Should This Exist?
31 episodes - English - Latest episode: 9 days ago - ★★★★ - 780 ratingsIt's the question of our times: How is technology impacting our humanity? "Should This Exist?" invites the creators of radical new technologies to set aside their business plan, and think through the human side: What is the invention’s greatest promise? And what could possibly go wrong? Show host Caterina Fake (Partner, Yes VC; Cofounder Flickr) is a celebrated tech pioneer and one of Silicon Valley’s most eloquent commentators on technology and the human condition. Joined by a roster of all-star expert guests who have a knack for looking around corners, Caterina drops listeners into the minds of today’s ingenious entrepreneurs and guides them through the journey of foreseeing what their technology might do to us, and for us. Should This Exist? is a WaitWhat original series in partnership with Quartz.
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Episodes
Introducing: Offsite Adventures
April 17, 2024 09:00 - 20 minutes - 18.8 MBFrom the team behind Should This Exist?, we're happy to share the first episode of Offsite Adventures, our newest show uncovering the gems, magical moments, and unique learnings in iconic business travel destinations. Three minutes before midnight in Times Square, one of the most trafficked commercial centers in the world momentarily transforms into a vibrant digital art installation, providing a refreshing pause for locals and tourists alike. It’s called the Midnight Moment, and y...
Introducing: Ingenious with Caterina Fake
September 26, 2023 09:00 - 2 minutes - 2.29 MBRenowned creator, entrepreneur and pioneer Caterina Fake brings together some of the most brilliant and visionary figures of our time, many of them friends and colleagues, for deep discussions about inspiration, humanity, technology, and the future of the world. With Ingenious, she explores the sources of inspiration and the hopes fueling luminaries working on the cutting edge of creativity, art, entrepreneurship, and technology. Shaping the outcome of global conflicts, climate chan...
Introducing Spark & Fire Season 2
November 21, 2022 10:00 - 2 minutes - 2.6 MBIf you love Should This Exist?, we have exciting news to share: From the same company behind our show, the podcast Spark + Fire is back for Season 2! Spark + Fire explores what really happens on the road to creative success. In their own words, creative icons share the moments of inspiration and setback, the collaborations and the pivots, the breakthroughs and the dead ends along the hero's journey to bring something new into the world. Regardless of your own field, there are endles...
Can we trip our way to better mental health?
December 23, 2020 10:00 - 32 minutes - 29.9 MBYou’d be forgiven for being surprised if your doctor wrote you a prescription for ecstasy, ayahuasca, magic mushrooms, or LSD. But a recent resurgence in psychedelic research shows that a number of mental health conditions can be treated directly and effectively with potent psychoactive drugs. Dr. Dave Nichols has been studying the chemistry of these drugs for over 40 years, and he’s convinced of their therapeutic potential — and aware of the dangers of abuse. After a long psychedel...
Recommended: Spark & Fire
December 21, 2020 10:00 - 4 minutes - 3.83 MBIf you love Should This Exist, I think you’ll love Spark & Fire – so I’m sharing a trailer with you now for this new show that launches on January 5, 2021. Why do I think you’ll like it? Because, a lot like our show, Spark & Fire is about the hero’s journey of bold, creative thinking. On each episode of Spark & Fire, an iconic creator — designers, architects, authors, filmmakers, musicians — tells their own story about what really happens on the road to success, from the initial...
Nuclear power in a six-pack
December 16, 2020 10:00 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MBWhen you think of nuclear power, what do you envision? For many people, the answer is Chernobyl or Fukushima: massive meltdowns that turned vast areas into radioactive wastelands. But those were meltdowns — and without meltdowns, nuclear power could be a valuable source of clean energy. Dr. Jose Reyes, the co-founder of NuScale, has designed a small, modular reactor that, he claims, cannot melt down. A six-pack of these reactors could power a good-size city, and though that power co...
