Team Human

Note: For the full, uninterrupted conversation plus audience Q&A, please consider becoming a patron and subscriber at Patreon.com/teamhuman where the entire 90 minute conversation is available now.Recorded live on June 21st at the Alchemist's Kitchen NYC in collaboration with Evolver, this evening of conversation focuses on the non-generic quality of time, the way each week of the lunar cycle favors a particular neurotransmitter, and how to leverage this knowledge for better productivity, emotional stability, and social harmony. Rushkoff opens the show offering a new perspective on his ever more relevant Present Shock manifesto.Joining Douglas on stage and playing for Team Human is Dr. Mark Filippi. Mark has practiced behavioral chiropractic therapy for the last 25 years, and worked as a frequently published clinical researcher and post-graduate instructor. His research has contributed significant new findings to the fields of somatics, memetics, and nonlinear dynamics. Most famous for identifying “the fo

Playing for Team Human today Adah Parris. Adah is here to help reorient us to ourselves and steer us to a better, more human future. Adah wears many hats. She is a tech Futurist, a transformation coach, storyteller, public speaker, consultant, and artist. Comfortable in such diverse roles, Adah brings a unique perspective to the team, having influenced both individuals and corporations to adopt a more connection-centered ethos. In this candid and open conversation with Douglas, Adah brings her empathy, insight, and creativity to the table. She reminds us of the power of putting down our smartphones, looking into one another’s eyes, and engaging in the “Art of Conversation.”Visit https://www.adahparris.com/ to learn more about Adah's philosophy and work. Douglas opens the show with a monologue that unmasks the propaganda that is being made with the unfolding horror of immigrant detentions and family separations. As we witness the shocking images, the administration’s intentions to prime the public fo

Playing for Team Human today, recorded live on the floor at the Personal Democracy Forum 2018, are Moira Weigel and Ben Tarnoff. Moira and Ben will be showing us how the tech industry’s promise to build less harmful products and programs is just capitalism’s way of proving that love means never having to say, “I’m sorry.”Moira and Ben co-wrote the brilliant feature article in the Guardian, “Why Silicon Valley Can’t Fix Itself”Just last week, Ben’s exposé and interview with an anonymous worker/organizer at Google revealed the internal fight led by workers against Google’s contracting with the Pentagon on Project Maven, a weaponized use of Google’s AI and cloud computing technology. The interview, published June 6th, can be found at Jacobin magazine: Tech Workers Versus the Pentagon Ben’s articles in the Guardian and Jacobin have been disrupting tech industry gospel for the past decade. He is also the author of The Bohemians.Moira Weigel is a postdoc at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Her recent book Labor

Playing for Team Human today is activist, Guardian columnist, and author of Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis, George Monbiot.Monbiot and Rushkoff discuss the abysmal failure of neoliberalism, a narrative that figures humans as self-interested, competitive, and greedy creatures. Monbiot offers compelling evidence, both from his own on the ground experience reporting on people’s movements in Indonesia and Brazil, as well as recent findings in neuroscience and anthropology that break the neoliberal myth. But it’s not enough to merely break a myth with facts and figures. Monbiot argues that we must offer a new, engaging story. Can we harness our “narrative instinct,” to amplify participation in a politics centered on belonging, community, and restoring power back into the hands of team human?Rushkoff opens thinking about the medium of podcasting itself. Is the podcasting landscape in danger of being overrun by cookie-cutter, corporate funded content factories? Is there still room for the q

Playing for Team Human today is Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble, former director of MoveOn.org and current chief executive of Upworthy.com.Eli uses media to make what’s important popular, rather than the other way around. Upworthy.com is a story-driven website focused on magnifying meaningful conversations that encourage positive social change. On today’s episode, Eli and Douglas mine our reality tunnels, looking at how perspective shapes meaning and what strategies we might employ to ground democracy in greater consciousness and empathy. On the theme of reality, Douglas opens with the viral craze over the “Yanni/Laurel” audio clip. Can we really say that everything is just a matter how you hear it?The first NYC Team Human Live event at the Alchemist’s Kitchen is on Thursday, June 21st. Limited tickets are available, Free to Patrons. Get your tickets here or check the homepage at Teamhuman.fm for details.On today’s show you heard intro and outro music thanks to Fugazi an

