October 20, 2025 • 42 mins
What if the people best equipped to shape tomorrow aren’t engineers first—but emotional athletes? Our guest, Ahmed Best—actor, educator, Afrofuturist, and the pioneering performer behind Jar Jar Binks—shows how art can lead technology, not chase it. From South Bronx summers where hip‑hop was born to conversations with George Lucas at Lucasfilm, Ahmed traces a life lived at the edge of invention and explains why trusting artists to drive the tools changed cinema—and could change the future.
We dive into dramatic narrative design, the class he created to teach future‑fluent storytelling that centers collaboration over hierarchy. Ahmed breaks down how performance capture emerged by following the actor, how the “used future” aesthetic reframed sci‑fi, and why the fundamentals of drama never age even as mediums flip from film stock to digital sensors and now to AI. He sees today’s AI as a creative accelerator that removes costly bottlenecks so humans can spend more time on what matters: feeling, choosing, and crafting meaning.
Then we open up Afrofuturism through Afrohythms, the worldbuilding game he co‑created with Dr. Lonny Brooks. Using tension cards—“Black superheroes,” “James Baldwin,” and more—players define shared values, build planets, and practice radical imagination without the fear that keeps teams stuck. Ahmed challenges the industry’s obsession with “safe futures,” argues for protopia—incremental betterment we can actually feel—and points us toward the coming “bionexus,” where synthetic biology reshapes identity and possibility.
If you care about culture, technology, and where they meet, this conversation is a map and a spark. Subscribe to Think Forward, share this episode with a friend who loves bold ideas, and leave a review to tell us the protopian story you want to help build.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Coming up on today's show.
SPEAKER_03 (00:01):
With my with my acting students of dramatic
arts, when I'm teaching themfilmmaking, I am constantly
pushing them towards the futurebecause that's where the future
of acting is going to be.
There's going to be more of abenefit for actors as like these
hybrid technologists and hybridfuturists than there are as like
(00:24):
what it used to be, which waslike, let's wait by the phone
and have somebody call us andthen do a part.
Like that's not going to be thecase very, very soon, right?
And it's kind of starting now.
What are the foundationalbuilding blocks of designing a
dramatic narrative?
Because that you can take intothe future.
The building blocks for drama inorder to affect human beings has
(00:48):
not changed.
What has changed was how weconsume that drama.
SPEAKER_01 (00:54):
Hey everyone.
Welcome back to Think Forward.
I've got something reallyspecial for you today.
You know, one of the things Ilove most about the futures
community is how we all come tothis work from different paths.
Some of us are strategists, someof us are technologists, and
some are designers.
But every once in a while, youmeet someone whose journey is so
unique, so groundbreaking, thatit completely shifts how you
(01:17):
think about the future.
My guest today is Ahmed Bastard.
Now, you might know Ahmed as thepioneering performer behind
Charger Banks in Star Wars.
And yes, we definitely talkabout that groundbreaking work
in performance capturetechnology.
What you might not know is Ahmedis also a brilliant futurist.
An Afrofuturist.
He's an educator at the USC FilmSchool and a co-creator of an
(01:40):
incredible game calledAfro-Rhythms.
Ahmed and I met many years ago,and we have a strong friendship
as fellow futurists.
What strikes me about his workis how he brings this incredible
combination of performance,technology, and cultural
innovation to futures thinking.
He's not just imagining thefuture, he's literally
performing it into existence.
In our conversation, we divedeep into how artists approach
(02:03):
technology different thanSilicon Valley.
Why emotional intelligence iscrucial for futures work, and
how his experience growing up inthe Bronx during the birth of
hip-hop shaped his vision ofwhat's possible.
This is a conversation aboutcreativity.
It's about breaking boundariesand about why the future needs
more play and fewer safefutures.
Welcome to Alpha Rhythms,Storytelling, and Breaking
(02:25):
Through with Ahmed Best.
Alright.
Ahmed.
Welcome to the show.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (02:32):
Thank you for having me.
It's about time.
It's about time.
We've been circling for a longtime trying to get some time on
the books, but Yeah, man.
SPEAKER_01 (02:42):
It's so good to have you.
You know, you've had thisamazing journey, you know,
through performance, filmmaking,futures thinking.
Let's let's talk about, youknow, kind of your path because
you've had some realgroundbreaking things in your
life that you've experienced,like, but you've come into
futures being a futurist, aseveryone does, kind of
accidentally.
So what's your what's yourjourney?
(03:04):
What's been your background?
SPEAKER_03 (03:05):
Yeah, you know, the more I reflect on it, the more I
realize that I was kind ofalways destined to be in this
world.
Growing up where I grew up, um,you know, I grew up in the South
Bronx in New York City in the70s, 80s.
Um I was huge into comic books,and I was huge into computers,
(03:32):
right?
So the Commodore Pet was thefirst computer that I played
with in a science class.
My science teacher, Mr.
Goldberg, brought in thiscomputer that none of us inner
city kids ever saw before, andhe blew our mind.
And I wrote a program, my veryfirst program was in Basic, the
(03:54):
language basic.
Yes, 10, 10, start, 20, go to10.
Go to 10.
Totally.
Yeah.
That was it.
And I wrote like a simple stringprogram that was just like my
name across the screeninfinitely.
And I was hooked.
You know, I was really hookedinto what technologically the
(04:14):
future could be.
But even before that, you know,I was just a huge science
fiction fan.
My mother was a huge Star Trekfan.
So I would watch Star Trek allthe time, like the OG series.
Yeah.
It was Star Trek comic books andhip hop.
So growing up in the SouthBronx, hip hop music started on
my blog.
(04:35):
At the time, we didn't realizethat this was going to be a
phenomenon that was going tochange the world.
Right.
We just liked the music.
And, you know, being a littlekid across the street from my
building was this empty lotwhere, you know, was my
elementary school, and thenthere was this empty lot where
(04:55):
we would like play sports andthere was like basketball hoops
there.
But every summer, DJs would setup turntables in that park.
And people from all over theneighborhood would come in and
it would be parties on thatuntil the break of dawn, right?
Literally to the break of dawn.
My parents hated it.
(05:16):
You know what I'm saying?
Like my father was just like, Igotta go to work.
But, you know, I would behanging out at the window
watching this, this, this partyall night long.
So I didn't really know who wasthere until I got a little bit
older.
But what I was, what I learnedwas like all the DJs that
(05:36):
started hip-hop music were inthat park.
Cool Herc, who was pretty muchthe inventor of hip-hop,
Grandmaster Flash, Mellie Mel,the rapper.
All of these guys from the SouthBronx who invented hip-hop were
in that park in the summertimein the South Bronx in New York
City.
Grandmaster Flash specificallywas a big influence in hip-hop
(06:00):
music because he created theCrossfader, right?
For the DJ Crossfader.
He was an electrician.
And before Grandmaster Flash,it'd be like five turntables,
five amplifiers, right?
But Grandmaster Flash createdthe switch that went from one
set to another set.
So all now you need is two, anda party can go all night long
and no volume now.
(06:21):
Keep the volume the same.
Right.
Did he ever patent that?
Did he ever patent that?
And it's it's the mostheartbreaking story in hip-hop
music because he wanted to be aDJ, and making money as a DJ
meant spinning records all nightlong.
He didn't realize that thisinvention that he created was
the invention that allowedhip-hop to travel.
(06:43):
And he never patented the idea,which is just heartbreaking.
Heartbreaking because we owe alot, like EDM music, we owe
techno, we owe you drum andbass, all that, all kind of
DJ-driven music we owe toGrandmaster Flash.
Right?
And then companies, of course,millions off of the mixer, which
is now standard for every DJ.
(07:04):
Right.
But growing up in New York atthat time, it was such a pivotal
time and such a time ofinnovation.
And I was always like, I lovedit.
I loved the innovation.
I love being on the cuttingedge.
I love seeing what's next.
New York has kind of thisreputation about knowing what's
coming before it actuallyhappens.
(07:24):
And it was, it was kind ofSilicon Valley before Silicon
Valley because of Bell Labs inthe 60s.
SPEAKER_02 (07:30):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (07:31):
Absolutely.
Post-World War II, 50s, 60s,Billy Clouver, Robert
Rauschenberg, and they createdthese happenings all throughout
Greenwich Village.
Kind of art and scienceinnovation started in New York
City and it really permeatedthrough the entire city.
(07:51):
My grandmother used to live inFlushing, Queens.
And Flushing was the site of theWorld's Fair.
And all of the artifacts fromthe World's Fair are still
there.
SPEAKER_01 (08:02):
This is the Men in Black saucers.
Exactly.
For those of you seeing, yeah,that's Flushing.
SPEAKER_03 (08:06):
Yep.
I grew up with those.
