Across Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II, and Back to the Future Part III, the future isn't something that happens to you, it's something you can change. Released during the optimistic, nostalgia-driven culture of the 1980s, the trilogy combines small-town Americana with speculative futurism, creating a world where individual choices ripple across time. Through the adventures of Marty McFly and Doc Brown, the films transform time travel from a scientific curiosity into a deeply personal story about family, identity, and self-determination.

What It Got Right

• Individual choices, relationships, and life decisions often matter more than technology itself.
• Technology increasingly enhances convenience and personalization through smart devices, voice interaction, and automation.
• Cultural nostalgia has become a powerful force, with the past constantly revisited, remade, and reinterpreted.
• DeLorean's are just cool.

What It Missed

• Its vision of the future remained focused on consumer gadgets rather than broader social transformation. Complex challenges like climate change, political polarization, and global interconnectedness barely appear.
• Mr Fusion, flying cars and personal hoverboards have proven either too impractical or not yet possible.

Nearly forty years later, Back to the Future remains one of the most influential visions of tomorrow ever put on screen, and according to Greg the best movie ever filmed! It both accurately predicted the future and captured the belief that our future is shaped by the choices we make today.

Join McKay, Ian, and Greg as we explore the trilogy that convinced a generation that the future is never fully written.

Harley Earl didn’t just create the art and science of automotive design, he helped teach America what the future was supposed to look like. At General Motors, Earl transformed automobiles from mechanical products into emotional experiences, using sweeping forms, jet-age styling, and theatrical presentations to turn progress into spectacle. From tailfins inspired by fighter planes to the creation of the modern concept car, Earl believed the future had to capture the imagination before it could shape reality.

But his vision extended far beyond the showroom. Through the Parade of Progress, World’s Fair exhibits, and the creation of the General Motors Technical Center, Earl helped pioneer a new kind of corporate futurism, a future where companies didn’t just build products, but immersive visions of tomorrow.

What He Got Right

Harley accurately predicted, and shaped, the growing importance of design, branding, and desire in shaping consumer culture, and created the model year structure, one of the core engines of consumerism. Harley created a playbook for building brands and selling products that is followed by companies from Apple to Jaguar today.

What He Missed

Harley's future also assumed endless growth, constant consumption, and limitless resources. The sleek optimism he championed helped define postwar America and laid the groundwork for many of the excesses that followed.

Join McKay, Ian, and Greg as we explore the man who turned the future into something people could see, touch, and aspire to own.

Michael Crichton wasn't a dreamer of distant futures, rather he built worlds that felt only a few steps ahead of reality and filled with cautionary tales. Drawing from his medical training and deep interest in emerging technologies, Crichton explored what happens when powerful systems become too complex for the people operating them to fully understand. From the genetic chaos of Jurassic Park to the runaway automation of Westworld and the invisible dangers of The Andromeda Strain, his stories framed the future not as fantasy, but as consequence.

What He Got Right

Crichton accurately anticipated growing anxieties around biotechnology, artificial intelligence, corporate influence, and the instability of interconnected systems. His work captured a world where innovation moves faster than ethics and where complexity itself becomes a source of risk.

What He Missed

His futures often assumed technological systems would fail dramatically and catastrophically, overlooking how adaptation, regulation, and human collaboration frequently stabilize new technologies over time. His worlds are brilliant at exposing overconfidence, and less interested in the quieter ways societies learn to cope with change.

Join McKay, Ian, and Greg as we explore the prolific writer and director who turned scientific possibility into cultural cautionary tales, and made the future feel both thrilling and dangerously close.