Playing for team human today is author, occult scholar, and wizard Jason Louv. Jason will be helping us see how the intentions we bring into the world of artificial intelligence could set something in motion from which it is hard to return. Jason’s latest book John Dee and the Empire of Angels: Enochian Magick and the Occult Roots of Empire digs deep into the untold and often ignored occult history of Western thinking and empire. On today’s show Jason and Douglas bridge the gap from the Elizabethan esoteric imaginary to the modern day alchemical thinking driving our technologies.Visit this John Dee mini site for a unique preview of Louv’s latest book.  https://www.johndee007.comAnd https://jasonlouv.com/ for more on Jason as well as links to his books, the Ultraculture blog, and his Magick School.Rushkoff kicks off the show on the heels of a week of Blockchain events here in New York. What values are retrieved in blockchain thinking? And is blockchain the right tool to turn money into a verb in

Playing for Team Human today is Juho Makkonen, co-founder of Sharetribe.Juho is working on a vision of the “sharing economy” where people share value with one another instead of seeing it get syphoned off by companies like Uber and Airbnb. His company Sharetribe creates tools for individuals and local communities to decentralize and ultimately democratize ownership of the sharing economy. In this conversation, Douglas and Juho discuss platform cooperatives and the slow patient work of building a business focused on sustainability rather than the “unicorn ambition” of growth and profit. Check out Sharetribe.com as well as this link to Juho's latest book https://theleanmarketplace.com/ .Douglas opens the show with a monologue that questions the imposition of new mythologies as we make sense of social change. Is it time to dispense with mythology altogether?On today’s show you heard intro and outro music thanks to Fugazi and Dischord records. In the intro you also heard Mike Watt’s Hyphenated Man.

Playing for Team Human today is technology and society researcher Molly Sauter. Molly will be helping us see how stupid some “smart city” visions really are. Molly and Douglas discuss the extractive, “mining ethos” of the tech investment swarm, and how this mentality does harm to communities from Silicon Valley to Toronto, Canada. Is your city the next VC Guinea pig in the technocratic experiment to grow cities and extract their value?Check out Molly’s fantastic book on another type of “swarm”: The Coming Swarm: DDOS Actions, Hacktivism, and Civil Disobedience on the Internet https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Swarm-Hacktivism-Disobedience-Internet/dp/1623564565Plus their most recent writing referenced on today’s show: Why is Anyone Listening to Tim O”Reilly? And Google’s Guinea-Pig City Support Molly’s work at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/oddlettersDouglas opens the show with a monologue on the perils of futurist thinking and its inherent linear conception of progress. Is it time to r

Playing for Team Human today, the economy’s equivalent of an outsider artist, Of Two Minds blogger and author of Money and Work Unchained, Charles Hugh Smith.Charles will be talking to us about the market, Universal Basic Income, and distributed prosperity.You can learn more about Charles at his website and blog Of Two Minds: https://www.oftwominds.com/.Opening the show, Douglas considers the "Art of the Deal." Perhaps a truly artful deal is one that engages us in relationships of collaboration rather than self-interest.Producer's note: The audio in this show is less than ideal due to a poor VoIP connection. It has been processed for intelligibility, but you still may notice drop outs and distortions. Apologies.You can sustain this show via Patreon. And please leave us a review on iTunes.This show features intro and outro music thanks to Fugazi and Dischord Records. Mid-way you heard Throbbing Gristle. See Ep. 67 with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.Thanks to teammate and listener Bobby

Playing for Team Human today is designer, technology historian, and author of the new book Architectural Intelligence, Professor Molly Wright Steenson. Molly and Douglas share a wide-ranging conversation that begins by looking at the “weirdness” of AI. How do design metaphors such as “awesome mouth feel” and “uncanny valley” provoke deeper questions of human imagination, play, and meaning. Molly’s background in architecture and history offers listeners a unique grounding of digital in the physical. Check out Molly’s new book Architectural Intelligence and her longstanding website girlwonder.com. Molly also discusses her oft-cited essay, What is Burning Man, working with Howard Rheingold (TH 76) at Electric Minds, building the Netscape search page, and launching the influential feminist webzine Maxi.Opening the show, Douglas comments on educating robots versus educating humans. Is there something more, something ambiguous and sacred even to be retrieved from a well-rounded liberal arts education?You can sustai

