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Katie: You're listening to The BusinessMakers Overtime Show, heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com. Now while we like to definitely stay very close to the present day, focusing on matters at hand, right now we're gonna talk about the future.
Esther: Woo.
Katie: Woo! (Laughter)
Esther: In the future!
Katie: The future, future, future.
(Laughter)
Katie: So we saw a really interesting feature from a futures consulting firm called Fast Future and they recently released a study called "The Shape of Jobs to Come," which basically was forecasting 20 of the hottest jobs that are gonna be coming up in the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years and it was really amazing. I guess I just hadn't thought about how quickly we're progressing as far as, you know, what are the needs gonna be in our work force.
Esther: It's really amazing. Actually I was shocked. Katie, you sent me this article earlier today and I was, quite frankly, weirded out. I don't know how else to say it, by some of these jobs that they predict will be popular.
Katie: It's like sci-fi. Like "Twilight Zone" sci-fi stuff.
Esther: It's so, so weird.
Katie: Yeah.
Esther: Some of the top jobs, as they say, body part maker. Apparently, advances in science will make it possible to create living body parts. So we could need living body part makers, body part stores and body part repair shops.
Katie: (Laughter)
Esther: Uh. Okay.
Katie: So I mean currently -
Esther: Sure.
Katie: - okay, you break your leg, you go to the hospital but you break your leg and you wanted another one anyway and you get an early Christmas gift and you get a new one.
Esther: Honey, I got you a leg. And look, it's got guts in it.
(Laughter)
Esther: Oh my gosh. So weird. I mean can you imagine? Going to a body part store? There' like hands hanging on the wall, like different sizes.
Katie: But how amazing to know that - I mean especially people that have been in catastrophic accidents - that that technology is so close to being here?
Esther: Actually the technology already exists.
Katie: It is here, yes.
Esther: And I actually saw this on Fox News recently at 6:00 in the morning at the gym. A man lost his hand to a bacterial infection. There is a company, basically it attaches on.
Katie: Okay.
Esther: Okay, but you tense your arm muscles and it closes the hand. So it's a fully-functioning hand. You can pick things up -
Katie: Oh!
Esther: - you can eat. I mean can you imagine? Being able to hold a fork where you didn't think you'd ever have a hand again? I mean that's just -
Katie: Exactly.
Esther: - unbelievable technology.
Katie: Well and pair that technology with a lot of research they're doing - actually, locally here at Rice University - there's a fellow named Dr. Matthew Wettergreen who, if you're on Twitter, if you're online, he goes by Organprinter and what his entire body of work was covering was actually using these physical printers - but not printers like, "Yay, I wanna print on paper and here's a coupon," like printing these 3-D pieces of stuff with the idea that with this new technology that they're developing that they'll be able to print organs.
Esther: Oh my gosh.
Katie: so it's like a 3-D printing and it just gets taller, taller, taller, taller. It is absolutely fascinating. So imagine organ printing plus robot hand. Like coolest cyborg ever. (Laughter)
Esther: Humarobot. (Laughter) Robohuman.
Katie: It's a Hubot.
Esther: Yeah.
(Laughter)
Esther: That's a sound bite for sure. Hobot. Oh my gosh. Actually another one that was very cool and is very futuristic, very George Jetson. Space pilots.
Katie: Woo.
Esther: Space tour guides and space architects. Now this one actually struck my fancy because some of this research that they're doing is going on right here in Houston and the University of Houston.
Katie: Oh!
Esther: So with companies already promising space tours and what we're gonna need, space pilots. We're gonna need space tour guides and architects to design where people are gonna live and where they're gonna work when they move to space.
Katie: Very cool. (Laughter)
Esther: So they're creating these greenhouses that can exist on Mars, lunar outposts and space exploration vehicles.
Katie: That is so cool. So imagine like right now you wanna figure out if you wanna live in a neighborhood or have this apartment complexes - so it'd be like spacecomplex.com. Like, you know and everyone's yelling about their landlords on Mars.
Esther: Cool new zip codes.
Katie: Yeah.
(Laughter)
Esther: Oh my gosh.
Katie: So one job of the future that really caught my attention was memory augmentation surgeon.
Esther: This sounds weird.
Katie: Now, it's very weird 'cause the first thing that I thought of was that movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," I think it's called?
