Past Events

This week Biden elevated the Presidential Science Advisor to a cabinet position for the first time in U.S. History. In his appointment of Eric Lander (human genome project lead) as science advisor and leader of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Biden refers back to the first presidential science advisor, FDR’s Vannevar Bush. In 1945 Bush prepared a postwar report for FDR “Science the Endless Frontier.” It laid out the vast possibilities, economic growth and human improvement that the…

Just when you thought you’d seen everything populist in America, what was last week’s political mob took on hedge funds and Wall Street at their own game this week. Game stop. Was it the ultimate liberation of the retail investor? The elevation of bubbles to high art on Reddit with the emergence of meme stocks? Or, the most public exposure of Wall Street corruption and manipulation in all history, experienced as an ARG on Robinhood. Today on Quarantime we dive…

Today we’ll be exploring an ongoing topic of ours around cities, change, and how we build back better. Peter will provide a report from the front lines of change going on in San Diego and Atlanta with an organization called CoPlace who you may remember from our urban prototyping episode #25 in June of 2020.  Peter will share what he saw on the streets and what he heard from community members as they work to rebuild at the dawn of 2021, in the midst…

Context is decisive. What if evidence-based design research could be combined with how we shape the context of the places we go when we’re sick, or face physical or mental health crises, or expectantly prepare for new beginnings, when we yearn for graceful transitions, or bittersweet endings over our lives? That was the question the Center for Health Design was created to ask and has helped answer for more than 25 years. Today it has become the global community and…

Artists who work in code explore the “Distant Early Warning Line (DEW line) of culture. Today they play in the medium of privacy, surveillance, AI, robots, 3D printed stem cells, and body mods. During this global pandemic, when we’ve lived so virtually, we’ve come to realize that virtual interfaces are as real and present and have as many governance issues as the real world does. There is a there there. When we see scientists ”rip“ the DNA of a virus…

Today’s show marks our pandemic first anniversary. What happened? We’ll examine our changed world through the seismic changes to our communication environment and how these have reworked out value systems, our sense of self and communiy and the fundamental Enlightenment principals on which Western Democracies are built. We’re honored to have three of the best minds on this topic together for the first time!  The Analog City and the Digital City L.M. Sacasas is author of “The Analog City and the…

It’s Quarantime! With Synthetic Biologist Andrew Hessel on how that community is responding, Mickey McManus from BCG on how tools for coloration and empathy are evolving in real-time, Moheeb Zara from HeatSync Labs on streaming dance parties, dinners, life and more — all on Quarantime!

What is a machine? We draw our images and metaphors from the industrial revolution and the era of the clockwork universe: Machines are predicable, created by humans (rather than Mother Nature) and inanimate. Today we consider the prospect that we’re on the threshold of a new science, “Machine Behavior” where life is organic and mechanistic at multiple levels and machines might inherit the traits of organisms and new hybrids may be born, built, or both. Stunning advances in biology, neural…

Just about now America needs some pretty big ideas for economic recovery, industrial transformation, and how to tackle climate change while driving inclusive growth. Today on Quarantime! a report of the boldest approaches to economic development in our nation today, hot off the press, direct from the visionary teams creating them. 1 A Marshall Plan for Middle America. Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto famously committed his city to the Paris Climate Accord when the US government pulled out & believes that…

From the 1600s to the early part of the 1700s, there were a few dominant economic forces globally, and one of them was the Dutch Republic. But an odd thing happened in the 1620s. The world had two first-of-its-kind innovations. A newly discovered flower known as the tulip was sweeping the land. As speculation on who might breed the best black tulip reached a fever pitch, tulipmania broke out, and then the first recorded economic bubble in history burst. Today…