All language subtitles for Closer Than We Think (2017)

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- [Matt] Agriculture in
the world of tomorrow

will be so mechanized

that farms will actually
resemble factories.

Crops and livestock will be
raised on regular schedules

under uniform and carefully
controlled conditions.

Sensors, those automatic control devices

for today's wonder machines,

will be adapted to the requirements

of precision agriculture.

They will take the place of human judgment

in deciding and reacting
to soil conditions,

crop maturity, moisture levels,

weather forecasting,
feeding needs, et cetera.

Bendix researcher W.E. Kock

has reported that instruments to do this

already exist or will soon be developed.

The final part of the
job for tomorrow's farms

will involve the packaging
of the grown foodstuffs

and their shipment to market,

accomplished just as automatically
as the growing itself.

- [Interviewer] Do we have
something like that today?

- It's not as streamlined

as the monorail that's zooming overhead.

I think what's fascinating

about these past predictions of the future

is that examples like the factory farm

showed just how spot on some
of these predictions could be.

It's just not necessarily in
the form that we saw them in.

What kind of influence
can a comic strip have?

Well, it can have an outsized influence

when it seeps into the broader culture

of something like The Jetsons.

Again, what kind of
influence can a cartoon have?

Well, Tim Cook, just a few years ago,

held up his iPhone during
an interview and said,

"This is The Jetsons."

Well, iPhone and all
kinds of Apple products

are direct descendants of The Jetsons,

which is a direct descendant
of Closer Than We Think.

These futures are all
connected in such a way

that they're all aspirational things.

They're the way that we
want to see the world

and they have to exist before
we can make them that way.

(futuristic music)

- We had a huge loft space
down in Old City Philadelphia,

across from Ben Franklin's house.

And it was really wild and
the rent was really cheap

and I had a moving company.

And we had this big space.

Up front was our archive
and research library.

In the back, was the office
for the moving company.

And in the middle was all
this exhibition space.

At one point, doing salvage work for fun

at a place that was closing
down, a photographer,

a commercial photographer in
Philadelphia in Center City.

So instead of buying these individually,

I was pulling them all into one big pile.

And I kept grabbing boxes of negatives

and throwing them in the pile.

And he said, "What do you
want with those negatives?"

I said, "I don't know,
but I want to have them

"because you're gonna throw them out."

And he says, "Well, you
can't use them for anything."

Said, "It doesn't matter."

And they were all large
format negs, the 4x5 negs,

and there were thousands and thousands

and thousands of them in
endless mid-size boxes.

So I bought the whole
pile of things from him

and one of the kids who
was working for me there,

was not work for him and he
could see that that was coming.

And he needed some more work.

He didn't have any other job lined up.

He says, "Well, tell you what?

"How about if I organize
all those negatives

"that are in the back of
the space on the shelves?"

Well, a few days into it,

he came up and threw down
on this one light table

these very large format, more
8-1/2 x 11 size negatives.

He says, "I think you need to see these,"

and he put them down on the table.

And it was the work of Arthur Radebaugh.

(ethereal music)

I absolutely exploded with joy.

It was amazing work.

You could tell in an instant.

(ethereal music)

And the feeling, looking
across this big light table

and seeing all this futuristic imagery,

yesterday's vision of the future.

(ethereal music)

But all images I'd never seen before.

That's the thing.

In my world and in my
taste and in my collecting,

we had lots of that sort of thing,

but it would be science fiction covers

and pulp magazine covers
and that sort of thing.

But I'd never seen any of these.

And then there was one that was a clue,

just similar in style, to
a Motor cover that we had.

And I saw the signature that
said Radebaugh on the negative

and we went into the collection

and pulled out the Motor covers,

and sure enough, that was his work.

So we had somebody, we had somebody,

we had a name to work with.

The instant I saw them,

I decided there was
going to be an exhibit.

The instant they were on that table.

Originally, we had
planned to do an exhibit

just of the negs as they were, but larger.

That was a great idea,

but the practicality of it wasn't there

'cause they weren't as exciting

when they weren't popping somehow.

Something was flat.
And some of them, in our equipment,

were defaulting to certain pale colors,

and there was some excitement there.

So that sort of kicked the doors open

and we decided to colorize
some of them because we can

and because it was ours

and because there was no one to say no.

And we presented those in that way.

And we decided to go ahead

and put together an
exhibit and set a date.

At that point, one of
the local punk rock kids

who appeared on the scene
was a young Jared Rosenbaum.

He was not interested in
working for the moving company.

He was interested in
taking some of what we had

and doing something with it.

And he did.

He took the project and ran with it

and it was an awful lot of fun.

- Radebaugh came onto
the scene with a bang.

It was kind of amazing.

There he was, a really
young fellow in his 20s,

in the Depression,
basically, just scraping by,

making peanuts decorating candy
boxes and stuff like that.

And then somebody within
the company he's working for

sees his work and was like,
"I'm gonna be your agent,"

and comes back to
Radebaugh one day and says,

"I just sold one of your pieces of artwork

"to Motor Magazine for $450."

And if you think about 1935 and $450,

I went back and checked
that 'cause I was like,

"No, that number can't be
right, that is so much money."

Before that, he was
making like $25 a week.

- We started to put together a website

about Arthur Radebaugh,
the futurist illustrator.

We showed the negatives that we had.

And because I'm such an insane

and voracious paper collector,

it suddenly gave me a new
focus to attack all the time.

I mean, I was in get mode.

And so, if he was on one Motor cover,

then we looked at every Motor cover.

If we found an advertisement
for a particular company,

then we found all the
ads from that company.

And so we were able to
build a visual body of work.

- When the United States got involved

in World War II in the 1940s,

he went and served in the Army.

- In the Pentagon,
apparently, designing weaponry

and designing ordinance,
designing innovative but practical

implements that the Army could use.

There's some information about things

that he was involved in.

He did blacklight panels
for inside of vehicles

so that the driver could
see their instrument panels,

but they couldn't be seen by the enemy.

He designed, apparently, the
shapes of some Army vehicles,

like a personnel carrier or a tank.

He may have done all kinds of stuff there,

but it's been kind of
opaque to us to find.

I think we can only guess

that he was prolifically
churning out imaginations,

but how much of that was taken seriously

and actually implemented?

- After World War II,
Radebaugh went back to Michigan

and worked for everyone from Coca-Cola

to the big three automakers in Detroit.

- [Rachel] He does illustrations
for William Stout's Scarab.

He does ad work for
Studebaker, Bendix, Nash,

United Airlines, Hastings
Piston Rings, Dodge,

he does a menu cover
for Burlington Zephyr,

which is a train line, and Motor Magazine.

- [Jared] I want to
call those images fiery.

They are so colorful and
they're so abstracted

and they're so just like
levitating in space.

- [Rachel] Or it's on a drawing
board and out the window.

You can see the city looks
like it's two miles below

the artist's studio.

- And then you move into the post-war era

and maybe people had just had had

so much grimness during the war

that they just wanted to
be liberated from it all.

But the new sentiment and
feeling in advertising,

it's just like happy, smiling,

everybody's got this big grin.