So the, you know, the flyingsaucers for Men in Black and
Flushing, Green Master Flash,you know, Star Trek, Science
Fiction, all of that stuff mademe like really hunger for not
only being a part of a future,but helping to craft a future.
(08:29):
I didn't know you can do it as ajob, right?
I didn't know it was a thingthat people did.
I only thought it was a thingthat either people did
speculatively in fiction, or itwas a thing that, you know, you
got around and you talked,right?
I didn't realize it was a jobuntil Phantom Menace.
Like when I met George Lucas,George Lucas is probably one of
(08:55):
the most influential futuristsI've ever met and or known.
Even though he doesn'tnecessarily call himself a
futurist, but we owe a lot ofnot only ideas of the future,
but inventions of the future tohim pushing the envelope of what
(09:15):
could be done in his art form.
In order for him to make things,he had to invent the things that
could make those thingspossible.
And, you know, George and I usedto talk a lot during the
shooting.
And, you know, there were timeswhere I would like drive to work
with him.
And we would always be talkingabout 20 years from now, 50
(09:38):
years from now.
100 years from now.
Right.
So I would like come up with aquestion and he'd be like, he
would answer my question.
And he was like, 50 years fromnow, this is what's gonna be.
100 years from now is what'sgonna be.
200 years from now.
And like that's how he wouldalways talk.
That's how you would alwaysthink.
And so I kind of got addicted tothat thinking and being a part
(10:00):
of the team with GeorgeLucasfilm and ILM, like, ILM,
everybody thinks that.
You know, Industrial Lights andMagic, they're just like, this
is gonna be this now.
What is this gonna look like in50 years?
SPEAKER_01 (10:16):
It's literally magic at the end of the Nord.
I mean, it's amazing.
What did what did Arthur C.
Clarke say?
It was like, if you seesomething for sufficiently
farther in the future withoutthe understanding of the
technology, it'll look likemagic, right?
Yes, exactly.
And to kind of as you kind ofcontinue this journey, you're
right.
He is we'll call him one of thestealthy futurists because what
(10:38):
he invented, what most peopledon't consider, especially the
kids kids now, he created the hecreated the concept of the used
future.
Because everything before that,Logan's Run, uh, any any movie
you saw was all this beautiful,like an Apple store.
It was like clean lines, not aspeck of dirt, right?
(11:00):
No imperfections.
Whereas you watch a show likeAndor now and you just get this
grittiness of it, he, his visioncreated that because those have
that universe has been aroundfor so many years.
And it's like you're so asyou're doing this, I think about
you did stuff even before Lordof the Rings.
You broke through in terms ofperformance capture.
(11:22):
How has that influenced yourkind of the way you look at
technologies?
How is that because that's anthat's an interesting aspect to
future's work and the way it'sperformative.
Because a lot of your right isfiction, or a lot of it is
interpretation of things, butyou're bringing something in a
live format of the future,right?
(11:44):
How has that impacted you?
SPEAKER_03 (11:47):
Yeah.
So the thing that I really lovedabout performance capture was
the fact that I was the ghost inthe machine, right?
So when you first do performancecapture, and you know, they were
writing the performance capturesoftware as I was performing.
(12:07):
So I think what a lot of peoplehave to realize and understand
what we know as performancecapture today didn't exist.
That all of what we know asperformance capture today was
written with me as the physicalcode.
Right?
(12:28):
So all of the code that has beenwritten to capture um images and
or people, I'm in there.
Right.
Even though I didn't write thefit uh the the the you know the
lines of code.
The lines of code were writtenas an inspiration off of my
(12:54):
because for them, this is thisis the purest form of iteration,
right?
SPEAKER_01 (12:58):
You think about the way software's built, right?
You're constantly, I guess itsays breaking things because you
you're all constantly improvingthings.
I think about Cameron's work onAvatar.
Yeah, they invented newtechnologies for that, and
they're building things asthey're they're learning from
the performances of like, youknow, the different actors, and
(13:18):
they're they're rechangingbecause something's not coming
out.
But it's not so much you and I Iasked this question because it's
about the emerging technology.
I mean, how has that influencedyour perspective as a futurist
over these last 20 years,though?
Because you're living in theemerging technology.
You know, it's like you're notlike seeing it out there.
SPEAKER_03 (13:37):
Yeah.
Well, it's actually it made me,I'm not really afraid of it, to
be honest.
Okay.
It really made me embrace it alot more than a lot of people
who are skeptical because um Ican see the benefit for humanity
with it, right?
And this is why the arts, Ithink, is so important to the
(13:58):
future conversation, right?
I think when artists embrace thefuture, we are building things
for, you know, different reasonsthan a lot of the Silicon Valley
folks are building things,right?
We're not building it as abusiness, right?
We're building it as anexperience, and then it becomes
(14:21):
a business, right?
So it's mostly for the feelingof it.
And, you know, artists, we areuh a set of people who are
constantly talking about ourfeelings.
Like we're professional feelingpeople.
You know, as an actor, I like tocall myself an emotional
athlete, right?
Like my job as an actor is toemote, right?
(14:45):
When I'm asked, right?
Just like, you know, somebodysays to Steph Curry, we need a
three, he'll shoot the three.
Somebody says to me, I need youto cry on page 10, I'm crying on
page 10, right?
That's the training, right?
That's what we're trained for asemotional athletes.
We are trained to use ouremotions to convey the truth of
the moment, right?
(15:07):
So as artists, when we embracenew technology, that ethos is
the same, right?
George said to Rob Coleman andJohn Noel at ILM for my
performances Jar Jar, he said tothem, follow Ahmed.
Right?
(15:27):
He didn't say look at him andthen make some stuff up.
He was like, no, put your faithand trust in his artistic
ability, right?
And that's what made thecharacter come to life.
And he was the first person everto say that, right?
Which is how, you know, PeterJackson could say, thrust Sandy
(15:50):
Circus, right?
Which is how Cameron can say,thrust Zoe Soldana and Sam
Worthington, right?
Like he can say that because nowwe're talking about the art and
artists communicating, andthat's driving the innovation.
That's driving the technology,that's driving the future.
SPEAKER_01 (16:08):
It's interesting that you bring those different
actors and those charactersbecause they have you're the per
you are doing the performance,right?
They have to trust you, right?
Yeah.
You're in you're in a senseinterpreting the future,
interpreting what you're takingfrom that performance.
What is interesting to me aboutall three of those films, all
(16:31):
three of those types of motioncaptures, you, in a sense the
breakthrough work that you did,I think is only finally being
recognized a generation laterfor the groundbreaking work that
was done.
I think you all were so farahead of your time that people
(16:52):
just couldn't even understandit.
And I think that now also peoplethat are older, like they they
grew up with it, they recognizethat.
And I think you mentioned Andy,like, you know, he's someone I
would love to have aconversation with about when he
pulls emotion out of it, youknow, how does he find, how does
(17:13):
he find the character that'salready existing?
And I mean, those books havebeen around for decades, you
know, for a long time, right?
So there's a lot of way.
Like you create, you're creatingJar Jar as something who's
original, he's never been seenbefore, right?
Andy's got a different set ofstandards because he's got
people's minds know what theythink Gollum is.
(17:35):
They they have this mindset,right?
He has to one, find theperformance that is his at the
same time while really beingtrue to the books.
And he looks at Peter to dothat, right?
It's like, how do you find that?
That's an interest.
SPEAKER_03 (17:49):
It's an interesting thing.
It's really the collaboration,right?
It it's a collaboration betweenthe actor, the director, and the
actor, the the director, thetechnology, the technologists,
and the animators, right?
Really is this like symbioticcollaboration, right?
Which is why I don't usually saythat.
(18:12):
What's Jar Jar?
I usually say we were Jar Jarbecause I love it.
Jar Jar doesn't happen withoutRob Coleman, John Mill, George
Lucas, me.
Like there's at least fourpeople capturing the
performance, right?
And then there's an army ofanimators and visual effects
people, right?
SPEAKER_01 (18:31):
And there's millions of fans who really, really,
really want you to be a Sithapprentice.
I'm just saying, you know, I sawyour little lay.
That's hilarious.
But but I think that theperformance just just just just
just Josh.
So I think with the performanceof that, it kind of brings us to
like your work as a futurist andas an educator.
(18:54):
You know, you're at the USC filmschool.
So what you know, obviouslypeople are gonna have history,
they're gonna know you from thescreen, they're gonna, and
they're gonna take your class.
And now you as a futurist, whenyou bring that to your class and
the and the how to communicate,like how do you teach, how do
you bring in futures, how do youteach them, as I like to say, to
be futures fluent in the waythat they tell stories?
(19:16):
Like how do you how do you take,take me, take us through the
kind of journey like withstudents, like the way when you
when you teach at USC?
