There's probably no one in the world better versed on the history and varieties of monorail technology than Kim Pedersen, the founder and president of the Monorail Society. When he agreed to talk with me for Soonish Episode 1.02, "Monorails: Trains of Tomorrow?," I knew the story would turn out okay. The sound file here is the full recording of my October 2016 interview with Kim at his home in Fremont, CA. Kim founded the society of monorail fans and monorail professionals—which has 7,000 members around the world—back in 1989. He's traveled the world to visit and ride monorails of every type. In fact, he and his wife Carol plan many of their vacations around destinations with monorails. Kim collects monorail memorabilia, and he's even an accomplished painter of futurist art, including, of course, cityscapes graced with monorails. In 2015 Kim distilled all this knowledge into a gorgeous, image-rich, 248-page book called Monorails: Trains of the Future—Now Arriving. The book became my bible on the history and engineering of monorails as I was doing the research for this episode.

Friend and supporters of Soonish came out in force to help celebrate the release of the Soonish pilot episode last Friday, January 13, 2017. Slide show below! The party featured a live performance of sections of the pilot by yours truly, along with a fantastic spread of food prepared by my wonderful mom, Patricia Bates Roush. Folks from all over the Boston podcasting, media, and university communities attended, including old friends from Xconomy, MIT, and the Boston Globe. The kind folks at PRX let us hold the event at the PRX Podcast Garage in the Allston neighborhood of Boston, just across the Charles River from the Harvard campus. The Podcast Garage is a new recording studio and educational hub dedicated to promoting audio storytelling. I've attended numerous events there since they opened last August, and it's a fantastic resource for the local radio and podcasting community. Thank you to everyone who came out to learn about the show…

This bonus post is the full recording of my December 7, 2016, interview with Jason Pontin, the CEO, editor-in-chief, and publisher of MIT Technology Review. He's one of the stars of Soonish Episode 1.01, How "2001" Got the Future So Wrong. Jason was editor of The Red Herring from 1996 to 2002 and of The Acumen Journal, a life sciences magazine, from 2002 to 2004. I got to know him in 2004 when he became editor-in-chief at Technology Review, where I was a San Francisco-based senior editor. Jason is a big science fiction fan and an eloquent writer and speaker about technology and the future, which made him the perfect person to interview for the pilot episode of Soonish. That episode is ostensibly about the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it's really about how science fiction helps define our aspirations for the future, and what it means for society when we fall dramatically short of those aspirations.

As a piece of bonus content to go along with Soonish Episode 1.01, How "2001" Got the Future So Wrong, here's the full recording of my interview with Jamais Cascio. Jamais is a professional futurist / foresight thinker / scenario planner / "prognosopher" (take your pick of labels) who consults for the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, CA, and other organizations. He’s the author of numerous magazine and journal articles as well the 2009 book Hacking the Earth: Understanding the Consequences of Geoengineering. I interviewed Jamais at the IFTF offices on October 19, 2016, a couple of weeks before the presidential election. We focused on the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and how the futurism that Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke were doing in that movie turned out to be so wrong—or to put it the other way around, how the world we actually got by 2001 was so different from the one portrayed in the movie. Jamais had some fascinating thoughts about all that, but we also talked about…

As an alum at Xconomy I have the title "contributing editor" and a standing invitation to write guest columns. In December 2015 I wrote a piece called The Best Podcasts of 2015: A Guide for New Listeners, and last week the folks at the site called up to see if I wanted to update the list for 2016. "Of course," I said, "as long as you'll let me plug one important up-and-coming podcast of 2017." They agreed, and the new list is up. It's called 50 Podcasts You Should Be Listening To—And 5 New Ways to Find Them. The bonus 51st podcast is Soonish. I also included some information about...

If there's a discrete moment of birth for a new podcast, it comes when you get the "Podcast Approved" notification from the Apple iTunes Store. For Soonish, that happened today. I'm popping some corks here at Soonish headquarters! Being listed in the iTunes Store means it's okay for me to start sharing the teaser episode, since listeners can now act on it by subscribing. Which I hope you'll do!