Join us for an inspiring conversation with Darlene Damm, a fellow for impact at Singularity University, whose career spans decades of solving “wicked problems” in some of the world’s most challenging environments. From cofounding drone delivery networks for healthcare to launching global competitions that democratized space innovation, Darlene has shown how bold ideas—paired with the right teams—can create lasting change.
Darlene’s journey includes roles with Ashoka, the World Food Programme, and exponential startups, as well as work in Asia helping communities rebuild and thrive. In this episode, she shares how her early life in a remote town shaped her empathy and determination, and how a neighbor who worked on the first liquid-fueled rockets sparked her lifelong passion for technology and impact.
In this episode, Darlene delves into:
Empowering Communities to Lead Change: Why the people most affected by a problem are often best suited to lead its solution, and how rethinking power structures can unlock innovation.
From Drones to DIY Rockets: The origin stories of her groundbreaking ventures and what they reveal about turning constraints into creative breakthroughs.
Future Forces Shaping Impact: How exponential technologies like digital twins and biotechnology will transform resource challenges and create new opportunities.
Balancing Scarcity and Abundance: Why solving resource shortages is only half the challenge—and how overabundance creates new societal problems to tackle.
Building Future-Ready Teams: What it takes to assemble diverse, empowered teams that blend lived experience, capital, and technology to solve global challenges.
Making Impact Work Inside Big Organizations: Lessons on finding hidden impact in your current role, leveraging existing assets, and spinning out sustainable ventures.
Discover how Darlene’s insights can help you turn big problems into bold opportunities, align doing well with doing good, and create your own possible future.
In this thought-provoking episode, Gary A. Bolles sits down with Nell Watson—Singularity University faculty member, AI ethicist, and president of the European Responsible AI Office—for a wide-ranging conversation on the exponential future of artificial intelligence and the ethical design challenges that come with it.
Nell shares how a childhood steeped in engineering and science fiction shaped her vision for a more human-centered technological future. She reflects on lessons from the Titanic, the ethics of design, and how our values often lag behind our innovations.
Together, they explore:
Why the real danger of AI isn’t Terminator—it’s the psychological and social rewiring already underway.
How AI will soon become a “supernormal stimulus”—deeply engaging, ever-present, and emotionally irresistible.
What it means to build AI that uplifts rather than addicts, inspires rather than replaces.
The importance of embedding ethics not as an afterthought but as a design foundation—much like safety standards in aviation or food.
How we must prepare children and society to thrive in a world where AI companions may one day be more influential than human ones.
Why learning to “be a beginner again” is one of the greatest skills we’ll need in the AI age.
Nell offers a hopeful vision—if we’re wise enough to teach AI to make us better, not just more efficient.
In this episode, we delve into the transformative impact of exponential technologies on governance with Nicholas Haan, a Fellow for Governance at Singularity University. Explore how digital identities, blockchain, and AI are reshaping decision-making processes and accountability across societal groups, from nation-states to local communities. Discover the concept of network states and how they challenge traditional geographical boundaries, offering new models of governance driven by shared values and culture. Join us as we uncover the potential of these technologies to create more efficient, inclusive, and adaptive governance systems for a rapidly changing world.
In this episode, we delve into the pivotal role of frontline workers in shaping the future economy. Join us as we explore insights from Muriel Clauson Closs, CEO and co-founder of Ant Hill, who shares her expertise on the evolving landscape of work. Discover how demographic shifts, technological advancements, and economic dynamics are transforming frontline roles, and learn about the opportunities and challenges these workers face in an ever-changing world. Tune in to understand how these essential workers are not only adapting but thriving in the face of automation and globalization.
Join us for an insightful conversation with Misha Byrne, a fellow for leadership with Singularity University, known for his diverse background applying neuroscience to the world of work. Misha's extensive experience includes roles as head of consulting for Future Academy X, editor for NeuroPower, and work with the Queensland Brain Institute on cognitive genetics. He discusses how his academic journey in neuroscience and psychology, initially a placeholder, became a fascinating exploration of the brain, ultimately aligning perfectly with his current endeavors.