He definitely doesn't have that

sort of like magnificent grimness

of his early Motor Magazine covers.

And then especially when he works his way

into syndicated, like
Closer Than We Think,

some of the column work,

it becomes a lot more like a Sunday funny,

so that's partially a
product of that's what it is,

but it also, I think,
really reflects the time,

which was a lot more kind of like

the future is going to be happy

and everybody's going
to be really affluent

and we're all gonna live

in these big, sterile bubble houses

and everybody is gonna be
very white and very smiling

and very gleaming at all times.

And you don't necessarily get that feeling

from his work in the '30s.

Sure, like the lines
are really aerodynamic,

but just also this art deco quality to it.

And there's just this
intensity to the colors

that I think really changes,
the palette changes,

as you move through his career.

- He was highly successful in the 1930s,

but the 1930s has a different attitude

than the post-war years.

1930s is about progress.

Look how far we've actually come.

And that was a very, very
popular promoted idea

through the 1930s.

So there's certainly an idea of

well, we've come this
far, how far can we go?

But it wasn't quite the same
as what happened after the war.

During World War II, you
had so many people become

completely in touch with
technology and science

that they had never experienced before.

You have women working in factories

doing blueprint drawings and machine shop

and welding and riveting.

You have men who were in the military

who were experiencing radar

and they're being handed
extremely advanced airplanes

and they're learning about jet
technology and other things.

So the post-war America was
really in tune with technology

and science like they'd never been before.

Men and women.

Radebaugh, although he had
clearly had a bent for the future

before the war, you could see
he's doing futuristic cities

for some of his ads.

When he became syndicated,
it really comes together.

There's no doubt, it really comes together

with Can You Imagine, which
was just the perfect timing

in the 1940s right after the war

because people were so
in love with this idea of

technological utopia
more than ever before.

- He found an avenue,

his cartoon strip, Can You Imagine,

to have a continuous career.

Because what happened in the marketplace

was, once you were not
marketable to the studios,

you were let go or you
were given less work,

and then you were more or less phased out.

This allowed him some type
of direction in his career.

- It's clearly in the
style of the late 1940s.

It's almost stoic.

It has that rather dry,
but very aspirational

concept vehicle look.

Closer Than We Think is much more playful.

Obviously, Closer Than We
Think as a Sunday funny strip,

it's a little bit more tongue-in-cheek.

It's a little bit more fun.

Whereas Can You Imagine is
a little more buttoned down.

It's got its bow tie
on and its hair combed.

It's got that look of something

that's a little more antiseptic

and it's ready for primetime,

even though it's still a futuristic,

utopian vision of the future.

And I think that that's
coming out of the time period.

It's coming out of World War II.

And it doesn't mean
that it's not still fun,

but once we get to the
late 1950s and early 1960s,

Radebaugh, where he's
doing Closer Than We Think

and you have these just
amazing streamlined cars,

it's just a lot more playful.

It's not quite as rigid
and almost militaristic.

- The Closer Than We Think work,

we found a couple of pieces of it.

But fairly early into our process,

we were contacted by someone

who had managed to acquire
somebody else's scrapbooks

of Radebaugh things.

Kids used to cut things out all the time

and stick them into scrapbooks.

So why not Radebaugh?

You know, some kid was
doing that every week

about the future.

And so this fellow was
able to acquire that

and then suddenly had a collection,

which he then continued to build on.

So he got in touch with us

and was able to provide those for us

and that was a real eye opener as well.

Imagine if your career is illustration

in a world that couldn't get enough

really good illustration for magazines,

for covers, for ads,

and to suddenly have that all disappear,

because we were into
photography, all of a sudden.

It happened practically overnight.

Before, photography in
advertising was just not done.

It seemed third rate.

And then, all of a
sudden, it was accepted.

And it was just like having the whole rug

pulled out from underneath him.

So he then reinvented himself
as this Sunday funnies guy.

- The first edition of
Closer Than We Think

ran in January 1958.

No coincidence that Sputnik
launched in October of 1957.

The first manmade artificial satellite,

launched by the Soviet Union.

The first strip was actually
about manmade satellites.

I mean, that's what fascinates me about it

is that Closer Than We Think was pristine,

artifact of the Cold War, in that respect.

It was a direct response
by the United States

to get kids interested in
science through the funny pages.

We kind of forget that the Sunday funnies

was this popular medium,
especially in the 1950s,

that everyone read.

And Closer Than We Think,
as this techno-utopian

vision of tomorrow, gives kids this

not only educational
futurism, if you will,

but this sort of rally around
what the future could be like

against the Soviets,

if it's satellites or
even streamlined cars.

It's a very Americanized vision

of what the future is gonna look like.

- It was an exuberant expectation

of the future that was gonna come true

like all these drawings
were showing people.

We were gonna ride around
in self-driving cars.

Now it's coming true.

We were gonna ride around in cars

that were sort of big glass
canopy teardrops and things.

And the exuberance of the
technological expectation

was really quite wonderful.

- There was kind of a
technological optimism

based on the fact that
we had just figured out

how to crack the atom.

There was an idea that
we were gonna be able to

make technological advances,

which even started to
appear in industrial design.

Cars started trying to look futuristic.

Toasters started trying
to look futuristic.

And Radebaugh, in his drawing career,

was part of that movement.

There were many other people

drawing futuristic looking cars.

His were among the
better examples of that.

So he was used to the
idea of thinking about

where is design gonna go,
where is technology gonna go.

And when he had the idea
of Closer Than We Think,

he somehow knew enough
about industrial design

and automotive design and technology

to be able to make some great guesses

about where things might be heading

and what might be possible in the future

if somebody took the time
to actually build it.

- A lot of Radebaugh's stuff came true

because he was really

working from this very
practical starting point.

And so you could really go a
couple decades into the future

or maybe sometimes, more or less,

and see that he was tapped
into actual product development

and he was thinking through, sometimes,

really big picture things and
sometimes really small things,

like the TV watch.

There was a trajectory there

and it was just kind of
based around this real thing.

- It's very hard to predict the future.

If you look at the history of predictions,

it isn't very encouraging.

A year or two before the Wright Brothers,

most people were saying
flight's impossible.

Nobody predicted the internet.

Self-driving cars now seem
like they're inevitable.

Again, if you go back just 10 years,

anybody who knew anything about this

was saying that computers
will never be able

to navigate streets like this.

So it's hard to make specific predictions,

but if you look at long-term trends,

what you can see is that,
over decades or centuries,

you can predict that human lifespans

will continue to get longer.

You can predict that economic growth

will keep pulling people out of poverty.

You can predict that
everyone on the planet

will be connected to the internet,

which means that all
those billions of brains

that, so far, haven't
been able to contribute

to human culture will be able to.

Those kinds of predictions, you can make

because you're looking at
the long-term and trends,

but making a specific prediction

about a specific piece of
technology is really hard,

which is why what Radebaugh has done,

or what Radebaugh did was so amazing

and kind of unbelievable
when you take a look at it.

- Doctors are looking ahead to the time

when manmade substitutes will replace

many sections of the human body.

