Where new tech meets everyday behavior, talked out plainly.
Serge and Peter take on one piece of the future at a time, from targeted ads and electronic voting to Boston Dynamics robots and the cities to come. Their talk is loose and friendly, trading worry and enthusiasm as it weighs what each technology could mean for ordinary life.
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Future Break is a conversation show built around two voices, Serge and Peter, and one standing question: what does a new technology do to the way people live? Each episode here picks one subject and stays with it. The range is wide. There are episodes on the cities of the future, on advertising, on electronic voting, on Boston Dynamics and on disappearing from the internet. Privacy links several of them. The advertising conversation starts with a host feeling creeped out by ads that seem to know a little too much. It then works through how an advertiser can reach people using nothing more than where a website's traffic goes. 'How To Disappear Online - 022' asks whether vanishing online is possible at all, whether someone means to or not. The voting episode is framed as a friendly showdown between pros and cons. Part of it has the hosts sketching how a blockchain ledger could make a cast vote hard to tamper with, and they point listeners to the show's own blockchain episode for more. The robot conversation starts with the post-apocalyptic shows one host remembers watching as a kid, then turns. The more present danger, that host argues, is a person or regime misusing the machines. The cities episode appears in the feed as a rebroadcast and stays lighter, right down to a question about how anyone would plunge a pneumatic tube. The delivery is loose and friendly. The two finish each other's thoughts, trade asides and find their way back to the point. Episodes end the same way, with a wish that everyone has a magical day. The hosts invite topic ideas by email and say they reply to pretty much every message. The show belongs to the Podglomerate network, and the pair make a point of thanking Jeff Umbro and the team there for sponsors, support and reach. An episode titled '629 Days & Counting....' looks back to the day the two first recorded, in a car, on a recorder they say they still use. It describes what comes next as a new chapter, 'see you later' rather than goodbye. For a first listen, the advertising and disappearing-online episodes show the privacy side most clearly. The Boston Dynamics conversation shows how the show handles bigger fears.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants emerging technology talked through in plain, friendly conversation, and who cares more about privacy and everyday consequences than about the gadgets themselves.
What sets it apart: It keeps the focus on what technology means for ordinary people: ads that seem to know too much, whether anyone can truly vanish online, and who ends up steering the robots. Two hosts argue it out with more curiosity than jargon.
Technology has been a passion for both of us. We quickly found that out once we started working together. Lunch breaks became an assembly of ideas. We discussed not only emerging technology but how we got to this point in time in the first place. On one of these lunch breaks, without much planning, we grabbed a personal recorder, got in the car, and the Future Break Podcast was born. We're thrilled to have you join us on this wild and wonderful journey... New shows come out every other Wednesday
Spot holds the door; Serge and Peter make room for your robot anxiety.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A warm swan song that follows Future Break from its first car ride toward an open-ended next chapter.
Future Break closes by turning its final stretch into a small, affectionate story about how the show was built. The title's 629 days reaches back to Serge and Peter's drive to pick up the recorder they still use, with Russian sausage along the way and their first recording…
A loose, accessible look at future cities, strongest when a pneumatic tube system makes urban infrastructure feel tangible.
Future Break looks at future cities through the everyday systems that make them work: living, working, leisure, and waste. Its strongest section turns a pneumatic-tube rubbish network at a mosque into something easy to picture, with 400 openings sending garbage to a receiving…
A wary drive home leads into a grounded look at how traffic and analytics can turn attention into ad targets.
Online advertising turns uneasy once location and taste can be inferred without a person ever being named. Future Break builds from that discomfort into a fireside discussion of targeting, website traffic, and the machinery behind online ads, with Serge and Peter keeping the…
A friendly blockchain-voting debate makes electronic ballots feel clear, optimistic, and still lightly contested.
Electronic voting turns into a friendly contest between Serge and Peter, centered on whether a blockchain ledger could make ballots easier to verify and harder to alter.
Spot's door-opening demo turns robot spectacle into a sharper question about human control.
Future Break's 44th episode uses Boston Dynamics to ask a clean, uneasy question: when machines can move through the world with confidence, who gets to decide what they do?
Fast questions, sharper game tangents.
Tech talk with useful detours.
Few questions, long tangents, wherever the conversation goes
Tech skepticism with geek-household fingerprints.
Engineer brain, tech culture, no polish.
Tech culture through working humans.
Future Break revisits the first car ride, the Russian sausage stop, and the recorder that launched the show 629 days earlier.
Future Break ties the idea of the “cities of the future” to real systems already running in Los Angeles and Mecca.
Geofencing can follow a customer from a competitor’s lot to your store.
The hosts debate the pros and cons of electronic voting, focusing on the technology versus human behavior aspects.
Future Break Podcast episode 44 centers on Boston Dynamics, the MIT-born robotics company later bought by Google in about 2013 and then SoftBank.
The hosts discuss the possibility and implications of disappearing online, covering intentional and unintentional digital privacy issues.
The hosts discuss the origins and future of artificial intelligence, including the breakthroughs needed for general AI.
The hosts discuss CES 2017, its history, and their favorite products from the show.