FUTURE FOSSILS
231 episodes - English - Latest episode: 16 days ago - ★★★★★ - 231 ratingsJoin paleontologist-futurist Michael Garfield and an avalanche of amazing guests for deep but irreverent discussions at the edge of the known and knowable: on prehistory and post-humanity and deep time, non-human agency and non-duality, science fiction and self-fulfilling prophecies, complex systems and sustainability (or lack thereof), psychedelics as a form of training for proliferating futures, art and creativity as service and as inquiry. New episodes on a roughly biweekly basis. Get bonus material and support the show at patreon.com/michaelgarfield or michaelgarfield.substack.com
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Episodes
🎋🔬🕸️ 218 - Neil Theise on Complexity & Nonduality
April 02, 2024 22:56 - 1 hour - 79.6 MBI’m honored to share a profound and soulful conversation on science and spirituality with Neil Theise, professor of pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, discoverer of a new human organ (the interstitium), lifelong Zen meditator, and author of the superb book, Notes on Complexity. ✨ Mentioned & Related Links: Embodied Ethics in The Age of AIComplexity, Culture & Consciousness - a Minds.com panel discussion with Neil Theise, Erik Davis, Michael Garfield, Richard Doyle, and Mitc...
💻💶🌏 217 - Gregory Landua & Speaker John Ash on Regenerative Accelerationism & How To Heal A Broken Internet
March 06, 2024 23:46 - 1 hour - 87.6 MBIf you care about this show as a public good, consider signing up on Substack or Patreon today for bonus episodes, live calls, and more — or at least mash “subscribe” on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and leave a five-star review. The unborn future archaeologists who find these episodes inscribed in DNA will thank you! Today I welcome you to join me for a long-awaited trialogue with two of the most thoughtful people I know: Gregory Landua, co-founder of Regen Network (and CEO of Regen Network D...
🐦⬛🦖🕵🏼♀️ 216 - Jingmai O'Connor on Dead Birds & Living Paleontologists
February 21, 2024 21:00 - 1 hour - 86 MBThis week I speak with Jingmai O’Connor (Staff Page | Instagram), Associate Curator of Fossil Reptiles (a.k.a. Priestess of Dead Dino-Birds) at The Field Museum in Chicago, about the magnificent strangeness of Mesozoic flying reptiles, the perverse anthropology of paleontologists, and much else. Contrary to expectations for a show with “fossils” in its title, I don’t ordinarily interview people who actually dig up prehistoric creatures, but as I make perhaps too obvious in this enthusiastic ...
🫂👩🏼💻🔍 215 - Social Science & Collective Intelligence with Brigham Adams of Goodly Labs
January 22, 2024 07:36 - 1 hour - 91.4 MBThis week I speak with social scientist Nicholas Brigham Adams (Twitter, LinkedIn) about his work at Goodly Labs to create new infrastructure for collective intelligence — new systems for collective fact-checking and sense-making that can help us rise to the occasion of our inherently social, planet-scale challenges. And the time for this work is definitely NOW. As paths across social, economic, and ecological networks continue to shrink due to the increasing connectivity of technological ...
👁️🔄📀 214 - J.F. Martel, Phil Ford, & Megan Phipps on Weird Cybernetics: Waking Up From The Ecstasy
December 25, 2023 09:33 - 1 hour - 73.6 MB✨ Subscribe and review at Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify. Unborn archaeologists thank you! Merry Christmas, Future Fossils! This is Michael Garfield welcoming you to episode 214 of the podcast that explores our place in time — and as demonstrated in the Dr. Who and Aliens franchises, Blade Runner 2049, and Batman Returns, Christmas is a fruitful backdrop for the pondering of big ideas — a moment in which we can see with greater clarity than usual the unity of everyday mundane humanity and t...
🕸️⛩️💻 213 - Amber Case & Michael Zargham on Entangled Technologies & Design As Governance
December 01, 2023 20:31 - 1 hour - 65.1 MB✨ Subscribe and review at Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify. Unborn archaeologists thank you! This week I speak with two of the most thoughtful people I know in tech, cyborg anthropologist Amber Case and systems engineer Michael Zargham (Founder & CEO of BlockScience) — who work together on tools for building trust between tech users and tech companies at the Superset DAO and each contribute diverse value to society through myriad creative projects in their own right (like Amber’s totally fabul...
