Future Around & Find Out

We live in a world where every crisis lands in your pocket the moment it happens. The result? We're more informed than ever — and somehow less capable of doing anything about it.
Inventor and investor Pablos Holman has a diagnosis: we're spreading ourselves across every problem, which means we're solving none of them. His prescription is uncomfortable — pick one thing, go all in, and cut the noise.
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QUICK PLUG: Future Around & Find Out is nominated for a Webby for best tech podcast! Voting is open now for the People's Choice Award. Please vote before April 16th! https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/shows/technology
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Pablos is the co-founder of Deep Futures, where he hunts for inventors tackling world-scale problems: energy, water, food, waste, transportation. Not apps. Atoms. And thanks to advances in AI and software, these "impossible" problems are more solvable than ever — if the right people show up to back them.
In this conversation, recorded at the fabulous PopTech conference, he makes the case that inventors are the most important creative class on earth — and the most invisible. They're undersupported, uncelebrated, and working alone in garages. Some of them are probably going to blow themselves up. Those are exactly the people he's looking for.
We get into:
Why doomscrolling is literally eroding your ability to make a difference
The difference between craft (optimization) and creation (zero-to-one) — and why AI is great at one and struggling with the other
Why you can name 100 musicians but fewer than two living inventors
How solving energy unlocks clean water, sanitation, and climate — essentially for free
Why software people are uniquely positioned to work on the hardest problems in the world right now
Chapters:

(01:15) - Why the world isn't as broken as your newsfeed makes it seem

(03:00) - The sticky note exercise: how to pick the one problem worth your time

(04:30) - Inventors are the most important creative class nobody talks about

(07:00) - Living inventors you should actually know

(09:00) - What AI is good at — and what it still can't do

(12:30) - Why software people are the right ones to tackle deep tech problems

(22:56) - Energy is the root problem — solve it and you solve a lot else

(25:56) - Climate change needs a thousand solutions, not one big fix

(28:26) - The fashion industry's dirty secret and what robots can do about it

Links & ResourcesPablos Holman on LinkedIn
Deep Future: VC firm, book, and podcast
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Pablos's first appearance on the show covers his work at Blue Origin and Intellectual Ventures. Scroll in your podcast app to July 2025 to find that fun conversation. (Can listen before or after this one; not a prerequisite.)

Hey, great news! We’ve been nominated by the Webby Awards for best tech podcast! Voting is open now and we’re in second place for the popular choice prize. Just behind The Verge. They really don’t need this win, but it would really help this show grow. Would you please (ask a friend to) vote for Future Around & Find Out?
*** VOTE FOR FAFO ***

OK, here’s this week’s FAFO Friday… (we record on Fridays and the show has Friday/weekend vibes, so just go with it no matter what day of the week it is :) 

This week, Kwaku and I…
Gape at the moon in wonder
Ask why we sent humans on this mission when space robots could’ve done the job (related: why climb Mount Everest?) 
Marvel at Anthropic’s new Mythos model, which they say is remarkably good at finding flaws in the world’s critical software — or is this just another example of their marketing savvy? — or both!?
Dig into AI world models and Jeff Bezos’s (modestly named) Project Prometheus
Ask whether we want robots in our houses (yes, but only if they’re dumb)
Keep FAFO weird (because in the age of AI that’s how you prove you’re human)
*** VOTE FOR FAFO ***

Future Around & Find Out is a best technology podcast nominee! And with your help it could be a winner. The Webby Awards voting is open now. Please vote for FAFO!

Thanks to AI, “content is about to become infinite.” And just like the Internet disrupted distribution, AI is disrupting creation. And so when anyone, anywhere can create content, what’s left? What’s defensible? That would be trust and humanity. 
Live from Podcast Movement Evolutions at SXSW, I sit down with Jim Louderback — former VidCon CEO, Inside the Creator Economy newsletter writer, and media veteran — to unpack what's actually changing and what builders and creators should do about it.
We get into why the "age of perfection" is over, why founders need a meme instead of an elevator pitch, and why putting a creator on your cap table might be the smartest move a startup can make. Jim makes the case for a trust economy where views and likes are meaningless — and where the real question is how far your trust graph extends. We also talk digital twins (and what happens when yours goes rogue), why events are still the best way to prove you're human, the state of journalism and public media, and why 2004’s “Subservient Chicken” was so ahead of its time.
Chapters:

(01:30) - How AI disrupts creation

(03:50) - The number of creators is about to double to 500 million

(06:45) - We’ll have “certified human” labels, just like “organic” and why the Subservient Chicken was so far ahead of its time

(08:40) - The age of perfection is over

(10:00) - The only thing that matters is trust

(12:00) - Events, FTW!

