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Build For Tomorrow

How to Communicate With the Future

Build For Tomorrow

Jason Feifer

Business, History, Technology, Entrepreneurship

4.7573 Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2020

⏱️ 43 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

These feel like historic times… so how can we share our wisdom and experiences with future generations? Turns out, it’s really hard! This episode explores why time capsules fail, why almost nothing lasts for thousands of years, why the future may not care about us after all—and why all of that is just fine. Get in touch! Website: jasonfeifer.com Newsletter: jasonfeifer.bulletin.com Instagram: Instagram.com/heyfeifer Twitter: Twitter.com/heyfeifer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Something unexpected has arrived in Happy Meal. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Hello Kitty and friends are teaming up for the ultimate collab.

0:08.3

Joining your little ones on a fun-fueled adventure. Some fun, some food, it's all inside this happy meal.

0:16.2

Until the 2nd of February from 11am includes one pre-selected book or toy whilst it's last.

0:20.2

This is Build for Tomorrow, a podcast about the things from history that shaped us and how we can shape the future.

0:26.7

I'm Jason Pfeiffer.

0:28.0

If you don't live in central Nebraska, then you may not have heard of the Kingsley Dam, but oh damn, it is a big dam.

0:35.3

A hundred and sixty-two feet high, three point one miles long, it is a big dam. 162 feet high, 3.1 miles long.

0:39.3

Construction began in 1936.

0:41.3

President Roosevelt praised it as a feat of engineering,

0:44.3

and after its completion in 1941,

0:46.3

it became a significant source of power and money for the region.

0:50.3

And that is why, as the dam's 50th birthday approached in 1991, Nebraska planned to go all out.

0:58.2

Hot air balloons, helicopter rides, parades, talks from local officials, a giant picnic.

1:03.5

And then the event planners caught wind of a total showstopper.

1:07.0

It would be the perfect way to bridge the past with the present.

1:12.2

The way to revel in 50 damn years of glory. And it was a time capsule, rumored to be buried near the dam when it was

1:19.2

completed in 1941. Now, this thing was not actually intended to be opened yet. The instructions

1:25.2

left by the people of 1941 was not to open it until the year

1:29.8

2041, a full century later. But the people of 1991 were like, ah, it's been 50 years and we're not

1:35.9

waiting another 50. Let's open this so long as they could actually find the damn thing.

1:41.5

We made phone calls to the state capitol in Lincoln where supposedly a plaque or some

1:48.9

sort of document was being stored.

...

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