Today we travel to a future where we can tattoo sensors right onto our skin.

What happens when you can get a live readout of everything from glucose to hormones to hydration levels built into a tattoo? What kind of privacy can you expect when your medical data is literally written on your skin? And what does any of this have to do with Inspector Gadget and René Descartes?

Guests:

• Ali K. Yetisen — researcher at Imperial College London
• Ace Tilton Ratcliff — disability activist, writer, co-founder of Harper’s Promise
• Eler de Grey — interdisciplinary artist & writer
• Quinn Grundy — researcher at the University of Toronto

Further Reading:

• Dermal Abyss
• Designing Smart Tattoos To Help Monitor Your Health
• Chaotic Moon Explores Biometric Tattoos For Medicine And The Military
• These tattoos only become visible when detecting cancer-linked disease
• Synthetic biology-based cellular biomedical tattoo for detection of hypercalcemia associated with cancer
• Clinical Trial Tests Tattoo Sensor as Needleless Glucose Monitor for Diabetes Patients
• Low-cost, μm-thick, tape-free electronic tattoo sensors with minimized motion and sweat artifacts
• What’s inside Motorola’s digital tattoo?
• BiostampRC
• How private is your mental health data? An empirical study of mental health app privacy policies and practice
• Data sharing practices of medicines related apps and the mobile ecosystem: traffic, content, and network analysis
• The body is not a machine
• On the body as machine
• The body made machine: On the history and applications of a metaphor
• The machine body metaphor: From science and technology to physical education and sport, in France (1825-1935)
• The Machine-Body as Contested Metaphor in Clinical Care

Actors:

• Maria — Cara Rose de Fabio
• Gaby — Eler de Grey
• Marquis — Rotimi Agbabiaka (check out his new solo show called Manifesto on June 21 at the African American Arts and Culture Complex as part of the National Queer Arts Festival.)
• John — Keith Houston (also check out his karaoke nights in San Francisco)

Flash Forward is produced by me, Rose Eveleth. The intro music is by Asura and the outtro music is by Hussalonia. The episode art is by Matt Lubchansky. Special thanks this episode to

Adria Otte and Molly Monihan at the Women’s Audio Mission, where all the intro scenes were recorded this season. Check out their work and mission at womensaudiomission.org.

If you want to suggest a future we should take on, send us a note on Twitter, Facebook or by email at info@flashforwardpod.com. We love hearing your ideas! And if you think you’ve spotted one of the little references I’ve hidden in the episode, email us there too. If you’re right, I’ll send you something cool.

And if you want to support the show, there are a few ways you can do that too! Head to www.flashforwardpod.com/support for more about how to give. But if that’s not in the cards for you, you can head to iTunes and leave us a nice review or just tell your friends about us. Those things really do help.

Flash Forward is a critically acclaimed podcast about the future.

In each episode, host Rose Eveleth takes on a possible (or not so possible) future scenario — everything from the existence of artificial wombs, to what would happen if space pirates dragged a second moon to Earth. What would the warranty on a sex robot look like? How would diplomacy work if we couldn’t lie? Could there ever be a black market for fecal transplants? (Complicated, it wouldn’t, and yes, respectively, in case you’re curious.) By combining audio drama and deep reporting, Flash Forward gives listeners an original and unique window into the future, how likely different scenarios might be, and how to prepare for what might come.