Forseeable: Emma’s predictions for the near future

(Part 1)

Jul 08, 2025

May 2025, Joshua Tree. Covered in mineral sunscreen. For the future.

I listen to a huge number of podcasts. They are the wallpaper of my would-be silent moments and a medium that I longed for when I was a kid, teen, and young adult. Brushing my teeth, shaving my legs — I’d think, I wish I was learning something right now.

My dream came true and now I learn constantly. That “dead time” has been transformed into a sonic wall of curated information, unique to my interests and audio tastes.

As a result:

I can now spout a huge volume of opinions without deep contextual understanding because I learned them in a hasty fashion, while clipping my toenails.

I have become a large language model trained on aggregated podcasts.

And it’s from this heuristic cesspool that I can now see the “white space” in the market. What experts typically won’t do is speculate beyond their domain. That’s respectable of them. But I don’t have that kind of self-restraint. And I’m always sort of blue-balled when an expert on a podcast declines to speak outside his/her/their area of expertise. I often think it would be nicest to hear what a smart person of integrity thinks about something they have no business speaking on.

Imagine my relief when I realized it. I am the uniquely unqualified “expert” I have been looking for! The wait is over! I am here for me.

Taking all I’ve heard about the world from podcasts (and audio books), here are my predictions about where the world is headed. I’ll cover some ideas with gusto and unearned confidence and some I’ll ignore completely. That reflects my Montessori approach: to learn a lot about some stuff and totally ignore other stuff. (Apologies if that’s not how Montessori works. I’ve never listened to their podcast.)

So here are my entirely speculative predictions, organized by topic. Unlike a celebrated academic on a major podcast, I have no tenured position to protect, no book to promote, nor field from which to be canceled!

Let’s check back in 40 years and see how I did. Please comment below with your predictions. Feel FREE to disagree with me. I would love to hear your take on this imaginative exercise, which we all share equal rights to.

Oh, one more word about the tone of what I have to say. This endeavor is forged in a state of imaginative neutrality. I’m not here to say what’s good or bad. I’m just here to look at patterns and guess what’s next. (Think of me as an advanced chatbot, but with skin! What we used to call, “a friend.”) So if my predictions seem overly idealistic at times or terribly dire and upsetting to you, know that my idea of what’s good or bad is intentionally placed on ice for the moment, for just long enough to allow me to clearheadedly wager these predictions.

It is my intention to offer my best guess and to save this piece, and your comments, as an artifact of this volatile moment, so that I can look back to see how right or how wrong we were:

The Future of Friendship

The next 7 years, beginning now, will see a renewal of the importance of community. As people become increasingly horrified by their alienation and social media addiction, along with the ick factor of AI-made content, the quest for face to face contact will shoot up. More new apps and startups and thought leader jargon will begin to reflect this. People will begin to invest more time and money in their friends. We can see this yearning in Japan, where people literally hire a stranger to exist with them, platonically, as they shop or dine. Friendship will soon see an infusion of care, ingenuity, and funds as loneliness surges and requires an antidote. I think loneliness will soon face less stigma and friendship-building will receive problem-solving attention, even from tech, which will be dystopian. But actual friendship will improve and get renewed recognition.

The Future of Love

AI relationships will flourish. Some kind of NFT-style patent will emerge so that people can create non-replicable lovers that are only theirs. These lovers will have agency and then cheat on their humans with other AIs. It’s going to be completely unhinged. I hope Luke and I stay married. Oh, I said I wasn’t going to offer emotional opinions.

AI will have dating profiles and truly workable sexual bodies in 30 years. (Bodies way sooner than that. They already do. But I’m saying 30 years from now for when they’re, like, Turing Test-level good bodies. ; ) If you know what I mean. I have no idea what I mean.)

AI will affect love and relationships in such an extremely revolutionary way that I’m sort of at an impasse to imagine more. Sex with real people is going to become increasingly rarified. Like a natural wine shop: something you can access, but with a little snobbery and intimidation in the way.

The Future of Geriatrics/Longevity

The conversation around lifespan vs healthspan will begin to permeate all in the wellness world and trickle into the medical world. People will become more intentional about whether they’re here for a good time or a long time. The ages of 75 to 125 will present big decisions on what makes a life meaningful. I believe that medically-assisted suicide will eventually enter the American mainstream. I think it will take 30 years and I think it will be fraught with abuse and legal challenges galore. But when it comes, along with far greater understanding of the genomic treatments for common diseases, it will give people much more agency in how they want to live and what limitations are acceptable to them. There will be a lot of decision fatigue in this space and counseling services and death doulas will spring up to meet this need for the wealthy as they plan their time and weigh their values.

