Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Welcome to the Think Forward podcast where we have conversations with futurists, innovators and big thinkers about what lies ahead. We explore emerging trends on the horizon and what it means to be a futurist.
Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Think Forward EP 140: Afro Rhythms, Storytelling and Breaking Through with Ahmed Best
What if the people best equipped to shape tomorrow aren’t engineers first—but emotional athletes? Our guest, Ahmed Best—actor, educator, Afrofuturist, and the pioneering performer behind Jar Jar Binks—shows how art can lead technology, not chase it. From South Bronx summers where hip‑hop was born to conversations with George Lucas at Lucasfilm, Ahmed traces a life lived at the edge of invention and explains why trusting artists to drive the tools changed cinema—and could change the future.
We dive into dramatic narrative design, the class he created to teach future‑fluent storytelling that centers collaboration over hierarchy. Ahmed breaks down how performance capture emerged by following the actor, how the “used future” aesthetic reframed sci‑fi, and why the fundamentals of drama never age even as mediums flip from film stock to digital sensors and now to AI. He sees today’s AI as a creative accelerator that removes costly bottlenecks so humans can spend more time on what matters: feeling, choosing, and crafting meaning.
Then we open up Afrofuturism through Afrohythms, the worldbuilding game he co‑created with Dr. Lonny Brooks. Using tension cards—“Black superheroes,” “James Baldwin,” and more—players define shared values, build planets, and practice radical imagination without the fear that keeps teams stuck. Ahmed challenges the industry’s obsession with “safe futures,” argues for protopia—incremental betterment we can actually feel—and points us toward the coming “bionexus,” where synthetic biology reshapes identity and possibility.
If you care about culture, technology, and where they meet, this conversation is a map and a spark. Subscribe to Think Forward, share this episode with a friend who loves bold ideas, and leave a review to tell us the protopian story you want to help build.
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Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
Coming up on today's show.
SPEAKER_03:With my with my acting students of dramatic arts, when I'm teaching them filmmaking, I am constantly pushing them towards the future because that's where the future of acting is going to be. There's going to be more of a benefit for actors as like these hybrid technologists and hybrid futurists than there are as like what it used to be, which was like, let's wait by the phone and have somebody call us and then do a part. Like that's not going to be the case very, very soon, right? And it's kind of starting now. What are the foundational building blocks of designing a dramatic narrative? Because that you can take into the future. The building blocks for drama in order to affect human beings has not changed. What has changed was how we consume that drama.
SPEAKER_01:Hey everyone. Welcome back to Think Forward. I've got something really special for you today. You know, one of the things I love most about the futures community is how we all come to this work from different paths. Some of us are strategists, some of us are technologists, and some are designers. But every once in a while, you meet someone whose journey is so unique, so groundbreaking, that it completely shifts how you think about the future. My guest today is Ahmed Bastard. Now, you might know Ahmed as the pioneering performer behind Charger Banks in Star Wars. And yes, we definitely talk about that groundbreaking work in performance capture technology. What you might not know is Ahmed is also a brilliant futurist. An Afrofuturist. He's an educator at the USC Film School and a co-creator of an incredible game called Afro-Rhythms. Ahmed and I met many years ago, and we have a strong friendship as fellow futurists. What strikes me about his work is how he brings this incredible combination of performance, technology, and cultural innovation to futures thinking. He's not just imagining the future, he's literally performing it into existence. In our conversation, we dive deep into how artists approach technology different than Silicon Valley. Why emotional intelligence is crucial for futures work, and how his experience growing up in the Bronx during the birth of hip-hop shaped his vision of what's possible. This is a conversation about creativity. It's about breaking boundaries and about why the future needs more play and fewer safe futures. Welcome to Alpha Rhythms, Storytelling, and Breaking Through with Ahmed Best. Alright. Ahmed. Welcome to the show. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you for having me. It's about time. It's about time. We've been circling for a long time trying to get some time on the books, but Yeah, man.