Like, what do you bring to that?
SPEAKER_03 (19:26):
Absolutely.
So I teach a class calleddramatic narrative design.
And it's a class that I created.
Dramatic narrative design is aterm that I created because I
realized that regardless of whatposition you play, when you're
making a drama, you are adesigner.
(19:48):
Right.
You're either designing theperformance as an actor, you're
designing the set as a setdesigner, you're designing the
lighting as a either acinematographer or a stage
lighting person.
So we're all in this design onthis design team together.
Right.
Um the drama that you'redesigning has a certain set of
parameters.
And the reason why I startedthinking this way is because
(20:10):
when I was in film school, Ifelt like by the time they got
to the actors, it was alreadytoo late.
SPEAKER_02 (20:18):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (20:18):
Got it.
Nobody was really looking atactors as part of the solution.
And I came up in a film worldwhere one of the best directors
of all time, his big note toeverybody on the team was trust
Ahmed's performance.
So I had the responsibility tobe a part of the team in
(20:41):
collaboration.
And I wasn't a tool that you putin front of a lens.
A lot of film schools, theyteach that the actors are kind
of just like this tool that youput in front of a lens, and you
got to get the best-looking oneor the one with the most, you
know, Instagram followers, andyou'll have a successful film,
successful play.
That's not the case.
(21:02):
It does not work like that.
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (21:04):
So you're saying as an instant Instagram
influencers, it becomes theirresume or their their real, if
you will.
SPEAKER_03 (21:12):
Well, yeah, I mean, what happens with the Instagrams
are, you know, they're butts andseats, right?
And if you're a marketingperson, you're gonna go for
that, right?
Right.
SPEAKER_02 (21:24):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (21:24):
It's true.
That's true.
unknown (21:27):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (21:27):
You and I have known each other a long time, but I
think at the core of you isyou're a storyteller, right?
You you in different ways thatyou tell those stories.
When you bring in with thestudents, is there anything else
you wanted to kind of, you know,we got is there anything you
wanted to kind of add on the theway you teach the classes?
Because I'd love to talk aboutthe students and do you bring
(21:49):
any gameplay in to it?
Always.
SPEAKER_03 (21:51):
Okay.
Especially like uh when I whenI'm talking to my students at
Stanford.
Is it at the D school or is it?
It's so funny.
I teach the same thing in bothplaces.
SPEAKER_01 (22:03):
Yeah.
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (22:04):
Um but different, they're different students.
That's a different population.
SPEAKER_01 (22:09):
Right, different students.
SPEAKER_03 (22:10):
Different population, different students.
With with my with my actingstudents of dramatic arts, when
I'm teaching them filmmaking, Iam constantly pushing them
towards the future becausethat's where the future of
acting is going to be.
There's going to be more of abenefit for actors as like these
(22:30):
hybrid technologists and hybridfuturists than there are as like
what it used to be, which waslike, let's wait by phone and
have somebody call us and thendo a part.
Like that's not going to be thecase very, very soon, right?
And it's kind of starting now.
So I am constantly expandingtheir idea of what, and this is
(22:51):
why I call it dramatic narrativedesign.
What are the foundationalbuilding blocks of designing a
dramatic narrative?
Because that you can take intothe future.
The building blocks for drama inorder to affect human beings has
not changed.
What has changed was how weconsume that drama.
(23:13):
But the emotions behind thedrama are the same.
The reasons why we love thingshas not changed.
It's been that way since wewere, you know, in the in the
tribal square in Africa or cavepaintings, right?
That's why those things stillaffect us.
When we see a cave painting,we're just like, oh my God, I
(23:35):
can't believe that early humansmade this, right?
And what we're watching is theirlives.
And we imagine, we feel a wayabout it.
We go, wow, that's that's whattheir day was like.
And it affects us, it touches usemotionally.
That's the foundation that I'mbuilding with my students.
(23:59):
How to identify how to beemotionally affected, and then
turn that into story that canthen live in the medium of
either today or the future.
We have a lot about the mediumof the past.
Right.
We get hyper fixated on the pastmediums.
(24:22):
Right.
Rather than realize that, andthis is again, this is George
Lucas.
Like George Lucas had to say toILM, no more miniatures, digital
now.
Right?
And they were scared.
When did he do that?
When did he do that?
Was that 99?
That was um Attack of theClones.
Attack of the Clones.
Attack of the Clones was thefirst digital major motion
(24:43):
picture.
And I remember when they wheeledthe cameras in and they wheeled
the monitors in.
And I remember the first A Dsaying, check the gate.
Oh, wait a minute, there is nogate, right?
Because there's no film stock.
Right.
Everything is digital.
So I watched everything changein real time, and I watched
(25:04):
everybody have a hard time withit.
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (25:08):
That's I can imagine the growth.
That is a systemic that'ssystemic.
SPEAKER_03 (25:13):
Yes.
But the technology didn't doanything to the storytelling.
And I think in general, this iswhat technology does.
We advanced technology to getthe creativity out.
One of the reasons why I thinkartificial intelligence and and
LLMs are doing so well now isbecause it takes away part of
(25:38):
the production process that wasvery expensive.
Right.
And now you have a digitalassistant that could help you
get the creativity out sooner.
More efficiently.
And you don't have to deal withthe friction and the stress of
(25:59):
trying to find the right person,hiring that person, getting the
budget for that person, thatperson not working out, firing
that person, fire, findinganother person.
You know what I'm saying?
Like these things take thesethings take time.
So embracing the technologies inorder to help you get more
creativity out, help you getmore stories out, help you feel
(26:20):
more drama is how I push mystudents.
SPEAKER_01 (26:25):
So with students, you know, and just teaching
those two schools, you alsoco-created Afro rhythms.
Yeah, with Dr.
Lonnie Brooks.
Right.
So Lonnie, you also, I know youpresented this at the Dubai
Feature Forum this past year.
So if anyone listening hadattended that, love to hear from
you because I heard it wasamazing.
Can you explain what that is andthe what are the what are the
(26:48):
desired outcomes with that game?
Like what is it, what is itprompt?
What's the what's the structure?
What's the construct?
What does it prompt?
And what are the outcomes?
SPEAKER_03 (26:56):
Yes.
So um Afrofuturism usually iscentered around art, either art
ideas, art works, artnarratives, right?
So the centering of art beingthe inspiration for thought
processes, technologies,algorithms is kind of the sweet
(27:18):
spot of Afro-futurism.
We draw a lot from futuresthinkings from either indigenous
cultures or African cultures,hence the Afro, because Africa
is probably some of the oldestcivilizations on the planet,
right?
Absolutely.
Because of a lot of erasure, wedon't know a lot about the
(27:41):
technological advances, advancesthat happened on the continent.
But, you know, during theIslamic Golden Age, all of those
things have carried over intotoday.
And we don't really talk aboutwhat where those things came
from.
Like we don't talk about peoplelike Ibn al-Haytham, who was
probably the first person tocreate the scientific method,
(28:04):
right?
Um, and that contribution hasbeen lost, which slows down our
future advancement.
If we get rid of all thepolitics and just focus on how
these things shape the future,we would be so far ahead, right?
So our Afrofuturism and Afrorhythms come from that ethos.
(28:27):
They got, we we're like, let'stake away the politics of this,
right?
Let's take away thesesupremacist ideas of this.
And let's imagine what it wouldbe like if we had all of that
information and created auniverse and a world around that
information that moves forwardinto the future, right?
(28:47):
So that's what Afro Rhythmsdoes.
Afro rhythms takes these ideasof what an Afro-futurist
inspired universe would looklike, right?
And we use these cards we calltension cards.
And the tension cards are whatwe may or may not have more or
less of in the future, right?
But the tension cards areusually subjective, right?
(29:11):
So we'll have a tension cardthat's that would say black
superheroes and James Baldwin,right?
And although you don't think ofthose things as future framing
universal things, what we do iswe talk, it's a very
communicative game.
It's about people, aboutcommunity.
(29:32):
So we talk and we define thoseterms.
Like what is James, what does aJames Baldwin future look like?
Right?
What does that feel like?
And depending on who's in theroom, right, we come up with
these ideas and we come up withthese, come up with these
criteria.
And then we place a planet inthe middle of that universe and
(29:52):
start building things on thatplanet.
And it really is to like freeyour mind of where you are now.
And I And I'm sure you'veencountered this in your futures
practice.
Like it's really hard to getpeople to imagine the future.
SPEAKER_01 (30:06):
It is.
There's actually a wholepsychology of it that, you know,
I there's a I took a in mymaster's program, I did a long
time ago, we did the psychologyof futures.
And there are people who areactually afraid of thinking of
the future.
There are people who are fearfulof it.
I never thought of it in thatway.
