Our Premier Episode will be airing at 23:00 PM, GMT, on 21 March 2021.
7 PM, EST, or 4 PM, PST.
You can hear a sample of our pilot now if you subscribe to the show:
iTunes RSS or Generic RSS. We are also on Mixcloud.
Subscribe today, and live… 20 Minutes Into The Future!
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36 years ago, Channel 4 in the UK took a chance on a very unusual 60 minute “telefilm,” that was to offer the backstory for their new “digital presenter,” who would be showing 13 weeks of music video programing later that Spring and Summer.
What began as an experiment in testing out “cyberpunk” on broadcast television, became “Max Headroom,” who ran rampant through our culture as he moved from mainframe to mainframe, infecting us with the same kind of digital buoyancy that we were all looking for in the late 80’s. First, Max took over in the UK, then moved on to Cinemax and then, finally, improbably, on ABC television, and from there, he went global. After three years of massive exposure in nearly every medium, and becoming one of the world’s most preeminent cola salesmen, Max suddenly vanished… and little has been seen of him since.
Almost 40 years later, it really does seem like Max’s files may have finally gone to the Purge Directory on our cultural network mainframe.
“20 Minutes Into the Future” is a podcast hosted by Heather & Austin, who plan to track and chart the history of this incredible character, and review some of the media that inspired it. The Pilot episode will air March 21st, and the second episode – where they discuss the BBC telefilm, will air exactly 36 Years after the original program aired. A fitting beginning for a show that wants to look at all the details, and figure out what they mean.
Heather is a radio veteran, who currently hosts The Sound of Tomorrow with her co-host, Ross Johnson. Heather is in the demographic for it, and yet, has never seen a lick of Max Headroom. All of this will be new, as she is introduced to this material for the first time.
Austin is a radio nerd and musician, and a big “Max Headroom” fan. Austin discovered the show in the Spring / Summer of 1987, and watched it relentlessly until the show disappeared from the airwaves in 1988. This experience has left him wanting more, and he has revisited this show several times since then. This time, Austin will be taking a more academic look at the series, using Heather’s first-time perspective to help dig deeper into the material’s social dynamics as they are presented.
Join them, every two weeks, as they discover the world of Max Headroom, and find that living 20 Minutes Into The Future is actually eerily like living today.
20 Minutes Into The Future 