🌏🚜🫀212 - Manfred Laubichler & Geoffrey West on Life In The Anthropocene & Living Inside The Technosphere
November 06, 2023 17:06 - 1 hour - 65.9 MBSubscribe and review at Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify. Or wherever! This week on the show I speak with physicist Geoffrey West (SFI) and evolutionary biologist Manfred Laubichler (ASU, SFI) about the transformations that our geosphere, biosphere, technosphere, and noosphere are undergoing as the “extended phenotype” of human innovation runs rampant across the surface of Planet Earth. These two distinguished scientists are some of the most profound thinkers I’ve ever encountered, helping mi...
💻🍄🧙🏼♂️ 211 - Adam Aronovich on A Cultural Anthropology for The Psychedelic Internet
October 31, 2023 18:08 - 1 hour - 51.3 MBSubscribe and review at Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify. Or wherever! This week on Future Fossils we pierce the veil with Adam Aronovich, cultural anthropologist and psychedelic integration therapist, to talk about the strange brew of web-connected healing and web-inflicted paranoia and delusions of grandeur, conspiracy epistemics, how people are being treated as robots, and robots are being treated as people, and engaging reality directly versus engaging through the manipulation of symbols. ...
👁️🧠🎧 210 - Mitch Schultz & Shanta Stevens on Documenting The Next Psychedelic Revolution
October 02, 2023 20:23 - 1 hour - 77.7 MBSubscribe and review at Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify. Or wherever! This week I welcome back psychedelic film-maker and culture-cultivator Mitch Schultz, Director of the legendary documentary DMT: The Spirit Molecule, alongside our mutual co-conspirator, experience design consultant and psychedelic provocateur Shanta Stevens. The two of them have formed a nucleus at Uniphi Studio around which a new transmedia documentary project is emerging — The Conscious Molecule — which will reflect on ...
🍄🎥👁️ 209 - Ken Adams on A Life of Psychedelic Film-Making & Collaboration with Terence McKenna
September 12, 2023 15:35 - 1 hour - 84.7 MBThis week I have the joy of sharing a long-overdue discussion with legendary psychedelic media pioneer Ken Adams (Vimeo | LinkedIn), one of the first people I ever interviewed on record years before Future Fossils and whose influence on my own creative life cannot be overstated. Two of Ken’s main claims to fame are the films he created in collaboration with Terence McKenna, namely Alien Dreamtime (mediocre fan upload, archived references to) and Imaginatrix (rental page). This June was the t...
👷🏽🌎🎊 208 - Building Cultural Capacity for A REAL Psychedelic Renaissance with Samantha Sweetwater, Ian-Michael Hebert, and Jahan Khamsehzadeh @ Psychedelic Science 2023
August 25, 2023 21:01 - 1 hour - 81.6 MBThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com This week on the show I share a reading and panel discussion with three amazing psychedelic thought-leaders I facilitated as a satellite event during the MAPS 2023 Psychedelic Science Conference! Samantha Sweetwater (author of The Wisdom of WTF?!? and the forthcoming book True Human), Jahan Khamsehzadeh (author of The Psilocybin Connection), and Ian-Michael Hebert (founder of Holos Global) met in an i...
🌊🏄🌱 207 - Tech & Community LIVE at Junkyard Social Club with Evan Snyder, Ryan Madson, Roger Toennis, Aaron Gabriel, & Juicy Life
August 10, 2023 23:02 - 1 hour - 52 MBThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com This week I’m glad to share a special Future Fossils Live recorded at one of the coolest places I have ever seen, the Junkyard Social Club in Boulder, Colorado! It’s a menagerie of interesting brilliant weirdos, including my old friend and original co-host/robotics engineer Evan Snyder, soul-searching serial community-development entrepreneur Ryan Madson, former rocket scientist turned tech advisor Rog...
🤩🎻🤖 206 - Scout Rainer Wiley on AI vs. BS Jobs, The Return of Culture, and Eldritch Wonders in The Bright Apocalypse
July 27, 2023 12:00 - 1 hour - 75.5 MBThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com ...about AI, art, culture, celebrity, identity, and trauma. Before we begin: I’m teaching a six-week online course on science, philosophy, economics, media, and dinosaurs! Join me at NuraLearning.com for Jurassic Worlding, a psychedelic deep dive into self-fulfilling techno-thrillers and the analog-digital transition, starting August 1st! The course is now pay-what-you-can thanks to the generosity of...