And in tomorrow's world,
hospitals may stock

many synthetic human parts,

just as they have blood
and bone banks today.

Tiny valves now used in space mechanisms

will strengthen defective hearts.

Plastic meshes are being tested

to reinforce weak chest
and abdominal walls.

Other plastics are
undergoing experimentation

as trellises along which
arteries will rebuild themselves.

Hospitals of the future
may well be warehouses

of spare human parts
as well as headquarters

for installing them.

Fascinating.

To be honest, it's mostly true.

It's not true yet, but the root towards it

is uncannily accurately described here.

The idea of having organ banks,

places where organs are stored

for transplantation into people,

is something that doesn't exist yet,

but people are certainly working on it,

and in fact, a company that
we spat out just last year,

that company is actually
developing exactly that thing

based on a technological
breakthrough that they made

that is going to make
it much more possible

to cryo-preserve organs,

to take an organ from a donor

and to reduce it to, let's say
liquid nitrogen temperatures,

in a manner that does not
damage it and, therefore,

that allows it to be warmed up again later

and given to someone.

That's a technology that we absolutely,

vitally need in organ transplantation

because, at the moment, if
you can't freeze an organ

when you take it out of somebody,

it only lasts for a few
hours, and that's not enough.

If we talk about the next paragraph,

valves that might
strengthen defective hearts

and the meshes to reinforce things,

these things are, indeed,
already happening.

The whole field of tissue engineering,

which kind of started to emerge

maybe 30 years after this was written

and which had a bunch of
false starts, actually,

that field is now really burgeoning

with a number of very promising

and successful companies in that space.

And again, these things
are really moving forward.

Of course, things have changed

with different materials that
are being used keep improving.

The ways in which we create these valves

and these trellises, as this
thing calls them, have changed,

but the general concept
is pretty much exactly

what this paragraph describes.

It's uncanny.

- We had this whole web of
people who had known him,

who are now old, but had known
them when they were young

working in this illustration
house in Detroit.

- New Center Studios
arises out of this sort of

post-war surge in the
automobile industry in Detroit

where, before the war,
maybe all the companies

would put out essentially one automobile

and then it'd be like the high end

and low end version of that.

After the war, they try to
target all the available markets

and they make very different
marks within the company,

its different brands,
different automobiles come out.

And concomitantly, there's
this surge in advertising

and brochures to get at all
these different markets of

everybody should have an
automobile, and ideally,

everybody would be buying
a new one every two years.

And so the commercial art world in Detroit

just kind of exploded.

The affluence of something
like New Center Studios

was really remarkable.

- Then by a fortunate break,

there was an opening at New Center Studios

in the Fisher Building
right at the end of the war.

New Center Studios, at that
time, with the volume of artwork

that was coming into the Detroit area

from the automotive
companies that was needed,

brought in a lot of illustrators
from all over the country.

- Detroit automotive advertising
is an ever-revolving cycle.

It's a very competitive
market, and each year,

the community has to come up
with a new look or new style

to present to the client
to freshen up the product.

- Now, basically, it all
started with the artwork.

Photography had not really

come into the advertising picture.

The talent they had
there was unbelievable.

Illustrators, car painters,
figure people, re-touchers.

Even had three or four
lettering men alone,

just lettering headlines.

Things weren't done in typesetting form

in those days either.

Maybe they wanted a certain typeface

to be reflected in the ads

so they kept, imagine
that, all hand lettering.

Gradually, an artist that I
worked with, Art Radebaugh,

we kind of became good friends.

I really enjoyed Art.

He was really a great guy to
communicate with and talk to.

He'd come and talk to me occasionally.

Our photographic, our little department

was at the back of the studio

and he would come by every day and stop.

And when he got talking,
when you got to know him...

I don't know why.

He liked me.

I went out one time with him

to do a series of pictures
of automobile dealerships

that he was going to illustrate.

And that's when we really got
into talking and conversing.

He was a quiet individual,

kept to himself,

just a real gentleman, in my opinion.

I really liked Art.

Time Magazine was up above the
studio in the Fisher Building

and they had heard about Art

because, at that time, he
was just getting into this

Can You Imagine series.

They wanted to do something unique,

so Art said, "Look at
what I'd like to do then,"

and they came down and approached him.

"We would like to do something
in blacklight possibly, Art."

So Art came up with the idea,

I want to do a nude in blacklight.

I want to paint the nude fluorescent

and he had a vision of
this whole thing set up.

So in the set-up of the situation,

and this model was on a tiered box,

he wanted to do a profile of her

and he was gonna have his white ascot.

So in the dark, he would be glowing,

background would be glowing,

and the girl, obviously the background,

there she is glowing in the dark.

And when it came to futuristic drawings

that he would get into, I never
saw a reference around him.

A lot of artists would have reference

if they're illustrating say a figure

or a background or what have you.

He did not do that.

I never saw that at all.

Everything he did was in his head.

- It became clear that...

They had a whole stable
of really terrific artists

doing illustration work for advertising.

And they would send out examples

of various artists' work
to potential clients,

and they would include
Radebaugh's work in there

because Radebaugh was
kooky and interesting.

But he didn't get a lot of work.

They loved his work and so
they would hire somebody

that was in association with him

that was part of that same club,

but that was a little more down to earth

that they could sell their toothpaste

or hubcaps or whatever it may be.

- I think when we interviewed people,

what we learned was the way
any professional art studio

would have operated at that time.

It was a fast-paced life.

People would be pulling all-nighters

to get an ad collection done.

There's a lot of drinking and smoking.

Lots of people working on
any particular ad campaign,

and not just on a particular ad campaign,

but also on single pieces of artwork.

Where Radebaugh's name might
be on the piece of artwork,

there were other men who
working on the piece as well,

people who might have
penciled the automobile in

to make sure that, in fact,

it did look like a Dodge Luxury Liner

from that particular year.

- As an illustrator, you
bring certain things to it.

And my advertising illustration background

and my personality as a painter

wants things to be positive

and not cold and foreboding,

but yet warm and inviting.

A futurist illustrator, they have an idea

about the way something should be

and then they might illustrate that,

that aspect of looking into the future.

I try to bring as much of that,

personally, out of myself as I can,

but yet, I am still
restricted by another person's

vision of the future, which
I'm illustrating for them.

You have to be very empathetic
to the cause and the mission.

I've always been interested in space,

hardware, planes, spaceships.

When I was a little boy,
I watched Flash Gordon

every afternoon on television

and thought that was
the most fantastic thing

that you could do is fly around on a ship

from planet to planet.

So I always had an interest in that

and I always try to keep current
as possible and whenever,

something to read or follow.

- If you're doing a straight
future vision of something,

it has to be consistent
with why it looks that way

in that world.

It's very philosophical in a strange way.

And when you're doing a
job for a commercial client

that wants you to create a
future look for whatever reason,

then you invent with this tailored look

that fits their agency.

Sounds sort of...

Well, it is.
It's a business.

So I create my scenario

and illustrate why it would be that way

and go ahead and make it all up.

But within the industrial
design background,

I can make it all up

and it looks like it
really should be that way.

