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From Wondery, I'm Stephen Johnson, and this is American Innovations.

It's a new decade, and that means a new decade of exciting innovations to look forward to.

But as we ponder the future and its potential, it's also important to take a brief look back at what happened over the past year.

2019 was a year that brought some pretty exciting advancements in a lot of important industries.

In the world of computing, Google announced it achieved a feat called Quantum Supremacy,

which could fundamentally change how we think about computers and computing.

Meanwhile, 2019 was also the year where a lot of major auto manufacturers announced they were investing major dollars in electrification.

Ford, Volkswagen, Honda, and just about everyone else is developing the next generation of cars we drive, so watch out Tesla.

And even the way that we think about the food we eat took a major step forward in 2019.

Man-made meat hit the mainstream with major fast food chains like Burger King, Carl's Jr, and White Castle,

all serving beef alternatives that are grown in labs.

But even as those developments and lots more like them are exciting, a lot of these technologies are still in the early stages.

Today I'm going to talk with Clive Thompson, he's the author of the terrific book, Coaters,

The Making of a New Tribe, and The Remaking of the World.

Clive and I are going to talk about the past year in innovation and what we're both looking forward to in the next decade.

That's next.

Clive Thompson, welcome back to American Innovations.

Good to be here.

So this is kind of an annual thing. I think we're now doing this. This is the second year we've done a kind of year end review in tech looking forward and backwards at the same time.

So I hope we'll be doing this for the next century.

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