🎶⚔️👏🏼 205 - Greg Thomas & Stephanie Lepp on Jazz Leadership & Antagonistic Cooperation
July 12, 2023 23:40 - 1 hour - 84.4 MBThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com Before we begin: I’m teaching a six-week online course on science, philosophy, economics, media, and dinosaurs! Join me at NuraLearning.com for Jurassic Worlding, a psychedelic deep dive into self-fulfilling techno-thrillers and the analog-digital transition, starting August 1st! Use discount code FUTUREFOSSIL for 10% off. This week on Future Fossils, I enter into a deep and delightful call-and-respon...
💐📚🏛️ 204 - Jamie Joyce on The Society Library and Tools for Making Sense Together
June 19, 2023 20:57 - 1 hour - 47.5 MBThis week we talk with Jamie Joyce of The Society Library! ✨ SOME References: An Oral History of The End of ‘Reality’ Regina Rini and the Epistemic Backstop Stephanie Lepp Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens Alison Gopnik The Hyperion Cantos The Internet Archive Ed Bernays ✨ Support Future Fossils: Subscribe anywhere you go for podcasts. Subscribe to the podcast PLUS essays, music, and news on Substack or Patreon.Buy my original paintings or commission new work. Buy my music on Bandcamp!...
203 - Kevin Kelly on Excellent Advice for Living, Playing with AI, and Staying Curious
June 03, 2023 15:41 - 58 minutes - 40.1 MBPardon the delay, as I’ve been gathering more conversations than I’ve shared. Future Fossils is about to go into the rapids with three amazing back-to-back episodes! The next will be with Jamie Joyce of The Society Library and then it’s Greg Thomas of The Jazz Leadership Project with producer/futurist Stephanie Lepp (formerly The Center for Humane Technology and The Institute for Cultural Evolution). BUT FIRST! Our guest for this episode is technologist, best-selling author, and WIRED fou...
202 - Caveat Magister on Psychomagic, Amusement Parks, & Turning Your Life Into Art
May 03, 2023 20:00 - 1 hour - 67.4 MBIn this episode I welcome Caveat Magister, resident philosopher of Burning Man, to Future Fossils to discuss his latest book, Turn Your Life Into Art! We talk about transformational cross-country and urban adventures, psychomagic, and the difference between two kinds of experience design — one of which structures something fun but easily consumable and the other which demands our personal transformation at great risk and maybe peril. Get more familiar with your daimon through this conversati...
201 - KMO & Kevin Wohlmut on our Blue Collar Black Mirror: Star Trek, Star Wars, Blade Runner, Jurassic Park, Adventure Time, ChatGPT, & More
April 13, 2023 21:44 - 1 hour - 73 MBThis week we talk about the intersections of large language models, the golden age of television and its storytelling mishaps, making one’s way through the weirding of the labor economy, and much more with two of my favorite Gen X science fiction aficionados, OG podcaster KMO and our mutual friend Kevin Arthur Wohlmut. In this episode — a standalone continuation to my recent appearance on The KMO Show, we skip like a stone across mentions of every Star Trek series, the collapse of narratives...
200 - Ehren Cruz & Daphne Krantz on Psychedelics, Addiction, and Transcendence
March 17, 2023 17:49 - 1 hour - 47.9 MBWelcome to episode two hundred of Future Fossils! On this episode, I'm joined by Ehren Cruz (LinkedIn, Instagram, Website) and Daphne Krantz (LinkedIn, Instagram, Website) to discuss transcendence, trauma, and transformation. We talk about the festival world, our individual journeys, the rise of psychedelics in therapeutic applications, the potential of these substances, and their cultural roots. We also discuss addiction, trauma, and the consequences of collective consciousness, freedom, an...
199 - The Great Decoherence of Android Jones
February 24, 2023 18:32 - 1 hour - 43.6 MBThis week I have one of the most vulnerable, personal, and profound conversations ever shared on the show — and it’s one that speaks directly to the deepest and most persistent themes addressed on Future Fossils. Android Jones is one of the world’s pre-eminent digital painters and an utterly singular and inimitable visionary artist. He’s also a loving husband and father of three, an old friend (even if we don’t talk as often as I’d like, or as perhaps we should), and someone I regard as a to...
