NEWS & UPDATES

Sean Leahy 7/14/26 Sean Leahy 7/14/26

When the AI Goes Dark: What the Fable Ban Taught Us About Digital Fragility

What happens when the government switches off an AI?

For most people, AI is a text field in a browser window: you type something in, something useful comes out. That framing makes it hard to see what AI has quietly become for organizations across research, healthcare, education, and industry, all critical infrastructure. And in the summer of 2026, we learned just how fragile that infrastructure can be.

In this episode of Modem Futura, hosts Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard unpack the saga of Anthropic's Fable, the most capable AI model yet released to the public. Three days after launch, a U.S. Commerce Department export control directive declared it a national security concern, barring access for non-U.S. citizens. Because no platform can verify the citizenship of its users, the model effectively disappeared for everyone — including the researchers inside Anthropic who built it. Weeks later, it returned as suddenly as it left.

The episode treats this less as a news story than as a signal. Futurists have long used sudden technology loss as a hypothetical scenario; like the pandemic scenarios that preceded 2020, it has now crossed from the abstract to the lived. Once that happens, the questions change, if a government can switch off a frontier model at the close of business on a Friday, what does responsible AI adoption look like for a hospital, a university, a business? Where is the line between experimenting on the fringes and building your operations on ground that can move?

One answer explored in the conversation is local AI — smaller models running on hardware you control. They can't match the capability of cloud-based frontier systems (yet) and the hosts are honest about that trade-off. But the Fable episode gave the local argument its first piece of hard evidence, and it may point toward a future of hyper-specific local tools working alongside more powerful, more revocable cloud platforms.

The deeper thread is governance, and even the invocation of the big R-word (regulation). The directive was triggered by capability that regulators had never seen before, and capability is not slowing down. Governing technologies like these will take more than technologists and more than policymakers — it requires people who can work across disciplines, translating between the builders, the philosophers now being hired into AI labs, and the institutions trying to keep up.

The episode doesn't land on tidy answers, because there aren't any yet. What it offers instead is a way of thinking about dependency, sovereignty, and resilience while the ground is still shifting — which is, after all, when thinking matters most.

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Subscribe to Modem Futura wherever you get your podcasts and connect with us on LinkedIn. Drop a comment, pose a question, or challenge an idea—because the future isn’t something we watch happen, it’s something we build together. The medium may still be the massage, but we all have a hand in shaping how it touches tomorrow.

🎧 Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/4ykQCez

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1yCGEa1nafYu9CM4Mxux5Z?si=jPTtglvnRGW_qHtXqPbFvA

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/7ir38k4DjLA

🌐 Website: https://www.modemfutura.com/

Sean Leahy 6/30/26 Sean Leahy 6/30/26

Summer Reading List 2026: The Books That Inspired Our Imagination (Part 1)

Reading Backwards to Understand the Future
There's a particular kind of book list that shows up every summer — the one that seems designed mostly to signal how serious and well-read its author is. This isn't that. In the first part of our annual Summer Reading List, the guiding instinct was the opposite: lasers, space ships, escapism, the kind of book you genuinely can't put down. What we discovered while recording is that the most escapist reads on the list turned out to be some of the most useful lenses on the present.

The cyberpunk classics anchored the conversation. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (1992) coined "metaverse" and imagined a digital overlay on the physical world years before anyone could plausibly build one. William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984) did the same for "cyberspace." Both have been mined relentlessly by the technology industry — and both, the hosts argue, are routinely stripped of their context. Snow Crash is a satire and a warning; it's frequently read as a roadmap. That gap, between fiction written as caution and fiction adopted as ambition, is one of the more revealing dynamics in how Silicon Valley tells its own story.