In this episode, Misha delves into:
The Power of Social Neuroscience: He explains that social neuroscience, his particular interest, challenges the traditional "Newtonian mechanical view" of human performance. Instead, it emphasizes that humans are inherently social creatures and the brain is an open system, constantly influenced by our environment and interactions. This perspective offers crucial insights into team performance, culture, leadership, resilience, adaptability, and innovation mindsets.
Redefining Leadership in the AI Era: Misha defines leadership as the ability to bring people together around purposeful outcomes, balancing individual and community needs, and creating an environment that elicits the best in each person. He stresses the critical importance of intentionality and self-awareness for leaders, especially in a rapidly changing world, arguing that leaders must be "self-authoring" and anchor their leadership in core values.
Navigating the Empathy Gap: A significant concern Misha highlights is the "empathy gap" emerging from increased screen time. He notes that analytical tasks performed on screens can draw blood flow away from empathy systems in the brain, potentially leading to increased transactionality and distance within teams. He expresses hope that future consumer neurotech will help build self-awareness and keep technology in service of human connection.
The Future of Teams (2035): Misha envisions future teams as fractional, dynamic, and rapidly changing. As automation trivializes many operational tasks, human collaboration will shift towards sensing the outside world, making judgment calls based on values, and resolving complex edge cases. Teams will likely consist of adaptable generalists who can quickly "swarm" around high-purpose tasks, fostering high-performance teaming in as little as an hour, rather than a months-long journey. He emphasizes leveraging social neuroscience to rapidly build trust and belonging by addressing universal human needs like psychological safety.
Understanding and Expanding Mindspan: Drawing on concepts from Dr. Tiffany Vora, Misha introduces "Mindspan" as a crucial complement to lifespan and health span. Mindspan focuses on preserving, extending, and expanding the beloved aspects of one's own mind—the unique human consciousness and wisdom. He encourages intentionality in curating one's cognition and continuously growing one's perspective of self and the world.
Actionable Advice for Aspiring Leaders: Misha offers two core practices: leading self through observation, awareness, and understanding how to show up in "good shape", and leading others with humility, by directly asking team members what they need to achieve their potential and listening deeply for themes.
Discover how these insights can empower you to lead effectively in an exponentially changing world and cultivate a future rich with purposeful connection and expanded human potential.
In this conversation, Gary A. Bolles and Andra Keay explore the evolution of robotics, its impact on society, and the future of work. They discuss the early influences that shaped Andra's career, the growth of robotics in Silicon Valley, and the ethical considerations surrounding the development of robots. The conversation also touches on the potential futures of robotics, including its integration into daily life and agriculture, the dynamics of job displacement, and the importance of establishing guardrails for responsible robotics development.
Takeaways
In this insightful episode, host Gary A. Bolles welcomes Kyle Hermans, Singularity University's Fellow for Purpose and CEO of Be Courageous. They dive deep into the concept of purpose in a world of exponential change, marked by "great resets" like the global pandemic and the "AI tsunami".
Kyle, who has conducted over 2,500 sessions with leaders globally, shares his unique journey, starting from his curious youth in apartheid South Africa. Driven by a "five whys mentality" and a vast imagination, his non-linear career arc was always shaped by profound questions. A pivotal "lightning bolt" moment revealed his life's purpose: that "creativity is courage," leading him to help others choose between building their lives through fear or courage. Kyle emphasizes that deep purpose often emerges from "conflicted places" and "very hard struggles," not just ideal circumstances. His process for finding purpose involves reflecting on life's highs and lows to find meaning and gain "agency".
The conversation extends to organizational purpose in an era of constant disruption. Kyle asserts that many modern disruptions are a "failure of imagination," as humans fail to anticipate possibilities. He highlights how "modern tools" like AI are increasingly accessible, enabling rapid adoption of new solutions and challenging fundamental societal beliefs. For organizations, the future is a "blank canvas," necessitating big, different thinking anchored in purpose. Kyle offers practical examples for cultivating purpose, such as Patagonia's practice of starting meetings by asking, "How did we serve and impact the earth today?" or placing an "empty customer chair" at the table.A significant focus is placed on generational differences in the workforce. Kyle notes that younger generations are "wide for different things," with meaning and purpose often ranking higher than traditional career incentives or money. They seek organizations that "stand for something" and offer psychologically safe environments where their voices are heard and creativity embraced.