It really kind of opened my mindbecause the work that I did at
(30:26):
places like McKinsey is likepeople are very short-term
thinkers and they don't want topay.
They pay for that work, but theybut the idea of them, because
they're not even I'm not goingto be here like in, I don't care
about five or ten years.
Like what the marketing peoplegive me cool things to say for
the for the keynote, right?
But the fear of that it's it's ait's an anxiety, I call it an
(30:49):
anxiety wall because there's aparalysis of the present that
they're in.
And in order to get them out ofit, what we try and do is take
something that they're familiarwith, ask them how they handled
COVID or other things in theworld.
Then we try and get them toimagine a different outcome of
(31:09):
the past.
And then what I like this term,I love this term from Julian
Bleaker.
He's a design fiction, uh he'sone of the pioneers of design
fiction.
He calls it future archaeology.
So it's like you almost like outof body yourself to imagine
you're seeing the future andwhat you dig out of it.
So you're you're you're just canyou're not personalizing it to
like your future.
(31:31):
You're disconnecting yourself.
And if you can disconnectsomebody in the abstract, then
it frees them to think about thepossibility without the
consequence.
SPEAKER_03 (31:42):
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01 (31:43):
So I'm glad you brought that up because one of
the things I was thinking aboutwas when you did this at Dubai
Feature Forum and John Sweeneytold me you did just you guys
were just amazing.
Is like what did you find?
Because there's a diverse groupthat come to that conference.
SPEAKER_02 (31:59):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (32:00):
Did you find like a consistent thing that could you
find any surprises that came outof that?
Like what was the what surprisedyou and Lonnie the most?
I mean, I speak for him, butlike what surprised you both
from from that?
SPEAKER_03 (32:11):
Yeah, well, you know, Dubai was so interesting
because there were a lot offuturists there, but there was
there was a very like safe, itwas like everybody's like safe
future, right?
SPEAKER_01 (32:24):
Uh okay.
Nobody was really kind of like Ilike the way you said that safe
future.
SPEAKER_03 (32:28):
Yeah, it was right.
SPEAKER_01 (32:29):
It didn't really like the preferred future, the
safe, right.
SPEAKER_03 (32:33):
Okay.
Everybody was just like, let'sjust kind of keep it even and
not ruffle any feathers.
And Aphorhythms is really aboutyour radical imagination, right?
It's not really about your safeimagination.
And then sometimes safety can bereally kind of boring, you know
what I mean?
So there was a lot ofconversations that, you know,
(32:56):
made me go, okay, but it didn'tmake me go, yes, right?
Because I come from a futurespractice that is emotional,
right?
I want to say yes.
Like I want to be like that.
I I want that, like I got that.
(33:16):
Oh, I'm in.
You know what I'm saying?
And when you game when yougamify something, right, the
game should be kind of fun, youknow?
SPEAKER_01 (33:26):
Well, it's again the abstract.
You're taking somebody out of itso there's not this personal
connection, they're just playinga game.
Right.
They're doing an experience thatthe game has a finite outcome.
It's like this is the thing wedo.
SPEAKER_03 (33:38):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (33:39):
And it's not gonna be my job or this or that, but
it allows them to play.
SPEAKER_03 (33:42):
Yes.
SPEAKER_01 (33:43):
It allows them to explore, right?
SPEAKER_03 (33:45):
Yeah, and I play for a living, and most people don't.
That's true.
They they they don't realizewhat they're missing out on.
So when I, you know, do analphabeth game, I want everybody
to feel what it feels like toplay for a living, right?
(34:07):
Because it's it's extremelyfree, right?
It gets you back into that kindof child mind where you can just
be like, you know, make come upwith things like Sharknado.
You know what I'm saying?
Like it makes it makes of allthe things you picked out of the
universe.
Because it's like makes nosense.
(34:29):
Why, you know what I'm saying?
Like, who doesn't?
It's absurd.
It's absolutely absurd.
Right.
But Sharknado was a hit.
It was huge.
SPEAKER_01 (34:38):
I think it actually funded the sci-fi channel for a
good five, five years.
Absolutely, no doubt.
So look, yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (34:45):
One day I'll tell you the story of piranha cane,
because I actually pitched thisas a show.
It was like, yeah.
I was like, from the makers ofShark.
Piranhas in a in a hurricane.
Yep.
I was I was this close toselling that show.
I was somebody was trying to buyit and I was like, I can't do
it.
It just felt that's hilarious.
SPEAKER_01 (35:03):
But yeah, so Oh my gosh.
So we've got, I know we knowit's we're gonna do a part two.
And I I want what I'd love toask is a couple quick questions.
So just because we kind of kindof wrap this one up.
So what's the one thing aboutthe future that keeps you up at
night?
Like when you think about thefuture and future's
possibilities, like what keepswhat keeps you to be anywhere?
(35:24):
It doesn't have to be like thecurrent political state of the
world.
It's more of just what getswhat's on your mind a lot.
SPEAKER_03 (35:30):
What's on my mind a lot for the future right now is
the fact that, you know, thisidea of protopia is it's very
achievable.
It's very achievable, but weseem to be really invested in
dystopia.
And I and I honestly think Ihonestly think it's because
(35:51):
there aren't enough stories ofprotopia out there in the world.
Dystopia makes a lot of money.
And I think as as human beings,we're attracted to things that
scare the shit out of us.
That's just that's in us, right?
We spent how many thousands ofyears being prey to bigger
animals, right?
So those uh, you know, thoseancient neurons, as David
(36:13):
English says, Eagleman, DavidEagleman, as as those ancient
neurons exist.
Those things that fire up ourbrains to feel fear exist, and
it gives us a dopamine hit thatwe like, right?
Yeah.
But, you know, there's aMonsters Inc.
version of this where thedopamine hit of all of us living
(36:35):
with an enormous amount ofpotential and imagination is
just so much greater.
And I I I go to bed feelingreally good about a pro-topian
future.
And what keeps me up at night isthe lack of imagination of a lot
of people who don't allowthemselves to imagine that way.
(37:00):
And it hurts.
It hurts.
And that's what keeps us inthese conflicts because we
believe that a subjugation ideais a way to a future that is
egalitarian, but it really justpromotes more dystopia.
It really just gets gets morewar out there.
SPEAKER_01 (37:21):
To move through that, what what inspires you?
Who who are what you knowcontinues to inspire you to push
forward things?
SPEAKER_03 (37:29):
I mean I really like um the Gen Zers.
I'm I'm a big fan of them.
And it's not because I have oneonly, but you know, I was
recently at a biotech conferencecalled The Spirit of Asylomar
with one of my colleagues inStanford, Drew Endy, who is kind
(37:50):
of the godfather of syntheticbiology.
And he and I have a lot offuture conversations together
because when it comes to I thinkthis next century is the century
of biology, right?
The 20th century was like thephysics century, right?
I think this century is going tobe the century of biology.
SPEAKER_01 (38:11):
That's interesting.
That's good fodder for nexttime.
That is really gets a really Icall it the bionexus.
unknown (38:18):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (38:19):
We're gonna change what it means to be generations
is gonna change what it means tolive.
It's also we have the potentialto actually dare I say the word,
fragment, or the species ofhumanity, like in terms of you
know, who lives, who's a wholives purely and dies, who
(38:40):
changes con who changes theirbody, who changes themselves to
go on interstellar travel,right?
It's like all of that, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So you have you know been donesuch breakthrough things, like
for you, like you've got such anamazing career that you've
already accomplished, and youhave obviously more to do.
When you're looking back and,you know, sipping, you're in
(39:04):
Jamaica, and now you go to J andyou're just like thinking about
your life.
How do you want your work to beremembered?
Like the impact you've had,because you've had you've had
such great impact already.
SPEAKER_03 (39:16):
I want my work to be remembered as um constantly
transformational and changing.
Right?
Yep, yep.
I don't want anyone to repeatwhat I've done.
I've I always want to be thefoundation that helps move us
forward.
(39:36):
I'm not a very nostalgic person.
I don't really I don't reallywallow in nostalgia.
Um but I I do like where we wehave been, where we are, and
where we're going.
Afro rhythms, we say we have areverence for the past, an
awareness of the present, butthe future is creativity.
(39:58):
And if if I leave anything, um,I want to leave that as a way, a
reverence for the past, anawareness for the present.
But that future, that futurealways be a creative future.
And so we have to strive to staymore creative.
You know, what I say to a lot ofmy like young scientists at
(40:18):
Stanford who believe thatthey're inheriting a fucking
crazy ass world.
What I say to them is as long asyou can create, it's never too
late.
As long as you can create, it'snever too late.
SPEAKER_01 (40:33):
And that is the best way to wrap this show, this
episode together.
So it's great.
So thank you again for the timetoday.
And um we're gonna do this againsoon.
Yes.