The deeper thread is about cognition. Snow Crash turns on a virus that crosses from the digital realm into the human mind. In an era of AI systems that engage directly with how we reason and feel, that premise reads less like science fiction and more like a description. Iain M. Banks extends the inquiry in Surface Detail, imagining civilizations that construct virtual heavens and hells so immersive that the line between real and simulated experience dissolves — and asking who, if anyone, has the right to govern what happens inside them. His The Player of Games offers a gentler entry point to the same Culture universe, and a sly meditation on whether a frictionless utopia is something humans actually want. We also dive into some of the amazing and seemingly timeless work of Douglas Adams, whose original Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy radio scripts Andrew counts among his prized possessions and whose wit, he insists, anticipated our anxieties about AI with personality long before the chatbots arrived.

The list closes on firmer ground with Cory Doctorow's Enshittification, a nonfiction account of how convenient, delightful platforms decay once users are locked in. It opened onto a question that runs through the whole episode: what do we actually own in a digital age? A printed book from 1980 still works, unconditionally. A digital one comes with terms that can change beneath you. And when the historical record itself becomes editable without a trace, reliability becomes something we can no longer take for granted.

None of these tensions get resolved here — they aren't meant to. The takeaway is quieter and more durable: stories written decades ago remain among our best instruments for thinking clearly about technologies their authors never lived to see. Part 2 continues the list next week.

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🎧 Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/444V3ws

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5TXSx0QgY4CxUhWsJSF5wm?si=lHeVVcWHS5qE3wd5lFJl5w

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/KN8iEA5tfiQ

🌐 Website: https://www.modemfutura.com/

Sean Leahy 6/9/26 Sean Leahy 6/9/26

When the Definition of Life Gets Blurry: Synthetic Cells and the Care They Demand

We tend to imagine that scientists know exactly what they're making. So it's oddly reassuring — and a little head spinning — to learn that one of the first challenges facing a National Academies committee on synthetic cells was simply agreeing on what a synthetic cell actually is.

That was the starting point for our conversation with Emma Frow, an associate professor at Arizona State University whose work sits at the intersection of bioengineering, science and technology studies, and the governance of emerging biotechnology. Emma served on the committee behind a recent consensus report on the responsible innovation of synthetic cells, and she described spending months wrestling with definitions before any other questions could even be asked.

A spectrum, not a thing

The reason is that "synthetic cell" isn't one technology, is because it is a spectrum of different variations and combinations. At one end is a simple membrane enclosing a handful of enzymes — something that may not be alive in any conventional sense, and that exists in a genuine regulatory gray zone between chemical and biological oversight. At the other end is the long-standing scientific ambition of building a living, replicating cell more or less from scratch. In between are the practical applications driving much of the field: programmable cells for drug delivery, biomanufacturing in bioreactors, and biological substitutes for agricultural chemicals.

Emma offered two clarifying questions that help locate any given creation on that spectrum: Does it contain genetic material? And can it replicate? Those answers shape everything about how seriously, and in what way, we ought to pay attention.

The mirror in the lab

The conversation's most striking turn concerned "mirror life" — organisms built from the reversed molecular handedness of all known biology. Every living thing we've found uses left-handed amino acids and right-handed DNA. A mirror organism would invert that. For years this was framed as a potential safety feature: something so alien it couldn't interact with existing life. But the scientific community has since questioned that assumption, and in late 2024 a group of leading researchers called for restraint, warning that a self-replicating mirror cell could pose risks we'd have no evolutionary defense against.

Care as an ongoing practice

What gives the episode its center of gravity isn't the specter of catastrophe. It's Emma's insistence that care isn't a box you check once. It's a posture you maintain throughout the work — and one the biotech community, by necessity, has cultivated more deliberately than some faster-moving fields. Biology resists the move-fast ethos. There is no perfect containment, and some experiments can't be undone.

The result is a conversation less about prediction than about practice: how thoughtful people decide what's worth building when the old categories no longer hold.

Read the full report here: Supporting Responsible Innovation of Synthetic Cells: Biosafety, Biosecurity, and Environmental Considerations
2026

Sean Leahy 6/2/26 Sean Leahy 6/2/26

What an AI Hallucination Tells Us About First Contact

Space Fiction - Astronaut looks onto an alien world in the cosmos

There's a thought experiment that keeps surfacing in futures work, and it goes something like this: if a genuinely alien mind tried to communicate with us, would we recognize the signal, or would we just call it noise?