SPEAKER_01:It's so good to have you. You know, you've had this amazing journey, you know, through performance, filmmaking, futures thinking. Let's let's talk about, you know, kind of your path because you've had some real groundbreaking things in your life that you've experienced, like, but you've come into futures being a futurist, as everyone does, kind of accidentally. So what's your what's your journey? What's been your background?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you know, the more I reflect on it, the more I realize that I was kind of always destined to be in this world. Growing up where I grew up, um, you know, I grew up in the South Bronx in New York City in the 70s, 80s. Um I was huge into comic books, and I was huge into computers, right? So the Commodore Pet was the first computer that I played with in a science class. My science teacher, Mr. Goldberg, brought in this computer that none of us inner city kids ever saw before, and he blew our mind. And I wrote a program, my very first program was in Basic, the language basic. Yes, 10, 10, start, 20, go to 10. Go to 10. Totally. Yeah. That was it. And I wrote like a simple string program that was just like my name across the screen infinitely. And I was hooked. You know, I was really hooked into what technologically the future could be. But even before that, you know, I was just a huge science fiction fan. My mother was a huge Star Trek fan. So I would watch Star Trek all the time, like the OG series. Yeah. It was Star Trek comic books and hip hop. So growing up in the South Bronx, hip hop music started on my blog. At the time, we didn't realize that this was going to be a phenomenon that was going to change the world. Right. We just liked the music. And, you know, being a little kid across the street from my building was this empty lot where, you know, was my elementary school, and then there was this empty lot where we would like play sports and there was like basketball hoops there. But every summer, DJs would set up turntables in that park. And people from all over the neighborhood would come in and it would be parties on that until the break of dawn, right? Literally to the break of dawn. My parents hated it. You know what I'm saying? Like my father was just like, I gotta go to work. But, you know, I would be hanging out at the window watching this, this, this party all night long. So I didn't really know who was there until I got a little bit older. But what I was, what I learned was like all the DJs that started hip-hop music were in that park. Cool Herc, who was pretty much the inventor of hip-hop, Grandmaster Flash, Mellie Mel, the rapper. All of these guys from the South Bronx who invented hip-hop were in that park in the summertime in the South Bronx in New York City. Grandmaster Flash specifically was a big influence in hip-hop music because he created the Crossfader, right? For the DJ Crossfader. He was an electrician. And before Grandmaster Flash, it'd be like five turntables, five amplifiers, right? But Grandmaster Flash created the switch that went from one set to another set. So all now you need is two, and a party can go all night long and no volume now. Keep the volume the same. Right. Did he ever patent that? Did he ever patent that? And it's it's the most heartbreaking story in hip-hop music because he wanted to be a DJ, and making money as a DJ meant spinning records all night long. He didn't realize that this invention that he created was the invention that allowed hip-hop to travel. And he never patented the idea, which is just heartbreaking. Heartbreaking because we owe a lot, like EDM music, we owe techno, we owe you drum and bass, all that, all kind of DJ-driven music we owe to Grandmaster Flash. Right? And then companies, of course, millions off of the mixer, which is now standard for every DJ. Right. But growing up in New York at that time, it was such a pivotal time and such a time of innovation. And I was always like, I loved it. I loved the innovation. I love being on the cutting edge. I love seeing what's next. New York has kind of this reputation about knowing what's coming before it actually happens. And it was, it was kind of Silicon Valley before Silicon Valley because of Bell Labs in the 60s.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. Post-World War II, 50s, 60s, Billy Clouver, Robert Rauschenberg, and they created these happenings all throughout Greenwich Village. Kind of art and science innovation started in New York City and it really permeated through the entire city. My grandmother used to live in Flushing, Queens. And Flushing was the site of the World's Fair. And all of the artifacts from the World's Fair are still there.
SPEAKER_01:This is the Men in Black saucers. Exactly. For those of you seeing, yeah, that's Flushing.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. I grew up with those. So the, you know, the flying saucers for Men in Black and Flushing, Green Master Flash, you know, Star Trek, Science Fiction, all of that stuff made me like really hunger for not only being a part of a future, but helping to craft a future. I didn't know you can do it as a job, right? I didn't know it was a thing that people did. I only thought it was a thing that either people did speculatively in fiction, or it was a thing that, you know, you got around and you talked, right? I didn't realize it was a job until Phantom Menace. Like when I met George Lucas, George Lucas is probably one of the most influential futurists I've ever met and or known. Even though he doesn't necessarily call himself a futurist, but we owe a lot of not only ideas of the future, but inventions of the future to him pushing the envelope of what could be done in his art form. In order for him to make things, he had to invent the things that could make those things possible. And, you know, George and I used to talk a lot during the shooting. And, you know, there were times where I would like drive to work with him. And we would always be talking about 20 years from now, 50 years from now. 100 years from now. Right. So I would like come up with a question and he'd be like, he would answer my question. And he was like, 50 years from now, this is what's gonna be. 100 years from now is what's gonna be. 200 years from now. And like that's how he would always talk. That's how you would always think. And so I kind of got addicted to that thinking and being a part of the team with George Lucasfilm and ILM, like, ILM, everybody thinks that. You know, Industrial Lights and Magic, they're just like, this is gonna be this now. What is this gonna look like in 50 years?