Please, please.
Anything is there anythingpeople should like what what's
coming up for you where peopleshould check out, you know, find
you.
SPEAKER_03 (40:53):
Yeah.
Um, you know, the only social Ido now is Instagram.
So at best.
There's a whole bunch ofbeautiful things happening.
Afrorhythms.com.
Afro-rhythm futuresgroup.com.
Either one of those works.
Great.
(41:13):
Come check us out.
And yeah, really beautiful workthat's coming very soon.
Thank you, my friend.
Thanks.
Appreciate you, brother.
Appreciate you so much.
Thanks.
SPEAKER_00 (41:24):
Thanks for listening to the Think Forward Podcast.
You can find us on all the majorpodcast platforms and at
www.thinkforwardshow.com as wellas on YouTube under Think
Forward Show.
See you next time.
Coming up on today's show.
SPEAKER_03 (00:01):
With my with my acting students of dramatic
arts, when I'm teaching themfilmmaking, I am constantly
pushing them towards the futurebecause that's where the future
of acting is going to be.
There's going to be more of abenefit for actors as like these
hybrid technologists and hybridfuturists than there are as like
(00:24):
what it used to be, which waslike, let's wait by the phone
and have somebody call us andthen do a part.
Like that's not going to be thecase very, very soon, right?
And it's kind of starting now.
What are the foundationalbuilding blocks of designing a
dramatic narrative?
Because that you can take intothe future.
The building blocks for drama inorder to affect human beings has
(00:48):
not changed.
What has changed was how weconsume that drama.
SPEAKER_01 (00:54):
Hey everyone.
Welcome back to Think Forward.
I've got something reallyspecial for you today.
You know, one of the things Ilove most about the futures
community is how we all come tothis work from different paths.
Some of us are strategists, someof us are technologists, and
some are designers.
But every once in a while, youmeet someone whose journey is so
unique, so groundbreaking, thatit completely shifts how you
(01:17):
think about the future.
My guest today is Ahmed Bastard.
Now, you might know Ahmed as thepioneering performer behind
Charger Banks in Star Wars.
And yes, we definitely talkabout that groundbreaking work
in performance capturetechnology.
What you might not know is Ahmedis also a brilliant futurist.
An Afrofuturist.
He's an educator at the USC FilmSchool and a co-creator of an
(01:40):
incredible game calledAfro-Rhythms.
Ahmed and I met many years ago,and we have a strong friendship
as fellow futurists.
What strikes me about his workis how he brings this incredible
combination of performance,technology, and cultural
innovation to futures thinking.
He's not just imagining thefuture, he's literally
performing it into existence.
In our conversation, we divedeep into how artists approach
(02:03):
technology different thanSilicon Valley.
Why emotional intelligence iscrucial for futures work, and
how his experience growing up inthe Bronx during the birth of
hip-hop shaped his vision ofwhat's possible.
This is a conversation aboutcreativity.
It's about breaking boundariesand about why the future needs
more play and fewer safefutures.
Welcome to Alpha Rhythms,Storytelling, and Breaking
(02:25):
Through with Ahmed Best.
Alright.
Ahmed.
Welcome to the show.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (02:32):
Thank you for having me.
It's about time.
It's about time.
We've been circling for a longtime trying to get some time on
the books, but Yeah, man.
SPEAKER_01 (02:42):
It's so good to have you.
You know, you've had thisamazing journey, you know,
through performance, filmmaking,futures thinking.
Let's let's talk about, youknow, kind of your path because
you've had some realgroundbreaking things in your
life that you've experienced,like, but you've come into
futures being a futurist, aseveryone does, kind of
accidentally.
So what's your what's yourjourney?
(03:04):
What's been your background?
SPEAKER_03 (03:05):
Yeah, you know, the more I reflect on it, the more I
realize that I was kind ofalways destined to be in this
world.
Growing up where I grew up, um,you know, I grew up in the South
Bronx in New York City in the70s, 80s.
Um I was huge into comic books,and I was huge into computers,
(03:32):
right?
So the Commodore Pet was thefirst computer that I played
with in a science class.
My science teacher, Mr.
Goldberg, brought in thiscomputer that none of us inner
city kids ever saw before, andhe blew our mind.
And I wrote a program, my veryfirst program was in Basic, the
(03:54):
language basic.
Yes, 10, 10, start, 20, go to10.
Go to 10.
Totally.
Yeah.
That was it.
And I wrote like a simple stringprogram that was just like my
name across the screeninfinitely.
And I was hooked.
You know, I was really hookedinto what technologically the
(04:14):
future could be.
But even before that, you know,I was just a huge science
fiction fan.
My mother was a huge Star Trekfan.
So I would watch Star Trek allthe time, like the OG series.
Yeah.
It was Star Trek comic books andhip hop.
So growing up in the SouthBronx, hip hop music started on
my blog.
(04:35):
At the time, we didn't realizethat this was going to be a
phenomenon that was going tochange the world.
Right.
We just liked the music.
And, you know, being a littlekid across the street from my
building was this empty lotwhere, you know, was my
elementary school, and thenthere was this empty lot where
(04:55):
we would like play sports andthere was like basketball hoops
there.
But every summer, DJs would setup turntables in that park.
And people from all over theneighborhood would come in and
it would be parties on thatuntil the break of dawn, right?
Literally to the break of dawn.
My parents hated it.
(05:16):
You know what I'm saying?
Like my father was just like, Igotta go to work.
But, you know, I would behanging out at the window
watching this, this, this partyall night long.
So I didn't really know who wasthere until I got a little bit
older.
But what I was, what I learnedwas like all the DJs that
(05:36):
started hip-hop music were inthat park.
Cool Herc, who was pretty muchthe inventor of hip-hop,
Grandmaster Flash, Mellie Mel,the rapper.
All of these guys from the SouthBronx who invented hip-hop were
in that park in the summertimein the South Bronx in New York
City.
Grandmaster Flash specificallywas a big influence in hip-hop
(06:00):
music because he created theCrossfader, right?
For the DJ Crossfader.
He was an electrician.
And before Grandmaster Flash,it'd be like five turntables,
five amplifiers, right?
But Grandmaster Flash createdthe switch that went from one
set to another set.
So all now you need is two, anda party can go all night long
and no volume now.
(06:21):
Keep the volume the same.
Right.
Did he ever patent that?
Did he ever patent that?
And it's it's the mostheartbreaking story in hip-hop
music because he wanted to be aDJ, and making money as a DJ
meant spinning records all nightlong.
He didn't realize that thisinvention that he created was
the invention that allowedhip-hop to travel.
(06:43):
And he never patented the idea,which is just heartbreaking.
Heartbreaking because we owe alot, like EDM music, we owe
techno, we owe you drum andbass, all that, all kind of
DJ-driven music we owe toGrandmaster Flash.
Right?
And then companies, of course,millions off of the mixer, which
is now standard for every DJ.
(07:04):
Right.
But growing up in New York atthat time, it was such a pivotal
time and such a time ofinnovation.
And I was always like, I lovedit.
I loved the innovation.
I love being on the cuttingedge.
I love seeing what's next.
New York has kind of thisreputation about knowing what's
coming before it actuallyhappens.
(07:24):
And it was, it was kind ofSilicon Valley before Silicon
Valley because of Bell Labs inthe 60s.
SPEAKER_02 (07:30):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (07:31):
Absolutely.
Post-World War II, 50s, 60s,Billy Clouver, Robert
Rauschenberg, and they createdthese happenings all throughout
Greenwich Village.
Kind of art and scienceinnovation started in New York
City and it really permeatedthrough the entire city.
(07:51):
My grandmother used to live inFlushing, Queens.
And Flushing was the site of theWorld's Fair.
And all of the artifacts fromthe World's Fair are still
there.
SPEAKER_01 (08:02):
This is the Men in Black saucers.
Exactly.
For those of you seeing, yeah,that's Flushing.
SPEAKER_03 (08:06):
Yep.
I grew up with those.
So the, you know, the flyingsaucers for Men in Black and
Flushing, Green Master Flash,you know, Star Trek, Science
Fiction, all of that stuff mademe like really hunger for not
only being a part of a future,but helping to craft a future.
(08:29):
I didn't know you can do it as ajob, right?
I didn't know it was a thingthat people did.
I only thought it was a thingthat either people did
speculatively in fiction, or itwas a thing that, you know, you
got around and you talked,right?
I didn't realize it was a jobuntil Phantom Menace.
Like when I met George Lucas,George Lucas is probably one of
(08:55):
the most influential futuristsI've ever met and or known.
Even though he doesn'tnecessarily call himself a
futurist, but we owe a lot ofnot only ideas of the future,
but inventions of the future tohim pushing the envelope of what
(09:15):
could be done in his art form.