198 - Tadaaki Hozumi on Japanese Esotericism, Aliens, Land Spirits, & The Singularity (Part 2)
February 06, 2023 16:38 - 1 hour - 58.7 MB“We want to be careful when we’re in conflict on the internet.”– Tadaaki Hozumi Tadaaki Hozumi, member of Japan’s oldest surviving lineage of royal Shinto priests, is back for the second part of our three-hour conversation on animism in the ancient-future technological construct-wilderness of the 21st Century! In this episode we discuss the ongoing battle between the spirits of the analog “realm of circles” and the digital “realm of squares,” the blurry boundary between humans and artificia...
197 - Tadaaki Hozumi on Japanese Esotericism, Lost Civilizations, and The Singularity (Part 1)
January 20, 2023 21:28 - 1 hour - 57.7 MBThis week and next, we talk to returning guest Tadaaki Hozumi about the crossroads between the esoteric history of Japan and its Indigenous peoples and royal family; the mysterious convergence of ancient records from around the world on stories of lost civilizations and extraterrestrial encounters; and how animism and magic seem ripe for retrieval as we barrel down the chute of the Technological Singularity. This is one of those edge-case conversations that I’ll look back on in twenty years...
196 - Robert Poynton on Improvisation As A Way of Life
December 28, 2022 20:05 - 1 hour - 55.4 MBRate and review the show at Apple Podcasts Browse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, etc. “Notice more. Let go. Use everything.” I’ve decided Future Fossils is going to double down on its commitment to helping people navigate uncharted waters by focusing explicitly on improvisation in 2023, and our first stop together on this journey is a marvelously soulful and profound discussion with my friend Robert Poynton. Robert is many things, including an Associate Fellow of the S...
195 - A.I. Art: An Emergency Panel with Julian Picaza, Evo Heyning, Micah Daigle, Jamie Curcio, & Topher Sipes
December 12, 2022 21:14 - 2 hours - 59.4 MBComplete show notes at Patreon Rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts Browse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, etc. ✨ About This Episode: This week we dig down as what W.J.T. Mitchell called “paleontologists of the present” to explore the ramifications of A.I. on the creative economy as lensed through two notorious William Gibson quotes: “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed” and “The street finds its own uses for things.” Joining me on the call ...
194 - Simon Conway Morris on Convergent Evolution & Creative Mass Extinctions
November 20, 2022 03:56 - 1 hour - 45.5 MBComplete, EXTENSIVE show notes at Patreon Rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts Browse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, etc. How much of natural history is inevitable, and how much is the result of chance? Do mass extinctions slow the evolution of the biosphere, or speed it up? These are two of the six great questions of biology explored by Simon Conway Morris, famous evolutionary theorist, in his latest book. From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evol...
193 - Kimberly Dill on Environmental Philosophy: In Defense of Wildness & Night
October 30, 2022 21:02 - 1 hour - 54.5 MBThis week I talk with environmental philosopher and Santa Clara Clara Assistant Professor Kimberly Dill, an old friend of mine from Austin, Texas whom I met at Bouldin Creek Coffee over lemon maté sours and a deep dive into Eastern nondual traditions while she was in school studying arguments against free will under acclaimed analytic philosopher Galen Strawson. She has since grown into a formidable scholar and ethics instructor in her own right and positively exudes a studious, diligent, ca...
192 - My Cataract: An Initiation 👁✨
September 26, 2022 22:34 - 51 minutes - 35.3 MBThis week I go solo and get reflective on age, noise, loss, mystery, stars and angels, dreams and seasons, modern science and the retrieval of magic... Read the ✨ EXTENSIVE ✨ show notes, and join the Future Fossils community, at Patreon. cataract (n.) early 15c., "a waterfall, floodgate, furious rush of water," from Latin cataracta "waterfall," from Greek katarhaktes "waterfall, broken water; a kind of portcullis," noun use of an adjective compound meaning "swooping, down-rushing," from...
191 - Roland Harwood on Learning To Be Liminal
September 09, 2022 16:27 - 1 hour - 47.4 MBSubscribe wherever you dig podcasts Rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts Browse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, NFTs, etc. Dig into the complete, extensive show notes (and join our online community) at Patreon This week on the show I chat with the storied, insightful, multidimensional Roland Harwood (Twitter | LinkedIn | Liminal | Participatory City Foundation) — a “compulsive connector,” generalist, “failed astronaut,” pianist, Founder, CEO, Trustee, impresario o...
