The Actionable Futurist® Podcast

S4 Episode 23: Author Byron Reese on his latest book: Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think.

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Episode notes

My guest is Author Byron Reese to talk about his latest book: Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think: How Humans Learned to See the Future — and Shape it. 

It is a fascinating read and looks at what makes the human mind so unique, and how did we get this way?

This fascinating tale explores the three leaps in our history that made us who we are—and will change how you think about our future.

Look around. Clearly, we humans are radically different from the other creatures on this planet. But why? 

Where are the Bronze Age beavers? The Iron Age iguanas? 

In Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think, Byron Reese argues that we owe our special status to our ability to imagine the future and recall the past, escaping the perpetual present that all other living creatures are trapped in.

Envisioning human history as the development of a societal superorganism he names Agora, Reese shows us how this escape enabled us to share knowledge on an unprecedented scale, to predict—and eventually master—the future.

Thoughtful, witty, and compulsively readable, Reese unravels our history as an intelligent species in three acts:

Act I: Ancient humans undergo “the awakening,” developing the cognitive ability to mentally time-travel using language

Act II: In 17th century France, probability theory is born—a science for seeing into the future that we used to build the modern world

Act III: Beginning with the invention of the computer chip, humanity creates machines to gaze into the future with even more precision, overcoming the limits of our brains

A fresh new look at the history and destiny of humanity, readers will come away from Stories, Dice, and Rocks that Think with a new understanding of what they are—not just another animal, but a creature with a mastery of time itself.

We also discussed:

  • What is a Futurist?
  • Why Byron wrote the book
  • The structure of the book into 3 acts
  • Pascal's 1654 moment on reasoning & Probability
  • Human brain capacity in 1654 vs now
  • The 21 told stories
  • The power of storytelling
  • Are we being overloaded with stories?
  • What about "fake news" and untrue stories?
  • Act 3: The rocks that think
  • What will the next 50 years look like?
  • Where will AI help us innovate?
  • The half-life of a job
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • Actionable advice for predicting your future


More on Byron
Byron's website
Byron on Twitter
Buy the book

Your Host: Actionable Futurist® Andrew Grill
For more on Andrew - what he speaks about and recent talks, please visit ActionableFuturist.com

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