- I would ask for certain information

or they would provide pretty much

everything I needed visually.

And sometimes, the authors of
the project would be there,

and then I'd go away and produce a drawing

and bring the preliminary sketch back,

which is a line drawing,
we're showing the apparatus

or subject pretty carefully.

And then I'd return once I got the okay

with some particular comments,
which I would adjust.

Then I'd come back, get a second approval,

then take it back and create
the full color illustration

and deliver it.

- Radebaugh was a futurist,
but not working alone.

And things that he was tapping into

were already somehow
being used in the design

of other things that we
were already collecting.

So it fit in with that

and we would constantly
reference back and forth

between other things,
and then sometimes find

another piece of Radebaugh's work

in a file full of things
that had to do with toasters

or race cars or something.

There would be something that we had saved

and slipped in there and it
ended up being Radebaugh's work.

We learned he was called an imagineer

because we would read
it in various places.

It was presented as a
sort of official feeling,

like he was not just an imagineer,

but he was the Imagineer.

It was a word that we
weren't familiar with,

that was assigned to him
because he'd earned it.

It just had that feel.

I've never seen it
anywhere before or since

except, some years later,

when he wasn't using it anymore

and it was suddenly owned,

and I'm sure copyrighted, by
Disney and their Imagineers.

- It seems to have originated
with Alcoa Aluminum in 1943.

It seems to have come a very
common term at that point

where they were advertising
that you should do imagineering

to enhance your business.

And then other people started using it.

So a good chance that Radebaugh
didn't create the term

and just absconded with it, you might say,

and made it his own.

And then it becomes a term

that is applied to numerous people

like Bill Stout, who did the
Stout's Scarab automobile

and did the Ford Trimotor.

People started using it to
identify him, Imagineer Stout.

Imagineer, this guy, he's an imagineer.

It was starting to become
a term in the late '40s,

mid- to late '40s, to describe people

who were kind of visionary.

I could easily see Radebaugh
just making it his own,

taking it and embracing
it and making it his term.

With the national distribution
that he no doubt had

with his strips like Can You
Imagine, then it became his.

As a historian who studies
a lot of designers,

I often find that they take credit

for things they didn't do,

they have big egos, they
inflate their importance,

knowingly create mythologies
that are not true

for various different purposes.

Radebaugh says he created
the Ferris wheel parking lot

and that was actually something done

by Westinghouse in the 1920s,

probably before he even
started as an illustrator,

as well as it was at the 1933 World's Fair

and they were all throughout Chicago.

Why he took credit for that,

did he think he could get away with it

because it had been so long,

or did he actually think
that he invented it?

I don't think he actually invented it.

I'm convinced that he actually

knew he could get away with it.

- I get the impression
that, when people see this,

they see hope and I see fear.

It's the ways that we
might be able to survive

a suddenly perilous world.

But it's all an escape plan.

None of it, to me, is
particularly positive.

People are living in bubbles

or under the water

or in space

because the world has been destroyed.

To me, it's frightening.

(ominous music)

A small amount of it is dealing
with things that we would

really need help with in
the world at the time.

I think it's really beautiful

and there are aspects
of it that are hopeful,

but so much of it has nothing
to do with the natural world,

either altering actual
agriculture of the time

or actual landscapes of earth

or just not being on it whatsoever.

I just wonder what people's responses were

to Closer Than We Think, if
it was making them hopeful.

It seems like it must have in a way

because, at a time where, all of a sudden,

things seemed really scary,

of the potential of mass nuclear warfare,

these seem like great encouraging visions

of an American future specifically.

We're the largest collection
in the entire world.

Our collection holds over
three million pieces.

2.5 million of that is
comic strip clippings

and tear sheets, so a whole
page of the newspaper torn out,

in this case, the comic section.

But about 400,000 of it is original art,

and it can be original art

from things like Closer Than We Think.

This collection came to us

from the International
Museum of Cartoon Art,

which was one of the first
museums in the United States

dedicated solely to
comics and cartoon art,

founded by Mort Walker,

who was the creator of Beetle Bailey,

famous comic strip that's
still around today.

He founded this museum
and was just gaining,

I think, close to 200,000 pieces

from various other institutions,

be it syndicates that were closing down

and had leftover original art

or proof sheets from
comics that they had run.

So he amassed this very large collection,

and after the museum had been
around for a couple decades,

when they finally folded,
their collection came to us.

So that's where we got it
but, from my understanding,

he got it originally from the
Chicago Tribune's archive.

We have a climate controlled facility

so our archive where all
of our original art is kept

is constantly at a low
temperature and humidity,

monitored 24 hours a day
under very high security.

And the Closer Than We Think collection

is within acid-free boxes
in that archival space.

Of Arthur Radebaugh's work, we
have about six or seven boxes

of original art from Closer Than We Think

as well as an entire book of proof sheets

from the Chicago Tribune
of Closer Than We Think

and of Jet Swift.

Here's the first one.

This is Bristol board and he,
unlike with the other ones,

where that texture is coming from that,

for this, he actually
did an airbrush effect,

splatter paint, I think.

But yeah, it is on pretty
thick Bristol board

or illustration board is
what it's also called.

(futuristic music)

- I find that the shocking
thing about Radebaugh is

how many of his predictions
aren't just close,

but are right on the money.

So it's kind of crazy
stuff that he was inventing

or fantasizing about in 1960
or '61 is only now happening.

- Well, I tell people
the future came true,

but it came true in little bits and pieces

called consumer goods.

- He drew a wristwatch TV.

It's kind of amazing how targeted

some of the predictions are.

And other ones, he was right in seeing

that there was a need for something

or that something would be possible,

but maybe didn't see
how it would be applied.

A Roomba is not the same as a
robot housemaid is a good one.

They're not exactly the
same, but he was seeing

that we're gonna have robotic appliances

doing some of the heavy
lifting of housework

that nobody wants to do.

Wall-to-wall television has
existed for about a decade.

You know, 100 inch screens and bigger.

Robot warehouses now exist.

Amazon is mostly robot warehouses.

Rocket mailmen.

So he didn't get this quite right,

but his idea that your mail
would get delivered to you

by some kind of transport

is Amazon and Google both
experimenting with drone delivery.

It's like took the person
out of the equation,

but the idea that something was gonna come

directly to you by some mechanical device,

it turns out to be right.

He had a thing called
One-World Job Market,

which LinkedIn and the
rest of our social networks

are kind of making us all global citizens.

People are applying for
jobs in far-off locations

using this networked
economy that we now have.

He did a couple things about education.

Push-Button Education or
Every Home a Classroom.

You can now go on the
internet and take courses

at almost any college in the country.

You can go on Udacity.

You can see things on YouTube.

The idea that education now
comes to you in your home

happens all the time now.

- When it comes to gauging

whether Radebaugh's
predictions are accurate,

I think it's tough to say.

I think every old
prediction for the future

is sort of Rorschach test

because you're gonna
see what you wanna see.

Let's take a Radebaugh
prediction of video phone.

You see an executive at his desk.

He's got a video phone.

Was that accurate?

Sure, we've got Facetime,

we've got all these technologies

that give us the video phone.