190 - Lauren Seyler on Dark Microbiology & Right Relations in Science
August 20, 2022 06:14 - 1 hour - 58.5 MBRate and review the show at Apple Podcasts Dig into the complete, extensive show notes at Patreon This week we’re joined by Lauren Seyler, Assistant Professor of Biology at Stockton University (Lab Website, Twitter @darkmicrobio, Google Scholar), who studies the microscopic living world that flourishes in dark places: the mud of coastal marshes, inside rocks, and in sediments at the bottom of the sea. She’s also co-authored a number of publications on how scientists can work ethically with...
189 - Planet-scale Musical Chairs: 21st Century Human Geography with Parag Khanna
July 28, 2022 10:07 - 1 hour - 54.7 MBThis week on Future Fossils, we sync up with globe-trotting (Singapore-based) futurist Parag Khanna, author of several internationally best-selling books on the shifting landscape of human geography and technological evolution. My acquaintance with Parag dates back all the way to 2011 when I found his Hybrid Reality Institute, and started writing for his BigThink blog, thanks to the writing of Jason Silva — I knew this was a party I couldn’t miss, even though I was then, as now, deeply ambiv...
188 - LARPing as a Nation-State with Jon Hillis & 0xZakk of CABIN DAO and Christian Lemp of Diamond DAO
July 03, 2022 20:44 - 1 hour - 56.1 MBComplete, EXTENSIVE show notes at Patreon.com/michaelgarfield! As guest 0xZakk says at the very end of this conversation, most of the construction projects throughout the history of civilization have been coercive. What does it look like when we actually build things in a really cooperative way? This episode was recorded in November 2021 when the cryptocurrency markets were insanely bullish and the world relatively stable…but releasing it now, in July 2022, seems more aptly-timed than I cou...
187 - Fear & Loathing on the Electronic Frontier with Kevin Welch & David Hensley of EFF-Austin
June 10, 2022 23:40 - 1 hour - 56.3 MBFind the complete show notes for this episode on Patreon. This episode was recorded live in Austin, Texas at the West China Tea House in partnership with EFF-Austin, a non-profit committed to the establishment and protection of digital rights and defense of the wealth of digital information, innovation, and technology. Founded in 1991 as a local sub-chapter of The Electronic Frontier Foundation and run as an independent organization, EFF-Austin promotes the right of all citizens to communica...
186 - A Manifesto for Weird Science
May 15, 2022 03:16 - 1 hour - 43.5 MBor, “Why Isn’t There A Science of X?” or, “Alchemy is to Chemistry as Astrology is to…?” “If people don’t believe us after all the results we’ve produced, then they never will.” “It’s time for a new era, for someone to figure out what the implications of our results are for human culture, for future study, and — if the findings are correct — what they say about our basic scientific attitude.” – Robert G. Jahn “We have been very open with our data. But how do you get peer review when you...
185 - What Good Is Conversation? Jonathan Rowson, Bonnitta Roy, Jason Snyder, Ashley Colby, & Stephanie Lepp Play Liminal Lingo Bingo Amidst The Metacrisis
April 29, 2022 08:01 - 1 hour - 47.3 MBDon't waste another minute here. Go read the full show notes on Patreon! Be forewarned: This latest episode is some extremely heady stuff. But thankfully, it's also full of heart and soul... Back in February, Jonathan Rowson posted two clips (here and here) from his latest in-progress writing tlimito Twitter, where it succeeded in baiting a bunch of the folks with whom I regularly interact as members of the so-called "Liminal Web" into reflecting on the value of partitioning a global boil ...
184 - Henry Gee on The History & Future of Life on Earth (& Much Else!)
March 28, 2022 19:28 - 2 hours - 55.8 MBI don't even know where to start with this amazing episode. Henry Gee is the Senior Editor of Nature, the author of many cool science books including his latest, A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth; an accomplished musician; a riveting storyteller and humorous fellow; the Founding Editor of Nature's Futures sci-fi series; and a total joy in conversation. We met to discuss his brilliant tour of evolutionary history past and future, and did, but also occupied a fair bit of our two hours to...
