Ep. 328

Duncan Trussell, comedian and Host of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour, joins Rushkoff to explore how we can best metabolize rising geopolitical tensions, the ways billionaires view the power of the AIs they’ve developed, the relationship between comedy and fascism, and the importance of human connection and community. 

Ep. 327

Eliott Edge revisits his first book, Three Essays in Virtual Reality, while giving us a sneak preview of his thinking for his upcoming opus on Simulation theory. Edge is a critically-acclaimed author, artist, and international speaker. Edge has published and presented through The Institute of Ethics and Emerging Technologies, The University of Melbourne, Stevens Institute of Technology, Anthology Film Archives, The C.G. Jung Center, The Fenris Wolf, The Museum of Computer Arts, VRTO, Block Seoul, and Disinformation.

Ep. 326

Each supposed AI “problem” stems from a lack of imaginative capacity from us. We are refusing the opportunity to rethink more fundamental assumptions about the systems under threat.

Instead of acting like tech bros and reinforcing obsolete institutions in order to further entrench their extractive and inhumane monopolies, we can go deeper to discover what cracks are being revealed in this new media environment. Don’t shoot the messenger. 

Ep. 325

De Kai, the man who built the world’s first global translators and AI systems, says we better learn to parent our AI offspring before it’s too late. The author of Raising AI argues how we behave in front of AI’s matters more than whatever we tell them.

Ep. 324

Playing for Team Human today, LatinX professor, and the author of Hospicing Modernity as well as the upcoming book Outgrowing Modernity, my favorite civilizational doula, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira.

Ep. 323

Playing for Team Human today, the author of Techgnosis, High Weirdness, and the just released history of the LSD medium Blotter, esoteric scholar Erik Davis.

Ep. 322

Insights, as wonderful as they are? They’re the booby prize. Up there in the idea space. Where you can be right, and someone else can be wrong. Where there’s cause and effect, guilt and blame, victim and perpetrator or even problem and solver.

Ep. 321

Playing for Team Human today, Canadian pop artist, author, journalist, magician, and CEO of VOID Collective, Alex Kazemi.

Ep. 320

Playing for Team Human today, activist, Blogger, and Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, David Bollier.

Ep. 319

Playing for Team Human today, novelist, spiritualist and host of the podcast Against Everyone, my friend Connor Habib. This conversation continues tomorrow on Conner's podcast, Against Everyone.

Ep. 318

Has digital technology turned us all into fascists?

Rushkoff explores fascism as an environment in which we live, rather than the specific ideology of one "side." He shows how technology, psychedelics, and business are all "non-specific amplifiers," yielding different results depending on what we bring to them. He asks us to consider what would happen if we stopped seeing issues in terms of "sides," and why our current media and political environment makes that so difficult. How do we break the fascistic state of mind?

Ep. 317

Playing for Team Human today, occult historian, author, and esotericist Mitch Horowitz, sharing the formulas that give us all access to Practical Magic.

Ep. 316

Edward Ongweso Jr., Senior Researcher at Security in Context and co-host of This Machine Kills, journeys with us into the political economy of technology and the deep crazy that is informing the collapse of the still viable, if problematic, civilization.

Ep. 315

Radha Agrawal, Co-Founder of Daybreaker and author of Belong, helps us break from our online-induced community confusion and learn to find true connectedness again.

Ep. 314

Douglas Rushkoff recognizes the high weirdness of our circumstances, and the universal strange characterizing this moment in our shared history. He also offers four recommendations for us to take agency over our situation.

Ep. 313

Jonathan Larsen, Founder of The Fucking News, proves there's still a path forward for the fourth estate.

Ep. 312

Artist and writer Molly Crabapple helps us retrieve the purpose of the artist - particularly in hard times.

Ep. 311

Helena Norberg-Hodge, Founder and Director of Local Futures, shares the power of local connections and building resilience - even against the globally-scaled abstract monsters threatening human sustainability and sanctity today.

Ep. 310

Rushkoff discusses what we can do in the face of political. cultural, and economic phenomena – and why the Team Human mission hasn't changed.

Ep. 309

Dr. Mara Einstein, Author of Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics As Cults, helps us recognize the cult tactics being used to hoodwink us into submission and get us to act against our own self-interest.