figured it out when the butterflies started coming to it.

Monarchs, specifically, those beautiful black and orange begins of spring.

Actually, that's a lie. I noticed the caterpillars first, eating the plant.

And then I did a search to figure out if I should kill them.

If they were some kind of terrible invasive species I've never heard of,

that I should eradicate immediately, and with glee, they were not.

Have you ever tried to watch, in real time, a caterpillar turning into a butterfly?

It happens in two parts, as you probably know.

First, the caterpillar finds a spot on a leaf or a branch.

Then, the soft, smushy caterpillar spins a protective exoskeleton.

The ones monarchs make are a beautiful, leafy green with gold flecks.

Other butterflies have even more striking shells.

...