183 - The Evolution of Poetic Song Verse with Mike Mattison & Ernest Suarez
March 08, 2022 19:40 - 1 hour - 51.5 MBFind the complete show notes and support the show at Patreon. This week on Future Fossils, Orpheus is in the building for a soulful and visionary conversation with Grammy-winning blues singer-songwriter Mike Mattison and inveterate English professor Ernest Suarez of Catholic University, co-authors of the new book Poetic Song Verse: Blues-based Popular Music and Poetry. Their book explores the history of the complicated love affair between literature and rock, tracing the tangled roots back...
182 - Siv Watkins on Microanimism: Living with The Smalls
February 16, 2022 23:20 - 1 hour - 51.5 MBMicrobiologist, independent scholar, ritualist, equestrian therapist, and overall badass Siv Watkins joins the show this week to discuss right relationship with the world of the invisibly small: mood-altering gut flora, the COVID-19 pandemic, Lyme disease, AIDS, and other chronic ailments…as well as with the all-encompassing tapestry of microbial life from which we evolved and within which we exist from birth to death. It’s turtles all the way down! Tag an anti-natalist friend and have them ...
181 - Jim Rutt on The Pre- and Post-History of GameB
February 01, 2022 21:57 - 2 hours - 58 MBGet the AMAZING full show notes on Patreon (free public post). Jim Rutt joins us this week to explore the pre- and post-history of “GameB”, an antidote to the social script of rampant ecocidal profit maximalization. Of course, Jim himself is an optimizer par excellence, a true Boomer if there ever were one who saw the wave of personal computing coming in and rode it like a champion surfer from one tech company to the next. What is the relationship between making it big by connecting people ...
180 - Web3 & Complex Systems with Park Bach, Sid Shrivastava, Shirley Bekins, & Avel Guénin-Carlut at Complexity Weekend
January 19, 2022 02:24 - 1 hour - 59.2 MBThis week I talk with four brilliant people working in and around the study of complex systems about the World Wide Web’s co-evolution with cryptocurrencies and other distributed ledger technologies: the promise AND the peril; the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s a hugely complicated topic and there wasn’t enough time in this panel for Complexity Weekend (recorded on 14 November 2021) for everyone to get on the same page, much less come to a final agreement about anything — but the real val...
180 - Web3 & Complex Systems with Park Bach, Sid Shrivastava, Shirley Bekins, & Avel Guénin-Carlut at Complexity Weekend
January 19, 2022 02:24 - 1 hour - 197 MBThis week I talk with four brilliant people working in and around the study of complex systems about the World Wide Web’s co-evolution with cryptocurrencies and other distributed ledger technologies: the promise AND the peril; the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s a hugely complicated topic and there wasn’t enough time in this panel for Complexity Weekend (recorded on 14 November 2021) for everyone to get on the same page, much less come to a final agreement about anything — but the real val...
179 - Scout-Lieder Wiley on Transrational Oracles & Magical Thinking in The 21st Century
December 18, 2021 03:03 - 1 hour - 51.4 MBThis week on Future Fossils, metamodern magick ritual artist, yogini, songwriter, and delicious weirdo Scout-Lieder Wiley and I ask: “How are you supposed to repair the darkness if you don’t own the darkness?” And we have much fun and profound exploration besides, into the performance of expertise, the virtue of naïveté, integral theory without the jargon, being unfinished, speaking the unspeakable, heyoka medicine, astrology, the enneagram, the tarot, hermes the scientist versus hermes t...
178 - Chris Ryan on Exhuming The Human from Our Eldritch Institutions
December 02, 2021 03:36 - 1 hour - 51.6 MBThe longest-incubated episode of Future Fossils ever! "Vanthropologist" Chris Ryan and I discuss his book, Civilized To Death: The Price of Progress, and the conflict between human beings and our institutions. What is the bright side of collapse? What syntheses of wilderness and culture can we foster in the years to come? This was a blast... ✨ Housekeeping • If you want to see these conversations thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts! As...
177 - Systems Design & Extended Cognition at Complexity Weekend with Tom Carter, Jenn Huff, Pietro Michelucci, and Richard James MacCowan
November 13, 2021 21:17 - 56 minutes - 38.5 MBLast autumn, as part of the Complexity Weekend hackathon, I hosted a live panel discussion with four unique and fascinating minds. We discussed archaeoacoustic design as a form of extended cognition, the continuity between the ancient and postmodern worlds, biomimicry, and many more interesting threads at the intersection of complex systems research and creative innovation. I’m doing this again tomorrow (11/14) for a panel on complex systems science and the evolution of Web3 — more info her...