On the latest episode of Modem Futura, we play another round of Futures Improv — a format where an AI-generated scenario lands cold on the table and the two of us have to think our way through what it might mean. This time the scenarios kept pulling us back to one question: what counts as a mind, and what do we do with the ones we don't recognize?

The first scenario — a riff on Stanislaw Lem's Solaris — imagines first contact with a moon-sized organism that communicates only by generating vivid hallucinations inside our astronauts, drawn from their own repressed memories. It isn't hostile or friendly. It may not even know we exist as separate beings. The premise sounds outlandish until you notice that we already struggle to have a real conversation with an octopus.

The second scenario hands humanity a single question to ask a time traveler from the year 8,002,701, who carries one piece of verified information — humanity survived — and a sad expression. What do you ask, and what do you deliberately choose not to ask? It's a thought experiment about scarcity, priorities, and the difference between surviving and flourishing.

The third — the one that sticks with you — imagines a service that backs up your consciousness to the cloud every night while you sleep. Ten years in, the backups begin to diverge. They dream differently than you do. Who, then, has the right to your name, your relationships, your sense of self? And the question that arrives quietly behind it: how would you know you weren't the backup already?

None of these scenarios resolve, and that's the point. Futures Improv isn't about predicting which of these worlds will arrive. It's about practicing the kind of imaginative attention we'll need for the technologies that already are — embodied AI, longevity research, neural interfaces, the slow erosion of the line between physical and digital selves.

The conversations get weird. Occasionally they get genuinely strange. And sometimes, in the middle of joking about Elon Musk being reconstituted as a banana, we land on something serious about what it means to be human in an age that keeps redrawing the edges of mind.

🎧 Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube.

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🎧 Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/4vodLdY

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1242zwOf2ZsHgpN1UnF5OM?si=dLiVkWUjTv2f-XdAHS8x3A

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/4vCILufh2RU

🌐 Website: https://www.modemfutura.com/

Sean Leahy 12/30/25 Sean Leahy 12/30/25

Modem Futura Year in Review: What 2025 Taught Us About Being Human

As we step toward 2026, we recorded a “Year in Review” episode of Modem Futura to pause the treadmill, look back, and ask a bigger question: what did this year reveal about the future of being human?

This wasn’t a victory lap. It was a reflection on what resonated, what surprised us, and what it means to build a future-focused show while the future keeps moving.

metrics matter… and they don’t

Yes, growth matters — it helps ideas travel. But podcast analytics are often incomplete and inconsistent, and they rarely capture what impact actually looks like. The most meaningful signals are still human: messages, emails, thoughtful disagreement, and reviews that help someone new discover the show.

“If you want to support the show: subscribing, sharing, and leaving a rating/review are still the most helpful actions.”

— Modem Futura

The themes that defined our year:

AI, beyond the hype: We kept returning to the same tension — generative tools are everywhere, but “AI” isn’t just a feature set. It’s a cultural force that shapes identity, agency, creativity, and values. We try hard to avoid both the hype machine and the doom loop, and instead stay in the messy middle where the most useful questions live.

Education and learning: We lean into what learning actually is (not just schooling), including John Dewey’s idea that humans are wired for inquiry, communication, construction, and expression. When AI arrives in every document and device, what does it do to those impulses — especially for kids?

Technology in the physical world: From autonomous‑vehicle safety systems that quietly drift out of calibration, to EVs and the persistent “flying car” dream, we explore what happens when shiny promises meet real‑world constraints.

Big questions, no apologies: Yes, we go there — simulation hypotheses, black holes, de‑extinction, space travel, and the edges of what science can (and can’t) explain. These episodes aren’t about “being right.” They’re about expanding the space of possible futures we can imagine.

If there’s one takeaway, it’s this: the future isn’t something that happens to us — it’s something we build together.That’s why we keep showing up each week: to create a shared space for curiosity, skepticism, wonder, and responsible imagination.