Does it look like Radebaugh's particular

vision of the video phone
with the circular screen

sitting on the executive's desk?

No, it doesn't.

So, can you call that prediction accurate?

Sure, no, I don't know.

I don't have a video phone
that looks like that.

Would be pretty cool
if I did, but I don't.

Every piece of futurism
is a Rorschach test.

No one is psychic.

That's what makes old
visions of the future fun.

No one's gonna get it 100% right.

And even if someone was
really, really close,

it's still gonna be just a little bit off.

It's gonna be just enough off

that it's gonna look really cool.

- Cartoonists have had a history

of drawing futuristic scenes

and a lot of it is because, I
think, cartooning is escapism.

I mean, it's a really isolated practice.

People who are making things,

especially dailies coming
out every single day,

are spending a lot of time alone

in a room focusing on this stuff.

And so there's a lot of dreaming involved.

Creating visions of the future

is not something that started
with Radebaugh by any stretch.

Dating back to the really early 1900s,

some similar ideas to what
Radebaugh would do later,

especially with people
flying on propellers

that are attached to their back.

Radebaugh was not a known cartoonist

in the grand scheme of things.

I don't think that Closer Than We Think

was widely syndicated.

His name is not known by almost
any scholars in the field.

Even when I first started researching him,

no one I knew had ever heard
of him and the people I know

are the people who know about this stuff.

So I think he was probably
really well known, I would guess,

in the science and automotive
illustration world,

but in a lot of ways,
he wasn't a cartoonist.

He was an illustrator.

- It was amazing to me
that he was so obscure

because the science fiction
people all have their favorites

and love them and honor them

and there're articles written about them.

- He's parallel to Frank R. Paul.

Paul has a very quirky style.

Radebaugh has a very quirky style.

But they're working in different fields,

where I feel like Paul is strictly

in the science fiction community

and Radebaugh is kind of
selling this to everyone else.

- So his stuff wasn't
as popularly embraced

and remembered as the science
fiction and pulp covers

that we still know and love today,

that any number of people can tell you

who those artists are.

He had just fallen through the cracks.

- We looked and looked for a
science fiction connection,

like, "Oh, he must have done a cover of

"an Isaac Asimov book
or something like that."

There was really no
apparent Radebaugh overlap

with the world of science fiction.

Even though, at least on the surface,

his work looks so closely aligned

to what science fiction
was and what it was doing.

I feel like, in some ways,

I want to tease out this difference of

Radebaugh was working on
futuristic consumer products

and he wasn't necessarily talking
about alternate realities.

Like the realities are
still sort of like this

happy, sterile, gleaming,
white 1950s reality,

but just with flying cars
instead of regular cars.

It was a little bit different from what

at least some of science fiction was doing

and sort of proposing
these different futures

in which fundamentals
were really different.

Radebaugh's work was
external and superficial.

He was superficial in
this really captivating,

beautifully raw way,

but it was really about...

You know, I think he said it himself.

I mean, his quote is, "halfway
between science fiction

"and designs for modern living."

He was definitely always
on the consumer end

and maybe it's just because
his professional life

was within the commercial art world.

Maybe he could've taken a different path

and ended up more enmeshed
with science fiction

or with film or something like that,

but he really was largely
a commercial artist,

and so his material was
all kind of riffing off of,

you know, here's this
consumer product we have now,

here's what the Radebaugh
version of this looks like

that is so much cooler,
glossier, more luminous

partakes of this sense of the things

that we think of as futuristic,

aerodynamic and
rocket-propelled and atomic

and micro or macro or whatever,

made something seem really
futuristic at that time.

- I think that it's a possibility

he could've gone off and done other things

because you go where the money is.

But I think, in this
case, it was fortuitous

that he ended up in
the automobile industry

because he already had
an inclination towards

science and technology and the future,

and the automobile industry
was very much about that.

- Closer Than We Think is
largely forgotten today.

When I first started blogging about it

and learned about Closer
Than We Think back in 2007,

there wasn't much online about it at all.

Most people had forgotten
about it, obviously,

since it was a 50 year old comic strip.

There was sort of this residue from it.

It had inspired so many things.

It was this cultural
touchstone from 1958 to 1963

that inspired things like The Jetsons.

The Jetsons obviously
touched so many people.

It premiered on the tail end

of Closer Than We Think's run,

which ended in January of 1963.

The Jetsons premiered in
late September of 1962.

But we forget that The
Jetsons was a parody show.

The Jetsons was parodying things
like Closer Than We Think.

Closer Than We Think was this sort of

golden age of futurism, if you will,

and The Jetsons came around to parody it,

to parody at precisely that thing.

And people who were too young

when they saw The Jetsons
don't remember that.

They remember The Jetsons
as that pure futurism.

They remember The Jetsons
not as this parody show,

which it was, not as this
great ridicule of futurism

that people had been going through

with the flying cars and the jet packs

and all of the golden age
that had already happened.

- Now this is going back into the '60s.

What I did was run in
my head a timeline of...

We still had four wheels

'cause it gonna go to car companies.

But what I was doing was
synthesizing a future

where cars looked like this.

And it was commercial,
so it was for U.S. Steel.

They had a steel trim,
they were made from steel,

and so forth.

So I was synthesizing a whole

technological, stylistic put-together

that was attractive to people

that were in the business of
designing cars for the future.

- You know, Syd...

Actually, I think there was some parallels

between Syd and Radebaugh

because Radebaugh keeps
becoming rediscovered

by new generations and people
keep falling in love with him.

And the same things
happened with Syd's artwork.

And actually, one of
the interviews with Syd,

in one of the magazines, Syd says,

"A lot of my artwork, it has the same look

"through time in a sense."

So he's like, "it worries me sometimes,"

but on the other hand,

still, no one surpassed him.

No one's come along and replaced him,

so it's still, even
after all these decades.

I can tell you from having

looked at a lot of
designers over the years

and artists as well, but mainly designers,

if something hasn't come true,

as far as they're concerned, it still can

so there's no problem reusing it.

And I've seen designers

that have actually just taken a rendering,

erased the date on it, and dated it again

to the present day.

And it can be a 25 year old,
a 30 year old rendering.

Usually, it needs to be redone,

and that's what Radebaugh did.

He may have recycled ideas.

It was like, well, why not?

Why not recycle ideas?

They're good ideas.

They're exciting ideas.

They haven't come true yet,

but that doesn't mean
they won't come true,

so why not make a new rendering?

So he does and he updates
them, which is great.

And he brings that idea back,

and maybe he even popularizes ideas

that people had forgotten about,

which is a whole 'nother
interesting thing.

Who knows who he inspired
to try and make it happen.

Well, this hasn't happened yet,

and maybe some youngster who
read his strip went forward.

- A lot of the Closer
Than We Think features

are being fed from articles

that Radebaugh was reading at the time.

Maybe friends of his that
were scientists or engineers

were sending him this stuff.

He was processing it and writing the text

that would feed into these
beautiful illustrations

that he would build around them.

He even put himself in
a lot of the features

as the narrator, so this
is entirely his dream world

that he's coming up with, but oftentimes,

inspired by other scientists and engineers

that were actually doing
this research at the time.