Esther: Uh huh. Yeah something like that.
Katie: Where basically a couple gets in a breakup. One of 'em goes in and has a specific section of her memory erased which is their relationship and so then she never has to remember the heartbreak they went through but what this company is saying is that these memory augmentation surgeons will actually be adding extra memory in people's brains and also helping people that have been overexposed to information to kind of help their brains handle all of the data that's getting thrown at them.
Esther: Interesting.
Katie: Which, I mean, that's kind of like Beyonce, like give me an upgrade, you know?
Esther: Yeah.
(Laughter)
Esther: What's confusing about this one to me is, isn't that the human brain, endless in its capacity? Isn't that what they say, that the - you know, you kind of use 10 percent of your brain and you can actually -
Katie: I think we use even less.
Esther: - you would -
Katie: I mean it's kind of embarrassing. (Laughter)
Esther: Right. So you could, potentially, with the right training and the right skill, use more of your brain if you wanted to.
Katie: Yeah.
Esther: Without having surgery to increase your me- your RAM.
Katie: Yeah.
(Laughter)
Esther: Your, your memory space. I mean eventually we're gonna be plugging USBs into our foreheads and downloading like "The Matrix." That's freaky.
Katie: But I mean pretty cool to think that, I mean people are currently working on the technology to help us just utilize our brain capacity better.
Esther: Yeah.
Katie: So whether they're installing more stuff or not, like I would love to -
Esther: I don't want anybody installing anything into my brain.
Katie: Yeah, you know. Yeah.
Esther: That's just me.
Katie: Those viruses'll just get you. (Laughter)
Esther: Yeah, exactly. I'm like, popups in your head?
(Laughter)
Esther: Porn! Porn!
Katie: Exactly.
Esther: Oh my gosh.
Katie: So another job to come that is definitely a reality and maybe much sooner than they say in a couple of decades is a quarantine enforcer.
Esther: That is necessary now.
Katie: So - it really, actually it is. You hear about people hoppin' on the plane with tuberculosis.
Esther: I know.
Katie: And it's like, "Come on, people!" (Laughter)
Esther: Come on, guys.
Katie: So I work a lot with a company called Firestorm, which is based out of Atlanta, and what they do is like business continuity, disaster planning, emergency preparedness for top level government officials to small businesses, to everything in between and they are insane about the coming epidemics, you know, that will be here. You know the different viruses and flus and things that I could never pronounce even if I'd gone to medical school for seven years.
Esther: Uh huh.
Katie: And they talk regularly about how in the future this is gonna be one of the greatest, you know, risks of being a human on the planet is all of these, you know, viruses and crazy things people are genetically modifying and to think what a crappy job that would be. (Laughter)
Esther: Oh my gosh.
Katie: To be runnin' around - and they actually say that these people will have these amazing immune systems so they'll be kind of like superhuman corralling people, you know, until they get their medicine. I don't - you know I don't even know but man.
Esther: Man.
Katie: Yeah, not, not -
Esther: I don't wanna think about the kinds of diseases we're gonna have in 30 years.
Katie: Yes.
Esther: We already have some pretty bad ones.
Katie: We do. We really do. Well it's definitely been fun peering into the future with all of our beloved Overtime listeners. (Laughter)
Esther: We're actually broadcasting from a spacecraft right now.
Katie: La la la. That's right. (Laughter)
Esther: Hovering above your house. We can see you in your window.
Katie: That's right and we're totally admiring our producer John's second head that he had installed recently.
(Laughter)
Katie: Well as always, we are so glad to have had a chance to talk business, talk Supreme Court, talk chocolate, talk technology, everything that we talk about with you. (Laughter)
Esther: It's endless over here.
Katie: It is. It is.
Esther: Don't forget, you can always find us on Twitter, twitter.com/overtimeshow. You can find us on Facebook, obviously, facebook.com/theBusinessMakers and then on the website, our beloved website, theBusinessMakers.com/overtime. So please leave us your feedback, leave us your comments, leave us your hate mail, whatever you feel like. If we got something wrong. If we got something oh so right, please tell us, we wanna know.
Katie: (Laughter) You've been listening to The BusinessMakers Overtime Show, heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com. I'm Katie Laird -
Esther: And I'm Esther Steinfeld.
Katie: - and we'll see you next week.