If you’ve been listening, thank you. If you’re new here, welcome. And if an episode sparked a thought you can’t shake — share it with a colleague, a student, a friend, or your community. As we step into 2026, we’re excited to keep exploring the possible, probable, and preferable futures — with you.

Sean Leahy 12/24/25 Sean Leahy 12/24/25

Why Human Creativity Still Matters in an Age of AI

What a Year in Review Tells Us About the Future of Creativity

Why Human Craft and Creativity Still Wins in an Age of AI – Episode 63

What Spotify Wrapped and a Holiday Ad Reveal About the Future of Creativity

As the year winds down, many of us find ourselves reflecting—not just on what we’ve done, but on how we’ve spent our attention. In this holiday episode of Modem Futura, Andrew Maynard and I leaned into that instinct, using Spotify Wrapped as an unexpected entry point into a deeper conversation about creativity, technology, and what still matters in an AI-accelerated world.

Wrapped experiences are playful by design, but they’re also revealing. They quietly surface patterns of listening, engagement, and community—reminding us that culture is shaped not just by algorithms, but by millions of individual choices. For us, seeing how Modem Futura resonated globally wasn’t about vanity metrics; it was a reminder that thoughtful, exploratory conversations still find an audience, even in an oversaturated media landscape.

From there, the conversation turned to Apple’s 2025 holiday Ad (but feels like a short film) A Critter Carol—a whimsical, puppet-driven production that feels almost rebellious in its insistence on visible human labor. In a moment when AI can generate polished video in seconds, Apple chose puppeteers, practical effects, and intentional imperfection. The result isn’t just charming; it’s instructive.

The ad works because you can feel the human care embedded in every frame. It’s not anti-technology—far from it. It’s pro-human. Advanced tools are present throughout the production pipeline, but they serve imagination rather than replace it. That distinction matters.

You can read a more detailed breakdown of this Ad and the care and craft that goes into it in a previous blog post: Apple’s 2025 Holiday Ad and the Power of Human-Made Creativity in an AI World.

We’re at a cultural inflection point. As generative tools remove friction from making things, the temptation is to settle for what’s “good enough.” But creativity has always lived in resistance—iteration, constraint, failure, and craft. When those disappear, so does much of what gives creative work its soul.

One hope we shared on the episode is that 2026 becomes the year of “behind the scenes”—a renewed appreciation for process, labor, and the messy human work that makes meaningful outcomes possible. Whether in education, media, or design, showing how something is made may soon matter as much as the finished product itself.

If the future is being shaped right now, then choosing care, intention, and humanity in how we use our tools may be one of the most important creative acts we have left.

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🎧 Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/48Sdx6r

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4TVwLBfncHjPs4kDKbLz5t?si=QFYyZuq9R-WtgoEPTeWOlw

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/N1vTfDPSusY

🌐 Website: https://www.modemfutura.com/

Sean Leahy 12/9/25 Sean Leahy 12/9/25

The Hidden Costs of “That Was Easy”: AI Slop, Creative Friction, and the Future of Human Craft

In this Modem Futura episode, hosts Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard examine the rise of “AI slop” and the growing cultural pressure to accept frictionless creation as the norm. Drawing on examples from coding, design, futures thinking, and psychology, they unpack how satisficing, homogenization, and inherited power threaten to erode human craft and understanding. The article explores why creative friction is essential for mastery, agency, and meaning — and offers futures-oriented insights into how we can use AI intentionally without losing what makes us human.

Generative AI has ushered in an era where producing text, images, video, and code is no longer a challenge — it’s a button press. And in this week’s episode of Modem Futura, Andrew and I wrestle with a growing cultural tension: if everything is easy, what happens to the things that matter?

It began with a shared frustration. Both of us have noticed an explosion of what we call AI slop (content that is technically competent but devoid of care, intention, and personality). You’ve seen it too: the LinkedIn posts with identical emojis, the slide decks that all look like NotebookLM, the essays with no point of view. These things aren’t wrong, they’re just empty. And the emptiness is the point.