- Closer Than We Think is
the zenith of his career

because that's when he
had the most exposure

where most people finding
out who Radebaugh is

or seeing his work.

So certainly going from
the automotive field

into a comic strip sort of format

was definitely not a downgrade.

It was certainly not a demotion.

I feel very confidently

that that was a huge boon for his career.

- At the same time that
Radebaugh was doing

Closer Than We Think, there
was Athelstan Spilhaus,

who was in Minnesota at the time.

He was an academic who wrote Our New Age,

which was another Sunday
funny that came out

nearly at the exact same time,

and this comic strip was
a little bit different.

It wasn't explicitly about the future.

It had plenty of futuristic themes.

And it was much more broadly
about science and technology.

And Athelstan Spilhaus
actually said, explicitly,

that he wanted this comic strip

to inject some subliminal education

into the Sunday funnies.

Contrasting with Closer Than We Think,

he was very explicit
in saying that this was

a direct response to Sputnik
and the Soviet Union's threat

to the western world as it were.

The differences between
Closer Than We Think

and Our New Age are pretty interesting

in that both were very
techno-utopian, if you will.

Both were very optimistic.

Closer Than We Think was
much more sort of fun-loving.

Closer Than We Think took
it three steps further.

Our New Age certainly
had a futuristic bent,

but it definitely felt dryer.

It definitely felt more
educational, if you will.

Not to use that in a derogatory way,

but it definitely felt like something

that you'd read in school.

Closer Than We Think had
the streamlined cars,

the supersize crops,

and much more fantastical
visions of the future.

Our New Age sort of flirted
with that on occasion.

Our New Age had kangaroo butlers.

He definitely didn't hang its hat

on the more outlandish
visions of the future,

which isn't to say that
Closer Than We Think

was always outlandish.

It certainly had a lot of
things that have come true,

mechanized hearts, satellites,

all kinds of things that we have today.

Our New Age is this
huge, multi-panel strip,

whereas Closer Than We Think
is a single panel strip.

And Our New Age takes advantage
of the multi-panel strip

because it typically chronicles
history, present to future.

That's sort of the way that
every strip is structured,

whereas Closer Than We Think
is just about the future.

Radebaugh, after his very last strip

of Closer Than We Think,
in January of 1963,

goes right into making a
new strip called Jet Swift,

which actually mirrors
Our New Age a little bit.

The whole Jet Swift strip
mirrors Our New Age's

past, present, future sort of formula

and becomes a multi-panel strip.

I'm not sure that Jet Swift
was inspired by Our New Age,

but there's definitely a
lot of similarities there.

- We don't know why Closer
Than We Think ended.

It's anyone's guess what
the reason could be.

Most likely, it was not
as marketable anymore.

Maybe as times were changing,

there was less of an
obsession with futurism.

Who knows?

And so something like Jet Swift

I think was much more
marketable towards children

and probably selling
more papers in that way.

The last Closer Than We
Think was Family Computer

on January 13, 1963,

and then immediately one week later,

Radebaugh followed up with Jet
Swift and His Science Stamps

on January 20, 1963.

He has this character, Jet
Swift, that's this young boy

essentially narrating
lessons of past history

on how rockets have been
used throughout time

and then where he sees
those inventions going.

And they're done in the shapes of stamps.

It's not exactly a comic,

but it has a little bit
more of a strip feel

and there is a sequential narration to it

because the stamps advance in time

through the ways that different
discoveries have been made

depending on what his subject is,

and typically ending in
what Jet Swift's idea

or Radebaugh's idea of
what the next step will be.

- Americans soon may see a
new kind of family second car

run by batteries and
boasting hot rod agility

and of adequate size and speed
for limited distance use.

Stinson Aircraft at San Diego

and the Washington Water
Power Company, Spokane,

have working models.

A Detroit auto manufacturer

also has a big project in this field.

These electro-cars will run about

70 miles between chargings,

which can be done on any home socket.

Also planned are roadway chargers
similar to parking meters,

which will give a fast
charge for a quarter.

So what he described
essentially is an EV1,

which came out in '96.

It was actually designed around 1990,

late '80s, early '90s,

and the California Air
Resources Board saw the car.

It was just a one-off at the
time, but it opened their minds

and they said, "Wow, we have a
serious air pollution problem

"and this looks like a
viable electric car."

So they passed a law in 1990

called the Zero Emission
Vehicle Mandate, ZEV Mandate.

By 2003, the lobbyists succeeded

in overturning the ZEV Mandate and then

all of the automakers had already built

these great electric cars,

the EV1 being the flagship from GM.

But they started taking them
back and destroying them.

And that's why a bunch of us got together

and started protesting.

We formed the national organization
called Plug In America.

We saved about 1,000 of
those cars from the crusher.

But more importantly, we
helped convince the car makers

to build electric cars again.

The initial ones with lead acid batteries

was around 60 or 70
miles, so he nailed that.

And the second generation,
they didn't change the body,

but they ended up putting nickel
metal hydride batteries in

and that more than doubled the range.

So they were getting 140-150 mile range

with those batteries.

The charger location in
various cars differs.

On my Nissan Leaf, it was in the front,

but a lot of the cars
have them in the back.

It does look like a two-seater.

It does have a lot of slope to it

so the drag coefficient
is probably pretty decent

And the wheels are covered,

so that's another design feature

that helps with the drag coefficient.

So I would say they got some of it right,

and considering it was a
good 30 years before the EV1,

I'm pretty impressed,
to tell you the truth.

- The picture that we get
of Radebaugh post-retirement

is that he probably retires

pretty close to the top of his
game and he has these ideas

about making a nice
cottage on Lake Michigan

and doing these things that somebody

who has been an accomplished
professional their whole life

might want to do in their retirement,

but apparently, his health
fails, his investments go sour.

One gets a sense that maybe
he had initially felt like

he was going to be secure,

but then whatever nest
egg he has disappears.

So he has to go back into working,

but instead of working as a
top flight commercial artist,

he's basically doing hack work,

decorating furniture in Grand Rapids

and probably just trying
to make ends meet.

I remember in his latter days,

we looked up his addresses and every year,

he had a different address.

I think his health gets
progressively worse and worse

and he just is unable
to take care of himself

and has neither the means nor the health

to take care of himself.

And luckily, one of his later jobs

is in a furniture factory
owned by Albert Heemstra.

And it seems like Albert
Heemstra was this,

on the surface, very different
person from Radebaugh,

like very religious and
conservative and proper,

but it seems like they saw
something in one another.

It must've been actually a
very significant and deep tie

because the Heemstra family

ends up taking care of
Radebaugh in some ways

and then, apparently,
taking care of his wife

for what amounts to almost several decades

after Radebaugh passes away.

So there was some real devotion

and probably sense of duty there

from the Heemstras towards the Radebaughs.

- Art would say, "Hey, Danny Boy!

"How you doin'? C'mon
over here, Danny Boy!

"What are you doing today?
You up to any good?"

Very much sort of Ralph Kramden, you know?

Jackie Gleason a little bit.