In order for him to make things,he had to invent the things that
could make those thingspossible.
And, you know, George and I usedto talk a lot during the
shooting.
And, you know, there were timeswhere I would like drive to work
with him.
And we would always be talkingabout 20 years from now, 50
(09:38):
years from now.
100 years from now.
Right.
So I would like come up with aquestion and he'd be like, he
would answer my question.
And he was like, 50 years fromnow, this is what's gonna be.
100 years from now is what'sgonna be.
200 years from now.
And like that's how he wouldalways talk.
That's how you would alwaysthink.
And so I kind of got addicted tothat thinking and being a part
(10:00):
of the team with GeorgeLucasfilm and ILM, like, ILM,
everybody thinks that.
You know, Industrial Lights andMagic, they're just like, this
is gonna be this now.
What is this gonna look like in50 years?
SPEAKER_01 (10:16):
It's literally magic at the end of the Nord.
I mean, it's amazing.
What did what did Arthur C.
Clarke say?
It was like, if you seesomething for sufficiently
farther in the future withoutthe understanding of the
technology, it'll look likemagic, right?
Yes, exactly.
And to kind of as you kind ofcontinue this journey, you're
right.
He is we'll call him one of thestealthy futurists because what
(10:38):
he invented, what most peopledon't consider, especially the
kids kids now, he created the hecreated the concept of the used
future.
Because everything before that,Logan's Run, uh, any any movie
you saw was all this beautiful,like an Apple store.
It was like clean lines, not aspeck of dirt, right?
(11:00):
No imperfections.
Whereas you watch a show likeAndor now and you just get this
grittiness of it, he, his visioncreated that because those have
that universe has been aroundfor so many years.
And it's like you're so asyou're doing this, I think about
you did stuff even before Lordof the Rings.
You broke through in terms ofperformance capture.
(11:22):
How has that influenced yourkind of the way you look at
technologies?
How is that because that's anthat's an interesting aspect to
future's work and the way it'sperformative.
Because a lot of your right isfiction, or a lot of it is
interpretation of things, butyou're bringing something in a
live format of the future,right?
(11:44):
How has that impacted you?
SPEAKER_03 (11:47):
Yeah.
So the thing that I really lovedabout performance capture was
the fact that I was the ghost inthe machine, right?
So when you first do performancecapture, and you know, they were
writing the performance capturesoftware as I was performing.
(12:07):
So I think what a lot of peoplehave to realize and understand
what we know as performancecapture today didn't exist.
That all of what we know asperformance capture today was
written with me as the physicalcode.
Right?
(12:28):
So all of the code that has beenwritten to capture um images and
or people, I'm in there.
Right.
Even though I didn't write thefit uh the the the you know the
lines of code.
The lines of code were writtenas an inspiration off of my
(12:54):
because for them, this is thisis the purest form of iteration,
right?
SPEAKER_01 (12:58):
You think about the way software's built, right?
You're constantly, I guess itsays breaking things because you
you're all constantly improvingthings.
I think about Cameron's work onAvatar.
Yeah, they invented newtechnologies for that, and
they're building things asthey're they're learning from
the performances of like, youknow, the different actors, and
(13:18):
they're they're rechangingbecause something's not coming
out.
But it's not so much you and I Iasked this question because it's
about the emerging technology.
I mean, how has that influencedyour perspective as a futurist
over these last 20 years,though?
Because you're living in theemerging technology.
You know, it's like you're notlike seeing it out there.
SPEAKER_03 (13:37):
Yeah.
Well, it's actually it made me,I'm not really afraid of it, to
be honest.
Okay.
It really made me embrace it alot more than a lot of people
who are skeptical because um Ican see the benefit for humanity
with it, right?
And this is why the arts, Ithink, is so important to the
(13:58):
future conversation, right?
I think when artists embrace thefuture, we are building things
for, you know, different reasonsthan a lot of the Silicon Valley
folks are building things,right?
We're not building it as abusiness, right?
We're building it as anexperience, and then it becomes
(14:21):
a business, right?
So it's mostly for the feelingof it.
And, you know, artists, we areuh a set of people who are
constantly talking about ourfeelings.
Like we're professional feelingpeople.
You know, as an actor, I like tocall myself an emotional
athlete, right?
Like my job as an actor is toemote, right?
(14:45):
When I'm asked, right?
Just like, you know, somebodysays to Steph Curry, we need a
three, he'll shoot the three.
Somebody says to me, I need youto cry on page 10, I'm crying on
page 10, right?
That's the training, right?
That's what we're trained for asemotional athletes.
We are trained to use ouremotions to convey the truth of
the moment, right?
(15:07):
So as artists, when we embracenew technology, that ethos is
the same, right?
George said to Rob Coleman andJohn Noel at ILM for my
performances Jar Jar, he said tothem, follow Ahmed.
Right?
(15:27):
He didn't say look at him andthen make some stuff up.
He was like, no, put your faithand trust in his artistic
ability, right?
And that's what made thecharacter come to life.
And he was the first person everto say that, right?
Which is how, you know, PeterJackson could say, thrust Sandy
(15:50):
Circus, right?
Which is how Cameron can say,thrust Zoe Soldana and Sam
Worthington, right?
Like he can say that because nowwe're talking about the art and
artists communicating, andthat's driving the innovation.
That's driving the technology,that's driving the future.
SPEAKER_01 (16:08):
It's interesting that you bring those different
actors and those charactersbecause they have you're the per
you are doing the performance,right?
They have to trust you, right?
Yeah.
You're in you're in a senseinterpreting the future,
interpreting what you're takingfrom that performance.
What is interesting to me aboutall three of those films, all
(16:31):
three of those types of motioncaptures, you, in a sense the
breakthrough work that you did,I think is only finally being
recognized a generation laterfor the groundbreaking work that
was done.
I think you all were so farahead of your time that people
(16:52):
just couldn't even understandit.
And I think that now also peoplethat are older, like they they
grew up with it, they recognizethat.
And I think you mentioned Andy,like, you know, he's someone I
would love to have aconversation with about when he
pulls emotion out of it, youknow, how does he find, how does
(17:13):
he find the character that'salready existing?
And I mean, those books havebeen around for decades, you
know, for a long time, right?
So there's a lot of way.
Like you create, you're creatingJar Jar as something who's
original, he's never been seenbefore, right?
Andy's got a different set ofstandards because he's got
people's minds know what theythink Gollum is.
(17:35):
They they have this mindset,right?
He has to one, find theperformance that is his at the
same time while really beingtrue to the books.
And he looks at Peter to dothat, right?
It's like, how do you find that?
That's an interest.
SPEAKER_03 (17:49):
It's an interesting thing.
It's really the collaboration,right?
It it's a collaboration betweenthe actor, the director, and the
actor, the the director, thetechnology, the technologists,
and the animators, right?
Really is this like symbioticcollaboration, right?
Which is why I don't usually saythat.
(18:12):
What's Jar Jar?
I usually say we were Jar Jarbecause I love it.
Jar Jar doesn't happen withoutRob Coleman, John Mill, George
Lucas, me.
Like there's at least fourpeople capturing the
performance, right?
And then there's an army ofanimators and visual effects
people, right?
SPEAKER_01 (18:31):
And there's millions of fans who really, really,
really want you to be a Sithapprentice.
I'm just saying, you know, I sawyour little lay.
That's hilarious.
But but I think that theperformance just just just just
just Josh.
So I think with the performanceof that, it kind of brings us to
like your work as a futurist andas an educator.
(18:54):
You know, you're at the USC filmschool.
So what you know, obviouslypeople are gonna have history,
they're gonna know you from thescreen, they're gonna, and
they're gonna take your class.
And now you as a futurist, whenyou bring that to your class and
the and the how to communicate,like how do you teach, how do
you bring in futures, how do youteach them, as I like to say, to
be futures fluent in the waythat they tell stories?
(19:16):
Like how do you how do you take,take me, take us through the
kind of journey like withstudents, like the way when you
when you teach at USC?
Like, what do you bring to that?
SPEAKER_03 (19:26):
Absolutely.
So I teach a class calleddramatic narrative design.
And it's a class that I created.
Dramatic narrative design is aterm that I created because I
realized that regardless of whatposition you play, when you're
making a drama, you are adesigner.
(19:48):
Right.
You're either designing theperformance as an actor, you're
designing the set as a setdesigner, you're designing the
lighting as a either acinematographer or a stage
lighting person.
So we're all in this design onthis design team together.
Right.
Um the drama that you'redesigning has a certain set of
parameters.
And the reason why I startedthinking this way is because
(20:10):
when I was in film school, Ifelt like by the time they got
to the actors, it was alreadytoo late.
SPEAKER_02 (20:18):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (20:18):
Got it.
Nobody was really looking atactors as part of the solution.