We discuss a concept called satisficing: the act of choosing something “good enough” rather than something excellent. In the age of AI, satisficing has become an increasing default mode of creation. Why craft an idea when you can generate one? Why wrestle with a blank page when you can autocomplete your way to the finish line?

But here’s the problem: friction is where learning happens. It’s where creativity lives. It’s the sanding that polishes the stone. When you remove friction, you remove the struggle — and without struggle, there is no mastery, no depth, and no meaning.

Throughout the episode, we explore how this plays out across domains. Coders relying on AI-generated code they can’t understand. Designers accepting images that are “close enough.” Writers sharing posts they didn’t write. And organizations flirting with a future where expertise is replaced by button-pressing.

We draw on Michael Crichton’s concept of inherited power from Jurassic Park: the idea that wielding abilities you never earned leads to carelessness, overconfidence, and danger. AI gives us power we didn’t work for — and without wisdom, that power is hollow.

But this isn’t a pessimistic episode. We explore how AI can amplify creativity when used intentionally, how friction can be designed back into workflows, and why people may ultimately push back against frictionless living. Humans crave meaning, not efficiency. And meaning takes work.

If you’re navigating how to use AI thoughtfully — in your craft, your teaching, your leadership, or your creative life — this episode offers a grounded, futures-focused lens on what we stand to lose and what we still have time to protect.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of Modem Futura — and join the conversation on what we should preserve in an age that wants to eliminate every struggle.

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🎧 Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/48WCGgh

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1BajA2SvDWVyY0mRSQ9Flk?si=wvCFhWlgQtC2kye3bGz5Kg

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/1V9PD7j8iu8

🌐 Website: https://www.modemfutura.com/

Sean Leahy 11/25/25 Sean Leahy 11/25/25

Made by Humans: The Apple TV Logo and Future of Design

Made by Humans: What the New Apple TV Logo Reveals About the Future of Design

In a world saturated with AI-generated media, branding, and motion graphics, it’s easy to assume every logo and animation comes from a prompt. But Apple’s new Apple TV logo and mnemonic quietly challenge that assumption—and offer a glimpse into a different future of design.

In a recent episode of the Modem Futura podcast, we unpack the surprising story behind this five-second sequence. Instead of relying entirely on CG or generative tools, Apple commissioned a physical frosted-glass Apple TV logo, mounted on a rig and filmed as colored light passes through it. The luminous flips you see on screen aren’t a simulation; they’re real light interacting with real material.

The audio is equally intentional. The signature Apple TV chime was composed by Finneas, distilling identity and emotion into just a couple of seconds of sound. Together, the visual and audio design embody a level of care, craftsmanship, and human judgment that stands out in today’s AI-heavy landscape.

On the episode, we explore why this matters for creators, educators, and anyone thinking about the future of being human. From Steve Jobs’ insistence on caring about the parts “no one sees” to new signals like “This show is made by humans” tags, we’re seeing a renewed appreciation for work where human intent is clearly present—even when the audience can’t articulate why it feels different.

Rather than rejecting AI outright, we argue for using it in ways that amplify human creativity without erasing the craft that gives our media meaning.

🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Modem Futura wherever you get your podcasts, and explore more at futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu.

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🎧 Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3JT2Tms

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6mkbtUMk9P99BhxRA11aki?si=1d36zowmQb2eo7AFctk1rg

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/df-crZLZJuM

🌐 Website: https://www.modemfutura.com/

Sean Leahy 10/31/25 Sean Leahy 10/31/25

Tech or Treat: Exploring the Haunted Side of Future Tech

Modem Futura’s Halloween special transforms speculative futures into eerie fun. Hosts Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard use AI-generated scenarios to imagine haunted algorithms, sentient mirrors, and neural nightmare modes — revealing how emerging technologies can both thrill and unsettle us. This episode continues the show’s mission to explore how science, technology, and society intersect to shape the future of being human.