“Everyone wants to be a cowboy, but no one wants to ride the range.” A dream of unraveling the mystery of the birth of universe led astrophysicist and author Brian Keating to "saddle up" and head to a frozen ocean of snow at the bottom of the world. Keating joins Rushkoff to talk about science, religion, questions that lead to more questions, and the "background noise” of the cosmos that may just be the key to understanding how this all began.Rushkoff begins today's show commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Are we suffering the effects of HAL computer-like programming on Facebook? "I know everything hasn't been quite right with me, but I can assure you now, very confidently, that it's going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do." HAL 9000 or Mark Zuckerberg?Learn more about our guest, Brian Keating:Professor Brian Keating is an astrophysicist with UC San Diego’s Department of Physics. He and his team deve

Playing for Team Human today is Jeremy Lent, author of The Patterning Instinct. Lent’s expansive research looks at the variety of ways cultures throughout history have patterned meaning into the cosmos. In excavating these patterns, Lent shares how humans might retrieve those metaphors that amplify altruism and shared intentionality. Together, Rushkoff and Lent explore the question of what makes humans unique and how we might leverage our patterning instinct to foster a future characterized by deeper connection rather than alienation. Douglas begins today’s show with a monologue on cultural immunity. He questions the impulse to solve the problems of democracy by simply building better tech. How might we build resilience in people rather than just in our gadgets and algorithms?This show features intro and outro music thanks to Fugazi and Dischord Records. Mid-way you heard our friend R.U. Sirius featured in episode 31 https://teamhuman.fm/episodes/ep-31-r-u-Sirius/You can sustain this show via Patreo

What can artists, musicians, magical thinkers and "weirdos" bring to machine learning and neural networks? What do we need to make the right kind of AI? Exploring these questions and more is Kenric McDowell, leader of Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence program. In this conversation with Douglas, Kenric explains how his unique role at Google enables him to bring the artistic spirit into the very heart of technology development. Moving beyond the hype of AI, Kenric shares strategies for leading technology with human imagination rather than the other way around.Douglas opens today’s show addressing the myth of social media; the notion that you matter. Facebook doesn’t care about you, and it’s time to leave it behind. Every minute spent off Facebook is a minute you can spend with the others! Go find them.Our intro and outro music is thanks to Dischord Records and Fugazi. A special thanks to Kenric for sharing his own original music featured at the mid-roll. Visit http://thebiggestphone.com to hear mor

Playing for Team Human today is Suzanne Slomin, founder of Green Rabbit a small solar powered bakery located in the Mad River Valley of Vermont specializing in naturally leavened breads. Suzanne will share with us what it’s like being a “Real Person Doing Real Things” – an actual baker, farmer, employer and global citizen trying to operate as sustainably and humanly as possible across all the dimensions of her work. In this episode, we meet Suzanne having just “fed” her sourdough starter, a living culture of yeast and bacteria that is the essential element for her delicious and healthful breads. Instantly, the conversation is grounded to the hands-on daily work that makes Green Rabbit so special. Is it possible for the small farmer and local baker to maintain integrity and stewardship of the community in an increasingly extractive economy? Find out how Suzanne does it...Plus, in stark contrast to "Real People Doing Real Things," Rushkoff opens the show with a monologue on the idealism of bitcoin. Ar

Today on Team Human we conclude our series of live shows recorded at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts in the historic Mission district of San Francisco. Picking up where we left off last week and joining Douglas on stage are teammates Erik Davis and Josette Melchor. Erik Davis is the author of Techgnosis, Nomad Codes and host of The Expanding Mind podcast. Erik and Douglas start with the big question, “What the fuck is going on here?” What begins with a few laughs quickly digs into a mind-expanding conversation about those gray areas between religion, technology, and psychedelics. Erik and Douglas look for coherence and connection in these fractious times. Making this message concrete is Gray Area’s founder Josette Melchor. Josette resurrects our show segment “Real People Doing Real Things.” She offers both practical and profound lessons on building a safe space for community, creativity, and artistic exploration.As we conclude this series, we’d like to thank our teammates at Gray Area; Josette Melchor, Seab