The Future of Body Image

Plastic surgery and weight loss medication will continue to get better and more available. The pressure to use these products will increase so much that to not use them will easily identify you as some sort of radical activist. People will start to wear their politics ever more plainly in their skin, collagen, hair treatment, and body size. This vibe will peak in 15 years and then a reactionary shift of some kind will follow.

The pain in this space will continue to spread toward men and, though women will always bear more of it, the trend will intensify for men to face these issues more and more. Once weight loss is completely available to all (I’m placing this at 12 years from now), some will choose to honor their natural body type and will face discrimination, specifically, for doing so.

But at some point, as people come to empirically understand that thinness/fatness is not linked to willpower, new forms of body discrimination will spring up. Around 30 years from now, weight will no longer be a focus. But some other kind of pernicious status-chasing obsession will take its place. I think that will be related to bionic parts and hybrid bodies. It will be a mark of status and pride to have a body that is mingled with lab grown parts. Natural bodies, with their quick decay, will demarcate a lack of wealth and status. Weight will cease to be a focus, but something will neatly fold itself into that space.

The Future of Illness

A cultural reckoning is coming about what it means to be disabled and/or chronically ill. As AI takes more and more jobs, we will, as humanity, need to look more closely at the idea that work makes us worthy. The chronically ill and the able-bodied will have more in common when the veneer of “meaningful work” is removed.

The Future of Gender

I really believe that this will end with freedom for all gender expression. There is such a tidal wave here of gender diversity and, taking my motivational bias out as best I can, I see a world where gender becomes increasingly fluid in the next 20 years. Medication-wise — slightly separate issue. But in terms of cultural acceptance of gender diversity, I think the gravitational pull of it will see it through. There are many genders and it simply is that way. We know this because historically and in incredibly hostile environments, people have still expressed gender outside the binary. So it has its own momentum and is unstoppable. Gender diversity will persevere and I’d put the end of mainstream debate about this at 20 years. It will take longer than it would otherwise because of repressive religion and underfunded science. But I believe that, in Germany and the Netherlands, they will sort out a very clear and safe hormonal and surgical protocol and Americans will eventually get unobstructed data and reap the benefits. A lot of familial suffering and teen/young adult suicide will precede this. The wealth gap will be just enormous here because those who can travel will get better information and care. I do see the USA falling far behind in this space as other countries surge ahead.

The Future of Women’s Health

There is plenty of research (that I heard while doing dishes) about how the boomer wealth transfer will largely go to millennial women. This is how money ultimately moves because men die a little faster. (They don’t wear helmets! I mean, they could!) As women take on more wealth, I believe that investments/advancements in women’s health are about to explode, as well as a ton of startups capitalizing on the pathetic void in this market that’s been shaped by a lack of curiosity/an abundance of fear about women’s health and aided and abetted into stagnancy by women being tied up in servitude — unable to properly participate in the workforce or gain their own money due to the majorly undervalued care work they’ve been doing for children and elders, which, hour by hour, should have made them rich since it’s essential labor.

I believe that, beyond fertility, which already has plenty of money in it, huge, life-changing advancements are coming in hormone management (for menopause and postpartum, for PMS and every era of a woman’s life), UTI treatment and prevention, and a continuation of the amazing textile advancements in both period underwear and incontinence underwear. Childbirth itself will get a tune up amid all this and women will eventually no longer accept peeing themselves for decades after delivering vaginally. I would put these life-changing advancements and a full revolution in this industry into the next 5 to 20 years AND the lack of science funding in the US won’t derail it because it will be done for profit (Mark Cuban is already on it!) or done in Denmark.

If it’s gotta get done, the Danish will do it. They don’t tolerate nonsense.

The biggest shift here will be cultural. Women will be demanding much more from their doctors, and medical students, regardless of gender, will push for better information. Money will drive this shift, though. It’s not just altruism and activism. There’s enormous money to be made here and female investors are better poised to know where to place it. This is NOT investment advice. Unless you choose to take it.

There’s going to be a huge boom of people on hormone replacement therapy and the water supply will be flooded with hormones. No, I’m not citing my sources. The whole point of becoming a grownup is so you don’t have to make bibliographies anymore.

Stay tuned. Here’s the next crop that I’m marinating on:

Emma Tattenbaum-Fine's Substack

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