This episode grew out of our playful Futures Improv series, where we use AI to generate speculative prompts about the future — but this time, the prompts got a little… haunted. We explore “The Haunted Algorithm,” a defunct social-media AI that resurrects old user posts every October 31 — a digital séance that’s equal parts sentimental and unsettling. Then we look into “The Mirror That Remembers,” a smart-mirror concept that doesn’t just show your reflection, but who you might have been in another timeline. Finally, we enter “Neural Nightmare Mode,” imagining what could go wrong when brain-computer interfaces merge immersive gaming with fear response.

Each vignette uses humor and imagination to surface deeper questions: What does it mean when our digital selves outlive us? How do we ensure psychological safety in immersive tech? And at what point does innovation slip from magical to menacing?

Our goal isn’t to predict the future — it’s to provoke curiosity about how technology is reshaping what it means to be human. And if we can have some fun (and a few chills) along the way, even better.

You can stream the Halloween special wherever you get your podcasts or watch the illustrated episode on YouTube. If any of these scenarios inspire your own “Tech or Treat” ideas, share them with us — we’d love to feature the best ones in a future episode.

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🎧 Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/4oovNKa

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/47nWrjvBW3ASjMuJUip8o1?si=96d8062d029a4834

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZmZ46sHgMZY

🌐 Website: https://www.modemfutura.com/

Sean Leahy 10/14/25 Sean Leahy 10/14/25

We Turned One - plus Liquid Media, Work Slop, and the Road Ahead – Episode 53

Year One, Human First: How We’re Building a Relational Future Podcast

Fifty‑two straight weeks, many guests, and countless “aha” moments later, Modem Futura just turned one. Instead of a victory lap, we used this episode to do what we always do: invite you into the studio while we make sense of the future—together.

From day one we set out to be relational rather than transactional. That means no polished lectures and no sugar‑coated takes. It means showing our work, making space for genuine curiosity, and trusting that a community grows when people feel like they’ve pulled up a chair at the table. Over the past year, that approach has taken us everywhere—from AI and AGI to bio‑hybrid robots, simulation hypotheses, autonomous mobility (including a Waymo ride‑along), space futures, and media theory, just to scratch the top of the list. Listeners have told us they’re using episodes to kick off team discussions, and yes, we’re even astronaut approved! (Thanks Cady). That’s rocket fuel!

This anniversary episode isn’t just about reflections we also look ahead. We probe “liquid media”—from tools like NotebookLM to Huxe’s 24/7 AI‑generated radio—and ask where convenience ends and exhaustion begins. We talk about “work slop,” the plausible‑sounding but soulless output AI can slip into workflows, and the hidden cognitive tax leaders pay to verify it. And to keep futures thinking playful, we run a “Futures Improv” lightning round: AI pets smarter than real ones? Brain‑to‑brain headbands at work? Meditation‑mandated robotaxis? Jurassic Park on the Moon? The point isn’t to predict perfectly—it’s to stretch how we think so we can exercise our radical creativity. (Maybe this should become a reoccurring segment? - I’ll need to craft up a quick theme song I think… )

What’s on the calendar for next year? Expect deeper dives into human‑centered AI, experiments with spatial and wearable interfaces (Vision Pro, Meta’s glasses), and conversations that foreground care—for people, institutions, and futures worth having. And as Andrew’s new book AI and the Art of Being Human lands, we’ll keep exploring how technology can amplify, not erode, what makes us…us.

Join us:

Listen to the anniversary episode and subscribe on your favorite app
Comment with one idea we should explore next—or what we should put in the “empty chair” on non‑guest weeks
If the show sparked a conversation where you work, tell us how. We’ll highlight examples in a future episode.

If you believe better futures are built through candid, caring conversation, you’re in the right place.

Subscribe and Connect!

Subscribe to Modem Futura on a favorite podcast platform, follow on LinkedIn, and join the conversation by sharing thoughts and questions. The medium may still be the massage, but everyone has a chance to shape how it kneads modern culture—and to decide what kind of global village we ultimately build.

🎧 Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/48oB1QS

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1H29Q1LnP8oL7LER1gS6wa?si=5j97IKzGSjGJFlZSQMS-hg

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/FX0DmYgIe0w

🌐 Website: https://www.modemfutura.com/