Have a Nice Future: Don't Worry, It Gets Worse
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2023
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We're off this week, so instead of our usual show, we're sharing an episode of WIRED's other podcast, Have a Nice Future. It's hosted by Gadget Lab cohost Lauren Goode and WIRED editor in chief Gideon Litchfield. The show features interviews with guests who have big, audacious ideas about the future. Lauren and Gideon dig into whether this is a future we want to live in, and what we can do about it now.
On this episode, Gideon and Lauren are joined by someone whose full-time job was to predict the future. Noah Raford spent nearly 15 years working as the UAE’s chief futurist, where he advised the government on how to prepare for all sorts of futuristic challenges, from pandemics to global warming. His advice? Get comfortable with discomfort.
This episode originally aired April 26, 2023. Listen to every episode of Have a Nice Future wherever you get your podcasts.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Greetings technology fans. Michael here. GadgetLab is off this week, but we have a special |
| 0:06.4 | pinch hit surprise for you. We're going to play you an episode of Wired's other podcast, |
| 0:11.4 | Have a Nice Future. You'll recognize one of the voices on the show because one of the hosts |
| 0:16.5 | is our very own Lauren Good. The other is our boss, Wired's editor-in-chief, |
| 0:21.7 | Gideon Litchfield. |
| 0:23.2 | The episode you're going to hear |
| 0:24.4 | is a conversation with Noah Rafford, |
| 0:26.4 | the former futurist in chief |
| 0:27.9 | at the United Arab Emirates Dubai Future Foundation. |
| 0:31.9 | His whole job was predicting the future, |
| 0:33.9 | like he is a professional soothsayer |
| 0:35.9 | on topics like technology, |
| 0:38.7 | transportation, and the climate. As you can imagine, he is a professional soothsayer on topics like technology, transportation, and the climate. |
| 0:44.2 | As you can imagine, he says we have a pretty bumpy road ahead of us, so we'd better buckle up. |
| 1:06.0 | Enjoy this episode of Have a Nice Future, and we'll be back next week with our regular episodes of Gatchelab. I always feel like, hey, hi, hey, hi, hey, hi, hi, three, two, one. |
| 1:09.1 | Hi, I'm Lauren Good. |
| 1:16.9 | And I'm Gideon Litchfield, and this is Have a Nice Future, a show about how fast everything is changing. |
| 1:18.4 | I want to help you. |
| 1:26.5 | Each week, we talk to somebody with a big, audacious idea about the future and ask, is this really the future we want? |
| 1:29.5 | This week, our guest is Noah Rafford. |
| 1:30.6 | I'm from the future. Who for nearly 15 years served as an in-house futurist for the government of the UAE. |
| 1:36.4 | My God. |
... |
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