SPEAKER_01:It's literally magic at the end of the Nord. I mean, it's amazing. What did what did Arthur C. Clarke say? It was like, if you see something for sufficiently farther in the future without the understanding of the technology, it'll look like magic, right? Yes, exactly. And to kind of as you kind of continue this journey, you're right. He is we'll call him one of the stealthy futurists because what he invented, what most people don't consider, especially the kids kids now, he created the he created the concept of the used future. Because everything before that, Logan's Run, uh, any any movie you saw was all this beautiful, like an Apple store. It was like clean lines, not a speck of dirt, right? No imperfections. Whereas you watch a show like Andor now and you just get this grittiness of it, he, his vision created that because those have that universe has been around for so many years. And it's like you're so as you're doing this, I think about you did stuff even before Lord of the Rings. You broke through in terms of performance capture. How has that influenced your kind of the way you look at technologies? How is that because that's an that's an interesting aspect to future's work and the way it's performative. Because a lot of your right is fiction, or a lot of it is interpretation of things, but you're bringing something in a live format of the future, right? How has that impacted you?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So the thing that I really loved about performance capture was the fact that I was the ghost in the machine, right? So when you first do performance capture, and you know, they were writing the performance capture software as I was performing. So I think what a lot of people have to realize and understand what we know as performance capture today didn't exist. That all of what we know as performance capture today was written with me as the physical code. Right? So all of the code that has been written to capture um images and or people, I'm in there. Right. Even though I didn't write the fit uh the the the you know the lines of code. The lines of code were written as an inspiration off of my because for them, this is this is the purest form of iteration, right?
SPEAKER_01:You think about the way software's built, right? You're constantly, I guess it says breaking things because you you're all constantly improving things. I think about Cameron's work on Avatar. Yeah, they invented new technologies for that, and they're building things as they're they're learning from the performances of like, you know, the different actors, and they're they're rechanging because something's not coming out. But it's not so much you and I I asked this question because it's about the emerging technology. I mean, how has that influenced your perspective as a futurist over these last 20 years, though? Because you're living in the emerging technology. You know, it's like you're not like seeing it out there.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Well, it's actually it made me, I'm not really afraid of it, to be honest. Okay. It really made me embrace it a lot more than a lot of people who are skeptical because um I can see the benefit for humanity with it, right? And this is why the arts, I think, is so important to the future conversation, right? I think when artists embrace the future, we are building things for, you know, different reasons than a lot of the Silicon Valley folks are building things, right? We're not building it as a business, right? We're building it as an experience, and then it becomes a business, right? So it's mostly for the feeling of it. And, you know, artists, we are uh a set of people who are constantly talking about our feelings. Like we're professional feeling people. You know, as an actor, I like to call myself an emotional athlete, right? Like my job as an actor is to emote, right? When I'm asked, right? Just like, you know, somebody says to Steph Curry, we need a three, he'll shoot the three. Somebody says to me, I need you to cry on page 10, I'm crying on page 10, right? That's the training, right? That's what we're trained for as emotional athletes. We are trained to use our emotions to convey the truth of the moment, right? So as artists, when we embrace new technology, that ethos is the same, right? George said to Rob Coleman and John Noel at ILM for my performances Jar Jar, he said to them, follow Ahmed. Right? He didn't say look at him and then make some stuff up. He was like, no, put your faith and trust in his artistic ability, right? And that's what made the character come to life. And he was the first person ever to say that, right? Which is how, you know, Peter Jackson could say, thrust Sandy Circus, right? Which is how Cameron can say, thrust Zoe Soldana and Sam Worthington, right? Like he can say that because now we're talking about the art and artists communicating, and that's driving the innovation. That's driving the technology, that's driving the future.
