Idea-ology

The one question asked more than any other, yes, even more than "How can I pay your show lots of money to keep making these fantastic episodes?", is "How do you come up with ideas?".

Like anything, it can be a number of ways. One of the great benefits of our show's format is that the potential topics are limitless. There are always subjects that are developing and changing, whether it's the knowledge and understanding of ancient history through modern techniques and discoveries, or the cutting edge breakthroughs the change the way we live. For millennia, humans have attempted to predict the future, and so there's little shortage of examples we can revisit for a check-up with where we are at.

One approach to seeking inspiration is to look at movies, TV shows or books that are set in, or predict, the future. Movies like The Fifth Element, iRobot, Back to the Future have already featured a few times in our episodes, and will continue to do so. The "meal-in-a-pill" concept used in The Fifth Element where the "Supreme Being", played by Milla Jovavich, drops a few pea-size capsules on a plate, presses a button, and then struggles to carry the now-heavy meal of chicken, vegetables and gravy, was the direct inspiration for looking at Ultra-Processed Foods. 

But that highlights another way we find our episodes. In seeking someone who's researching UPFs, we came across an award-winning woman working in the food-labelling space, Dr Alexandra Jones, and so the topic pivots to fit her work. 

As a former journalist, I contributed to some of the media-based speculation too. "Is this the car of the future?" "Solar-cell infused paint might soon make your whole house a power generator." It's easy now to find old articles, TV shows or websites either predicting the future, or showing where other predictions were wrong.