Future Perfect
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Top 10 Future Perfect Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Future Perfect episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Future Perfect for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Future Perfect episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
What MLK and Malcolm X would do today
Future Perfect
08/19/20 • 74 min
Co-host Sean Illing talks to Peniel Joseph, a University of Texas at Austin historian of Black Power movements
Relevant resources:
The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. by Peniel Joseph
Featuring:
Peniel Joseph, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin
Host:
Sean Illing (@seanilling), interviews writer, Vox
More to explore:
Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.
Credits:
Producer/Editor: Jackson Bierfeldt
Editor: Elbert Ventura
Executive Producer: Liz Nelson
About Vox:
Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines.
Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts. Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 Listener
What the housing crisis means for the climate
Future Perfect
09/07/20 • 58 min
Dylan Matthews sits down with housing policy experts and advocates Leonora Camner and Annie Fryman to discuss California’s housing crisis, climate catastrophe, and how more sustainable land use policy could help both.
Featuring:
Leonora Camner (@CamnerLeonora), executive director, Abundant Housing LA
Annie Fryman (@anniefryman), housing policy lead for California State Senator Scott Wiener
Host:
Dylan Matthews, senior correspondent, Vox
More to explore:
Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.
Credits:
Producer/Editor: Jackson Bierfeldt
Executive Producer: Liz Nelson
About Vox:
Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines.
Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts. Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 Listener
How to prevent a factory farmed pandemic
Future Perfect
10/21/20 • 24 min
What if the next pandemic comes, not from wet markets overseas, but from our own factory farms? Martha Nelson, who studies viruses at the NIH, says we are playing Russian roulette with potentially dangerous influenza strains on our pig farms.
In this episode, we explain what makes these giant farms so likely to breed the next pandemic virus — and spread that virus into the world. And then, we look at solutions — from creating a virus-resistant pig, to developing a universal vaccine, to changing the systems we have for raising meat itself.
Further listening and reading:
- Sigal Samuel wrote an in-depth explainer on the pandemic risks of factory farms earlier this year. She’s also written about “wet markets.”
- The Vox video team also made an explainer video on the same subject.
- For more on how viruses can spread in the pig population, Martha Nelson has an excellent paper “When Pigs Fly.”
- The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations wrote a 2013 report on the health risks of factory farming.
- Sonia Shah’s book Pandemic is a great primer on how pandemic strains arise.
We always want to hear from you! Please send comments and questions to [email protected].
Subscribe to Future Perfect on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week.
This podcast is made possible thanks to support from Animal Charity Evaluators. They research and promote the most effective ways to help animals.
Featuring:
Byrd Pinkerton (@byrdala), podcast producer, Vox
Martha Nelson (@swientist), epidemiologist, National Institutes of Health
Juergen Richt (@juergenricht), professor of veterinary medicine, Kansas State University
Host:
Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel), staff writer, Vox
More to explore:
Follow all of Future Perfect’s reporting on the Future of Meat.
Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.
Follow Us:
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 Listener
How to save a stranger's life
Future Perfect
10/15/18 • 23 min
In 2016, Dylan Matthews donated his kidney to a complete stranger. He didn’t think he was doing anything really extreme or remarkable. He was just trying to do the most good he could. Dylan was taking part in a movement called effective altruism, a community that tries to maximize the good you do. In our first episode, we’ll explore the idea of effective altruism, why making our charities more effective matters, and what giving a bodily organ looks like in practice. ––– Further reading: More on Dylan’s kidney donation Peter Singer’s case against the Make a Wish Foundation More of Vox’s effective altruism coverage ––– Discover more podcasts from Vox here.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 Listener
How to make prisons more humane
Future Perfect
10/17/18 • 26 min
Karianne Jackson was working for the North Dakota prison system in 2015 when a trip to Norway changed her life. There, she saw a prison with no bars and no uniformed guards. Instead, prisoners lived in small cottages with common areas, private bedrooms, even kitchens with real cups, real dishes, and real knives. And she started thinking: What if I could make the US prison system a bit more like that? ––– Further reading: Jessica Benko in the New York Times on the "radical humaneness" of Norway's Halden Prison Dashka Slater in Mother Jones on Karianne Jackson's "Norway experiment" in North Dakota Vox’s German Lopez explains mass incarceration in the United States More of Vox’s effective altruism coverage ––– Discover more podcasts from Vox here.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 Listener
Can we raise better beef?
Future Perfect
10/28/20 • 24 min
Beef cattle take a huge toll on the environment. In Brazil, a huge chunk of greenhouse gas emissions comes from ranching alone. And a California-sized chunk of the Amazon rainforest has been cut down to provide land for these cattle to graze on.
But one man, living on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, has a potential solution. In a series of small pilot projects run in his own small town, he’s demonstrated that he can work with ranchers to make their land healthier and more sustainable, so they don’t have to slash and burn more forest. He’s also shown that, by making the land greener and the cows healthier, he can dramatically reduce emissions from ranching.
Further listening and reading:
- Christina Selby’s story about Vando Telles’s company can be found at Scientific American.
- Vox video has an in-depth explainer on deforestation in the Amazon and on the invasion of indigenous land in Brazil.
- Vox video also has an explainer on why eating beef speeds up climate change.