SPEAKER_01:It's interesting that you bring those different actors and those characters because they have you're the per you are doing the performance, right? They have to trust you, right? Yeah. You're in you're in a sense interpreting the future, interpreting what you're taking from that performance. What is interesting to me about all three of those films, all three of those types of motion captures, you, in a sense the breakthrough work that you did, I think is only finally being recognized a generation later for the groundbreaking work that was done. I think you all were so far ahead of your time that people just couldn't even understand it. And I think that now also people that are older, like they they grew up with it, they recognize that. And I think you mentioned Andy, like, you know, he's someone I would love to have a conversation with about when he pulls emotion out of it, you know, how does he find, how does he find the character that's already existing? And I mean, those books have been around for decades, you know, for a long time, right? So there's a lot of way. Like you create, you're creating Jar Jar as something who's original, he's never been seen before, right? Andy's got a different set of standards because he's got people's minds know what they think Gollum is. They they have this mindset, right? He has to one, find the performance that is his at the same time while really being true to the books. And he looks at Peter to do that, right? It's like, how do you find that? That's an interest.
SPEAKER_03:It's an interesting thing. It's really the collaboration, right? It it's a collaboration between the actor, the director, and the actor, the the director, the technology, the technologists, and the animators, right? Really is this like symbiotic collaboration, right? Which is why I don't usually say that. What's Jar Jar? I usually say we were Jar Jar because I love it. Jar Jar doesn't happen without Rob Coleman, John Mill, George Lucas, me. Like there's at least four people capturing the performance, right? And then there's an army of animators and visual effects people, right?
SPEAKER_01:And there's millions of fans who really, really, really want you to be a Sith apprentice. I'm just saying, you know, I saw your little lay. That's hilarious. But but I think that the performance just just just just just Josh. So I think with the performance of that, it kind of brings us to like your work as a futurist and as an educator. You know, you're at the USC film school. So what you know, obviously people are gonna have history, they're gonna know you from the screen, they're gonna, and they're gonna take your class. And now you as a futurist, when you bring that to your class and the and the how to communicate, like how do you teach, how do you bring in futures, how do you teach them, as I like to say, to be futures fluent in the way that they tell stories? Like how do you how do you take, take me, take us through the kind of journey like with students, like the way when you when you teach at USC? Like, what do you bring to that?
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. So I teach a class called dramatic narrative design. And it's a class that I created. Dramatic narrative design is a term that I created because I realized that regardless of what position you play, when you're making a drama, you are a designer. Right. You're either designing the performance as an actor, you're designing the set as a set designer, you're designing the lighting as a either a cinematographer or a stage lighting person. So we're all in this design on this design team together. Right. Um the drama that you're designing has a certain set of parameters. And the reason why I started thinking this way is because when I was in film school, I felt like by the time they got to the actors, it was already too late.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Got it. Nobody was really looking at actors as part of the solution. And I came up in a film world where one of the best directors of all time, his big note to everybody on the team was trust Ahmed's performance. So I had the responsibility to be a part of the team in collaboration. And I wasn't a tool that you put in front of a lens. A lot of film schools, they teach that the actors are kind of just like this tool that you put in front of a lens, and you got to get the best-looking one or the one with the most, you know, Instagram followers, and you'll have a successful film, successful play. That's not the case. It does not work like that. Right.
SPEAKER_01:So you're saying as an instant Instagram influencers, it becomes their resume or their their real, if you will.
SPEAKER_03:Well, yeah, I mean, what happens with the Instagrams are, you know, they're butts and seats, right? And if you're a marketing person, you're gonna go for that, right? Right.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's true. That's true.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You and I have known each other a long time, but I think at the core of you is you're a storyteller, right? You you in different ways that you tell those stories. When you bring in with the students, is there anything else you wanted to kind of, you know, we got is there anything you wanted to kind of add on the the way you teach the classes? Because I'd love to talk about the students and do you bring any gameplay in to it? Always.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Especially like uh when I when I'm talking to my students at Stanford. Is it at the D school or is it? It's so funny. I teach the same thing in both places.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Um but different, they're different students. That's a different population.
SPEAKER_01:Right, different students.