Playing for Team Human today is interactive artist Lauren McCarthy. Lauren’s thought provoking work brings a unique and creative perspective on social interaction and the intersection of humans and technology.In this episode, Lauren’s app Crowdpilot becomes the first “advertisement” to be featured on Team Human. Crowdpilot is an app in which real time conversation advice is crowdsourced from online third-party monitors. In another crowdsourcing experiment titled Social Turkers, McCarthy hired Amazon Mechanical Turks to participate with her on her own OkCupid dates. The Turks, connected via stream, give Lauren dating advice while she meets strangers in real life.Lauren also discusses Follower, a service that puts humans into the role of real-time surveillance. Users sign up to be followed for a day, answering two questions: Why do you want to be followed? Why should someone follow you?And finally, in her most recent project Lauren: A Human Smart Home Intelligence, Lauren attempts to become the human versi

This week we continue with part two of our special live recording of Team Human at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts in San Fransisco. Joining Douglas on stage is cyberculture pioneer, educator, artist, author, visionary, and shoe painter, Howard Rheingold. “Mind amplifiers,” “psychedelic signifiers,” and “the instrumental vs. the sacred” are just the tip of the iceberg in a conversation that explores how we got to this moment in technology and society... and ultimately where we hope to go. Following Rushkoff and Rheingold’s conversation, Sci-Fi author and technology journalist Annalee Newitz (hear Newitz's conversation in part 1) rejoins the team for a roundtable discussion and audience Q & A. If you are just discovering Team Human, check out last week’s Episode 75, featuring the first hour of this of this live show with guest Annalee Newitz. Patreon supporters have access to the complete uncut interview at patreon.com/teamhuman. Music heard on today’s show; “Walkabout” by Throbbing G

This week's Team Human comes to you recorded live at the historic Grand Theater in San Francisco's Mission District, home to Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. We'll be sharing four installments of this live event, kicking it off with a conversation with Annalee Newitz, author of the mind blowing sci-fi novel Autonomous, as well as prior work Scatter Adapt and Remember: How Humans will Survive a Mass Extinction, founder of I09, and journalist for outlets such as Ars Technica among many others.Annalee joins Douglas on stage to talk about artificial intelligence, autonomy, tech ethics, robot sex, saving the planet and more. It's a lively discussion, energized by the presence of a wonderful and welcoming audience.Rushkoff kicks off this live series with an excerpt from his Team Human Manifesto, an excellent primer on the motivation driving this podcast and the connections being forged through its members.Next week we'll pick up with part two of this live show, featuring cyberculture pioneer, educator, and artist

Playing for Team Human today is interdisciplinary thinker and technology philosopher Damien Williams. In this episode, Williams and Rushkoff look at the embedded biases of technology and the values programed into our mediated lives. How has a conception of technology as “objective” blurred our vision to the biases normalized within these systems? What ethical interrogation might we apply to such technology? And finally, how might alternative modes of thinking, such as magick, the occult, and the spiritual help us to bracket off these systems for pause and critical reflection? This conversation serves as a call to vigilance against runaway systems and the prejudices they amplify.Learn more about Damien’s work at http://www.afutureworththinkingabout.com/Rushkoff begins today’s show with a story from home. A well-meaning school administrator begins using social media to promote his school, posting pictures of students and classroom activities. As parents become upset, the question arises: Why is it so easy to lo

Playing for Team Human today, cyber security expert Eleanor Saitta. Eleanor shares her deep knowledge on building secure and robust digital ecosystems. As Eleanor and Douglas converse on issues of privacy, encryption, and surveillance, a set of thought-provoking insights about online identity and human to human connection emerges. Does empathy scale across our cyber connections? Or is it confusion and distrust that are most apt to scale? Conversing over a shaky and intermittent VoIP connection, the question at hand seems to materialize within the interview. Luckily Saitta and Rushkoff overcome technical hurdles and find rapport and connection in a unique conversation that ultimately asks;What is real? How do I know I am me? Is it safe? Opening today’s episode, Douglas looks back on the life of friend, cyber culture pioneer, and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation John Perry Barlow. Rushkoff remembers Barlow and their shared optimism for cyberspace back in that hopeful moment before the