Nuclear Power in a Six-pack
December 16, 2020 10:00 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MBWhen you think of nuclear power, what do you envision? For many people, the answer is Chernobyl or Fukushima: massive meltdowns that turned vast areas into radioactive wastelands. But those were meltdowns — and without meltdowns, nuclear power could be a valuable source of clean energy. Dr. Jose Reyes, the co-founder of NuScale, has designed a small, modular reactor that, he claims, cannot melt down. A six-pack of these reactors could power a good-size city, and though that power co...
Cloud brightening for climate fever
December 09, 2020 10:00 - 34 minutes - 31.2 MBKelly Wanser is a climate activist who wants to use a strategy called cloud brightening to fight climate change, using a naturally occurring process to bounce rays from the sun back out to space. She and others have described it compellingly as “emergency medicine for the earth’s climate fever,” and suggest it could buy us more time to implement policies addressing the root causes of climate change. But climate change is a planetary problem – so who gets to decide what countries or ...
The promise of bioartificial organs
December 02, 2020 10:00 - 34 minutes - 31.2 MBUCSF bioengineer Shuvo Roy and his team have created the world’s first bionic kidney. The coffee-cup-sized device includes a silicon nanotechnology filter to cleanse the blood, while living kidney cells grown in a bioreactor perform the other functions of a natural kidney. A bioartificial kidney could save kidney patients from being stuck on a dialysis machine for life – or dying while waiting for a rare transplant. But is the promise of such a life-changing device enough to convinc...
The promise of a bioartificial kidney
December 02, 2020 10:00 - 34 minutes - 31.2 MBUCSF bioengineer Shuvo Roy and his team have created the world’s first bionic kidney. The coffee-cup-sized device includes a silicon nanotechnology filter to cleanse the blood, while living kidney cells grown in a bioreactor perform the other functions of a natural kidney. A bioartificial kidney could save kidney patients from being stuck on a dialysis machine for life – or dying while waiting for a rare transplant. But is the promise of such a life-changing device enough to convinc...
A world without our devices
November 25, 2020 03:00 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MBCould you, would you, go one full hour without your phone? The average American spends one-third of their waking hours on a smartphone; we’ve been told our devices make life better, faster, and easier. What happens when we choose to live without them – or when we are forced to? In this episode, we’ll talk to media studies professor Douglas Rushkoff, get the down low from a U.S. senator who sat in a “digitally sequestered” hearing for three weeks (guess which one) – and travel to the...
Could this game replace the SAT?
November 18, 2020 10:00 - 32 minutes - 29.9 MBStandard college admissions tests are: a. based on an outdated model of intelligence; b. exclusionary; c. a lucrative business and a near-monopoly; d. all of the above. 28-year-old Harvard dropout Rebecca Kantar is disrupting the paradigm of pencil-and-paper tests like the SAT and ACT by designing interactive scenarios that play like video games, and that test for qualities like grit and creativity. But is another test the answer? Given the spotty history of aptitude tests...
VR vs. PTSD
November 11, 2020 10:00 - 36 minutes - 33 MBA VR system called Bravemind allows combat veterans with PTSD to confront and process their trauma in a virtual environment. The therapy, developed by psychologist Skip Rizzo, shows promise for PTSD and potential for other issues like phobias and addiction – and it may have applications to help healing more broadly. But does the potential for harm from virtual self-medication outweigh the good it can do in a clinical setting? And given what we know about how VR affects the brain – i...
Young blood / old brains
October 28, 2020 09:00 - 30 minutes - 27.8 MBWhat if you could extend your healthy life by 10 or 20 years – with a blood transfusion from someone younger and healthier than you? Research by Stanford professor Tony Wyss-Coray shows potential to treat Alzheimer’s and prevent age-related cognitive decline: He’s discovered that proteins found in the blood of young mice can dramatically reverse the effects of aging when transfused into older mice. Doing the same thing in humans could increase our quality of life as we age, and our ...
Can we reverse aging, or Alzheimer’s, with transfusions?
October 28, 2020 09:00 - 30 minutes - 27.8 MBThe research done at Stanford by professor Tony Wyss-Coray has the potential to treat Alzheimer’s and prevent age-related cognitive decline. He’s discovered that proteins found in the blood of young mice can dramatically reverse the effects of aging when transfused into older mice. Doing the same thing in humans could increase not only our quality of life as we age, but life expectancy as well. We’re years away from seeing any clinical applications of this research, which gives us t...
