209: Discussing Science and the Future with Isaac Arthur

Isaac Arthur is the creator of the wildly successful "Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur," an award-winning weekly science education and entertainment show with over 700,000 subscribers and over 400 episodes on YouTube. His show covers a wide range of futuristic concepts including space technology, development, and exploration, and focuses on how humanity or other hypothetical advanced civilizations may behave logistically, technologically, and socially, both in the near and distant future, under the understood laws of science. Isaac is also the current President of NSS (National Space Society), an independent nonprofit nonpartisan educational membership organization. https://nss.org/about-national-space-society

On this episode, Isaac and Beth discuss: Exploring space using AI, the ideal propulsion systems, helping to make our world a better place and the best sci-fi and space exploration movies.

Find Isaac at Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur (SFIA), a science education YouTube channel focused on all aspects of futurism and space. https://isaacarthur.net/

Since its first episode in 2014, SFIA has considered topics ranging from the seemingly mundane to the extremely exotic, featuring episodes on megastructure engineering, interstellar travel, the Fermi paradox, and many other topics. But regardless of how strange a subject may seem today, we always try to ensure that the discussion is grounded in what we know of science today, limiting our speculation to what we believe to be in the realm of realistic possibility.

About Isaac: Isaac Albert Arthur showed an early interest in physics, left public schooling in the 9th grade at age 12, and received his GED at age 16, then attended Kent State University, majoring in physics and graduating top of his class at age 20. Isaac Arthur was a research intern at the US Air Force Institute of Technology before beginning grad school, which he left to join the Army at age 23.

He served in the United States Army for 7 years, deploying to Iraq, as well as being stationed to Germany for 13 years. In 2020, Isaac Arthur received the National Space Society's Pioneer Award, and in 2023 was elected its President. In 2014 he founded his channel, Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur, which now has over 700,000 subscribers on Youtube and many other followers on other platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Audible, Amazon, and Spotify.

In 2020, Isaac Arthur married his long-time friend Sarah Fowler. They and their three recently adopted children live on their farm in Plymouth, Ohio.