The Robots Podcast Interviews Futurama's David X. Cohen

Good news everyone! In its latest episode, the Robots Podcast interviews David X. Cohen, the head writer and executive producer of Futurama.

In the year 3,000, robots are an integral part of society. Futurama's anti-hero is a robot called Bender, whom Wikipedia describes as a "foul-mouthed, heavy-drinking, cigar-smoking, kleptomaniacal, misanthropic, egocentric, ill-tempered robot." Other robots include Donbot, a criminal robot heading the robot mafia and Calculon, a hopelessly self-absorbed robot heading the robot supremacy society. There's even a "Robot Santa," which, due to a programming error, judges everyone to be naughty and goes on yearly Christmas rampage across Futurama's universe.

Futurama is foremost a comedy show, and its flawed robots are foremost theatrical characters. But Cohen and colleagues are science buffs (Cohen himself is a former Harvard and Berkeley graduate and even worked at the Harvard robotics lab for a while) and take joy and pride in providing the occasional "science relief" -- the "z-ray" on Bender's head shown in the picture to the left is one such example (more on that in our previous interview).

As becomes clear in his Robots Podcast interview, Cohen deeply cares about the way science and technology are portrayed in Futurama. It is a difficult balancing act, but an important one given the wild success of Futurama (now in its fifth season!) and the subtle but enormous influence of science fiction on robotics: I suspect sci-fi has had some influence on the career choice, goals and dreams of most roboticists I know, and it certainly does greatly affect public perception.

I, for one, love the influence and am a huge Futurama fan. Thanks for the interview, David X.!

Images: "Futurama" TM and (C) 2009 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.