Grandma, here’s your robot
October 21, 2020 08:00 - 33 minutes - 30.7 MBIs it the loneliest idea you’ve ever heard? Or an ingenious hack that helps human caregivers be more attentive and empathetic? You might have these questions when you meet the robot caregivers who roam the halls at retirement homes, doing basic tasks for residents and keeping them connected. Is elder care something we want a robot to do? Roboticist Conor McGinn from Trinity College Dublin actually moved into a retirement home in Washington, DC, to gain a deeper understanding of what...
Contact tracing: So promising. So invasive.
October 15, 2020 09:00 - 36 minutes - 33 MBIt’s one of the best weapons we have to contain a pandemic. But can it defeat the disease without spying on people who might carry it? MIT’s Kevin Esvelt has a bold idea: Let’s try a new form of contact tracing that could more than double the program’s impact. Bi-directional tracing looks both forward and backward from a known transmission, building a chart of the “undiscovered branches of the viral family tree,” and identifying potential spreaders other systems can’t see. But how m...
The deepfake detective
October 14, 2020 09:00 - 35 minutes - 32.4 MBChances are, you’ve seen a “deepfake” video. But did you know it? A new breed of tech detectives are building tools to spot these hyper-realistic videos – built with AI – where people say things they didn’t say or do things they’d never do. Some of these clips are just good, fanciful fun. But a deepfake deployed at the right moment could sway an election, or wreck a life. That’s why UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid is working on a “deepfake detective" – a tool to help media outlets ...
Season 2 Trailer: Should This Exist?
September 29, 2020 02:00 - 1 minute - 1.76 MBHow is technology impacting our humanity? It’s the question of our times. Join host Caterina Fake for Season 2 of Should This Exist – where each week we take a single technology and ask: What’s its greatest potential? And what could possibly go wrong? With fascinating guests telling great stories, we’ll talk about some astounding technologies. Robots who could become our caregivers in old age. Video games that aim to replace the SAT. And virtual reality that could heal our trauma ...
Introducing Meditative Story
July 30, 2019 02:00 - 4 minutes - 4.24 MBThis short trailer offers a taste of a new podcast from the team that created Should This Exist? And just like STE, it's unlike anything you've heard before. In each episode of Meditative Story, you'll hear a storyteller who will transport you to a time and place where everything changed for them, telling a story you might find yourself relating to deeply. As the story unfolds, mindfulness guide Rohan will offer gentle prompts to settle you more deeply into the story, and calm your ...
What went wrong with the world wide web – and how we can fix it
July 16, 2019 02:00 - 27 minutes - 25.1 MBThe web is broken. Data is mined, sold, and exploited. Social media is an endless and biased scroll through the worst of humanity. Nobody’s personal information is safe. And worst of all, it’s inescapable. The web is a cornerstone of our lives. It’s how we work, communicate with each other, and get information. And it wasn’t supposed to be like this. How did a utopian vision of a free, open, and democratic internet turn into nothing more than a machine for marketing and surveillance...
How to hack your way out of aging
June 27, 2019 02:00 - 31 minutes - 29.2 MBImagine meeting your great-great-great-grandkids. Or going to law school in your 80s, learning to snowboard at 110, taking a gap decade instead of a gap year. Greg Bailey dreams of a world where everybody lives twice as long, and no one gets sick. His startup, Juvenescence, is developing a whole ecosystem of anti-aging medications to help you live longer, healthier. Which sounds great. But would this world of perky centenarians wreak havoc on our already strained resources? Would na...
The next gen of meat will be grown in a lab
May 30, 2019 02:00 - 35 minutes - 32.2 MBImagine biting into a steak that didn’t come from a cow. Or a chicken breast that did not come from a chicken. Imagine if your favorite meat dish did not involve an animal getting killed. This is Isha Datar’s dream. She is a scientist on a mission to not only reinvent meat but the entire meat industry. If Isha's dream comes true, we'll live in a post-animal bioeconomy where animal products – from meat to leather and wool – are harvested from cell cultures, not animals. And we're abl...