And I came up in a film worldwhere one of the best directors
of all time, his big note toeverybody on the team was trust
Ahmed's performance.
So I had the responsibility tobe a part of the team in
(20:41):
collaboration.
And I wasn't a tool that you putin front of a lens.
A lot of film schools, theyteach that the actors are kind
of just like this tool that youput in front of a lens, and you
got to get the best-looking oneor the one with the most, you
know, Instagram followers, andyou'll have a successful film,
successful play.
That's not the case.
(21:02):
It does not work like that.
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (21:04):
So you're saying as an instant Instagram
influencers, it becomes theirresume or their their real, if
you will.
SPEAKER_03 (21:12):
Well, yeah, I mean, what happens with the Instagrams
are, you know, they're butts andseats, right?
And if you're a marketingperson, you're gonna go for
that, right?
Right.
SPEAKER_02 (21:24):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (21:24):
It's true.
That's true.
unknown (21:27):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (21:27):
You and I have known each other a long time, but I
think at the core of you isyou're a storyteller, right?
You you in different ways thatyou tell those stories.
When you bring in with thestudents, is there anything else
you wanted to kind of, you know,we got is there anything you
wanted to kind of add on the theway you teach the classes?
Because I'd love to talk aboutthe students and do you bring
(21:49):
any gameplay in to it?
Always.
SPEAKER_03 (21:51):
Okay.
Especially like uh when I whenI'm talking to my students at
Stanford.
Is it at the D school or is it?
It's so funny.
I teach the same thing in bothplaces.
SPEAKER_01 (22:03):
Yeah.
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (22:04):
Um but different, they're different students.
That's a different population.
SPEAKER_01 (22:09):
Right, different students.
SPEAKER_03 (22:10):
Different population, different students.
With with my with my actingstudents of dramatic arts, when
I'm teaching them filmmaking, Iam constantly pushing them
towards the future becausethat's where the future of
acting is going to be.
There's going to be more of abenefit for actors as like these
(22:30):
hybrid technologists and hybridfuturists than there are as like
what it used to be, which waslike, let's wait by phone and
have somebody call us and thendo a part.
Like that's not going to be thecase very, very soon, right?
And it's kind of starting now.
So I am constantly expandingtheir idea of what, and this is
(22:51):
why I call it dramatic narrativedesign.
What are the foundationalbuilding blocks of designing a
dramatic narrative?
Because that you can take intothe future.
The building blocks for drama inorder to affect human beings has
not changed.
What has changed was how weconsume that drama.
(23:13):
But the emotions behind thedrama are the same.
The reasons why we love thingshas not changed.
It's been that way since wewere, you know, in the in the
tribal square in Africa or cavepaintings, right?
That's why those things stillaffect us.
When we see a cave painting,we're just like, oh my God, I
(23:35):
can't believe that early humansmade this, right?
And what we're watching is theirlives.
And we imagine, we feel a wayabout it.
We go, wow, that's that's whattheir day was like.
And it affects us, it touches usemotionally.
That's the foundation that I'mbuilding with my students.
(23:59):
How to identify how to beemotionally affected, and then
turn that into story that canthen live in the medium of
either today or the future.
We have a lot about the mediumof the past.
Right.
We get hyper fixated on the pastmediums.
(24:22):
Right.
Rather than realize that, andthis is again, this is George
Lucas.
Like George Lucas had to say toILM, no more miniatures, digital
now.
Right?
And they were scared.
When did he do that?
When did he do that?
Was that 99?
That was um Attack of theClones.
Attack of the Clones.
Attack of the Clones was thefirst digital major motion
(24:43):
picture.
And I remember when they wheeledthe cameras in and they wheeled
the monitors in.
And I remember the first A Dsaying, check the gate.
Oh, wait a minute, there is nogate, right?
Because there's no film stock.
Right.
Everything is digital.
So I watched everything changein real time, and I watched
(25:04):
everybody have a hard time withit.
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (25:08):
That's I can imagine the growth.
That is a systemic that'ssystemic.
SPEAKER_03 (25:13):
Yes.
But the technology didn't doanything to the storytelling.
And I think in general, this iswhat technology does.
We advanced technology to getthe creativity out.
One of the reasons why I thinkartificial intelligence and and
LLMs are doing so well now isbecause it takes away part of
(25:38):
the production process that wasvery expensive.
Right.
And now you have a digitalassistant that could help you
get the creativity out sooner.
More efficiently.
And you don't have to deal withthe friction and the stress of
(25:59):
trying to find the right person,hiring that person, getting the
budget for that person, thatperson not working out, firing
that person, fire, findinganother person.
You know what I'm saying?
Like these things take thesethings take time.
So embracing the technologies inorder to help you get more
creativity out, help you getmore stories out, help you feel
(26:20):
more drama is how I push mystudents.
SPEAKER_01 (26:25):
So with students, you know, and just teaching
those two schools, you alsoco-created Afro rhythms.
Yeah, with Dr.
Lonnie Brooks.
Right.
So Lonnie, you also, I know youpresented this at the Dubai
Feature Forum this past year.
So if anyone listening hadattended that, love to hear from
you because I heard it wasamazing.
Can you explain what that is andthe what are the what are the
(26:48):
desired outcomes with that game?
Like what is it, what is itprompt?
What's the what's the structure?
What's the construct?
What does it prompt?
And what are the outcomes?
SPEAKER_03 (26:56):
Yes.
So um Afrofuturism usually iscentered around art, either art
ideas, art works, artnarratives, right?
So the centering of art beingthe inspiration for thought
processes, technologies,algorithms is kind of the sweet
(27:18):
spot of Afro-futurism.
We draw a lot from futuresthinkings from either indigenous
cultures or African cultures,hence the Afro, because Africa
is probably some of the oldestcivilizations on the planet,
right?
Absolutely.
Because of a lot of erasure, wedon't know a lot about the
(27:41):
technological advances, advancesthat happened on the continent.
But, you know, during theIslamic Golden Age, all of those
things have carried over intotoday.
And we don't really talk aboutwhat where those things came
from.
Like we don't talk about peoplelike Ibn al-Haytham, who was
probably the first person tocreate the scientific method,
(28:04):
right?
Um, and that contribution hasbeen lost, which slows down our
future advancement.
If we get rid of all thepolitics and just focus on how
these things shape the future,we would be so far ahead, right?
So our Afrofuturism and Afrorhythms come from that ethos.
(28:27):
They got, we we're like, let'stake away the politics of this,
right?
Let's take away thesesupremacist ideas of this.
And let's imagine what it wouldbe like if we had all of that
information and created auniverse and a world around that
information that moves forwardinto the future, right?
(28:47):
So that's what Afro Rhythmsdoes.
Afro rhythms takes these ideasof what an Afro-futurist
inspired universe would looklike, right?
And we use these cards we calltension cards.
And the tension cards are whatwe may or may not have more or
less of in the future, right?
But the tension cards areusually subjective, right?
(29:11):
So we'll have a tension cardthat's that would say black
superheroes and James Baldwin,right?
And although you don't think ofthose things as future framing
universal things, what we do iswe talk, it's a very
communicative game.
It's about people, aboutcommunity.
(29:32):
So we talk and we define thoseterms.
Like what is James, what does aJames Baldwin future look like?
Right?
What does that feel like?
And depending on who's in theroom, right, we come up with
these ideas and we come up withthese, come up with these
criteria.
And then we place a planet inthe middle of that universe and
(29:52):
start building things on thatplanet.
And it really is to like freeyour mind of where you are now.
And I And I'm sure you'veencountered this in your futures
practice.
Like it's really hard to getpeople to imagine the future.
SPEAKER_01 (30:06):
It is.
There's actually a wholepsychology of it that, you know,
I there's a I took a in mymaster's program, I did a long
time ago, we did the psychologyof futures.
And there are people who areactually afraid of thinking of
the future.
There are people who are fearfulof it.
I never thought of it in thatway.
It really kind of opened my mindbecause the work that I did at
(30:26):
places like McKinsey is likepeople are very short-term
thinkers and they don't want topay.
They pay for that work, but theybut the idea of them, because
they're not even I'm not goingto be here like in, I don't care
about five or ten years.
Like what the marketing peoplegive me cool things to say for
the for the keynote, right?
But the fear of that it's it's ait's an anxiety, I call it an
(30:49):
anxiety wall because there's aparalysis of the present that
they're in.
And in order to get them out ofit, what we try and do is take
something that they're familiarwith, ask them how they handled
COVID or other things in theworld.
Then we try and get them toimagine a different outcome of
(31:09):
the past.
And then what I like this term,I love this term from Julian
Bleaker.
He's a design fiction, uh he'sone of the pioneers of design
fiction.
He calls it future archaeology.
