Dreams Of Future Past

Leonardo da Vinci — The Original Futurist

Was Leonardo da Vinci a Renaissance artistor the first true futurist? Living in a world without engines, electricity, or modern materials, Leonardo imagined flying machines, armored vehicles, and robotics centuries before they were possible. As the ultimate polymath, he blurred the line between art and engineering, using observation of nature to design human-centered machines and systems. While he correctly anticipated principles of flight, anatomy, and complex infrastructure, his ideas were limited by the lack of power sources, materials, and manufacturing and his ideas remained only in his notebooks. Yet his legacy endures as the blueprint for curiosity-driven innovation, proving that imagination often arrives long before technology catches up. Please join Greg, Ian, and McKay as we as we explore one of the most inventive and brilliant minds in history, a man who ignored the boundaries between art, science, architecture, and engineering and was sketching the future long before it arrived.

Ralph McQuarrie: Painting the Long, Long Time Ago Future We All Remember

Ralph McQuarrie didn’t just imagine the future, he grounded it in dirt, wear, and function, making it believable in a totally new way. In the 1970s, as audiences moved past campy or sterile sci-fi, McQuarrie partnered with George Lucas to create a visual language for Star Wars that felt worn, lived-in, and emotionally real. His designs, X-wings patched together, Darth Vader’s industrial menace, and the Death Star’s authoritarian scale, grounded fantasy in function and history. McQuarrie’s art convinced studios to fund an entire universe, proving that artists don’t just illustrate the future, they can truly bring it to life. Join McKay, Ian, and Greg as we explore the life and work of the visual futurist who created a universe that is still expanding today.

The Thunderbirds, Saving the Future One Disaster at a Time

Before superheroes ruled the screen, there were the Thunderbirds. Debuting in the mid-1960s, Thunderbirds imagined a future where technology wasn’t built for war or profit, but for rescue. With impossibly advanced machines, calm professionalism, and a belief that humanity’s biggest problems could be solved through preparation and cooperation, the show offered a surprisingly optimistic vision of the future at the height of Cold War anxiety. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/thunderbirds/s01 [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/thunderbirds/s01] Please join Greg, Ian, and McKay as we as we explore a future where saving the day is just another scheduled launch. 5-4-3-2-1, Thunderbirds are Go!

Star Trek (The Original Series) and Gene Roddenberry’s Blueprint for a Better Humanity

What if the future wasn’t about conquering the galaxy, but about exploring it for the betterment of all? When Star Trek premiered in 1966, Gene Roddenberry offered something radical: a future that was hopeful, orderly, and worth striving for. In a genre dominated by fear, invasion, and conquest, Star Trek imagined humanity surviving its worst instincts and choosing cooperation, ethics, and exploration instead. Roddenberry wasn’t just building a sci-fi show, he was outlining a vision of social evolution. Please join Greg, Ian, and McKay as we explore whether Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future was naïve idealism or a roadmap for the future of humanity.

De-Evolution: When Progress Goes Backward

“We dreamed of flying cars and moon colonies. Instead, we got influencers and two-factor authentication.” What if progress didn’t stall, but reversed? This episode explores de-evolution, the idea that societies can regress intellectually, morally, or culturally even as technology advances. De-evolution isn’t about going backward in time; it’s about losing the drive to move forward at all. The modern belief in inevitable progress is surprisingly recent. History and science fiction suggest something less comforting: progress is cyclical, fragile, and reversible, especially when technology outpaces wisdom.