What if you could Photoshop your voice?
May 21, 2019 02:44 - 37 minutes - 34.7 MBMike Pappas and Carter Huffman believe their invention fulfills the promise of the digital world: the complete freedom to design your identity. But what if we all used it? The human voice is a key marker of authenticity and individuality, and Modulate uses A.I to transform your voice into anything you want it to be. In real time. If you’re a woman and want to sound like a man, Modulate can help you. If you’re a teen and want to sound like a grandparent, Modulate can do that. If you’...
We can change the DNA of an entire species — in the wild
May 02, 2019 02:18 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MBKevin Esvelt knows the stakes are high. As a geneticist at the MIT Media Lab, Kevin discovered a technique called a gene drive, which gives humans a power we’ve never had before: to change the DNA of entire species in nature. This capacity is so new and so unprecedented that when Kevin made the discovery six years ago, it was “literally unimagined by any human being at that time — not in science fiction, not in any form of literature, not in any scientific journals.” Used successful...
When your invention becomes a weapon
April 11, 2019 02:14 - 32 minutes - 30.1 MBWhat do you do if your invention becomes a weapon? This happened to Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired Magazine, who launched DIY Drones, an open source community that helps anyone build their own flying machines. Chris and his community evolved drones from a military tool to an everyday gadget. Now, drones are used by conservationists to monitor bird's nests, contractors to insure safety standards at building sites, and filmmakers to capture sweeping vistas, among other things....
The return of supersonic flight
March 28, 2019 02:00 - 33 minutes - 30.7 MBThroughout human history, we’ve wanted to fly – and to fly fast. So it’s hard to resist Blake Scholl’s idea. His startup, Boom, is building a new supersonic jet, which will fly at twice the speed of sound. If he succeeds, it could be the biggest disruption to air travel since the Jet Age of the 1960s. But progress always has a price. There’s the sonic boom, yes. But also — what happens when the world’s wealthiest can descend en masse on places that used to be hard to reach? And what...
What if your phone could detect how you feel?
March 14, 2019 02:00 - 42 minutes - 39 MBWhat if your computer had an "emotion chip" — AI that could read the expression on your face (or the tone in your voice) and know how you’re feeling? Could online courses teach you better if they knew when you were bored or confused? Could your car help you stay awake if you drift off when driving? These are the questions Rana El-Kaliouby asked when she built an AI tool that examines every micro-muscle in the human face to detect universal emotions — happiness, fear, grief, disgust....
Tell your troubles to the chatbot
February 27, 2019 03:00 - 35 minutes - 32.9 MBWoebot is a mobile app that gives one-on-one therapy and gets 2 million messages a week. But Woebot isn't a person – it's a chatbot. It was invented and developed by psychologist Alison Darcy and it uses AI to guide users through a session, anytime, anywhere. Darcy hopes that Woebot will help break down the stigma of therapy and help provide services to communities with a lack of mental health resources. But what happens when we remove the human therapist from therapy? Host Caterina...
This headset helps you learn faster. But is that fair?
February 21, 2019 03:00 - 33 minutes - 30.8 MBNeuroscientist Daniel Chao created a headset that hacks your brain with electricity so you can learn as fast as a kid again. It’s called Halo, and it helps you learn motor skills faster. Athletes use it; musicians too. But we’re not far from a future when Halo could help anyone master anything. Where will that take us? Host Caterina Fake leads the journey, joined by Comedian Baratunde Thurston and Quartz Editor in Chief Kevin Delaney, who help Daniel future-cast, and see his inventi...
Launching Feb. 21: Should This Exist?
January 21, 2019 23:08 - 1 minute - 1.75 MBIn the trailer for Should This Exist?, you’ll get a sneak peek (err, listen!) into the first episodes: a wearable that hacks your brain with electric fields so you can learn like a kid again; an AI-driven tool that translates between human and animal languages; a fully automated chatbot that offers one-on-one therapy; and more. Premiering February 21, 2019.