- Vox’s Umair Irfan traveled to Brazil last year to report on deforestation and climate change.
We always want to hear from you! Please send comments and questions to [email protected].
Subscribe to Future Perfect on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week.
This podcast is made possible thanks to support from Animal Charity Evaluators. They research and promote the most effective ways to help animals.
Featuring:
Christina Selby (@Christina Selby), freelance science reporter
Host:
Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel), staff writer, Vox
More to explore:
Follow all of Future Perfect’s reporting on the Future of Meat.
Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.
Follow Us:
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1 Listener
04/21/21 • 62 min
Climate scientist Kimberly Nicholas co-led a study that showed the single most effective thing an individual can do to decrease their carbon footprint is have fewer kids. Despite that finding, she still says that people who really want to have kids should go ahead with their plans. She explains how she squares that circle to Vox’s Sigal Samuel, and the two discuss how to think about the decision to have kids or not and how to make meaning in a warming world.
Read more of Sigal’s climate reporting:
- Having fewer kids will not save the planet
- Where to donate to improve climate policy
- It’s not just Big Oil. It’s Big Meat too.
More information about Dr. Kimberly Nicholas
- Find her new book here
- Read more of her writing on her website
- The podcast she recommended called So Over Population
Host:
Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel), staff writer, Vox
Producer:
Sofi LaLonde (@sofilalonde)
More to explore:
Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.
We always want to hear from you! Please send comments and questions to [email protected].
Subscribe to Future Perfect on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week.
Follow Us:
Support Future Perfect by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Season 2: Philanthropy vs. Democracy
Future Perfect
05/16/19 • 1 min
On the second season of Future Perfect: how philanthropy clashes with democracy. First episode drops Wednesday, May 22nd.
Subscribe on your favorite podcast app!
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Rethinking meat
Future Perfect
11/04/20 • 21 min
How can we convince people to change their relationship with meat?
Melanie Joy has been grappling with this question for a long time. To answer it, she takes us back to other points in history when new technology helped make social change palatable. She digs into how the invention of the washing machine and other household appliances, for example, helped make feminism easier to imagine.
Then, she looks to the future, at our latest meat technologies — plant-based meat and lab grown meat — and asks: Could they make it easier for us to move away from meat altogether?
Further listening and reading:
- Joy’s books, Powerarchy: Understanding the Psychology of Oppression for Social Transformation and Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows.
- Vox’s Ezra Klein interviewed Joy for an episode of The Ezra Klein Show in 2018. Hear that interview and read her book recommendations here.
We always want to hear from you! Please send comments and questions to [email protected].
Subscribe to Future Perfect on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week.
This podcast is made possible thanks to support from Animal Charity Evaluators. They research and promote the most effective ways to help animals.
Featuring:
Melanie Joy (@DrMelanieJoy)
Host:
Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel), staff writer, Vox
More to explore:
Follow all of Future Perfect’s reporting on the Future of Meat.
Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.
Follow Us:
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sucking the carbon out of the sky
Future Perfect
04/28/21 • 43 min
Most of our efforts to fight climate change, from electric cars to wind turbines, are about pumping fewer greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But what if we could pull out the gases that are already there? Akshat Rathi, a reporter at Bloomberg with a doctorate in chemistry, knows more about this technology, called “direct air capture,” than just about anyone. He follows companies like Carbon Engineering and Climeworks that are trying to figure out how to take regular air and pull carbon dioxide out of it.
If their plans work, they could mean a world with net negative emissions: less carbon in the sky than there is right now, and a cooler planet. But his reporting has also highlighted how elusive carbon capture can be, and how tricky it can be to make the tech work at an affordable price. Rathi and Vox’s Dylan Matthews discuss how direct air capture works, how it’s different from capturing carbon at a fossil fuel plant, and the struggles of one direct air capture company in particular.
Read more of Akshat’s work here:
- Inside America's Race to Scale Direct-Air Capture Technology - Bloomberg
- Crushed Rock Could Capture Billions of Tons of Carbon Dioxide - Bloomberg
- Britain Is Getting Ready to Scale Up Negative-Emissions Technology - Bloomberg
- Planting Trees Isn’t a Simple Climate Change Solution It Seems - Bloomberg
- The story behind the world’s first large direct air capture plant — Quartz (qz.com)
- The ultimate guide to negative-emissions technologies — Quartz (qz.com)
Host:
Dylan Matthews (@DylanMatt), senior correspondent, Vox
Producer:
Sofi LaLonde (@sofilalonde)
More to explore:
Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.
We always want to hear from you! Please send comments and questions to [email protected].
Subscribe to Future Perfect on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week.
Follow Us:
Support Future Perfect by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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FAQ
How many episodes does Future Perfect have?
Future Perfect currently has 42 episodes available.
What topics does Future Perfect cover?
The podcast is about News, Society & Culture, Podcasts, Philosophy and Politics.
What is the most popular episode on Future Perfect?
The episode title 'How to prevent a factory farmed pandemic' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Future Perfect?
The average episode length on Future Perfect is 34 minutes.
How often are episodes of Future Perfect released?
Episodes of Future Perfect are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of Future Perfect?
The first episode of Future Perfect was released on Oct 12, 2018.
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