(13:45) - The elements of a great event are timeless

(18:11) - Favorite moments from SXSW

(21:56) - What’s your meme? > What’s your elevator pitch?

(23:28) - Put a creator on the cap table

(27:21) - Creator-community fit

(29:38) - The challenges of being a journalist today

(32:26) - Create your own digital twin

(36:26) - Why John Green’s jaw dropped when he learned of Dan’s grandma

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Future Around & Find OutVote for FAFO to be a Webby Awards winner!
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Very fun news… The Webby Awards have just nominated Future Around & Find Out as a nominee for Best Technology Podcast!!!
And you can help make it a Popular Choice winner. Winning would be great for the growth of show. Thank you!
Please vote for FAFO! 
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OK, on to today’s episode… it’s another good vibes rooftop episode recorded at SXSW. 
For the second year in a row I’m joined by Rob Kenedi, a fellow podcaster, who is the founder and host of Decelerator. 

Last year he, very memorably, said we were in the “fart app era of AI”. Meaning: people are trying stuff (a la the make-a-fart-sound apps that people built in the early days of the iPhone). So, we revisit that comment and ask where are we now? And what’s defensible for app makers — and for creators like us?

Podcaster that he is, Rob turns the tables on me and asks me a bunch of questions about how I’m approaching this question and I shared what was top of mind when I rebranded the show recently from CRAFTED. to Future Around & Find Out. Namely, I wanted to give the show more personality, but that is how you stand out right now and that’s what going to be defensible in the age of AI. 

And the Webby nomination — you already voted, right?? — only makes me feel more confident in the rebrand and the addition of more of these casual “FAFO Friday” episodes that feature a lot more of my (and regular guest Kwaku Aning’s) personality. 

(You’ll hear more about how AI is changing the creator economy and why “being human” is so important in a few days when my episode with Jim Louderback, writer of Inside the Creator Economy, comes out; he gives a great annual talk at SXSW and I had seen it the day before recording with Rob.)

In the meantime, come join Rob and me for some good vibes from Austin… 

And (ask your friends to) vote: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/shows/technology

Climate-tech founder Eben Bayer is on a mission to protect Spaceship Earth. And he says it's time for climate control, i.e. active measure that cool the Earth. Why? " Because all other reasonable approaches have failed miserably," he says, slapping the table for emphasis.
Eben is the co-founder of Ecovative and MyForest Foods, the makers of MyBacon, which is sold in more than three thousand stores. It’s a non-meat bacon, made from mycelium, which (more or less) means mushrooms roots. Fewer people eating meat —> fewer farting animals —> a cooler planet. 

And Eben's latest Earth-cooling idea is (nearly) out of this world. Eben wants to put giant parasols in the stratosphere where they could block sunlight from reaching Earth. With "shade-as-a-service" a maxed-out utility (say in Phoenix) could pay for shade to cool a city or an individual could pinpoint a shadow over their backyard for an afternoon barbecue.

The idea is in its early stages, but Eben says it's feasible and it's the kind of big idea we need to get climate change under control. And while the idea of messing with the sun may sound scary, he says we alter the climate in all sorts of ways already: " We are geo-engineers. We farm animal livestock. We live on Planet Earth. We have impact. We emit CO2. We should not limit ourselves to modifying just one or two atmospheric gases to modify the planet. It's not how we operate, and it's an unbelievably constraining framing if you actually want to address this problem in a practical manner... When you start to take that frame, the options open way up."

Eben is a fascinating guy — very steampunk in his approach to entrepreneurship — and I'm sure you'll find this interview eye-opening.

And a special shout out to my field producer for this onsite recording from Troy, NY: my eleven-year old son, Julian! He was my camera and sound guy and he also makes his long-awaited (YouTube!) debut to ask Eben a question about protecting Spaceship Earth. 🤩

Thanks also to PopTech, the amazing tech conference where I first met Eben, and where he became a fellow more than a decade ago as he was just scaling up.
Support Future Around & Find Out
Follow Dan on LinkedIn
Get the free Future Around & Find Out newsletter
Become a paid subscriber and help future proof the podcast!
Sponsor the show? 
Are you looking to reach an audience of senior technologists and decision-makers? Email me: [email protected]
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Music by Jonathan Zalben