SPEAKER_03:Different population, different students. With with my with my acting students of dramatic arts, when I'm teaching them filmmaking, I am constantly pushing them towards the future because that's where the future of acting is going to be. There's going to be more of a benefit for actors as like these hybrid technologists and hybrid futurists than there are as like what it used to be, which was like, let's wait by phone and have somebody call us and then do a part. Like that's not going to be the case very, very soon, right? And it's kind of starting now. So I am constantly expanding their idea of what, and this is why I call it dramatic narrative design. What are the foundational building blocks of designing a dramatic narrative? Because that you can take into the future. The building blocks for drama in order to affect human beings has not changed. What has changed was how we consume that drama. But the emotions behind the drama are the same. The reasons why we love things has not changed. It's been that way since we were, you know, in the in the tribal square in Africa or cave paintings, right? That's why those things still affect us. When we see a cave painting, we're just like, oh my God, I can't believe that early humans made this, right? And what we're watching is their lives. And we imagine, we feel a way about it. We go, wow, that's that's what their day was like. And it affects us, it touches us emotionally. That's the foundation that I'm building with my students. How to identify how to be emotionally affected, and then turn that into story that can then live in the medium of either today or the future. We have a lot about the medium of the past. Right. We get hyper fixated on the past mediums. Right. Rather than realize that, and this is again, this is George Lucas. Like George Lucas had to say to ILM, no more miniatures, digital now. Right? And they were scared. When did he do that? When did he do that? Was that 99? That was um Attack of the Clones. Attack of the Clones. Attack of the Clones was the first digital major motion picture. And I remember when they wheeled the cameras in and they wheeled the monitors in. And I remember the first A D saying, check the gate. Oh, wait a minute, there is no gate, right? Because there's no film stock. Right. Everything is digital. So I watched everything change in real time, and I watched everybody have a hard time with it. Right.
SPEAKER_01:That's I can imagine the growth. That is a systemic that's systemic.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. But the technology didn't do anything to the storytelling. And I think in general, this is what technology does. We advanced technology to get the creativity out. One of the reasons why I think artificial intelligence and and LLMs are doing so well now is because it takes away part of the production process that was very expensive. Right. And now you have a digital assistant that could help you get the creativity out sooner. More efficiently. And you don't have to deal with the friction and the stress of trying to find the right person, hiring that person, getting the budget for that person, that person not working out, firing that person, fire, finding another person. You know what I'm saying? Like these things take these things take time. So embracing the technologies in order to help you get more creativity out, help you get more stories out, help you feel more drama is how I push my students.
SPEAKER_01:So with students, you know, and just teaching those two schools, you also co-created Afro rhythms. Yeah, with Dr. Lonnie Brooks. Right. So Lonnie, you also, I know you presented this at the Dubai Feature Forum this past year. So if anyone listening had attended that, love to hear from you because I heard it was amazing. Can you explain what that is and the what are the what are the desired outcomes with that game? Like what is it, what is it prompt? What's the what's the structure? What's the construct? What does it prompt? And what are the outcomes?
SPEAKER_03:Yes. So um Afrofuturism usually is centered around art, either art ideas, art works, art narratives, right? So the centering of art being the inspiration for thought processes, technologies, algorithms is kind of the sweet spot of Afro-futurism. We draw a lot from futures thinkings from either indigenous cultures or African cultures, hence the Afro, because Africa is probably some of the oldest civilizations on the planet, right? Absolutely. Because of a lot of erasure, we don't know a lot about the technological advances, advances that happened on the continent. But, you know, during the Islamic Golden Age, all of those things have carried over into today. And we don't really talk about what where those things came from. Like we don't talk about people like Ibn al-Haytham, who was probably the first person to create the scientific method, right? Um, and that contribution has been lost, which slows down our future advancement. If we get rid of all the politics and just focus on how these things shape the future, we would be so far ahead, right? So our Afrofuturism and Afro rhythms come from that ethos. They got, we we're like, let's take away the politics of this, right? Let's take away these supremacist ideas of this. And let's imagine what it would be like if we had all of that information and created a universe and a world around that information that moves forward into the future, right? So that's what Afro Rhythms does. Afro rhythms takes these ideas of what an Afro-futurist inspired universe would look like, right? And we use these cards we call tension cards. And the tension cards are what we may or may not have more or less of in the future, right? But the tension cards are usually subjective, right? So we'll have a tension card that's that would say black superheroes and James Baldwin, right? And although you don't think of those things as future framing universal things, what we do is we talk, it's a very communicative game. It's about people, about community. So we talk and we define those terms. Like what is James, what does a James Baldwin future look like? Right? What does that feel like? And depending on who's in the room, right, we come up with these ideas and we come up with these, come up with these criteria. And then we place a planet in the middle of that universe and start building things on that planet. And it really is to like free your mind of where you are now. And I And I'm sure you've encountered this in your futures practice. Like it's really hard to get people to imagine the future.