'Cause he certainly had
that profile going on.

Best I could tell, I met
Art Radebaugh about 1966

when he came to work for my father

out in the country in Cascade, Michigan.

We lived on an old 100 year old farm.

We weren't farmers.

My father ran his sign painting
business out of the barn.

So instead of cows, we had
signs and paint and lots of it.

My father got a contract
to decorate these desks,

black lacquer desks.

And what Art did was he decorated them

with this gesso paint, where
you would actually build up

three-dimensional and
he'd make these little

Japanese ladies and the little bridges

and little trees and so forth

and decorate these desks very ornate.

And Art would just scoot around the desk.

He had patterns, perforated patterns

he'd dust chalk through,
make a dotted outline.

And then he'd just paint
these dancing women.

- Well, we just painted
these little figures.

When I met Arthur Radebaugh,

I was introduced by another
person that worked at the studio

and it's like, when our eyes met

I knew he was something special,

and I knew that him and
I were gonna be friends.

Arthur and I, after we'd become friends,

we always had lunch together
down in the parking lot,

maybe in his van or maybe

just anywhere we could
find a place to sit.

- Here comes LaVon.

And I look out the window
and there's this bizarre van,

pulls up the driveway.

And it's all painted up.

It was just bizarre, so I went out

and she had Arthur with her.

He took her home from work.

He was very well dressed.

He had really shiny shoes, pressed pants,

and he was just so different.

And when I saw his van, I
was just totally blown away

'cause I looked in the back of the van

and he's got a beautiful drawing table

in the back of the van, airbrush,

and he started showing me his studio.

I'd never met anybody like him.

- Well, it was pretty exciting

to turn up those photos
of him with his space car.

- Chrome loop was for
a wireless telephone.

About almost 16 inches
diameter or whatever,

it stuck straight out and
that was for the phone,

the telephone.

- You know, he had to have retrofitted

and souped up this Ford van
so it looked really futuristic

and it said Closer Than
We Think on the side.

And one of the ways that I
think he then promotes it

is to drive around the country

in his Closer Than We Think van

and be doing illustrations while he's just

out there traveling on
the road being an artist

and rolling into town

and probably everybody clamors up

and they're like, "Wow,
what's that futuristic van?

"Wow, there's an artist in there!"

What an interesting, kinda fun,

kinda enigmatic way to promote yourself.

- Here's a struggling illustrator

without any safety net who...

He put that van together
to go get journeyman work,

I would imagine.

I mean, it was, here I am.

I am this crazy.

You know my work.

My work is about the future.

And I'm here in my van

and we're gonna do some work, whatever.

He kept reinventing himself several times.

- My brother wound up buying that van,

he and the neighbor guy,

and they turned it into
a field car basically,

which is sad, but it was tired by then.

I'm talking the end of the '60s.

That English Ford van was
something of the '50s.

But it all started, though,

with his ability as an illustrator, okay.

And to be able to take
something from his mind

or something someone else would say as

"Hey, make me this thing."

He could do it.

And then that ability is what

gave him the ability
to look at the future.

In other words, if I can put down in paint

something that somebody can
imagine or I can imagine,

well, I can imagine a whole lot.

And then that's where
he just went with it.

It was because he had the ability

that he went and did all that stuff.

- People often said that he was very much

artistically driven, that his work was not

really product-oriented,
and I think it's true.

- Somewhere in his young life,

I would say between
the age of nine and 15,

Arthur, like the rest of any
dedicated artist will tell you,

that they see maybe one person
that just sets them on fire

as far as it clicks.

Something clicks in your mind about...

It's a desire, it's a fire,
it's an entire lifetime

of seeking to do that, what you see

in this other artist or
whatever, this illustrations,

and something must've clicked for Arthur

in his younger years.

I would really like to
see his school work.

I'm betting it would
possibly be included in that.

- His non-technical skill
is already really good

and he's drawing images of
dragons and conquistador ships

and sort of vaguely fantastical stuff.

There's some cars in there and stuff too.

So you can sort of see the imaginings

of an unusual young man

who has a sense for the
fantasy world already.

- When we talked to different
artists who worked with him

as well as some of the people who knew him

towards the end of his life,

no one was really certain
what influenced him.

People had emphasized that it
seemed to come from within,

that it was just his own creations.

So we really don't know.

- When he would go through,
walk through the studio,

he seemed to be thinking.

He was like a thinker, I think.

He would just quietly go through.

He wouldn't stop and congregate.

He was a very serious
illustrator, in my opinion.

Always focused.

- I'm sure he isolated.

He was in his own world all the time.

- He was married, but
never discussed children.

Quite private.

- And he never really
did talk about his past.

I had no idea.

- Radebaugh marries
Nancy Harrington in 1934.

She also went to Sturgis High School.

She's in the yearbook
a couple years later.

And they remained married
until Radebaugh's death.

Nancy, his wife, dies about

I think 18 years later in California.

- My dad had made Art a promise

that he would always take care of Nancy.

And so about six months after
Art died, or maybe less,

my folks got her into a place
called the Wissahickon Inn,

which was a retirement home in Redlands.

And she had a little studio there

and then that's where
she lived out her days

in Redlands, California.

Nancy was very mousy, very quiet.

Certainly not unheard of for a wife

in the '40s, '50s, and '60s to be the wife

and take care of the house

and let the man do all the
doing and thinking and stuff,

and it was that kind of relationship.

- I never met Nancy.

And that's just something I did.

She never came to the studio.

He never talked about her much.

When he did tell me the story

about Nancy burning his artwork,

you could tell he felt really deeply hurt,

very deeply hurt by it.

I don't think she
understood him very well.

- It's not uncommon,
actually, to find so many gaps

in histories of artists like Radebaugh,

and especially folks that came before him.

Comics throughout history

have been considered a lower art form

because people think they
were just made for kids

or made for the masses or really,

when they first emerged in the newspapers,

made to just sell more papers,
for commercial purposes.

So with those ideas in mind,
this stuff was never saved.

I mean, really, up until the
1940s and sometimes even later,

it's rare that original art was saved

because the idea was to get it
into print and then move on.

It was a real business and it
was not looked at as fine art

because it's so mass produced,

I think, is one of the reasons.

A lot of the things that
have survived, luckily,

are newspaper tear sheets and clippings,

and many of those things were
even thrown out by libraries

when they transferred their
collections to microfilm.

And microfilm, of course,
is really not great

because it's only in black and white

so all the beautiful color
from Sunday comics pages

is completely lost and it's
not durable 'cause it's film,

so the more it's used,
the more it's scratched up

and covered in fingerprints.

So the actual clippings

that happened to be saved
by certain collectors,

in many cases, they are
literally the only evidence

that a lot of this stuff has existed.

- Commercially, once the
job's over, nobody cares.

They're on to the next job.

All the U.S. Steel art
was going to be destroyed

by the agency in Pittsburgh.

It's a merchandising, advertising effort.

Had nothing to do with keeping it

or treasuring it or any of that.

It was momentary.

The books were printed.
They were given out to the auto industry

and vehicle designers all over the world.

And once the job is over,
then they don't care.