So it's like you almost like outof body yourself to imagine
you're seeing the future andwhat you dig out of it.
So you're you're you're just canyou're not personalizing it to
like your future.
(31:31):
You're disconnecting yourself.
And if you can disconnectsomebody in the abstract, then
it frees them to think about thepossibility without the
consequence.
SPEAKER_03 (31:42):
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01 (31:43):
So I'm glad you brought that up because one of
the things I was thinking aboutwas when you did this at Dubai
Feature Forum and John Sweeneytold me you did just you guys
were just amazing.
Is like what did you find?
Because there's a diverse groupthat come to that conference.
SPEAKER_02 (31:59):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (32:00):
Did you find like a consistent thing that could you
find any surprises that came outof that?
Like what was the what surprisedyou and Lonnie the most?
I mean, I speak for him, butlike what surprised you both
from from that?
SPEAKER_03 (32:11):
Yeah, well, you know, Dubai was so interesting
because there were a lot offuturists there, but there was
there was a very like safe, itwas like everybody's like safe
future, right?
SPEAKER_01 (32:24):
Uh okay.
Nobody was really kind of like Ilike the way you said that safe
future.
SPEAKER_03 (32:28):
Yeah, it was right.
SPEAKER_01 (32:29):
It didn't really like the preferred future, the
safe, right.
SPEAKER_03 (32:33):
Okay.
Everybody was just like, let'sjust kind of keep it even and
not ruffle any feathers.
And Aphorhythms is really aboutyour radical imagination, right?
It's not really about your safeimagination.
And then sometimes safety can bereally kind of boring, you know
what I mean?
So there was a lot ofconversations that, you know,
(32:56):
made me go, okay, but it didn'tmake me go, yes, right?
Because I come from a futurespractice that is emotional,
right?
I want to say yes.
Like I want to be like that.
I I want that, like I got that.
(33:16):
Oh, I'm in.
You know what I'm saying?
And when you game when yougamify something, right, the
game should be kind of fun, youknow?
SPEAKER_01 (33:26):
Well, it's again the abstract.
You're taking somebody out of itso there's not this personal
connection, they're just playinga game.
Right.
They're doing an experience thatthe game has a finite outcome.
It's like this is the thing wedo.
SPEAKER_03 (33:38):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (33:39):
And it's not gonna be my job or this or that, but
it allows them to play.
SPEAKER_03 (33:42):
Yes.
SPEAKER_01 (33:43):
It allows them to explore, right?
SPEAKER_03 (33:45):
Yeah, and I play for a living, and most people don't.
That's true.
They they they don't realizewhat they're missing out on.
So when I, you know, do analphabeth game, I want everybody
to feel what it feels like toplay for a living, right?
(34:07):
Because it's it's extremelyfree, right?
It gets you back into that kindof child mind where you can just
be like, you know, make come upwith things like Sharknado.
You know what I'm saying?
Like it makes it makes of allthe things you picked out of the
universe.
Because it's like makes nosense.
(34:29):
Why, you know what I'm saying?
Like, who doesn't?
It's absurd.
It's absolutely absurd.
Right.
But Sharknado was a hit.
It was huge.
SPEAKER_01 (34:38):
I think it actually funded the sci-fi channel for a
good five, five years.
Absolutely, no doubt.
So look, yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (34:45):
One day I'll tell you the story of piranha cane,
because I actually pitched thisas a show.
It was like, yeah.
I was like, from the makers ofShark.
Piranhas in a in a hurricane.
Yep.
I was I was this close toselling that show.
I was somebody was trying to buyit and I was like, I can't do
it.
It just felt that's hilarious.
SPEAKER_01 (35:03):
But yeah, so Oh my gosh.
So we've got, I know we knowit's we're gonna do a part two.
And I I want what I'd love toask is a couple quick questions.
So just because we kind of kindof wrap this one up.
So what's the one thing aboutthe future that keeps you up at
night?
Like when you think about thefuture and future's
possibilities, like what keepswhat keeps you to be anywhere?
(35:24):
It doesn't have to be like thecurrent political state of the
world.
It's more of just what getswhat's on your mind a lot.
SPEAKER_03 (35:30):
What's on my mind a lot for the future right now is
the fact that, you know, thisidea of protopia is it's very
achievable.
It's very achievable, but weseem to be really invested in
dystopia.
And I and I honestly think Ihonestly think it's because
(35:51):
there aren't enough stories ofprotopia out there in the world.
Dystopia makes a lot of money.
And I think as as human beings,we're attracted to things that
scare the shit out of us.
That's just that's in us, right?
We spent how many thousands ofyears being prey to bigger
animals, right?
So those uh, you know, thoseancient neurons, as David
(36:13):
English says, Eagleman, DavidEagleman, as as those ancient
neurons exist.
Those things that fire up ourbrains to feel fear exist, and
it gives us a dopamine hit thatwe like, right?
Yeah.
But, you know, there's aMonsters Inc.
version of this where thedopamine hit of all of us living
(36:35):
with an enormous amount ofpotential and imagination is
just so much greater.
And I I I go to bed feelingreally good about a pro-topian
future.
And what keeps me up at night isthe lack of imagination of a lot
of people who don't allowthemselves to imagine that way.
(37:00):
And it hurts.
It hurts.
And that's what keeps us inthese conflicts because we
believe that a subjugation ideais a way to a future that is
egalitarian, but it really justpromotes more dystopia.
It really just gets gets morewar out there.
SPEAKER_01 (37:21):
To move through that, what what inspires you?
Who who are what you knowcontinues to inspire you to push
forward things?
SPEAKER_03 (37:29):
I mean I really like um the Gen Zers.
I'm I'm a big fan of them.
And it's not because I have oneonly, but you know, I was
recently at a biotech conferencecalled The Spirit of Asylomar
with one of my colleagues inStanford, Drew Endy, who is kind
(37:50):
of the godfather of syntheticbiology.
And he and I have a lot offuture conversations together
because when it comes to I thinkthis next century is the century
of biology, right?
The 20th century was like thephysics century, right?
I think this century is going tobe the century of biology.
SPEAKER_01 (38:11):
That's interesting.
That's good fodder for nexttime.
That is really gets a really Icall it the bionexus.
unknown (38:18):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (38:19):
We're gonna change what it means to be generations
is gonna change what it means tolive.
It's also we have the potentialto actually dare I say the word,
fragment, or the species ofhumanity, like in terms of you
know, who lives, who's a wholives purely and dies, who
(38:40):
changes con who changes theirbody, who changes themselves to
go on interstellar travel,right?
It's like all of that, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So you have you know been donesuch breakthrough things, like
for you, like you've got such anamazing career that you've
already accomplished, and youhave obviously more to do.
When you're looking back and,you know, sipping, you're in
(39:04):
Jamaica, and now you go to J andyou're just like thinking about
your life.
How do you want your work to beremembered?
Like the impact you've had,because you've had you've had
such great impact already.
SPEAKER_03 (39:16):
I want my work to be remembered as um constantly
transformational and changing.
Right?
Yep, yep.
I don't want anyone to repeatwhat I've done.
I've I always want to be thefoundation that helps move us
forward.
(39:36):
I'm not a very nostalgic person.
I don't really I don't reallywallow in nostalgia.
Um but I I do like where we wehave been, where we are, and
where we're going.
Afro rhythms, we say we have areverence for the past, an
awareness of the present, butthe future is creativity.
(39:58):
And if if I leave anything, um,I want to leave that as a way, a
reverence for the past, anawareness for the present.
But that future, that futurealways be a creative future.
And so we have to strive to staymore creative.
You know, what I say to a lot ofmy like young scientists at
(40:18):
Stanford who believe thatthey're inheriting a fucking
crazy ass world.
What I say to them is as long asyou can create, it's never too
late.
As long as you can create, it'snever too late.
SPEAKER_01 (40:33):
And that is the best way to wrap this show, this
episode together.
So it's great.
So thank you again for the timetoday.
And um we're gonna do this againsoon.
Yes.
Please, please.
Anything is there anythingpeople should like what what's
coming up for you where peopleshould check out, you know, find
you.
SPEAKER_03 (40:53):
Yeah.
Um, you know, the only social Ido now is Instagram.
So at best.
There's a whole bunch ofbeautiful things happening.
Afrorhythms.com.
Afro-rhythm futuresgroup.com.
Either one of those works.
Great.
(41:13):
Come check us out.
And yeah, really beautiful workthat's coming very soon.
Thank you, my friend.
Thanks.
Appreciate you, brother.
Appreciate you so much.
Thanks.
SPEAKER_00 (41:24):
Thanks for listening to the Think Forward Podcast.
You can find us on all the majorpodcast platforms and at
www.thinkforwardshow.com as wellas on YouTube under Think
Forward Show.
See you next time.
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