SPEAKER_01:It is. There's actually a whole psychology of it that, you know, I there's a I took a in my master's program, I did a long time ago, we did the psychology of futures. And there are people who are actually afraid of thinking of the future. There are people who are fearful of it. I never thought of it in that way. It really kind of opened my mind because the work that I did at places like McKinsey is like people are very short-term thinkers and they don't want to pay. They pay for that work, but they but the idea of them, because they're not even I'm not going to be here like in, I don't care about five or ten years. Like what the marketing people give me cool things to say for the for the keynote, right? But the fear of that it's it's a it's an anxiety, I call it an anxiety wall because there's a paralysis of the present that they're in. And in order to get them out of it, what we try and do is take something that they're familiar with, ask them how they handled COVID or other things in the world. Then we try and get them to imagine a different outcome of the past. And then what I like this term, I love this term from Julian Bleaker. He's a design fiction, uh he's one of the pioneers of design fiction. He calls it future archaeology. So it's like you almost like out of body yourself to imagine you're seeing the future and what you dig out of it. So you're you're you're just can you're not personalizing it to like your future. You're disconnecting yourself. And if you can disconnect somebody in the abstract, then it frees them to think about the possibility without the consequence.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:So I'm glad you brought that up because one of the things I was thinking about was when you did this at Dubai Feature Forum and John Sweeney told me you did just you guys were just amazing. Is like what did you find? Because there's a diverse group that come to that conference.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Did you find like a consistent thing that could you find any surprises that came out of that? Like what was the what surprised you and Lonnie the most? I mean, I speak for him, but like what surprised you both from from that?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, you know, Dubai was so interesting because there were a lot of futurists there, but there was there was a very like safe, it was like everybody's like safe future, right?
SPEAKER_01:Uh okay. Nobody was really kind of like I like the way you said that safe future.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it was right.
SPEAKER_01:It didn't really like the preferred future, the safe, right.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Everybody was just like, let's just kind of keep it even and not ruffle any feathers. And Aphorhythms is really about your radical imagination, right? It's not really about your safe imagination. And then sometimes safety can be really kind of boring, you know what I mean? So there was a lot of conversations that, you know, made me go, okay, but it didn't make me go, yes, right? Because I come from a futures practice that is emotional, right? I want to say yes. Like I want to be like that. I I want that, like I got that. Oh, I'm in. You know what I'm saying? And when you game when you gamify something, right, the game should be kind of fun, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's again the abstract. You're taking somebody out of it so there's not this personal connection, they're just playing a game. Right. They're doing an experience that the game has a finite outcome. It's like this is the thing we do.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it's not gonna be my job or this or that, but it allows them to play.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:It allows them to explore, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I play for a living, and most people don't. That's true. They they they don't realize what they're missing out on. So when I, you know, do an alphabeth game, I want everybody to feel what it feels like to play for a living, right? Because it's it's extremely free, right? It gets you back into that kind of child mind where you can just be like, you know, make come up with things like Sharknado. You know what I'm saying? Like it makes it makes of all the things you picked out of the universe. Because it's like makes no sense. Why, you know what I'm saying? Like, who doesn't? It's absurd. It's absolutely absurd. Right. But Sharknado was a hit. It was huge.
SPEAKER_01:I think it actually funded the sci-fi channel for a good five, five years. Absolutely, no doubt. So look, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:One day I'll tell you the story of piranha cane, because I actually pitched this as a show. It was like, yeah. I was like, from the makers of Shark. Piranhas in a in a hurricane. Yep. I was I was this close to selling that show. I was somebody was trying to buy it and I was like, I can't do it. It just felt that's hilarious.