176 - Exploring Ecodelia with Richard Doyle, Sophie Strand, and Sam Gandy at the Psilocybin Summit
October 29, 2021 04:50 - 1 hour - 42.6 MBThis week, in a powerful panel discussion at the Psilocybin Summit, we reflect on the lessons of magic mushrooms with three of the smartest, wisest trippers I’ve ever met: Penn State author and English professor Richard Doyle, Inner Traditions author and mythologist Sophie Strand, and Imperial College London ecologist and psychedelics researcher Sam Gandy. We talk about the history of the superb trip preparation algorithm “ecodelic,” how psychoactive plants and fungi are once again calling ...
175 - C. Thi Nguyen on The Seductions of Clarity, Weaponized Games, and Agency as Art
October 13, 2021 05:35 - 1 hour - 60.1 MBThis week I talk to philosopher C. Thi Nguyen (objectionable.net | @add_hawk) of the University of Utah, author of Games: Agency as Art and many fascinating papers on social knowledge and the psychology of games, transparency in society, and the philosophy of science — the very philosophical concerns with which I’m obsessed and to which I have devoted much of this show. I met him at Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute this July and immediately knew I had to have him on for what turned out...
174 - Evan "Skytree" Snyder on Sound Design for A Robotic Built Wilderness
September 30, 2021 04:11 - 1 hour - 47.8 MBThis week we're joined by robotics engineer, electronic music producer, and Future Fossils co-founder Evan “Skytree” Snyder — who has recently been asked to help design the sounds made by the next wave of Amazon warehouse robots. In this first part of our discussion, we explore the evolutionary and psychological considerations for designing human-compatible robot sounds, talk brilliant birds and their mimicry of people and machines, and riff on the manipulative utility of cuteness for both g...
173 - Daniel Shankin on Psychedelic Integration - The Path of the Heart
September 07, 2021 03:30 - 1 hour - 60 MBThis week I commune with psychedelic integration counselor Daniel ‘Sitaram Das’ Shankin, founder of Tam Integration and The Psilocybin Summit, in a soulful conversation on grace versus good works, taking multiple perspectives, being the kindest version of yourself (rather than the smartest), belief systems as spirit possessions, his journey from yoga teacher to psychedelic integration counselor, personality types as insurance strategies, the good, bad, and ugly of memes, and how to live with...
172 - Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Systems Thinking, Fractal Governance, Ontopunk, and Queering W.E.I.R.D. Modernity
August 18, 2021 03:38 - 1 hour - 48.2 MBThis week’s guest is one of my favorite discoveries of the last few years, and someone I’m honored and delighted to know. I can hardly express how strange and exciting it was when I reached out to Tyson Yunkaporta, author of Sand Talk and Senior Research Fellow at Deakin University, and found out he was already a fan of my podcasting…so this episode is a seriously chummy session of mutual discovery by two people perhaps already a little bit TOO familiar with one another’s work. Tyson inha...
Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Systems Thinking, Fractal Governance, Ontopunk, and Queering W.E.I.R.D. Modernity
August 18, 2021 03:38 - 1 hour - 241 MBThis week’s guest is one of my favorite discoveries of the last few years, and someone I’m honored and delighted to know. I can hardly express how strange and exciting it was when I reached out to Tyson Yunkaporta, author of Sand Talk and Senior Research Fellow at Deakin University, and found out he was already a fan of my podcasting…so this episode is a seriously chummy session of mutual discovery by too people perhaps already a little bit TOO familiar with one another’s work. Tyson inha...
171 - Eric Wargo on Precognitive Dreamwork and The Philosophy of Time Travel
July 28, 2021 06:28 - 1 hour - 48.8 MBThis week we welcome back anthropologist and science writer Eric Wargo, for a conversation about his book Precognitive Dreamwork and The Long Self — as well as: how tautology (not paradox) rules a time travel universe, what it means to become a time-faring species, the future of precognitive technologies, the concern of a quantum computing financial singularity, why lying to yourself about your own future-sight might be of evolutionary benefit, why retrocausalists don’t believe in randomness...