Regarding AI and purpose, Kyle's company integrates AI as a "team member" named FID (short for Infinity). While AI excels at synthesizing information and articulating ideas, Kyle currently observes its limitation in generating novel, profound "why" reasoning about things that don't yet exist. He raises a fascinating question: What if we started "programming" AI with a sense of purpose beyond just functional tasks?. Looking to the future (2045-2050), Kyle believes the only constants will be "love and courage," as humans, intrinsically wired for fear, will continually need courage to navigate relentless change.For listeners seeking to explore their own purpose, Kyle offers a free resource on his website, including a 10-minute video and downloadable toolkit.
https://bcrgs.com/
My guest today is Jay Baloo, who is Singularity University's fellow for computing and cybersecurity. In this conversation, we pull back the curtain on what “lawful surveillance” really means… how quantum computing could break the encryption we all rely on… and why the biggest vulnerability might not be technological… but human.
Because when it comes to cybersecurity, it’s not just the algorithms that matter. It’s our willingness or unwillingness to change.
Jaya helps us understand what’s coming and what leaders, policymakers, and everyday users can do right now to prepare. We cover deepfakes, digital trust, AI-assisted attacks, and the steps we can all take to defend our future.
Whether you’re a technologist, an executive, or just someone trying to keep your data safe, this episode will challenge the way you think about digital security and remind you why our future resilience depends as much on people as it does on code.
Jaya has been in the cybersecurity realm for two decades, widely acknowledged as one of the top 100 Chief Information Security Officers, or CISOs. She was a CISO for KPN Telecom, a vast Chief Security Officer for Rapid7. She's been a COO now for a stealth mode AI and cybersecurity startup. So interested to hear if there's any hints we can get about that.
Just previously, the vice chair of the EU Commission's Quantum Flagship Strategic Advisory Board, which was a $1 billion effort to understand the key opportunities and challenges of our quantum future. Interested to hear more about that. And there's Internet Security Trainer for Bankers Trust, Technical Security Specialist for Trans Telecom, and a practice lead for Lawful Interception for Verizon.
https://www.su.org/experts/jaya-baloo
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaya-baloo-558492/
Biotech isn’t a vertical. It’s a foundation.
And according to Dr. Tiffany Vora, it will be as revolutionary in the next decade as artificial intelligence is today.
In this episode of Possible Futures, Tiffany joins host Gary Bolles to explore how biology is becoming programmable, why we need to shift our thinking from lifespan to healthspan, and what it means to thrive in ecosystems we design — on Earth or off it.
Together, they dive into:
CRISPR, RNA therapies, and gene editing breakthroughs
Why aging may actually be a treatable disease
How space exploration helps us solve Earth’s biggest problems
The moral, political, and emotional stakes of biotech access
What a 120-year life might look and feel like
Tiffany’s work spans cancer research, computational biology, biotech startups, and space innovation — and in this conversation, she brings clarity to the science and urgency to the questions. Whether you're a policymaker, parent, or just biotech-curious, this episode will change how you think about the future of life.
In this episode of Possible Futures, host Gary Bolles sits down with writer, researcher, and Singularity University expert Aaron Frank to explore a provocative question: What happens when our digital and physical realities blur—and which one will feel more real?
From a childhood question about humanity’s technological acceleration to leading conversations on the future of spatial computing, Aaron takes us through the promises and pitfalls of immersive tech, virtual worlds, and digital twins. Together, they unpack:
Why spatial computing is about more than just VR headsets
What digital twins and 3D simulations mean for cities, training, and global sustainability
The real-world impact of immersive learning—from Walmart to the NFL
The dangers of data surveillance, hyper-commercialization, and forgetting our biological selves
A surprisingly human vision of 2030—centered on connection, nature, and... ice hockey?
Whether you’re a technologist, a skeptic, or simply future-curious, this conversation will leave you questioning what’s real, what’s next, and what kind of world we actually want to build.