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, so Oh my gosh. So we've got, I know we know it's we're gonna do a part two. And I I want what I'd love to ask is a couple quick questions. So just because we kind of kind of wrap this one up. So what's the one thing about the future that keeps you up at night? Like when you think about the future and future's possibilities, like what keeps what keeps you to be anywhere? It doesn't have to be like the current political state of the world. It's more of just what gets what's on your mind a lot.
SPEAKER_03:What's on my mind a lot for the future right now is the fact that, you know, this idea of protopia is it's very achievable. It's very achievable, but we seem to be really invested in dystopia. And I and I honestly think I honestly think it's because there aren't enough stories of protopia out there in the world. Dystopia makes a lot of money. And I think as as human beings, we're attracted to things that scare the shit out of us. That's just that's in us, right? We spent how many thousands of years being prey to bigger animals, right? So those uh, you know, those ancient neurons, as David English says, Eagleman, David Eagleman, as as those ancient neurons exist. Those things that fire up our brains to feel fear exist, and it gives us a dopamine hit that we like, right? Yeah. But, you know, there's a Monsters Inc. version of this where the dopamine hit of all of us living with an enormous amount of potential and imagination is just so much greater. And I I I go to bed feeling really good about a pro-topian future. And what keeps me up at night is the lack of imagination of a lot of people who don't allow themselves to imagine that way. And it hurts. It hurts. And that's what keeps us in these conflicts because we believe that a subjugation idea is a way to a future that is egalitarian, but it really just promotes more dystopia. It really just gets gets more war out there.
SPEAKER_01:To move through that, what what inspires you? Who who are what you know continues to inspire you to push forward things?
SPEAKER_03:I mean I really like um the Gen Zers. I'm I'm a big fan of them. And it's not because I have one only, but you know, I was recently at a biotech conference called The Spirit of Asylomar with one of my colleagues in Stanford, Drew Endy, who is kind of the godfather of synthetic biology. And he and I have a lot of future conversations together because when it comes to I think this next century is the century of biology, right? The 20th century was like the physics century, right? I think this century is going to be the century of biology.
SPEAKER_01:That's interesting. That's good fodder for next time. That is really gets a really I call it the bionexus.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We're gonna change what it means to be generations is gonna change what it means to live. It's also we have the potential to actually dare I say the word, fragment, or the species of humanity, like in terms of you know, who lives, who's a who lives purely and dies, who changes con who changes their body, who changes themselves to go on interstellar travel, right? It's like all of that, right? Yeah, yeah. So you have you know been done such breakthrough things, like for you, like you've got such an amazing career that you've already accomplished, and you have obviously more to do. When you're looking back and, you know, sipping, you're in Jamaica, and now you go to J and you're just like thinking about your life. How do you want your work to be remembered? Like the impact you've had, because you've had you've had such great impact already.
SPEAKER_03:I want my work to be remembered as um constantly transformational and changing. Right? Yep, yep. I don't want anyone to repeat what I've done. I've I always want to be the foundation that helps move us forward. I'm not a very nostalgic person. I don't really I don't really wallow in nostalgia. Um but I I do like where we we have been, where we are, and where we're going. Afro rhythms, we say we have a reverence for the past, an awareness of the present, but the future is creativity. And if if I leave anything, um, I want to leave that as a way, a reverence for the past, an awareness for the present. But that future, that future always be a creative future. And so we have to strive to stay more creative. You know, what I say to a lot of my like young scientists at Stanford who believe that they're inheriting a fucking crazy ass world. What I say to them is as long as you can create, it's never too late. As long as you can create, it's never too late.
SPEAKER_01:And that is the best way to wrap this show, this episode together. So it's great. So thank you again for the time today. And um we're gonna do this again soon. Yes. Please, please. Anything is there anything people should like what what's coming up for you where people should check out, you know, find you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Um, you know, the only social I do now is Instagram. So at best. There's a whole bunch of beautiful things happening. Afrorhythms.com. Afro-rhythm futuresgroup.com. Either one of those works. Great. Come check us out. And yeah, really beautiful work that's coming very soon. Thank you, my friend. Thanks. Appreciate you, brother. Appreciate you so much. Thanks.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to the Think Forward Podcast. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at www.thinkforwardshow.com as well as on YouTube under Think Forward Show. See you next time.