So it's a whole thing of

how important is this and why,

socially or technologically

or as a media museum review,

and that's sort of a rare thing.

The honorific keeping of what's been done

is not that common.

- I've gotta believe that there are

things that are in the world now

that only exist because
Radebaugh dreamed them up,

put them in a drawing, and
then let the rest of us

imagine with him what the
world with that in it could be.

I think futurists and people
making guesses about the future

is part of what drives
technological change.

- We're within striking
distance of truly curing

these massively important diseases.

That's not tissue engineering,
it's not replacing parts,

but it achieves the same objective.

It makes the body biologically younger.

I believe that by 40 or 50 years from now,

we have a very good chance,

I would say at least 70 or 80
percent, of reaching a point

that I've called
longevity escape velocity.

Essentially, what that means is that,

even though our therapies for

repairing damage in the body,

whether at the organ level

or at the molecular or cellular level,

will not be perfect by that point,

they will be very good,

hey will be very comprehensive.

So comprehensive that the residual damage

that we can't yet repair
will accumulate really slowly

and we'll have time

to incrementally improve
the therapies further

as time goes by.

So it will be equivalent,
from the point of view

of the individual who
receives these therapies,

to the situation in which the
therapies really were perfect.

The total amount of damage

that the person is carrying around

will be nowhere near the
level that's bad for you

that causes pathologies of any kind.

I believe that, yes,
we've got a very good chance
of getting there by that time.

- His two designs with the electric car

and the autonomous car,

he probably didn't see
that quite being the same,

but I'm sure, had he thought it through,

he would have seen it.

He just didn't know how far
advanced the technology would go

once we really got serious about it.

Other than the car manufacturers

and oil companies fighting
us 10-15 years ago,

that delayed us a good decade,

but once Elon Musk and
Tesla started going,

it was very clear to
everybody paying attention

what the end game was,

and the only question was
how fast we would get there.

But that all autonomous
vehicles would be fully electric

is pretty much agreed upon
by everybody in this space.

- Somebody said, "Arthur's
in the hospital. He's sick."

And I went to the hospital.

The nurse, she said, "Are you family?"

I said, "Yes."

I felt like they didn't really want him

to have visitors or something.

That's the way I felt.

That's all I can tell you

is he was very, very weak and ill.

We talked.

We just talked and...

We just accepted each
other as human beings.

I was the only person to
visit Arthur in the hospital

as far as I know.

I was there all but five
hours until he passed away.

He had no children.

Arthur was real quiet.

He was at peace with
himself when he went there.

He knew he was gonna, probably
knew he was gonna pass away.

- Well, I know from his death certificate,

he had heart problems.

I know that Radebaugh had
a problem with alcohol

and that that had damaged his career.

From finding out how he
spent the end of his life,

painting furniture, and not artistically,

just decorating and just
painting finishes basically,

that clearly must have been a blow to him

to be spending his last years

putting finishes, varnish
and what have you,

or painting flowers or something
on a piece of furniture,

it must have been very
humbling, I would think,

for somebody like him.

When I think of Radebaugh's last years,

I think it was a very
depressing, very sad end

to somebody who had really
given so many so much

with his artwork and
really was so influential,

to see him to have fallen to so low.

To me, that's a very sad
position that he ended up in.

- Uncertainty is a characteristic

that human beings just don't like.

And if you can synthesize
a future that's interesting

or exciting or even a cathartic effect,

it's just part of the human psyche.

You're responding to how
humans like to think.

What we do is we like a
response to the question,

what's gonna happen,
what's gonna happen to me?

Where are we all going? Why?

And it's a very, very human thing.

From time immemorial that the early man

kept track of the stars

and the rotation of the
earth relative to the sun

and the equinox and all that

because they wanted predictability.

And once you got to that stage,

then you started to build
things like the observatories

in the Middle East at that time.

You had Stonehenge and the
Egyptians and at equinox,

there's a light that would
come down the shaft, bing,

and then light up the
god's face or whatever,

and that meant that, "Oh, wow,
we got through that again.

"And now we're ready to
start another cycle."

Predictability is intrinsic
to the way we think

'cause we're intelligent

and we have the ability
to synthesize experience,

and animals don't have that.

- When I was young,

probably one of the most
inspiring pieces of art

that I'd always see in the magazine

were the car illustrations.

There was some beautiful work being done.

Full color reproduced in a post

and glamor magazines of the period

were very inspirational to a young artist.

And everybody wanted to be back in Detroit

and doing these kind of assignments.

He was very lucky to be able to do that.

- The legacy of Radebaugh
is sort of multifaceted.

The future killed him while
he was creating the future.

The future arrived, and
he was talking about

what would the future look like.

But when the future got
here, it made him redundant.

He helped create the future
by imagining the future,

by being part of how we talked about

what we wanted from the future,

and what the future might be bringing us,

and are these ideas worth
chasing and some of them were.

But the future also destroyed
him a couple of times.

It destroyed him when
illustration went out of fashion

and photography came into fashion

in the world of illustration

for magazine covers and for advertising.

He reinvented himself as
a futurist illustrator

and a Sunday funnies guy.

And had to.

You know, it's like, wow, I'm middle aged

and don't have a job and
the illustration house

that was this king of illustration,

this little empire of illustration,
and I was one of their,

certainly their most fanciful prints,

doesn't exist anymore.

It's been swallowed up and folded and sold

and the people aren't in demand.

That's pretty frightening, you know,

'cause he was no kid.

I respect that he was
able to reinvent himself

within what he did already.

- We met two women.

- Kat and LaVon, the two sisters,

and LaVon had worked with Radebaugh.

LaVon had been a young woman at the time

that she and Radebaugh
sort of were teamed up

in this high end furniture
decorating factory.

And they were mischievous.

I don't think LaVon was really aware

that Radebaugh had been
the nationally famous,

futuristic imagineer.

She maybe saw glimmers of that.

She really had gathered this impression

that Radebaugh really wasn't
from the planet Earth.

And then we go out to the
Veterans Memorial Facility

where supposedly Radebaugh's interred,

and we get there and we make our inquiry,

and even though it says
on his death certificate

that he's interred there,

they're like, "Nope, we
have no evidence of that."

And basically, Kat and
LaVon just look at us

and were like, "We told you so."

Like, "We told you that Radebaugh
wasn't really from Earth

"and that he's not really dead."

And there's just sort of
this mystique around him.

Finally, the end of the story

that we had traveled partway
across the country to unravel,

and finally we get to the
place where Radebaugh is...

He ends his career at sort
of a low point, right,

and he passes away like
somewhat anonymously

in a veterans facility,
but he's not really there.

And it was a very
fitting, mysterious ending

for the enigmatic Mr. Radebaugh.

- I think what's interesting

about studying past visions of the future

is that they rarely say something
about the actual future.

We've become obsessed,

when it comes to past
visions of the future,

what they got right, what they got wrong.

To me, the most interesting question

about these past visions of the future

is what they say about
the people that made them.

A prediction of the future says much more

about the people making that prediction

and the time in which
that prediction was made

than it does about the actual future.

(futuristic music)