What has weather got to do with computational power? Quite a lot as it turns out: early efforts to predict the weather led to some of the biggest breakthroughs in computing during the 20th century. Today the weather forces us to rethink anew our ability for scientific innovations - and as so often in history, there are those for and against.

Biosphere 2, Big Brother, Steve Bannon, The Panopticon…When a group of improv actors conduct a science experiment perhaps it’s bound to give rise to a whole new form of entertainment. Find out about how this experiment touches on the U.S. election, the idea of the panopticon and what we’ll teach the first babies born in space….

Russian Cosmism.

Could new entire ways of life be found in the lyrics of a pop song? Find out how this theory touches on lost civilizations and lost network messages, the past and the future, and the perception of reality through Radiohead's ‘Pyramid Song’.

So you decide to ask Facebook for your data record and once you have downloaded it you then decide to delete your account. You now have a couple hundred pages of data as your souvenir of your time spent on the network. What understanding can you get about your life from this data recuperated from Facebook? And who among us is capable of translating this data, electronic translations from our lives and societies, into any sort of meaning?

As the amazon burns and extinction rebellions rage, we start the life cycle by asking: is there going to be a future to speak of at all? Why is it that the apocalypse is no longer just the reserve of religion, but now dominates everything from our Netflix viewing to our conversations with friends and family?

In this episode, John and Eva stare up at the night sky and get deep. Some of those age-old stoner questions are posed: where are all the aliens? Are we alone in the universe? Could it be that we’re just pets in some zoo run by alien overlords? Does this mean everything we do is meaningless? And what has Jodie Foster got to say about it all?

John and Eva go down the rabbit hole and question what is reality itself and whether or not we are in fact in a large scale simulation. Possibly one made by aliens. Or indeed our future descendants. We are such stuff as dreams are made on - who is to say we aren’t?

In this episode, John turns up to hear Eva has discovered a story she’s pretty certain will pique his interest. She starts to tell him about a transhuman hero by the name of Dr. Phil Kennedy, and it leads to some pretty interesting places by way of Belize. By the end of the episode, Eva will have left the building, getting on a Trans-Atlantic flight to follow the story….

Eva has followed the story to Georgia, USA and tracked Dr. Phil down at his neurological practice. In the back of the surgery and after his original patients have left, Dr. Phil carries out some mind-blowing experiments - on himself, and others. Brain interfacing is a bold new frontier for our ability to understand our minds - and in turn, help us to communicate.

Is your brain a machine? Are your thoughts and feelings just malware of the mind? But what is 'really' is a machine? Welcome listeners to the transhumanist fight of the century. In the blue corner, we have Eva meeting founder and CEO of Kernel, Bryan Johnson, straight from his office in LA. And in the red corner, John meets with writer Mark O'Connell in a cafe in Dublin.

15% of all human consciousness that has ever existed is present and happening today: as we speed up and grow ever more connected via the Internet, what are the implications for this massive digital shift? In this episode, renowned Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig discusses the present state of the digital landscape and its impact on notions of freedom and democracy. For good or for bad, how will this new era play out in the years to come? The last episode in Season One looks resolutely into the near future.